But Words are Things

It is only in books that one can lose themselves so completely that just for a little while, all else ceases to exist.

Isn't it funny how getting sucked into a book can change your mood and play with your emotions?

Do other people get so lost in books they take on the main character's feelings? If they are sick I feel I am suffering, if they are sad I feel distraught without knowing why. If they are angry, my mood is black.

Worse still is when that book is over, and there are no longer any pages left to turn. It's like an entire world died, even though it's still right there, in your hands. I call them book hangovers, because you can't bring yourself to start a new one, when the last is still fresh in your mind, and the world feels useless and grey without that book to read, like suddenly everything has become pointless. 

How can I be angry over a world that isn't even real?
But that's the magic of writing I suppose, to have such a way with words that the author can communicate these people from their heads, their triumphs and losses, their laughter and deaths. We grieve with them, their words alive, even though their creators may be long dead.
In many ways I believe that authors are the ones who have transcended death, because their souls are still right here, within those pages. We hold them in our hands, innumerable treasures, and it is for this that the greatest sadness a book can have is to never be read.

Literature is a funny thing. A powerful thing.

Lord Byron himself words it better than me:

“But words are things, and a small drop of ink,      

Falling like dew, upon a thought, produces

 That which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think;     

 ’T is strange, the shortest letter which man uses 

Instead of speech, may form a lasting link   

   Of ages; to what straits old Time reduces Frail man, 

when paper — even a rag like this, 

Survives himself, his tomb, and all that’s his.”

Myself

How things can change in a year. It's not long, a year. 365 days. Yet every year now, I look back and everything is different.

Last year it was my 21st birthday coming up, I had a party planned with all my family and friends, I was about to graduate, I lived at home. Things were hard, I was full of uncertainty, but also hope. Sadness was just beginning to lose its hold on me, and I felt ready for this new adventure.

Now look at me. Its my 22nd in nine days, and I will be completely alone. I am adrift in Europe, with no direction. I'm braver now, more certain of myself.
It's an adventure, but a lonely one.

Perhaps that's what I need. I need this time to grow into myself, into the adult I want to be. Leave that child behind, her broken hopes, her naivety. She didn't know what the world would hold for her, and she was trapped because of it.

When you are free from expectations, you can do all the things you only dared to think about long into the night, and never voice. Who can judge you now, when no-one knows who you are?

I can be anyone, and maybe, just maybe I can finally be myself.

Romance is Dead

Not mine, someone who writes far more eloquently than I could ever hope to do. But reading her lines (and in my mind, it is a her, I wonder why) makes me wonder what bitterness she has gone through, to speak of romance so coldly. And yet the harshness of the words resonate with me, telling me there's no use pretending: this is real life.

 Tell me a story before it all ends

 Something that’s wonderful, something pretend 

Give it a moral and maybe a lie 

Fill me with laughter, then make me cry. 

You know how it starts; “once” and then “time”

 And don’t worry much if it doesn’t all rhyme 

Throw in some danger, then throw a rope

 Lace it with irony, dose it with hope. 

But don’t get caught up love, and don’t start to feel

 Remember, my darling, that none of it’s real

 The dragons and damsels are all in your head

 Real life hails no heroes and romance is dead.

                                                                         -Violet Matter

Europe

Europe, the beating drum within my chest, shuttered like wild thing within this cage of flesh. It thrums it's beat against my own heart beat, building within expectation.
One week. One more week. Am I running away? Or running towards opportunity? I still haven't worked it out. Regardless, with trembling timid steps, I'll board that plane, the one that will fly me to Europe, that mysterious continent that calls to me like a Siren, willing me home.

Will Europe be my place? The one that quells this wanderlust of mine?
I'm feeling so poetic today, on edge with excitement and fear the words are flowing from me with little thought or regard. I'm going, really going.

I'm leaving all my problems behind, the depressing job, the cold winter, my broken heart. It stays in New Zealand as I fly away to become a new person. Is this cowardice or bravery?
I could  be whoever I want to be, collect my best qualities in a jar and display them proudly at the forefront, saying 'yes, this is me!' A new name, a new attitude, a new person. Intoxicating ideas.

She will always be a part of me, that sad solemn timid girl who's heart is lying smashed at her feet. She still is me in many (too many) ways. But I don't only want to be her anymore.

 I want to be someone more. I want to be something more.

Coriolanus

My new favorite Shakespeare line, though I don't know why. It just flows so well and rolls off the tongue. It brings to image that of a worm, blind and writhing in the dark, to something greater, a serpent to be feared. Or maybe it's time for me to go to bed.
 Regardless, here it is:

This Coriolanus is grown from man to dragon: 

he has wings;

 he's more than a creeping thing.

                                                 Act V-Scene 4

I Did Not Die

This piece of poetry. Wow. The more I read it the more it means to me and the more I love it.
In some strange way it gives me hope in this deep fear of death which plagues my mind too often. I am insignificant. I know that; simply one more person in a world of seven billion. They say that 107 billion people is the number of those that have ever lived (since we begin considering ourselves modern humans, way back in the mists of time). And we remember almost none of them.
It's a frightening thought, and yet in our insignificance, are we not also significant? To those around us whose lives we changed, we were the world. Our footprints still marked the earth, and even though they have long since blown away, is it simply the fact that they were there at all that is important?

Do not stand at my grave and weep 

I am not there. I do not sleep.

 I am a thousand winds that blow.

 I am the diamond glints on the snow. 

I am the sunlight on ripened grain.

 I am the gentle autumn rain. 

When you awaken in the morning’s hush 

I am the swift uplifting rush 

Of quiet birds in circled flight.

 I am the soft stars that shine at night.

 Do not stand at my grave and cry; 

I am not there. I did not die.
-Mary Elizabeth Frye 

Europe

Accepted to the dig in Italy. Accepted. Funny how that one word can change your life.
I leave soon, in barely over a month I am away, flying over countries and seas to Italy. To Europe. Mysterious, dangerous, beautiful Europe. I'm terrified, I'm elated.
This is the bravest thing I've ever done, and I'm doing it alone.

I feel like I am accomplishing things finally, my limbo has an end in sight, this waiting, numbly going through each day is almost over.
 In the past few weeks I passed my full driver's licence, I graduated the best university in my country (although that isn't saying too much) with a degree, and now this.

I don't know where I am going, what I'll do, where I will be a year from now. All I know is I want to immerse myself in Europe, in the culture, the history, the food, the language. I want to forget myself and be completely free, be whoever I want to be.
I truly feel like the world is mine in this instant, and the line from J.R.R. Tolkien keeps going around and around my head and I take heart from it;

Not all those who wander are lost.

Thought Was Me

Too many tears I’ve shed

And not a single thing has changed

Tears make you weak he said,

His smile twisted and deranged

I tried to be strong and wear the mask

To still my beating heart with iron fists

And yet here again I've failed at my task

In tears again for all I’ve missed

You’ve left me in disgust

And destroyed all we could have been

An ideal now turned to wretched dust

Disappointed with the shreds of who you thought you’d seen

The girl that I could never be

The girl that for a while, I thought was me

I wrote this a while ago, and it's interesting to look back to. I'm still sad, still hurting, still lonely, and I want someone, but I'm beginning to realize that someone isn't him. 

I am not that girl 'I never could be' but maybe that isn't a bad thing. Perhaps I don't even want to be that girl. 

I am me, and maybe that's good.

History

History isn't about dates and places and wars. It's about the people who fill the spaces between them.”

 - Jodi Picoult, The Storyteller

Words

“Words are pale shadows of forgotten names. As names have power, words have power. Words can light fires in the minds of men. Words can wring tears from the hardest hearts.”

 - Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind