Do the Vendigum live at the North Pole?

What I want to know is this …

Where did all the magic go … Where are the space aliens, the flying cars and the dragons? When did we stop hiding out in caves and wishing to find smugglers and buried treasure? When did we stop dreaming about being the famous five and start watching the sort of reality shows that have our brains leaking out of our ears to escape to a world where questions open doors.

What the fuck happened to starry nights, and old castles and secret agents? Where did the fairies go to? Why do we live in a technologically advanced world that can send us to the moon and can’t create cars that run on happiness. Why can’t we fly like Peter Pan? WHERE are the tree houses and the woodland swings and the banana boat adventures?

Are there no more sorcerers and magic and demons? Where are the giants hiding? Why don’t we pick plums off trees and go picnicking on secret islands? Why have we stopped looking for adventures and myths and legends? When did our collective minds close? Did it happen gradually so we didn’t notice or with a creak and a reverberating clang that we have long since forgotten?

What happened to camping in farmers fields and milk fresh from the cow? What happened to home baked cakes and scones for tea? What happened to climbing in haystacks and sitting with ladybirds on our noses? Why don’t we take our little rowboats out fishing any more or dive off rafts in the middle of lakes just for fun?

Why are there NO SECRET PASSAGEWAYS? Where are the circuses and acrobats and the campfires? What happened to the secret societies and the vampires and the werewolves? What happened to climbing trees and skipping and merry-go-rounds?

Where are the dancing penguins and the magical chalk pavement pictures. Has Mary Poppins got too old? Did Captain Hook ever get out of the crocodile? And white-water rafting down the Amazon and Canibals and Voodoo  and Witch Doctors and Telekinesis? What happened to them?

Do Gods retire or do they die when you stop believing? Do Gods eat other Gods when one religion subsumes another? How can we find the pot at the end of the rainbow? Are leprechauns really Irish?

When did camping become regimented squares of grass instead of getting down with nature? What happened to the escaped tigers and the big cat sightings and WHAT ABOUT THE YETI??

What happened to the Wise Women? Who runs with the wolves now? What happened to Crocodile Dundee? And what about dreams and interdimensional portals? What about ghosts and telepathy? When Alice fell down the rabbit hole, was the rabbit really big or Alice really small?

What about gypsies and nomads and bedouins – where is their space now? Why is the scale so big? Does God give private audiences? How long IS a piece of string? What happened to flesh-eating hamsters and homicidal feet? What about alchemy and the art of transformation? What about invisibility and flying and love potions? What about Time Travel?

These are just some of the things I want to know. What about YOU?

I’d given up on finding a name for the shape I was looking for, and thought the hole needed to be carved bespoke. I’d spent too long being other shapes that I had forgotten where my boundaries lay. I stopped seeing what was THERE. I had stopped listening to myself and asked the world what I should do, and got a million answers in response, all of which were partly right. I forgot that my destiny evolves AS I DO and what I choose to do does not restrain me still but gives me a platform to build on, to mould around myself and make into something other than the neat-and-tidy, well-ordered pigeon hole I so dislike.

Sometimes all it takes is for something to move for everything to shift and suddenly fit into place. In the unlikeliest of places, answers stare you in the face and when it happens, you can feel the OH YES barrelling up from your belly and erupting in a geyser of laughter and joy. It just happened to me and made me feel like a bottle of champagne: fizzing and happy and full of life and potential and creativity. It opens up things inside you and it brings back those childhood feelings where you thought that anything in the world was possible, just because you WANTED it, those feelings where faeries were real and danced on the tips of your fingers and the moon was made of cheese and your absolute certainty that if you travelled far enough, you would find places where houses were really made of gingerbread and armchairs really did grow wings and fly.

It’s the magic of possibility that I forgot and the feeling that EVERY DAY is an adventure. I am poised and ready for stories of smugglers and giants and cannibalistic shoes. I am open to streaming, gilded lights in gardens and magenta horses wearing pearls on magazine shoots. I am standing on the edge of a precipice with my arms out wide and my hair streaming and READY to take that step that will send me cannon-balling through life, scattering the conventions that have held me back like skittles.

It took a series of moments standing by a carved out hollow in a hill in the moonlit dark in the wind and rain to find that CONNECTION again. That feeling of remembering, of roots and ancestors and potential. It took a place of power to remind me of my own. It took somewhere exceptional to remind me that I am.

Knowing that I was a piece of the puzzle that didn’t fit was my catalyst. It kept my mind open and promised me quietly, night after night, that answers would come and opportunities would come knocking. Vigilance, it said, was the key to growth and in a moment where I most needed it, answers came. If I hadn’t been open-minded, and more importantly, open-HEARTED I might not have paid attention. I might have dismissed it. I might have let it pass me by. I didn’t. Instead, I embraced it. I took a deep breath and said YES.

Harry Potter is just a book. This is not just a book. This is not JUST an anything. It’s exceptional. If you can look no further than one action to another, all you might see is the day to day lives of those on the fringes of Australian society, but if that is all you can see then the magic and wonder of this book will have entirely passed you by. It’s a book of discovery, of remembering, of forgetting but most of all it’s a book about seeing.

It’s a story about tragedy and how history reforms in the memories and actions of those of us who live on, and however we live that every moment we face can be irrevocably changed in the light of one fleeting, frozen moment in time. It’s about the way we’re woven together in the strangest of ways. It delights in showing us how our perceptions are altered forever after.

SEE, it whispers to me. See the past, see the future and see the possibilities. Nothing is ever exact. All it takes is a shift of perspective, some light and shadow and what was one things can become another. It shows us life as a fluid stream of mutating possibilities, that life and art and are trickery and real, and just because it’s one thing doesn’t mean it can’t be both.

She leaves so much open, for you to interpet yourself. Silence becons, she says, it entices. It does and that too is part of the magic. She weaves you into her story and it can’t become without your participation. It’s your interpretation, your memories and your own emotions that are pulled into the mix, that you remember and feel in place of the characters. That’s one of the joys of this book. It’s not a constant or an escape, it’s an evolution. It’s never the same book twice because you’re never the same person each time you read it. Subtle nuances that reflect the changes in your life suddenly bring to life a new part of the book that you didn’t find before.

It’s a story that is reflective of life. There is no definitive pathway through it, rather it wanders and meanders and upon occasion gets lost on the way, and rather than detracting from it, it’s that journey that makes it utterly and absolutely real. I’ve heard it said that it’s not an easy read, although I would disagree, but then it suits me, and it fits. This story and I understand each other. We are literary kindred spirits.

These are the moments we stay alive for

(No, not like that.)

I was sitting in a pub a few nights ago, chatting with a friend of mine about all manner of things, moving away, spreading your wings and living a bigger life, heading for exciting times. It’s her time for that, and I’m happy for her, excited and at the same time slightly nostalgic and reminiscent. Jeanette Winterson said in her introduction to Oranges are not the only fruit, that “Dinginess is death to a writer. Filth, discomfort, hunger, cold, trauma and drama don’t matter a bit. I have had plenty of each and they have only encouraged me, but dinginess, the damp small confines of the mediocre and gradual corrosion of beauty and light, the compromising and the settling; these things make good work impossible.”

The truth is that writers or no, we all need this time in our lives, that we remember in grainy black and white, living in cold houses with odd people, where the paint peels off the walls, you lie tossing and turning over paying the rent, you meet people who change your life and you become the person you want to be. These are the moments and the experiences that shape you, that stay with you when you’re older and your life begins to settle. These years are the years that are anything but ordinary. They are somehow tinted with promise and the future seems a long way away and something to worry about another day. These are the years for living in the now, that seem somehow reminiscent of an art-house film and make you feel that every moment you live through is special and meaningful.

I have never been one for taking the safer road. When I am old, I would rather be rich in experience than rolling in money. I’ve always considered those wonderful moments you look back on to be beyond price. There is nothing you could offer me that would be worth the price of these momories. They are my movie moments and live as clearly in my mind as if they were caught on film.

If it is true that the whole world loves a lover, then the moments I remember, my celluloid snapshots are those of romance, art and mystery, and my story is a series of love stories that change and transform the heart. From the moment of my very first kiss, I remember that feeling blooming in my heart, a breathless thudding tingle that burst and fizzed like champagne and a sound that rang through me like a symphony.’Twas a feeling that bloomed through art and literature, that knowledge that love lifts you to heights so great that you cannot be ordinary. I suppose that when it comes down to it, it’s our greatest driving force: those moments of love that force truth from our lips and have us acting on our passions in ways we could never predict.

I remember moments of racing through cornfields, hesitant kisses in haystacks and anticipation on cobbled streets. I remember moments of art and flirtation in trees, and bare feet on tiled floors in the middle of the night. I remember crashing parties and making unexpected friends and tumbling helplessly into love in small attic spaces. Of new faces over cheap coffee, and early morning kisses next to the dying embers of midnight campfires. ‘If there was one thing in your life you’d regret not doing, what would it be? ‘ were my words to him. His answer was ‘this‘ as he turned his face to mine and touched my lips with his. There were days of icicles on the insides of windows and sitting on roofs and watching the sunsets. There were moments of sitting under sloping ceilings with paintbrushes and watching my surroundings fall away in a rush as I stared into eyes that held mine in a way that nobody ever has since. There will always be moments on bridges and next to rivers, there will always be the dedications that nobody else understood. There were the moments we took, smuggled away illicitly, that were our own moonshine and the moments we tore from a yawning day to day dullness. ‘I know your heart’ he told me. If only he had known that he already had it to command. Never will I forget being led blindfold into a cathedral only to open my eyes to see a ceiling full of golden stars, swimming in an azure sky.

These are the moments we live for, the moments we never forget. They stay with us because deep in our hearts we know that these are the days that define us. Hold on to these days, for even if there is nothing else, there will always be those magical years with no money and all the magic the world had to offer.

If 2010 was a year of losing myself, then 2011 is to be a year of finding myself again. 2010 was supposed to be a year of relaxation. A year of kicking back and giving myself time to recharge but things never seem to quite work out the way you intend. It seems to be that when you feel you need to wind down most that you’re on the receiving end of a curve ball and you’ve either got to get the fuck off the floor and hit that ball right out of the park or lay down on the floor, accept defeat, knash your teeth in despair and sob into your hands with the half chewed nails and chipped nail polish … and I’ve never been one for coming second, despite the chewed nails and chipped nail polish.

This 2010 is not a year I’ve been especially proud of. I can’t say that I’ve looked back on it, or me, with pride. I’ve been less than I could have been, and didn’t fight as hard as I could have for the things I wanted or the things I believed were right. I didn’t always raise my voice and say TO HELL WITH YOU, I am ENOUGH the WAY I AM. I wasn’t out there being vital and determined and amazing. I curled up with my sadness and hibernated. I tucked it all inside and pretended it was okay when it wasn’t. I went through the motions without my mojo and comforted myself with books and baking and it wasn’t enough. I tried to mould myself into a lifestyle I had convinced myself I wanted instead of letting my life form as a result of my passions. As a result, I’ve watched myself explode out of my self-imposed cliche and rebuild my walls into a new pathway.

My questions were maybe too big to be voiced, and my answers lay in old films, the books of my childhood, buckets of ice-cream and walking through the moonlit cobbled streets of a little city, watching the world pass by silently, like the shadows of my life. I demanded the bright and bold in my life and when I found muted pastel shades, I scorned them instead of building them up into something more. I watched myself curl up from a butterfly back into a chrysalis. I hibernated, I devolved and I hid away from a world I didn’t like. I hid my fears in chocolate and anger and fought back against my hurts when I should have voiced them and used them as a springboard for something better.

That said, 2010 hasn’t been all bad either. I’ve made some tremendous new friends and found solace in places I never thought to, I found a new job and discovered skill and confidence I’d lost. I’ve begun rediscovering who I was and exploring who I’d like to be. I’ve had dates that made me weep, and others that have made me cry with laughter. I’ve been surprised, shocked, blessed and comforted… and so on New Year’s Eve, I’m sitting with a dog curled up on my foot and a glass of cola, reminiscing and reminding myself to AIM HIGHER for the New Year.

If last year was a year of devolution, then 2011 is my year of EVOLUTION. This is my year for BIG DREAMS and opportunity and finding my niche. It’s a year for development and driving like a bat out of hell up the motorway singing LOUDLY to music that makes my eyes water and my heart soar. 2011 is going to be a year for opening my mind and heart. This is going to be my year for CREATION and for LOVING. If it breaks my heart or makes me weep then so be it but this year I want my heart to lead me on a journey that doesn’t hold me back but one that ENRICHES me and brings my life together in a RIOT of colour.

I want this to be the year when I learn to express who I am. When I am not afraid to dress or speak in a way that reflects who I am inside. When I can stand in the waves of anyone’s criticism and say simply and quietly that this is WHO I AM. This year I’ll move, I’ll travel, I’ll write poetry again and take the photographs that have been waiting for me for a year or maybe two. Maybe I’ll upgrade my phone and learn aromatherapy. I might dance at bus stops and eat with my fingers. Maybe I’ll climb trees again and watch people go by underneath and unaware. Perhaps this year I’ll order in less, and go out more. I’ll get a tattoo and pierce my ears again. This year, my resolution is to ENGAGE. To be part of it all and to be REAL.

They’re my dreams, my resolutions and 2011 will be MY year. Here’s to you and yours.

We live within a film of tension, that only exists between us: stretched taut like bubbles blown in the open air, our friendship is fundamental  in its beauty, fulfilled by its fuction and fragile as an autumn moment. The air seems  every so often to fizz between us, demanding intimacy in its age-old way. It’s not the intimacy of lovers, but the intimacy of those who have known each other from the beginnings of forever and before. It’s the casual need to touch to comfort and reassure, whether it’s no more than the brush of a finger sweeping your hair from your eyes or a solid hug in a moment of sadness.

These moments we share: the silences, the demands, the tension. They are our private dance. It cannot be recreated elsewhere with different players, because it is defined by the magic and power that sits between us, largely untapped and waiting. This is our lesson, our message and our joy. It needs to be unwrapped layer by layer for us to discover its truth, its core. Our power is potent and elemental. We must together close our eyes and venture into the unknown.

It is impossible to do otherwise. You feel held in thrall until you comply or break out. This is how we define ourselves and how we balance. We demand each other’s truths: in silence, in touch, in sound, in vision. Each of us is a key to a path already defined. Heart and soul we are comitted and complicit in turning the keys.

Together and apart, we understand that we are driven to be who we truly are. We remain united in our refusal to be less. Everything within us demands the intensity of extremity while we fight for a balanced consciousness.

We demand more of each other than we have any right to ask, yet rarely does it foster anger or resentment. More commonly, it opens a door to a rabbit hole. Like Alice, we fall down and wake up in an altered consciousness.

So much of who we are is unarticulated, and inarticulable. The questions are unformed and the answers too abstract, yet the truth of us cannot be questioned. For all we have done together and all we are now – it is nothing compared to what will be. One question remains: will you walk this path with me?

This week, the world seems to have seen fit to show me new friends, new perspectives and encourage me to follow my path and find what joy it can bring. Sometimes, chance meetings with people you never expect are designed to make you re-evaluate yourself and your beliefs. A few days ago, I met someone who did just that: challenged me and pushed my boundaries and waited for me to push back. It’s good for me to rediscover my own boundaries and see over the years how they have shifted and changed and how they have stayed the same. If you or other people don’t challenge those things in you, you become stagnant, unchallenged and entrenched.

To re-examine your own perspectives or have someone who does the same isn’t the same thing as having someone agressively demand that you defend your beliefs. A good friend can do it by asking, enquiring and noticing. It’s what makes conversation flow, it makes ideas develop, it brings people together. It’s a creative process.

I often refer to myself as an unwitting creative, because I find that creativity exists in us in ways we often don’t recognise and can even more rarely imagine. I’ve worked in creative settings, I’ve worked in situations you wouldn’t consider creative but as I went my merry way through life, I find that creativity exists in places you often expect it least. It’s creativity that expands your mind to concieve of new ideas and find ways of putting it into practice. It’s creativity that helps me to find and articulate answers to questions I hadn’t considered. It’s creativity that broadens my horizons. And it’s creativity that opens my heart to new experiences, new perspectives and new friendships.

It’s nice to imagine that every fascinating and exciting person that happens into our lives will be a lifelong friend, and sometimes if we’re very lucky, they are. Sometimes, though, they’re a fleeting moment, designed to interact and inspire, to be a momentary muse in the tapestry of your life.

Last night, I found myself upon a number of occasions, stretched and challenged. I discovered which beliefs of mine stood firm, which I was happy to jettison. I opened myself up to new ideas and I grew. Opportunities and possibilites blossomed in my mind. I made connections that hadn’t occurred to me before. I understood things I hadn’t before. and I ENJOYED IT.

I want to be more than I am. I want to be everything I can be. I will only become that if I pay attention to the things people ask me and share with me, open my heart and mind and take chances that could change me.

They’re happy days, people. Happy days

The Winding Path

Have you ever found yourself doing something you don’t want to do, being less than you really are just to keep the peace, and feel so worn out and so lost that you’ve almost lost the sense of who you are and the energy it takes to turn around and find your way? Well that’s what happened to me not so very long ago. It’s a situation that’s pitifully easy to get into. So easy that sometimes you don’t even realise that’s where you are until you’re right in the middle of it. Maybe you don’t realise until you get a shock or a wakeup call or a moment that tells you, this is not who I am. This is not what I do. I need to change.

I recognised this pretty early on. It didn’t take long to notice the square peg round hole-ness of the situation. The question was ‘what next’ and truthfully I didn’t know. I was blank. I wanted to do, I wanted to be, I wanted truth, values, honesty and much, much more. I wanted to march to my own drum and create my own reality, attend to my dreams and be responsible for my own successes and failures.

My present location cemented a great deal for me. I couldn’t abide it, but like many of the similar situations in my life, it taught me what my limits were, where my boundaries lay and what was and was not acceptable to me. In some ways, experiencing the diametric opposite to my own values taught me more than experiencing a situation that would not have challenged me in that way. By putting myself in a place which caused me unhappiness, has forced me to evaluate my life and to sit down, look deep inside myself and say ‘woman up Sarah, and decide what the hell you DO want’. It meant that I couldn’t coast along in comfort for another year or six months. It made me say ‘now or never’. Never wasn’t an option so Now it became.

Yet the question remained.

It confused me. It vexed me. It caused a lot of soul searching, waking up in the middle of the night sweating for fear that I was nothing more than a walking superiority complex waiting for a place to unleash myself. It caused me desperation and more than a few tears. But slowly, my list became more defined and I found that I recognised what I dreamt of. I began to polish away at it until it became clear and crisp and real. And suddenly there it was: more than a life path, it was MY life path – all bright and shining and just waiting for me to step into it.

Now that I know what I want, the steps to take me there don’t seem so immense and unachievable. It seems like a small thing. A step by step journey. It can happen. It will happen. I can see it now. Yes, there are things that need to be done before I can step into that new life but it’s ready for me, just as I am ready for it. The confusion is gone now. It’s exciting, it’s a little bit scary and it’s a monster of a risk. Those are all things I can deal with because I have a vision of what I want. Everything is surmountable now because I’m not walking blind through my life.

This is the moment I’ve been waiting for. It’s exactly this moment where I have a choice between staying as I am or beginning the path to the person I could be. It’s a decision between myself and my future. A moment where I embrace ALL that I am rather than just a part of it and a moment where I stand up, throw myself wide open, and say follow your dreams, whatever they are. However fantasical, however humble, however big or small: follow them. Open your heart to you deepest desires. Don’t be afraid. Don’t think you aren’t enough. Don’t give up. Don’t be held back by the limitations other people impose on you. Be everything you imagined yourself being when you were a child, and then be more.

Loving you.

Unbridled JOY

I seem to have a tendency to avoid blogging when life takes one of its more turbulent turns, and so it has been of late. Whilst life continues in its unremarkable day to day way, somehow everything has turned on it’s head, until I feel like I’m walking on my hands, upside down through a sea of molasses.

Not entirely a lifetime ago, I was struck by yet another vicious bout of of wanderlust. When these moments strike, I feel like Vianne in Chocolat. I can hear the wind whispering its message, teasing and tantalising with stories of new places and new adventures and they all look brighter and shinier than where I am right now. I seem to have an affinity with places for a short amount of time, before I feel it passes and I’m on my way to newer, greener pastures. It’s as if my life, mine particularly, is more of a book of short stories or a series of vignettes than a story or a film. It feels less continuous and more like a series of moments that stand out, like connect the dots. I feel drawn to certain places, and certain people, and seem to spend my life following one instinct after another on a journey that’s a little wild and unpredictable, and by its nature seems to throw up beautiful unexpected moments when I least expect them, and when I fear they may have passed me by.

Which brings me to today. I had an uncomfortable start to the day, with a meeting I was dreading. Thankfully it turned out better than expected, and left me in a sardonically amused but quite upbeat frame of mind as I headed in to the second part of my day, which truth be told I was looking forward to almost as much as the first part of the day. Amidst the chaos of our shop in full swing, I slipped out into the back to take a breath, and regain the tattered remnants of my sanity, and as I came out of the corridor, my day suddenly brightened as I saw an acquaintance popping into the shop.

There are some people that you meet randomly, through the course of your life that you just connect with. Inexplicably. People that just upon seeing them make you smile. It’s like a moment of recognition: I GET you. Meeting them again, even momentarily is an event that fills you with joy, and this one was one I had been afraid would pass me by. I thought my wanderlusting might find me gone, without another of those moments of connection, but today the universe threw me a bone.

It really brought home to me something that I had forgotten, about myself and my life, in the turbulence of the last couple of years, and that’s the joy that’s derived from the unexpected moments, the spontaneous acts and the things you wouldn’t and couldn’t have dreamed in a million years. In the turbulence of life that I had tried to control, I’d forgotten the exhilaration of just rolling with it and somehow ending up EXACTLY where you needed to be at EXACTLY the right time. Somehow, without a modicum of control you still meet people who take your day from bog-standard to AMAZING in the blink of an eye, you get a kick in the arse just when you really need it, and at certain privileged points in your life you find yourself in a place where you can make a difference to someone just through being the right person in the right place at exactly the right moment.

Got to say, sometimes life really is just awesome.

1. I experience wordjoy. Particular favourites include: frond, effervescent, collywobbles, ignite, anthropomorphic, meringue and renege. On the other hand, I also have a list of words that I don’t like. Particularly unjoyful are: lithe, stringy, moist, invaginate and remonstrate
2. I have a love affair with brightly coloured hair, and often yearn to dye my dark brown hair pink (again) … even just a little bit of it.
3. I would love to be one of those superior intellectual readers but the truth is that I enjoy the Famous Five and Harry Potter just as much as proper grown up literature, and if you called me on it, maybe even a little bit more.
4. I’m addicted to decorating and home improvements. The potential and possibilities appeals to the creative in me. Show me a new house I could move straight into and I’ll turn my nose up at it. Show me an ancient, tumbledown old shack that’s going to involve me being on my hands and knees in mucky clothes for months on end and my joy will be uncontained.
5. I am mortally afraid of dried fruit. Phobic. There is simply NOTHING on the face of the planet more hideous. I actually have to leave the room if someone starts eating it in front of me. *shudder*
6. I rule my spending with a rod of iron, because if my naughty ‘I enjoy shopping side’ goes out armed with a credit card, I’d be in a LOT of trouble.
7. I am ever so slightly *cough* addicted to chocolate. I’m pretty sure I get withdrawal symptoms and everything.
8. I LOVE colour and texture. It’s like a new form of language to me: the way that you set and combine different pieces to create different effects. The subtlety, the statement, all the unsaid things, the subconcious effect of colour and texture on your mood, the way you can clash and combine and all of it works. Delicious.
9. I love old films and tv series and am particularly fond of a good whodunnit. Poirot, Miss Marple, Sherlock Holmes …. a surefire good night in
10. I get very bored very quickly, and constantly need new things on the go to excite and fulfil me. This shockingly bad habit of mine has led me to do many insane things that include giving up perfectly good jobs to set up businesses, move across country for no good reason, date ridiculously inappropriate fellas (well, it was interesting at the time) ….
11. I have a really hideous recurring dream that involves being eviscerated by rats in the middle of a kitchen. The odd thing is that the kitchen always changes to reflect wherever I’m living but that seems to have absolutely no effect on the rest of the dream.
12. I love to bake but I don’t do it nearly as much as I’d like to. I somehow imagine that baking makes me a more capable grownup.
13. I can never remember what I’ve done with my keys. Even if they’re in exactly the same place they normally are, I still look straight past them, panic momentarily, run around going ‘omigod, where the hell are my keys’ before finding them exactly where they ought to be. I have now started tying them to my clothes in an attempt to stop losing them. Because, clearly that will work.
14. I have a decidedly contrary character. While I tend to be a big picture person, who can’t be arsed with the finer details of things, if there’s no-one I trust to sort out the details, I become insanely nitpicky to the point that I want to rip my own head off and use it to hit people with.
15. I’m an insufferable romantic. I believe wholeheartedly in love at first sight, and will one day be swept off my feet by a man worthy of me.
16. I think the most beautiful poem ever written is Before the world was made by William Butler Yeats.
17. I like to defy expectations
18. I want a tattoo. Two actually. A star on my wrist and a floral design on my foot. I haven’t worked up the courage for it yet. But I will.
19. I like the feeling sand makes under my feet when I walk barefoot on the beach.
20. I am incapable of walking along a beach without collecting stones, shells and driftwood
21. My first dog was called Rio. He was a vast golden lab that belonged to My Godfather’s son originally. I used to ride him around the garden. Giddyup.
22. I have weirdly double jointed fingers. They scare people.
23. My favourite flowers are roses and daisies. When I have a garden of my own, these flowers will feature strongly
24. I don’t drink. I gave up entirely by accident, and don’t miss it even remotely. Nobody really seems to mind, since it means I’ll happily play designated driver.
25. I really want a goat. Yep – that’s it.

The studio had suggested wearing and bringing along props that were reflective of your personality and interests. So as I was dragging on my clothes this morning, I automatically reached for a pair of odd socks (can you say that?) for good luck and that got me thinking of the small, almost unconscious, things that we do that make unique in ways we don’t even notice.

My odd sock habit has its depths in my University days, when I would catch the bus in to lectures when the weather was grim and I didn’t fancy a four mile hike in the rain. The bus stop was a five minute walk away across a field, and the buses were often double deckers or bendy buses that jammed us together like sardines. At any rate, I had a spate of bad luck on the buses in my first year, when I consistently fell down, got pushed over or some other calamity (see reasons why I hate buses, many of these ocurred during that fortnight) would befall me whenever I was on a bus. It lasted about 2 weeks, and at the end of the fortnight, I had bruises on bruises and could cheerfully have done without seeing a bus ever again. I was, in fact, on the verge of turning in my bus pass completely.

One fine day, I overslept and when I woke up and realised the time, I grabbed whatever clothes were to hand (I must have made a fine sight!) and threw them on including a pair of odd socks and headed for the bus stop and found, to my undisguised delight, that I had not only an uneventful journey but that I made my lecture with minutes to spare. I could only put this unlikely ocurrance down to the odd socks (or blind luck) and ever since, if I’ve felt the need for a little extra luck, I’ve worn mismatched socks. (Clearly I should have remembered to do that on evil, everything sucks Tuesday, shouldn’t I?)

What quirky habits do you have?

Image borrowed from here

Sometimes, right out of the blue, something happens that forces you to open your eyes to yourself, and when that happens, sometimes what you see isn’t what you’d like it to be … and sometimes that hits you like a fist in the solar plexus. It’s not a good feeling.

Yesterday I got sucker-punched by the Universe (and by Christ, it packs a punch, I can tell you!) which reminded me that sometimes, I really suck as a friend. Oh sure, I remember birthdays, I turn up when we hook up as much as I can. I offer a listening ear and occasionally, when asked, a bit of advice. But there are times when a friend has to be more than that. Sometimes a real friend looks behind the calls and texts that go unanswered and instead of assuming that  you’re busy, follows hunches and connects the dots, knows that you’re not as ok as you claim and stands up and calls you on it. And that’s what I forgot to do.

I got blindsided by my own worries and troubles and forgot to look out at my friends and see how they were doing. I became blinkered inside my own head and left my friends to fight their own battles, without picking up the phone and BEING there. It doesn’t take much, it’s a small thing to pick up a phone and let a friend know that you’re there and you care, and sometimes it’s the smallest of things that make the biggest difference.

We all have our highs and we all have our rough patches, it’s life and we deal with it but sometimes the highs are exceptionally high and sometimes the lows are so low that they almost require a new word and those are the times we most need a friend … to hold out a hand, to give us a hug, to just BE there.

It doesn’t matter how we make them but those connections are what make our lives, rich, fulfilled and wholesome, regardless of whether those connections are friends, family or lovers. They brighten our days, inspire us, support us, define us and occasionally frustrate the bloody hell out of us but for all their intangibility, they are the most REAL things we possess and we owe it to ourselves and each other to remember that and to put our friendships ahead of all those other distractions we indulge ourselves in, because one day long after our jobs are a distant memory, our friendships will remain and our memories of them will be more precious than any amount of money could buy.