Tonight Tonight

'Everyone of us is losing something precious to us... lost opportunities, lost possibilities, feelings we can never get back again. That's part of what it means to be alive. But inside our heads ... there's a little room where we store those memories. A room like the stacks in this library, and to understand the workings of our own heart we have to keep on making new reference cards. We have to dust things off every once in a while, let in fresh air, change the water in the flower vases. In other words you'll live forever in your own private library'

Murakami again, this time Kafka on the Shore. I really need to start reading more of his books. More books generally.

Colour darkroom today, bit surreal, everything is done in complete darkness. Was asked whether I felt the room get smaller or bigger. I answered bigger. Apparently this means I'm not claustrophobic, which can only be a good thing. Also went to the Tate Modern to see the Michael Rokowitz exhibition. Have to say it was quite intriguing. Not many people would be seen to be linking Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq with Star Wars in examining the power that cult phenomenons have upon the popular consciousness.

These are lovely

Today I am grateful for

• Big cartons of Ribena.
• Darkroom facilities. Bleach and film.
• Tate bookshop on a quiet day
• Brian Eno's oblique strategies generator. I may indeed write an exhaustive things to do list and do the last thing on it.
• Long bus rides.
• Simon & Garfunkel. The Only Living Boy in New York

Today I am not so grateful for

• The bitter bitter cold
• My ridiculously long things to do list
• How quickly my money seems to be disappearing.

Old Kent Road is a really long road. I really am living at the brown part of the Monopoly board.

2.10

Think Freshers Flu part two is on the horizon.

Scenic bus ride. Wanted it to last forever. Hilarious man with a hilarious laugh reducing us to tears. Radio 4 to drift off to sleep. Sporadic list. Brian Eno generator suggested to make an exhaustive list of things to do and then do the last thing on it. I may take him up on that. Should really be asleep. Fresh sheets call. Rediscovering my love for Simon and Garfunkel. Can hear the vixens screaming and pipes clattering. Tired eyes.

Watched New York, I Love You yesterday. Not quite as good as Paris Je T'aime but it had the most beautiful story. It was everything a short film should be.

And now bedtime.

Music

I highly doubt I will ever have any idea what is ever happening on the music scene.

Little Thoughts

• I have been alive for 7154 days.
• Mumford and Sons lyrics are making me melancholic. As is Goldmund.
• Dulwich was beautiful. Winter sun, green spaces and suburbia.
• Sainsbury's basics chocolate is bloody brilliant.
• Ikea instructions for something completely ridiculous would be fun. I don't know what though.
• Being drawn invokes funny feelings.

Busy Day

Cass Art trip to stock up on supplies, to be honest I spent £30 just to get another free bag. I went for Phthalo Turquoise. Also treated myself to a compass cutter, the virtue of which I couldn't extol enough. My productivity stopped here, apart from the testing out of the compass cutter. Three perfect circles. Beautiful.

Silkscreen booked for tomorrow, am playing around with the idea of a visual saturation, our relation to exposure to such a vast amount of images, McLuhan's idea that our environment is a 'passive wrapping'. It's still in its primitive stages, but at the moment I have been bleaching photographs and looking at the residue it leaves when transferred onto paper. Also the act of destroying a photograph and what its implications may be.

My studio now has mini pegs. I am determined to domesticate my space.

Bananas

So much more fun to draw on than to eat.

Murakami

'Eyes mark the shape of a city. Through the eyes of a high flying night bird, we take in the scene from midair. In our broad sweep, the city looks like a single gigantic creature - or more like a single collective entity created by many intertwining organisms. Countless arteries stretch to the ends of its elusive body, circulating a continuous supply of fresh blood cells and collecting the old, sending out new consumables and collecting the old. To the rhythm of its pulsing, all parts of the body flicker and flare up and squirm. Midnight is approaching, and while the peak of activity had passed, the basal metabolism that maintains life continues undiminished, producing the basso continuo of the city's moan, a monotonous sound that neither rises nor falls but is pregnant with foreboding.'

'After Dark' by Murakami. I'd give my left big toe to write like this. Also wondering if the monotonous sound of New Cross involves trains and sirens. The sirens for one would be apt if, 'pregnant with foreboding'.

Am back in New Cross now. To the world of febreze bottles and cookers that don't work. Also the buses have gone up to £1.20. This is ridiculous. Aside from extortionate bus fares however, have very much enjoyed the exploits of the last few days, involving namely cupcake baking, kitchen chats, scrabble, greasy spoon cafes and market bartering. The studio has shelves in it too, enough to get me motivated to go in. Though it is missing a biscuit tin.

Anything art related? These are almost as good as bourbon biscuits. If not better.

Rude Awakenings

Was awoken this morning by a package being ungraciously flung at my form under the duvet, opening it to find the 'It's Nice That' magazine I had ordered. Reading it in the prescribed magazine way; that is to flick through and absorb the images and then (and only then) to go back and read everything, I stumbled upon this little beauty by Craig Damrauer.

I thought it was quite poignant.

New Year

My year began ungracefully. My bag still smells of gin and lemonade. I have taken the idea of my clip on earring (of which only one remained by the end of the night) and may apply it to a sketchbook, restricting everything in it to a small circular shape. I think it resonates more with my love of pattern and repetition than of learning self control however.

On a separate note, these are my favourite things of 2010 so far

• The new Adrian Mole Book. Not as good as the rest, but still reliable for a plum of a quote, 'my own father thinks that Tate Modern is a new type of sugar cube'
• Reading 'The Art of Looking Sideways'. Discovering that the person you love is 72.8% water. Poetic.
• Playing Rapidough. It turns out being an art student is absolutely no advantage at all.
• Brock Davis's 365 Things. It's lovely.

Back in London later this week. Can't wait to get reacquainted with my A-Z.