2004-08-10..8:27 a.m.

Got an email from Nelle today, lovely girl. She is �shocked and giddy� at the news of my little venture into monogamy. And I quote: �This is astonishing. This is wild. You seem equally surprised, which is the best way to be, I think�I guess what I�m saying is the fact that you�re awestruck by the whole thing yet lucid about your own feelings means that you can trust said feelings�the dark horse Matthew has triumphed in the Ultimate Boy 2004 competition. I like it. Anyway, GO! Be giddy! Kiss freely at bus stations and on trains and metro platforms! And on escalators!�*

I�m guessing she�s pretty pleased at the development. And need I say, I am too. I think all the emphatic surprise is due to the fact that a. I hadn�t written to her for a couple of weeks, and b. I hadn�t been saying very much before hand because I just didn�t want to go jinxing anything. I am a superstitious girl, I guess. But now that we have her blessing, I say let no bus station, train or tube platform go unsnogged upon! Let us make out in the harsh light of day and halogen gleam of night alike! Let us force the rest of the world to rejoice in our lusty happiness! Three cheers for wilful neglect of public decency! Huzzah!

*Over Christmas in Prague Nelle and I spent a great deal of timing observing the mating patterns of Metro Couples. We�d frequently see the same pairs in different stations throughout the day leading us to the conclusion that there is an entire subterranean culture of Czechs who live, work and breed in the labyrinth that lies beneath the streets. There is one steady purpose of Metro Couples: to ensure that all those around them rejoice in their LOVE. Public demonstrations of their LOVE are a necessity � like breathing, or deep-fried breaded meat products � and so you�d find buck-toothed spotty boys pushing skinny girls with badly dyed hair up against pillars, carriage doors and the jerky banisters that rode alongside escalators, hands down each others overtight jeans thrusting away with frenetic hunger. It was funny for a while, primarily because it was so damn predictable. But the amused revulsion boiled into mired disgust, and slowly sank into anesthetised indifference. There were simply too many of them to bother being shocked.

In other news I spent the better part of the yesterday afternoon fighting the urge the run from the office in a burst of tears. It wasn�t reflective of anything, the abject sadness threatening physical collapse. The self-indulgence of crying freely is consuming, of somehow relieving myself of this awful dead weight that�s hanging in my throat and choking my larynx. At lunch I dragged down the road to Waitrose like I had an anchor tied to one ankle, and the simplest of pleasantries were met with a withering glower at worst, dull eyes and blank mouth at best. Everything felt so weak and shaky and slowly shrivelling; lost and disconnected, and totally indifferent to that. It was a wet blanket day. A dripping black cat day. A forgotten pair of pants loosened from a smelly gym bag seeping dankly in a gutter day. Breaking down and sobbing loudly seemed like a pretty inviting option. And when you think about it: melancholy plus melodramatic, equals awful tendency to forget you do not cry in public.

I ended up taking in half a package of those McVitie�s More Chocolate Digestives, which released enough of the happyfat hormones to bring it all into focus and see me walk home.

Because of all this pre-men moodiness, I had an odd weekend. Kicky and giggling one minute excited by the bright colours and exaggerated portraits on the covers of c. 1960s Pan editions of trashy pulp detective novels, recklessly irritable with small children, large children, adults, dogs and cars the next and having to forcibly control the need to pummel smiles off their faces (the cars too). Saturday on the way to the Betsey I started crying in the middle of the street while the Boy kissed the top of my head, held me close and sweetly said nothing. Sunday I spent twenty minutes predatorily circling the organic fruit and veg stalls in Spitalfields before decided I did want an apple, and then another eight picking over which one.

This considered, it very likely wasn�t the best time to go engaging with political/religious tracts, eh? Saturday I went to see Fahrenheit 9/11, Sunday I finally caved and listened to one of Myra�s propaganda tapes that she persists in sending me home with. Neither was a good idea given my current state of severe emotional extremes, though interestingly I found fault with the both on similar ground. While interesting enough, both were tacky and sentimental, placing too much emphasis on personal experience in lieu of arguments sustained by clear facts/examples. Both hint at something more noteworthy with a deep and relevant history, but failed to deliver. Both required its audience to have prescribed views on certain things, and resorted to derogatory remarks towards anyone who fails to agree. Both used personalised brands of �logic,� leap from point A to point C without considering point B and ended up contradicting themselves. Both were over-dependent on the idea of �Letting you come to your own conclusions� when unwilling to formulate coherent conclusions themselves, and claimed to �Just be giving you something to think about� without actually going into any depth or asking pertinent questions that could lead to bigger, more precise answers. Which is highly irresponsible as it mere ends up leaving those who DO NOT have the required background with pre-directed half-thoughts and growing resentment towards the messenger themselves. In short, both made me fed up to the core and getting angrier for such misguided arrogance. Myra for her propaganda tape, her insistence that my non-belief is in some way unworthy of being recognised and respected, DESPITE the fact I go to great lengths to attempt to understand her, and accept her beliefs as her beliefs. Michael Moore for putting together such a slipshod effort on an important subject, relying far too heavily on his soundtrack for effect and catering too much to an American cant rather than exposing the global situation and the history of this conflict.

I am a firm leftist, I agree with (most of) what he was TRYING to say, I just think the way he went about saying it undermined the motivation and intended end. This is perhaps a rather puerile point of contest, however it seems to me that he went about making this documentary the wrong way round: surely one does not take 16 of one�s favourite songs� and decide to build an anti-war/investigative documentary around them. Surely one compiles vast reams of painstaking research, establishes sources and resources and strives to make articulate arguments. Surely one does not stoop to the professed lack of intelligence of its subject and dumb everything down even further. His seeming lack of purpose only ended up serving to give the impression he pushed this film to production before it was ready more as a money-making opportunity than because he wanted to get his message out, which is terrible damaging and disappointing. As a political activist who has made it into the mainstream and who has the opportunity to actually reach the minds of a much wider audience than most activists dream possible, this film teeters on being recklessly facile.

After my pissed-offedness of Sunday had worn away some, M*, so patient and good, came round bearing vegetables and bagels. He secured himself around my waist when I wanted him to hold me tight and let go when I felt confined, listened to me blather when I needed to spew and spoke nonsense when I needed to be silent. Yesterday, he sat stroking my arm and looking a little worried as I sobbed wetly into my pillow, and let me listen to vol. 2 of the 69 Love Songs�. His general advice is this:

Think of little lambs and cherubs and geese with pink bows around their necks on a bright day in a lush green park. Then think of shaving and dying the lambs into punks, throwing big rocks at the cherubs and dropkicking the geese into the trees.

I�ve decided to take this advice to heart, because there is nothing more satisfying that imagining heaving great rocks at fluttering cherubs and their plinky-plonky harps. If patterns are developing and I�m to have my period every 6 weeks, the one thing that seems abundantly clear is that my cycle now also includes a preceding ten day period of violent moodswings and crashing indecision.

*I�ve gone and changed his abbreviation again. You understand, right?** I couldn�t keep him at the Boy, not when he�s so much more than merely a Boy. Not when he means all this. Zanna and I used to just call boys we were seeing Boy, Guy or Dude for clarities sake. It made it easier not having to remember names, merely levels of maleness. Once emotions and mutual care sets in, only then are they bestowed use of their name.

**And even if you do care, what are you going to do about it? jesus! Always with the complaints. In the immortal words of Cyndi Lauper, It�s my diary and I�ll do what I want to, do what I want to, do what I want to.

In any case, outside my barrage of moral/spiritual indignation and overwhelming hormonal hoopiness, the weekend was fairly productive. I finally managed to pickup a birthday gift for my little sister. Though it will not arrive in time for tomorrow what with the 3000 mile flight it has to make, I think she�ll be pleased. An onyx stone set in pewter on a three-strand wire chain. That sounds shitty and cheap, but I swear it�s not! I also picked up a copy of the Quiller Memorandum by Adam Hall, which is shaping up beautifully. I hadn�t really given any thought to Hall/Quiller for my thesis, but in a study of masculinity in post-WWI thru Cold War literature it seems to link quite nicely to Fleming/Bond et al. I�ll have to read more before deciding, I�m only about 40 pages in. I finished ER Braithwaite�s To Sir, With Love as well Sunday morning, which almost made me rethink my spy-genre Cold War studies. Such an eloquent writer who quite rightly places as much emphasis on racial philosophy as he does personalised experience. I was utterly hooked from the off.

Incidentally, I�m also reading biography of Simone de Beauvoir by Deidre Bair who also wrote Samuel Beckett�s. I�m going to have to get that one out of the library as soon as I�m finished with Simone because the quality and style of writing is stunning. Not to mention the subject! She�s only 20 and about to enter her second year at the Sorbonne, just begun hanging out with Satre, and already what a life! I find myself imitating Simone�s own obsessive tendencies, unable to put it down and determined to finish her story by the end of the week. For kicks I might decide to learn French by the end of the month so I can read her six volume Memoirs untranslated.

****meep