The Susanne

Handed in my essay at 14:59 and can now only keep my fin­gers and toes crossed and hope for the best. Have begun read­ing the lovely little book that the girl recom­men­ded and I can hon­estly say I agree with her, this book is endearigly, enthrallingly sweet, cap­tiv­at­ing, hil­ari­ous all at once. I’m def­in­itely not going to sleep until I’ve fin­ished it, although I really could use some sleep. Have barely slept a wink for two nights in a row whilst com­plet­ing two very import­ant essays in three days and feel close to faint­ing, but at the same time strangely exhil­ar­ated. I actu­ally did it! I think instead of crawl­ing into bed I’m going to stroll down to my favour­ite café/shop/restaurant Mat og Mer to cel­eb­rate with my book and per­haps a glass of wine. Or maybe a coffee would be a better idea — but then, I’m done, I can drink whatever I want now and read whatever I want although I find myself strangely drawn to my course read­ing lists, per­haps it’s the intense three day essay mara­thon that did it, maybe my brain is so full of renais­sance lit­er­at­ure that that is all it can under­stand and relate to and wish for. Except for En rekke avbrutte forsøk (A series of inter­rup­ted attempts) which is the book I’m so in love with right now… Well, I’m off I think! Here’s just a tidbit from the party on Thursday; I’ll not go into any long tale of how fun the party was or how amaz­ingly Filo­lo­gen turned out or how proud I am of myself and the rest of the people who’ve worked on it, here’s 1000 words and then, ta-​ta! x

Movie night with the sister –  what a lovely concept. And what a lovely night. A while back we placed an ad at finn.no which serves as a kind of ebay to us living in stone age Norway, asking if anyone owned (and would be will­ing to sell us) a copy of the movie Vill­hesten (The Wild Horse) from 1994. I’d write all about it but I’m simply too lazy so if you want you can read about it (in Nor­we­gian) on Nor­we­gian wiki­pe­dia here. Grow­ing up as a horse crazy little girl it was one of my favour­ite films and I even belonged to a book club called Pennyklub­ben which was all about horses, and they had sponsored the film and sent all their mem­bers the single with the theme song from the movie: Du Følger Vinden (You follow the wind). Yeah, you guessed cor­rectly: I played it non-​stop.

So a lovely girl replied to the ad and my sister bought the film and tonight we were finally able to sit down and watch the movie we’d so been long­ing to revisit. And oh what a won­der­ful film it is. It had me back in 1994 in an instant. I felt the old long­ing for my own horse, long­ing for an adven­ture like the girls in the film, long­ing to listen to the song again… and again and again! Alas — the single is long lost. I ask myself how I could have lost such a treas­ured object, but the truth is I got over my horse crazy stage at some point and prob­ably threw it out during one of my tan­trums which usu­ally occurred when I was forced to tidy my room, or maybe it was even lost long before that time. I’m ser­i­ously con­tem­plat­ing pla­cing another ad just for that little cd single. With just one or pos­sibly two tracks on it — but then I only need that one, that song that can still make me feel like a ten year old girl whose greatest ambi­tion is to own my own horse and go for long rides every day. Ah…

But my life is quite changed since then. My ambi­tions now are much higher and the pro­spect of them much scar­ier. I’ve still not com­pleted all my oblig­at­ory course work for the semester, my mind just refuses to co-​operate, every time I sit down to work my mind blanks or freezes or I get a head ache from the stress of it all. I wish I knew how to calm myself, col­lect my thoughts and just do it but I don’t — I con­tinue to doubt my own abil­ity to the point where the self doubt becomes a self-​fulfilling proph­ecy and the end result is… well I don’t know the end result yet but the situ­ation at the moment is far from great!

But I still treat myself. The other day I decided to buy myself a cook’s knife which I’ve been want­ing for a long time, a san­toku knife but I don’t think it’s an actual san­toku. The little leaf­let that came with it says it’s a san­toku but I’m sure that’s just a descript­ive term and it’s really a fake. It’s def­in­itely lovely though. So light, fits so well in my hand and does my every bid­ding with no trouble at all and I’m simply smit­ten with it.

I also allowed myself a little night out on Friday after spend­ing many hours read­ing and taking notes for my essay on Vol­pone (yes, still on that! Will it ever end I ask you! But then I know it will, for the final dead­line is on Sat­urday). I had made plans with Lis­beth to go out but then I texted her saying I had to stay home and study because I simply didn’t deserve to go out. — And then I changed my mind of course and allowed myself some fun. And oh, we had fun. We had moji­tos at qba, a bar at Grünerløkka where Hilde works, and the Aus­tralian boy who danced whilst making our drinks man­aged to get grass straws in our drinks. They still tasted fine though.

And we met a lovely dog who tried to eat our faces and my camera. His owner came out and I apo­lo­gised to her for get­ting him all excited but I don’t quite remem­ber her reac­tion. I sus­pect she was stone sober and found me annoy​ing.The dog loved us though! (and yeah, I’m a cat person not a dog person. And I still liked this dog)

Tomor­row is my last chance to finish my phon­et­ics paper then have to really get down to Vol­pone: I’m making myself hit the lib­rary so hope­fully that will give me that extra push. Also it will keep me away from the kit­chen which is always a big help, today I made a quick couscous soup which I read about and it just soun­ded so lovely. I used some minced beef because it was on spe­cial and some tomato paste and it was amaz­ing! Mmmm. Although I think I put a little too much couscous in there - I’ll use less next time. No photo - it simply didn’t look as good as I would have liked. It tasted deli­cious though and really, that’s what mat­ters isn’t it?

I’m des­per­ate for a study break. Today has been ded­ic­ated com­pletely to the writ­ing of my essay on Amer­ican immig­ra­tion his­tory and atti­tudes, and my head is about to explode with the massive amounts of immig­ra­tion acts I’ve looked up in the last ten or so hours. I’ve now reached the McCarthy era which has made me long to read The Cru­cible instead of all this other boring crap. I want to go out­side and sit on a park bench with The Cru­cible and a cup of coffee for a couple of hours and just enjoy my free­dom which I don’t have, and bask in the sun­shine which is not there because it’s 9.20 in the even­ing and we only have sun­light at this time during summer.  I want to run around and kick the leaves on the ground into the air and marvel at the way they catch the light, and feel the sun warm­ing my face and body, and maybe even get a little hot and sweaty because it’s such a gor­geous autumn day: but the last few days have been freez­ing and wet and stormy. I want to hold the fin­ished Filo­lo­gen in my hands and marvel at the fact that the layout was done by me and that it’s the best one so far and I want to smell it and read all the texts over and over and over, even though I’ve already read them of course whilst doing the layout. But I only sent it to the print­ers yes­ter­day and it’s not due to come out until the 30th by which time I’ll have to have fin­ished all my three essays and one phon­et­ics paper.

On Sunday morn­ing I was woken up at ten to twelve by The Ex call­ing me with the dev­ast­at­ing news that the local burger place wasn’t open yet, because appar­ently I had told him when I came home the night before, drunk as a… well, drunk person, to wake me up next morn­ing with a burger and coke. — (Dis­claimer: when I say ‘home’ I mean the stu­dent vil­lage where we both live, of course. We don’t live together any­more) — He came bring­ing coke and pop­corn how­ever and although I couldn’t actu­ally remem­ber telling him to get me a burger I for­gave him for not doing so and instead got up to make us a break­fast of fried eggs and beans. Crack­ing an egg into the pan I got the shock of a life­time when the egg had not one, but two yolks! I’d never seen any­thing like it before and at first I thought there must be some­thing wrong with this egg, I ran to get my camera and man­aged to get a few snap­shots before it died because I’d been taking so many photos the night pre­vi­ous. Crack­ing two more eggs into the pan I got even more sur­prised as they all had double yolks and I decided to look up this phe­nomenon online — which research first led me to believe that what I had just exper­i­enced was an impossib­il­ity: one person claimed that this was so rare that he had only seen two eggs like this in his 60 year long life. Then I stumbled onto a site called ‘infoplease’ where I was relieved to read that

This hap­pens when two yolks are dropped from the ovary at the same time. Because they are so close as they go through the ovi­duct, they are treated as one yolk and only one shell is made. Double-​yolk eggs are usu­ally pro­duced by young chick­ens whose laying cycle has not yet been estab­lished, but some chick­ens are genet­ic­ally more likely to lay them reg­u­larly. Sources we’ve found online differ con­sid­er­ably as to the odds, ran­ging from 0.1% to 5%.

The twin eggs tasted just fine and I guess they must have been more nutri­tious than normal eggs as they had two yolks, at least I lasted until quite late that day before reach­ing that point of star­va­tion at which I had to eat some­thing so I wouldn’t pass out.

I sup­pose I’d better get back to my essay now as the dead­line looms ever nearer and I am determ­ined to make a proper attempt at this one, my two previus essays being such fail­ures that I’ve pretty much noth­ing to go on coming up to the final dead­line after which my essays will be marked and the respect­ive lec­tur­ers will determ­ine whether I shall be allowed to sit my exams at the end of the semester. Oh, and by the way it seems like mum and I are going on a long week­end to Stock­holm for my birth­day, very excit­ing and a little scary as I have exams on the two days fol­low­ing that week­end and I’m not sure if there will be any time to study whilst there, well in fact I doubt there will be. Sup­pose I’ll just have to study hard before we leave!

Dead­line for the first draft of my essay was nine minutes ago. I handed in noth­ing like what I hope my fin­ished essay to be a month from now — in fact I have simply not been able to wrap my mind around the ques­tion. Either it must be ridicu­lously simple and only a matter of dis­cuss­ing how the char­ac­ters differ in their ruth­less self-​seeking, or it is as I think: much more com­plex and com­plic­ated. And I still haven’t figured out how to answer it. I have come up with an idea for a bril­liant essay on the dif­fi­culty of the ques­tion, but some­how I doubt that will get me that A…

I always feel strong dis­ap­point­ment in myself at times like this. I feel like a fail­ure, I feel like I have not put enough effort into it (although I have, of course!) I feel like I have no worth while thoughts at all and that I know noth­ing. Yea, I know. Sad. It’ll pass soon enough though. And when it does, hope­fully the veil that I know is hiding the answer I seek will lift and I will be able to finish my task!

In the mean time, I’ve got the layout job for Filo­lo­gen loom­ing. The first course night of the layout class was yes­ter­day and I found it inter­est­ing, if maybe a little dif­fi­cult and not com­pletely sat­is­fy­ing. There were ques­tions which I didn’t get answers to, and lots of stuff that is quite irrel­ev­ant to the type of pub­lic­a­tion we make. I’m going back for round two tomor­row and am excited about it: hope­fully things will fall a little into place and I’ll be able to learn most of what I’ll need so that when Monday rolls around and I have my meet­ing with the editor and the rest of the edit­or­ial staff I won’t be com­pletely clueless.

I must admit I eat quite well even when I’m busy with study­ing. The dis­trac­tion of cook­ing is the most wel­come to me of all dis­trac­tions, and I’m sure many of you can relate to my feel­ings on the sub­ject of dis­trac­tions and pro­cras­tin­a­tion: Yes please, no please, please leave me alone… So I allow myself the luxury of spend­ing an hour or two in the kit­chen cook­ing and eating. Yes­ter­day it was smoked saus­ages and sautéed veget­ables; today it was a lovely grilled tail piece of trout, with green beans and sugar snaps (as you know, my favour­ite combo), mush­rooms and a sweet bal­samic vin­egar glaze. Mmmm!  What I really love about cook­ing when I’m really sup­posed to be study­ing, is that I can ration­al­ise and tell myself that I must eat, I need brain food, I can’t very well starve to death over an essay! Plus the break is very refresh­ing and I always return to my work with renewed energy and much, much happier!

Or should I say that time of the semester: it’s essay time! Four essays to be writ­ten and handed in within the next couple of weeks, the first one due tomor­row. And let me just say, that as fas­cin­at­ing and fun I find the play I’m sup­posed to write my essay on, Ben Johnson’s Vol­pone, the ques­tion is pro­por­tion­ally boring and unin­spir­ing:

“The major­ity of the char­ac­ters of Ben Jonson’s Vol­pone are devotedly self-​seeking, and vary only in their meth­ods and their degree of ruth­less­ness.” Dis­cuss this statement.

Ser­i­ously, what’s there to dis­cuss? Yes, they’re devotedly self-​seeking! That’s one of the major themes of the d*** play!  And yes, they are all dif­fer­ent and so they must inev­it­ably vary in their meth­ods, as well as their degree of ruth­less­ness! Ahh…I’m frustrated.

There is no rel­ev­ant cri­ti­cism to be found on the sub­ject either, I’m guess­ing because it’s such an obvi­ous theme that no one has bothered to write about it. Feel my frus­tra­tion! Does anyone know this play? Anyone will­ing to rescue me from my cur­rent state of hope­less­ness by assist­ing me to another view on this sub­ject and/or giving me some point­ers on how to write this essay, will earn my eternal grat­it­ude and pos­sibly dinner if they live near enough.

Of course, all work and no play (well, one play, but you get my drift I’m sure) makes Susanne a very dull girl.. and hungry too! Luck­ily deli­cious, light meals can be put together in a jiffy if you’ve only got a few staples at hand: a little rocket, some cherry toma­toes and a few wafer thin slices of parmeg­giano reg­giano and you’re good to go! Well I am, anyway. Sadly, snack time and rant­ing time over, it’s now time to get back to work. Yey.