Rah Goddess' Guide to Life

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Celebrating 75 years of The Wizard of Oz.

L. Frank Baum’s book inspired a film that has been cherished by many, including myself, over the past 75 years. It was ground-breaking in its day, with its Technicolor contrasting sharply against the sepia browns and greys. The songs and the costumes have always made this film exciting for me too. Judy Garland plays Dorothy beautifully, and with a voice like hers it’s no wonder “Over The Rainbow"not only won the Oscar for best original song but that it’s still remains a favourite with people today.

Thank you Victor Fleming for a fantastic film

And just to show my love a little more, here is a pic of me as Dorothy and my friend Abi as Marilyn

Marilyn, btw, if you haven’t seen the film, is not a character in the WoO.

And because I love quotes

Auntie Em: Help us out today and find yourself a place where you won’t get into any trouble!
Dorothy: A place where there isn’t any trouble. Do you suppose there is such a place, Toto? There must be. It’s not a place you can get to by a boat or a train. It’s far, far away. Behind the moon, beyond the rain…
[begins to sing “Over the Rainbow"]

Dorothy: [has just arrived in Oz, looking around and awed at the beauty and splendor] Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas any more.
Dorothy: [after a pause] We must be over the rainbow!
[a bubble appears in the sky and gets closer and closer. It finally lands, then turns into Glinda the Good Witch wearing a spectacular white dress and crown, holding a wand]
Dorothy: [to Toto] Now I… I know we’re not in Kansas!

xxx

Gotta love a bit of Paolo. I am not sleeping at night but likewise am not tripping the bar crawl fantastic Several reasons for this lack of zzzzzz. I’m away from home and my own bed. It’s oppressively hot in Paris at the moment. And I cannot shut my talkative brain up. Blah blah and then you should, what about this, you could, should, hope, blah blah blahdity bleurgh. Honestly shut it brain for one second with all your creative yearnings, worries, thoughts, feelings and dissecting every aspect of my life. It also gets worse with every night I don’t sleep, hopefully my own bed should help heal this. Also making lists should help, hopefully, won’t it?

Key operative word. Hopefully.

So scientists pitch sleep as an important part of leading a fairly sane healthy life, it figures! Thoughts are actually hurting me a bit, starting to feel like I’m heading on a vaguely bumpy unused path towards weird ideas and sleep deprived emotions. Beginning to understand part of what my other half has been going through, being away from home, exploring on your own, coming back after work to an empty abode and all you can hear is other people living their lives in the distance. A medley of words in a different language, city chatter and oh my god, the traffic.

I will be happy to be at home, relieve the housesitters of the duty and reclaim my dog, I miss being there and have only a short time to enjoy it before work starts again. The sad thing is, I love this city and being here with the man has been fantastic but. I’m over it now. Want home and the man to back with me in it. Roll on Thursday peeps Saying that, I am set to blog ten times about Paris. If you hate the French, dislike cities or just are grumpy, avert your eyes over the next few weeks

I am back x

What is your current obsession?

Surveys I keep joining online reader panels for things, it’s bad I tell you I’m also working through my bejewelled 2 at night addiction. It’s going well, for now!

What is your weirdest obsession?

I buy lots of books, ermm I am not sure I have any really weird obsessions… please correct me if I’m wrong of course!

What are you wearing

My pjs, they are blue and have penguins on them (I like penguins). What! It’s not afternoon yet!

What’s for dinner?

Not sure, I’ve only just had breakfast. MIght go out and get something healthy and yummy later.

What would you eat for your last meal?

Lasagne mmmm I love pasta Ooh and Champagne - I love the bubbles!

What’s the last thing you bought?

Books and tapes on The Secret Garden. I’m just about to start the topic with my class.

What are you listening to right now?

A noisy house at peace, it is bank holiday sleeping in silence, yummy.

If you could have a house totally paid for, fully furnished anywhere in the world, where would you like it to be?

Ooh that’s hard, maybe Hong Kong, Japan, India or Australia - or then again probably Italy

If you could go anywhere in the world for the next hour, where would you go?

Paris to persuade Dan to take a lunch break

Which language do you want to learn?

Japanese - I know little bits of French, Russian and Spanish - oooh or maybe Chinese.

What’s your favourite quote (for now)?

My favourite quote for now comes an article on Richworks

What is your favourite colour?

Today, it’s turquoise

What is your favourite piece of clothing in your own wardrobe?

My wedding dress - see here -

Picture courtesy of Jenny Packham and it is called Papillion which is quite funny as I absolutely hate butterflies.

What is your dream job?

Film director, fashion designer, writer, actress, oooh singer - although I can’t sing

Describe your personal style?

A work in progress, what I wear at the moment isn’t extremely me. I am overweight and working on it, my wardrobe is home to many beautiful dresses, I want to be that girl from my wardrobe.

What’s your favourite tree?

Oak

What are you going to do after this?

Get showered, dressed, work for a couple of hours, then go out with my sister, home again and more work before bed.

What’s your favourite fruit?

Strawberries - and white nectarines.

What inspires you?

People, sharing thoughts and ideas, talking, travel, pictures, creative outputs - lots of things.

What is your favourite photo that you’ve taken?

What are you currently reading?

One Day by David Nicholls - “You can live your whole life not realising that what you’re looking for is right in front of you.” It’s good fun

Go to your bookshelf, take down the first book with a red spine you see, turn to page 26 and type out the first line:

“However, she could find nothing but a bottle of ink, and when she got back with it she found he had recovered, and he and the Queen were talking together in a frightened whisper - so low, that Alice could hardly hear what they said.” Alice Through The Looking Glass - Lewis Carroll.

What delighted you the most today?

The welcome I got from my dog this morning, all meaty kisses and following around.

By what criteria do you judge a person?

Manners, I dislike rude people. Next friendliness and humour.

What item could you not live without?

Laptop/PC/iPhone I need to be able to get online. NEED to.

Enough for now, back to work I go!

xxxx

“Please send me your last pair of shoes, worn out with dancing as you mentioned in your letter, so that I might have something to press against my heart.”
~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe~

“And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.”
~Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche~

To finish, one from a man I admire, Albert Einstein,

“I have no particular talent. I am merely inquisitive.”

“Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.”
~ Joseph Addison ~

I tried, I really did. I mustered up enthusiasm, I bought the book and yet couldn’t open it. I was paralysed with hard cold procrastination and reading was put aside while I actually did my work. I love to read and so was genuinely confused, why couldn’t I complete the reading group task? I will tell you what I discovered. The book didn’t appeal to me, it fell flat against my expectations. I haven’t read for pleasure in a long time, my everyday work means tons of reading, this book sat in my hands wasn’t doing it for me. I read the blurb, handled the cover, hell! I even smelled the new pages. It was lost to me and so I hid it under my bed and left it there whilst I journeyed home.

However, I am reading again. Tentatively, nervously. Hoping to fall in love with books again. So I have five books, one old favourite (I love Tolstoy), three cheesy books and one that looks like it requires far more brain power. I have just finished reading “Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief” by Rick Riordan and am contemplating ordering his others. It is our class book this term. It is fun Try it, rewriting the Greek Myths channelled through modern day America, his writing is funny and accessible. My class are loving it.

What of the book club book I hear you ask? I hope I will read it one day, until then I may pass it forward, send it to a friend, I know someone will enjoy it! I am slowly making my book lists as well - so I think I will put them up in groups of ten.

First ten are -

1. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
2. Sucks to be Me - Kimberly Pauley
3. Skulduggery Pleasant, The Faceless One - Derek Landy
4. A Hollywood Ending - Robyn Sisman
5. The Wedding Day - Catherine Alliot
6. The Inheritance of Loss - Kiran Desai
7. The Girl Next Door - Elizabeth Noble
8. The World’s Wife - Carol Ann Duffy
9. A Gate at the Stairs - Lorrie Moore
10. The Girl with Glass Feet - Ali Shaw

Some classics there Hehe! Some bought for me for Christmas (I love books for children btw)and others bought but not read. If you feel like reading any of the above with me, let me know!

“Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted;
nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider.
Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed,
and some few to be chewed and digested:
that is, some books are to be read only in parts,
others to be read, but not curiously, and some few
to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.”
~ Francis Bacon ~

Happy book hunting and reading!

xxxxx

So I am not as the title of this post suggests, starting anew. Not totally anyway. Well, new years lend themselves to stretching, contemplating and guiding positive thought into some sort of positive action. I said to one of my students today, “come in tomorrow with a new head on". She was very giddy, disruptive and noisy today and I wanted her to realise that her choice was having an effect on the rest of the class. Changing your frame of mind, can be life altering. I have long believed that happiness is a choice, you can choose to see the positive or dwell on the negative in life. Realising that can radically alter how you live.

Attempting to change the way you see life can be the first step in changing your inner “landscape”. Marcel Proust, in one of my absolute favourite quotes, has it right on the money, “The voyage of true discovery lies not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” I see a rich lush landscape of people and experiences awaiting me in 2010 and am happily setting about my journey. Perhaps this is a rosy clouded perspective but I have been down at heel emotionally speaking for far too long. In embracing a new set of eyes, I am able to take on the challenge of being away from home (it is indeed where the heart is!) for part of the week, starting my career and tackling things, instead of procrastinating.

It is a quasi-rebirth, a new breath and a nervous step in another direction. All the snow we’ve been having a lately felt strangely symbolic of this time in my life. It made me think about the last story in James Joyce’s “Dubliners” - The Dead. A story, I believe, which focuses on shifting perspectives.
“His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.”
This final line makes me envision a man who needs his life to be washed clean as his focus on things around him have sharpened and become more realistic. He feels a link to the falling snow as he needs to start again. I like its link to the old myths of Ancient Greece, particularly of Persephone and Demeter, daughter and mother. Demeter is said to share her daughter with Hades (who stole her from her mother’s side) and her grief at spending only half the year with her daughter is used as an explanation for the changing seasons. Her sorrow becomes the bleak landscape of winter after which comes the joy of sunny days and the return of her daughter. Essentially Persephone is reimagined and reborn every time she comes back. New eyes indeed!

Apologies for my wandering tonight I am just getting warmed up again

xxx

Love. Awh that old writers’ block, the stumbling step in an array of rainbow experiences. I love the quote above as it really makes me think of love and how it is different for all of us and non of us are experts. Even two people in a couple, in a relationship, experience love in a completely different manner. Loving yourself, loving each other. Admire, adore, adhesive. Sorry feel in love a little with alliteration there :) I am musing about love as I am away from my beloved and missing him. Incidentally I am listening to Rodgers & Hammerstein’s King and I on Youtube.

This song is superb, has so many quotable lines :) Makes me happy!

Talk about tension and romance - take a gander at this scene, another of my favourites - Shall We Dance?

I like the very unpc The King & I :)

Shall we dance… 123… and 123 xxxx

A tweet by Jen got me thinking.
“Words written? Bugger all. Words deleted? Bloomin loads. Reverse writing. Not the right idea at all. Ho hum, time to Do Things now.”
Yesterday I made the decision to not punish myself for not completing 50, 000 words for Nanowrimo. It was hurting me creatively as I was meandering everywhere without a plot, writing quite appalling crap and both loving and hating it at the same time. Then Dan said something to me. Along the lines of surely you’ve missed the point, the whole exercise is to get people writing every day. So I started to slow down, actually consider the plot, take some time for planning, deleted a little and here I am with a good story to tell. Feels great! I’ll probably get to my 50, 000 words in a couple of weeks. I feel good about it! November has been a busy month for me. I’d probably do better doing the challenge in October Awh well! Onward and upwards!

Book update - it is a magical love story with intrigue, murder and lots of journeys all thrown in. I love my two protagonists and will probably give you a little taster on here in a few weeks

However not to detract from the amazing task of finishing Nanowrimo, I’d like to say a massive congratulations - in addition to singing it on her answerphone to my good friend Laura for completing her 50,000 words, can’t wait to read it Chuck! xxx

Happy writing!
xxx

So I am a little late blogging about this one and have read many articles about this already. However, it’s been a tough week to get motivated and I have lists of things I want to write about, so you will have to be patient and put up with me blogging about old news for a while.

Kate Moss Copyright TopShop.

So Kate, Kate, Kate. It’s so good for some people to have a poster child, a figurehead, a scapegoat, someone to blame for corrupting the minds and bodies of innocent teenagers and eating disorder sufferers worldwide. Hell she is a model who has her picture taken everywhere she goes, not a stranger to controversy and she gets paid to wear expensive clothes, jewellery and make up for a living. Of course she has single-handedly made young women feel like they should be size zero, that being skinny is only that, nothing else. Pro-anorexia aligned with one slip of the tongue (virtually speaking). What complete twoddle. I mean, sure. Young girls do look up to her. A strong young woman, had issues but got through them, carved a successful career and juggled that with parenthood. She’s no saint and is a bit of a lamp at times but I am not sure bad choice in men and an addiction to drugs are reason enough to be charged with the crime of making eating disorders fashionable. Words do have power but often interpretation of those words, context and tone can severely affect their meaning. Believe me, I am a lover of sarcasm.

So Kate quoted the mantra used by many a dieter and also by the extreme end of eating disorder suffers, the pro-ano lot. I happen to agree with the statement in my context which is that crap like sweets and cakes do not taste as good as being skinny (size 10) would feel to me. That doesn’t mean I am going to google pro-ano sites (which actually I have done in the past following an article about banning them in the papers but only because I am so nosey and have a google addiction), develop an eating disorder or strive to be a size 0. Life isn’t like that. I agree with Carole Malone’s take on the whole affair.

“It’s ludicrous to blame her for encouraging kids to starve themselves. But if we’re talking blame then blame a society obsessed with image, the body beautiful and vacuous celebrity.

Blame the mothers who let their daughters have breast ops at 15, give them Botox for their 18th birthday and teach them that looks are everything.

Blame the teen magazines obsessed with sex and perfection. Blame the retailers who make the trendiest clothes in Sizes 4-12.

Blame movies and TV for subliminally transmitting the message that only thin, beautiful women get the rich, gorgeous men.”

Amen. It’s a good common sense article and it encourages us to take control of ourselves. We live in a blame culture, it’s always someone else’s fault, trust me, I see it everyday I’m in school. It’s so important to teach our children and ourselves to eat properly, exercise and then enjoy treats occasionally. So I agree with the statement and it’s one of many I use on myself. Kate Moss hasn’t given the world an eating disorder, just something to talk about!

Happy moderation peeps! xxx

Whether you like it or not, history is on our side. We will bury you!
Nikita Khrushchev

St Basil’s Cathedral Moscow, Alex Zelenko Creative Commons License 3

So Russia. 54. Speak Russian in Russia. One of my many outstanding bucket list goals. I have been fascinated by the vast sweeping country since I picked up War and Peace and then saw the Audrey Hepburn’s film version of the book.

Not the best adaptation, but not as bad as Laurence Olivier and his version of Pride and Prejudice, shudder. But anyway, back to Red Square, the Winter Palace, the Mariinsky Theatre and other such chocolate box jewels nestled in the dark landscape of extreme nights, long lasting cold spells and copious amounts of the white stuff. Mmm vodka.

Various books have fuelled my interest in Russia, particularly the language and culture. I enjoyed Marcus Sedgwick’s Blood Red Snow White which is the story of Arthur Ransome’s exploits as a spy prior to his Swallows and Amazons success. Recently I also devoured The Russian Concubine by Kate Furnivall which although set in China (another country I find fascinating) it’s story and blood is Russian. I have read a bit, watched many travel programmes, documentaries and films about the place but can’t imagine a Russia that is now. Sitting in cafes sipping flavoured vodka - no mixer! Waltzing through history through the arcades that surround Red Square. Whiling away the morning at the Hermitage steeped laguoriously in art and Faberge jewelled delights. Dressing up up for the opera or the ballet (also on my list!)at the Kirov would be a royal treat! Speaking Russian scares me but I’m working on that, I have plenty of time until I don my fur hat and camera. Looking forward to it!

До свидания (Do Svidanya)

xxxx