I'm starting my week at Rick's, a friendly cafe on Cowley Road. It's a good place to work, which is why I guess all the people around me are staring intently into their macbooks. I am writing my essay on Gus Van San't Elephant and want to finish it before I leave for a short excursion to Barcelona this coming weekend. I am trying to explore the significance of 'walking' in the film and link it to how it treats the school as a space. For me, the most strenuous part of writing an essay -- or any piece of writing for that matter-- is always the first paragraph. There is so much pressure on the first couple of sentences, the need to be engaging, witty, intelligent, and unique all at the same time!

P.S. Guess what I found at Tesco! The New Maltesers Teasers! Double tease, is what it is. Of course, they aren't as fun to eat as the original balls. You both know that I find great joy in scraping off the chocolate and nudifying them to shame.  

I stumbled upon this quote today in a book I'm reading for my essay.

Places are fragmentary and inward-turning histories, pasts that others are not allowed to read, accumulated times that can be unfolded but like stories held in reserve, remaining in an enigmatic state, symbolizations encysted in the pain or pleasure of the body.

- from Michel de Certeau's The Practice of Everyday Life    

Resonance! Just in the morning on my trip to the library, I spotted this cute little ensemble of windows and barren bush. I stopped and took the time to chuckle at its resemblance of a dazzled and dopey smile. And just like that, this arbitrary place on the street became a fragment of my 'accumulated time,' a space that I now will always find endearing and personal.