Oh, another night rolling slowly by
as those lilting notes, cascading and
riotous, comfort the limbs pacing hard
inside those clouds resembling my dreams
far above the blackened sky.

I cannot hope to dry your tears as they drop
against my chest and wet my welcome skin and
stare at us both with their eyes: glistening and knowing
as I smell your day-stained hair and hold your heavy head
with mine, “we’re fine” we say.

And as the hours pass, unfairly by
we wallow in drink-fueled misery
bound by blinding ecstasy: we dance together
building an ice-bricked castle,
we write, and laugh and die together.

A million miles drawn with our eyes,
tied by letters, our words to navigate
us through our soul-binding exhaustion
brought on by those minutes that escape control:
we clutch to a truth that can never be found

and,
as I smell your day-stained hair and hold your heavy head
with mine, “we’re fine” we say.

From the left - Brad, Renu, Hannah, Yvonne, Thomas, Erica, Peter, Grandma

Brad and Hannah arrived in New Zealand the other day and are now on the South Island. For the next month they will be traveling around soaking up the sunny rays of the last of the New Zealand summer/beginning of Autumn. I hope they pick up a Hobbit for me.

How much do we conceal? If our minds were laid bare, like the wares the old lady lays on the makeshift table at a jumble sale, how many people would stand over them? How many would price them up and haggle for a piece? How many would pick up your mind and gaze at it in the glare of the cold sunshine, up in the air, held above their head, a puzzled look upon their face as they struggle to understand what it is exactly that they are holding. A cup? A statue? A radio? Is it a vase? Ornate and quaint and chipped. There is a crack in the rim. What is the colour? Topaz. No, aquamarine. Well actually, I would have called it azure-blue but each to their own. Who wants an azure mind that is looked at before an azure sky? 

Let me into your wares. Lay them neatly on a table for me. Let me haggle for the price of a thought and I will go away happy with my purchase. A content little piggy with an even more content little blue vase in my bag. 

Look how dirty that centre-piece is. Look how damaged we all are. Covered in dust and cobwebs. We are turning yellow with age like a cigarette stained wall. There is grease dripping down your neck - we are revolting. I could never buy that. Clean it up first. Make it new and white and dazzling. But you cannot freshen used goods. Standing in a line, arranged in an orderly fashion - it makes it easier for others to peer at us from underneath their bushy heye-brows.

We are all as naked as the one-armed, one-legged doll Amy threw away that day.

One day, as I walked to Uni along the main (and busy) road, I noticed something rather peculiar. Bearing in mind there are no Ponds or Rivers or Canals near or around my University, the following image was a very odd sight and was the cause of much laughter and bemusement.

This may be the best way for businesses to sell their goods - I certainly thought I might want a car after seeing these little dudes waddling around in front of the Kia advertisement!

My Summer Of Love (Pawel Pawlikowski: UK, 2004)

They say never judge a book by its cover, and one would assume the same should be said about films and their coverlets. I picked this film out of the library’s (rather small) collection for no other reason than the poetic title and its serenely bright cover baring two young women lounging amongst the grass. The bikini-clad girls do not appear to be from Britain, not when you consider the usual downpours and cloudy skies we are so used to. But despite the bare blue skies and their baking skin, this film is set in Yorkshire, England and as the title suggests, spans a summer of an unsaid recent year.

Though only 86 minutes long, and its edits through linear time, quick, the film is slow: languidly tracing upon the lives of two girls. They chance upon one another on a hot summer’s day: Mona, a working class orphaned teenager taking a break from riding her broken motorcycle around the moors and Tamsin, a higher-than middle class fantasist expelled from her boarding school and home for the summer passing the time riding her white and well-groomed horse through the countryside.

They embark upon what can only be called a devastatingly romantic exploration of one another, the hopelessly sensual transition from friend to lover occurring quickly with plenty of help from wine, cigarettes, mushrooms and long, often unheard discussions of the pain found in both of their lives. Mona despairs at her brother’s born-again carnation into the spiritualistic realms of Christianity, leaving her cold and wanting of the old, wayward ex con she once new and loved. Tamsin reeks of depression as we learn of her Dad’s infidelity with the office Barbie and the tragic death of her sister: Tamsin grimly recalling the debilitating illness which left her bones looking like “somebody had just stuck daggers under her skin.”

Pawel Pawlikowski has done an astounding job of merging a fantastical and ethereal love story with the grounding realism of the county in which it is based. For those of you that can wallow happily in a beautifully ruinous story this film is perfect. Its shots are visually breathtaking, our first glimpse of Tamsin is seen upside down, between spear-like blades of grass, the sun angelically bouncing from her adolescent hooped earrings. Dancing rhythmic and free afore a hazy blue light the two girls move with the frenetic pulse mushrooms have duly given them and a blazing fire silhouettes their love which permits the chance to kill one another if they separate.

All in all, a beautiful film that eagerly rides on a short ‘n’ sweet running time much like the relationship it so happily observes.

Birthday: 11th April
Currently Reading: The Annotated Lolita
Last watched: Untraceable. This was, for a horror fan, pretty good.

I don’t know what this page will be for exactly. Just…for me. My books, my thoughts, my films, my thoughts again. It will be a slow start I think…