The first time you move here you think it’s brilliant. Everyone’s from a dream. You start slutting around, you date five guys at a time, you get into relationships and find yourself still watching out for the spectacle.
But then you begin to realise the monotonous continuity of it. And all of a sudden, they look the same, and all are equally full of shit. They smell the same, and all have no stories to tell.
By that time everyone knows you, you’ve been hanging out with him and his friend, you’ve had sex with that guy, you’ve been neurotic here and there.
Phase three, you lose confidence. You think you’re hideous. No one’s ever liked your Arab nose, perhaps your clothes put guys off. Who cares about postcolonial studies, no one’s into the abstract. Where’s the visual left you.
Next one: you’ve made some amazing friends. Both male and female. Your circle of friends has expanded by an infinite number and you’ve met a few guys, they weren’t quite your type. But you’ve come to see that it’s not really important what you do and with who you hang out, and who you don’t like. London’s an amazing city.

After two years I’m at my best, so comfortable with myself that guys pick up on that and chat me up on the bus. Embarrassing, but it’s cool. I love london. I’ve made myself a happier person here.

Lewisham children’s protest against cuts

Only two weeks have passed since I’ve received my money and already am I scaping together the last crumbs of bread crust. It’s never been a secret that London is a money sucker but you’d expect people to get better with money at some point. I just get worse day by day.

I’m off to a sympathetic friend. We agreed that he gets the food and I use my magic hand to wank a lovely dish.

Hito Steyerl, STRIKE. 2010, 28s, HDV

Laurie Penny in the New Statesman

“Mubarak has gone and the army has been entrusted with the republic!”

(La formation de l’esprit scientifique, 1934)

At times I have to remember this. It may be difficult to see how it may help someone, but I believe a being completely led by one’s own/someone else’s emotions must remind him or herself of the physicality of this world. And that even the seemingly most complex emotion is grounded on a constructed image of how we are to see the world. I understand that this is an attempt to intellectualise my emotions right now, and I understand that I should just focus on my breath and my immediacy to this substantive world.

But I simply can’t. Let me be reminded by Bachelard.

I just remembered, when I was 13 one day a friend of mine who was older came up to me:
‘you just put in your finger and then go up, kind of round the corner. That’s where it is, the G-Spot. You can feel it, it’s like a little bump’

I knew I’d never be into that.

Royal Academy of Arts

“It’s a great piece (you can read the whole thing here) and, as Greenslade points out, Dunham’s photo is “one of those shots that will surely appear endlessly in future”:

It will have historical value and be republished endlessly in future because it catches a moment in the political life of Britain and the life of the heir to the throne.” (Guardian)

The photo was taken last night during a protest to oppose university cuts. Protesters, that’s me included, took on the streets yesterday when the government vote on an increase of tuition fees up to £9000 annually.

Anyone who wanted to leave the protest was forced to stay in the kettle until about 11pm. The plan was to calm protesters down and wait for people to behave ‘orderly’ before opening up the kettle and releasing them. I still can’t believe what went on last night. The whole event was a demonstration of purely imbalanced power and authority. It is our responsibility and duty to protest a citizens to remind government of its obligations to us.

If we are denied the right to protest, what i left of the liberal democracy that Britain allegedly stands for? I am literally disgusted.