four. (the tide)

In the evening I watched the sun set over the rising tide. When I was trying to fall asleep in my hotel room I realised that when you breathe in and out it sounds a bit like the waves. I stood by the edge and watched my sand filled boots get soaked by sea water. I smelt the seaweed. I wrote letters.

three. (sea stuff)

All over the walls of the cliff was all this sea crap. Instead of appreciating its natural beauty i spent hours trying to get my phone to take good pictures of it. Nature is wasted on the youth. It made me angry but now its funny.

two. (cliff climbing)

I climbed the red cliffs as an ode to my childhood summers spent climbing polish mountains. I would write more about it but all my thoughts were strangely familiar, as if in that moment I connected to my past and was the same person again, and I can't be bothered to type it all again.

Thoughts from places; dead crab and naked babies

one. (rock pool)

Whilst staying in Devon I visited Exmouth on a cloudy misty morning. Sometimes after staying in the city for so long you kind of forget about the vast expanse of the outside. The sea looked like it tumbled endlessly into the horizon. The red stained chiselled cliffs grew from the sandy Earth. The rock pools infested with children hunting crabs and fish, poking at them with their chubby fingers.

the butler's nose

"Well, he wasn't always a butler; he used to be a silver polisher for some people in New York that had a silver service for two hundred people. He had to polish it from morning till night, until finally it began to affect his nose-"

"Things went from bad to worse," suggested Miss Baker.

"Yes. Things went from bad to worse, until finally he had to give up his position."

Amongst the countless hastily skim read and overlooked dialogue in the history of literature lies this anecdote from Fitzgerald's great american novel, The Great Gatsby (although it probably earned that nickname not from its greatness or novel-ness but more from its abundant american-ness).

Looking through old holiday pictures of Versailles (above), the relevance of the butler's nose to society became obvious. The butler's tale appears to be an attempt at filling a painfully awkward silence during a painfully awkward dinner. However, Fitzgerald is illustrating the continuously pertinent point that wealth does not only consume the rich, but it also consumes the poor.

The palace of Versailles stands as a fine example of this (cue summer 2009). The French royals became increasingly obsessed with the idea of power and wealth and so they designed ever more extravagant buildings and ornaments and gardens and statues and clothes and wigs and food, all at the expense of the suffering peasants. They felt the consequences of the extensive debt that the palace had accumulated, in the form of famine and starvation and deprivation.

Fewer words more true have ever been printed than these which Fitzgerald once wrote almost a century ago...

(Personal Note: ...and yet fewer words have ever been more neglected by English students. Times like these I'm thankful I wasn't good enough at English to be studying this book amongst the tired walls of a dull classroom. I'm sure I would have neglected Daisy's urgent whisper and I'm damn sure I would have liked this book a hell of a lot less.)

beauty is lonely; melting into green

no one sat on this grass until we did

Larry: What do you think?
Alice: It's a lie. It's a bunch of sad strangers photographed beautifully, and... all the glittering assholes who appreciate art say it's beautiful 'cause that's what they wanna see. But the people in the photos are sad, and alone... But the pictures make the world seem beautiful, so... the exhibition is reassuring which makes it a lie, and everyone loves a big fat lie.

quantifying and qualifying

My sister took me to Haunch of Venison (which I still believe sounds like an extravagant cut of meat- "I'd like your finest haunch of venison please") around Green Park. We saw this exhibition by some guy who consecutively went on long continuous hikes around Britain. Most of his art work was writing on the walls and I noticed that everything seemed so ordered; from the neatly aligned stones on the floor to the actual order and composition of the words against the blank. He organised all his memories and all his experiences into letters and rocks and paintings. It made me think about how odd it is that we can select, collect and quantify all our intangible thoughts. And yet here my keyboard is rattling away.

We found macaroons and of course decided that we must eat them.

Soon the rain came and washed it all away.

Thoughts from places: flying lanterns

a long post about a long eveningtwilightdawnmorning.

we sat impatiently cross-legged with chocolate in a skip amongst other delights.

we switched on the lights which were wrapped around the white frame of her bed.

time passed

as we watched film after film.

the thoughts which they left spiralled dizzily around the tired conversations which we had.

if the dreams which we finally have do not live up to our expectations, must we find a new dream? is that a good thing or a bad thing?

why are we growing up?

we think we are finally ready for one.

soon she began to softly snore

and our conversations melted along with the ice cream.

I woke her up again and we gathered candles and lighters

we greeted the morning amongst their warm glow

smiling at the new day.

(our candles were the closest thing we had to lanterns)

once we returned, all that was left were the creases in the bedsheets; a reminder of the hours that had just passed and a reminder to me that I always think clearer at night and away from people, away from the city and away from home.