Tillya Tepe is fascinating, so is the book Reza gave me. Afghanistan is fascinating. My Gandhara course is fascinating. Everything blows me over within the better part of a minute but writing a paper, god, why, god, why, why must this be such an insipid task? Three days and three hundred words, what a scream.

No point doing this. Wait for the first beams of sunlight through the window glass, smoke some grass, listen to some jazz. Defeatist hua toh kya hua? Huahuahuahwahahaha.

Someday when I am wise enough. Or sure enough. Depends.

old school old men

to soak in things that are made of wood
think of a face that is wooden
and brown and ancient the way bark is,
smelling of pine,
making you close your eyes
trembling inside waiting
for that lined wooden
lacquered smile.

Difficult night, full of interconnected dreams, cross-genre dreams, the kind of scary matryoshka dreams where apocalyptic situations are only the larger scenario and within them are abductions and amputations and abandonments and indifferences and it's all happening to you in the space of twenty four hours. That's the worst kind of dream, the one with a time limit, the soundtrack's not Run Lola Run but Trent Reznor and Mughal-e-Azam combined, how to explain this? Woke up to find pest control guys outside my room and sat for the mandatory ten minutes outside on the corridor floor absentmindedly stroking my across-the-floor neighbour's leg because it was unwaxed and fuzzy and comforting. It made for a funny moment at the time, in retrospect it's goddamn weird, I do such creepy things sometimes I creep myself out by how goddamn creepy I'm being. I then annoyed the juice guy about how he should have watermelon juice and volunteered to pick out the pips for him if he'd only get watermelons. Downed a mango shake shivering in blazing sunlight on a bloody hot stone bench, then came back in and decided to pull myself together and take a shower, only I tripped over the rug and then slipped in the cubicle and can now add two more bruises to the ones I discover every morning while washing my feet.

Sitting in the library now obsessing about Cindy Sherman. I should study for tomorrow's exam but all I want to do is read, read something unstoppable and unbearably exciting, read it the way I read Vernon God Little on buses and chairs and parking lots all over the city till the last page appeared, I love it when that happens and you heave a sigh of relief and feel suddenly drained. I want that now. I want that right now. I don't want to read about the fucking avant-garde now. If I do read about the fucking avant-garde I'll find myself on the floor staring at a fan wondering about capitalism again, not again please not again. 

A day in the life, six hours awake and I'm already getting this feeling, this Pooter feeling, this Adrian Mole feeling, a kind of everyday ridiculosity. Banal is never quite banal, at least to me, I'm always overwhelmed by this suppressed hysteria for things that are lying around looking like they've always belonged, but something about the shape looks altered, just a little bit, imperceptible but very apparent, how to explain moment number two. This, by the way, is the aptest background  music right now. It fits.

Just a trick of the light, today.

To-do:

- Get a new lightbulb.
- Triumph over origami.
- Replace toothbrush.
- Assemble and assimilate inspiration, stop using bookmarks.
- Try to break the emergency staircase lock yet again.
- Stop reading A History of Madness.
- Scrub feet.
- Get rid of that bit of fluff on the ceiling that creeps me out every night.
- Buy tea not smokes.
- WASH UNDIES OR FACE DISEASE. New slogan.
- Retrieve S's shoe from Warden's cabbage/cauliflower/dead babies garden plot.

I've been out walking 

I don't do too much talking 

These days

A sudden storm, intermittent bursts of food and night and leaves spiralling down all around. What a perfect perfect day this has been, bar the presentation in the morning where I looned out on everyone and clutched my face in class and repeated the same phrase five times. Happens to the best of us I suppose. All I need to do is get twelve hours of sleep now.

No no no there's none. Be beginning to despair, to despair, despair, despair, despair, despair. I think it is of great use once in a while to be sitting somewhere that is entirely disconnected to where you are and what you should be doing, like a footpath at high noon, or an unknown person's bike in a parking lot at dawn, to just stack yourself on something that won't respond or sympathise, and despair, just despair. Not the head-in-your-hands kind of despair, but the kind of wildness where you look around you and the air feels heavier and curiously coloured and the sky's closing down on you and the people who walk by wave and nod and you smile back but you, as the flying dust is your witness, as the scabs on your feet are your witness, you don't think you can do much but just sit. It is always a good thing when your hopelessness is at such a peak it's almost transcendental. Pick a twig out of your hair vacate your spot walk up ask for a viciously sugared coffee then find another spot, and hello, here it is again, you feel even more lightheaded and think that maybe it's the cheerfulness that comes with being lost in a thousand different ways, but there's an equally good chance it's just the sugar.