The Sea Is A Good Place To Think Of The Future

"And that maybe we only fall in love to have something to do,
But what a lonely and tasteless and bitter excuse
When you're starving to death, even fingers will do.
Cutting out our own organs and limbs to make fuel
For a ship that set sail with a wiry crew.
And the paper boy's there, and the butcher, and you,
And you navigate lost in your vessel of glue
And banana peel, vinyl and driftwood and news,
Tossing violently in your sleeps as you move
Through a simmering ocean of broken-heart stew."

- Amanda Palmer, The Sugar Club, 16/02/09

Frightened Rabbit - Swim Until You Can't See Land

Dip your toes in the water and soon you will see

that it is the same ocean as is in front of me.

With our toes in the water of the same sea,

we are practically touching, you and me.

Keep Calm and Carry On

More snow. Post for my precious. The naked women of Dali and Klimt. My plant falling out of flower. My budgie memorial. A message or two.

Xave

I don't believe I've mentioned something momentous occurring in my future...
This summer, I'm going to Tanzania to teach children first aid. My life is full of fundraisers right now, and one of them is quite special. I invite those of you on Facebook to have a look at a personal invitation to SHAVE IT OR SAVE IT. This is not a request for you to join or give me money, just for you to take a peek at what is happening in my life and what I want to do with it.


Xiu Xiu - I luv the valley OH

Do you remember forgetting a song? When it slips away into your past? When it boards a steamboat, waves goodbye and sails off into the sunset without you even noticing?

Remember how inexplicably bittersweet and splendiferous it feels to hear it again?

Yesicanuary has been a productive month!

Scrawl

I found this outside where I used to live.


I wrote this in its place over a year ago. I still believe it.

Shining Shadows

Let my shadow disappear into yours
Let me lose myself
under the tall trees
that themselves lose their crowns in the twilight,
surrendering themselves to the sky and the night.

- Pär Lagerkvist (1891-1974)

(vintage silk scarf from Buckingham Palace that belonged to my late great aunt)

I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.
I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

- from Pablo Neruda's Love Sonnet XVII

Sublimity & Something Blue

I have talked before about beauty and the sublime, or at least have referenced someone else's words on the subjects; I had a mind-blowing lecture about the pair on Monday that reminded me. According to Longinus, "a well-timed stroke of sublimity scatters everything before it like a thunderbolt" and has the power to fill us with inspired emotion. The power of sublimity fascinates me.
There is a school of thought that sees there being no pleasure without pain. Edmund Burke wrote on the subject and asks what we are afraid of; pain, vastness, obscurity. The powerful, the infinite. All of these "fill the mind with delightful horror, the truest test of the sublime". It is a paradox - we are drawn to pain and terror, and yet we seek pleasure. The sublime is only that because it both terrifies and delights us. A way to resolve this is to see ourselves finding pleasure in fictional or imagined pain, or that the pain of the sublime is metaphorical to begin with.
I prefer to see sublimity as something both frightening and illuminating.
Like a thunderstorm at sea, or real heart-wrenching love.


On an unrelated note, it is Holocaust Memorial Day today. A favourite girl of mine sent me John Boyne's The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas and I finished reading it yesterday. Tonight, I want to watch Mark Herman's film, and take a little time to think about what we are capable of as a race - all things bad and beautiful.

"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."

Edmund Burke

Still On Fire

I am listening to last month's playlist and contemplating the weekend. We had a terror-ific time down in the the Edinburgh Dungeons, ate more than was necessary or sensible, shopped, sight-saw, drank and danced and stayed up and slept in.
Happy Burns Day; for me, this means haggis, neeps and tatties, a ceilidh and striking a match to banish with fire a chosen secret something for the next year.