Stand Still.

Seb and I have been reflecting on this year as if it’s already over, talking about the highlights and lowlights and trying to remember everything that has happened, but it all seems a bit of a blur to look back on. Last year was such a catastrophe of events, everything was constantly shifting and changing direction – this year, my life at home seems to have been at a stand still. Perhaps I’m eternally dissatisfied with my surroundings because I grow bored so easily. I think there was something intoxicatingly beautiful about not being in control of my life in the past, of having everything taken out of my hands by external events and the people around me, that roller coaster feeling of being along for a ride and the unexpected elements that kept it stimulating and entrancing. This year, leading such a structured life of studying, less socialising, so much time spent around the house, has made me resent it. In Anais Nin’s diary, she talks of Henry Miller being protected by his wife June – he worships her, and defends her in conversation, and would never raise an arm to hit her – for she is flighty and passionate and unstable, and he must make himself small for her to love him. And she does love him, but as a mother loves a child, a love devoid of passion, for she can’t feel passion for a man so flexible to her every whim. I’m not sure if I sympathise more with Henry or with June. But it’s a strange and complex idea, the notion of power and control – and once one has it, there is no struggle to exercise it; there is no ambition to conquer or to succeed. Everything stands still.