Dinner Party

I'm sure a lot of people, at one point or another, have pondered and mentally constructed a guest list for a dream dinner party. You're at liberty to invite anyone you want, whether they're living or dead, famous or non-famous (although, why would you invite someone of little importance, when you can have anyone you want?) and your disregard for whether or not everyone will get along will not be sniffed at. Here's my list, in order of no importance.

1. Jeff Buckley.

2. Marilyn Monroe.

3. Edgar Allan Poe.

4. Charlotte Brontë.

5. Cary Grant.

6. David Hume.

7. Audrey Hepburn.

8. Jane Austen.

9. Oscar Wilde.

10.Henry VIII.


If you're reading this, and want to make your own guest list, post it in the comments section, if you so desire.

Songs of January

1. To Wish Impossible Things - The Cure.

2. It's Tricky - Run DMC.

3. Spectacle - Sean Lennon.

4. TKO - Le Tigre.

5. Crushcrushcrush - Paramore.

6. Flume - Bon Iver.

7. Blue Ridge Mountains - Fleet Foxes.

8. Wow, I Can Get Sexual Too - Say Anything.

9. Back In Your Head - Tegan & Sara.

10. City Girl - Kevin Shields.

Art

I'm in an arty mood tonight. So here's a list of some of my favourite works of art.

1. The Glass Of Wine - Johannes Vermeer.

2. The Family - Paula Rego.

3. Portrait of the Journalist Sylvia von Harden - Otto Dix.

4. Study after Velazquez's Portrait of Pope Innocent X - Francis Bacon.

5. Doubting Thomas - Caravaggio.

6. Christina's World - Andrew Wyeth.

7. The Death of Marat - Jacques-Louis David.

8. Nightfall Down the Thames - Atkinson Grimshaw.

9. School of Athens - Raphael.

10. Young Man at his Window - Gustave Caillebotte.

2009

I don't really like to make resolutions at the beginning of a new year; they always end up being the really obligatory and obvious choices and I almost always never keep them. So instead of having to make 10 resolutions (I cringe just at the thought of that) I decided to make a list of 10 things that I would like to happen this year. Yes, some of them are probably in the 'resolution' category, but I prefer to think of them as wishes, hopes and aims. I'm not going to feel like a total failure if I don't stick to some of them. These aren't in order of importance, either.


1. Love. This year, I really want to maintain a relationship, and feel that contentment and happiness for a prolonged period of time. Happiness is important to me, and I think that if I'm genuinely happy and the people I love and care for are happy aswell, then everything seems more attainable and problems might be just a bit easier to overcome. I want to make a certain someone happy, because he deserves to feel like that. Every day.


2. Get a good job. I am definitely a dreamer, and hoping fervently for a job that makes me happy is a perfect example of this. But like most people, I don't think it's too much to ask for.


3. Donate blood again. Donating blood for the first time last September was a great experience, one I ventured into after reading a book where a character donated blood and ended up falling in love with the woman who received his blood in a transfusion. Rest assured, I didn't donate hoping to find love, but for some reason, the thought of doing it stayed with me until I decided to do it. And I felt so proud of myself. It felt great to know I potentially saved someone's life. Unfortunately, when I was invited to donate a second time, I was really ill and wouldn't have been allowed to donate. So I would really like to do it again this year, hopefully more than once.


4. Get a puppy. Losing Holly in '07 was pretty tough, after 16 years of her being part of our family, it felt strange to go into the kitchen and not see her lying in bed, or hear her padding about looking for a nice place to lie down and nap. But last year, as a family, we decided that we were ready for a new pet, and so this summer, hopefully, another Miniature Schnauzer will be brightening up my life. And the rest of my family's, too. I can't wait.


5. Study again. I'm not sure if it will be with the Open University again or if I'll find a uni or college to study at. It's all about finding the right course, and I've still not come across Holocaust Studies, which is my idea of a dream course. As nerdy as that may seem. But I felt a great sense of accomplishment with completing and passing my course with the OU.


6. Have a great birthday. I tend to have disappointing birthdays, and while they're just one day out of the year and it may seem bratty to want to have a perfect day, I am determined to have a good one this year. Turning 21 is quite special, I believe, and since I'm going on holiday to Derbyshire for a week for my birthday, I hope that I don't fall victim to the disappointment birthdays tend to bring. I'm still trying to decide what to do on the actual day, so lists shall be made! I already have a few - geeky - ideas.


7. Do something creative. I like to think I'm quite a creative person, I am prone to a few good ideas a month, but whenever I try to put them into motion, something seems to be preventing me. I'm a bit like one of those people who can see a perfect drawing in their head but when they have the pencil in their hand and the paper in front of them, it ends up looking nothing like the image they had in their head. So, whether it's starting that short story or getting back into playing music, I'm going to try and unblock my creativity.


8. Keep reading. Anyone who knows me well will testify that I adore books and reading. For the last few years, there hasn't really been a prolonged period of time where I wasn't reading a book. And I'd love to keep that going. I have a list of 'to read' books and a lot of books I'd love to buy, so hopefully this one will be easy to achieve.


9. Finish my bedroom. I started to decorate quite a while ago now, and there are still a few things to do, and I would love for my bedroom to be a place I feel really happy and safe in. A little sanctuary. I still need a bookcase for all my books, and I have some black and white pictures I want on the wall. Things like that. I think completing my room and adding lots of little decorative touches would be a good tie in with my 'Do something creative' aspiration.


10. Talk to people about how I feel. I'm quite bad for keeping things bottled up and I want to feel more liberated with my feelings, for instance, if I have feelings for someone again, I will NOT keep them to myself for so long because it did me no favours and made me feel really low. It really does help to talk to someone if you have something on your mind, and I think I'd like to get over the notion that people wouldn't want to hear my thoughts and worries because they have bigger things to deal with.

Songs of December

1. Pictures Of You - The Cure.

2. Silent Spring - Massive Attack.

3. Bruises - Chairlift.

4. Heartbeats - Jose Gonzalez.

5. What Makes A Man? - City & Colour.

6. Around The Bend - The Asteroids Galaxy Tour.

7. Lessons Learned - Ray LaMontagne.

8. Center Of Attention - Jackson Waters.

9. A Lack Of Color - Death Cab For Cutie.

10. Ice Age - Pete Yorn.

Songs of November

1. The Shadowlands - Ryan Adams.

2. Wuthering Heights - Kate Bush.

3. Always For You - The Album Leaf.

4. More Than Everything - Bombay 1.

5. By This River - Brian Eno.

6. The Luckiest - Ben Folds.

7. Whole Lotta Love - Led Zeppelin.

8. Nightmares By The Sea - Jeff Buckley.

9. Nights In White Satin - The Moody Blues.

10. Please Forgive Me - David Gray.

Literary Quotes

From novels, plays and suchlike. This will probably be one of many installments. I quite like quotes, you see...

1. "There is a tide in the affairs of men. Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. But omitted, and the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat, and we must take the current when it serves - or lose the ventures before us." - from 'Julius Caeser' by William Shakespeare.

2. "The world is a looking-glass, and gives back to every man the reflection of his own face. Frown at it, and it will in turn look sourly upon you; laugh at it and with it, and it is a jolly kind companion; and so let all young persons take their choice." - from 'Vanity Fair' by William Makepeace Thackeray.

3. "Neighbors bring food with death and flowers with sickness and little things in between. Boo was our neighbor. He gave us two soap dolls, a broken watch and chain, a pair of good-luck pennies, and our lives. But neighbors give in return. We never put back into the tree what we took out of it: we had given him nothing, and it made me sad." - from 'To Kill A Mockingbird' by Harper Lee.

4. "In old days there were angels who came and took men by the hand and led them away from the city of destruction. We see no white-winged angels now. But yet men are led away from threatening destruction: a hand is put into theirs, which leads them forth gently towards a calm and bright land, so that they look no more backward; and the hand may be a little child's." - from 'Silas Marner' by George Eliot.

5. "It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who have lost it; but the young know they are wretched, for they are full of the truthless ideals which have been instilled into them, and each time they come in contact with the real they are bruised and wounded." - from 'Of Human Bondage' by W. Somerset Maugham.

6. "My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods. Time will change it, I'm well aware, as winter changes the trees - my love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath - a source of little visible delight, but necessary." - from 'Wuthering Heights' by Emily Bronte.

7. "No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be true." - from 'The Scarlett Letter' by Nathaniel Hawthorne.

8. "He could not forget the touch of her arms around his neck, impatiently felt as it had been at the time; but now the recollection of her clinging defence of him, seemed to thrill him through and through - to melt away every resolution, all power of self-control, as if it were wax before a fire." - from 'North and South' by Elizabeth Gaskell.

9. "A funeral is not death, any more than baptism is birth or marriage union. All three are the clumsy devices, coming now too late, now too early, by which Society would register the quick motions of man." - from 'Howards End' by E.M. Forster.

10. "Give me my Romeo; and, when he shall die, take him and cut him out in little stars, and he will make the face of heaven so fine that all the world will be in love with night and pay no worship to the garish sun." - from 'Romeo and Juliet' by William Shakespeare.

Jeff Buckley

Since today would have been Jeff's birthday, I thought I'd post an entry concerning my favourite musician. I entertained the idea of posting a list of my favourite Jeff songs, but it felt to me how it would feel to a mother choosing between her children. So, after looking at my Merri Cyr book of Jeff photographs and quotes, I decided to post my ten favourite photographs of him. These are in a rough order, as I felt it was slightly difficult to choose my ultimate favourite. These are just a few of the photographs I love.

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

Songs of October

1. You & I - Jeff Buckley.

2. Lie In The Sound - Trespassers William.

3. Moon River - Audrey Hepburn.

4. Dream Brother - Jeff Buckley.

5. Comptine d'Un Autre Ete - Yann Tiersen.

6. Cloudbusting - Kate Bush.

7. Opened Once - Jeff Buckley.

8. Those To Come - The Shins.

9. Proof - I Am Kloot.

10. Running - No Doubt.

More Quotes

1. "Only the dead have seen the end of war." - Plato.

2. "Everytime we liberate a woman, we liberate a man." - Margaret Mead.

3. "A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on." - Sir Winston Churchill.

4. "Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind." - Albert Einstein.

5. "A mother takes twenty years to make a man of her boy, and another woman makes a fool of him in twenty minutes." - Robert Frost.

6. "There's no point in being unhappy about growing older. Just think of the millions who have been denied the privilege." - Cary Grant.

7. "Well-behaved women rarely make history." -Laurel Thatcher Ulrich.

8. "What greater thing is there for two human souls than to feel that they are joined for life?" - Leo Tolstoy.

9. "Maybe this world is another planet's Hell." - Aldous Huxley.

10. "To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead." - Bertrand Russell.