During a conversation about knowledge being power...

And squares have two knowledge!

In a friend's car....

It's really hard to make broccoli charleston...

SORRY

In the absence of having written anything recently that I'm happy with posting, I'm going to post some of the strange things uttered by my friends and family (and yours truly) over the Christmas season.  I apologise to my loyal fanbase of three for not having been better with updating this, but as you probably know, I've been a little busy.  Hopefully this will provide inspiration for later material...

Boredom

Greed

Fear

Doubt

I did a series of what I think bad things look like.  Enjoy.

FACE

I drew a face.

To be honest I find the colours etc more fun than the face itself...you can probably tell.

And the winds just howls.

There’s a chill in the air.  A frisson, a frenzy.  A tension that creeps up through your muscles until you are poised to strike at nothing there.  And the wind just howls.  There’s a drop of rain on my window.  Another, then another, like arrhythmic drums, until they blur into the white noise of a car radio between towns, between lives.  And still the wind just howls.  There’s an emptiness on the street.  Everyone retreated to safety, to warmth and comfort and psychological fortress of a locked door and curtains closed.  And the wind just keeps howling.  There’s a glint in my eye.  I worry about windows not quite closed, about a house just old enough to be a question.  I feel a feral anticipation towards the crashing and the clashing and the raucous joy of the elements.  And the wind howls and howls and howls.

Gone.

I didn’t know you.

You were a name and an illness and a family.

And then you were gone.

But still,

     I’ll never forget you,

  now-dead man.

I met you at the beginning of the week

We followed the round

The ward was a sad place, but not the worst

The doctors were cheerful, even if their humour was black

The nurses were kind, even if they were tired

And the patients, your companions, seemed as positive as anywhere

Some were confused

Some were in pain

Some were looking forward to leaving

     But you were never really awake, in your room to the side, quiet but never quite peaceful

The doctors told me your systems were failing

To fix one would too much damage another

I could see the frustration, and the resignation behind their eyes

All their experience

All their knowledge

And nothing they could do.

The rest of the week, I saw patients come and go

To nursing homes, to family, to other departments, to other hospitals

You were one of the constant few

At one point we discussed care pathways

An “end of life” plan sounds nicer than any to do with death

As though this life just happened to be coming to an end

Maybe if I believed in some sort of heaven and hell

Or in rebirth

Or in something, anything, that made death less final

Then the phrase “end of life” would offer a small comfort

As it is, I hold no such convictions

I didn’t truly believe this only to be a step on a longer journey.

Your doctors had said you had a couple of weeks left,

but still,

it shouldn’t have been such a shock.

my colleague found you,

Quiet.

Still.

Gone.

My heart goes to him.  I cannot imagine his shock, his sadness.

Because you had gone quietly into that dark night

We’d heard no raging, no final fight

Maybe that was your character

Maybe that was your disease

Were you prone to lie there and take it?

Or were you fighting, we just couldn’t see?

We saw you certified dead

Passed on.

Gone.

It was the first time I’d seen it done.

I should have been learning, taking notes.

But all the while I just marvelled at how you seemed just asleep

So much more peaceful than before

I had an abstract hope that you would just wake up, that it had all been a mistake

But I knew that it was nonsense.

Your heart stopped, never again to speed up at the sight of a lover

Your eyes stayed closed, never again would you blink at the brightness of a new day

You did not cry out in pain, to the horrible things doctors must do to be sure.

You were beyond that now.

And, with a signature on a form, it was official.  You were no more.

The next day, the last that I was there, was like any other

I smiled at the woman heading into the room where you were before

She had hope and pain and fear and trust in her eyes.

And so we go on.

Alone

I am alone.

Not lonely, just, alone.

     Sitting on the bed in my parent’s house – when did it become my parent’s and not mine? – with my mother away studying, my father out at work and me left here to mind the house, I am alone.

     Sometimes I enjoy it, sometimes I don’t.  I enjoy the freedom to stand in the shower that’s turned up just a little too hot, for just a little too long, languishing in the heavy flow of the steaming water.  I enjoy my malleable time, where everything’s fine so long as it gets done by the end of the day and then whoops I forgot and I can always do it tomorrow.  I enjoy the fact that I’m in a semi-detached stronghold with the cannons of middle-class bourgeois self-importance peeking over the crenulations of my memories of this place, so that when a cold-caller calls claiming to be compensating for a car-accident, I can comfortably say with a smug smile that thank you for calling but my family doesn’t own a car and no, thank you, I think I would have known if such a calamity had come to pass.

     I don’t enjoy it when it gets dark.  When I find myself watching for movement out of the windows, from the corners of my eye.  I don’t enjoy it when there’s a silence, and then a sound, out of place, leading me to question where I am and what I’m doing.  I don’t like it when I’m caught not knowing what to do, when asking for help by phone or by email would seem like a beacon blasting out an admission of helplessness.

     All in all, I think, I can’t help but relish this.  But then, I have to stop, reconsider.  I’m not alone at all.  There’s a boy, miles and miles away who can’t help but smile whenever I kiss him, on the tip of his nose.  There’s a girl, who’s not quite so far, who confided in me recently, worries about another friend in a chain of hope and goodwill.  And there are friends that I will meet soon, who are coming for fun and larking about  but who I’m sure will hold me up when such things are farthest from  my mind.  I realise that I could write and write and write about  the  people – who I know, who I’ve met, who love me, who  hate me, and who haven’t quite decided yet, but it all boils down to this.

I’m not alone.  I’m surrounded.

OK so I know you're supposed to tell people before any sort of long break in posting...

But this one was kind of unplanned.  Forgive me?
Either way, here's something I wrote and edited at the beginning of the summer to keep you entertained until I've processed all the things I've been writing without access to computers.

I see red.

                Mottled, streaked.  The sun behind my eyelids makes a strange pattern.

                I’m leaning on my hands, sitting back on a rough picnic blanket, bathed in sunshine.  We’re in the park, it’s crowded with families and friends but we have our own island.

                Twenty metres in front of me, there are dancers in the rapture of classic 40s music.  It would nice to be them.

                Behind me, to my left, a group with drums and tambourines, weaving intricate rhythms through the hubbub of chatter and laughter.  Next to them some people with discs and pins and other circus trappings.

                Footballs and frisbees fly and roll around, the gentle thud as foot connects with ball and the ring of calls to the other players cut through the air.

                A breeze washes over me, a welcome variety to the insistent caress of the sun.

                I open my eyes.

                There are five other inhabitants of the island surrounded by grass.  Three well known, two less so.  One is learning tarot, reading the fate of another not here. Two gossip, two read, and then there’s me.

                The tarot reader talks of gains and losses, apathy and faith.  The cards are hopeful, she thinks, head deep in a book that tells their meaning.

                The gossips giggle over a friend’s folly.  Deep in discussion and intensely interested in the other’s opinions and stranger’s situations.  I don’t know them well, but their talk is a portal to a parallel world of scandals and sweetness.

                The readers are intent, silent.  They are building fortresses of imagination around themselves, another universe that they will escape and destroy as soon as they shut their books.

                And I sit, and stretch, and see.

Procrastination - 5

41)      Find the powerpoints online of all the lectures I plan on doing today.  Then find all the notes.  Work out the appropriate order in which to do them.  Realise there’s not enough time left to do all of them and leave it for next time.

42)      Look at hilariously titled books in the library – end up reading a book on “cumaceans” and feeling ridiculously immature,.

43)      Doodle on everything.

44)      Unclog the shower.  Wonder how it got so bad.  Feel slightly nauseous for the rest of  the day.

45)      Learn BSL. (badly)

46)      Reorganise your friend’s DVD collection.  Not even your own.  SOMEONE ELSE’S

47)      Sit on the sofa in a pile with your friends, talking about anything and everything.

48)      Stretch out ALL of the kinks in your back. ALL OF THEM.

49)      Have silent rants in the library at your friends about that girl sitting near to you who just won’t whisper.  No seriously, do you have trouble grasping the concept? I THINK THE LIBRARY MIGHT NOT BE THE RIGHT PLACE FOR YOU.

50)   Make a list of all the things you do to procrastinate.

Procrastination - 4

31)      See how many blog views I have.  Blogger tells me all about your operating systems and where you’re from.   I KNOW WHERE YOU LIVE. (only to the country though)

32)      Make a Google Plus account

33)      Try to do everything you can do with a google plus account.

34)      Link my google plus account to my blogger.  Not be sure this is a good idea.  Unlink it a few days later to be on the safe side.

35)      I DON’T UNDERSTAND GOOGLE PLUS OR THE INTERNET.

36)      Spend forever choosing exactly the right music to revise to.  Then change my mind.

37)      Dance like a silly. I tell myself it’s exercise.

38)      Sing along to music, realise I’m singing the words of the lecture I’m reading in time with the music, wonder if it helps, then realise said words have lost all meaning to me.

39)      Look up all of the lyrics to what I’m listening to.  That way at least my procrastination is accurate.

40)   Stick things on my wall.  Like tickets, receipts, leaflets...you name it, if it can be stuck using white-tac then it’s probably up there somewhere.

Procrastination - 3

21)      Plan all the things I’m going to do after my exams.

22)      Plan all the things I’m going to do over the summer.

23)      Plan what I’m going to wear to every event I could possibly go to.

24)      Plan my next five meals.  In great detail.  Then end up cooking something else because I wasted all my time planning and I don’t have time to do anything fancier.

25)      Think about how exactly I’m going to tidy my room.  And then not do it.

26)      Contemplate cleaning the kitchen.

27)      Unblock the sinks down in the kitchen.  Well, slightly.  I think.  I’m kinda terrified  that my attempts at unblocking will end up in a worse problem later on.  If they do : I’M SO SORRY GUYS.

28)      Play Mahjong/Solitaire/Spider Solitaire/Freecell. As in, the games that come free with the computer.

29)      Look up things on Wikipedia.  Then follow links.

30)   Reorganise my Bookmarks bar on Google Chrome.

Procrastination - 2

11)      Giggling over the things in the weird and wonderful world of Ann Summers.  Particularly the reviews of sex toys.  People say really the weirdest things.

12)      Searching things in an incognito window  that I knew that I didn’t want to search, that I knew would leave me feeling weird and losing faith in humanity, but thought that I might as well look up “in the interests of thoroughness”  And no, I won’t tell you what I  searched.  Believe me, it’s for your own good.

13)      Looking up symptoms that I have on medical websites.  I’ve found that since starting my medical course I tend to either come to the conclusion that it’ll sort itself on its own, or that I have a brain tumour/gallstones/some sort of heart conditions/most mental disorders.  Never underestimate your own ability to hype things up in your mind.

14)      Mourning what could have been.  What I could have been, what I could have become, what doors are now closed off to me. 

15)      Looking up things that I could do other than medicine.  Currently the plan is wait tables or an equivalent until I have the money to start a patisserie.  I will bake and cook and sell my knitting and other crafts and I will write in my spare time.  Either that or sexy librarian.  Or maybe switch to a palaeontology degree.  In all seriousness, I really like dinosaurs.

16)      Doing my make up/my nails.  This is made more ridiculous by the fact that I currently live in a house on my own since everyone else is at with their families.  THERE IS NO ONE TO SEE MY BEAUTY.

17)      Play viola.  Try to get better at the bass.  Sing.  Not really relevant at the moment because the house is too cold for my fingers to do what I want them to.

18)      Decide to go to the library in the afternoon.  Get ready for the library – this involves showering, packing your revision, putting on appropriate clothes, packing different revision because you don’t need to cover what you’d originally decided on, finding snacks to take with you and filling a water bottle, repacking your revision AGAIN.  And then oh look the library closes in an hour not that much point going after all.

19)      DRINK ALL THE WATER.  I have started drinking more water than can possibly be necessary.  I don’t understand why.

20)   Make coffee.  Drink coffee.  Remember why I try not to drink so much caffeine.  Try to sit still and fail.

Procrastination - 1

     Why do we procrastinate?  What is the point of it all?   There’s a part of me that thinks that maybe it’s part of my brain’s way of giving itself some time off, so that it can...I dunno...do some sort of background processing.  If I’m being honest though, I think it’s just my innate laziness.

     I really am one of the best people I know at procrastinating.  Maybe that’s just because I know me best, but I do genuinely believe that I spend more time procrastinating than a lot of my peers.  Heck, I’m so good at it that I find myself procrastinating during my procrastinating.  As in right now, I should be revising.  I have some pretty major exams in a couple of weeks.  As in “I need to pass these exams so that I can stay at Medical School and follow my dreams” sort of major.  However, here I am, writing this.  Not only that, but after allowing myself to start writing this (the idea’s been in my head a few days), since I’d fulfilled my initial (albeit low) expectations of what I’d complete today, I thought I’d do half an hour on this.  And yet, after letting myself start, I found myself looking at possible laptops I could buy a sentence or two ago.  Now, I should be looking at them at some point - my laptop currently rattles when I hold it the wrong way, is losing its keys and occasionally freaks out for really no reason.   Much though I’m rather attached to it, I think this might be the beginning of the end.  I don’t want to be left suddenly without my portal to that wonderful and disgusting place that is the internet. However I consciously told myself that I’d let myself get a laptop for my birthday.  My birthday is AFTER my exams, so I can fantasise about laptops AFTER my exams.  But do I?  No.  I decide the time to look at them is during the time that I’ve allowed myself in order to do something else that isn’t revising.  It’s like some sort of meta-procrastination.  It’s not the first time and it’s getting pretty annoying.

     Recently, I watched Jenna Marbles’ video on Junk FoodConfessions.  Now aside from the fact that she’s pretty damn awesome, I want to be her friend and I have really an awful lot of respect for her for doing what she does, I thought that I’d take a leaf out of her book and start writing down all the things that I do to procrastinate.  I’ll publish this after exams, and maybe it’ll help me to stop doing the things I shouldn’t be doing and start doing the things that I should be doing.  I’ll put it up in instalments, so that you can fully appreciate it all. 

So...here goes. 

1)       Checking  facebook, stalking anyone who I haven’t seen/talked to recently.  Facebook has since been deactivated, which is way harder to keep up than it should be.

2)      Going on funnyjunk/icanhazcheezburger and not only looking at top uploads, but looking at the newest uploads and then ending up comparing the two and looking at everything twice because I saw everything in top uploads when it was in the newest uploads.  Also getting really annoyed at a lot of internet peoples.  Let’s not go into why.

3)      Looking at pretty dresses.  Again, something I justify to myself on the basis that  I have a ball  coming up and want to get a new dress for, since I don’t think I  have anything quite formal enough.  However this ball is months off.  I have time.

4)      Obsessively finding new webcomics  and reading their entire archives.  I’ve done this for enough so far that  I’ve added 7 new comics to my list of things to regularly check.  That’s just the ones that I particularly liked.   And some of their archives went back over 5 years.   THAT’S A LOT OF STORYLINE NOW IN MY BRAIN

5)      Doing the above with blogs/tumblrs/fanfictions.  

6)      Reading over old skype/facebook/email/text conversations with my friends.

7)      Feeling bad about what I said in those conversations/realising that the friends were actually being kinda harsh.

8)      Trying to reconnect with old friends (this happens at random, if you feel we need to reconnect and I haven’t tried it with you, it’s nothing to do with you, more like to do with when you’re on facebook/skype and how long for)

9)      Skyping everyone I know.

10)   Watching youtube videos about things that are irrelevant to me  and that I don’t care about. SO MANY MAKE UP TUTORIALS DESIGNED FOR PEOPLE WHO LOOK COMPLETELY DIFFERENT TO ME IN THE FIRST PLACE.

Trichotillomania

Run your fingers through your hair, searching for the right spot.

It might be where there’s a patch of odd skin, an itch.

It might be where there’s a thinning of the hair.

It might be where you’ve done this before.

When you find the right spot, you’ll know.

Work your fingers around it.  Get to know it, the feel of it under the tips of your fingers.

Close the tip of your forefinger and thumb around the base of the hairs.  Compress – not so hard that you’ll pull them all out, mind.   You’ve got to find the right hair.

Move your fingers gently away from the root.  You know what you’re looking for; you’ve done this a thousand times before.  A thousand times that shouldn’t have happened, a thousand times that will happen again.

Really feel the texture of your hair.

Some strands thick, some strands thin.

Some strands smooth, some oddly rough.

You’re looking for the one that stands out amongst all of the straight, normal hairs.  The one with the tight, strong, rebellious 2mm wave to it.

Is that one?

Your grip tightens

              you pluck it from the root with a deftness that comes with practise.

You look at your catch.  Not this time.  These are all normal, straight.  You feel a pang of regret that you pulled them when there was no need, but that thought is quickly overtaken by the compulsion to find and remove what you think you just felt.  The hair that you just pulled won’t have been lost in vain.

Maybe five more times, maybe ten, you pull out perfectly normal hair.  You lose count because now you’re in the zone, in a kind of obsessive trance as you seek that one hair, that for no logical reason to you now needs to be pulled.

Sometimes you give up.  Move on to a different spot, or get on with whatever it is you’re meant to be doing.

Most of the time though, you don’t. You will finish what you have started.

Eventually, you get the right hair.  Sometimes it feels the same as the rest as it comes out, sometimes it has a certain pain, a particular discomfort, and yet with it a feeling of victory that you’ve done it, you got it!

Researching in a fit of self-centred navel-gazing you learn that each hair that gets pulled causes the brain to release a small dose of dopamine, in theory to help you cope with the pain.  In practise, it leads to a sort of addiction, an addiction to slow, sure but steady self-mutilation.  Your hair used to be thick, straight, full, shiny and strong.  Now it’s thin, brittle, irregular, prone to breaking.  You notice that you can track stressful events by strange layers that develop in your hair.  You can no longer grow it to be long and flowing as was your pride and joy when you were young and carefree.  Instead, you chop it short, to minimise the visibility of the damage. 

Your reading also turns up a piece of horrible beautiful irony.  The small-waved, dark, stray hairs that you focus in on?  They’re characteristic of the regrowth that occurs following plucking.  Self-obsession driving self-mutilation driving self-mutilation.

And yet still, you continue.

     This is a recognised condition, that only becomes a problem for me when I'm stressed.  Like when, y'know, you have exams in just over a week.  If you want to find out more, these are a couple of useful websites :

NHS choices

UK-based support and information group

US-based support and information group

In your arms

In your arms I am safe.

In your arms I am warm.

In your arms I am the only one.

In your arms we are together.

In your arms I am a king.

In your arms I am a queen.

In your arms I am a joker.

In your arms I am everything in between.

In your arms I am lovely.

In your arms I am cruel.

In your arms there is the comfort of the well-known.

In your arms there is the excitement of something new.

In your arms I am yours.

In your arms you are mine.

COME BACK GUYS!

The dark is deeper, the cold more final, and the wind on the roof is louder when you're alone in the house.

Come back soon, I miss you.



I couldn't sleep last night with all the words in my head, so even though I'm technically on a sort of hiatus, I'll share last night's ramblings with you.  Also, if any of you are on Google Plus, there's now a button on my profile that lets you follow me.  I think.  I'm still not so good with all of this technology hubbub.

Time-travelling Tuesday

A few more monsters from old notebooks...

 

The Worst in the World.

     I don’t think I ever told you what it meant, the eyes across the half-lit room.  Not what you thought, not what I let it mean.  For I am the worst in the world.

     Names exchanged and trust hard-won, and a joy in madness’ grasp.  You pinned me down, held me up, taught me the art of a bewildered smile. This must be what it is, this must be what fables tell of, and “forever” was fleetingly there.  But somehow, no matter what expertise you employed, I remained stoic, in control of what I was.  You were not what I needed to fly free.  For I am the worst in the world.

     Plans were made, and new bonds formed.  I was in a new state with you, revolving in your spheres and tethered to your orbit.  I forgot what I wanted and I focused on what you needed and that seemed to be a bright, brilliant purpose.  But once someone else cast a shadow over the house I had built, I saw the cracks in the funhouse mirror, the flickering of the lightbulb, and I realised with a crash and a stab and an oh god no that I wasn’t actually as happy as I had assumed myself to be.

So I spoke the words.

Silence.

One breath, two.

And then you cried.

I had bought a giant to his knees.

For I am the worst in the world.

Want.

I just remembered that this exists...and now I want a  fancy loopy thingummy (and someone to operate while I play)  so that I can play Joanna Newsom covers on my viola too...   

(On which note, I also just found out that Newsom and Andy Samberg are a thing...mind = blown. In a good way)

Curse you procrastination!

Time-Travelling Thursday

So, I thought I might share some of the things that I've produced over the years, since I'm pretty busy at the moment and whatever inspiration I'm having isn't being given much time to grow.  I've done a lot of doodles in various notebooks, many of a kind of imagined grotesque, many of an interpretation of real animals/people.  

Here are some that I scanned in the other day.   I was about 14 or 15 when I drew them.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Heya folks - hope y'all have had a good day celebrating your lovers/friends/freedom!  I thought I'd take the occasion to share some cutesy goodness with you. 

Just in case anyone hasn't seen it yet - Disney made a short (Paperman) to show a new technique of merging computer animation and traditional drawing.  It really is awfully adorable.  Unfortunately, Disney have taken down most links for it, so I can't share its wonderfulness with you - I suggest you search for it on YouTube at a later date.  A lot of people have commented on its similarity to Signs, which is also lovely, why not watch wish you were an office worker just waiting for romance to unfold...

Here's a few miscellaneous comics and similar....
ONIONS!
Pass it on...
<3  Internet!
Another cute office whatsit
Doctor Whoooo
Nom
...ninjas...
Game of Thrones
T-rex!  (while we're on the subject - check out T-Rex Trying!)
Dalek
Aaaaand for those of you feeling in need of instruction......

I hope you enjoy, and  I'll do some proper updates soon!

Sunset in amber

This light is like honey.

     I'm lying on the 10 year old bed, the covers that I've never seen different, but each year smell of the same faint washing powder.  I remember these curtains too.  I drew them once, tried to capture their dear twee honeysuckle pattern.  Felt-tip and black marker was too harsh a representation of these twirling fragile flowers.

     Through the net curtain, the stones of the wall and the bark of the tree are gilded in the same leaf against the sapphire of the evening sky.  A wry smile darts across my lips at the thought of a falling down stack of dry stone and an old man tree made precious by turn of phrase and the setting sun.

     I take out my headphones.  Listen.

     I can hear a lazy dusk chorus getting into swing.  Nature, the cruel gentle mother, knows it’s soon time for dark.

     I've written about this enough times before.  My favourite time of day.  Everything old, everything new.  Day to night, light to dark, when the familiar forms and shapes around are made scary and wild, dynamic and thrilling.  I want to go outside, feel the warmth on my skin and the chills down my spine, that inexplicable anticipation at the day’s turn. 

     But I don’t.  I stay inside like a good girl, secure, with my senses dulled by these four walls around me.  Why?

     I don’t truly know.  It’s not for lack of a companion – this time is best alone, or with that rare good friend who knows not to talk.  I think maybe I've grown complacent.  In a world where the greatest wonders are seen on screen, I have grown content to be a passenger, just another member of a captive audience, rather than risk playing a part.

      So I gaze out the window, and wish that this amber light could keep me trapped just a little while longer.

There is awesome in the world...

Jellyfish that can live forever?  This seems pretty damn excellent!

An Open Letter to Changed Friends

This is to all the friends that I still love, just not quite in the same way anymore:

     I’ll still speak to you in endearments, ask about your day.  You’ll still be on my mind when I'm making arrangements.  I’ll still text or call whenever something important happens.  But now, there’s that sense of duty, you’re not natural to me anymore.

     When we first met, I wasn't quite comfortable with you at first, but then I never am with people that are new to me.  We got to know each other, and then came to a consensus that we enjoyed each other’s company.  Our personalities complemented each other and so we were friends.  Your opinions were always stronger than mine, but they were still along the same lines.  We planned a holiday together, even though it didn't quite happen. It was fun.

     Then something changed.  Was it the change in circumstance; was it something that one of us did?  Was it the new people you met, or the trouble I was having in my own life?  Either way, we’re not quite in synchrony any more.  It’s like one of us has changed time signatures without telling the other and we can’t work out how to get back to the same place.  The things you say are no longer such that I agree with you unthinking, and reciprocally it seems as though you feel a lot of  confusion at what spills from my mouth, and much though I feel I want to engage with you, I don’t think we’re on the same page anymore.  I start avoiding you without even realising, while I look forwards to seeing other friends, with you it feels a little like a chore. 

     I still want to be nice to you, so we don’t talk about the fact that one of us has changed.  I don’t know if you've noticed it too, if to you everything’s fine, or if you, like me, don’t want to admit that it’s happened.  Are we both just pretending for the sake of old times?  Is that a good thing?  Should we be being more frank?

I don’t know, so I just keep on acting the same, and I hope that’s alright by you.

Snow (epilogue)

     Then, after the novelty has worn off, after the weather starts to change, after councils get their act together and put down grit, colour starts to be seen again.  A thaw seeps into your bones.   You remember just how bright is the green of the trees, how warm the naked winter dirt.

     And there’s a smile on your face as a familiar, calm, drizzle washes the weird magic of the snow away.

The Existential Crisis of Alternative Culture

(Credit goes to a good friend for telling me I should write this)

     We all know what is meant by the term “hipster”. Someone who dresses in “retro” clothes, listens to music that you wouldn’t have heard of, and whose greatest ambition is to have a cult following for their music/art/poetry – but to still end up starving in a garret anyway.   Someone who is dissatisfied with popular culture, the much reviled “mainstream” and by way of protest affiliates themselves as exclusively as possible with alternative culture.  Someone who seems deliberately aloof, obscure, inaccessible.

     We all know what is meant by the term because alternative culture has become such a universal phenomenon.   Hipsters are becoming an accepted, numerous breed of subculture to be spotted regularly on the high street.  And here is where today’s reflections lie.  Since alternative culture has become so trendy, so common, so...mainstream – what does this mean for its future?

     In metamorphosing into the very thing that it opposes, what has alternative culture become?  With high street shops stocking hipster trends of only a year or two ago, will alternative culture, with its retrospective trailblazing, be caught up by its less cool, popular sister?  Will hipsters be able to cope when the point comes that every new old thing that they find to champion is snatched away and shoved into the limelight that is the mainstream media?

      My predictions are twofold.  They might both occur, or maybe neither of them will, but then they’re just ideas.

Prediction 1:  A shiny new subculture will emerge

     Once alternative culture is well and truly established as one of the predominant influences over music, art and fashion, something else will come along to counter it.   In the same way that the last few decades have seen mods, rockers, hippies, punks, goths, emokids, indie kids and more, something else, something new and its own will come about.  An alternative to the alternative if you will.  Perhaps it’ll be an evolution of something already around, steampunk, Gothic Lolita or somesuch.   Perhaps they’ll be ironically futuristic, or have a carefully crafted “normal” persona, an antithesis to the obsession with non-conformism.

Prediction 2:  The “true” hipsters will rise again.

      Despite alternative culture being ever increasingly popularised, the very fact that it has lost sight of its original “different” identity might just be its saving grace.  Even with all the bandwagon-jumpers that have vintage-style jeans bought at Topshop and a mix-tape with Pitchfork’s favourite bands, there are still those select few who genuinely trawl through charity shops, vintage shops and eBay looking for the particular model of that one shirt.  There are those who truly feel at their most comfortable in clothes that remind them of times gone by, that can’t stand what music is now in the charts, so revel in what it is that they can find by word of mouth or  at underground gigs, that they relate to and get involved with.  There are those who are themselves creating and reinventing alternative culture with their music and art and fashion and poetry.

 It is the ones who originated it in the first place who are the ones who will help hipsterism maintain its non-conformist identity, by being immune to the conventional media’s influence and turning a blind eye to whatever it is they are being told is cool, because to them, it doesn’t matter .  It is they who will keep a stronghold of true alternative culture until the mainstream populous moves onto its next craze.

      Whether or not alternative culture is in immediate danger of breakdown, it cannot keep this momentum up too much longer.   Sooner or later, either the indifferent masses will find a new target, or what we now know as alternative culture will undergo fission, imploding under its own popularity. But what new creatures will step out from the mist to take its place?

In the interests of sharing what is good in the world...

A friend showed these to me today.  I am in awe.

Anis Mojgani : For Those Who Can Still Ride An Airplane For The First Time

                      Shake The Dust

                       

Sarah Kay :     If I Should Have A Daughter

Snow (secret time)

Something a little more light-hearted today...

     Living in Wales, today, it snowed.  Usually, this would mean a sprinkle that doesn't last, like icing sugar melting into a cake, but today it has stayed, a solid layer on the ground.  The forecast is for more and more, exams have been cancelled, and for just a little time (until we remember that we've had snow before) the world is in awe.

     Last night, staying up with my housemates, the anticipation had already set in.  Every few minutes we’d twitch the curtain in order to confirm that it hadn't quite yet started.  BBC Weather was checked regularly, it told us again and again that yes, it would snow, yes, it would be most intense here.

     And then this morning, there was that vast silence.  More than just our house not having woken up; it was as though the whole street had rolled over to see white quilts thrown everything outside, and was just sitting at the window, yawning, blinking, marvelling at the metamorphosis.  I spent longer in bed than usual, then ventured downstairs to see if anyone else was around, the intrepid explorer off to find the inhabitants of the strange new land I’d woken up in.  On a normal morning, my housemates and I would have been at the stage of getting up, firing our engines to get on with the day.  But today, perhaps due to a hangover from childhood when snow meant no school meant no obligations meant time for fun, there was something different in the air.

     Downstairs I found one of my housemates.   We talked about the snow, excited like small children even though we knew there wasn't that much reason to be.  And then, as they heard our voices, the others crept out of their rooms, emerging from their warm caves to revel with us in the newness of the world outside.  We chatted and laughed about nothing of huge consequence, all a little jumpy, ready to smile, looking forwards to what could happen later on, as though we were at a station or an airport about to leave on a holiday together.

     A good friend has an excellent simile for that feeling.  She says it’s like the secret time early in the morning, before the day is really happening, when everything is quiet and everything is new and nothing has quite happened yet that gives a clue of how the day is going to go.  It’s the same feeling as when you and someone else are the first to show up to a big event, a feeling that is best experienced with someone else.  It’s a fragile one though, and this morning, as soon as someone decided that they were going to go and do some work, to get on with the day, it went, ebbing away and stranding us in the real world.

     And so I've come back to my room, to clutch at the last tendrils of the secret time, before I accept real life again.

There's a coldness in this room.

There’s a coldness in this room.

     Not an uncomfortable one, not yet.  Enough to keep me awake, alert, not quite enough to reach for a blanket, another jumper.  I can feel my hair half on end as my body figures out what to do, the appropriate measure of response.  I’ve never been good at controlling my temperature.  I seem to be naturally a couple of degrees colder than I should be.

     Friends, lovers have played on this.  Pulling me closer to “give” me their heat.  Telling me I had “cold hands, warm heart” as though human beings can only maintain either physical or emotional warmth, not both. 

     Why is that?  Where did the concept of a “warm personality” come from?  Is it because of how we feel when some people are around, the coddled and cosy feeling somewhere in the chest, of our brains and bodies saying “we like this person, you’re safe around them”.  As if any instinct can truly make that judgement.  My current state of cynicism has left me in doubt of what any instinct tells me to do.   Since I alternate between wanting to be an absolute recluse, and wishing I could burn up, tear everything apart, that’s probably a good thing.

     Much though I spend plenty of time moaning to my friends about the inanity of social norms, without such norms, such friends would not stoop to be mine.  My self-abusing, humble, cutesy, naïve, overtired, sideways, loathsome nature is a carefully crafted compromise between what I know, what I want to be known and what must never, never be known about myself.  I moon over people, thinking “they would want me, if only they knew me” when in reality, they know all that they would need.

     Then there are those who know me too well, those who know, knew, a different me to the current version I’m selling.

     He was one of those.  His knowledge of me was based on himself, so was bound to go sour.   Now, he knows himself through me, which I can’t take, I can’t stand, why can’t he just leave me be?  Whenever I see him, I punish myself, for failing him, failing us, failing my dream.  Why couldn’t I keep my head, stay on task?

     And then.

     Was he always this melodramatic?  I must have enjoyed it, back then.  Now, it grates.  Did he always have such narrow-minded views?  I must have justified it, made it my mission to open him, back then.  Was everything always to do with him?  I must have ignored it, revelled in it, fed the fire when I danced around him, back then.  Worshipping him, loving him, wanting him, ever ignored until it was too late.

     Now I am different, I am new. More mature, or less, or just revolving in another sphere.  And yet he still fetters me to the corpse of what I was, with his actions, his words, the very memory I have of him.

     There’s a coldness in this room.