I heard your heart sing...

I came across this song yesterday. My sister and I were wandering about in Glasgow for a while before going to see The Artist (silent, black and white, beautiful) ...and I heard it in a shop. I wrote a story over Christmas about a girl with a singing heart... so the words stuck out.



Happy New Year! I hope it is a year to remember (for good reasons, not for bad ‘Oh yeah, that was the year that I broke six ribs, and I did so badly in all my exams that I was personally called by the Dean and told to "get lost", and my parents ran away, and I witnessed that trapeze artist fall to his death which made me lose my appetite so I ate nothing but toast and peanut-butter for four months’ kind of reasons).

I’m hoping this year will be filled with fantastic conversations, and ink-stained fingers, and new experiences, and piles of books read, and plans that have ticks next to them, and enlightening discussions, and trips to interesting places, and better time keeping, and things that challenge me (in a positive ‘growing into the best version of myself’ kind of way) ...and tea (of course).

♥

recovery.

Last week, just because I could and because I've meaning to do for a few years, I re-covered one of my favourite books, A City of Bells by Elizabeth Goudge. The copy we have (a three-in-one version) used to look like this:

Yikes. I do judge books by their covers. Most people do. It's hard not to. But (yes, yes) the cover can be misleading. I read A City of Bells quite a lot when I was younger, so if I'd payed too much attention to the (hideous) cover, I would probably be a completely different person. One who doesn't like Shelley's Ode to the West Wind, for example ('...Drive my dead thoughts over the universe...') Now it looks like this:

    

It is such a lovely story. Funny, and quaint, and beautiful (especially the parts about the missing poet and the play and the bookshop and the Grandfather and...)  

After covering it, I read the first chapter, planning on popping it back on its shelf... but I then remembered how much I liked it, and it had been so long, and I thought I'd just read it again.   

So I did! 

And it is just as good as I remembered it to be ...even if she does write quite and rather a lot about flowers. 

♥

functioning.

On the bus home the other day, I looked out the window and saw that we were driving parallel to another bus on the motorway.

Suffering as I do from chronic nosiness, I looked at the people in the window seats and noticed one boy listening to his iPod, staring at his phone. The lady in front of him had fallen asleep, and the man in front of her was eating a sandwich and reading a magazine (quite a skill. I can’t read and eat at once. Things tend to fall out of the sandwich onto the page, or I can’t keep the book open, or something like that).

 

Another lady was daydreaming out of the window, and then the man in front of her was listening to his iPod and staring at his phone, and the boy in front of him was listening to his iPod and staring at his phone, and the girl in front of him was listening to her iPod and staring at her phone, and the man in front of her, and in front of him, and him, and her, and him.

Something about it made me shudder.

While technology can be wonderful in many ways it is also quite isolating, and doesn’t do much for individuality. All of those people probably were listening to different music, and texting different friends, but they just looked exactly the same. Robotic.

I got a fright when I looked down and realised I was sitting in exactly the same position: phone in hand, music in my ears, vacant expression. I bundled it all away and pulled out a book instead!

♥

As an aside: The book I was reading was on satire - I’m looking at it for an essay - and this paragraph from it make me laugh a bit:

[A writer] tells of a guest at a large party who said to the host, 'Who is that ugly woman sitting by herself?' 'That,' said the host, 'happens to be my sister.' 'Of course,' said the embarrassed guest, 'I didn’t notice the resemblance.'

~ From An Introduction to Satire by Leonard Feinberg (1967).

Ho ho.

(pictures from: here.)

six noticings:

1. Leaving things to the last minute – things like walking down to the bus stop, actually writing (and not just planning and researching) assignments, telling people things, getting out of bed, taking dinner out of the oven et cetera – makes life a bit more stressful than it needs to be.

♥

2. Sometimes, no matter how many times you notice things, you just can’t get them to sink in. The ‘leaving things to the last minute is a bad idea’ thing is an example of this. It is easier to talk about things than to actually do them. This year I will learn. I will.  

(I won’t.)

♥

3. Orange juice is the best cure for thirstiness.

♥ 

4. The reason studying English Literature is so wonderful is because it is actually a little bit of everything: history, theology, psychology, sociology, philosophy, what it means to be a human (not sure what ‘ology’ that falls under...all of them probably). After carrying about my Renaissance Literature anthology for the past four months it feels strange to stick it in my bookcase. So long Spenser, Sidney and friends. Hello Defoe, Fielding and Austen.

♥

5. This sentence:

‘There is as much difference between us and ourselves as there is between ourselves and others’ 

~ Michel de Montaigne, 1634.

I came across it in an essay on the Renaissance notion of identity and ‘the self’. (‘The self’ has been one of the most interesting concepts to look at last semester.) And I agree. If I find it so difficult to understand and know myself – that curious and infuriating person that is both too quiet and too opinionated, both thoughtful and rash, can feel about fourteen things at the same time without knowing which one to listen to – then how is it possible to ever actually know anyone else? I suppose it isn’t. I suppose that is why love, be it romantic or not, is so frightening: it is about relinquishing control and just trusting. It is about being brave.

♥

6. This song (‘Please Speak Well of Me’ by the Weepies).

(Pictures by Eveline Tarunadjaja).

hopes.

By the end of this year I would like to be well on my way to becoming a healthy, happy, peaceful, prayerful, interesting, wise, witty, articulate, kind, decisive, purpose-driven, organised, fun, loving, funny, fabulous, all-round better sort of person.

A bit too ambitious? (Probably.)

♥

I would also like to stop procrastinating (which I am, of course, doing right now. I’ll get back to studying.)

Happy New Year!

I spent the first few hours of 2011 at work, serving drinks, cleaning wine glasses, sweeping up confetti. Just before the stroke of midnight though, everyone who was working was given a small glass of champagne. All the customers gathered by the stage in bow ties and sparkly purple dresses, and all the workers huddled together a little way off.

'Ten! Nine! Eight! Seven! Six! Five! Four! Three! Two! One! Happy New Year!!'

And for a few minutes we were allowed to drop our roles – waitress, bar staff, chef, dish washer – and just be people, toasting in the New Year. A few moments of excitement, hugging people you wouldn't normally, asking about ambitions...and then back to work.

...that is the thing about being a waitress, it is a role. Once I put the uniform on, once I button up the shirt and tie a bow at the back of the apron, I become: The Waitress. Which is fine, but sometimes (during the summer especially, when I’m working for months at a time) it feel quite anonymous, like my 'self' gets lost inside crumpled napkins and dirty dishes... 

There was one day, two summers ago, when the cafe was mobbed – clinking tea cups, piano music, talking, talking, a small child whining, laughing, cutlery rattling – and I had been running about all day bringing ice-cream sundaes and coffees to customers, when I came to a table I’d served earlier. Table 39: a lady, and a man with blue eyes, and their little boy, and his granny who was wearing a bright pink t-shirt. And the man said,

‘I hope they pay you well, because you work very hard.’

And then the granny asked,

‘What’s your name, love?’

‘Melissa.’

And soon I was back to whizzing about with more trays of drinks, but that was lovely. Kindness is beautiful, even if it comes in the form of a few words and a naming.

‘Melissa. My name is Melissa.’

Yes! I am not a uniform. I am a literature student. I had tuggy hair when I was a little girl. I am in love with the idea of love, but frightened of the reality of it. I am an aspiring ‘doer of good’. I am a person.

I try hard to see the customers as people, and not just table numbers. They are living stories, characters with quirks and ambitions. I like it when they remember, and remind me, that I am story too. Just now is only a chapter.

(pictures from Matte Stephens. The last one isn't related, I just thought it was funny...)