When you don’t like Monet

So I love impressionism, looking at a Monet, even in the diminished capacity of a computer screen, I feel joy, passion, hope, beauty. Few things stir my spirit more that Monet. This is why I cannot understand when people don’t like impressionism. I should be able to understand when people say ‘nah’ to impressionism, because heaps of people are passionate about cubism which I just don’t get.

Art is SO subjective. How can one piece make one cry while another person merely passes by?

It’s strange that I love impressionism when I think about it. Generally I love even lines, order, parallels; there is a sharpness all around us, a clarity, a distinction between one thing and the next. I feel like I’m escaping the world when I’m taking in impressionism.

Illustrations of Women by Carol Rossetti

…wow… loving this

Project Naked

This is one of the reasons I love facebook and can’t quite give it up because I come across amazing things like this from the various pages I follow. This is the amazing work by Carol Rossetti, so simple yet so powerful! I wanted to share on the blog because I felt it so fitting and something a lot of woman will relate to. Also the illustrations are just too KICK ASS not to share.

Posted with permission. Please go to http://https://www.behance.net/carolrossetti to see more of her amazing work!

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Beware of stickers

You may be casually roaming the halls, thinking everyone else is at class…
You may be in the library, as the words on the page before you push that evolutionary instinct of awareness too deep…
You may be getting blind with a supposed friend, defenses lowering as your blood alcohol level rises…
Before you realise it has egan happened, there, on your shoulder, is a sticker. Yes, you’ve been tagged, you’ve been bagged, you are out.

As I write this, dozens of thumping footsteps are pounding down my corridor. I still haven’t decided whether I should begin my own hunt…

My uni res is currently playing a cunning game of tag ’em and bag ’em. You get a name, stickers and some anxiety pills. You have to tag your target, get their victims name, and begin again with someone new.

I’m excited, highly suspicious, and ready to play!

On Magazines

When I was in primary school, I used to get Dolly magazine. Dolly magazine was (and I would guess it still is) a magazine for girls too young to read Cosmopolitan or Cleo. It had quizzes like what Disney Princess are you and are you a go-getter or a wall flower. It had a celebrity interview, it had Doctor Dolly, it was mass media for a soggy mind.

Of course it wasn’t complete trash, I’m sure at times I found it interesting or educational or funny, but I’m talking on the whole, as an average, there was no substance! For a long time, I thought that was a summation of the magazine industry. I looked at the covers of all these magazines that had celebrities without make up, shock headlines about divorces and cat-fights, 10 amazing things you didn’t know about the orgasm, and I was turned off. 

My dream is to work in publishing, a number of things contributed to this, one of them was the discovery of Frankie. This magazine was so different, so beautiful, so interesting, that in one issue my entire opinion of the magazine world was transformed. For the first time, I bought a subscription, I eagerly anticipated each new edition, I did happy dances when I saw it lying on my front step, I muttered curses when the post-man rolled it up and shoved it in the too-small mail box. 

After a while, I began to explore niche magazines more fully. I searched the net for publications in fashion, literature, art, fitness and the publishing industry. I made sure to have a proper look when in the newsagents, scanning for magazines that looked different, artsy, honest; things that looked like they had something to SAY.

I have Frankie for lifestyle/joy and Lula for fashion photography and Popshot magazine for new literary talent and women’s fitness for health. I think niche magazines are genius, they’ve revived an industry, they educate us, introduce us to new things, allow us to obsess over hobbies and connect like minded individuals. I love reading the ‘Dear Frankie’ letters, I get to see what people think and feel when they read something I too have read.
If you take the time to look, you can find a magazine for yourself…maybe several.

future prologue? pt 1

It was unusually loud and bright in the village of Unkor. Normally dark streets and empty windows were full of movement. People buzzed to and fro, drunk men began brawls in alleyways, women sold food and cheap wine off trays and young children escaped their beds, leaning out windows and calling out to one another instead of sleeping.

In the main square, a large bonfire crackled, menacing flames reaching high into the sky.

On Jiggling

Jiggle:

to move up and down or to and fro with short, quick jerks.

Today I found myself contemplating jiggling. Such a strange word, a word that holds within it many contradictions. Is it good, bad or ugly. Is it sexy? Is it unhealthy? Does it cause permenant self loathing or pride? When do you admire a jiggle, and when do you shun it?

As a young woman, I struggle with the ‘jiggle matrix’ almost daily. It impacts on my choice of clothing, my ideas of womanliness, of attraction and sex appeal; my body image in gereral.

I was the stick kid through most of school. I was skinny all over, even in places you wouldn’t think could be skinny, like your underarms. Later on, I got some little curves, a few bumps, but nothing really all that spectacular. I had no concept of jiggling as it pertained to me.

I thought my body had settled into its shape, but I was wrong. I got a second go of it in my final year of highschool. I went up two cup sizes, my thighs got to know eachother- too well for my liking- both my hips and ass were “upsized” and my arms became soft and rounded, rather than straight and lean. I became aware of jiggling.

I got anxious when running in P.E was required, embarrassed by my body’s excess movement. I liked that I looked more womanly, and I wasn’t unhealthy, but I didn’t like the jiggle. I was worried, because I was taught that fat jiggles, and that people thought jiggling was ugly, and that you should cover jiggly bits because no one want to see them. That’s what I thought, I believed that for quite a while.

I generally have a positive attitude towards my body. I like my face and my hair, my skin tone and my proportions. I usually consider myself relatively attractive. And yet the jiggle was that thing, the thing I was worried about people seeing, I thought that they wouldn’t be able to see past it; I was right, and I was wrong, and this is where the contradictions begin.

The truth is that people will see what they want to see (I really want to say haters gonna hate, do people still say that?) A person who wants to think of you as ugly, fat, unhealthy or unworthy will see your jiggling thighs and arms and stomach, and let that image taint everything about you; they probably don’t realise it half the time. If you have no jiggling, these people will find something else to use to validate their hatred and bias.

A person who wants to think of you sexually will generally focus on the ass and breasts, and they will love the jiggling, and it will taint their view of you too. Then there’s you, yourself, in this case me too. I choose to think that I like some jiggle, I dislike some jiggle, but my jiggle is not me, despite what my haters, or my objectfiers might think.

Hopefully, you have people outside of yourself who see any jiggles as a tiny faction of who you are. Friends, family and partners shouldn’t love you inspite of your jiggle or for your jiggle; they should just love you as a whole!

Reading ‘Eleanor & Park’

Earlier this week, I finished ‘Eleanor & Park’ and I was deeply moved by the story, and incredibly invested in the futures of the characters. In a relatively short novel, Rowell has managed to create whole, well rounded characters; not once did I feel an action or thought out of place. Richie’s character is ‘rank and rotten’ AND he makes sense. So often I struggle to understand the motivations and movements of “the bad guy”, but in ‘Eleanor & Park’ Richie’s horrible and depraved behaviour is weaved through the dialogue and action with such skill, he’s one of the best examples of a horrible person that I’ve ever experienced in fiction.

‘Her mother was standing at the stove, standing more still than usual. You couldn’t not notice the bruise on the side of her face. Or the hickey under her chin.’

The love between ‘Eleanor and Park’ is fantastically refreshing, with enough cliche teenage love to keep it realistic- in the style of melodramatic adolescents- and lots of truly beautiful and sincere connections and expressions.

I thought the pacing in some parts was too fast (perhaps I just didn’t want it to end) so when the end came, I felt I’d been robbed of a few months of romance. Regardless of this, ‘Eleanor & Park’ has already earned a place in my heart… and on my repeat read’s shelf.

The beginning

I recently found a journal entry about the first time I ever visited Melbourne. Even then I knew that I wanted to be here one day. I’ve been in Melbourne for a little over a month now, living out of home for the first time, following my dream to become a publisher. This weekend was definately testing for me; reflecting on my original impressions and experiences has lightened my spirit.

October 2010:

Melbourne stole my heart guys…not literarily of course, because then i would be dead and besides; Melbourne does not have the physical capabilities to actually steal a heart.

So on Friday I woke up at 20 past four instead of four and left at quarter to instead of half past. Basically it was unholy early. Then on the way to the car park place we got a message saying the plane was delayed an hour, so i would be awake in the terminal instead of getting a little extra shut eye. Anyway we got to the car place, and the driver was a bum face, and I would have punched him right in the face if we wasn’t driving our car.

You could be forgiven for believing, given the above, that my holiday was horrible but, you would be wrong, all of this took place in Sydney. Melbourne was totally different.

The airport at Avalon is about an hour from Melbourne and its surrounded by canola fields. Gold and purple flew past the windows; it was absolutely beautiful and inspiring. We eventually got to Melbourne, Emma was travel sick, but that didn’t effect me (so mean) Next was the epic quest to find the Tim Burton exhibition.

Melbourne is so amazing. The streets are wide, the trams go everywhere, and there are trees and cafes and a hundred and one nice things on every street. The traffic lights have instructions on them for pedestrians and there are no filter lights, cars just wait and slip through if there is an opening. Everyone seems so calm and nice. We were staying on king street, home of the gentlemen’s club. it was gross. And it was awkward walking past and seeing guys going in there!

I LOVE Melbourne! Tim Burton exhibition was interesting, not really my style but I could see the skill in it. After that we went to the master’s art exhibition and it was gorgeous! The faces and composition and meaning of the paintings just blew me away and even the writing beside the images was fascinating. They had classic, impressionist, renaissance, abstract; painting and sculpture. Some of them were so delicate and detailed i was awed by the talent of the painters.

All of this travel was done on foot. I think we did at least 5km every day! Then we went straight to dinner at a Nepalese restaurant and Emma had goat. It was quite nice. Mum got the best dish. Then we finished the day at about half past eight. I was GONE! Out like a light and I stayed asleep almost the entire time until I was interrupted by Emma coughing and everyone switching beds.

Then day two. We went shopping. We tested out the trams and they were excellent! Our destination was the Victorian markets. Nothing special really, but we did find this food court that looked like shops from the street, but they didn’t have back walls; instead they opened out onto a courtyard. So quaint. Then we went to the Melbourne goal where Ned Kelly was hanged. It was really interesting but also sad, to read all the stories. One was about this guy they believed was jack the ripper. He buried 2 wives and five kids?? Beneath the hearth in his houses. Then another man was hanged, but something like 50 years later was pardoned because they actually found out he was innocent.

After that we caught a tram into Bridge Street where they have shop shops. I thought the tram had stopped so I stood up, but then it jerked and a basically fell on the guy in front of me and I was so embarrassed. The shopping was epic!! And I was able to find the formal dress and it’s very pretty. I also got these shoes that I had given up on, for like 80 bucks less than in the plaza. Dad and I took some weird pictures, he was doing-trying to do- blue steel and I found a batman bra…very cool. So after that we trekked back to the hotel and napped/cleaned up for dinner on the famous Lygon street. We attempted trying something exotic but ended up at Italian, which was delicious!! I had seafood risotto and ate my first scallop and oyster. Surprisingly, I liked both and thoroughly enjoyed my dinner. The least stingy seafood dish I’ve had my whole life. During dinner I almost died from laughing because, and I will tell you why, me and dad were making jokes and we said something particularly funny and made Emma laugh. The problem with this is that Emma had a mouthful of pasta in her mouth-obviously-and she started coughing and spluttering. This was amusing; slightly funny but then….we all saw as Emma coughed and a tiny piece of pasta into her fringe. Well that did it. I was gone! I almost fell off my chair it was so funny. And we teased her for the next two days…. Night two; not such a good sleep.

Day three; perhaps the best day because that is the day we saw Mary Poppins. But first we went to St. Kilda. We trammed past Middle Park, where I’m going to live, and then arrived just as some sort of marathon was ending. Not that many runners were left; more of those people who are walking but try and make it look like they’re running. We went to the markets which were awesome and lovely. I picked up some very nice bits and pieces for me and others and then we wandered up the pier and admired this gorgeous little cafe thing at the end. On the way pack up the wharf we saw this bride dressed all in white but she had on sick red heels, and I liked that. After that adventure we went home and….slept some more. Mary Poppins was next, and I spent a fair amount of time getting ready and dressing up. Well, the show was amazing. Better than Wicked. Better than anything I have ever seen ever! The special effects, the singing, the dancing; it was all incredible and I completely loved it! I wish I could share the joy that was in that play. It just lifted your spirits and made us laugh and sing for hours and hours afterwards. We found this food place called pie face and it was completely yummy and it was a wonderful night. another sleepless night ensued, followed by an incredible, slightly sad day.

It was our last day and we went out to breakfast place that mum and dad had found earlier on their walk. I had the bid breakfast and it was delish! Four pieces of bacon, two eggs, two slices of toast and spinach mushroom fried combo. YUM!! Then we went hunting for two things: the chocolate shop and this alleyway I saw on the first day that looked like it was straight out of France, Paris. The chocolate shop was amazing and amazingly scrumptious and the little alleyway satisfied my craving for a milkshake that I had had since the very first day. It also was scrumptious, thick and flavourful and cold, and was in a very awesome cup. And then it was time to go to the bus station and catch a bus back to the airport. The plane ride was short and in no time at all I had left Melbourne behind… for now.

The joys of nostalgia….

Most of it is about food, I love eating!

Gold deposit(ory)

To accompany my first blog… my book depository delivery!! For those of you who aren’t aware, the book depository is an internet shopping site for books. It’s choc-a-block full of titles, authors, and beautiful covers. I spent a happy hour sifting through the site just last week, and managed to limit myself to five books, though I was sorely tempted by one or two additional titles. Hopefully the reviews will arrive in short order.

 

Book titles:

A Scene In Between– multiple contributors

The Goldfinch– Donna Tartt

Persuasion– Jane Austen

Eleanor & Park– Rainbow Rowell

The Husband’s Secret– Liane Moriarty