(no subject)

My life is actually pretty decent at the moment, it's just the lives of everyone around me that are falling to pieces. And while my own personal weltschmerz is good for a bit of amusing schadenfreude, I can't really put a funny spin on other peoples' without seeming a cad.

IN TIMES LIKE THESE, WE TURN TO T.S. ELIOT.

He's one of my favourites, except for The Wasteland which is frankly crap. The Lovesong of J Alfred Prufrock may be my all-time favourite poem; it's been a quote in my email sig file for nearly ten years, and I have the entire work committed to memory purely from re-readings. But I've posted it often enough here that I thought I'd share a few others as well: I've spent hours in contemplation trying to parse Sweeney, purely because of how much I like the final stanza, and used Portrait Of A Lady in fic before. The others, well, I just like them. :)

( Sweeney Among The Nightingales )

( Excerpt from Ash Wednesday )

( Fifth Section of The Hollow Men )

( Excerpt from Portrait Of A Lady )

( The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock )

(no subject)

My flat is trying to kill me.

I don't know what I've done. I mean, first the lamp catches on fire, which yes, all right, partly user error there because I didn't check the shade properly. But tonight, listen, I've cooked on gas stoves since I was ten, I know to check the dials when I finish, and I wasn't even using the rear burner. So someone please explain to me how the rear-burner dial was tilted just on enough to let the gas out and not quite on enough to click the lighting mechanism.

Although if it had lit up I'd now have a pot melting to the stove, so, I suppose in all it could be worse.

This weekend, I think I'm going to pull a Never Quite Got Over Being A Pagan and make some peace with this place. I can clean, and get rid of some of this thrift-shop-bound stuff that's been sitting by the bed. And R's used to me enough by now that I'm pretty sure I can convince him that moving Ganesh from my bedroom bookshelf to somewhere in the kitchen won't terrify his poor Catholic-raised soul.

PLEASE DON'T KILL ME BEFORE THE WEEKEND, OKAY? *shouts at ceiling*