o what care I for a goose-feather bed?
Jan. 13th, 2006 02:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
deviI am closer than I've ever been to the room I have in my head. I got the first lot of my stuff back last night, from ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
secretrebel's attic, and spent several glorious hours book-geeking – sorting them into categories and shelving them. Then I lit the lanterns I posted back from China and lay on the bed staring at the swirly patterns they make on the walls and thinking OMG my room is TEH COOLEST.
But today I woke up already feeling gloomy even before I was properly conscious. Yet another dark cloudy day, maybe. Or maybe it's the Red Wall oppressing me in some unconscious hardwired way. (Though I doubt it. I love the red wall.) I'm flat and uninspired and dwelling on things I shouldn't be. Even the books look weird to me. So many of them! So many words all over the walls! I'm not used to having so much stuff any more. I thought opening the boxes would be like coming home, but there was a funny undercurrent of unfamiliarity too. Like I'd broken the bond with the stuff by leaving it in an attic for seven months. Why do I have all this? I wondered.
I think I joined Oxford Freecycle at exactly the right time.
There was a girl at the bus stop the other night with her hand full of 2p pieces. She begged me to swap them for a 50p. I looked at her suspiciously even as I put my hand in my pocket, waiting for the catch. "I'm not a gyppo or nothing," she said. That word pisses me off (ever since the doctor who first shot me up with Depo-Provera said smirkingly, "We call it contraception for gyppos, you know") and I wanted to put the wind up her, so I said "What if I told you I was one?" I think she believed me. She said "Awww, bless!"
Then again, maybe being Irish and having had no fixed abode for half of last year would qualify me as one in her eyes. Who knows?
But it's great, even through the gloom I know it's great, to have a place to live again. And I know the books will come round. They're like wary pets who aren't quite sure what to make of you when you've been away a long time, but soon they'll remember me and love me again.
secretrebel's attic, and spent several glorious hours book-geeking – sorting them into categories and shelving them. Then I lit the lanterns I posted back from China and lay on the bed staring at the swirly patterns they make on the walls and thinking OMG my room is TEH COOLEST.But today I woke up already feeling gloomy even before I was properly conscious. Yet another dark cloudy day, maybe. Or maybe it's the Red Wall oppressing me in some unconscious hardwired way. (Though I doubt it. I love the red wall.) I'm flat and uninspired and dwelling on things I shouldn't be. Even the books look weird to me. So many of them! So many words all over the walls! I'm not used to having so much stuff any more. I thought opening the boxes would be like coming home, but there was a funny undercurrent of unfamiliarity too. Like I'd broken the bond with the stuff by leaving it in an attic for seven months. Why do I have all this? I wondered.
I think I joined Oxford Freecycle at exactly the right time.
There was a girl at the bus stop the other night with her hand full of 2p pieces. She begged me to swap them for a 50p. I looked at her suspiciously even as I put my hand in my pocket, waiting for the catch. "I'm not a gyppo or nothing," she said. That word pisses me off (ever since the doctor who first shot me up with Depo-Provera said smirkingly, "We call it contraception for gyppos, you know") and I wanted to put the wind up her, so I said "What if I told you I was one?" I think she believed me. She said "Awww, bless!"
Then again, maybe being Irish and having had no fixed abode for half of last year would qualify me as one in her eyes. Who knows?
But it's great, even through the gloom I know it's great, to have a place to live again. And I know the books will come round. They're like wary pets who aren't quite sure what to make of you when you've been away a long time, but soon they'll remember me and love me again.
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no subject
Date: 2006-01-13 03:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-13 03:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-13 03:15 pm (UTC)Though I loved your response. And then her response to you. I'd put it in a movie if I could.
There are just some scenes that, to me, ring true. That's one of 'em.
Bless. ;)
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Date: 2006-01-13 05:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-13 06:47 pm (UTC)Maybe because, over here, sometimes you get a creeping feeling that when some people say it they mean 'anyone who sounds Irish and looks a bit scruffy'. Or perhaps I'm paranoid.
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Date: 2006-01-13 03:15 pm (UTC)They're not going to shed, are they?
Or chew threw the cables?
(Although, maybe that's fair. Since the cables are obviously the results of my pets shedding...)
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Date: 2006-01-13 03:21 pm (UTC)runnerscables, and if you leave the cables there for long enough, new computers will spring up where their ends touch the ground...no subject
Date: 2006-01-13 03:16 pm (UTC)Having been sleeping in a room with a Red Wall for over a year now (although ours is at the head of the bed; which is the only way the room makes sense), I think it's unlikely to be that, anyway.
I am greatly in favour of a) Getting Rid Of Excess Stuff & b) Keeping The Stuff You Do Have In Non-Chaos, & maintain that both of the above are good for mental wellbeing. Although I struggle to apply this to books... My current plan is that when we next run out of shelf space (i.e. once the lovely bookcases I made all by myself are full) I am going to have a Proper Cull & get rid of all the stuff I'll really never reread. Or institute a one-in one-out policy, which is a slower way of doing the same thing, really.
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Date: 2006-01-13 03:24 pm (UTC)I wonder if you can cure it by listening to the most non-emo music you can find? (What would that be? Latin? Euphoric trance? What's the anti-emo for you?)
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Date: 2006-01-17 01:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-17 01:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-17 02:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-20 02:45 pm (UTC)I'm trying to collect mp3s of all the songs off that tape (though some of them could be a bit tricky, like the ones by Jo's own band!) so if you could send it, that'd rock.
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Date: 2006-01-20 05:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-13 06:49 pm (UTC)But I found another way. I cycled up to the top of a hill which is right next to my house and discovered you can see the whole town from there. And also found more woods. I am so looking forward to summer here it's untrue.
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Date: 2006-01-15 12:34 pm (UTC)*peers* I heard "..so X it's untrue" for the first time when I read Transmetropolitan a few weeks ago, and I thought it was terribly clever, since the characters were all in search of the truth, yada, and I liked it a lot. Did you start saying it recently, or is it something people have always said and I just never noticed. I should dearly like to know :-)
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Date: 2006-01-17 02:00 pm (UTC)It works really well in Transmetropolitan, though!
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Date: 2006-01-13 06:59 pm (UTC)With the holes drilled in so bravely, O!
For to-night I shall read the whole world's web,
Along with the raggle-taggle scholars, O!
Hmm. Needs work, I suspect:-)
Should any of your books have turned feral during their long stay in the attic, and take to batting you with their dustjackets at 4 am and demanding to be read, remember you can always threaten to donate them to Oxfam. They'll know what we do to Bad Books in the bottom cellar where only employees can go...
And I hope the gloom lifts soon:)
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Date: 2006-01-14 09:12 am (UTC)shelvingpetting them and they appear to have forgiven me.I have clothes, too. It's like Christmas! :)