Time flies. It’s 2011, Christmas break is over, New Year was beat in with pots and pans and vuvuzelas, and summer was swapped for winter as I left South Africa and returned to Oxford yesterday. Collections (exams on last term’s work) on Friday, and thus to delay study: time for the year’s review:
The Book:
The half of Cultural Amnesia I read (put on hold) and Janet Frame’s Towards Another Summer
The poem:
W.H. Auden – ‘Fall of Rome’
The Film:
Luca Guadagnino’s Io sono l’amore (I am love), soundtrack by John Adams
The T.V. Show:
LOST (tied with Planet Earth)
The Album
Easy, Joanna Newsom
The signposts:
Shi-Shi, the stars
Kristin & Patrick’s wedding
Laura & Jeremy’s wedding (also known as best dance party of 2010)
A move
A surprise adventure
It’s hard to be excited for 2011. Last year felt full of so much promise. This year holds neither promise nor dread; it’s the blankest of blank.
To-night a scrambling decade ends,
And strangers, enemies and friends
Stand once more puzzled underneath
The signpost on the barren heath
Where the rough mountain track divides
To silent valleys on all sides
Endeavouring to decipher what
Is written on it but cannot
Nor guess in what direction lies
The overhanging precipice.
From Auden’s New Year Letter, Part II
The Book:
The half of Cultural Amnesia I read (put on hold) and Janet Frame’s Towards Another Summer
The poem:
W.H. Auden – ‘Fall of Rome’
The Film:
Luca Guadagnino’s Io sono l’amore (I am love), soundtrack by John Adams
The T.V. Show:
LOST (tied with Planet Earth)
The Album
Easy, Joanna Newsom
The signposts:
Shi-Shi, the stars
Kristin & Patrick’s wedding
Laura & Jeremy’s wedding (also known as best dance party of 2010)
A move
A surprise adventure
It’s hard to be excited for 2011. Last year felt full of so much promise. This year holds neither promise nor dread; it’s the blankest of blank.
To-night a scrambling decade ends,
And strangers, enemies and friends
Stand once more puzzled underneath
The signpost on the barren heath
Where the rough mountain track divides
To silent valleys on all sides
Endeavouring to decipher what
Is written on it but cannot
Nor guess in what direction lies
The overhanging precipice.
From Auden’s New Year Letter, Part II
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