I Haven’t Read A Magazine In Years

The first thing I notice, is the ads.

Then there’s a delightful article about how at 21 some young lady has just finished Uni with a ‘shiny new degree’ – reminding me that at 25, I’m at the age where people assume I’ve either been and finished Uni or I shan’t ever go.

Then I notice the prices, in small print, on the ads. £420 for one little jacket? A jacket that you probably wouldn’t get more than a few months wear out of.

The models wearing them are all tiny and not at all ‘real’ looking. I’m tiny myself so I sound a hypocrite when I say that people like ‘that’ don’t look ‘real’. But I still wish that these models had some meat on their bones.

Even the food ads are ‘fat free’.

Fashion. Beauty. Fashion. Beauty. Keep fit. Exercise.

Drink. Smoke. Have sex.

Dress ‘right’.

How to post a selfie.

Subscribe now.

Maybe I picked up the wrong kind, maybe I didn’t. Maybe they aren’t all the same. Maybe there are different boxes, rather than just one stereotypical box.
I haven’t picked up and read a magazine in years. I keep hearing how social media and society is bad on the youth of today. The models are too thin and so girls aspire to be that thin. The celebrities are airbrushed so youths feel pressure to be ‘perfect’. I see that. I just saw that within every page.
Maybe I picked up the wrong kind. Maybe I didn’t. Maybe I won’t mindlessly pick up a magazine and waste my money again.

This IS just my opinion. This is Just Me. 

Eat Pray Love

‘I took on depression like it was the fight of my life, which, of course, it was. I became a student of my own depressed experience, trying to unthread its causes. What was the root of all this despair? Was it psychological? (Mom and Dad’s fault?) Was it just temporal, a “bad time” in my life? (When divorce ends, will the depression end with it?) Was it genetic? (Melancholy, called by many names, has run through my family for generations, along with its sad bride, alcoholism.) Was it cultural? (Is this just the fallout of a post-feminist American career girl trying to find balance in an increasingly stressful and alienating urban world?) Was it astrological? (Am I so sad because I’m a thin-skinned Cancer whose major signs are all ruled by unstable Gemini?) Was it artistic? (Don’t creative people always suffer from depression because we’re so supersensitive and special?) Was it evolutionary? (Do I carry in me the residual panic that comes after millennia of my species’ attempting to survive a brutal world?) Was it karmic? (Are all these spasms of grief just the consequences of bad behaviour in previous lifetimes, the last obstacles before liberation?) Was it hormonal? Dietary? Philosophical? Seasonal? Environmental? Was I tapping into a universal yearning for God? Did I have a chemical imbalance? Or did I just need to get laid?’

–Elizabeth Gilbert

You’ve Got Mail

(http://imgur.com/lulhg)

“Sometimes I wonder about my life. I lead a small life – well, valuable, but small – and sometimes I wonder, do I do it because I like it, or because I haven’t been brave? So much of what I see reminds me of something I read in a book, when shouldn’t it be the other way around? I don’t really want an answer. I just want to send this cosmic question out into the void. So good night, dear void. ”

“Do you ever feel you’ve become the worst version of yourself? That a Pandora’s box of all the secret, hateful parts – your arrogance, your spite, your condescension – has sprung open? Someone upsets you and instead of smiling and moving on, you zing them.”

“The odd thing about this form of communication is that you’re more likely to talk about nothing than something. But I just want to say that all this nothing has meant more to me than so many somethings.”

 

Distance

“When I lost her, I had dreams. Dozens of dreams. I was home and she was there, or she wasn’t. Sometimes it was worse when she was there because I knew that it would never be real. It would never be okay. She would take my hand, she was cautious – like she knew that I was ready to bolt at any moment.”

“Why did you feel ready to bolt?”

“…It can’t be real. If I run, I can create distance.”

Looking Back

There’s a sense of deja vu as she drives by the abandoned garage that sits between the two neighbouring villages.
It feels like so long since she was last home, her need to leave had been overpowering. The road seems a lot shorter than she remembers it.
Taking a right turn she takes in all the familiar sights and wonders if it is possible that not one thing has changed.
The church sits as peacefully as it ever did. The school kids zoom by on bicycles as the college kids wait at the bus stop.
Driving down by her first home is a ‘must’. Maybe that is the only change in this place. Practically a whole new house.
Of all the buildings, houses and shops surrounding her and her old home is the only noticeable, unrecognisable change.
She drives by and views it through her rearview mirror before moving on towards her destination.

 

1618

1916: ‘They’ by Siegfried Sassoon.

The Bishop tells us: “When the boys come back
They will not be the same; for they’ll have fought
In a just cause: they lead the last attack
On Anti-Christ; their comrades’ blood has bought
New right to breed an honourable race,
They have challenged Death and dared him face to face.”

“We’re none of us the same!” the boys reply.
“For George lost both his legs; and Bill’s stone blind;
Poor Jim’s shot through the lungs and like to die;
And Burt’s gone syphilitic: you’ll not find
A chap who’s served that hasn’t found some change.”
And the Bishop said: “The ways of God are strange.”

1918: ‘Piano’ by D.H. Lawrence.

Softly, in the dusk, a woman is singing to me;
Taking me back down the vista of years, till I see
A child sitting under the piano, in the boom of the
tingling strings
And pressing the small, poised feet of a mother who smiles
as she sings.

In spite of myself, the insidious mastery of song
Betrays me back, till the heart of me weeps to belong
To the old Sunday evenings at home, with winter outside
And hymns in the cosy parlour, the tinkling piano our
guide.

So now it is vain for the singer to burst into clamour
With the great black piano appassionato. The glamour
Of childish days is upon me, my manhood is cast
Down in the flood of remembrance, I weep like a child
for the past.

Up Close and Personal

What if I liked living here?

Friend says, “There is nothing to photograph here.”
My mind says, “The voyage of discovery is not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.” – Marcel Proust.

There is no privacy here.

But this, right now feels so private. There is no one here but me. I feel so at peace in this moment.

Shortcut, this way.

Let us take the shortcut so that the memories do not climb into the pores of us. It is easier this way.

Trust.

Repair the broken, replace it and it becomes something completely new. Never again shall it be the same.

Walking.

Walking around looking for my next photograph instead of just looking. Take a breath. Take it in. The only people who seem to be out and about today are the dog walkers.

Reaching.

If you have the same thought often enough, you should listen to it. If “I do not want you in my life” is a daily thought, you should listen to yourself. *I should listen to myself* Reach out to the right people, not the wrong ones. Even if all you are surrounded by are ‘wrong ones’.

“Everything that makes you not perfect, makes you perfectly who you are.”

Poems To Take Home

Page 5. Matthew Arnold. “Below the surface-stream, shallow and light.”
Below the surface-stream, shallow and light,
Of what we say we feel – below the stream,
As light, of what we think we feel, there flows
With noiseless current strong, obscure and deep,
The central stream of what we feel indeed.

Page 36. Emily Dickinson. “Tell all the Truth but tell it slant.”
Tell all the Truth but tell it slant –
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth’s superb surprise

As Lightening to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind –

Page 84. George Gordon, Lord Byron. “When we two parted.”
When we two parted
In silence and tears,
Half broken-hearted,
To sever for years,
Pale grew thy cheek and cold,
Colder thy kiss;
Truly that hour foretold
Sorrow to this!

The dew of the morning
Sunk chill on my brow –
It felt like the warning
Of what I feel now.
Thy vows are all broken,
And light is thy fame;
I hear thy name spoken,
And share in its shame.

They name thee before me,
A knell to mine ear;
A shudder comes o’er me –
Why wert thou so dear?
They know not I knew thee,
Who knew thee too well: –
Long, long shall I rue thee,
Too deeply to tell.

In secret we met –
In silence I grieve,
That thy heart could forget,
Thy spirit deceive.
If I should meet thee
After long years,
How should I greet thee?
With silence and tears.

Page 121. Christina Rossetti. “Remember.”
Remember me when I am gone away
Gone far away into the silent land;
When you can no more hold me by the hand,
Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.
Remember me when no more day by day
You tell me of our future that you planned:
Only remember me; you understand
It will be late to counsel then or pray.
Yet if you should forget me for a while
And afterwards remember, do not grieve:
For if the darkness and corruption leave
A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,
Better by far you should forget and smile
Then that you should remember and be sad.

Page 49. Susan Coolidge. “New Every Morning.”
Every day is a fresh beginning,
Listen my soul to the glad refrain.
And, spite of old sorrows
And older sinning,
Troubles forecasted
And possible pain,
Take heart with the day and begin again.

 

That

Sometimes I look at films and think, “that”. That is what I want to capture. A moving image. The opening moment when the shot is out of focus and then slowly you begin to see what it is that is right in front of you.

A solid image that someone has captured, a moment in time – frozen. “Every picture is worth a thousand words.” I want to write those words. To experience the stories and know every detail.

To meet all the people of the world, all the cultures and all the landscapes.

 

Friendship

There is a moment afterwards when you realise that you have just scrolled through every picture. A hurtful moment during when you realise you do miss them. A sad moment straight after that one when you remember you don’t want them in your life for a reason. And hopefully, that final moment afterwards makes you feel strength. A strength that helps you to close the tab, to close the app, to put down the phone.

A realisation that the happy memories are from years ago and that the recent memories are tainted by being treated carelessly. A realisation that negative repetitive behaviour is not welcome in your life. That if you had been around different people you would have realised sooner how that is not how friendship is supposed to work.

Friendship is two people. People who both want to make an effort to stay in touch and support each other. It is give and take. Not just let me give while you take. I no longer want to give all of myself. I no longer want you to take the little pieces of me that I can never get back.