Day 55, 2 March: Wavelengths of Love

Norfolk Terrace, Day 55. Wavelengths of Love

I finished Great Expectations at 4 in the morning, as a result of being too wired to sleep after skype, but I woke up at 8:30 and had THE best Romanticism seminar I have had yet. There were merely ten students in attendance and the square of tables only formed a quarter of the room, making discussion more lively and fluid. We learned of the gradual change aspired by Percy Shelley and carried implicitly into his anarchistic poetry. I went to the library after class to pick up recommended prose he wrote.

            Dan (on the page “Daniel Townsend”) and I finally have up the JustGiving charity page. Basically, we’re participating in a school-wide event, hosted by our radio station student club Livewire, called “Jailbreak!” In groups of two or three (mostly), students are to raise at least £35 for charity but recommended to raise as much as possible. We have until the end of March 8^th to do this, since at noon on March 9^th, we set out to do the challenge: get as far away from the University of East Anglia as possible—without spending any money on traveling (we can spend money to travel back, once the 48-hour limit expires at noon on Sunday the 11^th, but yes, this challenge may require hitchhiking and reaching out to travel companies). Some groups got incredibly far last year–the winners got 3,800 miles away to Gran Canaria (I don’t honestly know where that is). I apologize if I’m advertising on this blog, but I could use your support, if possible. Any amount of money would be fine. To donate, here’s our page: http://www.justgiving.com/thewestcoastguys. Links to the charity, Cancer Research UK, and to the event, “Jailbreak!” are on this page too.

            I wrote a long email—and poem—to Katya, slept for 90 minutes, had a pleasant skype with her, skyped my parents (yes, Dad, “skype” can be used as a verb), and returned for another hour of skype with Katya. Today had the resemblance of a Sunday, except for the morning and night.

Jen and Her Box

            I made a simple, healthy dinner—turkey slab with basmati rice (sprinkled with curry powder) and as an afterthought, cut-up onions. The turkey surprised me—it was amazing, especially with the addition of garlic and rosemary seasoning. I just had to take a picture of Jen in the box—she loved that box for some reason and found it comfy. Steff (Jen’s boyfriend) saw my book on Shelley on the counter and went into how Shelley was the protégé of arguably the founder of modern anarchism William Godwin and he eloped with Godwin’s daughter, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, who would later write Frankenstein. Power trio right there. Then in came Marie to the kitchen and asked if I was going out tonight. I said no, but then Steff cornered me with his ticket to the campus event he was no longer going to. I couldn’t say no.

Laura and Marie

            Before leaving, I visited Laura (Lithuanian) and Marie’s room, took one sip of their yellow concoction of mysterious flavours, and then got into an intriguing discussion about literature! I had no idea, but Laura loves to read and talk about literature, especially her Russian favourites like War and Peace and Crime and Punishment. She read War and Peace in English—and in Russian. Apparently the very title has a different meaning between the languages. In Russian “war” can also mean “world”…imagine if the book had been translated into World and Peace. It astonished me. Meanwhile, Marie went over the difference between the British slang "chav" and "pikey". A chav is white trash basically, and a pikey is an aggressive poor person associated, like chav, in its own counterculture identity. (A poor person can be just a poor person without being pikey or chav.) Then she went into arguing how she hated anthology (her literary study of poetry collections in 11^th year) because some of the poetry anyone could write, just as she hates modern art for the claim that one line on a canvas can be art. She has a point, but the poem I read on her computer (“limbo limbo like me”) had a point with the repetition, resembling the flatness and numbness associated with slavery. Still, I could understand her view and agree about the modern art.

            The three of us walked over to the LCR for the event, The Ministry of Sound (if that doesn’t speak of Harry Potter, I don’t know what does), but once inside the screaming, vibrating walls, the music was merely synthesized beats, rumbling through speakers, accompanied by pithy voice tracks (or was the guy with the microphone actually saying something?) and wholly overwhelmed by simply maximum volumes of noise. We found Matt, who was dancing it up, but overall there was a sense that this could only be enjoyed under the influence of something—and of the relatively stark turnout (40 people), it looked as though all of them were. If they found it awesome, good for them. The three of us just thought that fifteen minutes of it was enough.

            Back at the flat, I spent the rest of the night watching When Harry Met Sally. After double skype dates today, I was definitely in the mood for it. Even the jazzy soundtrack was what I needed. There is something about watching a love movie and not relying viscerally or vicariously on the characters to feel a sense of love that is so comforting. I have my reality of love, even though it’s 5000 kilometres away. Finally, I went to sleep, feeling the wavelengths of love.