Lots of words

Yesterday I didn't upload anything because I was doing so much writing.  2,000+ words!  

The book I'm about to review arrived too, though I've barely flicked through it.  

Today, however, I won't get a moment to analyse music or any poems, so the baffling 'Cuex qui luttent' (Stevie Smith, set Elisabeth Lutyens, 1948) will have to wait.

'Ceux qui luttent'

Ceuex qui luttent ce sont ceux qui vivant.
And down here they luttent a very great deal indeed.
But if life be the desideraratum, why grieve, ils vivent.

What do I do about the multi-lingual pun between 'luttent' and 'lute' or 'loot', what about the latin--is it referring to Max Ehrmann's 'Desiderata': 'Go placidly amid the noise and haste, / and remember what peace there may be in silence.' and if so, why?  I have a day to chew on it.
 

Back from Poland

Back from Poland--after bumping across the central grey plain of Poland to Lodz (pronounced woodj, don't you know) backwards, in a mini-bus full of poets (Christopher Reid (the 'martian'), W.N. Herbert (Bill), Kate Clanchy ('the woman who sank a website'), and Justin Quinn (Irishman abroad in Prague); spending two days in the Forum Kultury talking about poetry and drinking; back, still backwards, to Warsaw; and a mini-MacNeice-summit with Renata in Warsaw...

Poland is amazing, like Prague before it was renovated, like Berlin but not as cool, like... strangely like Hounslow...  I brought back some very heavy ceramic art, a bottle of bison grass vodka and a head cold.

I came back to a pile of emails, the blank page of chapter 3, and pouring rain.  A good reason to stay in and write...

Friday: Back up

This is a very boring picture of my key drive.  And backing up is pretty boring.

Still, I'm saving to it, obsessively, every time I do any work on my thesis.  There's another external hard drive back up too, because the horror of possibly losing my thesis is too enormous to consider.  So I'm not thinking about it, but going off to Poland blithely leaving my computer and all its contents behind.

So boring and smug--that's me today!

(Written before leaving for Poland, but strangely not posted...)

Thursday

Yesterday:
Started work, 9am.
Lunch break: 2 hours
Hours worked on thesis: 0
Hours worked on admin / email / teaching / conferences / articles: 7 (of which, hours trying to learn to say hello in Polish: 1).
Cups of coffee: 4

Regrets: Missed most of the lovely sunny day doing email.
Other achievements: Haircut! Birthday dinner for Andreas.

Overall: not bad.

Weds 27 Feb

Just back from Oxford--arrived just after midnight, woken in the night by the earth tremour (feeling slightly seasick!) and then up early as it's my partner's birthday today. The cleaner can't come this week, her back is out again. We've got six people staying the night and a big party on Friday, and then I'm off to Poland for this conference, leaving on Saturday night, so i need to get into town to change some currency, unearth my suitcase, burn a CD with the musical examples I'm going to play and make a handout... and clean the bath.

Having spent two days in Oxford, I'm starting to wonder if I will get any research / writing done this week. I'm sure this is a familiar feeling for other people. I'll let you know how I get on.