I LOVE YOU

Because it was Ed's birthday and they had mistakenly put the Gu brownies in the fridge which you're not supposed to do and that made them hard, not gooey, and we were making a sundae, together, in the kitchen, with two flavours of ice cream that I chopped a banana into and you took a hard brownie, standing next to me with your sleeve grazing my arm, and grated it all over the ice cream and it looked meant to be.

SHOPPING BAN UPDATE

HEY EVERYONE, look at these kirei (beautiful/pretty in Japanese)Doc Martens that I can't buy. My awesome Elle Daily Buy Facebook Application says they're around £99 but this website has them for £60. Weird, but a good weird. Spring is cominggggg!Also, I think I will have to cheat with this Lenten Shopping ban thing because, on the Facebook Marketplace, this guy is offering brand new GHD hair straighteners for £75 each! DO YOU KNOW HOW HOLISTIC A GHD STRAIGHTENER IS WITH YOUR HAIR? My stylist, back when I could afford him, in Fulham, swears by them and they are originally priced at £120. ALSO, this guy has 5 of them, so...if you're in London and you want one, he says he'll sell all of them for 70 each if I find people for the other 4. They're brand new too. Get back to me people or snooze and lose.

*PHEW* Had to get all that out before bed because I've been feeling guilty about not posting any Japanese Phrase of the Day or Item of the Day recently, which should be daily. I'm kind of OCD about my blog. OKAY! G'NITE!

SHEPHERD'S BUSH ADVENTURE

So, if it wasn't for my most amazing London friend Sherel calling me around noon saying she had problems and needed to talk to someone, I would not have gotten out of bed at all and had a 3 hour majorly productive writing session that harboured some raw and exciting bits of prose, and even some poetry, which I tend not to tamper with.

I sat in Starbucks waiting for her naturally fashionably late ass to show, with my Venti (I upsized expecting to be there ages, good call) Iced White Caffe Mocha, with which I customized by chucking the usual white chocolate syrup and replacing it with half cinnamon and half vanilla syrup. Yes, I know, it is genius. The word of the blogger. Thanks be to Kara.

I think I wrote about 6 A4 page sides of my notebook, which included planning out my next short story for my portfolio, a few Beat Generation-esque poems about love, descriptions of the people around me, and luckily there are a vast number of weird people lurking in Shepherd's Bush, and just general thoughts. I also decided that one of my interests is crab migrations on Christmas Island; ever since I was a little girl. I know. Leave me be. I've always wanted to go there and since I can't organize that anytime soon, I have decided to write a short story on it. Okay, you think I'm weird. Check it out for yourself.

I bet you're thinking, "Don't fricking tell us about your stories, show us!" My lecturers always say that, "SHOW, DON'T TELL!" Trust me, as time passes, and when they are finished being re-drafted and edited many times, I will let them go, release my babies, let them grow up in your minds. I promise.

For now, you can just have a look at my suicidal memory in my last post. And thank you, lovely Guerreira for commenting on my piece. It really made an already great day extra better, and who would've thought more joy could come to a day minutes to midnight?

After listening to the inspirational words of wisdom that my friend Sherel had to say about not giving up on being a writer and killing myself, we went to Chop Chop, where a plate the size of a hubcab of good Chinese food costs roughly £3. Go there. Nuff said. Then, we decided to catch a movie at the Vue. And we met a man.

"Sherel, what should we see? Jumper was shit, and sorry but I've seen Cloverfield, Sweeney Todd, Juno and Be Kind Rewind already."
"Well, hahahaha oh look! They finally brought out that movie with the ugly girl running from a car in underwear, 'All the Boys Love Mandy Lane."
"Well, do you wanna see that?"
"NO! Can I please spend my money wisely for once?"
"Well, I heard No Country for Old Men is wicked. It won best picture. Oh sorry, we're blocking this man."
"No Country is definitely a must-see girls, unless you're looking for a chick flick. No Country's a drama."
"I thought it was a thriller."
"Well, yes, both." Sherel gets scared. "It's not a spilling guts type of movie, it's pretty fucking weird...and brilliant. It's like a 'what the fuck' movie, yuh know?"

Well, yes, it is a 'what the fuck' movie, and What the fuck. It was brilliant. I didn't realise how hot Josh Brolin can be when he's not in a funny movie like Grindhouse. Apparently he wasn't even the one casted for the movie. It was his 67 yr old father actor James Brolin, but Josh showed up by mistake (HOW DOES THAT HAPPEN? HOW EMBARASSING!) Maybe I'm creepy for thinking I could have hot people sex with him, but Sherel liked him too, and we are pretty bipolar when it comes to guys. I mean, I helped her pick out a huge purple fake diamond 'bling' ear stud for her boyf today. Here are some other 'off' guys that I find attractive.

Anyway, unusually hot guys aside, this guy we met ('Call me Anthony, or Doctor Voice') was old+british+unattractive=not my type, but I REALLY liked him, in a 'I want to have awesome conversations with you' type of way. We talked to him for about 20 more minutes, well I did, not Sherel. She listened to us go on about movies and screenplays and movie scores (he writes movie scores and is actually quite famous) and how we secretly LOVED Cloverfield but didn't want anyone to know that (I THOUGHT I WAS THE ONLY ONE!) and he was impressed with my movie knowledge and I was just so excited with HIM! Has anyone ever felt like that about someone? Like you just HAD to be friends with that person? I suppose it is sort of like Juno befriending Jennifer Garner's husband in the movie, or the relationship in Lost in Translation, minus the 'Ohmygod, I love you' bits in both. I was really sad that he just turned around and left the theatre after talking to us, and wanted him to join us. Is that weird? Sherel had to listen to me talk about him over tea for 30 minutes. Anyway, be sure to see his movie 'Prison Ship' when it comes out. I don't know anything about it or if it's any good but he claims people are calling it the Die Hard 5. Okay that probably doesn't make you want to watch it so I'll scope it out for you guys and report back.

DEPRESSION AND OTHER WEDNESDAY DEALINGS

Everytime I read Natalie Goldberg's 'Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within' I am continuously amazed at how spot on she is about the writing self and the living self at the same time. They are these two friends walking together down a summery street, hand in hand, in battered Chuck's in Minnesota. And every word, the more times my finger brushes over them in the pale lamplight, has correlated with my life, in the most tight-knit of ways, too eerie for me to comprehend. Over the last two days, I have been hanging on her every word. I have been particularly working with this one exercise of hers called 'I Remember...' You can guess what you're meant to do. And after I tell you a little bit about me, just to set the scene, I will share with you one of my memories.

ABOUT ME
You don't know much about me but you've been reading my blog so I thought I would share a little. It's a healthy writing practice to share, Natalie says. So, my name is Kara Richelle Martin. I am now unfavourably 19 years old living in London and studying Creative Writing. I hail from Trinidad and Tobago, and a very comfortable yet unravelling childhood(I am still a child), with uncalculated levels of preteen alcoholism, journal entries, distance, misunderstandings and haziness. In 2006 my parents shipped us out of a criminally escalating homeland and put us to sit in an air-conditioned world of swirling dust, cigarettes, Hummers and hypocritical culture; Abu Dhabi in the Middle East. I live back and forth between there and the UK. I am an aspiring magazine journalist and novelist propped up on nothing but Starbucks and yoga, and in love with someone I cannot reach. I sleep. I write. Period. Ever since I was 14 I have had clinical depression. It has not been easy.

THE EXERCISE
I remember hearing my mother's heavy footfalls up and down the corridor, the crashing of a drawer full of keys as she rifled through it, looking for the spare one to my door. I lay in a ball under a yellow sheet whose fibers I was examining millimetres from my eyeball. I waited for her as she banged and shouldered my little white door with its chain locks, latches and keyholes. I waited for her to burst through it and save me as I slid between my sheets slowly to see the effect of it rising and falling, of the fabric gently caressing the little hairs on my body. It made me shiver throughout. Eventually, she did and I heard the wood and lock snap and fall away and knew of the lime green paint chips that fluttered to the ground where the door handle had smashed against the wall. I told her I was sleeping while I studied her throat; all the swallowing it was doing. She swallowed many things. The new rule was to never close my door again. I nodded, still wrapped in my sheets.
"Did you take your thing?"
"What's my thing?" I forced her to admit it; the truth of me.
"Your pill, Kara!"
"Yes, I took my Prozac; my lovely Lilly" I always wondered why each capsule said Lilly on it.
Helplessly, she left. She really had tried it all.

That is why I kept quiet, for her sake. I was free to ruminate now over my glazed wound; the volcanic spill. I never cleaned them; just watched, for days. I liked the way the curdled, hardened blood pulled my skin when I used my arm muscles, to lift a fork to my mouth, clench my fist, to write this. I liked the way it stuck to some of my clothes' fabrics, and got wisps of cotton tangled in it, that had to be unwound really slowly. They had set in like a maze, and CLUNG!

That movie Gigli taught me how to do it right, make it count, along the thick green cordy vein, where the blue blood swims, from the wrist all the way up. But to me, it wasn't about direction, or technique, poise or design, quantity of strokes, intensity of insanity or level of mental illness, number of vials of tears produced. It was about glorious blood flow. Red. I liked the way the cuts were pathetically never deep enough, but if you gave it a minute or two, the skin would blush madly, and through microscopic perforations, the blood would squeeze forth and bubble like a little chain of shiny beads.

During the scabbing stage they looked like stitches. Sally from the Nightmare Before Christmas, and I, had the same falling apart limbs full of tally marks, like on prison walls. "How many more days of this? Let me count." And oh, how these railroad tracks itched and made me want to scratch them to hell and back and make them burst open all over again. You could be mistaken for a heroin junkie with all that itching and scratching.

My scars usually faded away pretty well, but sometimes it was almost sickly refreshing to see the scars raised on my skin, like fresh plots in a cemetary; buried things, at least buried as far as they could go, still somewhat protruding from the fleshy ground.

10 THINGS ABOUT TODAY

1. Uncle Ben's is doing Risotto in a bag, y'all! And it tastes great! Uncle Ben is really saving students, man. The rice in a microwaveable bag thing is totally boss. You guys go ahead and lug your grandma's rice cookers along with you for college orientation. Not me, thanks.


2. Went to Sainsbury's today and while unloading and stuffing my one shelf in the fridge and having my flatmates go 'you eat that?', I realised how un-collegiate and chic my food buys make me look. Here is my shopping list:

Smoked Scottish Salmon

Brie

Red Wine

Green Seedless Grapes

Grated Mozarella and Cheddar Cheese

Grapefruit Juice

Lemon, Ginger and Honey Juice (experiment. Is this good?)

Brown Sugar

Green Tea

Whole Grain Tortillas

Thai Sweet Chili Sauce

Mushrooms

Uncle Ben's Risotto(not so chic but no one has to know it's origin, which then makes it chic!)

Gü Brownies (Have you ever had anything by Gü? FREAKISHLY AMAZING!)

3. Somestimes it's fun to wear heels and dress up a little just to do groceries a bus ride away. Cars stop for you in free-flowing traffic. Damsel in Distress! It reminds me of THE coolest line in Steve Buscemi's latest movie 'Interview', which he wrote the script for too:


Katya: Do you like fishnet stockings, Pierre? Wait. Let me rephrase. Why do you think it is that men like fishnet stockings so much?
Pierre Peders: They look good on women.
Katya: Fishnet stockings are a net, and the woman is imprisoned in this net like a fish. Do you get it?
Pierre Peders: Yeah, and what about high heels?
Katya: Well, high heels make walking very, very difficult. So you see, nothing would be more attractive to a man than a woman wearing fishnet stockings and high heels because she has trouble walking and she's imprisoned within this net and therefore he thinks she's easy prey. I know everything.


4. IT KILLS ME how spot on Trendinista always is. She's great. This. Is a cigarette case. I don't know about you, but it makes me want to die of severe Lung Cancer.




5. These headphones take the cake compared to the ones I rustled up. GREAT colours. Stolen from The Cobra Snake. I'm so lame. (I don't think you can be snapped on that website if you don't smoke cigarettes or own a pair of geeky glasses. I love watching those people but do they have missions in life? They're always having fun! *pout*)

6. I'm sick. On the one day I have classes this week. And am P.O'd that my Writing Fiction lecturer is once again flaking on me for my one-on-one tutorial. I understand that people get sick because...I just SAID I'm sick lol but my short stories need guidance. Help a lead character out!

7. I gave my room a thorough scrape out. HEY! I actually did a Spring Cleaning in time for Spring. Never did that before. Anyways, the reason I decided to turn up the Trance music and tackle my room today is because I did a swamp load of laundry and coming back to my room, resting my happy face on my warm scented hippie blanket, I was faced with the realization that I had too much clothes for an international student. I REALLY SHOULDN'T BE A STUDENT, GEEZ! IT'S DAWNING ON ME! So I started sifting the Charity shop give-aways from the dump-me-already's, then reasoned that I would have more space if I actually FOLDED the remainder of the good stuff; which I was right!

8. Things I found while cleaning:

an over-the-top Afro for a 70's/80's party I didn't go to

my pale pink bob wig a la Natalie Portman in Closer that I wore with other slutty stuff because I was some fetish fantasy for a Halloween party, and made my pinoy boytoy ex a meek and mild Heroes geek, and dragged him around on a leash

About a dozen tubs of old hair products

My Hello Kitty! adult crayon set

Enough Emirates money to buy myself something new at Forever 21 when I head back to the U.A.E.

A short pleated red skirt I wore to a 'Hired Help' party as a Prostitute (I had a condom and a wad of cash in my bustiered cleavage and everything!)

Some great handed down vintage jewelry

9. I DID NOT use any plastic bags while shopping today because over-sized handbags work just as well, AND BETTER! Say yes to big bags and make the world a greener place!

10. I might be bi.

WRITING RETREAT

I'm on a writing retreat todayyyy!
It seems The Craft is coming to me more and more frequently these days, the more material I read. WHO WOULD'VE THOUGHT?! lol j/k. So...since my lecturer has once again cancelled a session with her this week I must tutorialize myself!
I'm sure I'll be itching later and feel the need to write a post but for now, while I go sit in Starbucks penning and papering and timing my laundry cycle in the campus laundromat (since people like to throw your intimates out to use the machines), I'll leave you with this THING:

With Sincerest Regrets

Like a white snail the toilet slides into the living room, demanding to be loved.

It is impossible, and we tender our sincerest regrets.

In the book of the heart there is no mention made of plumbing.

And though we have spent our intimacy many times with you,

You belong to an unfortunate reference, which we would rather not embrace....

The toilet slides out of the living room like a white snail, flushing with grief....

-Russell Edson

Personally, I love the toilet, Apparently I like taking pictures with him around. Here we are having a moment:

ITEM OF THE DAY

Something terrible just happened. I finished the entire DVD series of My So Called Life. It was better than I expected, better than I remembered, better than anything on TV anymore. And there was WAY too much plaid.

The IOTD is plaid, because for me, it is not yet over-plaid (get it?). You know how some girls get really embarassed when they spot another girl wearing what they're wearing? Well, this weekend I went to Walkabout with some friends in the above outfit. Although there was a girl in an awesome over-sized blue plaid one she wore as a dress, I bumped into a GUY at the bar wearing my shirt. I don't get embarassed by those things. We just laughed and high-fived each other. Now being caught in the same thing as a guy makes me OFFICIALLY AWESOME! I just wish I had gotten a pic of the two of us together.

If you have 9 minutes to spare, here's a clip from an episode of My So Called Life. See if you can spot the plaid. What's funny is...this is JUST A CLIP and the number of plaid sightings in this clip is consistent throughout the entire show!