Grrr...

Feeling more than a bit miffed now. Got woken up by an uneccesary text message (won't mention names) literally within moments of falling into a deep sleep. Head's spinning cos I really need some rest but it's almost like I've just drunk an expresso or some caffeinated shit.

Now what does Yi-Wen do when she's insomniac? Good question. I've resorted to combining several of my favourite things in life.

(Slight digression: *cue music* " Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens, bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens... snowflakes that stay on my nose and eyelashes, silver white winters that melt into springs... When the dog bites, when the bee stings, when I'm feeling sad, I simply remember my favorite things, and then I don't feel so baaaad..." Hehe couldn't resist that. Must've been Monday's prancing around in the snow plus our inability to remember any lyrics whatsoever from the Sound of Music, of all things...)

So here I am, and these are a few of my favourite things when I'm stressed:

I listen to... Rachmaninov's Sonata for Cello and Piano, 3rd Movement Andante. Repeatedly. Recording by Yo Yo Ma and Emmanuel Ax, the most harmonious and lyrical interpretation of this over-recorded movement, in my opinion of course. I'll lend you my other recording by Lynn Harrell and Vladimir Ashkenazy and let you judge for yourself if you want. Tend to alternate between the two, not just this sonata but also the Prokofiev, depending on my mood.

I look at... some of the photos I've taken in the past. The very French scene above one of my favourite from the July trip; Abbaye de Chancelade, just below the stairs to our "dressing room". If I'm bored of the same old ones, I go onto National Geographic or some other favourite photo sites/blogs. Alternatively, the Taschen biography of Rembrandt I picked up in Oxfam is a surefire ruffled-feathers-smoother. (heyy I like that term!)

I write... or blog, depending on how much work I've done that day. Blogging's an easy way of stress-relief - helps me organise my thoughts and wind down. Hence a stark absence of polished reviews/commentaries on current affairs etc. I do more than enough of that anyway. If I'm still up for some serious mental work-out, I continue the never-ending process of writing my (rather neglected) book, which is several light-years from seeing daylight, I'm afraid.

I read... again, depends on my mood. Haven't done much personal reading this term, unfortunately. Usual favs: myths, Ernst Gombrich's Story of Art (alas! at home), whatever moderately light fiction in the room, maybe some poetry. Which now brings us to one of the best poems by John Donne (whom I've loved since... Year 10?)

A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning

As virtuous men pass mildly away,
And whisper to their souls to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say,
"Now his breath goes," and some say, "No."

So let us melt, and make no noise,
No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move ;
'Twere profanation of our joys
To tell the laity our love.

Moving of th' earth brings harms and fears ;
Men reckon what it did, and meant ;
But trepidation of the spheres,
Though greater far, is innocent.

Dull sublunary lovers' love
—Whose soul is sense—cannot admit
Of absence, 'cause it doth remove
The thing which elemented it.

But we by a love so much refined,
That ourselves know not what it is,
Inter-assurèd of the mind,
Care less, eyes, lips and hands to miss.

Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to aery thinness beat.

If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two ;
Thy soul, the fix'd foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if th' other do.

And though it in the centre sit,
Yet, when the other far doth roam,
It leans, and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as that comes home.

Such wilt thou be to me, who must,
Like th' other foot, obliquely run ;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
And makes me end where I begun.

Now then, John Donne was one helluva dodgy ole bugger, who liked his wine and women a little too much for his missus' comfort (poor lass). But I have to say that this poem is one of his more meditative, appreciative ones, with simply unusual and lovely imagery that feels so right. No passionate declaration of love, no bleeding emotions. Just utterly sanguine in the knowledge that one's patient other half will always be there, unconditionally. Too-few poets manage to convey such depth of feeling with such clean, deceptively-simple use of language.

The musicians are nearing the end of Rachmaninov's sublimely lyrical Andante. The blog entry has accomplished its purpose. Think I could go back to sleep now, and dream. Thy firmness makes my circle just, and makes me end, where I begun...