Adventuring

So it turns out that what I really needed was a day trip. I went to Oxford today - ostensibly for work, and feel so much better for it.

It wasn't really the Oxfordness of it, as much as it was the change and the inspiration.

I went to a craft shop and got some stuff I've been wanting for a while - a lino-cutting tool and some ink. I need to spend some real time on this to get the hang of different techniques, but I did a first bit of experimentation today:






I'm not convinced the ink is right, but it will do to get started with. I really love having a new craft to get buried in, I have quite a lot of ideas about what sort of thing I want to use this for, so I'm sure I'll have more pictures on this soon.

I also got what is probably the best ring in the history of the universe:

I thought about deleting all of this, but veracity prevailed

I read the entire of Wallflower last night, and this evening I went to see Inception. I think this may all be too much for someone who already has a lot of confusing things swirling round their head.

I have been left feeling like I am on the brink of figuring something out, while simultaneously knowing that the feeling is a sham and I that do not know anything at all.

I did realise one thing today...or rather, it crystallised in my mind even though I've understood it in some way for a while...all of my confusion and feelings of uncertainty boil down to my need to control everything....It's weird that I've known that for so long, but today I had a feeling that something in my brain went Eureka. I don't really understand the feeling, but I can trace a lot of it back to a good talk with the beautiful girl recently, who is the exact opposite and exact twin of me at the same time. She is my mirror, in every sense of the word.

I need to keep working this over, but I feel like something good came together in my mind and I can put it to use.


On a more clearly positive note, I looked in the mirror tonight and realised that in spite of everything, I almost always find myself to be beautiful. I wonder if everybody feels this way? I don't think I mean this in a conceited way, I am certainly very negative about other aspects of myself, but I want to really hold on to the good feeling of almost always being able to look at my face and find it beautiful.


Here is something, more real and external - all day in work I have been singing this. It is inappropriate, but I love it so much right now, almost as much as I actually love stationary and lists:




I wonder if I should be less honest on here?

And in that moment, I swear we were infinite

I have been sort of wanting to read The Perks of Being a Wallflower for quite a while, but I thought I'd left it too late to really appreciate it. However, the beautiful girl read it recently and I ordered it from Amazon on her recommendation. It arrived yesterday, which turned out to be just in time.
I got home today with this crushed and worried feeling built up inside me. It comes from lots of things, and it's been lingering for a while, but today while walking home from work the whole mess of it started to spill out and I felt kindof out of control.
I didn't really want to indulge the feeling (as it would have been so easy to do), and lose a whole evening to turning the same stressful issues over and over again in my mind. So I ran a bath and pulled out Wallflower to try and get carried away by it.
As the beautiful girl warned me, there are places where it seems a little tough to take and unbelievable. But honestly, it's wonderful. It takes me back so clearly to those feelings I'd forgotten of learning about life for the first time. I can actually feel the infinity Charlie writes about, I had let it get so distant from me and I hate that.
I hate that I'm so far away from the honesty he has. I remember being 16 and telling a boy that I liked him, even though I knew he didn't feel the same way, just because I thought it would be worth it to give him the good feeling of knowing that somebody thought of him that way.
I would never be so open these days. I feel like all I have is a jealously guarded handful of scrounged together happiness, and I'd fight to the death before I'd consider giving any of it away.
If I was 16 now and looking at my grown-up self I'd be so unhappy.

I think I've made too many compromises and protected myself too much. I think I want to find a way back from that, to feel a moment where I would swear that I was infinite.

Bat flight experiment

This is just an experiment to try making a jumpy animation of bat flight from some warping in photoshop. I like it for a starting point. It looks a lot better than I thought I'd be able to make it.

Cartoon me

More photoshop playing. I've not been up to much else today, just trying to figure things out and making a couple of pictures for people.

My first adventures in Photoshop

I'm trying to learn Photoshop, and a friend set me a challenge so I could have a purpose to my playing. He said I had to meet a President.

It's definitely not great from a realism perspective, but I still like it. I figured out a lot of tools while doing it, my next challenge is to find out how to blend the quality of images.

Photos

No new photographs for a while, how rubbish of me. Here are a couple from Easter, when we went for a walk in some woods...I do have pictures of the people I went with, but they didn't look as good as wood and fungus:






(hmmmm, quality ruined by the enlargement, meh.)

Sweet Blue Babies

Thank you so much to Max for this recommendation. I did get this edition as well, but mine has a different cover with lovely marbled paper. It arrived in the post today.

The language of it is wonderful - so clear and honest.

This paragraph stands out to me today from Consorting with Angels

I was tired of being a woman,
tired of the spoons and the pots,
tired of my mouth and my breasts,
tired of the cosmetics and the silks.
There were still men who sat at my table,
circled around the bowl I offered up.
The bowl was filled with purple grapes
and the flies hovered in for the scent
and even my father came in with his white bone.
But I was tired of the gender of things.

Success

No more house viewings necessary, I found a great place today, with a man who is going to be in the Olympics - which must be good.

To celebrate, here is another picture of me and my lovely brother, who is being kind enough to help me move. I think we're in Amsterdam here, a year or two ago. I am the one on the right, moving faster than the speed of light.



In other news...there is no other news. But here is a link to something someone reminded me of recently. It is truly wonderful, and must be seen to be believed.

Something Happy

As an antidote to the feeling of my previous post, here is one of my all time favourite photos. It is of me and my brother, and the world's bubbliest bath:



(wonder if I can still pull off an all-bubble outfit?)

On the theme of photography, read this (thanks Simon for the link)

Growing Up is hard to do

I have about twenty million house viewings this week. I know they're all going to be the same - a small room in a not too nice part of town because that's all I can afford. But then what would I do with more anyway? Move in the imaginary boyfriend and the never-to-be-conceived kids?

I came on here to write something interesting and at a sort of distance from my real life, but nothing comes to mind. I don't really need to complain, I'm just in that sort of mood at this moment in time. I'm trying to get back into writing and struggling with it.

Last night was nice - a spur of the moment movie and takeout at a friend's house in town. That sort of thing makes life pretty good. I just feel like I'm not quite doing enough with myself at the moment.

I'll try harder.

Old Spice / New Spice

Thanks to Nathan for these truly wonderful links. I thought I loved the old spice guy, but new spice is just so much better. Watch the top video first and then the parody below.

Dreams

I have laughed and talked so much this weekend that I have lost my voice. It has been wonderful.

Just when I was starting to feel that Sunday sadness in my belly, I came across this magical book by Dallas Clayton. Below is a little example of its loveliness. You can read it for free here.

If I had a car I would drive away from here and keep driving. Not because I don't like this place, and not because I have anywhere else to be, but because the movement of escape is the only thing that feels just right to me.

This is why I don't have a car.

Castles in the Sky

I dreamed of this years ago. Somebody took the dream from my head and put it in the sky.

Writing and Hair

Thanks to The Rejectionist for this cool site - it analyses your writing and tells you who you're most comparable to. I got Margaret Atwood, which is a nice compliment, but looking at Tea Berry-Blue's research into the site, it would appear that the person responsible for the coding may not be lovely sort of person you might hope.

Apart from generally procrastinating on the internet and watching 9-5 today, I have also finished One Day by David Nicholls (it's not without fault, but I did cry buckets at the end, which was exactly what I needed), and dyed my hair a shade of red that made the water I rinsed with look like a river of blood. Not sure that last part was the best idea ever, since I have to give a presentation at a very important sales conference with work in a couple of weeks. I need to look important and respectable in a way that blood-red hair may not quite enable me to do. I'm hoping that if I team it with a lovely green vintage dress, I will look charming and memorable, which is about the best I can ever hope for.

Later, I will be baking cookies for a party at work and doing some more crafting. All in all a lovely weekend, but it is conspicuously missing any time spent writing. I cannot even consider writing anything without shuddering with revulsion at the thought of my output. I think I may have to ease my way back into this with a resurrection of a fiction journal.

More Crafting

I have previously made a purple cupcake purse using this tutorial, found via Whip-up.

It started to look very tatty after rattling around in the bottom of my messy bag for over a year, so I made a new one. It's a little bit more grown up...maybe 25 is too old to be making cupcake purses, or maybe I just needed a change:

This is the first crafting I've done since moving down here. I couldn't bring any of my craft supplies with me, and I've been feeling a little lost without them. Luckily when I was down in Devon recently with my HLP we found a lovely little craft shop, where I got the heart ribbon (amongst other things). Then today I went to investigate the only craft shop in this one-horse town and found it was actually far better than I thought it was going to be. Sure, it's nowhere near as good as my favourite places back home, but it is still really good. I got everything else needed for the purse, including the lovely button there.

Anonymous

Loving this.

Favourites:

Dear Bacardi,
Up yours!
Sincerely, Who am I kidding, I'll be back

Dear girlfriend,
Please forgive me. I just bought a ring. I'm afraid to give it to you, because I know eventually you will die, which will break my heart.
Sincerely, sir.

Dear Scooby Doo,
Please don't ever go away. You are the best dog I've never had.
Sincerely, Basking In Nostalgia.

Dear all of my friends,
Please stop getting married and having babies..we are in our 20's!
Sincerely, Single lady that is glad that at least I can get drunk and slutty at your wedding.

Rejectionist joy

Today was Wednesday, but it felt so far from Friday that it might have well as been Monday. Check out the Rejectionist for a way to let the Monday feeling out.

I'm going to take a bath, with every nice smelling bubbly soothing pink thing I can find thrown in. If only someone would rub my feet, I think I could get back to feeling alive again.

Also, I just found this today, and I keep switching between loving and hating it. Either way I'm really impressed with it, why don't I have the marketing budget to get Snoop?

OP

I have lots of things to write about - so many lovely things have happened recently. But later, OK? Just not right now, if that's alright.

For now:

"To write one's first novel is not just to learn how to tell one's own story as if it were someone else's. It is at the same time to become a person who can imagine a novel from start to finish in a balanced way, who can express this dream in words and sentences." Orhan Pamuk, intro to Paris Review Interviews 2.

I am in no way that person.