Drive

I have been developing a growing fondness for Ryan Gosling. After watching Drive this morning, it has turned into a full-blown crush of teenage proportions. Gorily violent, a description which would normally put me off a film, this one was brilliant. I loved it. There is a lot of silence, some slow mo, a fabulous soundtrack and... Ryan Gosling. Sigh.

I am always astounded when I love movies like this. I'm not a fan of violence, especially gratuitous violence. This violence is so close to sex that it is unnerving. I'm not even sure that I can quantify that statement because it sounds wrong but it is not meant to. It's a violence entrenched in passion. Like Tarantino does violence. It's graphic, though. Really, really graphic - heads get blown off, blood spurts, jugulars get spliced open. I found myself closing my eyes, hiding behind my arm, in places but only momentarily, because the compulsion to look back was overwhelming.

Beautifully entwined is an electric love between two people that positively crackles on the screen and the one, very short, moment of passion between them turned my insides liquid. I was incredibly impressed by its beauty, its unexpectedness. Kissing scenes in movies are so often ridiculously contrived and the same thing is done, over and over, ad nauseum. This one - amazing - and followed by intense violence, again.

It's pretty obvious that my mind is a muddle after watching this movie. One thing is for sure - I'll be playing it over in my mind for a good, long, time. And finding the soundtrack. And carving Ryan Gosling's name into my desk at work. Oops, that's not 'one thing for sure' is it? Make that three.

http://youtu.be/-DSVDcw6iW8

Book vs Kindle

I love books – their feel, their look, their smell, the lot. I have been known to buy a book purely because I like the cover – idioms, be gone! I love bookshelves filled with books and piles of books on tables, next to the toilet, on my dressing table, next to my bed… they’re welcome anywhere, anytime. I read them, too. This paragraph was beginning to sound like I had them purely for decoration. Books – they’re like little friends made of paper. If I could find one willing to commit to a long-lasting relationship, I’d marry one. Well, commit to it at least, I’m not so sure about the whole marriage thing.

The thing is, though, that I got a Kindle yesterday. I’ve been humming and ha-ing about it for months. Do I? Don’t I? Isn’t it cheating on my lifelong lovers, The Books? Am I selling out, falling for commercialism in a technology-obsessed world? Sleepless nights, turning these thoughts in my head, I tell you! Well, okay, that may be a bit of an exaggeration.

Eventually, practicality won out over all those thoughts and I’m loving it. How easy is it? I have, however, sworn on Stalkbook (and, as we all know, a swearing on Stalkbook is like a legal document) that this will not stop me buying real books. Honestly, who could live without that paper smell? And the dust they gather?

Surreal. Nonsense.

It's hot. I'm not complaining (too loudly), though, because those little signs of Autumn are about and I'd far rather have hot, than Autumn. Autumn brings Winter and Winter turns me into a grumpy whiney person with no personality and a two-dimensional smile, if any at all.

I've had a vaguely surreal-feeling weekend for some reason, probably due to the hot nights causing a distinct lack of restful sleep. I saw friends, ate while we sat outside enjoying the balmy night, reflected to myself the priviledge of having old friends, and listened to conversations that I seemed to be flying above.

It's as if my mind seems to have shifted slightly off centre. Perhaps it was always there and now, in a flash of middle-aged wisdom, I've only just noticed. Did I really just say 'middle-aged wisdom'? Good god. If anything proves the point, that sentence must be it. Did I say my mind shifted slightly off centre? I think what I should've said was, my mind has taken a flying leap off a high, and particularly pretty might I say - the lillies are flowering in all its crevasses - cliff.

Waffle, waffle, nonsense. But it's writing, and I need to get back into it. I figure if takes thousands of a couple of nonsensical wafflings, so be it.

Heartbreak

Heartbreak. It's a rough one. One of my closest friends is going through a break up. She thought they'd marry, it's that kind of break up. Admittedly, she's been living in limbo, waiting for The Ring, for months and, honestly, has been miserable not knowing, waiting, wondering.

Being miserable, however, before the break up, doesn't make it any easier when it happens. She's devastated and torn apart, convinced she won't survive this. One forgets that acute pain (thank god!) attached to breaking up with somebody. That feeling of not being able to breathe. Watching her, hearing her, I seem to absorb some of her pain, and am flung back to my own heartbreaks. I'm a bit of a sponge like that. This is not necessarily a good thing.

I figure, though, that maybe, if I can absorb just a little bit of it, I could make it easier for her. Obviously I know this isn't true, only time'll make it better. Ugh, horrid. It's always so hard in the acute stages to see the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel and it's made worse by his behaviour now which, honestly, is just odd.

Best I away though, to take her out, feed her a delicious drink, and remind her (and me) there's lots out there still.

March? What?

There it is, right up in my face, proclaiming that February's done, dusted, over-scadover. March. Well, I guess I have no choice but so say: "Welcome March, come on in. Yes, yes, you can bring The Ides along too, just dust off all your feet at the door, please."

I have (again) been neglectful of my writing. I've been terribly busy doing Real Work, living life, now dealing with a heartbroken, broken-up friend, and gazing at my navel, to bring myself to write. This, in itself, is ridiculous because (a) What is blogging if not the highest form of navel-gazing? and (b) My navel seems to be expanding most worryingly and I'd do better to not look at it and, therefore, remain blissfully unaware of the middle-age spread happening down there.

I meant to (re)start blogging on the 1st of March and do it daily, at least for the month of March. I like doing stuff like that, starting things in a new month, resolving to be better at it. Please note that I said I like doing it, not I'm good at doing it. Not that I really have to point that out, it's pretty obvious, isn't it? It being the 3rd of March and all.

So here I am, starting. Maybe I'll do every third day, that seems more doable. I have lots of stories - the plans for the country move, a very sad and beautiful funeral, my first meeting with KitKat, the donkey...

Grumble grump

Thoughts of big skies and open roads keep distracting me from the matter at hand. The matter at hand, though, seems flimsy and colourless, a bland moment in time. I berate myself constantly for doing what seems to me to be Wasting Time. Again, I have the preciousness of time thrown in my face, with the death of someone I was once close to. There is no time to waste. None, nada, zip.

It just all seems so pointless sometimes, the dreary drugdgery of work, home, filling up time with ‘stuff’. It feels like the ‘stuff’ is junk food, nutrient-less, filling a void that just keeps getting bigger. I feel guilty, though, even saying this, knowing my everyday drudgings are so much easier than most, my job mainly stimulating, my life pretty damn rosy. In comparison.

I feel like I’m waiting for something big to happen, jumping from stepping stone to stepping stone in a marshland, toward a mirage that just keeps rushing further away. Wishing I could blame it on PMS I check my calendar hopefully, knowing my hormones are blameless this time.

Perhaps I need to stop jumpingjumpingjumping and just be still for a bit. Still and quiet. Maybe with a large bottle of gin and a couple of books.

The Tallest Man on Earth

A skinny figure with his guitar silhouetted in a round moon of white light. One man, casting two shadows. On stage he looks tiny, dressed in skinny jeans (a uniform, it seems, amongst the audience), but there, on both walls, either side of the stage, he really does look like The Tallest Man on Earth.

Then he plays his guitar and sings and there is a collective intake of breath. He is astounding, his voice gravelly, but pure and beautiful. His songs move easily from ones that want to make you wiggle your bum and dance wildly, gypsey-like, preferably under a huge sky filled with stars, to ones that crumple your heart and bring huge, fat tears that drop almost audibly.

This man has plucked the best of The City Beneath The Mountain’s uber-cool and I feel at once cool and old. We bump into a young whippersnapper girl who G works with and she exclaims: "It's so cool to see old people at concerts like this and know you can be cool when you're old!" Well, quite.

It's fabulous. He's astounding. My "old" body and bones don't want it to end and my heart squelches as he plays this, a song he hasn't played before, a new one, recorded coincidentally by a boy I knew once:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxP384b-HIs

I cried. The look of a boy, with a voice, and a guitar, is unbearably beautiful.