Finished

I will no longer be posting here... I've outgrown it. I'll probably leave the site live for a while... in the meantime, please find me here: http://acuriousjoyfullife.com

A Poem for Autumn

A Poem for Autumn 

Always the most magic of seasons is she

That begins to wipe clean the earth again.

With air consciously breathed and falling leaves;

It is not death, merely renewal.

Preparation for a period of want.

A cleansing, a harvest, a bonfire blazing.

As a child I sharpened new pencils inhaling their scent,

As the year begun in September as autumn hit 

And it still buzzes like new for me,
In these orange months.

Summer may have rendered us dozy,

Satiated with leisure and loving;
A lackadaisical life.

But September chills our bones and heats our souls,

And we throw ourselves into it again. 
With purpose.

It's a new term after all and we can begin.

Living with the leaves, grasping for their colour,

Just as we shirked from bright brilliance in summer behind shades.

What do you really want?

We harvest and we store.

We frighten at Halloween, the extreme.

And we burn, burn, burn,

And light up our sky for Guy.

Autumn is a pleasure, a warning, a human quest for...

I like things moving is all.

And we keep ourselves busy.

Enthralled. Till fall has finally fallen,

And we are left to live as ice-cold gluttons for one month, 

Eating and drinking and fucking till new year.

After, we disappear from behind our eyes for a while,

Barren land, bodies stooped, curmudgeonly;

Until spring dances her pretty feet across our path.

Cigarettes I've Smoked and Loved

It is probably too early to write this blog post as I am only 94 hours in and I have been ill for half of those days and its still a novelty. But here it is, my eulogy to my smoking self.

I have smoked since I was 16. I am now 29. For 11 of those 13 years, I would classify myself as a heavy smoker and by that I mean unless I was sick or badly hungover, I would get through at least ten a day (forty on day boozing sessions with follow-up evenings). None of this "only five nicked from someone else on a Friday night" for me. I was committed.

And I bloody love it if I'm being honest; a fact which has most definitely stopped me from trying to give up before. I have never once tried to quit or felt the inclination to and I didn't even care really. My attitude was sort of "that's great you want to - I don't - therefore leave me alone."

And then I started practising meditation and yoga just under a year-or-so ago and I started to crawl a bit with what smoking was - really what it was. A habit. A dirty habit that was killing me and was weak. It was killing my breath, which as anyone who has ever done yoga will tell you is your life source and the source of all life.

I started to wonder. I looked at my skin closer and noticed the greyness after a heavy smoking session. I'm 30 next year... Do I really want to be a 30-year-old-smoker? That always seemed so pathetic to me... it's not so sexy post-30.

And then I thought about my favourite cigarettes and I wavered...

Here they are for your information:

10: After the gym cigarette. Yes I mean it - I always feel I deserve it more.

9: With good Italian coffee in a street-side cafe in the crisp, dry London autumn.

8: After a large meal... or between main and pudding, excusing yourself from the table for a five minute "breather".

7: Driving... with the music really loud.

6: Post-coital (a habit picked up at university when my boyfriend at the time used to smoke in bed - hideous).

5: On a brief break from work during the day - a cigarette and a striding walk is guaranteed to calm me down when I want to kill a client or colleague.

4: On holiday - especially on the beach, but mostly in all those European countries who love smokers.

3: With the first wine of an evening.

2: The "smirting" cigarettes with a boy I fancy outside a bar, or meeting a boy I fancy through our collective need for a smoke outside anywhere. I may have to swear off dating smokers...

1: Cigarette or five or ten with my best friends, wine and plentttyyy of conversation. I will miss these ones the most (but may concentrate on the conversation even better if I am not worried about which of the others has stolen my lighter that I desperately need to light my next cigarette.)

Writing this has made me want to rethink again. All those lovely cigarettes.

However in reality this confirms to me even more how I must give up as I hate the idea of being such a slave to a habit. Also I have told A LOT of people in order that their jibes fuel my steely reserve and competition.

My last cigarette was on September 13th 2015, I hope that I will never have another and that if I slip up and do have one, or two, or a pack, I do not jump off the waggon totally and stay comitted to the resolve to quit. I do feel better already by at least wanting to quit. I feel better that I actually believe now that it isn't cool or arty or fashionably outsider to smoke... it's not. I want to succeed and I hope I'm strong enough.

Wish me luck and don't ask me to bum a cigarette.

PS: Anyone have any tips on staying off the fags, please tweet me @wordyloveslots.

PSS: I do not judge anyone else for their desire to smoke or not smoke. Thank you.

I Was Too Busy Falling in Love in August to Blog... Ti Amo Italia

  

This is not a travelogue or an account of a holiday, it is a love letter and I haven’t written many of those.

I didn’t realise it would happen like this. I thought only romantics fell in love with you. Carb-sluts, middle-aged divorced women, those who fall in amore all the time like I would like to, perfectly turned out men - gay and straight, people who pick Romeo and Juliet as their favourite Shakespeare play. 

I’d been to Florence before twelve years ago and two years ago, and she had already flirted with my mind and my spirit. But I was there both times with my greatest friends in the world and I could be anywhere with them and soar with laughter and a satisfied soul. So I think I ignored it a little. I ignored the feeling walking the streets gave me, the calmness and yet awe I felt in the presence of the great religious architecture. My affinity in the worship of coffee.

And then I went back there and slowly it crept up on me.

You Don't Need Your Heart When You're Dead

When I was younger, the concept of organ donation freaked me out when I thought about it, which was rarely. Having been blessed in never knowing anyone that had had a transplant it was not something I'd addressed really; I'd blame youth, but I think I was just me being self absorbed.

And then recently I had to renew my drivers' licence and one of the questions asked by the online form was to please tick the box if you would like to be added to the NHS Organ Donor list. I ticked it and then I thought about it. A lot.

When my card arrived to say I had been successfully added, its accompanying letter asked me to inform my next of kin that I was a card carrier. And so this is me doing this and also sending out a plea.

I am not really sure why organ donation is not opt out to be honest rather than opt in... I don't care what religion you are, most religions - if not all - preach helping others. However, not associating with any fomal religion myself, that is not my argument. Here it is...

We live our lives giving away parts of ourselves every day, some to people who deserve it and some who do not. We give away our hearts to lovers who leave us and those who become their caretakers till the end. We throw away our thoughts and our speech carelessly every day to companies and corporations we work for, or necessarily use these solely human gifts to go about our day to day life. We burn energy from our muscles in exercise and moving about. We hear everything that passes us, without prejudice. In youth these gifts seem unlimited and we do not always choose to use them wisely, perhaps until middle age moves to old age and they falter and we realise that we would like to carefully select - as much as we can - what we utilise them for.

This leads to time, our most precious, most limited resource which we give away everyday, even though we still need it. We give it with joy to people we love and to pursuits we enjoy, we give it with reluctance to perfunctory tasks, with resignation (sometimes) to the grinds of everyday life and careers. Often we give it to the world, to people we don't know, to charities, to good causes, to those in need, to help others even if if we never see the outcome. We often lose it uncontrollably when we are angry or sad or bad. We numb it with alcohol, food, drugs and television. We wish it away, we wait for the weekend, for the summer, for Christmas. CANNOT WAIT TO SEE YOU. When we examine our lives we muse on how to give our time better, to be of more value.

All of this is human and it's wonderful and it's part of what it is to have a human life. But tell me this, why, if you are happy - for the most part - to give away all these things when you still have need of them, are you reluctant to give away your bodily organs etc when you have not?

I hope as everyone does that I do not die young, but if I do, I would like my body to be a free for all for anyone who needs it. Take anything you want. I believe they are unlikely to want my lungs as I have smoked for ten years and even though I am going to give up this year, I still think they are unlikely to be transplant worthy. Other than this I would like to give everything away with no conditions. Obviously I would prefer if they went to "worthy" people, but if my liver is given to an alcoholic (tbf that might be pretty ropey too ;), or my kidneys to an ex-con then that is the way things go. Maybe they will take it and it might make their life so much better and the rest of me can be burnt and spread around the globe.

To be honest, I would just like to finish on you ALL signing up to the organ donation website.... PLEASE

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