Toy Stephen said:

We should spend more time looking up.

and some more wonderful thought-provoking things. On Christmas Eve, my loved one and I decided to have a day of noticing things we hadn't noticed before. We walked down streets that were familiar, but we walked slowly and looked up and saw towers on the top of buildings and people walking around their swankly loft appartments and interesting carvings in stone and a million things that were floating around out heads that we never noticed before. It was a wonderful day. I could feel the cold wind gusting round me and blowing away the cobwebs from my brain. I recommend this to all of you. Take a day, put on hat and gloves (and other clothing, of course) and aimlessly stroll down familiar streets, gazing UP UP UP. Drink it all in. And you get the thrill that comes from knowing something that other people don't know. No one else looks up. It will be just you. I have recently started going swimming twice a week, and this has led me to thinking about stuff a lot more than I usually do. What does one occupy one's mind with while swimming up and down and up and down the pool? I thought about 'The Adventures of Augie March' by Saul Bellow. Now, I've not read all of the book, because it's terribly long and I'm terribly lazy, but I have read and discussed some very interesting parts of it. Augie says: "But then with everyone going around so capable and purposeful in his strong handsome case, can you let yourself limp in feeble and poor, some silly creature, laughing and harmless? No, you have to plot in your heart to come out differently..... Mere humanity.... It's made up of these inventors or artists, millions and nillions of them, each in his own way trying to recruit other people to play a supporting role and sustain him in his make-believe. That's the struggle of humanity, to recruit others to your version of what's real." I apologise for the length of this quote, but I think it's so fascinating. I think about it when swimming, think about plotting in my heart to come out differently. And I think about whether people have their own philosophy of life, their own version of what is real. And I realised that I have no philosophy of life, no way of living it, no rules to follow. I read the gospels and thought about living my life that way, because I think that would be a way to be a good, true person. But so few people really honestly are good true people. I know I'm not. I don't know. I don't even know what I'm saying or what I mean. I feel dreamy at the moment, my head off in the clouds, thinking hard but with no urgency and no real need to figure it all out. Thinking in this way is pure indulgence, one of the luxuries I have. ********************************************************************** In other news: I've got my B&S tix for Manchester and have ordered some for the aftershow party, although I'm still not sure that I'll be going. So, if I don't end up going, I may have some spare tix. Who can tell? Fashion news: I have been dying my hair since I was twelve years old. Back then, my hair was light brown and dead straight. Now, eleven years later, I'm allowing it to be its natural colour at last. And it's deep brown and curly! How can this be? And my baby brother just turned 16 but in my head he's still a baby. And I bumped into my ex boyfriend yesterday and went for lunch with him and I couldn't remember how it felt to have loved him as much as I did when we were together. And my Dad comes to talk to me when he's feeling low and I listen and counsel him. And it just feels like time is moving too fast, changes happening second by second. It's like you blink when you're 16, and all of a sudden it's seven years later and you have all this 23 year old stuff, but inside you're still 16. Sorry, this has been a long and rambling post. Amour Madeleine xxx PS Requisite props go to AmyJacks, the Llew and Staceyetta. No reason. Just because. _________________________________________________________________ Join the world’s largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail. http://www.hotmail.com +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail sinister@missprint.org. To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to majordomo@missprint.org. WWW: http://www.missprint.org/sinister +-+ "sinsietr is a bit freaky" - stuart david, looper +-+ +-+ "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" "peculiarly deranged fanbase" +-+ +-+ "pasty-faced vegan geeks... and we LOST!" - NME April 2000 +-+ +-+ "frighteningly named Sinister List organisation" - NME May 2000 +-+ +-+ "sick posse of f**ked in the head psycho-fans" - NME June 2001 +-+ +-+ Nee, nee mun pish, chan pai dee kwa +-+ +-+ Snipp snapp snut, sa var sagan slut! +-+ +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+