Christmas Joy

'I am trying to be heroic
in an age of modernity
i am trying to be heroic
as all around me history sinks
So i enjoy and i devour
flesh and wine and luxury
but in my heart i am lukewarm
nothing ever really touches me'

Bloc Party, Song for Clay (disappear here)

I got the album as a christmas present from my brother, i knew it was coming; he has absolutely no idea about subtlety when it comes to buying gifts. But it didn't matter because at least it was a gift i could enjoy. This is how the album begins; quietly, cautiously, before jumping into the Bloc Party we expect. But the beginning haunts me.

The Goddess Guide

‘Do you know where to buy the best vintage clothing? Have you ever wondered what Tracey Emin collects? Want to know why the soles of Christian Louboutin’s beautiful shoes are always crimson red? Perhaps you have a room to decorate and want to put up- and customize - your own wallpaper?’ The Goddess Guide has the answers for shopaholics everywhere.

The Goddess Guide is Gisèle Scanlon’s eclectic scrapbook of all things girly and glamourous. Its glossy pages are embellished with photographs and handwritten notes, overlaid and interwoven with the text. Sketchy illustrations, including goddesses; from home to office, and earth to urban, guide us through the book. It is a bible of material things; style, beauty, travel, home, gardening, cookery and socialising, yet somehow manages to squeeze love into its pages. Its blend of nostalgia; Gisèle’s childhood spent in the country reading and her attempts to revive it through gardening and cookery, combined with the glamour which now infuses her jet setting life of shopping and partying, gives the book the substance to even satisfy women with an intellectual conscience.

A budding Goddess can learn how to wear a hat with Philip Treacy, how to take a photo with Martin Parr, visit the Artic Circle with street artists and have a heart to heart with Alice Temperley. Scanlon admits she has always been a collector and here she has collected useful tips and ideas which are both her own and those of designers, artists and writers. However the highlight of the book has to be her travels which have taken her from London to Iceland and to ‘G-Spots’ like The Ice Hotel and The Blind Cow (a restaurant in Switzerland where you can dine in complete darkness), she prepares us with places to eat, shop, general must sees and even her ‘First Impressions’ which include pigeons in London and ‘the pungent smell of goats and camels’ combined with ‘the scent of jasmine and orange blossom’ in Marrakech.

The book is filled with little details and beautiful things, reading The Goddess Guide makes you wish you had enough money to follow all the shopping advice; that you could drop everything and travel to Barcelona or Dublin, but most of all encourages you to go out and have fun. The Goddess Guide is the perfect gift for someone looking to sprinkle a little goddess magic into someone’s life.

Watermarks

I found you again.
Floating in the deep water
of a swimming pool, Backstroke,
As you tracked the path
of shooting stars.

The blossom, like hennaed dots,
drifting with the aftermath, Ripples.
Our arms were silken strips,
Swirling in the air,

The essence of Jubilance.
We swam so close
your skin traced a map on mine;
I wont lose you again.
The icy kiss of your fingertips

like steel biscuit cutters,
Heart shapes and stars,
The tattoo of 'I love you',
with the water in soft bubbles
which tickled our ears,

We kissed,
Blushing lips, a blood flood
of problems, weightless in water,
The boyfriend, The girlfriend,
a saccharine, honeyed mask,

For the bitter scented memory
we left each other selfishly.
But i found you again,
Beneath those yellow pinpricks,
Bodies entwined

Our heads resurfaced
like fishing floats,
Coloured feathers masquerading
as face painted flies.
Complicity without words,

The water so still, silent
like frozen time, it made us cry,
And in the morning
we were water marked.

A Definition of love

I was away for a long time, i don't know why i'm coming back...
Sometimes you just get so busy you lose yourself. I want to write a novel and life just gets in my way. So I guess i'll just document my plan, as long as you promise you won't steal it! I'm going to call it 'A Definition of Love' because i want to be able to redefine it as i get older. It's going to be a map of my heart, each lesson i've learnt set to the backdrop of some foreign place. I will try to weave it with magic and mysticism so that the division between what is possible and impossible is seamless, i will put my soul into it. So years from now if you discover it on some dusty bookshelf, promise me that you'll return the favour and pour your own loves into it.

Do you know the disney film 'The Sword in the Stone'? Well, in that film there is a scene when Merlin the Magician and the boy turn into squirrels and they both get chased by female squirrels with their own 'individual' seduction techniques. Neither can talk to their admirer because in reality they aren't squirrels and the poor girls aren't human and so they just over-flirt ridiculously, chasing and pouncing. Well i gave away the seventh piece of my heart to a german because he was like the female squirrel, he couldn't talk to me so he was just trying every desperate method of flirting he could possibly think of, it was cute. It worked.

For Corto Maltese

I know he dreamt of her last night, again.
She tiptoed across the duvet, so the bed was an advert for her scent,
The only way i knew was the number and address scrawled sleepily in ink pen,
But when i rang, all the numbers chattered empty and blank,
With my hand on his chest i felt his heart as it sank.

With daylight my face replaced the one he could not see,
But her name was strung out like a poem he kept round his neck, 9 beads.
She scattered her ashes in corners and doorways, so he could taste the char,
Then she blew it away on scattering winds, so not a gram could be kept,
Except for that strand of long brown hair twisted round his finger like a childish treasure,
And the purple mark placed centre of his cheek i knew would last forever.

All she left on that horizon of reality and dreams was a smell and a name,
But it was cut like a key: an invitation to open a pandora's box of memories.
So i found him in the morning balanced on the wall in the garden, goosepimpled and naked,
Dazzled by her presence and staring out to the rising sun, to the horizon where still the essence of her somehow existed.
If she will take him from me, take him whole
For she steals all i love; his spirit and his soul.

I'm so deeply drowned in this pool of love, those little bubbles of air that leave my lips ever so often never make it to the surface. And my wide eyes, agog in awe, are just mirrors beneath the surface, in amongst the pond weed; watching and waiting for you to drag me out, where i can breathe. Those feeble shadows of light that spread through the ripples stunned and enchanted me, so much so that here i lie frozen in the current. And it's the waves you create which modify the temperature of my blood, stop this numbness from travelling to my heart.

The love that i want is always unavailable, I am aloof, they are always aloof...So fragile, too fragile to try to catch because the thread of the net would just cut through; like a knife through butter. So it's always just me, or sometimes with a spare part that just tends to trip along beside me, never giving up their hope; just as i will never give up mine. I love sensitivity and the little things that move and stir me; to be honest it is too difficult for me to explain. It would be very beautiful if i could explain it...Can you long to love someone, but not fully love them because you do not know them at all really? And love the truth but never want to reveal it for fear of what the truth may trigger? For everybody else it seems love is so simple but for me it is a web of intricacies that i cannot bare to break.