Decemberist

There are pictures on the wall,
Telling stories short and tall
About dinosaurs that fell in love
And died a fiery molten death.
This night is so close to me.
Your face is far, but all I see.
My mouth was not the one you chose,
But I can feel your every breath.

(The library is full from dawn 'til dusk and everyone is on edge - it can only be exam season. I've found a typewriter for less than £20 though, hopefully in working order, so that makes me happy. Picking it up on Monday...)

cardigan, bag, belt and shoes - Barnardo's Vintage / top and tights - H&M / skirt - Mrs C.'s 1980s handmedown / amber ring - Krakow / horn ring - carboot sale

Frozen food on a budget; cod fillets - wrapped in foil and put on a baking tray, dotted with butter, seasoned with salt and pepper, in a 190oC oven for 20 minutes. Add lemon juice.

Eternal Sunshine

It's one of my favourites. So is she.

Impermanence

There's something so much more beautiful about the vulnerable, the easily ended, those balancing on the brink of destruction. They are lended a certain dignity because of their fragility, an exaggerated importance because of their ephemerality.
Like moments ticking by on a grandfather clock that tolls each hour like a death knell. Like grains of sand running through your fingers even as you try so hard to catch and keep them, safe in your palm.

Soho Good

I went to London last week. Bodean's BBQ; Bronenosets Potyomkin in The Green Carnation; Bloom Bloom Magazine at St. Martin's; free t-shirts; Ripley's Believe It or Not; an earth-moving Sunday roast; The British Museum; ultimate burgers; Prosecco, so/so sushi and good company.










t-shirt donated by Tom / skirt borrowed from Mel / shoes Nike Blazers

I finally watched The Royal Tenenbaums. Wes Anderson, oh my.

(Nico - These Days)

THE WHITE BIRDS

Would that we were, my beloved, white birds on the foam of the sea!
We tire of the flame of the meteor, before it can fade and flee;
And the flame of the blue star of twilight, hung low on the rim of the sky,
Has awakened in our hearts, my beloved, a sadness that may not die.

A weariness comes from those dreamers, dew-dabbled, the lily and rose;
Ah, dream not of them, my beloved, the flame of the meteor that goes,
Or the flame of the blue star that lingers hung low in the fall of the dew:
For I would we were changed to white birds on the wandering foam: I and you!

I am haunted by numberless islands, and many a Danaan shore,
Where Time would surely forget us, and Sorrow come near us no more;
Soon far from the rose and the lily, and fret of the flames would we be,
Were we only white birds, my beloved, buoyed out on the foam of the sea!

- W. B. Yeats

Sweet Lullaby Dancing

For whenever I am sad with the state of the world, whenever the unbearable lightness of being starts weighing me down, whenever I feel like I will never amount to enough...This is the antedote; it never fails to make me feel better. (From here)
Wanderlust and Lipstick makes me happy too, it's nice to think about the endless possibilities instead of worrying over the restrictions you might have to face.

Rough Love

Best friends are beautiful things.

Sawdust and Diamonds

“These were the lovely bones that had grown around my absence: the connections - sometimes tenuous, sometimes made at great cost, but often magnificent - that happened after I was gone. And I began to see things in a way that let me hold the world without me in it. The events that my death wrought were merely the bones of a body that would become whole at some unpredictable time in the future. The price of what I came to see as this miraculous body had been my life.”
- Alice Sebold







(World Spins Madly On - The Weepies)

Hitchcock Had It

I admit it. I am a paradox. I am the hermit man from Harriet the Spy.
I am a cat person, but
I
love
birds.

My dad and I put up bird houses in the garden before I left home again.







These are not my birds, but they are beautiful.




These birds are all presents; a glass paperweight that is my mother's, a tealight from Vicky and Tatty Devine magpie rings from Mel; she knows me so well.



I know someone wonderful and she loves birds too;

"there is a bluebird inside a cage in your heart.
i would like to be the one that he sings to.
i will gladly build him a nest and rear his young.

inside of your heart your bluebird is singing.
a man is drawing him onto your chest.
your bluebird sings of the sea and of five thousand miles;

inside of a cage in your heart."

Godot

Spring has sprung (even if I'm holding my breath for April showers) and the sun has certainly had his hat on for the past week. It makes the idea of reading and revision and exams seem absolutely ridiculous - who feels like working when it's a beautiful day outside and there's so much to do? I'm glad to be back but I miss home already...and not just the food either. Although, it was lovely to return to homebaked cakes and a myriad of vegetable soups after what feels like a lifetime of tinned tuna and Supernoodles. I've got to begin planning properly for Cyprus too; some sweet friends of ours sent me a package full of information about the island. So exciting!

Also, in other news, on my return to the city...I met a special someone. Sir Ian McKellen, maybe you've heard of him? I nearly died from overextertion of the heart.

Northward Bound

It's a beautiful day, and I'm going back to Edinburgh.


Seabear - I Sing I Swim

'Twas...

...a dark and windless night, and the scent of adventure hung heavy and expectant in the warm air like a curtain waiting to be pulled back from the window.
Three travellers came to the door of a keep just as a fourth stole out to meet them, and the two women amongst them embraced, for they had endured a long separation. With the joy of reunion, they all soon felt within them the irresistable tug of escape, and away they went into the waiting darkness.
The road carried them the long way down to the shore, to sand dunes and salty breezes and the taste of the sea. There was a full moon rising; it came up from under the earth orange and foreign, and lit an unnatural path through the clouds for them upon the damp sand. Their high spirits did not falter at this bad omen but simply skated over the augury like skimming stones skipping across foaming surf.
The four found a spot amongst the dunes' dry grass. The night grew quiet and close around them, with the deep chill resonating from what lay far beneath the sand starting to seep into their bones, and so they began to build a fire.
They used wood logs and dry sticks and a book of maps as kindling, as they knew their way and believed they would find no use for it on the journey home; they laughed unheedingly together about their foolishness at burning their only compass. Passing around the bottle of sweet sticky innocent brew, their only libation, they made jokes about one another as only real friends can and enjoyed being in one another's company once more. Smoke billowed around them, into surprised mouths and eyes, and coughing and laughter echoed down towards the waves.
When the fire had finally begun to burn merrily, their simple revelry was cut short by a sudden disturbance not far from their camp. The four stopped as still as death, and listened. The sea air carried unmistakeable sounds of approach towards them. More than this, they felt it; the presence of hostility was tangible. Their fire burned lower and yet the smoke was enough to make itself known to anyone near, and looking. They crouched low to the ground like hunting cats and hoped they would go unnoticed...




We were chased by gypsies last weekend. I, in true horror film fashion, tripped and fell, lost a shoe and caught myself on a fallen branch, ripping myself free in the nick of time.

The moral of the story, I hope, is clear...

Pickings

We drove home; I made a belated birthday tea-party for Vic; my brave cat survived an accident; and I immersed myself the delights of proper food again.

Uno Annum

It's been a year. This is how I began.

This is and isn't me now. I have changed but I am the same.
I am still the girl I have always been.