My sensible heart.

This is the creative writing I was telling you about. I wrote it in about 40 minutes in a seminar and have polished it up a little. We were given an image of a black, leather book with the words 'I do not want this back,' tipexed across the cover in large capitals. This is what came to me...

Dead Letters

Autumn brought cold sunshine and the need to feel whole again. The hollow chest was echoing, full of sound instead of feeling. I have that lime green scarf on, the one that we found at the train station, and my hair is washed out blue, like a damp cloth, you had said. The thankless grim of daylight burns blotches in my eyes and the weather is misbehaving.

Holding onto you for the last time, my veins squirm under my silver skin, swimming. Those nails you had painted are rolling around my tongue, my fingers bleed from their beds. Helpless and eaten with your disease, The Book sings songs still searching. It makes no sense now. Words written by your hand are broken, pulled flat across the page.

The smell of petrol reminds me of camping. The smell of anything reminds me of camping. It’s consumed my senses.

The Book brought pen to page and gave that night reason.

The Book was dead; it didn’t exist until you made it. It was just a dream to get us through the dusty air and delusion.

The Book remembered us. Now I have to forget.

Gasoline melts through pages. Soaking ink and glue and photograph. I should pray. I should pick flowers. Or weep. We are so beyond those times. The lighter flashes, the flame won’t hold. The fire licks and falls, licks and falls, licks and holds, sudden and hungry, eating the corners, the sides, the leather coat. Burning. Your words smell like burning.

I drop you onto the dirt. I drop you from my wet, bloody fingers and watch as orange ribbons suck your little soul away.

The sun sighs and moves slowly beneath the sycamore trees. Night holds me: linger, wait, stay, the ash must cool; you must watch the dead letters blow away.

Testing the waters with the tip of my finger, I begin to scoop the ashes into a plastic bag. Handfuls. And then I scream. I panic, I’m frantic. The ashes fall away, the sulphur smell disappears and The Book shines whole in my hands. Untouched, untainted, unbroken. The Book shines whole in my hands.

Modern times arrived.

Oh hai there. It's been a while. How you doing?

They say this is the most depressing time of the year. January. Oh January, poor January. It didn't choose to be at the beginning of the year. At the beginning of the time that you tell yourself that you will loose weight, that you will find love, that you will stop taking crack. And when you fail, inevitably, you blame January.

On a topical note, considering the name of my blog and my blirgin post, Marina and her lovely, little Diamonds have released the most radio friendly song of the decade (of the last 24 days, then.) I am emotional. All I said in my review, all I predicted, all I hoped against, has come to light. I suppose I should have prepared myself for this. But I am not prepared. Shall we take a look at her lyrics? Just to rub salt into the wound that is rapidly stretching across my heart...

'Hollywood infected your brain
You wanted kissing in the rain
Oh oh, I’ve been living in a movie scene
Puking American dreams
Oh oh, I’m obsessed with the mess that’s America
I’m obsessed with the mess that’s America.'

Whenever someone sings about how shite America is, they have officially run out of ideas. America is such an easy target, so unimaginative, so done. It's lyrics like that that are for the masses, because the neutral, unpassionate middleman responds with a, 'Yeah! Fuck America, or Iraq, or whatever... where's my Mean Girl's DVD?' When Green Day released 'American Idiot' my soul broke in two. And Enter Shikari's most recent album, don't even get me started on that. A butler, I can only assume, opens with his 'vexing' voice over: 'An aidless and harrowing future is developing for our generation and generations to come.' Then, we are encouraged, in a million languages, that 'WE MUST UNITE!!!!' Come on, drop the bullshit! You don't care that we live in a corrupt society. If you did, you'd start a revolution or sign a petition or start a facebook group or send a text, man. It is so very distasteful when musician's choose to turn their aggressive attention onto a particular country. Or even worse, onto Capitalism. This is the way it is. It wouldn't work better any other way and there's nothing much that we, the people, can do to power change. Of course, united, we could effect something better for ourselves, but there will always be lies, there will always be conspiracies and unknown factors behind the facade of a functioning society, so stop Capitalism Bashing and write something effective. I'm pretty defeatist when it comes to politics and the such. It's a bleak prospect, but human beings have lived centuries and centuries under the wrath of superior rule, and sometimes, get this.... even quite contentedly!

This is getting overwrought. I only came here to show you what I wrote in my Creative Writing seminar but now I think it'll make this blog to long and it won't be read. Dread. I'll post it later. As for now, listen to Marina's song 'Hollywood,' and die a little.

I can assure you it's just a scratch.

So I've been thinking about the perusal of male affection. And I've been thinking, being single for a whole year in March and all, wow, that I'm bored and tired and have had enough of playing with the toys of 'The Love Game.' As the Ga Ga says, 'It's complicated and stupid, got my ass squeezed by sexy cupid.' Excluding the latter, which is drivel, it certainly is stupid. And most certainly a game.

Shall I text him?
Shall I wait approx. 4 hours to add him on facebook?
Shall I stalk him on said facebook?- Of course.
How shall I present my tone in the text?
Presumptuous?
Casual?
Officious?
Shall I put a kiss on the end?
Shall I not, to appear allusive?
Shall I ask to meet?
Shall I wait for him to ask me?
Shall I take my clothes off, rub baby oil on my lumps, take a picture and bluetooth it to him to make him want me?

Ya-de-ya-de-ya-da. Bull. Back in the day, when all was good and true, there was no text. There was no facebook, tool of the demons, or digitalisation, or Heelies. There was just two faces, two voiceboxes and awkward eye contact. Oh to go back to a time when a man actually courted a woman. I'm romanticizing, I know, but all this unreal interweb microwave cowardly communication and all its stupid rules is fundamentally odd.

Maybe I'm just old fashioned? Well. I know I'm old fashioned, it's stitched onto my palms like ring worm, but I would love to just meet a guy, find ourselves mutually attracted and get the hell on with it. In my mind, each futile text is a building brick, each facebook 'poke' a slather of cement and each MSN 'nudge' a foundation to the Anti Human Communication Wall. Which ultimately leads to dry conversation and mindless shagging. Explains a lot, right?

I've been swirling around in a washing machine mind on repeat. I've been finding the seams in my seamless soul and wondering what is wrong. But, in reality, when I disregard self-esteem and the need to be modest, I know that I'm not unattractive. I have 2 arms. And 2 legs. Bonus. I have two eyes that are almost the same size and a nose that doesn't eat my face like a blood hungry leech. My ears don't stick out. I am not fat and I am not skinny. My hair could do with work but I am paying the price of impatience and I've dealt with it. I'm tall, but hey, whenever was that a sin? I am able bodied and I'm not obsessively into cattle production or The Chronicles of Narnia, meaning, I am not a single minded bore. So what's the issue?

There's this cliché which I shall resentfully repeat, I can't abide cliché, that goes 'When you stop looking, he will find you.' Oh hai! Thanks! So if you naturally want something with all your body and heart you simply have to order your mind to give up! Simples! (Meerkat referencing, the shame.) It's impossible. It's like telling a moth to stop seeking the light, like telling a dog to stop licking its arse hole. I am being totally hyperbolic but hey, it's all such a joke.

Ultimately, in this labyrinth of do or don't, within this rule book of shall I/shan't I, is the irrevocable truth that there is no escaping it. Modern times dictate that I'll meet my match on e-harmony.com, get married, hold the wedding reception in the town hall with a disco DJ, get hideously drunk to hide the fact that I've always been sure I'd make matrimony with Robert Patterson and end up smashing my Nan in the face with the bottom tier of the wedding cake.

Sweet.

Do you trust me, Clive?

Well, what a wonderful way to end a wayward decade. My sister and I truly climbed upon the rock-rap 90's bandwagon of Rage Against the Machine and our unabridged pleasure at the prospers of our protest have left me quite giddy. Like a little girl creeping downstairs on Christmas morning- the glory, the splendour of seeing all the presents splayed out across the floor, the half-eaten carrot, the sherry devoured, the sooty boot marks on the carpet. Bliss.

Ay, music fans, I'm sure you share my joy. It's not that I am a massive RATM fan, I wouldn't go out of my way to see them live but I harbour an inextinguishable hatred for the X-Factor and everything related to it. Trips home to the Southside are bittered by the putrid stench of Cowell. I abhor it. I express my disgust at the monotony of modern day music making to my parents who, ashamed yet content, gaze at the telly-box with addicted helplessness like monkey's forced into cocaine. My Mother pleads 'I hate it, I just watch it for the laughs, promise.' Just like the rest of the nation then? I’m sure.

So imagine my utter delight when I found this group which was revolting against the bullshit, joining together the like-minded music-lovers of the late Noughties like something from our nostalgic sexual fantasies of yesteryear! The revolution had begun and I was taking part! I was standing hand-in-hand with those who just wouldn't take it no more more. No, they wouldn't take it no more. I ain't gonna stand idly by while the bridal reply of a marriage of styles is "Yeah, but what's their demographic?"

I ain't gonna take it no more.
I ain't gonna take it no more.
I ain't gonna stand idly by with a tut and a sigh while inside we all cry out for something new.

I ain't gonna take it no more.
I ain't gonna take it no more.
Soulless music, artless lyrics.
Goalless movements, heartless gimmicks.
Controlled and clueless, careers lasting a minute.
If this is the big life, well I ain't lookin' to live it.
We ain't pushing the boundaries, we're blowing them up.
We ain't trying to expand the scene, we want the scene to erupt.

Ay, Dan Le Sac VS Scroobius Pip knew what they were on about. Alas, if only we were revolting against war! Against poverty! Against racism! And not just against some grossly over paid high-waisted git called Simon who we have all chosen to demonise. Even so, we like to pretend that we play an active part in history, don’t we? Like we were there when the first plane hit, when the bus exploded, when the wave consumed, when the carpet was forcibly removed from under the Cowell’s feet. I was there! I've cut out the article to show my kids. Not that they will care or understand the sheer endlessness of my joy or how we won. How we did it. How my sister got whiplash moshing in our living-room to the live Radio1 coverage. Or how I made a video. Or how we told the man in Vue cinema about Christmas number 1 who really didn’t care at all.

Glory is mine, forever, amen. I have defeated this decade and all its horrors just by downloading a song titled, ‘Killing in the Name.’ So it's sort of apt then, really.

The Crying of the Lost Things

So it's crunch time. I'm starting to think about my blog in terms of how I can fit it into my life, which surely means the mouth is beginning to unfasten and I'm taking a nose-dive down the oesophagus.

I'm in a horribly pensive mood. I'm in a horrible regret ridden mood. I have a 2,000 word essay due in on Wednesday and it's slowly eating the lustre out of my eyes.

I want to be a dancer! I want to be on stage! I want to be the one you wish you'd fought for!

Bloody hell. I don't even have anything creative to post to whoever out there reads this humdrum little ditty of mine. I just feel like writing, I feel like creating, like being being being.

I bought this vintage fur coat. I walked to uni today in said vintage fur coat and it felt like everyone who saw me was thinking, 'Douchebag, take that off, you are not a successful-aged-gracefully old starlet, you are not Elizabeth Taylor, just because they are vogue does not give you the god given right to wear one, k?' Yeah, I was thinking about it that much. I love it, it isn't real fur, before the tide of detestation consumes my soul, but it is delicious and it was £20 and I could not say no to the charming, peculiar little lady at the back of the antique shop. I tried it on and she said it's been waiting for me for 40 years. And she had a smelly, almost dead dog who, when I bent down to stroke him, lent against my knee like he’d been fighting off collapse. His eyes said he was grateful for the support of his cumbersome little body. How cruel, keeping a decrepit little thing alive like that. And in an antique shop. Quite fitting, actually.

I look at trip down Elm Hill on my lonesome and found myself in this alleyway, and there was a black cat and we exchanged pleasantries. There was a door that was open and I was thinking 'Is this a shop or someone's house?' It looked a bit like a shop because it was adorned with old fashioned sign posts, like the sort you get in the Toby Cavery when they're trying to be oldsy-woldsy. But these were genuinely oldsy-woldsy, antique type things. So in I trotted. There was a young man sitting in the corner. I was surprised to see such a young man in such a place of antiquery. He had an N-Dubz hat on, though he'd defiantly resent that association, and a vintage jumper like he'd just stepped out of the Milkbar. I said hello. He seemed put out. I must have been the only customer he’d had all day and he was probably watching porn on his little laptop screen or the Antiques Road Shop. I continued regardless. ‘Oh what a place!’ I remarked, ‘It’s like an Aladdin’s cave!’ I exclaimed. He said ‘Yeah.’ There was a skeleton hanging up in the corner holding a moth-eaten umbrella. Maybe it was the skeleton of the previous owner and he'd done a Pyscho type thing and pretended to be her and then he was going to murder me with the 1867 cheery wood pick-axe behind the counter. I turned around sharpish expecting a pick-axe to the face and a fitting Eee Eee Eee!!! BAM! Crash! Blood blood blood ddeeaaattthhh. No. He was still watching his Roadshow. I continued to browse. There were two stuffed animals in a freeze-frame-type-position where an otter was attacking/being attacked by a snake. And a basket of sea shells. And an array of glasses with lenses missing. And a bird cage that I quite fancied. He said it was £25. I could probably have used my feminine charms to haggle it down to a tenner but I hate haggling, it makes me feel like a gypsy, and he might have killed me then for disrespecting his judgement. So I left the boy with his N-Dubz hat, which I shall now associate with him always because he was shamefully rude and looked like he was into prog-rock-anti-folk. Pah.

Essay, Emily, the Restoration, libertinism, sexual immorality, seventeenth century literature….. I’ll post a poem instead, as the story has no real end.

The Crying of the Lost Things

When you took the anxious-bitten
Archers-bow lips, and painted them across
Your body, her voice was rented out
To your wanton, whispering litter and
You threw her fears across
The cellar. Her heart had always been
So sheltered, with thighs reserved for the
Tastes of drowsy thumb, but under your skin
She says, my body feels so very numb and
I don’t know what it’s like to come
Girlish clutters say heavy hellos.
Oh listen, won’t you, to the crying
Of the lost things, the dying of a time bomb,
Decaying since the drums began.
No, I will not regret this man, says she
With the skin displayed, undone
And the crying of the lost things
Drowned, by the rushing gush of sun.

Sneak, russet filters run bright into
My eyes. The dreams I’d been having
Removed lost things from my mind, but awake
Those lost things I’m very sure to find.
On turning, I saw a lump of flesh
My body, yellow, seemed now unfresh
Sticky memories of sweat combined.
Tasting tears, I am salty and reminded of
How moonlight took me away.

No, I will not regret this man, or hope for better
Or hope for land, land from hot floods, coming.
No, I will not regret this man, says she
With the skin displayed, undone
And the crying of the lost things drowned
By the rushing gush of sun.

Maybe drinking wine would validate my sorrow.

Hello. The Mass of Christ pulls closer on my winter-kissed face and I think I'd like to see my family.
Re: Poetry.I wrote it so much more last year. This year my creative flow has been stilted and starved. However, I did write this merry little ditty, joyful as it is, entailing the laziness of many bone idle bums around me. My ex-boyfriend used to tell me, much to my distaste, that all my writing was morbid and I needed to write about happiness, but happiness does not induce words for me, sorrow does. What sort of writer does that make me then? Confessional, I suppose. But most of the time I use imagery so detached from my own experiences that it can't be seen as a piece of me, more a piece of how I conceive every one else. Anyway, pretentious drivel over, this is a bigbravebold move for me, putting poetry on t'net. Enjoy it, hungry penguins.

cold fat unspeaking.

body is just bone idle
to the new rise of day watch
as it reverts into stone at the
thought of easy gone away introvert
and officious again the calendar
strikes time away sluggishness
corrupts your brain so defeated
unmoving you’ll stay corpse cut
eyes shut shine dissipates
and those joints gain clots of cold fat unspeaking.

your tongue tastes
its fate your forgotten liberty
falls
fast
for the trap
of fatigue consuming your sight
and conceit carving
reason from none of conviction
unwilling to fight
the cold war that's just begun

The Girl

So I only got a bloody first for that assignment. I couldn't be happier, I think I had a little, secret cry. This blogging business hasn't enraptured me yet, but I am going to give the seed some TLC and see if the bud will bloom.
I'm posting an article I wrote about my lovely Mum, again this was for class. I'll get around to writing some real blog-style prose later but as a sleepy student assignments are as much effort as I can fathom. Maybe the Christmas period will harvest my creativity, maybe it will release me and I'll flow like mulled wine. Maybe I'll write a really cynical piece about being single at this ghastly time of year. Maybe.
The brief is completely fantastical. If Marie Claire actually did e-mail me asking me to write for them my smile would make me top heavy.

Write a 600 word feature on your Mother for a collection of intimate articles celebrating the inspirational lives of older women, as told by their children. These articles will aid our Super-Mum campaign, which will coincide with International Women’s Day (8.03.2010) and Mother’s Day (14.03.2010).

Remember, at Marie Claire we pride ourselves on being ‘More Than A Pretty Face.’ We are the fashion magazine with character, substance and depth, for women with a point of view, an opinion and a sense of humour.

----

When I got to the age of thirteen I stopped seeing my Mum as my superhero. It wasn’t a cognitive decision; no major tragic event took place that would tarnish my opinion of her, in fact, we became much closer. It came suddenly, this impulsive realization crashing on top of my hormone-ridden head like a rally-car to the chest, the sudden understanding that she was a human being.

Now, however, my Mum is Athena, Greek goddess of wisdom, war, and skill. She battles through every set back with brute force, her power is ethereal, her love is tangible. Although every part mortal like myself, I don’t think she could ever be just a woman. Human being or goddess, how has Sharon Buchanan managed it? With the perusal of two wildly successful careers, raising four children and remaining twenty-five years happily married, I want to know how all these accolades can grace one woman who is yet to turn fifty and, of course, how can I learn from her successes?

When asked to sum up the last twenty years, my Mum automatically traces back time in her filo-fax of a brain: everything is in its place, under-file, organized and completed. Her 16 years in the Health Service peeked in 1990 when she became Head Occupational Therapist. Then, to coincide with a move across the country, took a u-turn and began to pursue a career in education. “It wasn’t planned,” she says, “When I moved [to Kent] in 1999…the plan was to take a complete break, but I’m not very good at being at home so that break lasted about 2 months!” The career change was a happy coincidence and before we had a chance to unpack the boxes she was passing her Certificate of Education and taking a permanent position at a local high school. Laughing, Mum jokes, “I never thought in a million years I’d be more than just a classroom teacher!” But to those that know her, this statement is easily dismissed. Ten years later and she’s the Head of Sixth Form.

A plethora of bold decisions has placed my Mum where she is today, “I’m one of those people who thinks ‘if I’m going to do this, it has to be to the best of my ability.’” If the tapestry of her career is anything to go by, pushing yourself to achieve- regardless of the no-sayers- is the formula for success.

Having grown older, the extent of her ambition and her relentless pursuit for happiness astounds me. When I was a bouncing “dolly-faced” baby, my parents’ both had full-time careers and three children- all under three year’s old. “I wanted to be surrounded by laughter and build individuals, moulding and creating them…It’s the ultimate gift.” And, of course, we cannot forget the main man in all this, my Dad, whose support and resilience has turned him into a Greek titan, holding up the heavens on his shoulders. “The key to any marriage is based on a solid foundation of love, mutual respect, and passion; without those three key elements, it becomes hard to communicate.

To understand that you’re Mother is a human being, just like you are, is to reach an age of emotional comprehension where you can accept mortality. I remember it distinctly. Before, my Mum was as solid as a house, unquestionably able to soar through her adult world with thunder-bolt precision. Then, like flicking a switch, my Super-Mum was an emotional, warm blooded woman, mortal to more than just kryptonite. Respect doesn’t even cut it. It’s more like awe. Awe that one woman, who does not have super powers, could accomplish so much, could drag herself on hands-and-knees over life’s hurdles without the ability to fly- it defies belief. But then that’s the role of a daughter, isn’t it? To hold your mother in a light where she is the epitome of ‘Woman.’ After all, regardless of the fact she’s just a woman, she’ll always be a goddess to me.