Ochre & Celadon

A scattering of recent 2025 diary entries traipsing dust, papercuts & the blue-white burn of computer screens.

Taken from the apex of 'Noble Hills', opposite the elusive transmission tower.

The crisp asphalt of the new, undulating road is lined with the giggle of weeds—elegant and upstanding, like narcissists in petal fedoras. I drag my black sneakers, dusted with red dirt and millipede corpses, up the manmade trail, scouting for a gap in the endless electrified fences where I might shortcut up Noble Hill. No such luck. Madonna blares through my earphones ('Like a Prayer') and I shakily frame each and every pixel of my Nokia camera on the scatter of flowers. In trying to pick a lupin for myself, I uproot the entire plant, stumbling back in an “oh no!” that slouches into a “whatever...” when I remember the shire gardeners will likely be murdering them en masse soon anyway.

Nero & a cherub from M, an old postcard from S - who I have not written to since. Remind me to follow up.

I have less than a month until I submit my final Honours dissertation, something I have worked on from two very different desks. Where I sit now, a percussive, retro keyboard reclines on a leatherette desk pad, surrounded by a scuffed lake of wood-grain MDF. Watching me from a flimsy cable box is a copy of 'Awakenings' by Oliver Sacks, and two plush animals embracing: a stuffed teddy bear holding a too-expensive pencil, and a jittery, but polite, raccoon with bug-eyes. Surrounded by them are reminders of someone close to my heart, miles away. It is the closest we can be at this very moment.

My desk, before I made a wallpaper out of love letters (privacy, please!)

Copies of Lispector, Chekov, and the more thesis-relevant Goffman glare at me from underneath my monitor stand. The vague, mellow smell of Earl Gray permeates the air, and the melodies of routine maintenance (hammering, cats mewling, children laughing) burn like incense up towards the window.

This week, once again, I will be paying homage to those my countryside circuits of statistical spreadsheets and hiking shoes furred with ochre dust by returning to the other desk, maybe we can call it 'The Noble Desk' to match its Noble Hills location. It is of a similar size, less well-decorated, and illuminated by a large vintage light overhead, drawers filled with chewing gum and discarded pamphlets from visiting Jehovah's Witnesses (they came all the way, why not enjoy the merch...). My thoughts are all scattered - I feel that I will be able to tell you more about it once I return and re-experience the place for myself.

Late as ever, I am acclimatising to the light, searing sensation that receiving feedback brings. It feels less skinless this time, since the check-ins are not tethered to grades, yet I remain submerged in a dense, glutinous cloud of worry. Worry that I am not doing the right thing, not laying down the right kind of sentence. My most persistent fault is reading too many references, taking neat notes, and then tangling them when I write. I swap A for B, X for Y, and end up with a sentence dressed in another source’s clothes. For my discussion section I am trying something else: reading the references, writing the statement, then matching it back to a reference like I’m conducting a very serious audit. If none fits, I will dismantle and rework the statement. It sounds easier than it will be.

The 2100 Year Old Limelighter

A hedonistic bedside tablescape

In exactly a month, it will be my twenty-first birthday. A strange thing to reckon with for someone who vacillates between feeling sixteen and thirty-five, depending on the day.

I remember the violence of salty wind thrashing against the wide, picturesque windows of the restaurant during last year’s celebration. The taste of some hybrid concoction—rum, whisky, a warmth—gliding down my parched throat, blooming as it stretched through my blood vessels. I had thought twenty to be an embarrassing number: no longer precocious, yet not impressive either. When you’re a teenager and “doing so much,” surely the effort counts double.

Now the thought doesn’t even brush my mind. I simply sit in front of my double monitors, glowing with radio stations and flashcard decks, and breathe.

FLEDGLING + sketches.

I’m thinking about last Wednesday—the gentle glow of lamplight cusping up my velvet-clad shoulders, the slight tremble between thumbprint and papercut as I balanced my recital book. Two poems: one from last year, the other from last month. That excited, hurried tone I once reserved for Shakespeare, or for the commandeering apathy of Beckett. For a second, I was wholly back—locking eyes with the audience, grinning, twirling like a child. Before introducing my latest poem, FLEDGLING, I indulged in a flourish:

Me, wearing a renaissance blouse and a burgundy velvet waistcoat. I wish I could dress like this all the time.

“I think there’s something so queer about vampirism. And I’ve always wanted to be a vampire. Or maybe I am one! But it would be terribly inappropriate to reveal such a secret tonight. So without further ado, I hope you enjoy.”

How intoxicating it felt—silly and sublime at once—to be witnessed, to be held for a moment in that charged gaze, and then to vanish. To dissolve into the night and reappear in that fluorescent purgatory of McDonald’s, sustaining myself upon the greasy sacrament of hashbrowns and the syrupy cloy of a bubblegum slushie.

I felt like some centuries-old vampire loitering beneath the harsh blue light of the pickup counter, consuming the inedible and thinking only of the journey home.