"I give myself such good advice, but I very seldom follow it"

Sang Alice, as she looked around Wonderland and it dawned upon her that she had brought this plight upon herself.

As a general rule, I see in the New Year surrounded by my immediate family plus my auntie, uncle and cousins, having spent the evening indulging in ridiculous pursuits and quite possibly wearing fancy dress. This New Year was no different, except for the fact that I added The Boyfriend into the equation. Inviting him along was brave to the point of insanity, and as I watched him sitting at the dinner table sporting a zebra-print cowboy hat and valiantly attempting a Wild West accent for his part in our Western-themed murder mystery, I realised two things:

1) My family must appear utterly mental to outsiders.
2) The Boyfriend definitely deserves a whole shower of gold stars for not running away as fast as he could.

Mixing people together whom I usually see separately causes me some degree of agitation, so with the success of this new combination of Boyfriend + Extended Family to worry over, it was not until the following day that I let my thoughts turn to that tiresome convention of making New Year's Resolutions.

Now, nobody's more of a fan of a fresh start than I. New beginnings mean the possibility of creating a perfect track record in whatever it is that I am attempting, and being a failed perfectionnist, that appeals. The problem is in the 'failed' part of 'failed perfectionnist': if I am unable to maintain perfection, I abandon the attempt altogether, finding blotted near-perfection far more painful than not trying. Thus if I am endeavouring to spend the entire evening working, and I find myself distracted by wasting time on the internet, I tell myself I might as well give up for the day and try again tomorrow, when I can have another fresh start. Moderation, balance and compromise are not congruous with an all-or-nothing personality.

Therefore when I break all my New Year's Resolutions, which I always do, I then want to wait until the next opportunity for starting over presents itself, and the right time inevitably never comes. This irritating facet of my character combines particularly catastrophically with an extreme weakness of will, and results in me never getting anything done. Resolutions are, for this reason, fairly pointless.

But, here we are again at the start of the year, and of course the old rush of optimism returns to me. This, I say to myself, could be the year where I change drastically. Perhaps I'll suddenly find myself full of motivation, and able to deal with failures as small set-backs as opposed to inconquerable, project-destroying obstacles. Hmm. Actually, I'm unable to fool myself any more.

Nevertheless, I present the usual list, containing the same resolutions I've made for years and have never achieved.

1. I will be more organised.
Yep, that old gem. Both predicatable and highly improbable. The Queen of Disorganisation, I am fairly sure, is not likely to change any time soon, and I can vow to use my wall planner and academic diary as much as I like - it's not going to happen.

2. I will stop procrastinating.
Another laughable goal. I dream of the day when I complete essays well before they're due in, and am able to concentrate for hours at a time. As I dream of this, my time drains away and I realise my essay is going to be a huge rush again. In fact, I just remembered that I was going to spend this afternoon reading and am now blogging. Best scratch this resolution off the list.

3. I will keep my room tidy.
I'm surveying it right now. Mission failed.

4. I will eat more healthily and get more exercise.
What, with the menu in Hall at college containing chips as an option every day? And with the selection of chocolate being positioned right by the till? And with everywhere I need to get to being less than five minute's walk away? Yeah.

5. I will stop biting my nails and the surrounding skin.
I'm currently just about managing this one. When the stress of work returns at the start of Lent Term, my fingers will undoubtedly unconsciously find their way into my mouth, and that'll be the end of that. In fact, my new supervisor for Paper 4 (English Literature and its contexts, 1830-Present) just emailed me, and I can feel my teeth itching to tear at skin and keratin already.

Welcome to 2011: the year where Lemonie will be exactly the same as she always has been. Happy New Year!

*

How strange that I have met you here – such luck was never known,

That you should be just standing there; that I should be alone,

And now you’re here, I might suggest that it would do no harm,

If we should stay and talk awhile in rare, arresting calm.

How fortunate this happy chance that brought me to your door,

A thought that’s struck me every time I’ve wound up here before,

It’s always ‘I was passing by’ or ‘Just dropped by to ask’,

A constant quest for pretexts; it’s a ceaseless, vexing task.

How odd that though I hate it, I seek you for your tea,

You’re never as suspicious as you really ought to be,

The many times we fall in step continues to amaze,

The thousand times I meet you, in accidental ways.

______________________________

Something fairly failish that I wrote a couple of weeks ago, prompted by the number of 'chance' meetings I was having with somebody. Luckily, I don't need to make up excuses any more.

Best I could do in a haze of work and tiredness - I believe I was studying Alexander Pope's 'The Dunciad' at the time and his couplets seem to have seeped into my brain, though mine aren't heroic. I was experimenting with metre because it's much more amusing than working. It's Wordsworth, Blake and Coleridge Week this time around, but I doubt they're going to inspire me to write anything - I shall be too busy sleeping in my free time!

Ode To Pritt Stick

I had a horrendous class in the scansion of French poetry this afternoon, so I'm blitzing it from my mind with some of my own drivel, which I hope may also mildly amuse my one and only known reader. This is my very own Ode To Pritt Stick. Considering I composed the main part of it while in the shower, it's... wait, no, it's terrible.

You're rarely around when I need you,
I'm sure that you do it for fun,
If only I knew how to breed you,
'Cause whenever I seek you you're gone.

I'm forced into PVA nightmares,
I'm forced into Sellotape hell,
I'm sure that you're actually right there,
But just where you are you won't tell.

Is this 'cause I once left you uncapped, dear?
Left you sitting alone and near dry?
I know I deserve to be slapped, dear.
When I think of it now I could cry.

I hope that these words are cohesive,
That you know my apology's true,
You're my one and my only adhesive,
Be my number one partner in glue.
______________________________

I am the next Wordsworth...

Elegy For My Hypothetical Death

One had the impression
That she thought she was headed somewhere
Knew roughly the route
To take, to further hasten her pursuit,
But somewhere had forgotten
Quite where to alight,
Or deliberately shut her eyes,
Or made just one too many a digression.
In any case, she never did arrive.

It’s probably for the best.
Mercifully no one ever tapped her shoulder
And said, “Excuse me, but I think I’ve rather guessed
You’re on this track by accident,
Pretending that you know
Where it goes?”
Her intentions, I hope you are aware
Could not be faulted.
And yet the will behind them wasn’t there.
One cannot really fail a quest to nowhere.

_____________________________

Apologies for the extreme morbidity of this. I was reading 'How To Read A Poem' by Terry Eagleton yesterday afternoon, and he mentioned that W.B. Yeats wrote his own epitaph. Then I remembered Thomas Hardy's poem 'Afterwards', musing on how he might be remembered after death. And then I thought, 'Hey, I'll write an elegy for myself as though I were dead..." Cheery, I know. I didn't really focus on the death angle; I was thinking about how if I were to die now, it would be quite irritating as nearly everything worthwhile that I've done so far in my life has felt like a step towards some greater goal which, as you may have gathered, I haven't quite worked out the nature of yet. Needless to say, I'm not planning on dying any time soon, so it's all good!

Self-labelling: A Hobby

I watched an episode of The X Factor once (at the time I didn’t generally make a habit of this; since then things have rather taken a turn for the worse), where an auditionee walked into the room, ripped off the sticky label with her audition number on, and irately declared, ‘First of all, let’s sort this out. I am not a number, I am a human being.” 

People often seem to have a problem with labels. In the case of the aggressive X Factor contestant, it irritated her to be an identity-less one of many. That’s understandable, I suppose, though she could have been rather less bad-tempered about it. I found myself in much the same frame of mind during UCAS applications, when I imagined that it must be very easy for universities to reject applicant 105-220-0994, as opposed to an actual person with feelings on the matter.

When the label actually describes an aspect of the person in question, it’s even more of a touchy subject. It’s the reluctance to be defined as one thing, or to be viewed in a certain way. They’re restricting. I call someone wearing a tracksuit a chav and you assume they have a bad attitude, hang around on street corners and play rubbish music at full volume on buses. Whereas I’m sure there are some very nice chavs out there. Probably. So you hear people say things like, ‘I’m not a label, I’m me.”

The problem I have is that as a label, ‘me’ is not a very helpful one. It’s tautological: if I ask, “Who are you?” and you reply, “I am me,” I have gained precisely zero information on you apart from the fact that you’re probably one of those non-conformist types that refuses to be put into a mental box. It’s even less helpful when I ask myself, “Who are you?” and that is the answer I return.

For that reason, I love labels. Only self-applied labels, you understand, or those given to me by friends. For example, I’m happy to be called a nerd by people I like, but back in secondary school, it tended to mean ‘loser’ as opposed to ‘interested in things not generally considered cool’. I suppose the danger is when you only see the labels and not the person they're trying to unravel.

The thing is, ‘I am me’ is for people who understand exactly who they are and feel no need to explain themselves. And, as yours truly is your typical, always-trying–to-find-myself adolescent, in a permanent identity crisis, I’m still tirelessly striving to define what this ‘me’ is. I want to break it into chunks, however artificial they are, and fit myself into little boxes until there’s nothing unfathomable left.

I’m addicted to those psychological personality tests you can take on the internet that will give you a category that you belong to. I can tell you, for instance, that according to the Myers-Briggs Personality Types, out of sixteen personality types I am an INFP – Introversion, iNtuition over sensing when taking in information, Feeling over thinking when making decisions, and Perception over judgment when interacting with the external world. Meaning I prefer small groups of people to large ones, think abstractly as opposed to concretely, value personal considerations more than objective criteria and tend to withhold judgement and delay important decisions. I read the entry for INFPs on Wikipedia (source of all knowledge; don't you dare say it’s unreliable!) and was fascinated by how accurate the description was. It took this weird, complex thing that is myself and put it neatly into a nice, straightforward compartment that seemed to encompass a sizeable proportion of my odd self. Marvellous!

Of course, as a label it's not a perfect or definitive indicator of personality by any means. But it's better than the obscure and perplexing 'me'. And so I shall continue to nurture my little collection of pet labels - one of them is 'hoarder', so it's unsurprising really - and perhaps one day I will feel that I have discovered enough about myself to set them free, and just be me.

'Nobody Even Guessed': A Poegle

Whatever the case, nobody even guessed that she could be dead. I was introduced as her niece, Allisa – I was anything but the young lady I presented. Her bloated, lifeless body was discovered six months ago.

Another ‘mass suicide’; thirty-nine dead bodies discovered by police in an antiseptic community. Two months in the compartments poisoned with mercury vapours. Obscure scenes. A town shocked.

He came over for dinner. He was definitely not stupid; spoke German without a trace of an accent. But I was an expert at masking it – nobody ever found out it was a real knife.

Still unsolved. And nobody even guessed.

______________________________

This is me having a go at a poegle, a concept introduced to me by the lovey Terradoll. I used the phrase 'nobody even guessed', and was rather surprised when I ended up taking on the persona of a homicidal maniac... Interesting.

Things that terrify: A rundown

I discovered something quite strange while on holiday at the Devon Cliffs Haven this week. I have a semi-phobia of amusement arcades. It's not as though I can't set foot in them without having a full-on panic attack or anything like that. They just make me feel quite nervous. Every time we had to walk through the arcade at Haven to get to the entertainment club, I had a sensation of unease. I think it's the jarring, discordant music of all of the machines, each attempting to entice you in with their creepy, overly cheerful tune. Then there's the garish flashing lights everywhere and the sudden, urgent ringing bells. Nope, arcades are not for me.

Having unearthed this hitherto unknown facet of my personality, I began contemplating my various other fears, and came to the conclusion that I am more mentally unstable than even I previously suspected. And so, on this dull Sunday evening, I bring you Lemonie's Top Five Phobias.


1. Enochlophobia (fear of crowds)
I hate being surrounded by lots of people. Not all the time - sometimes I'm fine - but if I'm in a club and there are too many people around me, I can't stand it, especially when they're touching me. I have been know to indulge in some irate elbowing of those who choose to dance enthusiastically right next to me, thus seriously invading my space. Mosh pits sound truly hellish.

2. Emetophobia (fear of vomit) 
Apparently this is pretty common, but I spoke to a friend about it the other day and she thought it was a bit odd. I can't watch people being sick on screen, even in films where I know it isn't real. Ugh. If a film has someone throwing up in it, even if the rest of the film is brilliant, I usually won't watch it again. Why oh why did I go to see The Hangover? I have no idea what I'll do if I ever have children.

3. Trypophobia (fear of clusters of holes)
Yeah, this is weird. I don't like things with lots of little holes in. Honeycombs, termite-eaten wood, pitted surfaces - they make my skin crawl. Even clusters of round things that aren't holes, like eggs, make me feel itchy all over.

The honeycomb picture isn't so bad, but I couldn't bring myself to post any of the ones that truly freak me out. Google 'trypophobia' and there's an image of a frog with eggs on its back. I can't look at that one!


4. Scoleciphobia (fear of worms and/or maggots)
Thinking about it, my hole phobia may be linked to this - maggots emerging from holes would be my worst nightmare; I'm shuddering at the thought. I've had a few dreams about having to walk over ground covered in lots of tiny worms. I think this fear was heightened after my school Head of Year's assembly on fishing. He picked up a box which he led us to believe contained maggots, and threw them into the audience. They were supposed to scatter across the first few rows, but in fact landed entirely on me. I jumped up from my seat, cried, 'Get them off me!' and then realised the 'maggots' were actually bits of string. Cue looking very stupid in front of my entire year.

5. Opidiophobia (fear of snakes)
Similar to the maggots, I suppose, but it's mostly the way they move that creeps me out. I made the mistake of watching 'Anaconda' when I was about 12 - horrendous film. Snakes are just horrible, enough said.

I want to include on the list a strong aversion to the noise things in the freezer make when they grate against each other, but I thought that was a little too odd. It's not even the noise, more like the sensation you can feel that goes right through your teeth and bones. It's my equivalent of the dislike people have of fingers scratching on a blackboard. Unfortunately this particular pet hate has no name, mainly because nobody else shares it!