ahem.

Died laughing.

Guilty Purchases

After a jam session where I realised the most contemporary songs I could play off by ear/by heart (essentially the same thing) were the Backstreet Boys, AND walking past Fopp and realising they had an amazing clearout sale happening, I bought:

Gary Jules, Trading Snakecoil for Wolftickets - £1
Richard Ashcroft, Keys to the World - £2
Oasis, Familiar to Millions - £3

Which, even if I convert it to S$, is $18 for 3 albums! C'mon, you've got to admit it was a bargain. Then, because I had a couple of coins left from the $10 I had broken, I walked into the clearance Galloway & Porters on Sidney Street...a bad idea if I don't want to buy anything, because there's inadvertently something I like at a ridiculously low price, and bought a huge tome of 'Best Loved Poems' for £2.95.

Am content now, and have also rationalised away all shopping urges for about 2 more weeks. Who needs new clothes when there are new cds and new books to be had? Also, new jamming possibilities! At this cool event held in a cafe called Songs in the Dark. Maaaybe. We'll see. But I'll have to brush up on picking songs up, am definitely rusty.

Other things I might finally get round to doing? Enter a couple of poetry competitions, start playing classical piano (with scores this time!) again, get back into learning French, finishing essays, trying to go for a poetry reading (stop organising formals on poetry reading days!) and looking for the elusive poetry slammers of Cambridge. They're bound to be here somewhere...

It's all looking good though. And I glad that I'm where I am, when I am, with the people I am, and with who I am. I think one might call this peace.

We are the music-makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams;
World-losers and world-forsakers,
On whom the pale moon gleams:
Yet we are the movers and shakers
Of the world for ever, it seems.

Ode, Arthur O'Shaughnessy

::finally::

If
Rudyard Kippling

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you.
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat these two impostors just the same;

If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!

While I reiterate that I'm not a man, nor do I want to be...'If' pretty much sums up the attitude that's gonna be necessary now.

And I'm proud of myself. Dissertation draft done, up on time, room tidied, books to be borrowed planned...weekend (kinda) sorted. Here's to a great Lent.