So This Is Quite Nice

Æneas leaving Dido

Don't go far off, not even for a day, because --
because -- I don't know how to say it: a day is long
and I will be waiting for you, as in an empty station
when the trains are parked off somewhere else, asleep.

Don't leave me, even for an hour, because
then the little drops of anguish will all run together,
the smoke that roams looking for a home will drift
into me, choking my lost heart.

Oh, may your silhouette never dissolve on the beach;
may your eyelids never flutter into the empty distance.
Don't leave me for a second, my dearest,

because in that moment you'll have gone so far
I'll wander mazily over all the earth, asking,
Will you come back? Will you leave me here, dying?

Don't Go Far Off by Pablo Neruda

I'll Love You Forever?

I haven't been getting on very well with my best friend lately. To keep it brief, we just don't seem to have much in common anymore and the lack of mutual interest makes our relationship a bit strained. I think we'll be okay and work things out soon (god, we sound like a couple), but the whole experience - combined with a few of others that I won't go into - has made me see a few things quite differently than I used to.

I've gone through various phases of best friends whilst growing up - I guess most people do when they're young. But I always thought that the ones I have now would be the ones that stuck forever; the ones I chose to be friends with as opposed to ended up being friends with because our names were next to each other on the school register.
I desperately want to believe that. But if I look back, I see a heap of failed friendships and a string of broken "friends forever" promises, and I'm thinking maybe I shouldn't even be surprised that fervent promises and half heart pendants don't mean jack. I'd like to think I can keep that kind of promise, but I clearly haven't before, so there's no past history to assure me that anything I have now is permanent.

I don't know...I think that maybe people in general are just incapable of keeping their promises. Which is ironic considering most of us crave some sort of permanence and stability in our lives.

I've seen beautiful weddings, I've seen couples promise each the world...and then I've seen them getting bored or cheating on each other. I've never been in love, so I can only speculate, but if you truly loved someone how could you even bear the thought of hurting them? Is it really possible to grow tired of them? Can love vanish just like that? Those prospects terrify me; the fact the someone - maybe even yourself - could change beyond your imagination...it's scary. How could you ever trust anyone when there's so much evidence telling you that nothing lasts forever?

Why is forever such a big deal anyway?
I will always love you, I will always be there, I will never let you down. We've all spoken some of those cliches at some point. And maybe we even meant them.

I truly hope that my words mean something...but there's never any guarantee of how long that meaning will last, and that's what I hate.

Forever? If only, if only, if only.

Amsterdam

The streets smell of sex,
The windows dance.
There is sex on my mind and sex on my skin.
She has a sweet face;
"50 euros" it says,
"And you'll be on top for that?"
"Of course."
Four doors down, a stockinged knee touches a pamphlet titled 'Jesus',
A thigh laughs at the voice saying "he loves you".
Walk past the next and I'm staring at myself.
We are sandwiched between sadness
And no one cares.
I am so high the red lights move me;
There is meaning in this debauchery,
There is prose in their pain.
Am I so cold?
No, I too am in pain,
It will hurt tomorrow.
Tomorrow I will be sad.
Does my sadness compare?
We are all lost, broken, wronged, searching...
Some a little bit more,
Some a little bit less -
No stop, don't quantify.

Pope of Mope

I know I go on about the Smiths a bit too much...but I just had a smithtastic weekend in Manchester visiting the Salford Lads Club and seeing Morrissey.

Morrissey...ah. Seeing him in the flesh was truly awesome (and not in the Americanised sense of the word). I don't know what it is about live music but there's just nothing like it. I probably sound like a sad loser...but I am! I am a sad loser who lives vicariously through music.
Following a band around like Kate Hudson in Almost Famous is my dream...

Not really.

Listen to Babooshka by Kate Bush, it's amazing. She sounds like how wine smelt when you were a kid (an excellent comment I found on youtube).

I'm A Hustler, Baby

I'M GOING TO SEE SIMIAN MOBILE DISCO TONIGHT.

(If you haven't heard them, click here.)

I'm so excited.



We don't have the drugs, but we got the buzz.

D-D-Drunk

I got a job as a bartender recently, and wow, it's been a pretty enlightening and interesting experience. There's nothing like being sober in a room full of drunk people to make you fully realise the adverse effects of extreme drunkenness, ie. idiocy and shame.
I see people who appear perfectly normal at the beginning of the evening turn into something completely different over the course of the night; women with fat bellies rolling their shirts up and dancing with ugly men, guys sexily slurring their way through winning chat up lines, girls shaking it like they're the shiz (when they're not)...
There was even this one girl who came in wearing her PJs, and then proceeded to flirt shamelessly with one of the guy bartenders and a guy who decided it would be a good idea to plop his phone into a pint of beer...and then gave us a £50 tip (I'm not complaining).
But yeah. Weird. Makes me never, ever want to act like that in front of people. Ever.


Although we do get free drinks.
And I make a nice mojito.

Snow

I don't have anything cool, funny or interesting to say about the snow except that it was beautiful and snowball fights are fun up until the point where you can no longer feel your hands.

And I throw like a girl.

Starbucks Mornings & Smiths Nights

I seem to have settled into a rather pleasant routine with Charlotte. After a night out we crawl out of bed around noon the next day and go to Starbucks or some cafe for brunch and overpriced coffee. We talk about lots of things, but mostly about how we haven't met any decent guys. It's our standard complaint. No boys no boys no boys, no nice boys.
If only we had real problems to whine about. But we don't.

We listen to the Smiths. Who articulate our woes a little bit perfectly:

There's a club if you'd like to go
you could meet somebody who really loves you
so you go, and you stand on your own
and you leave on your own
and you go home, and you cry
and you want to die

I prefer listening to the Smiths than cramming into a club with bad music.

Sheila take a, sheila take a bow
Boot the grime of this world in the crotch, dear
And dont go home tonight
Come out and find the one that you love and who loves you
The one that you love and who loves you

And thanks to my musical influence Char, we're going to see Morrissey in May!!

In my life
Why do I smile
At people who I'd much rather kick in the eye ?
I was happy in the haze of a drunken hour
But heaven knows I'm miserable now


I think I love her just a little bit

Waste of Paint

So I finally went to a protest.

I went to a protest. I didn't protest. I stood beside Charlotte on the fountain at Trafalgar Square sort of awkwardly, just watching.
It was against Israel, and to be honest, I don't know an awful lot about the whole Israel Palestine situation. I mean, I know roughly what's going on...and I do care. But I still didn't care with the burning passion of the people around me. I felt that same wave of sadness you feel when you hear about any atrocity, but nothing more or less, nothing that really hit home. Because of course what would hit home would be, well, home.

And home's what I'd love to protest about, actually do something about.

I just realised that I've gone past that age where the "oh well I'm too young to do anything" excuse can be used - if it's ever even an excuse.
I don't know what I can do, but I think it's time to start caring more actively.

When I lived in Colombo I was in a bit of a bubble. Some of the time I didn't want to know what was going on because it was too sad, and at times it was bomb goes off, first thought, oh shit does that mean we can't go out tonight? And that's beyond being in a bubble or being too scared to want to know, that's just being selfish and cold. I guess that's what I was, what I probably still am.
It's time to change that, and I'm not saying I'm going to become an activist or protester overnight.
I think it's time to be less of a waste.

You've Put On Weigh, Ah!

Nothing makes you want to lose weight like a holiday to C-town after a short spell abroad.

When I got back I wasn't greeted with "Oh how lovely to see you" or "How's England?". Instead I got "Ah you've put on weight no", "Your shoulders seem broader", "I think you've enlarged a bit" and many other comments along that very flattering vein...

Unfortunately the thought of having 'put on weight' actually makes me want to lose some. As blasé as I'd like to be about the whole thing...I actually do care. Just a little bit.
I've always lived in fear of growing fat, and like I said, there's nothing like a trip back home to reawaken any dormant weight-related paranoia you might have.
That and an uncle who insists on singing "Ohhh oh light on the bum, but heavy on tum...la la...".
Charming.

Well on the plus(?) side, I was told that I had become 'fairer' as well. (Seriously, how do people notice these things?)
I hate how in SL the criteria for being beautiful is to be skinny and 'fair', fullstop. Because god forbid an asian to actually be dark. How unnatural.

My aunt was telling me about how someone, when offering her a nanny for her son, went, "Only thing, she's very dark. Might scare the child no?".
I think we're one of those very special few races who are actually prejudiced against themselves.

Skinny, fat, light, dark, whatever. I think we should all just get over it.

Including myself.