This Much

The other night, coming back home from Rachel’s party, I was sitting in the shotgun seat of Freddie’s car (one of my favourite places). The cassette player was singing for us but outside everything was night-time quiet; the shadows of a Jersey woods blurring past us. We were going slightly downhill and several meters in front of us was a lonely lamppost in the dip of the road where it evened out from the downwards gradient, shining a single spotlight on the tarmac and causing the rest of the road beyond it to disappear completely. Suddenly, as if someone had sparked a fire inside me, I felt incredibly happy. It was the strangest sensation, simply because I couldn’t really attribute it to anything specific. The music, the moment, the silence, the night, the light, the darkness, the company...
I really wish I could bottle that feeling and- not re-use it- but show it to other people. Give a little peace to someone and say; this is why you have to try and be happy. Because it feels this good.

Language is just so useless sometimes. I find myself desperate to make people understand something and finding myself unable. How do you convince someone of doing something without giving them a logical, sure answer? How can I assure people that trying is worth it, that oh my God it feels so good to be free. Some people say this freedom is just an illusion, but it’s not. It’s not because it’s inside me, and there is nothing I can be more sure of that that. How can I convince you to do something as simple as living? As complex?

I wish I could hit people in the head and not only make them understand but make them feel that we only get one chance at this, feel it so much that they could break away from all those damn puppet strings, that we are free, and that we should live...well, to the max!
Come on people,

LOOK ALIVE!

Ornithophobia

...Can you hear it?

In remembrance of a stranger

Today, in Jersey, there was a funeral.

I don’t know who it was held for. I didn’t ask for the name because I felt it was irrelevant. I have never met him, will never meet him or talk to him or love him or see him laugh, talk, sing, dance, cry, shout, run, walk, see, hear, eat, breathe, touch, enjoy, suffer...
Live.
(again)
Is that sad? I don’t feel sad at the concept. I didn’t feel sad when someone close to me died either. I wasn’t sad when I was told someone I love very, very much had cancer. I felt...stillness, but not sadness. It wasn’t that I was cold, or that I was distanced. I simply felt that mourning would be...
I have a certain way of thinking; good things are worth it even if they end. Even if they end horribly. My loved one’s life was something to be joyful about, even if it would end painfully.
I’ve met people who don’t agree. And I’ve met even more people who agree by word but not by action.
jump
I’m not talking about death, now. I’m talking about living. About doing things. Now.
Now.
One action which has the potential to make you happy, or someone happy, can have a thousand shortcomings. A million, tiny, insignificant ‘what ifs’ that hold you back because
YOU ARE SCARED
That you will make a fool of yourself, or it will end badly, or, or, or, or, or.....
I am conscious that, obviously, everybody shouldn’t simply do the first thing that comes into their mind regardless of other people’s emotions and situations.
I’m talking about moments when all that is holding you back is social norms, or rules, or opinions, or laziness, or, or.
Telling someone you love them, for example.
Catching up to someone you haven’t heard of in a long time.
Telling someone you don’t love them.
Lying. Not lying.
I guess, however, if you have never been or seen someone in such a situation (and I highly, highly doubt that), where an action is delayed or cancelled because of fear, you can’t really understand what I’m talking about. But for those who have, or will be...
I am telling you to do whatever you have to do it now. And when I say now I mean RIGHT NOW. Don’t finish reading this post. Just do it for God’s sake just do it nownownownownow.

I dare you to take the plunge. To be happy.

Dare

The boy who died, who was remembered today, and will be remembered tomorrow, and for the rest of our lives, may have expired so many opportunities. Did you know him? Were you supposed to tell him something, and didn’t, should have, can’t?
Can’t?
And I can write about this, and I can post this and talk to a friend and laugh carelessly whilst there are people who’s souls are chanting will self-destruct in.... because it is killing them inside, to have lost him. How many parents, lovers, friends, familiars, are, right now, unable to smile or even think, breathe, be because of loss?
Inevitably, that will be us, one day. And, inevitably, we will leave that behind as well.
And it’s ok.
It’s ok because we have been here, are here now, breathing, and living, and well, wasting all these opportunities that we shouldn’t be wasting.
What I’m trying to say here is that the fact that we are going to die shouldn’t scare us (I’m serious), and shouldn’t even be forgotten. It should give some fucking meaning to all of this, spur us forward into daring, no matter how hard is seems to break free from all the ties.
So I’m telling you again, is whatever holding you back worth it? Worth being on your death bed, or beside that person’s death bed and thinking...
Why didn’t I do it?
Why didn't I do it?

LAST

THIS IS OUR LAST DANCE

THIS IS OUR LAST DANCE

THIS IS OURSELVES

.

UNDER PRESSURE

Dead Weight

Yesterday someone said the saddest thing I have ever heard.

We were talking about insanity, about being sad, being tired. About how much things mattered, or didn’t. About giving up.
‘I think I’m fine,’ they said.
‘But what’s fine?’ I asked. ‘Isn’t fine happy? Happy all the time and not just sometimes?’
But my friend replied,
‘Fine is not dead.’
I stopped and stared and felt something give in. I felt like screaming.
‘...Is fine happy?’ they asked. Like they had never known.

Maybe you won’t understand why this affected me this much. Why when I read over msn ‘fine is not dead’ I felt...heart-broken, if a cliché can actually describe this...this lack of hope.
Fine is not dead...
How do we reach that point? When good isn’t happy, when it can be pain and anguish and sorrow, as long as you’re not dead.
And sometimes not even then.

They Call Me Obsession

Last Fight
For anybody who doesn’t know, I can’t imagine why, I love anime/manga. For those of you who don’t know (really can’t imagine why), anime is a style of drawing: Japanese Cartoons, anime being the animated version (as seen on TV) and manga being in graphic novels.
I’m currently obsessed with an anime called ‘Naruto’. Its genre is Action/Adventure/Drama and it fucking rocks.
The storyline storyline follows a world where different countries have ninja villages which act as their military power. The storyline follows Naruto’s ninja village and the power-struggle between different countries and terrorist groups, which is a very formal way of saying it, considering how comical it can be at times. It however mainly focuses on ‘Team Seven’ which is Naruto’s 4-man ninja cell, and all the drama that comes with it. The fights are amazingly smart, the storyline is fantastic and the characters are just great.

Now why am I sharing this with everybody? Firstly because I simply want to and secondly because I’m in mourning. From the 30th of October to the 2 of November, Barcelona is hosting a Manga Convention, where people from around Spain or the globe collect to be all geeky and wonderful as they dress up as anime characters and put on shows and sell cheap manga books and traditional Japanese food; and I’M NOT IN IT!!!! >_< Team Seven

So if anyone out there (reading this) likes anime/manga, for Hayao Miyazaki’s sake, throw me a line!
*SOB*
spotlight

Half An Orange

My Schism

Today I will be talking about Soulmates!
Personally I don’t believe in them. Actually, not only do I find the idea very pretentious (oh yes, humans are so important they have fate creating a perfect counterpart to complete them), very redundant (how can a human being, as complex, versatile and ever-changing as we are fit perfectly with another complex, versatile and ever-changing being?), I also find it depressing.
Yes, my friends, Marina finds the romantic idea of soulmates DEPRESSING.
Why? Because the Soulmate Principle maintains that each human being has a corresponding person with which they will be the happiest.
Now, considering how many people there are in the world, and how pathetically small each person’s ‘bubble of life’ really is, what are the chances that we will even graze sights with this so-called-soulmate?
And now, who says that your soulmate has to coincide time wise? In all of history, your soulmate could have died or not be born yet.
An taking in account divorce rates, not all people find soulmates.
This pessimistic prospect that the only person with which we would be truly happy is unreachable isn’t my idea of romance. Actually, it sounds more like tragedy to me.

Yet still, people believe in this idea of soulmateism willingly, eagerly, whilst I rejoice that the fact that soulmates don’t exist is so much better.
Why!?
Because something which is fought for is so much delicious than something which is simply given!
Let me explain with an example! (I sure like them don’t I?)
My Mum and Dad (I seem to like them a lot as well) are by no means perfect for each other. Actually sometimes I wonder how they ever got together. I know people say opposites attract- but love is chemistry, not physics, apparently, because honestly you need a basis of UNDERSTANDING for a relationship to truly work, common ground in which to play with (please someone take note of my witty metaphors). .. . . . . . . . . . Listen to me
Yet despite all their differences they love each other. The kind of love that lasts. They still go out to the cinema and dinners, they kiss and hold hands and curl up in the couch together. They talk, they enjoy, they fight, they are happy together.
Maybe, probably, most likely, they would be happier with someone else if they had not met each other. And that’s what makes their relationship so beautiful. Not that fate brought them together, not that they are perfect for each other, but that they AREN’T and yet they are still together! That they changed for each other, shifted to fit to each other.
Personally I find that so much better, so much more romantic than the idea of soulmates. That one day we will find someone and not that- poof! It was meant to be. But that we will break up with one person, with another; learning, learning, until we find that common ground and BUILD, FIGHT.

Honestly, it would be boring if it were too easy.
The point isn’t finding someone who is perfect with for you, or ignoring the faults of the person so as to be able to love them. The point is finding the person which you don’t mind not being perfect with; finding the person which’s strengths outshine the weaknesses in YOUR EYES.
<3<3<3<3

THIS IS A SIGN

Because it's summer

The other day my mum told me a story that had been stuck in her memory from when I was a kid.
We were in Miami, or Colombia, or New York; somewhere where my brother and I were little. She, my brother and I stepped out of a supermarket to find the world watercoloured as it poured with rain.
My brother and I went crazy; we ran outside and jumped and played and screamed and laughed in the water, puddles, mud. And my mum didn’t stop us. She just watched us play and get soaking wet and filthy dirty and; what did it matter? She didn’t care about the ruined clothes, about the people that looked at the wild children and smiled or frowned. She let us be, let us live, let us loose because isn’t that what’s great about being a kid? They are the personification of ‘ignorance is bliss’. They’re not in charge, have no responsibility; all they have to do is live and survive.
I loved the story and was immensely glad of how my mum is. So many other parents would have somewhere to go, or something to do, or wouldn’t want the display of freedom and loss of control.

(But they want to run through the air with no barriers or obstacles:

Gunmen or guard dogs or priests)

But the fact that she didn’t says a lot about her, and about what a respectable person I find her to be.
And I hope that other people achieve that quality. I call it the ‘Big Picture Feature’ because it’s when a person does not let themselves be stressed with little things; being late, ruining a material possession, getting into trouble, embarrassment, if it means that they can’t do something they want to do. (Dance in the middle of a street, laugh loudly in the cinema)

A few weeks ago Freddie and I were walking on the beach and we looked at each other and Freddie said ‘I really want to go in.’ I looked at the crashing wavs and said ‘Well lets go in!’ so we walked to the edge and I didn’t pause, I didn’t take off my clothes, I just walked into the cold waves and let my black dress bubble with air around me and then stick to my skin. Freddie looked at me from the shoreline and said ‘but what about my phone?’ I looked over my shoulder and said ‘leave it! Leave everything, JUST DON’T THINK.’

So we didn't.
Popeye what?
We both swam under so that my head hurt from the coldness, so that my hair stood on end and my dress scratched against me, but who the hell cared?
What the hell did it matter, in the ‘big picture’?
By being careless and spontaneous we gained another moment worth remembering and for me that’s worth a million words behind my back, a thousand raised eyebrows and dirty looks or telling-offs.
People are afraid of other people. We are pack animals, I believe.
As we get older (though I don’t mourn the process) we will be more harshly judged and in return that means we will guard ourselves better. And I say; DON’T. Don’t care. Don’t think. I’m sure I can find a million reasons why weighing the consequences are good but sometimes you just have to forget, you just have to ACT and let go!
I want you to do that!

Don't worry.

Be happy.