Feeling quite low recently I like to browse this website http://freecabinporn.com/ and dream of a time when I can live quietly somewhere in a little house surrounded by plants. What is happiness? Is it constant change and material entering the mind, rapid growth and stress, excitement and motion. Or is it something softer, constant and eternal, slowly building on itself? Presumably it is some golden middle ground but I confess to leaning slightly more towards the softer side. I recently visited a place called Tantallon Castle http://www.flickr.com/photos/14628860@N00/7215582578/in/photostream Walking on the orange Fife sand in the crashing waves and the swarming seabirds I basked in the sun. How do we make choices in our lives? I think the best we can do is follow our hearts and see what happens next. That may lead to states of extreme stress, or extreme boredom, but I think it might be the best we can hope for.

I have been sadly sideways or upside down of good health lately. So, I've not been taking pictures or doing much except sleeping on whatever random surface can hold my head. Most recently that was a table in a restaurant and before that a carpet :) But life is good anyway in a quiet, animal kind of way, I feel a bit like a cat or dog trying desperately not to fall asleep but then literally collapsing into a little furry heap, I am furry because of my beloved Scottish cashmere sweater mind you. Also my real hair I suppose, I have decided it has become so enormous and rambunctious, especially on this windy Isle, that it is an Octopus named Fido who lives on my scalp and carries on a mostly symbiotic relationship with me. Fido seduces passerby but also has been known to get jealous of me and strangle them instead. In return I give Fido many nutritious scalp oils and minerals I do not want in my body but occasionally get frustrated with his over excitability and lop bits off of him with Alice's nail clippers. We are good friends mostly but we have our rough spots, especially when he wants a bath and kneads his suckers into my scalp like a nursing cat, it is very painful.
Today The hill beneath the castle in Edinburgh was glowing greenly in the rainy fishbowl light. As we hurried along from bookstore to cafe under an umbrella that kept turning inside out I deliriously watched the paving stones glisten and splash beneath my shiny gold and silver shoes. What a sense of timelessness this city cultivates, I love it in the rain for that dark and eternal sense of time.
I feel terribly guilty when I am sick for not doing more work/being more perky. Instead I read books of psychology that in my weakened state convince me I am completely mad, and sketch in black and red pencil. I also drink copious amounts of tea mixed with bee pollen, I have been helpfully informed that this is pollen that comes from bees, also it is magic?!
So, I should really be studying for my History exam but can't be bothered for the roaring sound in my head and the fact that the teacup beside my hand looks like the ideal pillow at the moment.

Well my friends, am am greying. Yes. I have about 3 inches of bright silver hair sticking up from my part like a little alien antenna.

I've decided I'm a bohemian.
Today I am typing with hands soaked in red and blue paint. Interesting things wrap about my body, a swiss 19th c windup pocket watch the Slayer of Dragons gave me, an Afgani cross, a Japanese Obi tie, a red Beret that was once my Granmothers, blue earrings like giant duck moons from Greece, striped woolen socks, green corduroy trousers, a cotton blouse with a subtle pattern on vines woven into it. I look like a cross between a Pre-Raphaelite and a bloomsbury woman. http://www.flickr.com/photos/14628860@N00/6972552712/in/photostream I sit on the floor smearing paint around that looks like blood and reading old books of Scottish literature. I tootled off to Aberdeen yesterday on a moments notice and went to the Aberdeen Gallery. !!! Francis Cadell! Toulous Lautrec! John Fergusson! Johnathen Waterhouse! Samuel Peploe! And scads of other painters hugely beloved of Princess Sea. I really liked Aberdeen, it had a breathtaking cemetery http://www.flickr.com/photos/14628860@N00/6972552498/in/photostream/, enormous granite buildings with tower and turret and rookery stacked one on the other but still relatively simple in design, freezing rain, lime green spring growth. http://www.flickr.com/photos/14628860@N00/6972553468/in/photostream I've decided for the umpteenth time that this country is glorious.
Now, after unrestful dreams about mountain climbing, I am going to take a long nap.

I've been visiting Cramond every weekend lately, bothering Sir Maxwell, ogling J.K Rowling's house, walking by the river, and staying in a little waldronesque house to baby sit the cat (http://www.flickr.com/photos/14628860@N00/6960918554/in/photostream) of some folks I met the first day I arrived in Scotland. The lady of the house has just returned from a dancing tour of Scotland however so I do not know when I shall next wade through the muddy wild onion and bluebells on the banks of the river Almond. Instead I expect I shall seek the shady pastures beneath Edinburgh castle for my weekend retreats from my Ivory Tower.
I've been reading, 'Lyrical Ballads.' http://www.flickr.com/photos/14628860@N00/7107059957/in/photostream The book is gold, pure gold. I absolutely adore my english class. I loved 'Frankenstein' and 'The Rape of the Lock' too and feel wonderfully comfortable sinking into Romantic text after Romantic text. It was such a Camilla movement. I also believe that my huge enjoyment has something to do with the fact that I've stopped taking notes in class and instead secretly draw the professors. This only works in English because if I do it in Modern History or Comparative Literature I forget to pay attention.

I returned from vacation at the very last second, arriving in my room to drop off my luggage and pick up my computer in the tiny window of time between my stepping off the bus and attending a lecture on late regency satire. I was sick with something I had picked up in Greece and trying to avoid terror in the face of this newest round of College applications. None the less I had a job to do. I'd been requested to do the sets for a production of Caligula put on by a friend. All that night and all the next morning I painted using a mixture of acrylic, watercolor, charcoal, and pencil. After six hours I had a 20 square foot painting of a murderous madman and a sense of happiness I had forgotten. Since I have come to St Andrews I have felt myself to be trapped in a beautiful and delightful and stifling limbo. I feel asked to use only a fraction of my brain power and spend all my time honing that little sliver of myself. I feel myself becoming stronger, more adult, more knowing. At the same time something was broken within me. My conviction was lost, I no longer trusted myself and no longer believed I had worth, or rather anything especial to give to the world. Over the winter vacation I faced the change within me and I made up a new plan of action, a new course to follow. For this reason I am leaving St Andrews. I do not regret my choice to come here at all, as I said I have become a stronger woman here, have made the step from childhood to adulthood. I feel young and fragile as a woman, where before I felt old and strong as a girl. However, I have also realized here that I AM an artist. I do not need to be a good one, or have grand ideals, I do not need to live any specific kind of life or practice any certain rituals, it is simply who I am. I came here to hone my mind and learn the world so that I could better express it through my work, I did not realize that it was not a question of honing, did not realize how necessary it is for me to be working, for better or for worse. Today I will be working on editing a new portfolio to be presented to certain art schools of my choosing over the next few days or weeks. I still feel the peace painting my Caligula settled me into. What I feel when I work on a big project is grace, will I get into art school again? I don't know, but I do know the important things, those things that lead me to grace, and one of them is art.

The dear Mama is in town and keeping a much more detailed travel blog than I ever have. Check it out! It's fascinating and full of me :) http://www.julialoyd.com/blog.html

Highly amusing trip to Leuchars this weekend. Was investigated by a fetching pony and walked barefoot down a country lane http://www.flickr.com/photos/14628860@N00/6826991284/in/photostream. I have a found an excellent cat to pet that meows when I scratch its head and as it is warming up have been able to spend more time in trees and in the cabbage patch (a garden that belongs to the University). This is all very delightful.
I love of all things being outside. There are only a few interiors I really feel at home in in St Andrews, the episcopal church, the little gazebos in the botanic garden, and Taste. I miss my room at home so much. Our so comfortable living room, whatever you may say about our sense of style or decorating our home is a HOME in a way a lot of habitations are not. I hate seeing all these dwellings about me with no sense of warmth, comfort, or personality. I think that is a huge sacrifice of living in flats especially but maybe I just hang out with too many poor students. Martin is on one of his endless runs and then we will go see about dinner and bother each other and the other Frenchies until we remember we are supposed to be writing zillions of essays.
Here is another something I hate. People not knocking at the door. I really dislike sitting in my room and having people just pop in and out looking for things/people. It is so rude!
However, there are rainbows on the sea and daisies in the field so a little bit of rudeness can be washed down with a fresh breeze. I also LOVE LOVE! I love having people around me who I cherish and who cherish me. I love lying in the sun in those daisy fields and feeling their heads resting on the small of my back as they read esoteric texts.

I've been a sleepy hibernating princess today. New colors creep into my life. New patterns, I have to skip lunch often this semester because of continuous lectures. I wouldn't mind but some of my favorite faces are fading out of my daily routines. Lin, Becky, Hana, Sara, Alica... I miss sharing that meal with them.
Alice's best friend Diane stayed here for a week and reminded us of a koala bear, llama, or bat. In short, absolutely adorable. Everyone is now duking it out as to whether I am a vegetable eating dinosaur (Martin and Diane) a Giraffe (Alice and Ophelie) or a Sitatunga (Jelte).
Late last night J and I randomly decided to hop the fence into the castle grounds. We walked down to the beach and found a beach fire surrounded by young people. I knew a handful and we joined them warming our hands and twisting away from the smoke. It was lovely to stand on a windy dark night by an open fire again. Some things, like the taste of fresh figs, cling to you forever after you experience your first one and you long for them in the back of your mind. We then scaled the castle walls and investigated the bits that were not locked. There is a pit there into which they used to drop live humans as well as a cave through which invaders tried to tunnel but were stopped by the castle dwellers somewhere underground. They stage Shakespeare plays up on the ruinous stones. It is all in very mouldering state because when the first long wooden pier burnt down they simply took the stones from the castle walls to build the new one.