Blue Saturday

thanks spacey i am going to go back to the middle of the night thing next time i see the counsellor. something to do with chemicals in the brain subsiding it was.

also lol full disclosure i had always assumed Celan was French because of how his nom de plume looks

aps, I suggest starting with Selections (edited and with an introduction by the great Pierre Joris).

Even if your German is lacking (as mine is, and direly at that), hearing him read his work is a shattering experience imo:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhO81S666Ok

I'd also like to point out that his brief and little-known stint as a Romanian-language poet in the early 1940s is no less remarkable and I prefer his work from that period to most of his contemporaries'.

thank you, pom! (and NV too)

I hope to investigate your recommended title via a library soon, and possibly a bilingual edition of poems too, though that's out on loan. Are there good English translations of the early Romanian work?

the aforementioned James B tweet included a link to Celan reading Todesfuge, and, yes, remarkable, shattering.

(pom's link has English subtitles if you turn CC on and that one ^ does not, alas, but the tweet thread links to the text of a couple of English translations)

My pleasure! Selections features one of the early Romanian poems – a Surrealistic pastiche of sorts, but hardly the piece I would have picked to represent that facet of his work. Reportedly, there's a 2003 volume that collects them all in English, but I have no idea what those translations are worth.

a low so low I don't even want to begin to describe it. I feel like I've been nothing but a burden, a user, a disappointment all my life. perfectly self-absorbed child, even this fucking thread is a manifestation of that.

I don't have a melodramatic solution to it. I know reality is never as extreme as I'm feeling it, or at least I know that's what I'd tell somebody else. But that doesn't mean those feelings can't be broadly true, doesn't mean "depression" can't be a selfish self-dramatising response to selfishness.

I'm lying here feeling like the end of the world with a little inner voice telling myself (or the outside world, I don't know) that recognition is part of recovery. But the sheer amount of work to climb out of here, to change myself, to have a viable future for anybody - it feels insurmountable, or it feels like I'm buried under it.

so I lie here passive and create a wilderness and call it self-care.

How are you doing now NV?

I have had a bad enough week with mine, but on top of that I’m very tired (I think I’m coming down) so I’m not really dwelling on it. The two are possibly interrelated as well - I am always very tired after a bad spell of it. Having said that all my sinuses seem to be going off at once, so. Probably shouldn’t be reading The Stand atm!

I don't know if people who haven't experienced it realise how physical mental health stuff can be sometimes.

I had a good session with my counselor yesterday. Dunno if it was "productive" but it was grown-up and I felt understood and I feel like I can see the beginnings of a possible path forward.

So after I went to the pub and well I *probably* shouldn't have but I mostly enjoyed it and it was mostly therapeutic but I should probably not do the buzzer in the pub quiz after an all dayer.

And now I'm a bit hungover and my brain if not yet my stomach is hungry and I can't be bothered to put outside clothes on or cook anything but I really want sweeties and I shouldn't spend Just Eat money so maybe I'll sneak up behind myself and go out before I realise what I'm doing.

And the psychic devastation is well down from Monday but I really really have to do stuff and I might be kidding myself about my own capacity to do stuff, we'll see, it's the weekend anyway even if I am a layabout, I will try to try on Monday.

Oh and I don't think my daughter's talking to me at the moment but hopefully that will pass.

Well I’m glad you’re getting something from therapy! And yeah, get something to eat like. I just remembered I have black pudding at home which I can eat tomorrow, which is good cos my iron could always do with a boosting.

Otm re physical symptoms of MH, I wish I had known this 20 years ago because things would have made so much more sense.

Are you doing anything this weekend?

Probably lying around the house playing video games but I've gone out for walks twice this week and enjoyed it, I should probably make the effort if the weather's not lousy.

Storm blowing outside, it was nice listening to the rain last night. Since I've been on the effexor I've had a lot of vivid dreams, which is a mixed blessing. And this morning was the return of a long lost frenemy, the dream of being loved and in love, like being sixteen again.

The worst of that being the real aching loss when you wake up and it's not real and you're alone and old. And I don't have getting drunk money and the storm is blowing outside and the blue is such a mirror image of actual joy that you treasure it anyway because.

I was out in that storm and got drenched to the bone in two minutes, that wasn't rain it was like a wall of water landing on me.

got a nice little soundclash between loud cracks of thunder, howling wind and the colin stetson color out of space soundtrack. please don't fail me national grid, i'm enjoying this!

Pretty windy here, haven’t been out in it. The kittens aren’t fans of it.

<3 to all

fabulous weather noises; should go out as I barely left the house y/day and 2 days without much fresh air or exercise or variation in real not-on-screen things to look at will not be good for my mental health throughout the week, but don't want to be out in this

cat was meeping constantly, possibly because of the wind/rain noises but perhaps just because, but has now settled down on her cat tree to glare at everyone and fall asleep (cat otm)

before previous big storm warnings i've always taken in the various flowerpots and herb-pots and little trees on my window sill, in case they blow off. This time I left it too late -- tho London is threatening 30mph rather than 80mph so fingers x-ed it will be OK. The tree is "safely" tied, and anyway no one will be out and about in the garden below to be brained by anything

actually i might take this opp to dig up all the invasive chickweed and let it blow free (and away) lol

Not much signs of any storm here, that's London for you, nothing interesting ever happens weatherwise.

... God heard me, thunder! Yasssssss!

... and now the wind shaking the trees. It's like "Night of the Demon" all of a sudden.

i was just listening to the commentator at Millwall, sounds like they're not short of weather right now

Bit of my fence has blown down, that's fun

I am in Corbynland, we are sheltered from storms by our preening self-righteousness.

Blew Sunday

It’s taken me from 11.15am to get from Bath to the outskirts of London, and I’m still approaching Paddington now. But the unusual weather, Blitz spirit and trusting to fate nature of the journey have been quite entertaining in their way.

LOL, the storm has definitely reached Islington.

xp ironic that it's slowed you down heading east, apparently a passenger jet broke the subsonic transatlantic record today thanks to the storm

I was hoping it would reach France in time to cancel the Six Nations match so I could sit in the pub quietly without the advertised big screen blaring and tossers in rugby shirts elbowing me at the bar - match went ahead but it did stop anyone else turning up except one other couple who also weren't watching, so the sound was thankfully on mute and no injuries were sustained

(apologies to those of you who actually enjoy that stuff)

some hefty lower branches of the tree out front have come down, hope the council won't take this as an excuse to cut the whole thing down, they already cut down a row of mature trees opposite

Fence tipped over here too, and the recycling bins with it. One for the Real England thread? Or so I like to picture it.

those Hebden Bridge pics/vids from today are grim watching. Glad I live on top of a huge mountain, well sort of a hill but locals call it a mountain.

^^ Calder Valley suffers every single time. It was really bad in Mytholmroyd, too.

In Todmorden they were using ww2 air raid sirens as a flood warning!

I need to change the litter trays and I am not looking forward to it!

I love that this is turning into the de facto Storm Ciara thread

its pronounced ciara

apparently extensive draining of grouse moors so toffs can go shooting is one of the factors that has worsened Calder Valley flooding. Maybe because Hebden Bridge is such a bohemian mecca for gays, eccentrics and lefties this is another front on the culture/class wars battlefield!

In Todmorden they were using ww2 air raid sirens as a flood warning!

― calzino, Sunday, February 9, 2020 7:52 PM (nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

In H B as well iirc. I never had to hear them when I lived there, thankfully. Well and also, like you, living up on a hill helps a lot.

xp lol

Wind has died down here but still a bit rainy - waiting to see before I go out and try to avoid getting cat litter blown everywhere.

i was gonna say before Hebden Bridge is like the Portland of England, maybe the flood water is being deliberately targeted

Hebden Bridge's reputation as incredible edible hippy nirvana is way bigger than what it's actually like there tbf (though the chai latte places do their part to amplify the stereotype). It's a good sell I suppose. Still don't wish them people any harm though. Well not most of them anyway.

oh i don't wish them harm, i was thinking of the ill intent of local landowners/county councillors

Oh I see, yeah. I've not been keeping close track on if the millions that were promised this to counter this were paid out, and what they did with it.

I went out in the worst yesterday, and was rewarded by one of the few people in Homebase being the LOTO - unsurprisingly he's got a good line in waterproofs, not clear whether it includes the cap.

it is easy to laugh at people in waterproofs but it sure beats the hell out of getting drenched!

I could imagine him having very good advice on the best affordable brands of outdoor gear.

https://i2-prod.mirror.co.uk/incoming/article6921467.ece/ALTERNATES/s615b/Labour-party-leader-Jeremy-Corbyn.jpg please say he was wearing something like this

No, but there was a respectable amount of red!

Red Sunday