Untitled
Monday, February 2nd 2004, 0618 hours
Location: my room
Weather: heavy cloud
In the vase: a white rose
t's Candlemas day today: forty days since Christmas, the Feast of the Presentation. I've got a
candle which I'll light today while singing the Hours, though I won't be dropping by a church. I've just sung Lauds, the
music clear in the darkness of morning, and now I wait for sunrise.
...ex utero ante luciferum genui te...
I can hear pigeons outside my window, as the day fades up. Par turturum, aut duos pullos columbarum. How appropriate.
***
Every day I spend in this country sees me growing more austere. My face lengthens, my bones show; my spirit severe as a windswept cliff. Am I colder, I wonder? More dispassionate, yes; perhaps also less intense. It's been a long time, I realise, since I've really felt anything. No love. No hate. Occasionally a flash of indignation, or of enthusiasm; and then it subsides again. I eat less, drink less, speak less. I've become like one of those old men who sit with their birds in the morning, listening to them chirrup and sing. Instead of people I have books for company: Ted Hughes and Dante, both of whom I like a good deal, for my thesis and coursework. My work, it seems, is my life. There's little now outside of it. And I realise this too was deliberate: I've thrown everything overboard for this my final semester, and now every day I pace up and down an empty deck, looking at the sea.