The diary of a girl in the 21st century

'The only way to gain approval is by exploiting the very thing that cheapens me'

' 'Cause if you look deep dreams are nothing that I lack'

I'm all talked out for the evening. I just felt I should update this bloggy-wog for once.

Lots has happened, blah blah blah. I'm wondering why we base an entire fucking cultural belief system about mental 'illness' on what a few blokes said a hundred years ago. Screw that. Everyone's insane these days. Everyone who festers in a nine-to-five with a society-imposed dream of marriage and children to smother is safe from the label, but anyone else...watch out!

By the way, 'A Million Voices' by Wyclef Jean is AMAZING. That's right, I don't just listen to songs about the political situation and history of Britain and America. Check me out.

"I am glad that you have shot this footage and that the world will see it. It is the only way we have a chance that people might intervene."
"Yeah and if no one intervenes, is it still a good thing to show?"
"How can they not intervene when they witness such atrocities?"
"I think if people see this footage they'll say, "oh my God that's horrible,"...and then go on eating their dinners."

Gah. I actually can't even explain why I've quoted that. It's too hard.

'with newspaper cuttings of his glory days'

'The novel is called Richard and will be published in early 2011. It tells the story of Richard Edwards (formerly of the Manic Street Preachers) as he might have told it. Picador called the novel "thoughtful and thought-provoking, and written in a taut yet beautiful tone".'

Oh, and ... :)

Wyrd byð swyðost

Is fate really inexorable?

lol the 'rag and bone' men have been shouting 'any old irrooon'!

Why does everyone think they're some sort of alternative model these days? Black eyeliner and skimpy pvc does not a model make. Self-esteem kicks need to be acquired elsewhere in most cases I've seen.

It's sunny again! In the Midlands! It's an auspicious occassion, I tells thee. I've made a compost heap in the garden, and now we have peppers, chilles and oregano growing. Garden therapy.

I have nothing more to say because I've only just woken up, but Friday promises to be a really good day, and so does Saturday, hooray!

'Maturity's a wrapped-up package deal or so it seems. Ditching teenage fantasy means ditching all your dreams. All your friends and peers and family solemnly tell you you will have to grow up, be an adult. Be bored and unfulfilled. But no one's yet explained to me exactly what's so great about slaving 50 years away on something that you hate; about meekly shuffling down the path of mediocrity. Well if that's your road then take it but it's not the road for me.'

'And that the values and ideals for which many had fought and died

Had been killed off in the committees and left to die by the wayside'

Really, I'm lucky to have such a supportive family but when you find out you're not invited to a family outing at Chrristmas arranged by your parents it hurts. But what can I do but say 'fuck 'em'? I'm confused and saddened and at the moment, past caring. I'm almost used to feeling like this.

The Gods are still alive and the quicker the world realises this, the happier we'll all be. I'm currently going through a healing process supported, as always, by my faith and the way things used to be. Also, by music: my old saviour. The world awaits me and I'm going to beat it.

The Dagda

The All father

King of the Tuatha Dé Danann for many years.

Symbols: Cauldron, Harp and the Club.

Click here for more information.

I'm seriously thinking about checking myself into some clinic or other - every other area of the health service just throws tablets at me and waits impatiently for me to leave.

Hope is a funny word. It's so...complete, and full of promise. Yet it can vanish in an instant, a nano-second for no reason whatsoever. I think I will play it safe by forgetting about hope and sticking purely to wishes.

I hereby vow to never, ever write a romantic comedy.

Okay, maybe I will do a post about it

Well...

I just sat here, fingers waiting in anticipation and readiness on the keys, eyes staring at the screen and my mind...it doesn't want to explain. Because there's no putting into words. There's no describing it that doesn't span out to novel-length.

I think I'll save it for my stories.

Or perhaps I still haven't really accepted it myself.

'Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to a better understanding of ourselves.'

GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE GEORGE!

Happy now? ;)

Aghem...Monday at the Safari was great and Ben came out with a classic as usual: Me - 'well, we;re going to be able to feed the animals out of the windows!' Ben - 'I don't want no giraffe lickin' my Dock car!' We fed deer and giraffes which followed our car, and a zebra tried to enter the vehicle also!

This week has been a good one. Haven't said that in a while. Good good good.

The Old Ways

...are not entirely lost...

'Jack, do you never sleep?
Does the green still run deep in your heart?
Or will these changing times,
motorways, powerlines,
keep us apart?
Well, I don't think so:
I saw some grass growing through the pavements today.'

Ride on

I also want Pagan Purity by Elvenking to be part of my funeral. Sod it, I'll have a whole compilation CD. Donations at the door please.

Today confirmed that true friendship transcends time and distance.

Yesterday confirmed that these are NOT the tablets for me.

Tomorrow...who knows. Babysitting all day and we might take the kiddles to the Safari Park. We'll see how much it costs first though! That's right, there are no beaches in the midlands but they have Safari Parks - the mind boggles.

Would the neighbours really mind if I played the tin whistle at this hour? ...

...Damn it, thought so :(

I want Tull's 'Life's a long song' played at my funeral.

Just for the record.

Last night I came back from Kent after seeing my wifey play her first proper gig. Ialmost cried fro pride, I'm so sodding soppy. Anyway, it was a great first gig and we look forward to more from the faerie herself!

I have a kitten on my shoulder. I'm a girlie pirate.

The fact that this has anything to do with Michal Jackson or his pet rat is irrelevant. This is for my nephew, my boy, my bestest buddy, for Ben.



The lyrics are so poignant. Especially as he gets older, people see Ben's cheek and not Ben himself. Also, his dispraxia means that sometimes he really is 'running here and there'! Ben brings me to life. Here's to you, you 'plinky-plonk'.

'God only knows what I'd be without you'

I've just had a long, girly chat with Jo. Some people are so important to me and it's not scary...it's the best feeling in the world.

'following the footsteps of a ragdoll dance'

Oh Siouxsie. So many memories attached to your influence on my teenage years.

History is a weapon to be used against your own prejudice

Today saw family, kiddlies and sunshine. This was a good thing. It was wonderful to see Kevin after such a long time.

I'm astounded by the palpable presence of racism from some parts of the city I live in. It makes me physically sick and I refuse to accept these opinions and remain silent about them. I always reply harshly to racist comments and I don't give a fuck if it gets me in trouble. Pfft. I'm too angry to write about this subject sanely or logically.

By the way, Journey = yay. Stadium rock wins today.

So what is there for little ol' me to write about now? I refrain from jabbering on about anything psychiatry related because I refuse to let any illnesses I have define me. It's just something I'm battling through, like cancer or the flu.

I learnt today that in some parts of the world people are still sentenced to death for just a suspicion of witchcraft. Why am I surprised by this? Amin, Pot, Stalin, Hitler: you ain't got nothing on Christianity.

That is all.

'Eyes that watch the morning star seem a little brighter'

I hate to complain about the NHS. We're so lucky to have something even close to our health system in comparison to many other countries but you know what? I'm going to complain anyway, because when you hear your doctor talking on the phone to a health professional and telling them that the matter is urgent and they must get in touch immediately, you do not expect to wait over a month for a letter telling you an appointment is available over a month from then. I rang them at this point to tell them that when my doctor said this issue is important, it really is important, so they gave me an earlier appointment and I waited two weeks for that letter. They've now put that appointment back. I will make my feelings strongly known when I arrive at the appointment, although I suppose I ought to bloody pray it happens at all.

RANT OVER.

Cor, I haven't listened to Morrissey in ages. *dances*

Tonight I spoke to Ewan on the phone for quite a while. Those kids are like a boiling, steaming pot of energy from which I can drink. Not in an I'MAGOFF psychic vampire type way but in a grounding, inspiring kind of way.

I've also realised that people (including me) use the exclamation mark way too much. It is only supposed to be used for an indication of a command, or extreme emotion or astonishment. So there. Stick that in your punctuation pipe and smoke it. Actually, I'd bloody love a punctuation pipe - those of you who know me well will be all too aware I'd be an addict.

I think that's enough for tonight. Hazel and Kevin are visiting soon with the squiddleyiddleykiddleys and I physically can't wait to see them all! <-extreme excitement.

'Razors pain you;
Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you;
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren't lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live.'

'Don't wanna be a hollow man'

Richard Cribben. You were the first resident I really took to at Lennox Wood. Many people didn't understand you but to this day, you were wonderful to me.

I wish I could have known you when you were of stable mind and under less stressful circumstances.

You are not forgotten. You fought for your country but the fight for your mind you lost and I wish I could have done more.

I hope you can hear me.

Wherever you are.

'Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast'

Heidi-ho campers. Yesterday mum and dad visited and we went to the Black Country Museum, we went down a mine which beat some of my claustrophobia into submission!

I'm so exhauted.

Oh, and I've just seen this. Go Obama!

Songs of Myself

I remember life when I could joke, and I meant every light-hearted comment, and the future and the grass all glistened towards me.

'I have gotta stop smiling - it gives the wrong impression'

I've got to be honest here: I'm worried. I'm worried that people will find hope in the BNP just as they did in the Nazis, ignoring the most fundamentally worrying aspect of their beliefs (namely racism) and pull out the hope and the prospect from a party of contradictions and bigotry (lol, I originally wrote 'bigamy' here!). Call me dramatic in comparing the BNP to the Nazis if you like but if you look at Germany's history and the political and social state of the German people before chancellorship was given to Adolf Hitler you may see why I worry about such things. That's all I'll say on the subject for tonight because I am rather tipsy.

In other news, everyone should buy the new Manics album.

In other other news, I miss my friends although I feel I need to be further away from everything. My dad once described me as 'an enigma wrapped in a labyrinth inside a riddle' and I'm beginning to wonder if this interpretation might be accurate or not. Either way I really don't think it's a bad thing. I'd hate to be shallow, simple, easy. If I were I might as well not be alive.

I might write a book called 'Songs of Myself'. If Chinua Achebe can take a line from Yeats then why can I not take a title from Whitman?

'A child said What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands;
How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more than he. '

'Art is born of humiliation'

The inclusion of the world's saddess poem was nothing to do with my mood, in fact I'm in a phase of mania induced by a general crazy brain. I've had my weeks of depression (which lasted too long this time, quite frankly) and now we're onto the creative, hyperactive, manic aspect of my existence.

I have decided to go and see someone again. I have only now truly realised just how much this have cost me throughout my life.

Enough of the self-indulgence for now though: I am just trying to make my brain stop on one idea/subject/thought long enough to either write it down or talk about it in a relatively-sane manner, and slowly enough for people to keep up!

Toodley-doo!

Thank you W.H.Auden...for being born

Funeral Blues

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He is Dead.
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

I've just thought - one of the worst things about today was that nothing...nothing could be done by me to prevent or help any of these things. I'm an ambulance at the bottom of a cliff.

We've made tomorrow's world a Nirvana for the damned

'Stick around one minute more...
I'm smarter than you think:
Do I sound like an old bore?
Oh man, it's just the drink.
I didn't always hit the gin,
there were times when I'd fit in -
they'll never know how much I tried,
did I tell you my cat died?'

The sound of almost everyone you love telling you you're wrong, making a mistake - not an unfamiliar sound to me. It gets no easier each time you hear it, especially the times you really need them to bloody well take a thought to really listen to what you're saying. One of the problems of coming from a middle class family where 'failure' is a scent obscure and any mental ailment is dismissed as foreign, strange, and trivial. If depression came along with skin boils and hair-loss my life would be a lot easier. Or maybe I shouldn't have got so good at hiding it.

Only positive words in this post: things seem to be pretty much sorted with Kevin. He needs check-ups and such, monitoring, and recovery but apart from that let's hope it's all over.

So, today we found the cat dead on the front lawn because people seem to find it terribly difficult to drive at the speed limit, which I can understand really - those rules of the road are just put in place to stop people from having fun after all, and why the hell shouldn't they? And I sympathise with the fact that they didn't stop because they probably had to be somewhere and it wasn't their cat anyway. Oh, and my mum had her handbag snatched in Hempstead Valley car park, which is also understandable really - if you see a vulnerable old woman by herself with a trolley full of shopping why shouldn't a group of cowards steal her handbag? She obviously won't be able to chase after them, and she's probably confused so unlikely to act very quickly about the situation. Really she's just asking for it - being silly enough to go shopping for some dog food and some cake ingredients in the light of day.

You know what human race? You can just fuck off today. Just fuck fuck fuck off.

'And my whole body's in flames'

How is he so patient?

Luke, you are an angel.

Is it only a dream that there'll be no more turning away?

I hope, that when you see this, you are just as fucking ashamed to be a human being as I am sometimes.

Most people will not watch this at all. Some will give up half way through because it's too painful to watch - I can understand this but pleasethink about how painful it is for those animals. And a few, rare people will have the guts to watch the video until the end, a few people will have the courage to accept that this is happening and that this is wrong. Which one are you? Will you turn away into that old familiar selfish comfort?


Learn more at PETA.org.

'What does it matter if I change the world at all?'

I am suffocated by routine. I need to just go and be wild.

'My respect to the ones in the forest
standing up for our old trees'

you can still ruin my day

'I don't wait by the phone like I used to,
I don't hope for kind words you might say,
you don't prey on my mind like you used to
but you can still ruin my day.'

I thought I had forgiven but in reality, I just hadn't accepted it. I am now swimming in the deep realisation of it all. Muddy, polluted waters spin around my ears and eyes and there are so many islands I'm neglecting because the filth surrounding me is in the way. Saying things aloud to people has helped - a lover, a soul-mate, and a teacher - and all three of them have handed me wood, now I just need to learn how to build a raft, never expecting I'd need one in such a shape.

'I don't easily forgive like I used to
and I seldom get carried away;
no, you don't have the pull that you used to
but you can still ruin my day.'

This all must come out, in whatever form. And soon. Because burying the past no longer works for me. Illumination, clarity and perhaps one day a forgiveness is what will set this free.

'Now, I don't lose my place like I used to;
I'm not moved by your artful display.
No, you can't draw me in like you used to
but you can still ruin my day.'

'I do not wish to treat friendships daintily...

but with the roughest courage. When they are real, they are not glass threads or frost-work, but the solidest thing we know.'
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Congratulations Mandymoo!

Follow your heart and may your soul continue in its radiant brilliance.

The dream is alive

Obama, even though you fucked up your oath, I still have faith in you.

I am practically living in two houses.

I am actually freezing.

Nellie McKay, I love you

...aaaand my brother has just left the house wearing leggings

'Everything popular is wrong'

Yesterday I had a history exam, went out for dinner, yada yada yada.

I can't remember the last weekend I had at home, with nobody far away to visit and no festivities to attend. This weekend is no different either!

Joanna needs to rest her tired mind, and yet, it buzzes! Will Joanna's mind ever relax? Even when her mind is done of homework, studying, and continual ponderings about feminism and spirituality, it invents something to worry about! I blame society. Once my mind is finished with the important things it focuses on the indoctrination it's been subjected to its entire life - THIS IS WHAT YOU SHOULD LOOK LIKE, THIS IS HOW YOU ARE EXPECTED TO BEHAVE, IF YOU DO NOT FOLLOW THE RIDICULOUS, SHALLOW RULES OF MEDIA AND ADVERTISING THEN YOU ARE WORTHLESS!

Although that doesn't happen very often at all these days, which I'm rather pleased about. I actually feel rather triumphant about it.

I've been trying to find articles for my English coursework all morning and, after going through about 70 articles, I'm now undecided about the subject I wish to approach. Back to the drawing board, it seems. I need some sort of divine inspiration!

Oh yes, I did

“ 'Beauty' is a currency system like the gold standard. Like any economy, it is determined by politics, and in the modern age in the West is the last, best belief system that keeps male dominance intact.” - Naomi Wolf

OMG: An update!

Today’s new:
A devil-cat attempted to dismember my right index-finger.

In other news, a question (as always):
How is it that people who would be classed as highly educated and highly intelligent, find it so unfathomably difficult to think outside a small, stuffy box?

I’ve often heard it said that people who have had a classic education are the worst for being ignorant in other, more free-thinking areas but in my experience, particularly over the last year or so, I’ve been encouraged to think for myself, from other perspectives and from every possible angle - the more unique, the better - when it comes to organised and institutional education.

This contradiction has me entirely flummoxed - how is it possible to be so intelligent and so utterly stupid at the same time?

I am well aware that there are many types of intelligence, all of them differing greatly from the other, but there comes a point at which you expect quite a few of these types of intelligence to meet where they actually just…don’t. Like separate countries with vast oceans in between but none of these countries seems to have invented a boat compatible with the shore or port of any of the other countries.

And that’s another thing - every single thing/situation/argument/love in life can be compacted into a simple metaphor using different countries and elements of our world! No other metaphors need ever apply!

…except perhaps for the purpose of a little variation.

For now though, I should probably offski as my wounded, injured finger is throbbing like a bass-line at Fabric and I fear it may detach itself from my hand entirely.

Good-day to you all!