2/02/2010

Lettered Adieu.

But if I had to walk away again, would you ever forgive me? If I had to leave before the moon, even if it's sometime soon would you smile the very next day like I had never gone away?

As I sit here on the clay-tiled roof of our home, I see the moon shine over Rome. I can hardly hear a bird; let alone a spoken word. I can't even see a cat stalk, let alone encounter someone on my walk.

I saw the many homes and shops of Rome, all seemingly bowing to the growing stature of the Vatican, which was partly covered by scaffolding and the like, for the Pope commissioned artists and architects to work on a new addition to the Vatican, the Sistine Chapel. Whatever for a Church of love in life needs such lavish constructions for is beyond me, and seeing all the construction and hearing all the eager comments of the citizens became stones in my heart. But these daily annoyances are pebbles that could fit in a child's hand compared to the boulder which I've been trying to ignore.

My dear Emilia, she's so precious to me, such that she is a necessity. I've never held such a love for someone I didn't want to bed. It is inexplicable, I see something in her that just seems to make me want to protect her, cherish her and guide her in life. Ever since I met her 7 years ago in the snowy Alps. She was so weak and hungry but still there was something in her eyes, something beautiful. It's not a word I like to use, but I do not think that anything else is as apt as that word for what I see when I look into her eyes. I can talk about how she holds ten-thousand stars in each one, or about how her gaze gives some of its own magnificent to light to whatever she casts it upon--but it does not suffice. I just had to protect that.

I had left her once before, 3 years ago. It was because I was scared that I took up too much of her life, that she wasn't living her own life because of me, and every day after that I used to look at the night sky and think about all the stars I'd see in her eyes, even now I think that the only reason there are this many stars at night is because they leave her sleeping eyes and settle for sky's infinity until morning arrives once more.

When I found her again a year ago she was selling pendants she made herself by the fountain in that yellow ocher dress I had bought her in Florence. The pendants would only be worn by peasants but they had a certain charm to them, something I feel that no one else would appreciate. When she had seen me standing so close to her she nearly fell into shock and started crying. She cried a million tears, and pounded my chest a million times. All I could do was hold her while she told me about those two long years we spent apart. She asked me to not leave her again.

What a promise I have to break, and you shan't know why, for if you did I know you'd follow me and that's something I know I cannot want. I'm a man of foolish tendencies and even more foolish habits, and it's because of those habits that I must bid her a farewell, at least for now.

2/01/2010

The Outside World Doesn't Belong In Your Bed.

The Outside world doesn't belong in your Bed
If you let it in it will take your stead

The smell and touch of your day
Will never ever go away.

If you don't cleanse yourself
You'll end up off your bed and on the shelf.

So take some time to shower
No more than half an hour

Before you dream the night's dreams
Before the sun bares its beams.

Evidently, I have to do this, well tralila and a sheep's hammock; here I go! On my way making the list. (I'm trying to evade formatting issues >_>)

The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed.
1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicise those you intend to read
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) Reprint this list in your own blog/fb note so we can try and track down these people who've read 6 and force books upon them

1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2. The Lord of The Rings - J.R.R. Tolkien
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4. Harry Potter Series - JK Rowling
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6. The Bible

7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare *not complete yet*
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19. The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis (haven't read them all)
34. Emma - Jane Austen
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen
36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - C.S. Lewis
37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38. Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41. Animal Farm - George Orwell
42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
45. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48. The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50. Atonement - Ian McEwan
51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52. Dune - Frank Herbert
53. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66. On The Road - Jack Kerouac *I know I'll love it though*
67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68. Bridget Jones' Diary - Helen Fielding
69. Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72. Dracula - Bram Stoker
73. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses - James Joyce
76. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78. Germinal - Emile Zola
79. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80. Possession - AS Byatt
81. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87. Charlotte's Web - EB White
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94. Watership Down - Richard Adams
95. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute

97. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas

98. Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo


So, in total...


Read: 23

Intend to read: 21

Love: 9