it's 2.13 and instead of doing work or getting some sleep i'm discussing soft toys with yen, yeenteck and von. we were talking about whether anyone would adopt my mouse, esso tiger, duck and bear if i should die this weekend. yeen teck and yen both offered their homes, and of course they could always go stay with su-lin, only they might feel ostracised because they're not green, or with minyin, who'd let them run amok. yen has a zebra, an elephant, a cat, a blue donkey, a monkey, a unicorn and a hamster. and a borrowed dog. very crowded. i suddenly remember that yeen teck has a crocodile named buaya which sleeps in his car. buaya! and people laugh at me for calling my mouse mouse! (at least i didn't call him a ngiao ci at anyrate, as von tells me mice are. or a tikus, for that matter, which is what i've been calling ashraf.) and addy has a purple platypus called platypus. oh well. we aren't all like su-lin, who gives intelligent names to her animals. (she has three dogs named barkis, digory and wagner) well, we do give humanish names? von's green ikea snake is lars, because he's a swedish snake. as an aside, lars was kidnapped briefly by von's friend eriko, and who knows what yan4 fu2 he had then? better than living all year round in a suitcase anyway. von doesn't go in for soft toys i think, but he has a plant who began life as mildred, and then grew up to become millicent, and now she's melanie, and may become meredith in the near future. i think he should make up his mind, or give the poor thing a stout sensible name, like margaret. yen tells me she had a plant named bob, which she gave to the porter at oxford when she left. bob was a twisty bonsai thing, which was too big to be a bonsai and had to lean on a wire thing. she said she bought him because she felt sorry for him, and took off the wired bits. i don't feel sympathy towards plants but i once did that with an umbrella. i wanted a pink one but then i saw a grey one which hadn't a cover and i felt very bad for it because i thought no one would buy it and it wasn't its fault it didn't have a cover, so i did. i did get a pink one too, eventually, but the grey one is still with me. neither of them have names. they have feelings, but they're not animate. the only inanimate object i know that has a name is von's water bottle. it wears a nametag that says: "hello, i am von's waterbottle". is it just our group or do we all have these anthropomorphosising tendencies. is anthropomorphosising a word? or do i mean anthropomorphing. they look equally wrong. the latter sounds more like the object is doing the morphing. it must be wrong. possibly there isn't a verbal form. nevermind. von will see this in a few hours and smugly correct me. who is leonard cohen? i'm listening to espen lind and morten harket sing hallelujah. it's a very bizarre song. but i like it. kinda. yen knows his songs, she says they're all bizarre like that. the name cohen makes me think of cohen the barbarian. was that his name? or at least it was a c-name. didn't like the early books anyway. hah. and now i've got the rufus wainright version. which i don't like as much. very bland lah. the lind/harket was rougher and had more character. this one was on the shrek soundtrack apparently, only i don't have any impression of the song on the movie. i have a lousy memory. actually maybe i'm just stupid. probably dsylexic too. i keep writing alphas for sigmas and vice versa. my brain isn't connected to my hand. or maybe i just write too fast. yeen teck asked me what i would do if i didn't get into grad school. keep applying till i bloody well do, i told him. at this rate, however, i am probably going to fail the gres. which is very sad. i'm sure getting into some grad school or other isn't a problem. the problem is how to get into the top schools, which, from what everyone is telling me, is nigh impossible anyway. oh well. has anyone noticed this entry has completely degenerated into babbling incoherently? what kg calls being a babbling idiot. i should go sleep. soon. i'll read one chapter and then go. need to get up early tomorrow. very sleepy. not going to nohrnberg, i think. still distressed about the ovid assignment, which i can't do. some people can and should if they like, and those who can't are better off not trying. people should do what they are good at and save the world bad poetry. i wish i were yisheng. i showed my prose translation, which follows, to him, which is archaic but close to the original syntax:

the first love of phoebus was daphne, daughter of peneis, which love, unseeing chance did not give, but the savage ire of cupid (did). delius, haughty with the serpent so recently conquered, saw him bending the horns of his bow with its string drawn taut and scorned: "what do you want with strong weapons, foolish boy? this load is proper to my shoulders, i who can give unerring wounds to wild animals and the enemy, i who have just now lay down the swollen python with my arrows, which now lies for so many acres on its deadly belly.

yisheng didn't think that was a bad translation at all, but to get from that to scannable rhymed lines is going to kill. i asked him the dumbest question that all writers must get all the time and loathe, i.e., how do you write your poems? where do you start? he said, concentrate on some images, but i have no imagination lah. sigh.

have you ever noticed how music, at this time of the night, even when played very soft, sounds magnified? i wonder what vuggevise means in norwegian. it's a nice song anyway. but i am going to read and then sleep. night everyone.