Eve

May your decade end well, and your new year begin beautifully.Don't be the wallflower at the edge of the festivities. Remember the good times, reminisce about the past, drink and eat and make merry. Make sure you kiss someone special when the clock strikes twelve - be it your beau or your best friend, your mama or your daddy, your sister or your mister, your confidante, cousin or cat.

Hallelujah

Peace and love, comfort and joy.

Angeles - Elliot Smith

Winter Solstice

Today I slept through a lunar eclipse and I am not allowed to leave the house.This is not mine, but a place I like to be.

I see the moon and the moon sees me,
The moon sees the one that I want to see.
So God bless the moon, and God bless me,
And God bless the one that I want to see.

Equations

Coming home for the holidays is as bittersweet as dark chocolate. Sweeter, though, with roast chicken and red pepper houmous, balsamic olives and feta cheese, cherry tomatoes and cranberry chutney, coleslaw and potato salad, rocket and minted peas and edamame beans, red velvet cupcakes and Christmas decorations. And family, of course.

Today I read the sad story of a girl named Lillian, and learnt that energy is equal to mass times the speed of light squared.

Prayer 238

‘…I am placing a lock upon my heart,
I am placing a lock upon my thoughts,
I am placing a lock upon my lips
And double knitting them…’

The Carmina Gadelica, collected by Alexander Carmichael, 1899

Swansea - Bombay Bicycle Club (Joanna Newsom cover)

The snow is slowly melting, there are puddles everywhere.

Giving Thanks

For the understanding that nothing is set in stone.What are you thankful for?

Gladly, The Cross-Eyed Bear

source unknown




Mondegreen is the word for when you misinterpret or mishear a phrase, like a line in a poem or a lyric in a song, in a way that gives it a different meaning.

‘Poetry is always a dying language but never a dead language.’

- Robert Smithson, ‘A Sedimentation of the Mind’, 1968.

Absence

You leave a void within me.
When you go
You take the W
and leave a hole.



Here I am again.

Kickswitch

Oak trees are often hit by lightning because they usually stand alone. They have thick, tough bark and softer cores of buttery wood. The lightning splits them apart, bursting through them from within, because when it strikes, it travels down through them and they explode with light.


It's my favourite month, and there has been sublime unseasonal sunshine on top of the autumnal deliciousness. I am reading 'The Memory Keeper's Daughter' for the first time, learning butterfly-fragile lines of prose from it because they are too heart-beatingly beautiful to forget. There are so many interesting and amazing things happening around me, melodies flying and chances arriving.
How and why, then, do I feel so entirely uninspired?
I miss summer strawberries and warm, white sands.
This might have something to do with it.

Ready Set Learn

I'm back to my books and a busy bee schedule in a big, big way. I am studying Archaeological Theory, have a lab. class of Animal and Human Remains and also delving deep into The Supernatural World - basically myth busting and archaic cosmology. I've got a lot on my plate already this year in every little nook and cranny of my life; lots to learn and practically every part is promising to be amazing. So far, so very good.

Atlas Hands

The beautiful video for Atlas Hands by Benjamin Francis Leftwich, who was charming my ears last year.

I feel like jigsaw pieces scattered across a table top, needing to be thoughtfully puzzled back together by patient hands on a rainy Tuesday afternoon.

Waka Waka

My time in Tanzania has been and gone, and I'm slowly putting my life here back together. It's nearly time to head north in time for all the academic circus to begin again. I African't believe this summer is over - it has been indescribably illuminating. Incandenscent. I'm a little bit in love.

Love and Sate

source unknown

Today I have a bloody throat and outside it's like monsoon weather. I had porridge, and clementine juice with honey, hot water and 10 year old whiskey, and felt better. I worry about the bumblebees when it rains like this. How can you sip flowers when the world is wetter than the ocean? Do they all just stay at home hungry for the day?

I leave for Africa one week away today. I'll be gone until September but you can hear from me here.


The Head & The Heart - Down In The Valley

You can have a little and you can have a lot, but sometimes, regardless, you just want more.

Bright Sight, Dark Memory

My sisters made this happen.

This makes me think of New York.

A best friend took this photograph.

You are a shining shadow.

Away We Go

I am all about the quaint.
"It's all those good things you have in you. The love, the wisdom, the generosity, the selflessness, the patience."

Truly

I'm trying.

Little Maid in Adelaide

REMEMBER me when I am gone away,
Gone far away into the silent land;
When you can no more hold me by the hand,
Nor I half turn to go, yet turning stay.
Remember me when no more day by day
You tell me of our future that you plann'd:
Only remember me; you understand
It will be late to counsel then or pray.
Yet if you should forget me for a while
And afterwards remember, do not grieve:
For if the darkness and corruption leave
A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,
Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad.

- Christina Rossetti

The copper plated leaf is going to Oz around the neck of one of my favourite people. The posy of flowers was for my best friend's little sister on her 18th birthday. The dress is China silk and used to belong to my grandma.
Today is for chicken soup and making crab apple jelly with my ma, and a belated birthday.

No Girls Allowed

Stargazing at the stone circle and seeing sunrise day after day, Somerset cider and silent discos and the best breakfast sandwiches. Beautiful people, beautiful music and the most blisteringly beautiful weather. Glastonbury 2010 was such an amazing experience. I've never felt so much in the right place at the right time.










King Charles, The Avett Brothers, Ray Davies, The Temper Trap, Local Natives, The xx, Laura Marling, Avi Buffalo, Jack Johnson, The Unthanks, Mumford and Sons, Grizzly Bear, Miike Snow, Two Door Cinema Club, Frightened Rabbit...there are some acts I missed and desperately want to see somewhere one day, but I knew each day that I was exactly where I was meant to be.

Free

"Sometimes when you sacrifice something precious, you're not really losing it. You're just passing it on to someone else." - Mitch Albom

Frightened Rabbit - Set You Free

The days grow shorter from here on out.

Sailing Home

Home has this magically familiar and endlessly comforting smell that I really can't describe or ascribe to anything in particular. It's the earth in my garden, the trees across the road, our washing powder, the distinctive scent behind my cat's ears, rain on the pavement, the dusty warmth in back bedrooms on sunny days...of the north wind and the fleeting flowers and the food we eat together, the cast-off skin of those I love and my whole life in this house.


She & Him - Home

I'm starting to remember what beauty looks and feels like, and learning again what it's like to be at home with a someone as well as a somewhere.

Happy Father's Day.
Today I'm grateful for all the different kinds of fathers who've helped to shape so many people around me into such remarkable and valuable people. Mine is one of the best; he's always provided for me, taught me so much and loved me so well. I hope he's as proud of me as I am of him.

Buddy

I have some fantastic friends, I'm so excited to go home and see them soon. I also can't wait to meet the new addition to our family...

Awake

Have you ever been given a glimpse of something, of how something could be, only to have it snatched out of reach? I am all hope and excitement, fear and dismay.

Poppy

Van Gogh and Monet. Tex-Mex and cherry vodka. Avi Buffalo and People Under The Stairs. Crown jewels and dog cemeteries. Secrets whispered in castle enclaves and dancing hard in underground clubs. Book shops and the Writers' Museum.
A pair of days, and everything went in two by two. Including us.






You never fail to make me glad to be alive.
This is my current favourite song, courtesy of you my friend.
Who's to say it can't be taken platonically?


King Charles - Love Lust