We Steal That Smile From Your Face
Bit on edge today. My Dad is having blood tests to see if they can work out what is going on for him. I'm not going to go into details on what is wrong - that's his stuff to tell the world about in his own way. People who read this who know me will have a fair idea what I'm referring to anyway.
Naturally I'm scared of what they might find. Conversely though, I'm scared of what they don't find too. If they don't find something then what's making him ill? How can they make it better if they don't know what it is in the first place?
I'm trying to not fixate too much on the fact that my Grandad had stomach cancer and died...
Naturally I'm scared of what they might find. Conversely though, I'm scared of what they don't find too. If they don't find something then what's making him ill? How can they make it better if they don't know what it is in the first place?
I'm trying to not fixate too much on the fact that my Grandad had stomach cancer and died...
Scream To A Sigh
Pictures of Manic Street Preachers (honest) at Southampton Guildhall 19 October 2010
Reading Meme
Do you snack while reading? > I generally don't when I'm reading, I don't like to get my books mucky! A cuppa or a squash are usually near by though.
What is your favourite drink while reading? > See previous question!
Do you tend to mark your books while you read, or does the idea of writing in books horrify you? > I write and highlight all the time in text books. In novels or poetry books etc., then I usually copy out things that capture me into a gorgeous book of handmade paper that's full of quotes and things.
How do you keep your place? Bookmark? Dog-ears? Laying the book open flat? > Book marks usually, or the sleeve flap bit if they're hard back books (which I generally don't like reading).
Fiction, non-fiction or both? > Both. I usually have at least one fiction book, one non-fiction (usually a history book) and several counselling text books on the go at the same time. And, having rediscovered my passion for poetry recently, I have a book of poetry on the go too.
Do you tend to read to the end of a chapter or can you stop anywhere? > I prefer to read to the end of a chapter, but if I can't then it's to a paragraph break or end of a page.
Are you the type of person to throw a book across the room or on the floor if the author irritates you? > Nope, if I'm more than a chapter into it then I make myself persevere. I generally feel like I owe it to the author to see where they're going with the storyline.
If you come across an unfamiliar word, do you stop and look it up right away? > It's usually pretty easy to figure it out in a fiction book I think. In text books and it's jargon then I'll look it up.
What are you currently reading? > Fiction: Jump! by Jilly Cooper (totally not ashamed of being a complete Jilly Cooper addict), Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris and Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami. Poetry: The Blue Book by Owen Sheers. Non-fiction: Handbook Of Counselling In Organizations by Michael Carroll and Michael Walton, and Auschwitz by Laurence Rees (still! It's fantastic, but obviously pretty bleak reading, so I dip in and out of it).
What is the last book you bought? > I bought 4 at Cheltenham Literature Festival - Nigella Christmas (so I can make Christmas presents), The Blue Book by Owen Sheers, One Day by David Nicholls and White Ravens by Owen Sheers.
Do you have a favourite time/place to read? ? Curled up on the sofa when it's teeming down with rain outside. I love reading on the weekend when I don't have uni work to do as it's a guilt free pleasure then.
Do you prefer series books or stand-alones? > Either. Really depends on the stories and the authors.
Is there a specific book or author you find yourself recommending over and over? > I don't think there's many people I didn't recommend The Timetravellers Wife to. Books like To Kill A Mockingbird, The Bell Jar, The Great Gatsby and Catcher In The Rye are predictable classics, but I love them all, so would recommend them to anyone. Generally speaking though, I don't like recommending books because it's so much about personal tastes.
How do you organize your books (by genre, title, author’s last name, etc.)? > Broadly speaking, they're ordered by what they are - cookery books are together, as are history, counselling, poetry etc. Then if I have more than one book from an author, then they're together. Other than that, I have a couple of shelves that where books are put together purely because they're the same height! I'm nothing like as anal about my books as I am about my CD's.
What is your favourite drink while reading? > See previous question!
Do you tend to mark your books while you read, or does the idea of writing in books horrify you? > I write and highlight all the time in text books. In novels or poetry books etc., then I usually copy out things that capture me into a gorgeous book of handmade paper that's full of quotes and things.
How do you keep your place? Bookmark? Dog-ears? Laying the book open flat? > Book marks usually, or the sleeve flap bit if they're hard back books (which I generally don't like reading).
Fiction, non-fiction or both? > Both. I usually have at least one fiction book, one non-fiction (usually a history book) and several counselling text books on the go at the same time. And, having rediscovered my passion for poetry recently, I have a book of poetry on the go too.
Do you tend to read to the end of a chapter or can you stop anywhere? > I prefer to read to the end of a chapter, but if I can't then it's to a paragraph break or end of a page.
Are you the type of person to throw a book across the room or on the floor if the author irritates you? > Nope, if I'm more than a chapter into it then I make myself persevere. I generally feel like I owe it to the author to see where they're going with the storyline.
If you come across an unfamiliar word, do you stop and look it up right away? > It's usually pretty easy to figure it out in a fiction book I think. In text books and it's jargon then I'll look it up.
What are you currently reading? > Fiction: Jump! by Jilly Cooper (totally not ashamed of being a complete Jilly Cooper addict), Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris and Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami. Poetry: The Blue Book by Owen Sheers. Non-fiction: Handbook Of Counselling In Organizations by Michael Carroll and Michael Walton, and Auschwitz by Laurence Rees (still! It's fantastic, but obviously pretty bleak reading, so I dip in and out of it).
What is the last book you bought? > I bought 4 at Cheltenham Literature Festival - Nigella Christmas (so I can make Christmas presents), The Blue Book by Owen Sheers, One Day by David Nicholls and White Ravens by Owen Sheers.
Do you have a favourite time/place to read? ? Curled up on the sofa when it's teeming down with rain outside. I love reading on the weekend when I don't have uni work to do as it's a guilt free pleasure then.
Do you prefer series books or stand-alones? > Either. Really depends on the stories and the authors.
Is there a specific book or author you find yourself recommending over and over? > I don't think there's many people I didn't recommend The Timetravellers Wife to. Books like To Kill A Mockingbird, The Bell Jar, The Great Gatsby and Catcher In The Rye are predictable classics, but I love them all, so would recommend them to anyone. Generally speaking though, I don't like recommending books because it's so much about personal tastes.
How do you organize your books (by genre, title, author’s last name, etc.)? > Broadly speaking, they're ordered by what they are - cookery books are together, as are history, counselling, poetry etc. Then if I have more than one book from an author, then they're together. Other than that, I have a couple of shelves that where books are put together purely because they're the same height! I'm nothing like as anal about my books as I am about my CD's.
"Missing Jack was one more feeling that implanted itself into the general fabric of Tully's kingsize quilt of pain; her mosaic, her handmade patchwork. Her stained glass soul hurt in every one of its intricate pieces, and she couldn't give adequate vent to any of its particulars."
Tully
Paulina Simons
Tully
Paulina Simons
Might As Well Jump, Jump!
http://jumpinginartmuseums.blogspot.com/
This blog is quirky, and weird and ultimately pretty cool!
This blog is quirky, and weird and ultimately pretty cool!
Feelin Like A Freak On A Leash, Feelin Like I Have No Release
MOSHPIT - Dan Witz
http://24flinching.com/word/headline/moshpit-dan-witz/
Mosh Pit's are curious things, when you're in the middle of one it's like there's a collective conscious, the pit takes on a life of it's own with a strange symbiosis of polarities - everyone fighting and pushing against one another yet connecting and in sync at the same time. The person next to you is as likely to knock you down as pick you up and keep you safe.
This is just one of a series of pictures by Dan Witz that for me capture the very essence of the Mosh Pit. Looking at the expressions of the faces, the angles and twists of the bodies you can read the story of the pit; you can almost feel the music pulsating through each and every one of them. And that's what it's ultimately about: the music. For the true MetalHead it's not about punching someone or ripping out some one's piercing or giving yourself concussion from headbanging too severely, it's all about the music. It's about it overtaking you, feeling it pulse through your veins and your heart beating in time with the thumping bass. It's about feeling finally like you belong.
You have translated
pieces of my heart that I
have never understood.
Tyler Knott
betterthanfine.tumblr.com
![[TwitrPix Photo]](http://img.twitrpix.com/b50x)
Should I Stay Or Should I Go?
When I finished uni, I desperately wanted to stay in Cardiff. South Wales has always felt like home to me, it's where my heartbeat feels in sync with the wind in the trees and the hammers deep within the mines. I feel the dreams of ancestors long gone whispering in the wind, comforting me and reminding me I'm not alone.
Ostensibly though, what I long for when I dream of moving there is no longer there. The bungalow my Mum grew up in will soon be filled with the laughter and noise of another family, the only physical connections left in Pontnewydd now are the headstones and plaques marking the final resting places of grandparents, aunts, uncles and great-grandparents so much adored and so much missed. The parks I played in as a child, the canal we walked alongside, the shop that still bares the name my Great-great Grandparents gave it, the street named after them all still exist, but is that enough?
'No' is the answer, that's not enough. Moving somewhere in attempts to hang onto something I no longer have is a pointless use of a life. The three years I was in Cardiff were amongst the happiest in my life - that escape from the stifling suffocation of the village I grew up in was like a freedom I'd never experienced before. For the first time I began to understand who I was and forge an identity for myself based on who I understood myself to be. Cardiff meant I could breathe again. Despite it being many years since any family had lived in Cardiff and walked the streets of Cathays and Roath, I still felt a safety I so connect to that part of my heritage. I didn't need to be in Pontnewydd to feel like I belonged.
Fair Oak is my home, it's home because there's a familiarity about it, I know every inch of it and understand how it works. My parents are here, living in the house my sister and I grew up in. The flat I own and live in are here. Uni is near by, and my job just a bit further away. That's all here, but my heart isn't.
For me it's that age old battle between head and heart. The romantic in me wants my heart to take control, throw caution to the wind and discover happiness in all its wonderful colours and forms. This isn't one of those occasions where my heart wins though; at least not today. Today my job and uni and mortgage have won the battle.
Ostensibly though, what I long for when I dream of moving there is no longer there. The bungalow my Mum grew up in will soon be filled with the laughter and noise of another family, the only physical connections left in Pontnewydd now are the headstones and plaques marking the final resting places of grandparents, aunts, uncles and great-grandparents so much adored and so much missed. The parks I played in as a child, the canal we walked alongside, the shop that still bares the name my Great-great Grandparents gave it, the street named after them all still exist, but is that enough?
'No' is the answer, that's not enough. Moving somewhere in attempts to hang onto something I no longer have is a pointless use of a life. The three years I was in Cardiff were amongst the happiest in my life - that escape from the stifling suffocation of the village I grew up in was like a freedom I'd never experienced before. For the first time I began to understand who I was and forge an identity for myself based on who I understood myself to be. Cardiff meant I could breathe again. Despite it being many years since any family had lived in Cardiff and walked the streets of Cathays and Roath, I still felt a safety I so connect to that part of my heritage. I didn't need to be in Pontnewydd to feel like I belonged.
Fair Oak is my home, it's home because there's a familiarity about it, I know every inch of it and understand how it works. My parents are here, living in the house my sister and I grew up in. The flat I own and live in are here. Uni is near by, and my job just a bit further away. That's all here, but my heart isn't.
For me it's that age old battle between head and heart. The romantic in me wants my heart to take control, throw caution to the wind and discover happiness in all its wonderful colours and forms. This isn't one of those occasions where my heart wins though; at least not today. Today my job and uni and mortgage have won the battle.
Mametz Wood
This is a completely gorgeously written poem by Owen Sheers, with a short explanation first of the story behind it...
"I wrote this next poem, ‘Mametz Wood’, when I went to the Somme battlefield to make a short film about two Welsh writers who had fought at this place. The two writers were called David Jones and Wyn Griffith, and they wrote very very different accounts of this dreadful battle, but it was a strange battle because there seemed to be lots of poets present: it was also where Robert Graves was wounded; Siegfried Sassoon actually watched the battle, so it’s a battlefield of the Somme that appears again and again in memoirs of poets and actually in their poetry, and I really wrote this because while I was there they uncovered a shallow grave of twenty Allied soldiers who had been buried very very quickly but whoever had buried them had taken the time to actually link their arms, arm-in-arm, and when I saw a photograph of this grave I just knew that it was one of those images that had burned itself onto my mind and I knew that I would want to write about it eventually. As it happens I did, but the poem took a long time to surface very much in the same way that those elements of the battle are still surfacing through the fields eighty-five years later."
Mametz Wood
For years afterwards the farmers found them -
the wasted young, turning up under their plough blades
as they tended the land back into itself.
A chit of bone, the china plate of a shoulder blade,
the relic of a finger, the blown
and broken bird’s egg of a skull,
all mimicked now in flint, breaking blue in white
across this field where they were told to walk, not run,
towards the wood and its nesting machine guns.
And even now the earth stands sentinel,
reaching back into itself for reminders of what happened
like a wound working a foreign body to the surface of the skin,
This morning, twenty men buried in one long grave,
a broken mosaic of bone linked arm in arm,
their skeletons paused mid dance-macabre
in boots that outlasted them,
their socketed heads tilted back at an angle
and their jaws, those that have them, dropped open.
As if the notes they had sung
have only now, with this unearthing,
slipped from their absent tongues.
"I wrote this next poem, ‘Mametz Wood’, when I went to the Somme battlefield to make a short film about two Welsh writers who had fought at this place. The two writers were called David Jones and Wyn Griffith, and they wrote very very different accounts of this dreadful battle, but it was a strange battle because there seemed to be lots of poets present: it was also where Robert Graves was wounded; Siegfried Sassoon actually watched the battle, so it’s a battlefield of the Somme that appears again and again in memoirs of poets and actually in their poetry, and I really wrote this because while I was there they uncovered a shallow grave of twenty Allied soldiers who had been buried very very quickly but whoever had buried them had taken the time to actually link their arms, arm-in-arm, and when I saw a photograph of this grave I just knew that it was one of those images that had burned itself onto my mind and I knew that I would want to write about it eventually. As it happens I did, but the poem took a long time to surface very much in the same way that those elements of the battle are still surfacing through the fields eighty-five years later."
Mametz Wood
For years afterwards the farmers found them -
the wasted young, turning up under their plough blades
as they tended the land back into itself.
A chit of bone, the china plate of a shoulder blade,
the relic of a finger, the blown
and broken bird’s egg of a skull,
all mimicked now in flint, breaking blue in white
across this field where they were told to walk, not run,
towards the wood and its nesting machine guns.
And even now the earth stands sentinel,
reaching back into itself for reminders of what happened
like a wound working a foreign body to the surface of the skin,
This morning, twenty men buried in one long grave,
a broken mosaic of bone linked arm in arm,
their skeletons paused mid dance-macabre
in boots that outlasted them,
their socketed heads tilted back at an angle
and their jaws, those that have them, dropped open.
As if the notes they had sung
have only now, with this unearthing,
slipped from their absent tongues.
Who Am I? To Be Blind
I didn't write this quote, I read it on her0in-chic, but I love it - pretty much sums up everything I'd have written in a blog anyway...
And the worst thing is, you can’t tell. You can’t tell that the person beside you may be heart broken. You can’t tell if they are hurting all over. You can’t tell if they’re struggling to smile. You can’t if they just want to break down and cry. And the sad thing is; they wish you could tell.
And the worst thing is, you can’t tell. You can’t tell that the person beside you may be heart broken. You can’t tell if they are hurting all over. You can’t tell if they’re struggling to smile. You can’t if they just want to break down and cry. And the sad thing is; they wish you could tell.
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