.Musings.

I'm lying on my bed, in the pyjamas I've been wearing for almost two days. There are builders outside my window and the noise they are making is absolute electric... but not in a good way. God bless city noise.

Earlier on, I was gazing off into the distance, as you do, and I realised that I am seeing things differently today. I think this is rather exciting. Today the world seems grainy like an old photograph. I noticed what looked like the softest powder shimmering down. Then I realised that I could see it everywhere. I'm still seeing it. The world seems transparent somehow, as if everything is just layer upon layer of light.
I promise I'm sober. Unfortunately.

I've got a ticket to Brussels but I don't know if I should go anymore. My friend just found out he has a business trip on the exact same dates. No, he's not trying to avoid me. I'm happy to go around the city alone but... it's the Bob Dylan concert that's stressing me out. I got us tickets for Christmas and I just don't want to go alone. At first I thought, I'll meet people in line. Then I realised that I DON'T SPEAK FRENCH! Unless I'm just going to order food from them. Which seems a bit rude.

I think I may go back to uni next year. I miss London. Perhaps if I'm super-busy, I won't notice the weather this time. Anyway, I have months to think about. For now, I'm going to stay here because the summer is coming and I love summers in Greece! In February next year I'm going to go to Australia and work until July to spend some time with family and friends and then, perhaps, onto London again. or maybe I should go work in South America for a bit. If I do my masters, I'll need to save some serious cash. Oh pickle.

Thinking about this is moot. As long as I'm doing something and enjoying myself, who cares?

Thirteen Things I Absolutely Must Achieve Before I Die.

In no particular order.
(Actually, in the order that I think of them, but that is not to indicate a scale of importance.)

1. Drink coffee without sugar or milk. Cafe noir if you will. It just sounds so goddamn cool.
2. Live with my French lover in a Parisian attic. It is preferable that he be an artist of some kind. Eat croissants for all meals, travel by bicycle, sing Piaf songs in the street when we're drunk on cheap red wine and ...well learning how to speak French would be excellent too.
3. Have long, lovely geisha hair. Maybe I should stop cutting my it.
4. Be a Mummy. This means that I want children who call me so. Ideally, all different colours. The rainbow family is so in but to my credit, I've always wanted one. Sorry Angelina, I thought of it first. Damn, maybe I should've gotten a paten.
5. Have a cat that's mine, all mine (as opposed to a family one) and name it after a great writer.
6. Get published, whether it be with my novel or my poetry. Oh or short stories! And I hate writing articles but I guess that would be OK too.
7. Familiarise myself with the numbered streets of New York. I think that living there would be a wonderful way to do this. My New York includes but is no limited to: bagels, people calling you 'buddy', picnics in Central Park, Breakfast at Tiffany's style parties, random blues bars and cosmos at an unrecognisable cuisine.
8. Own my own merry-go-round. In my garden maybe.
9. India. One day I will go to India with its spices and colours, smiles, old trains, its cows, its beads and its heat.
10. Love somebody without abandon. Offspring don't count. I want to love someone in that first-sight, whirlwind, can't breathe without each other, you complete me way. Oh and if it could last, that'd be lovely.
11. Make a difference. I have no idea how but it must be done.
12. Go snorkeling to get over my fear of the ocean. Fishies!
13. Own a punch buggy. Oh yeah. And, if possible, a vintage Astin Martin. OH YEAH.

I shall pause there because I love the number thirteen.

.Damn Cigarette.

Sometimes I wonder how it's possible for me to be so bored when there is so much going on out there. It truly boggles the mind- how the hell can we get bored of life? And yet.

I suppose I am just like anyone else, waiting for Life to really begin. Sometimes it comes to me, sometimes I run after it but, for the most part, I lie in bed and dream about it. I hope I don't turn into an old woman sitting in her rocking chair on the front porch watching the world go by with her sad eyes.

The awful thing is that usually I just forget. I forget to find something random and special in my day or to do something different. Whoever reads this entry, please go out there and discover something today- whether it be a dainty flower growing through a crack in the pavement, the thought to do a good deed, a drfiting balloon in a grey sky or a smile from a stranger.

I'd feel better if I had a damn cigarette.

.Counting Lovers Like Stars.

Counting lovers like stars. Candles
Burning in empty wine bottles.
Hair is pulled back, singing the blues
Once more, no longer amused and
The sun rises, blooms like a lily
In a rainbow sky. Still, it's silly,
This desire to be loved the way
I want to be loved. So each day
I play lovers like piano keys,
Leaving like a butterfly on a careless breeze.

One day, puled back my eyelashes will rise.
The piano will burn, disappear with a sigh.
The darkness, like me, will be silent and still.
In the sun I will rise, rise until

There is a word in the dark.
And it is ugly and stark.

Pink Balloon

My reflection on the train is blurred. I am out of focus, a picture taken by a child. I am transparent too, like a colourful shadow. It is so easy to look through myself. Other people seem to be stroke after stroke of perfect letters and words and paragraphs, and then there is me: one silly scribble to mar the page. I am envious of their definition, their clean-cut lines and eyes that aren't lost. I suppose, to strangers, my lines seem clean-cut also, not frayed as they feel. Life is so uncomplicated when it's not your own. Something tugs in my hand and I remember my stolen pink balloon. It has settled against the window, hanging limply like an empty womb, my hand gripping its silver umbilical chord.

I had a soul in my womb once; a cluster of cells, a pearl my jewel of the sea. Memories of high-school scares faded into ridiculousness as the reality of the situation evaporated any dramatisation. He came in me and I knew instantly. I felt him go through me like arrows and a pinprick of light started glowing in my womb immediately. I took a morning after pill and then forgot all about it. I adopted a craving for cheese and an intolerance for any transport. One day I realised that I'd worn my white shorts for the entire month of February.
I was dreaming about the ocean when I got the results- one blue line too many. I thought about her all day, knowing that we wouldn't have much time together. Like Cinderella I was home by midnight, rum and remorse flowing through my body. A few hours later my boyfriend stumbled home so that I could spend the night making sure he didn't fall asleep in his own vomit. Silently I thanked him for reminding me how young and selfish we were.
I suffered silently and solitarily. I was selfish. I insisted that she was something I need to lose alone. He did not possess a womb. His hormones were not causing constant tears and he still enjoyed cheese the way a regular person would; he could never understand. I wish he'd fought for his right to sadness. I wish he'd be more indignant or even goddamn angry that I was refusing him the right to feel any connection at all to something we would never have. But he didn't.
One day I woke up and there was no glow in the heart of my womb. A few weeks later I put my hand between my legs instinctively, just in time to catch pieces of me as they fell out of my body. A hoarse cry tumbled out of my mouth as I realised what I was holding, my jewel of the sea, nothing more but a few slabs of meat.

The train skids in to the station and I pause for too long until I unfold myself to rise. The doors beep their warning but I leap through them anyway. The slam of their meeting coincides neatly with the clattering of my heels against the platform. There is a moment of silence, a revival of the engine roar and then a sharp tug. I am spun like wool as I realise that I am no longer with balloon; it is being mimscarried by the train. I am left with nothing but a severed umbilical chord, its silver fading fast, and a long walk home.