The Pictures On the Wall

I like them there. I do not often like to see things in front of me, that throw reminders at me. But the pictures I put on the walls to see, out of choice or obligation, are the links in my chain and they keep me tethered down, lest I should fly off like a balloon and forget my places.

I say places, there never really was just one to call my place. There are so many people and pictures and houses and memories, and feelings I ought to feel for all of them; but mostly I do not, and I kind of like it that way. I am ungrateful and often I am unhappy. I have a lot of faces and I jump into every open arm and rock myself to sleep with anyone who'll have me, provided they promise me everything will be alright. And what's funny is that I HATE alrights.

I haven't written any poems in a while; although yesterday would have been perfect for it. I threw up terribly next to a bus stop in York, under the most perfect night-sky I have seen in a while. The clouds folded themselves over the moon like a protective blanket; as if it was his night off but he couldn't quite give up the responsibility and kept peeking through them to see if they were doing everything right. The guarding the dark. If I were the moon I would also loathe to abandon my post.

So, being up in the Yorkshire countryside, visiting "family"; breaking damns and making myself angry; losing at trivial pursuit; being reminded of being 15. That is one of my places. I have at least 4 pictures on my wall that make that place.
There is Switzerland, and there is also here. There are a lot of people who are very important and they live in these places and make them. I change what I want from them all the time, and I change what I want from myself. What I want to want. Second-order volitions make me a wanton; the strongest of them make me go with the options that will make me want to be what I want to be at that moment. It keeps changing.

I am a rainy day girl. I am someone who often just doesn't care. I am someone who is so deeply selfish but who would pack up all of my house of cards, move it on just to save something. I am one awful contradiction.

Why do we put pictures up? Why is the camera one of the greatest things ever invented? It is, but I want to know why. We get many moments and people and places, I am not alone in struggling to put all of that in order. But I think cameras make us greedy, they make us lazy. They make us able to keep our lives on a wall and lock it in a frame; make us exhibit everything we've already had and the people we've known and places we've been.

As if that's enough for a life. As is next time we change our minds about everything and everyone, and about us we'll really rip them down, learn our lesson and start again with our collection. As if our photo album of feelings is really ours for the collecting.

Waltz With the Monsters

There were protests in the city today.

People gathered to save their earth. They all came together to write witty signs, and dance and make promises to each other and everyone watching. I was curious to see it all. I don't think it was entirely what it should have been. People took out their iphones and took pictures of the revolution, to make their own news. April fools. Everything seemed to be waiting when I got there, and I read the word war too many times. The only person who tried to cover it up was Yellow. He was ashamed of that red tape with "Capitalism means war" on it. He said it's fine; everyone's a hypocrite, because everyone has to eat and work.

Our needs make us equal and they betray our causes.
Just like with the anarchists, who try to give back the laws they say they are not their own. But a society is not something you can join like a club. It's something you are forced into by truncheons and shields. I never felt more part of mine than today.


I had a nightmare a few weeks ago about being trapped on a bridge with thousands of anxious protesting faces all around me, but I didn't know any of them. Then out of nowhere disease descended upon the crowd. We were sent plagues and diseases instead of bullets to put us down and keep us down. I was petrified in my dream, just as I was today when the riot police came out of their walls and orders and trapped everyone in "their" street. This is called catteling, and they didn't care whether you were a hypocrite or someone who liked to throw stones from far behind the front lines for what you believe in, or whether you believed in anything at all. Every single one of them seemed angry, and their faces were set in the war that read on every sign and sticker. I think I would have liked myself to be braver and not have found gap in the wall to scarper through like a rat. Maybe one day I'll go back with the right kind of clothes and the right kind of attitude and really be a change in something. But getting that last part right just seems too difficult.

And it's funny how a self protecting mechanism caused me this cowardice; it's not a mechanism that usually works with me. But there's something in being reminded of my nightmares in broad daylight and being frightened of things I didn't even know existed for me until today. It made me feel really young; it made me feel really normal.

There are many things that are going wrong for me. I seem to tide myself over on my blackboard in white chalk, and I have my hand hovering over too much these days, ready to wipe it all off. I retract, and regroup. I make the riots, and I chant "new start, new me" at myself in the street, but I'm still missing the attitude. I deliberately refuse to know myself better and teach myself better. It makes me worry about everything all the time.

There are the exams, and a looming future, friends and families and and the fact that I kind of like to start in the middle and end at the beginning of everything. To be honest, I think I just prefer seeing life from over my shoulder.