14/02/2017

In the morning, I went for my last long run before the half marathon, doing 21.1km in 1 hour 55 mins and then very slowly jogging for another kilometer, before stretching, showering, and passing Alex her Valentine's day card.

Valentine's day, and it couldn't be prettier. The world always looks more dazzling through my teary-weary post run eyes, as if it needed it today, with blue sky and only slight could wisps. I had dates (with almond butter and chocolate) in the morning to celebrate - my run, the day, the sky - and love in general. I have always loved this poem about love:

Understand, I’ll slip quietly

Away from the noisy crowd

When I see the pale

Stars rising, blooming over the oaks

I’ll pursue solitary pathways

Through the pale twilit meadows,

With only this one dream:

You come too.

(From “First Poems,” Rainer Maria Rilke)

When I had my practical criticism supervision later, we talked about poems, and journal entries, and blogs. Poetry is a mediated art piece, edited and word-painted with conscious decision. The journal is apparently more honest, but how can it be when the very act of choosing a word changes and performs (in the theatrical, intentional sense) a version of reality, or self? And I know all too well how I change words and choose what to write or not write in this space. The separation of my 'public' thoughts and 'private' thoughts into blog and journal was meant to be an exercise in authenticity (that hyped up millennial word) but I've come to realise that I approach my journal with an equal measure of perfectionism. I wrote on a page of my journal recently, in big, black, bleeds-through-the-paper sharpie 'HENCEFORTH THIS SPACE SHALL BE FREE THOUGHTS, NO WORRYING ABOUT IF IT LOOKS GOOD OR SOUNDS ELOQUENT' which had effect for a while but now I've once again wondered how far that in itself was an attempt to assert some sort of free spirited facet of my personality on paper and -

I could go in circles like this forever (and don't doubt I ruminate about it in a sort of continuous undercurrent of thought) but I'll stop, in a conscious decision not to belabor the point.

We also talked about Lynette Roberts in my supervision, who I am now desperate to read. She was a journal writer who revised her journals with intention to publish, but they never were (published). She also wrote poems and prose fiction, visited (and was admired by) T.S Eliot, lived through the war and had two children. After a series of breakdowns, her writing petered out, but Leo says that to read what she writes as she is slipping, and realising that she is somehow losing her mind, is painful. 

I'm now trying to learn the alto part for Lugebat David Absalom, but I keep getting distracted by the soprano line. I also realise that I've been distracted from the main point of this post, which was going to be about love. But it is past midnight now and love will have to wait, I suppose.