tinypinkstar

The Lord gives everything and charges
by taking it back. What a bargain.
Like being young for a while. We are
allowed to visit hearts of women,
to go into their bodies so we feel
no longer alone. We are permitted
romantic love with its bounty and half-life
of two years. It is right to mourn
for the small hotels of Paris that used to be
when we used to be. My mansard looking
down on Notre Dame every morning is gone,
and me listening to the bell at night.
Venice is no more. The best Greek islands
have drowned in acceleration. But it's the having
not the keeping that is the treasure.
Ginsberg came to my house one afternoon
and said he was giving up poetry
because it told lies, that language distorts.
I agreed, but asked what we have
that gets it right even that much
We look up at the stars and they are
not there. We see the memory
of when they were, once upon a time.
And that too is more than enough.
- Jack Gilbert

Today is meme day. impishredhead wants me to talk about these thing...

1. Comment to this post and I will give you 5 subjects/things I associate you with.
2. Then post this in your LJ and elaborate on the subjects given.

( And here they are! )

Oh, completely unrelatedly, I may have a present for some bunnies...

Having seen both Gogol Bordello and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds in the space of a month, I've come to the conclusion that a truly spectacular band requires two important elements.

1. A Really Big Moustache







2. A Crazy Violinist







So obviously any of you out there with a band that doesn't have a very big moustache and a crazy fiddler in it is just going to have to try harder. And no, a beard isn't good enough!

I haven't written very much here this year. So here's a meme instead.

( Read more )

I've just had a phone call from my very drunk Mother, who is currently at home in Peebles with my very drunk Father.

One of the things Mother said on the phone was that I shouldn't phone her on her landline just now, because there's a crossed line and all her calls go somewhere else. In a novel, that would be a wonderful piece of symbolism.

I have no idea what's going on anymore.

My parents divorced sixteen years ago. The only time I've seen both of them together since then was at my graduation, which was strained, to say the least.

When Dan and I visited my Dad at the weekend (where he mentioned that he'd been in hospital, but hadn't bothered letting us know at the time because 'it was only a mild heart attack') he asked if I could check the divorce date with Mum because he needed it for a pension document. So when we saw Mother last night I dutifully asked. Mother's just became unemployed once more after an altercation at work where she swore at a pregnant woman, and she really hates not working so she said that she'd look it up, and phone Dad herself to let him know.

The upshot of all this is that my father is taking my mother out to lunch on Monday.

It's all very weird.

A meme from poor, coughing sakirmo, which seems quite appropriate as I'm currently filling in an application for a gallery job, which I probably don't have a hope in hell of getting as it's stretching things a bit to class anatomy as 'an arts-related subject' (even though my engineer ex-flatmate thought that biology wasn't a proper science).

Your result for What Your Taste in Art Says About You Test...

Simple, Progressive, and Sensual

Take What Your Taste in Art Says About You Test at HelloQuizzy

As the salesman worked through his spiel, a lender woman walked by, carrying twins in a knapsack-like contraption. She was less than beautiful, with shaggy matte brown hair, and a sharp, shrewd little chin. Her eyes – her whole body – looked tired in a profound, almost permanent way, as if no amount of rest would ever quite restore her. Still, she possessed a sure-footed self-assurance that lent weight to the bright aisle she walked in search of the correct yard tool. Her twins stared with puzzled absorption at the empty air directly in front of them. As she made her way along the aisle, I thought of how firmly anchored her life must be, for all its domestic hardship. A year from today, her twins would be walking and speaking. A year from today she would know exactly how much time had passed.

Kristin Hersh is doing a show called 'Paradoxical Undressing' at St Cecilia's Hall on the Cowgate until the 23rd. It's a mixture of music, spoken word and film, and it's brilliant, intense stuff to give you the shivers. An amazing venue too - an oval room with chandeliers, and a display of old instruments downstairs to look at before you go in. There were only 20 people there last night.






My other festival recommendation is 'Feast of the Ants', a Japanese play using Noh and other elements of traditional Japanese theatre. You'd have to see it to understand.

Tomorrow we go to Peru. I think I'm all ready. Our training has gone well, including our triumphant climb of Ben Nevis last Monday. I now have calves of steel! So hopefully I should manage the Inca Trail, though there is that pesky little problem of altitude sickness to worry about... apparently our hotel in Cuzco serves free hot beberages [sic], including coca tea - apparently the best thing for it. I told my mum that, and she asked if we would be getting some in advance to take with us. I had to explain that that's not really legal.

I'm a wee bit excited. Even though we have a night sleeping in Heathrow airport to look forward to (not terminal 5, I might add!). And the book I'm planning on taking with me to read possibly doesn't have the best title...

From sakirmo

It sounds quite a lot like me. Particulalrly that 'not a patient teacher' bit...

Your Thinking is Abstract and Sequential

You like to do research and collect lots of information. The more facts you have, the easier it is for you to learn. You need to figure things out for yourself and consider all possibilities. You tend to become an expert in the subjects that you study. It's difficult for you to work with people who know less than you do. You aren't a very patient teacher, and you don't like convincing people that you're right.

What Kind of Thinker Are You?

Dan and I have just spent a weekend hiking in Arran. We climbed Goat Fell. It was quite high. And very windy. There was snow. And you could see Ireland from up there.




It was also my first opportunity to use my new sleeping bag, which was wonderfully cosy. The only problem that's really occurred is that my walking boots have decided that now is the time to start splitting - not great, as it's less than four weeks until we're off to Peru. I popped out to the Army and Navy Surplus Store on Leith Walk today (along with impishredhead, who got some very funky wellies for beekeeping) and managed to find a pair of end of line boots reduced to twenty quid! The joys of having tiny feet... these are actually adult boots, so they're a decidedly sensible grey colour, unlike my previous kiddie boots, which were pink with fur trim... I think the children's ones were probably more me.

I've also put some pictures from our trip to Paris last month on Facebook, should anyone be interested. Paris was a combination of doing the usual tourist activities and sitting around in cafes drinking wine - I even managed to invent a new word. I know that the French for glass is verre. I know this. But somehow, when speaking to a waiter, between my brain and my mouth that became 'terre'... No one seemed to know what a terre de vin was. I also got very excited by buying this biography of Sylvia Beach in Shakespeare and Co. bookshop. For me, the literary connections were one of the major attractions of Paris, and so this was quite a moment for me... I don't think anyone else will understand though.

Finally, should anyone care to save me from madness: I have a film stuck in my head, and I can't for the life of me think what it is. All I remember is one section, I think it was just a subplot, possibly a flash back to a traumatic memory. A woman was kidnapped by a kind of hick farmer guy who drove her off in to the country to rape her. She had her hands tied up, but she managed to stab him, I think with a pocket knife she'd gotten from his back pocket. The police tracked her down and she was taken off to hospital in a helicopter. I think the policeman that found her may be the focus of the story, but really I have no idea. I don't know where I saw it, and I couldn't even tell you whether it was good, bad or indifferent. I think it was American. Any ideas?

Keith posting some childhood pictures on Facebook reminded me of this picture of me back when I was a Small Child. I was quite disgustingly cute back then, even if I do say so myself (my dad always adds "what happened?" when ever he talks about how adorable I was as a kid)




...and then there's this picture taken when my hair was starting to grow back after that little incident with a bic razor:



And just so it's not all pictures of me, here's a picture of Dan at his most monkey like:

I'm back to not being able to move my head properly to the left. This started in September, and after a couple of weeks it kind of faded to a kind of background stiffness which has been pretty annoying. Eventually I went for a massage at Napier's last week with the wonderfully-named Christina Lazarus, which was fantastic and made me really happy, and afterwards tramps commented on my smile. Then yesterday morning I awoke in a decidedly odd position, which I knew would be incredibly painful as soon as I moved.

It was.

I also woke up yesterday with hair very like Russell Brand's, so maybe the neck troubles have stemmed from all my crazy hair?

********************************

As both dan_monkeyhouse and nik_strychnine have reported, Glasgow did indeed implode on Saturday night, but I just sat across the road in Mono and read my book (except when Wraiths played, obviously). It was a wonderful day.

Yesterday, I got an email offering me job at Oxford University. Curation and conservation of the wet collections of their zoology museum.





It's a shame Oxford isn't in commuting distance from Edinburgh.

Today, Dan and I have been together for nine years. They've been good years.

A woman was going to get burned at the stake. She was a friend of mine. She escaped by changing in to a Talking Shower Curtain. I went to meet Paul in KFC. We were going to eat their vegetarian meal (some potato wedges, a particularly small packet of root vegetable crisps and a plate of fried seaweed. I didn't get my seaweed) and discuss the shortage of public toilets in central Edinburgh. I had also been going to bring along the Talking Shower Curtain, as Evs had been going to use it in a uni presentation the next day which she was going to do dressed up as a man, but I realised I had left it behind. I decided instead that I would take it to the Auld Hoose, and leave it behind the bar for her to pick up from there, but when I got there I realised that instead of picking up the bag with the shower curtain in, I had just brought along some dirty towels. I was very annoyed at myself, but then I got distracted by a new shop that had just appeared. It was filled with a whole array of bizarre items, and had stairs that led to nowhere. Dan and I bought baby clothes with ladybirds on for Rachael's impending child.

******************
...but in reality, I do have a fridge full of kale, which makes me happy.

I got two more vaccines today in preparation for Peru. Rabies and HepB. I had my HepA booster on Tuesday, so now there are only 5 more to go... The Rabies vaccine apparently makes you feel quite spaced, so I have that to look forward to. At least I shouldn't have to worry about rabid vampire bats nibbling on my toes while I'm in a tent in the Andes, which is apparently where the biggest rabies risk comes from over there. I also got more money for the sponsorship pot by making cakes... I called it Cake Karma. There was a Buddha whose belly you could fill with money in return for him filling your belly with cake. I'm sure Brian won't be surprised to hear that my banana bread went down quite well - I had a request for the recipe, and a commission for an entire loaf.

While walking home from the clinic, I saw a sign on St Mary's Street (which is being dug up yet again) saying "NO DROP OFF'S IN THIS AREA, TAXI DROP OFF'S UP AHEAD". It makes my fingers itch just typing that.

On a completely different note, any Edinburgh folk know where I can buy some curly kale? I have a huge craving, and I can't find any!

Today was my half day working at The Bike Station. The work load can be pretty variable. So this morning I dragged myself out of bed at about 9:05, had breakfast, washed, dressed, put some make-up on and walked out there. It takes about 20-25 minutes. I had finished working by 10am. The seven minutes of work I did included the time it took the computer to boot up.

While I suppose the time could possibly have been spent better doing something else, it's less irritating than the times I've turned up and nobody's there.

I did, however, manage to take some nice pictures of Siouxsie Sioux on Monday night...

One of the few bad things about not having a television is not being able to watch documentaries. However, there is the pleasure of getting the entire series of Life in Cold Blood on DVD and being able to watch it over and over again.

And having watched quite a lot of episodes at various people's houses over the last few months we've finally succumbed to buying The Mighty Boosh. Tonight will be spent with tea and toast and DVDs...

Anyway, this is what February contained prior to the DVDs:

( The February Review )