_

Quixotic quixotic baaaad open eyes be more practical about matters. Apt to be deluded.

Il faut être optimiste quand même.

I'm 22 now. Gah. For the +tive though: I'm talking online to a French boy called Thomas. I might go meet him in Lyon tomorrow for coffee.

Cet après-midi il y avait une femme qui est venue au lycée pour donner aux élèves de terminale et prépa quelques renseignements sur la traduction... c'est-à-dire, la technique, la pratique... tout à propos de la traduction comme métier. QU'EST-CE QUE C'EST COMPLIQUÉ! Et du coup pour moi c'était assez difficile à suivre, et pas seulement parce que c'était plutôt technique comme sujet. La femme, elle était impressionante, intimidante... d'une for-mi-dable intelligence! Et voilà je l'ai écoutée mais franchement j'avais du mal (plus que d'habitude) à tenir le français dans la tête, à ne pas être en traduisant constamment les phrases à l'anglais. Mais tant pis. Il y a toujours des difficultés, il faut pas m'en vouloir. De toute façon ça m'a fait très plaisir d'entendre le français parlé correctement, de façon soutenu, avec l'emploi de toutes les règles grammatique que l'on apprend et que personne n'utilise dans le français courant. Par exemple, l'imparfait du subjonctif... c'était vraiment la première fois dans ma vie que je l'ai entendu. Comme c'était marrant (au moins... pour moi, language-geek)!

Il y a une compétition littéraire auquelle je pense à participer. Il s'agit des langues vivantes en Grand Bretagne, leur popularités comme matières scholaires, et tout ça. J'aimerais bien écrire qqch de convaincant... quelques mots en persuadant les jeunes de les apprendre. Qqch d'amusant, plein d'esprit, assez charmant... Il faut qu'il soit en anglais, du coup... pas difficile pour moi, enfant génie. Lol.

Je me casse. Bisous.

RIP Kate McGarrigle. Total legend. 'Kate & Anna McGarrigle' is just complete comfort music. Will always be one of my favourites. &hearts




Some say a heart is just like a wheel
When you bend it, you can't mend it
And my love for you is like a sinking ship
And my heart is like that ship out in mid ocean

They say that death is a tragedy
It comes once and it's over
But my only wish is for that deep dark abyss
'Cause what's the use of living with no true lover

And it's only love, and it's only love
That can wreck a human being and turn him inside out
That can wreck a human being and turn him inside out

When harm is done no love can be won
I know this happens frequently
What I can't understand
Oh please God hold my hand
Is why it should have happened to me

And it's only love and it's only love
And it's only love and it's only love
Only love, only love
Only love, only love

He speaks French SO beautifully. And I know his French sounds gay. But then, my whole français obsession is homo-rooted. It's my drag language. Well, whatever. It's difficult to render sensical precisely wtf I mean. But I actually UNDERSTAND THIS which pleases me so much after years of watching French interviews on youtube and only pretending to know what they're pouting their little hearts out about. Oh oh oh, AND, he's from Saint-Etienne... ça me fait plaisir.

Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art--
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors--
No--yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever--or else swoon to death.

MEGA SWOON at Ben Whishaw as Keats. Poets are hot. Moreover, the combination of indie-boy haircut and fit as fuck 19th century tailcoats in electric blue pastel hues is such a win. I wish men still got to dress like that. And say things like, "Are we yet to dine?", when what you really mean is 'when is tea out'. Half the joy of period pieces is that the people speak English well. PROPERLY. Beautifully. Joyous to behold, etc. Also, discovered I can't marry a Frenchman, because (working with the new premise that I will before long meet my John Keats) we'd lose so much chat in the chasmic abyss between non-native French and non-native English. Basically I can't marry someone who speaks my language as a foreign language. Quelle shit realisation.

Anyway this poem is beautz.

The remarks of the director of some Spanish transexuals support group in the wake of the operation on that 16 year old:

"It is a condition that one is born with but which you cannot operate for until they are 18 years old. That, for a doctor, is something of a shock. No one could imagine that if your child was born with, say, leukaemia, we would say we must wait until 18 before operating."

That is literally the stupidest comment ever.

Bien qu'il neige pendant tout le trajet au lycée ce matin et que j’aie mal au pied j’ai réussi à arriver à l’heure pour mon cours à 8h. Ben en fait il était 8h02, car j’ai noté l’heure juste après que j’ai pris la moitié de la classe et on s’est installé dans la salle à côté de la prof. Et je pensais que c’était bien. Mais la prof était fâché et m’a dit après qu'il faut vraiment faire attention à mon comportement au lycée, la ponctualité et tout ça, parce qu’il parait (au moins, d’après elle) que les profs commencent à parler de moi entre eux, qu’il y a certains trucs qui ne leur plaisent pas en ce qui concerne mon présence à Fauriel. En fait c’est pas si sérieux, mais je dis n’importe quoi juste pour avoir quelque chose à dire en français, tu vois. Bonne année 2010, au fait. Meilleurs vœux ! &hearts

Fucking love when someone who you used to obsess about and who dumped you (in a manner of speaking) has a pure bogging profile picture when you facebook stalk them. Yes, I mightn't be able to read your wall-to-walls, but your face has fair been acne-raped. WIN.

God, I'm a sorry soul.

For the more positive spin - yes, I love France. Yes, it's fabulous to be back in Scotland. (Only half of that is true; the UK is shit, I love France.) Also, I want to move to London, but I dread being one of these knobs who moves to London and proceeds to think the rest of UK shouldn't/needn't exist. But then, if I approach London as non-Britain (which in frankness it is), it's manageable. I mean, the most 'UK' city in the UK is Edinburgh. And it's an utter fail of a city. I mean, I love it to death. But in purely superficial hues. I like a wee Starbucks on the Meadows, a wee wander through the soap boutiques in the Grassmarket, now and then a brief, and ironic, flirtation with Scotch traditions in a New Town eatery. As much as the next apostle of the Scottish brain-drain. And all without a regional accent in sight. JOYS. It's like that time I went out to eat with a parents' friend. Fiona Galt. Posh as fuck. Legend. Love her. (I love all people who speak with RP. A generalisation, and a lie, but TRUE.) Anyway, the portuguese waiter brought us the menu, and gave a redundant apology for the rainy weather. And Fiona, in beautifully delivered RP, replied "Oh, darling. One is a Scot. One is used to it." Legend. I mean, knob, but legend.

Anyway, I've forgotten the point I was trying to make. I love Scotland, but I'm entirely over it. By which I mean Britain-minus-London. And I don't know London a jot. It's just that everywhere else I've been in Britain has been the same as Scotland exactly (because, duh, it's the same country), just either more populated and less beautiful, or pretty and quaint in either an Elizabeth-Gaskell-novel way, or in a caravan holiday way (I think here of the Cotswolds, and Wales, and the endless family holidays).

And Paris. I mean, I love France to death. But there's threefold less kudos living in Paris as London. The French are inward-looking as fuck. It's fantastically endearing in medium-sized cities such as Lyon. But in Paris you may as well be in London, because no one the fuck can be arsed learning French, ergo fuck all happens in Paris, because English is piss easy to pick up to an adequate working level, so voilà, everybody goes to London. And New York's obviously that league above, but nobody it seems has the balls to move to America anymore with the schizo apocalyptic conservatism. And London's like a fail New York, if we're gonna be honest, because New York's not America. But then London is Britain, and we love it for that, so much, so much.

Anyway, I start to reprioritise my life, because I want most of all (as a 21 year old) to have bilingual kids when I'm of child-bearing age (damn absence of womb). So I have to reside in France, and meet a French beau. Or reside in UK, meet a beau who wants to move to Francia, and then rear bilingual adoptives. (I'm this close to Amazon'ing books about gay adoption and its modus operandi, btw). I wanna be like the gay, French, fuglier Brangelina. Except with Romanians n' shit. Not Africans. Keep it in the continent.

By the way, I can't even speak French. I mean, I can. I can have a conversation about anything you care to name. But I can't speak for shit. Because the more you accumulate of a language, the more aware you become of how OMG IMPOSSIBLE it is to maîtriser said language. It's a most depressing as fuck epiphany. And the thing is, French is a novelty language for me. It sounds beautiful and beautifully pretentious. Like someone made it up over a soy latte and a quick cig as an example, plucked from thin air, during a moment of Anglo-Saxon fancy, of how languages could sound if they weren't fugly like English. The way Amy Winehouse invokes some kind of Motown diva when she steps away from her Cockney original. I love the way French sounds. When I speak it, it's like the little poof boy inside me putting on girls' dresses when everyone else has left the party. And I approach it in this manner with the French, and they're like, WTF. And rightly so. There's no excusing it when, to them, ENGLISH (christ) sounds beautiful. And don't get me wrong, I love the English language more than I love many things - by far. I'm a linguist; it's my first love. But to comprehend this irony I have to rend my mind to fucking tatters, AKA, omg attempt being bilingual. THE IMPOSSIBLE DREAM. And then all the lustre of French dissolves and I see it as it is; the sole means of communication of this MASSIVE FUCK OFF CULTURE and the country that spawned it.

Inevitably, I love it.

Anyway, shit, it's late. I ought to sleep.

Ridiculously, ridiculously excited about this.

Elsewhere, I have a day in Paris on Friday. Unsure whether to do the Musée d'Orsay or just to sit at a cafe in the Montmartre and read Queneau and French gay mags. YUM.

 I love life in France!

Everything's great. I'm staying somewhere really great. The city's small and awesome and welcoming. I'm speaking French every day. Today was walking around the town with a disposable camera day. Ergo, photos to come!

I've still to find my Gaspard. BUT, the food is divine. And the weather still sunny and bright. :)

Details/updates will follow!

Toujours obsédé par quelqu'un...

 'mais en fait' is the hottest phrase in french ever. pronounced, of course, maison fete.

closely followed by 'que les autres'. pronounced k'les autres.

mais en fait, c'est mieux que les autres.

er, yum.

Tadzio, Tadzio.

Off to Barcelona for 4 days.

I love life.

I love this photo of me and Lizzie. I love when people take photos and upload them months later!

You know what I just remembered? When everyone started calling Courtney Love a psycho hose-beast. Hilarity.

In May 2008 I looked the best I've ever looked. Though I certainly didn't think this at the time. Hindsight = love. Must regress. Must copy facial expressions / hair styling / complexion of those photos.

Regression imminent.

Also, god bless facebook and its epochal minute-taking, sans lequel I'd probably never register important stuff like this.

(anyone remember that quote from Mrs Doubtfire? LOVE.)

I think I might need a filling of some sort. One of my molar's is ever so slightly hurting and over sensitive. I think this all the time, but feel more certain this time round. I hope it ain't the case. I've never had tooth decay and my mum would kill me. And the idea of a needle in my gum has my skin crawling.

Any of you had a filling? What's it like?