The essence of Larissa?

The latest quote from my supervisor:

"The Larissa essence is in trouble because she's playing the wrong records in her head."

At the moment, I'm struggling a bit with anxiety and depression. Fortunately, my PhD supervisor has been very supportive and encouraging. Anxiety is like a vicious cycle of negative thoughts, which lead to the release of stress hormones, which lead to physiological responses like increased heart rate and breathing, which lead to more negative thoughts... My supervisor suggested that the negatives thoughts are like a record (yes, he admitted this illustration is outdated) but I can turn off the record player or ignore it.

The 'Larissa essence' bit came in because I'm 'old-fashioned' and not a post-modernist, so I'm more likely to take my own thoughts more seriously. Or something like that.

Unfortunately, I don't yet feel that I have control over the record player. Still working on that!

Red Sun Band

I don't know whether this would be exciting news for anyone else... But I know theredsunband. Well, two thirds of them anyway. I went to primary school with John (drums) and high school with Sarah (guitar). It was quite trippy the first time I heard them on the radio.

Talking to myself...

When you're talking to yourself
And nobody's home
You can fool yourself
You came in this world alone
...
When I find out all the reasons
Maybe I'll find another way
Find another day
With all the changing seasons of my life
Maybe I'll get it right next time

Recognition

You know you've been somewhere far too often once the people who work there start to recognise you...

I think I'm currently recognised in four places:

1. The Coffee Cart, Library Lawn, UNSW - they even know what coffee I order

2. The Italian take-away shop in Centrepoint where I used to buy coffee and toast before my shifts at DJs

3. Diana Ferrari, Centrepoint

4. The most recent one - the bookshop at UNSW:
"You seem to be in here buying books a lot. You must like reading."
"I like buying books. It's kind of an addiction."
"There are worse addictions to have."

How true.

Books I read in January 2005

1. Gaston Leroux, Phantom of the Opera

2. John Grisham, The Pelican Brief (light holiday reading)

3. Melina Marchetta, Looking for Alibrandi (reminiscing about high school)

4. Melina Marchetta, Saving Francesca

5. Anna Johnson, Three Black Skirts (my favourite 'self-help' book - gives me hope that one day I might get my life in order!!)

6. Laura Doyle, The Surrendered Wife (found in the humour section of my brother's home library)

7. Matthew Pearl, The Dante Club (Literary crime thriller)

8. Sasha Cagen, Quirkyalone: A Manifesto for Uncompromising Romantics (apparently Jesus and Mary Magdelene were both quirkalones. Interesting...)

9. Tim Winton, Cloudstreet

I want to be beautiful...

I must be going soft in my old age, because I seem to be listening to so much girly pop music - Delta Goodrem, Kelly Clarkson etc. They're ok for some relaxing, easy listening music, but the lyrics are rather trite. Take Delta - "You're my butterfly." But then, "I was never one for butterflies, but you give me love that I can't describe."

Anyway, it's refreshing to find someone whose lyrics have the potential to have a more meaningful impact on young women. Bethany Dillon is a Christian singer (only 15 years old, apparently, which is quite amazing) whose music I find resonates with my feelings and experiences.

For example, her song called 'Beautiful' is about something all girls experience - trying to live up to society's definition of beautiful, in the hope that someone will find us worthy of love. The last chorus in the song, however, is addressed to God:

You make me beautiful
You make me stand in awe
You step inside my heart, and I am amazed
I love to hear you say
Who I am is quite enough
You make me worthy of love and beautiful

Or, another song called 'All I need', which is also addressed to God.

When the day is done
And there's no one else around
While I'm lying here in bed
You're in my heart, You're in my head
You're all I need, You're all I need
There are a million voices
Calling out my name
But You're the One I want to hear
So make the others disappear

You are all I need when I'm surrounded
You are all I need if I'm by myself
You fill me when I'm empty
There is nothing else
You're all I need

There's so much pressure from society, and even from the church, for people to be in relationships, to get married, to have children. It's easy to forget that we don't need another person to complete us. Although God made us for relationships, ultimately we can only be satisfied in him. No one else can love us like God, and if we expect them to, we're always going to end up disappointed. God is all we need!

My God is so big!

How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, 'This is better than we thought! The universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant. God must be even greater than we dreamed.' Instead they say, 'No, no, no! My God is a little god, and I want him to stay that way.'

Carl Sagan

Intelligent and highly strung

This is what my PhD supervisor told me today.

Since I have genetic inheritances from two sides of Europe (England/Scotland and Russia/Ukraine), I am intelligent and highly strung.

He also said that I would be fiesty, but my religious upbringing has made me too polite!

Hmmm...

Prufrock #3

And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep ... tired ... or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in
upon a platter,
I am no prophet-and here's no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.


And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it towards some overwhelming question,
To say: "I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all"—
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say: "That is not what I meant at all.
That is not it, at all."

And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along
the floor—
And this, and so much more?—
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a
screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
"That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all."

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool.

I grow old ... I grow old ...
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

Liberation

My latest craze is sewing. It's not the most relaxing hobby I've ever had - I tend to get quite tense when I'm cutting out the fabric (fear of stuffing it up completely), and it can be quite frustrating when the pieces just don't seem to fit together. However, it is quite a liberating feeling to be able to make my own clothes. No longer do I have to spend $100 on a skirt that fits and looks half-decent - I can make my own for $15. No longer do I have to submit to the whims of the fashion industry - I can make what I want, when I want, in the style, size and colour I want. Well, as long as I can find the pattern, the material and the time! So far, I have made a skirt and two bags. Hopefully this weekend I can finish my second skirt.

It occurs to me that clothes should be more like books. Books always fit. Books always look good. It doesn't matter what colour they are. It doesn't matter what season it is, or what the weather is like - any book is appropriate. People don't really grow out of books. If, on a whim, I feel like reading some of the books I loved as a kid, I can. Unfortunately, I can't still wear the cute little faux fur coat I had when I was three years old! I can read a book a hundred times, and still keep reading it. Clothes won't last that long (they don't make them like they used to!)

"I live for books."
Thomas Jefferson

Prufrock #2

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, "Do I dare?" and, "Do I dare?"
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair—
(They will say: "How his hair is growing thin!")
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin—
(They will say: "But how his arms and legs are thin!")
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute win reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all—
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?

And I have known the eyes already, known them all—
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
And how should I presume?

And I have known the arms already, known them all—
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
(But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!)
Is it perfume from a dress
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
And should I then presume?
And how should I begin?

Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows?

I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

Retail therapy

My guess is that for a lot of girls, retail therapy involves shopping for clothes or accessories. Now, I admit that I occasionally get a buzz from a new pair of shoes or a cute handbag, but what really makes me happy is buying books. I was feeling a bit down on Friday, so I wandered down to the uni bookshop for a browse, bought three books, and smiled to myself all the way back to my office.

I love books. I love the cool smoothness of the covers, the fragrance of the paper, the slight breeze from flipping through the pages. I love to lie on my bed and look at all the books on the shelves lining my walls. I love the feeling of being so engrossed in a book that I can't put it down, even if it's 2am and I need to get up early in the morning.

Where is human nature so weak as in the bookstore?
- Henry Ward Beecher

It's the question that brought you here (Prufrock #1)

Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherised upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question …
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.