Baths

I had an epiphany today.

There I was, mourning the passing of summer and the creeping fingers of winter, lamenting the changing of seasons to my friend. We were both freezing, unused to the chill breath of winter, when one of us struck upon an idea. A bath!
What could be better then taking a hot sweet scented bath when the cold overcame you? It was a splendid idea.
However, then I remembered the shortcomings of baths and indeed, why I took them so little.
Boredom.
Alright, so I get bored easily, so sue me.
So when you first sink into that warm lovely water it feels like heaven on earth, your worries wash away and you are surrounded by warmth. But after a while, you get too hot, and bored, and irritated and it turns into a whole fiasco which is too bothersome to go through with.
So I don't take baths.
But then, my friend struck upon an idea.
"I'm going to go read by awesome book in the bath now" she told me smugly.
I blinked. Reading? In the Bath? How odd.
"Won't your book get wet?" I asked stupidly.
There was a laugh, "No, you hold the book above the water and read. Haven't you ever done that before?"
Suddenly a world of possabilities opened up to me. You could read in the bath??
Spectacular.
I immediatly rushed to try the novel idea, and found it wanting.

And that my friend, is how I discovered reading in baths.
Try it, you know you want to.

Death Row

You always hear people talking about walking the walk of life, but you rarely hear about walking the walk of death.
Walking from Death Row, down the corridor shackled by your hands and feet, prison guards on both sides, approaching the iron door where within lie the impliments of death that will end your miserable life.
Death Row is a place of hell on earth, solitary confinment for months, years on end, with only your thoughts for company, many go mad.
And all you can do is wait.
How can it be a kindness, allowing you to choose your last meal on earth? Do they really think you can enjoy it? knowing you are only hours away from your own execution?
The food turns to ash in your mouth, somehow sticking in your throat. You can't enjoy your last meal on earth, not armed with the knowledge of your iminent death.
And then you at last walking the walk of death, with no hope, no-one to turn to.
Let me tell you, there are no heroric last thoughts, no deep and meaningfull last words, just a terrible mantra in your head 'if only if only'...your heart is pounding in your ears and all you can feel is sheer raw panic.

Go into Death Row, walk the walk of death, those fatal last steps that you know will be your last.

Then look me in the eye and tell me that this is justice.

An Apology of the Log

If I were a log..

Look around you, at the terror and torment and suffering.
You reap what you sow.

Because you're human, what right does that give you to lord above all else?
To assume in your egotistical mind, that you alone have a higher consciousness. That animals and plants can't feel can't think.

I'm a log. And I feel vindicated.

We have done our fair share of wrongs too, I will freely admit.

I rotted through and fell on your house.
The storm blew me down and I made sure to land where it would hurt you most.
My branch impaled you as you tripped.
My bark scratched you as you passed me by.
My roots caught your feet.
My trunk broke your arm when you were sawing through my trunk.
I killed you when I fell.

I'm now an innocuous log, rotting on the forest floor, well sorry for my wrongs.

I'm sorry I caught you,
I'm sorry I hurt you,
I'm sorry I killed you.

But am I the sole perpetrator? The rebel without a cause?

I cried as you cut my brothers down.
I pleaded to deaf ears as my branches were hacked off.
I watched in silence as I was hewn and used so carelessly, burnt.
When my roots were torn up and I bled.
When I screamed as you hacked so viciously into my body.
When I died as you cut me down.

Shouldn't you be sorry too?

Libraries

Today I discovered that libraries are vacuums.
No don't look at me strangely, it happens to be true. The outside world is busy with bustling people, the noise, the movement, the rush.
When you walk into the library, it's like you enter another world. It's cool in summer, warm in winter; you enter to be greeted by sweet silence, not the utter stillness of a tomb, but the soft wirr of air conditiong, the sound of pages being turned. Footsteps are muffled by soft carpet, the sound of voices has been leached from the very air.
No clock tolls out the seconds, no voices telling you there's someplace you should be.
It is a vacuum from sound and time and reality.
You can sit and lose yourself in an endless number of worlds without feeling the passing of time.
One could grow old in a library and never notice, instead you can hide in the books and their pages, hide in the shadows of day, and forget.

One could go mad and never notice.

A 'Friendly Reminder'

They puzzle me.
Friendly reminders I mean.
If someone sends you an email, and the first words are 'just a friendly reminder..' you should delete it, it doesn't deserve to be read.
Have they even thought about what they are writing? How could a reminder to attend an upcoming sports event or a work meeting be unfriendly? Do people send threatning and heinous reminders of things?
I just imagine it now; 'this is the voice of doom speaking...to give a threatning reminder to attend the special meeting at church on thursday night otherwise many unfriendly things will happen indeed...'
I kindof think the word friendly is superflous here. The only reason your reminding them is because, a. you're a nice person, b. you are desperate for people to attend whatever the reminder is about (in this case, please go find some friends) or c. its a barbed email, a veiled threat to someone who never attends and needs to, in this case, it most certainly isn't a friendly reminder and that seems uncannily like a lie to say it is.
So whichever way you look at it, friendly reminders are defunct. (I have this bad feeling i just made that word up)
Please please never write one.

Anyway, just thought I'd share that gem of wisdom as a friendly reminder to everyone.

Sigh.

Pensiveness on the Bus

The thing about buses is they're misleading. You wait at a bustop in the pouring rain or the sweltering sun, it's always late, and takes forever to get to your chosen destination.
But the thing is, buses are amazing.
I reached this epiphany today as i sat in the suprisingly comfortable blue seat, my knees pushed up against the back of the seat in front of me, head comfortably back on the lovely cushioned headrests, the bus was almost empty (a youth reading the paper and an old woman) and I was staring out the window with Mick-Jagger's haunting voice playing Angie in my ears as I clutched my ipod with absentminded fingers. The moving bus is a suprisingly lulling sensation and i found myself with my eyes drifting shut, and that's when I realised I hadn't been so relaxed and happy in a while, I was literally grinning out the window into nothing, and that was the moment of realisation that buses were in fact, my vice.
You can relex and time out, not worry about what's happening in the future, just concentrate on everything all around you, and be happy.
I think everyone should take the bus, I spend half my life on the things, and I haven't turned out too bad. In small doses they actually help you, they give you time to think, and in our lives, so dictated by time, that is a very unusual and good thing.
so appreciate the small things in life, because its all the little things like bus rides that make the world the amazing place it is today.

Of Misleading Sandwiches and pointless musings

The thing about tomato and cheese sandwiches is they're misleading.
Take two pieces of averge brown bread, four slices of tomatoe and three large pieces of cheese and you have your normal, innocuous sandwich. Except its not.
It appears to be nice, the bright yellow cheese harmonizing with the lively red tomato, setting of the pale chocolate coloured bread perfectly.
It might even smell nice, fresh, healthy.
And you'll think to yourself, 'I know! I'll have a nice tomato and cheese sandwich, just what I feel like!'
But after the first bite, you will see what a grave mistake you have made.
For these sandwiches are like bananas, one becomes sick of the taste ludicrously fast. And then you find yourself confronted by a large amount of sandwich that just doesn't want to be eaten.
And it's going to sit there staring at you until you either eat it or go sandwichless.
Me? I couldn't face the damn thing and it's still sitting on my desk, cackling at my torment.

That, my friends, is why Tomato and Cheese sandwiches are evil.


..And It's at times like these that I wonder what an earth I'm doing with my life.

Bus Stops

Bus stops tell you a lot about a person.
Now me, being an average teenager, without a car or licence (due more to lazyness than anything else) spent a large part of my days on buses, which also means a lot of time spent waiting at the bus stop.
Take today for example, after my math exam (which I wish never to hear mentioned again) I had to wait an hour for my bus.
And when you're bored, and your ipod has run out of battery, you start observing things. people.
And if you look at the people waiting at the bus stop, you notice things.
How people sit.
The confident ones come loping along and fairly sprawl themselves down on the seat, at the centre, legs out in front of them, casually bopping along to their music, talking on the phone, whatever. They're the confident ones. They aren't afraid to take up space, to be noticed, to be in the centre of everything.
Then there's the ones who sit with their legs crossed, or planted firmly on the ground, they sit more to one side of the seat, glancing up every once in a while to see if the bus is coming, check their watches, flick someone a text. They're just the average person, not loud, not quiet, would probably talk to you given half a chance, but it's unlikely they'l plonk themselves down and start up a conversation like the people who sit in the middle.
Then there's the sideliners.
They sit in the corner, on the fringes, watching people, saying nothing. They'll read a book, do some homework, check their phones, but mostly watch.
They sit as far to the side of the seats as they can, taking up as little space as possable. They don't grin at passerbys like some would. They don't sigh loudly when the bus is late, or get up for a wander when they've been sitting too long.
They stay silent and still.
They are isolated from everyone else, perhaps isolated from society. They're shy and quiet, hard to get through to, but when you do, it's usually rewarding.

I have to wonder sometimes, as I observe the unsuspecting people, is anyone watching me? Prejudging me, analysing me, seeing me.

Or am alone in a world full of people

Addiction

Ginger Beer is addictive.
No really, it is.
Ok solid hard, concrete proof. When I was little, I hated that stuff. It was bitter and bubbly and burnt my throat and people called it root beer. It was, for lack of a better word, disgusting.
Then, I re-tried it a few years ago; it wasn't an instant love, it was just ok. But as it is with all addictions, I found myself loving it more and more.
And now I'm addicted. I guess I should be glad it's not drugs or alcohol I'm addicted to. But really, Ginger Beer?
It's just so gooooooood...*takes gulp of Ginger Beer* its ok i've only had two today..
It's like shopping, or watching Lord of the Rings..(uh forget I ever said that one)
You know the worst thing?
I get Ginger Beer cravings.

GINGER BEER CRAVINGS!

I ask you.

You know there's something wrong with your life when you get cravings for Ginger Beer.

GINGER BEER GODDAMNIT.

Guy Fawkes

Remember remember, the 5th of November
I went to a fireworks show last night with some mates. The music was average, the fireworks fairly good. It was also Halloween which means we saw loads of amazing costumes and decorations everywhere; even a guy who dressed up like the Joker off the Batman, his makeup was perfect-it was amazing.
However that is not why I found last night so memoriable. It was because it was in celebration of the 5th of November. Of Guy Fawkes.
The gunpowder treason and plot..
of how a man tried to blow up parliment and died for it. I never quite worked out why we so enthusasticly celebrated the death of said man, or the survival of King James I. We do not celebrate the death of Hitler for example, or any other man who has commited crimes againt humanity, but we celebrate the death of an idealist, a freedom fighter, a man who fought for what he believed in. To this day, we burn effigies of him, as if to mock him. He has become a hated figure, and few people stop to think why he even tried to blow up parliment.
The king and his train had like to be slain..
I do not celebrate Guy Fawkes for a celebration of a man who was executed, but in rememberance, of the man behind the event, who believed in freedom, and revolution, and was willing to die for it.
And somehow when I was watching the whole sky light up in a shower of fading gold, when I heard the the cracks from the fireworks which sounded so much like gunshots, I found myself seeing not a park full of people by the sea, not an empty sky on an overcast night, but misty streets and the crack of guns as revolutionaries fell in their hundreds, the cobblestones red with blood. I saw fighting in the streets, and fear in the tunnels, I saw a man.
I saw the 5th of November, 1605.
And I hope it will ne'er be forgot.