Ruins

I once heard it said you grow up the day you realise you wont live forever. I don't know why this is something we aim for. The growing up. But the realisation of our own mortality can surely only be a good thing. It motivates.


I am a nomad. I like the sea. I like places, and I want to see as many of them as I can before I am faced with my sell-by-date. Although what you see in these places is the same; it's people and their home, and the symbols that embody them. It's the feel of it you go for.

I especially like ancient civilisations, and I shall start with the feeling of them. There is a lot of comfort in standing next to ruins of unfathomable genius; people understood their world and left a mark on it. They became great. They fell. They made a circle, and though there is an innate feeling about our civilisation that it wont follow their example, we are just continuing what they started. They tell us endings are fine; they have loads of them. But never an end.

In a few days I am venturing to Cairo with Mr. Blue. I have always wanted to go, for as long as I can remember. And not just because a psychic once said I was an Egyptian Queen reincarnate, with an old soul and a thousand lines on each palm to tell my stories. I have always wanted to go because it was truly the greatest of societies, well the Old Kingdom anyway. You have to respect their ability to wow a world where people have learned to fly and make machines to build wonders for them, c. 2000 years after their decline.


Knowledge is an amazing thing. It's also slightly addictive; the more of it you have the more you are made aware of how little you really own. I always found it strange that we need to pick up newspapers and know the details of tragedies that happened when there is nothing we could possibly do to help.

I happen to really like knowing things, even though most of the time I get what I know wrong or forget it again, or am confronted with the question whether it is ever truly possible to know anything at all, and if so how. With all the sceptics and the hard determinists. Between them there really is nothing left apart from standing next to something ancient and great, to touch it and be close to the million others who were there and came before without knowing. Without any controlled choice about your having come there or leaving; but just a feeling about it all. Maybe that should be all we take from experiences and knowledge. From every film we see and every book we read, and every person, and place and day.

In the end we are all just explorers though, with our helmets on and our fixed opinions and changing minds. Discovering everything, for the last time, for ourselves.

Fairy wings to SAVE THE WHALES

I forgot that I had signed up for a parachute jump to save the whales. Actually, that is a lie BUT I thought I'd clicked exit before I sent the request. I wanted to think on it some. But they have already written to me in an email full of exclamation marks and gratitude. So it looks like it shall be done.

To begin with my flying endeavors to help those most noble of animaals, after a beautiful bbq (served up in the backyard on an ironing board) and lemsips; friends and me doused ourselves in glitter, gowns, ties, feathers and fairy wings. They are a flying tool. We spontaneously planned to go on a drive around London at 1am, taking pictures with every London landmark as we went. We did so.

We beeped at strangers and shouted and thrust our feathers out of Bigglesworth and tried to make him fly too. We saw Big Ben chime. We got chased away by a guard woman from Buckingham Palace, whom we told we loved. We got told people are trying to mine gold on the moon by a father, because our world is lost now. I trampled my slippers raw around Piccadilly screaming "Happy Christmas and SAVE THE WHALES!" and my friend, Red (I shall name them all in their own colours henceforth) collected kisses from strangers as if they were tokens of their affection. We even got followed by an MI5 camera outside the MI5 building when we tried to get to the Thames in the dark.



We lost almost all the pictures we took on that trip due to technological malfunctions. Above is one that remained. I think that made me a lot unhappier than it should have done.
I am a hypocrite.


Friday we went to Lightbox. It's an amazing club! It's completely full of little lights and they shine in all different colours in time with the music. I saw a lot of people there I would not have expected to, like Harry Windsor and other Eton type snobs. We had a close encounter with one by the cloakroom. We were told of his rank and how many "in line" he is to the throne and how much money he has, told how lucky we would be if only we could screw his arrogant feeble-minded self. Red replied "we live in a meritocracy nowadays, mate". Apparently the cited reasons should be enough to make women want to roll in the hay with any unfortunate-looking fortunate. Money and rank And they say feminism isn't relevant anymore. De Bauvoir turns in her grave.


Sometimes being in clubs is a depressing thing, even if you go with your best friends. Even if they are Red, Green and Blue. Everything is loud and dark. You are cutting off most of your senses and alter the ones that survive. And really you go there for the people. I saw a few very old people in the club too, all alone. An elderly lady, with wrinkles carved into herself and smoothed over with powder and makeup. She held a bottle of water. Responsibility in a sea of kids all needing to grow up and grow old, grow disheartened. Those places are full of them. Kids wanting to make a choice, make themselves pretty, make themselves valuable. Make a move. Build futures and build trust.Find eachother, and dreams, and forget them again.
Dry their eyes and disappointments and give out their numbers and ask "are you having a good time?".

And they all dance in that loud darkness with all the little lights, doing shots and hoping. Being templates and wanting everything they haven't had yet. Thinking they can find it all in Vauxhall on a Friday night.

On the predatorial nature of the Sun

Apparently only bores tell people their dreams. Jean-Dominique Bauby said that. I agree with him. Though I thought the film " The Divingbell and the Butterfly" which tells his story based on his book, (dictated by blinking the letters!!) was vaguely lacking. I would like to have been more touched by it. Still worth watching.

Yesternight was particularly nightmareventful, so I awoke feeling dazed and like I had not slept at all. I dreamt of people burning, and underground crypts where a witch was trying to throw every evil up her cloak sleeve at me. Smiling serpents, and dying loves.

Anyway, finally awake at 2 in the afternoon, there was sunshine everywhere! Baldyknees had cleaned up the kitchen and his room so all was pretty light on the journey from his bed and I made myself some Coco Pops and enjoyed them in our back yard. He put the music on really loud, with songs that I was most interested in hearing. But the crunch of the cereal in my ears kind of made it hard to do so from where I was standing outside and away from the speakers; but I refused to give any of the two activities up. Either the eating or the listening. So both of them were considerably less enjoyable. There's a moral in that I'd wager.

I danced a lot in the back yard with my pyjamas on. All the neighbours could probably see me out from their window, but it made sense. The sun is like snow, it changes everything. They are oppositely the same. I can't think of many things that I would rather do than frolic in either.

I have been snuffeling this new google streets map thing for London. I found my very own window, and I could even see into it a little! Now I know where I can find me.

But where to find anything else? I looked it up, see:

LOVE: yes this is apparently where love is in london
HAPPINESS: and this what happiness looks like
TEARS: and where the tears live.

The Place is Alone

Sylvia said: I talk to God, but the sky is empty.


I think it's an unfair thing to say. Maybe she should not have looked for people to talk to in the sky, but rather focused her verbal endeavors on something closer to her home. Maybe she should just have talked to herself a little more. Actually, I do not doubt that she did that one bit. Selves give the best answers, and most of the time they know better about what you really want to say than your words do. No one else hears you like you do.
I rarely think about the things I say. Not even when I say them to myself.

A blog is a funny thing. You are trying to talk to people you don't know and the only one whose reaction you know and can understand and need to know and understand are yours, because you sit alone while you write your things. But still you are trying to shake their hand, say your name and your age and your interests and want to make them listen.
We talk to the internet, but God is empty.

I got given a leaflet today advertising God like a takeaway, and his love and so on. They said that he loves us more than anything. They quoted a bit from the bible: "where there is love God dwelleth". I don't know much about other people's God or Gods and their conception of things holy and comforting that demand absolute conviction and belief. To be honest I would rather never talk about them and be coherent about opinions and arguments, though to say God lives in our love kind of belittles both concepts.

I have terrible nightmares. All the time. I see things that I've never seen awake, and hopefully never will. I see things that terrify me and they leave those feelings lingering, to follow me through the day. They dictate the pace and the views and the worries of it.
The minutes after I wake up are always the worst because I remember everything exactly and the feelings are strongest, stretched so far over me that I see nothing else. Though the things that have caused me them are all gone. In those minutes I am capable of believing anything.
I would never mock anyone for believing anything ridiculous. Not even that man who says the Queen and other world leaders are secretly lizards dressed up. You don't need reasonable reasons for believing things, you just need a gut feeling and a mind that likes to read too much into nothing. Belief is probably the best self preservation tool we have.

I left the God-leaflet in the 176 bus. Maybe it'll tell someone more than it told me.