Wormholes and The Aristocracy

This is the title of my latest essay, which features Lord Byron as a burglar `high on a cocktail of drugs` breaking into a pasty shop in Plymouth.

I`m reading Don-Juan-rhymes-with-true-one, which is what all the textbooks seem keen to call Byron`s epic. The essay I have to write is a `compare and contrast` affair, and the poem with which I am supposed to be comparing and contrasting a few stanzas of Don Juan is a bit of an ear-bashing by Charlotte Dacre. I have made lots of notes. The actual argument eludes me.

I`ve discovered that the ability to string paragraphs together and make a coherent, intelligent case which moves seamlessly toward an end neither too creative, challenging or faintly wrong, has evaporated, or maybe I was kidding myself all those years ago in the days when I used to write in notebooks for hours, philosophising and making poems, plus passing exams with gusto at the drop of a flag. My scores are falling with each assignment. I feel like a winkle on the end of a pin. (No, I dont mean I feel like eating one. What a disgusting idea.)

Last night I had a dream where I wrote my essay, or rather I was speaking aloud the plan/argument/thing. Perhaps I was dictating it to a cowering secretary. I may have been delirious... This no doubt top-scoring plan didnt survive the night, so I`m back to square one.

For the past two weeks I`ve had the pleasure of sitting in on lectures about writing essays. You`d think I`d have found this helpful. Sadly, nay.The tutor is very sharp and even has a name to match, which for obvious reasons I can`t spell out here. He introduced himself by telling all present "I can`t abide sniffing." He said he didnt mind us talking among ourselves, or our phones going off, but sniffers were to be handed hankies and if that didnt fix the problem he`d have the miserable offender heaved out of a window. No, he didnt say that last bit, but he had the look of a desperate man. Five minutes later my phone went off (o the shame ) and I hurried out of the room as best I could, having to squish past a dozen legs and bags, only to get to the door before realising my phone was in my coat, which was hanging on the back of the chair I`d vacated. So I hurried back past the row of legs and bags, to reach my phone just as it stopped ringing. The sharp lecturer`s face was steely in the wan daylight, and his eyes, o let me not recall those eyes...
I believe he must have been telling a porkie about not minding phones going off. Or had failed to imagine anyone could be so ignorant. As for essay writing tips, I can reveal that there are many don`ts, avoids, nevers and that`s a fail. It was a little dispiriting. It still is.

Casper is dead! Casper, you know, the cat that queued up for the bus, went for a little ride into town and back, then waited to get off at his stop... A victim of a hit and run. We mourn him.(Who couldn`t love a cat with mental health problems?)

Back to Byron - what a show-off! What a manipulative cleverclogs! Why cant I write opinions like this in my essay? Because I have to be serious, and prove I are thinking for myself by referencing every opinion I may have, initially, had the interest to develop. Referencing, so I can show that my new-spun opinion was someone elses first. O, that`s too harsh and not true either. However (please note, `however` is an essay no-no according to Mr Steely Sharpman) in the past, when I used to do philosophy in A5 notebooks, brain bursting with things I`d posited, worked out, and got high on actually understanding, I`d phone a friend (though of course they arent my friends now) and share this wonder with them only to be told, "Oh yeah, you should read Descartes; that`s Descartes. He wrote about that in 1641." Comedown? Yeah, like totally.