Sinister: Making free with Llewed and Lascivious boasts

[Madeleine McNeil]

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.




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