Transparent Angel – Hadron Orchestra

So here’s the new look. Short and dark. Tomorrow morning I’m using COLOURB4 in hope of returning to my former shade. Today, I’m wearing a big hoody and being moody to match my dark hair. I’m listening to a CD we bought in Hungary, I’m thinking about Hungary. I’m thinking about how daft I was to cry. I cried because I hadn’t thought of how much the colour would change my appearance. I was daft to cry because taking risks is what brings excitement and what makes stories.

 

I’m now one of those girls who can add *Dyed my hair a bad shade* to my list of things I really shouldn’t have, yet things I’ve learnt from list.

I’m thinking about what I want to look like, and what decisions I should make about the future. In 6 days, I’m moving to York for anywhere between a week and a month, which is quite unsettling, yet the decision is entirely mine. Why am I afraid? I know why. I don’t want  things to change with my love. I don’t want dynamics to alter, yet altering dynamics is a fact of life. I’m looking at photos of the week we just had and watching movies. I’m thinking about how I’ve done so many things I’ve never done before, in the last few months alone. I’m thinking about how I am so happy. I am. I’m thinking about saying to Stuart that 60 years wouldn’t be long enough to be with him. I’m thinking about how he held me when I cried. I’m thinking about how lucky I am. I’m thinking about all the things I want to achieve in my life. I’m thinking about placements, internships and I’m thinking about jobs. I’m thinking about uni. I’m thinking about music and coffee houses.

There is so much in my little brain, and so much to think about. Always.

Weird how music can take you back to a certain place. I’m listening to Hadron Orchestra, and I may as well be sat in instant! in Budapest. Rabbits chasing each other above me. A packet of menthol cigarettes on the table: they are mine. I’m thinking about how I wanted to dye my hair dark and try something new. I’m thinking about how it’s ok. It’ll grow out. I’m thinking about how we sat in impact and bought CDs and wrote and read and drank and smoked and then went for the best meal we had: Pork at Disznó and the cycle home. The best week to date.

Everything is good.

Day Three

Last night, I did something really stupid. Something regrettable  something irreversible and something that ended in tears…lots of tears.

I (accidently) dyed my (beautiful blonde) hair black.

Stuart and I were planning to go and see Star Trek but with no good screening time, we instead decided to go to Tesco and buy dark brown hair dye for me, and dye my hair. Moments before, I looked in the mirror and said “I love my hair” which should have acted as a deterrent but instead, determined to be spontaneous, exciting and in a way, reckless, I sat down and Stuart applied the dye. I expected to sit up 15 minutes later and have lovely brown hair, but instead my hair was a shock of jet black, soft and bouncing above my shoulders screaming how it was too dark for my pale pinkish skin. With blond eyelashes and blonde eyebrows, I look frankly ridiculous. After discovering my distaste, feeling like I could cry, I went to sit in the lounge and did some writing. About 45 minutes later, I dressed for bed (wearing a black band t-shirt and black leggings) I looked in the mirror and hated everything about what I saw.

I have long struggled with accepting my appearance, but after a week away with Stuart, exposing my skin, seeing beautiful people of all shapes and sizes, spending a day in a spa surrounded by diffferent bodies, I had come to feel I had cracked it…my body was my body, I was lucky to have mobile limbs and smooth skin. My hair had never really bothered me too much, I found it easier to manage when it was shorter, I could always clip it out my face when it was limp or frizzy, but my body, was always there, and a warped version always looked back from the mirror at me. I have come to terms with the fact that I have chunky legs, a little belly and I’m carrying a bit of holiday weight, but it is who I am. 

My hair on the other hand, was always fine. Why I chose to dye it, seems all a little vague and ridiculous now. True, if I hadn’t dyed it, I would always have wondered what dark hair would look on me…I can now say, it definitely isn’t my favourite look. But it’s done. 

I’ve spent this morning, washing my hair in bottles of head and shoulders, packets of clothes detergent and I’m on my way to Wilkinsons to buy Vitamin C tablets, for if you crush them and make them into a paste, leave on your hair for 30 minutes, it should remove dye. 

So determined am I to look as I did before, yet before I was so unsatisfied. It’s been a lesson, for sure. It’s taught me spontaneity doesn’t always end well. (When you have blonde hair, you buy clothes that suit blonde hair, make up that suits blonde hair, shampoo for blonde hair, my skin…suits blonde hair.) In a way, it’s taught me what I find important in my version of my self image. 

I’ve always been blonde (dark blonde, or highlighted blonde, but always blonde). I like this. I like the light, summery, beachy, blonde hair look. I always see women with dark blonde, long hair and identify with them, and even though my hair is short now, they are still the ones I look to for inspiration, for association. 

My body is my body. Change occurs. My weight changes, my shape fluctuates. This is how it is. I am bigger than I was this time last year. Smaller than the year before that. A different shape altogether to the one I had six months ago. But  I am still Sarah.

I have changed. My ideals, my identity, my choices, my feelings, my surroundings have all changed. Currently, my hair is different. And despite the fact that I’m going to spend all of today doing everything I can to change that, if I can’t, then so it will have to be.

It’s not forever. There are far, FAR, more important things in the world to cry about. To spend my day thinking about. To worry about. 

Hair (despite it’s constant framing of my face) isn’t really that big a deal.*

I have learnt from the disaster. And have done my crazy thing of the month. I will now spend my day and my money trying to reverse it. 

People Who Eat Darkness – Richard Lloyd Parry

In the summer of 2000, Jane Steare received the phone call every mother dreads. Her daughter Lucie Blackman – tall, blonde, and twenty-one years old – had stepped into the vastness of a Tokyo summer and disappeared forever. That winter, her dismembered remains were found buried in a desolate seaside cave.

Her disappearance was mystifying. Had Lucie been abducted by a religious cult? Who was the mysterious man she had gone to meet? What did her work, as a ‘hostess’ in the notorious Roppongi district of Tokyo, really involve? And could Lucie’s fate be linked to the disappearance of another girl some ten years earlier?

Over the course of a decade, Richard Lloyd Parry has travelled to four continents to interview those caught up in the story and been given unprecedented access to Lucie’s bitterly divided family to reveal the astonishing truth about Lucie and her fate.

 

I was walking around Waterstones in Birmingham little over a week ago, looking for some “holiday reading” when I stumbled across People Who Eat Darkness. Always drawn towards non-fiction, and fuelled by a fascination of accounts of other peoples lives, I picked up the title, intrigued. Biographical writing is both something I enjoy reading and writing myself, so not only was the story interesting in accounts of being a reader, but as a writer too. Lucie Blackman’s story wasn’t one I was familiar with, details of the case, images of the suspect triggered some vague memories, but nothing overpowering, nothing to make me remark “OH yes, Lucie Blackman”. But the more I read, the more I remembered hearing fragments on the news, the seaside cave, the lengthy trial, concluding 8 years after Lucie’s abduction, rape, murder and dismemberment. All of which contributed to my intrigue into the story…what had actually happened to Lucie? Was the suspect, indeed her killer? What was his motive? 

Instead of the clear cut answer I was expecting, Parry delivered a tale of both family anguish, the life of a young woman drawn to Japan in attempt to clear her financial debts, a history of Japan (and relations with Korea), an insight into the Japanese Police forces and too, stories which I wished to un-read, accounts of the lives of monsters with human faces. Parry didn’t draw out the story unnecessarily. He provided a rich and enthralling narrative of both Lucie’s past, peppered with writings from her diary, childhood poems, text messages and transcriptions of phonecalls, giving a fair and rounded story of Lucie’s past, filling us in on both her personality and her upbringing, all family members quoted. You find yourself at least half way through the book before any real discovery takes place, for Parry not only discussed ‘the fate of Lucie Blackman’ but tells us the story of Lucie too. The story of her mother, her father, her friends and the effect she had on passers by. 

The book too, contains references to other women affected by suspect Joji Obara and tells their stories also. Parry tries to tell Obara’s tale but expresses the difficulty in learning about the man who he describes like a nut: you could see his shell but not what it contained. He was impossible to crack; but he acknowledges that the surface of the nut was fascinating in itself…he was able to learn enough about the man to know that he wasn’t ever going to discover the whole truth. Obara himself took 4 years to voice any statement in court, and then it was a highly elaborate tale that could have been the truth or could have been a ruse, 4 years in the making. 

I was drawn into the story because I wanted to know why he killed Lucie. What motive he had or at least a confession. I wanted everything that wasn’t found, and whilst the book was rich and written fantastically, the answers I wanted weren’t there, but they aren’t real. Parry says too how in a good crime novel, there are always answers, but in non-fiction crime, this is often impossible, if one cannot gain a confession from the nut. Evidence provided details of the approach to Lucie’s last days, but a two day void, including her death, remain a blank cavity of information, one that has not to this day been filled. 

The story is tragic, affecting, disheartening and shocking. Parts of the book opened my eyes to activity that I wish I didn’t know about. It was often easy to forget that the story I was reading was in fact, non-fiction. The events were real, horrifying and disturbing.

As a piece of literature, Parry provided excellent prose. Descriptions were suited to the tale, he was professional and thoughtful in how he acknowledges her (troubled) family, and he emitted the story of Lucie and her fate, with honesty, knowledge, fairness and neat execution. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it, but it wasn’t a book to leave a smile on your face. If anything, I found the book sorrowful, but so, so interesting. The combination of prose and snippets of diaries, photographs and documents made a good folder of Lucie’s life and a fair telling of her fate. 

It’s just such a shame that it is a story of non-fiction, for the tale itself is harrowing. 

9/10

Freedom

not being subject to or affected by (a particular undesirable thing)

University term has finished. From now until early October, I have no seminars, no lectures and no deadlines (well, apart from my dissertation proposal in a months time). Tied in with this ending, came the end of my job too, my final shift has been and gone and I feel liberated – if not a little lost  - at the prospect of the next six weeks: six weeks I have decided not to work, but to sit and stop and think; to read and read and read some more, and to write. To think about what direction is best for me, to think about what direction might be best for my boyfriend, Stuart. It will be possibly my last chance to take this amount of time off work, and justify my decision. I am now in the summer between my second and third year at University and this time next year, I’ll be looking for a big bad real job in the big bad world, so now, I feel is my chance to take a break. Four weeks of it will be spent in York with my family, preceded by (almost) two staying in Birmingham with Stuart.

Stuart and I have spent a lot of time together recently, the day before yesterday landing back on British turf after spending a week musing around Budapest, fuelled by inspiration and endless stimulation. The holiday was reasonably spontaneous, but such a good decision. 6 full days of a foreign city, a challenging language, new sights, smells, sounds and ideas aplenty. We challenged one and other, we learnt; we grew. I feel we are much stronger together now and know a lot more about each other. I certainly know that I love him even more and that it feels even better between us now. I have a lot to write about Budapest, and I’m sure the blog will be filled with tales and thoughts and musings in the coming weeks. 

But now, I am mid way through my time in Birmingham and on day two of being in the house on my own, wondering what I shall do to fill my time. Yesterday, I cycled to Solihull, had lunch and coffee and did some reading (I’m reading People Who Eat Darkness – Richard Lloyd Parry, a review of which will undoubtedly also be upcoming, I am so enthralled by the story, the writing…), and as much as I enjoyed my day, lunch and coffee were £8 out of the dwindling monetary pool of an unemployed student. Today, I intend to run (Hungarian food has given me a little more belly and a bit more butt…in fact, my love of food and desire to taste all Hungarian foods have given me the added inches), go and get some shopping in, wash our clothes from the holiday, read and write. I’ve already got two chapters under my belt, a load of washing on and it’s 10.35. Not too bad, I don’t suppose. But I feel lost! It always takes me a while to adjust to different working patterns, and I had a couple of weeks of work, work, work, (both uni and at work), then flew straight to Budapest where each day was filled, top to tail, with activity, and now I feel quite a vastness in front of me. There are things to do, I’m not entirely redundant. I have a list of things I could achieve today, I just need to sort them into what to do first. My running route is planned, and at 2.3 miles, could be a little push (I only tend to jog a mile or two) but will make me feel alive, undoubtedly. I have music for the run, washing on, and washing ready to go in. Plans to make courgette omelette for lunch, then maybe some reading and writing and coffee this afternoon, the codeword and then Stuart will be home and we can look at the pictures and movies from Budapest, watch a film, eat good food, and bask in each other’s company. 

I worry about moving home for a month, for living with Stuart has been fantastic and being apart will be difficult, but on my return I’m moving in to a new home with two new (great) girls, so I should get used to being apart from him I suppose. It’s sad though. I’ve never felt so strongly about someone, but I know we will still spend a lot of our evenings together, I’ll be working (hopefully) and he too, come the time I return. 

But currently, I’m just sitting and thinking and writing and reading. And day two, I’m already craving something more, maybe people…maybe I’m craving seeing people. But it’s nice, just to stop and to think. To feel no pressure of deadlines or having only one day to get everything done whilst I’m off work, and for that I know I am very lucky.

I am a happy girl with some great things going on and some great things to come. Blog posts about Budapest, books, philosophy and running are all due. Some personality will be injected back into my blog and I will hopefully express my gratitude for the good life.

A sonnet/on abuse.

Back to a darkened room, blood stained like ink.
One body struggled, one pinned like a clamp
from a refusal and a poisoned drink,
innocence was lost; sheets were ripped and damp.
Sudden regaining of consciousness. A scream.
A car driven too fast, nails cut a wrist,
mind, body and soul: killed, rendered unclean.
My power extracted; no chance to resist.
But, eighteen months on, I stand strong and proud.
I got free. I hope you’re riddled with guilt
for choosing the trusting girl in the crowd
because unlike my purity…I am rebuilt.

You fucked up big time, that October night
fuelled by venom, now it’s my turn to bite.

Haiku

The ground dries under
the heat of the amber sun.
But we are liquid

We swim fifty lengths
pulling the water with arms
tired from fighting fears.

In my dreams no sun
Illuminates the world.
The silence deafens.

Romeo,
I am home.
Forget yesterday.

I lost no time in
telling you everything.
The ticking stops.

Glass fronted shops
contain unfamiliar
people. Raindrops blur faces.

Petals wilt and fall
floating down like dove’s feathers.
Wellies splash in puddles.

IV The Sea-Chest

What kind of neighbourhood are these people going to imagine I live in?
Approaching footsteps between the dead
he paces the garden in this haunting, haunted fashion.

I’m stripped to the waist and drinking brandy in the Mayor’s parlour,
that detestable blind beggar hovering near.
A delicious terror seized me.

A contemplative atheist, that shall set it down as his deliberate and resolved judgment,
that there is no God.

It occurred to us at last to go forth together and seek help.
In the neighbouring hamlet, bare-headed as we were, we ran out.
In the gathering evening and the frosty fog.