RUM BAR!!

1. I was in France last week. I miss France. I promise you will get picture heavy posts shortly, and they will also be word-filled.

2. Amy Winehouse's cd, Back to Black, is seriously good. Seriously. Really. Good. I've been listening to it non-stop for the last week, especially the title track - Back to Black.

3. Thinking is bad for me. I end up taking 20km hikes without trying to. The worst bit of it is when you finally look up and try to figure out where you are, and then you realize how far you have to walk back.

4. I did not wake up slightly dehydrated/a bit hungover today. This is the first time in several months this has happened. I do not think my brain is enjoying the experience.

5. I have discovered Twitter. It's addictive. Now, I'm able to share my deep and soulful thoughts with the world. Such as "Hey. How did she look in the mirror this morning and think 'Yeah! This looks great!' before leaving the house?"

6. I'm going to the frozen north (Sheffield) this weekend. My brain will get to marinate in a bathtub full of gin. It's looking forward to it.

----------------------------

Fools Errand

Alone, like a feather in the air,
An occasional sadness the weather knows
Comes to earth as a bend in the road.

The winter is at its most instructive
As other sadnesses fall
Across the democracy of objects.

Those that aren't shy
Introduce themselves—
Fool's Errand, Clowns of Anguish—

The Equitation of Beautiful Young Girls
Is an exemplary sadness,
As is The Whale's Parasol.

I want to part company
With linear extent,
Congenital heartbreak,

Where the raven goes and snow comes from.
I want distance washed clean,
Unencumbered by facts;

The red cactus flower
To slip into my shirt at dusk
And be the heart's boat.

I want Clowns of Anguish to raise the sail,
And a white handkerchief
Waving from shore.

- James Galvin

Drowning

Things have been a bit crazy the last few weeks. I'm in France at the moment, spending some time with the most important person in my life and having unexpected (but very nice) things happen daily. As I'm in France, I thought that I should stay with the theme of this last week or so (and no, the theme is not 'As much wine as you can possibly consume', although it certainly feels like it is).

----------

I Live, I Die, I Burn, I Drown

I live, I die, I burn, I drown
I endure at once chill and cold
Life is at once too soft and too hard
I have sore troubles mingled with joys

Suddenly I laugh and at the same time cry
And in pleasure many a grief endure
My happiness wanes and yet it lasts unchanged
All at once I dry up and grow green

Thus I suffer love's inconstancies
And when I think the pain is most intense
Without thinking, it is gone again.

Then when I feel my joys certain
And my hour of greatest delight arrived
I find my pain beginning all over once again.

by Louise Labe

Back with a vengence

Winter has returned.

It came back at around 2 am when the very large tree (usually containing irritatingly chipper bird) slammed against my bedroom window, causing me to sit bolt upright in bed and shriek. Then the heavens opened, and all I heard for the next four hours while attempting desperately to sleep was someone clearly throwing bucket after bucket of water against my window. The tree also felt the need to say hello, to make sure that I knew it was there, always just as I was finally getting back to sleep. Then, right before my alarm was due to go off, irritatingly chipper bird decided that he really, seriously, needed to greet the day. In gale force winds. In the pouring down rain.

Well. At least one of us was excited when it went from blackish-gray to lighter-gray.

Spring

Why, oh why, do people run for the W7 in Finsbury Park? I can understand if it's 2.30 am and it's the last bloody one because the other bus took too damn long from central London and OH MY GOD it's taken you two hours to get from Piccadilly to Finsbury Park, but at 5.45 pm on a Thursday? When there is a queue of four, not just one bus but four buses, why is there a need to shove me out of your way to sprint for the bus? There are FOUR OF THEM! You will make it home before the wolves come out to hunt you!

----------------------------------

who knows if the moon's
a balloon, coming out of a keen city
in the sky--filled with pretty people?
(and if you and i should

get into it, if they
should take me and take you into their balloon,
why then
we'd go up higher with all the pretty people

than houses and steeples and clouds:
go sailing
away and away sailing into a keen
city which nobody's ever visited, where

always
it's
Spring)and everyone's
in love and flowers pick themselves

- e. e. cummings

Mine.

I have space again.

Space of my own, to decorate however I wish. If I wanted to I could plaster giant fluffy pink bunnies on my walls (not that I would, of course). I can buy a bookshelf that has yarn in mind. I can put the wardrobe wherever I like. I don't have to, at any point, take into account the desires or wants of anyone other than myself.

This is a new experience.

I woke up this morning and, since I'm now on the second floor (third floor to you in North America), sunlight was streaming through my window. There is a tree with a (very annoying) bird outside that started singing at an inappropriately early hour. But right now? I love that bird. It's my bird, that sings inappropriately in my tree, outside my flat with huge windows. If I'd wanted to (or, more realistically, if I'd managed to force myself out of bed early enough) I could have had a cup of tea before work while sitting in my lounge in the sun. It's beautiful.