Frankie Speak's Xmas List

Well that time of year has come round once again, and as childish as it may seem, I always seem to find myself swept up in the jovial ambience of the festive season. When it comes to presents, I find them a little unnecessary but a small gesture goes a long way if they have a certain sentimental quality - I always try to give personal pressies, rather than big, extravagant ones.

So here are a few things I would like santa to drop under the chrissie tree:

1. Tea - I love a nice cuppa, and i've recently been trying a few different flavours of tea. T2 is one of my favourite shops at the moment. I can just get lost in there. If I could, I would take one of each of the teas in there home with me and line my walls with different flavoured tea - awesome!

2. Used books - I don't even care which books - thats not to say I'll be happy with crappy literature, I want good books, I just don't care which ones they are. I love that used books have a history. They've been loved, and hated and cried over, they've sat on the bellies of their sleeping owners...and if you're really lucky, you'll get one with a little affectionate note scrawled across its front page - now those, they are a rare and precious find.

3. Anything hand-made. Whether it's a photograph printed off the home computer with a letter written on the back and a love heart drawn on with red texter, or an elaborate scrapbook logging your entire relationship with a loved one...receiving a gift that have been made especially for me gives me a fuzzy feeling in my belly, it always makes me feel considered and cared for.

I'm most excited about what I'll get for other people this year, I've been planning it out for a while now; thinking of what to get to show a lil love to a few of my most loved. As much as it is criticised for being a commercialized holiday which does little more than fuel capitalist rule, I can't help but get a little consumed by that cheesy xmas cheer.

Summer Break

It feels as though I haven't written something just for the sake of writing in an age. Oh keyboard how i've missed you. With the arrival of Christmas Holidays, I now have an endless supply of commitment-free time, and have been musing over the range of possible pass-times I can now enjoy - which has got me all giddy with excitement.

I recently bought myself a Jamie Oliver cook book (Cook with Jamie: My Guide to Making You a Better Cook) and have been burying myself in it. I really love to cook, and I'm a major Jamie fan. This book is my new bible. Over the next few weeks I am going to take over my kitchen :). 

On the topic of books, I've got a list of about 5 books that I want to get through asap, starting with Scar-tissue - Anthony Keidis' autobiography. Ah holidays are just awesome...

But right now...I'm enjoying lying on my couch with a blanket, in my pj's with my laptop, watching Sex and the City.  It feels so great just to do nothing sometimes. 

Rant.

I'm feeling frustrated.

There are always a lot of people in my house.
Always. 
And a lot of people create a lot of noise.

Conveniently, my desk and laptop lie between the two loudest rooms in my house; the living and dining rooms. So while I am punching away at the keypad, trying to get fifteen hundred words up onto my screen, I am hearing my mother in the kitchen talking on the phone, my sister at the dining table telling me every detail of her day, my cousin from a few streets away abusing the doorbell, my brother throwing a football against the wall, and my dad's phone ringing, all with the Simpsons running in the background.

I need a new workspace.

Love Story

We spread out a pink blanket - not the picnic type, just one from a bed that I had found in the boot of my car. I lay on my front and you on your back, by the red, blue and yellow of the playground. Running fingers through your hair, it felt as if the only two in the world were we. And I wondered how it could ever be any other way. 

Photo sourced from J. Colub

Quotes by the Master

Blunt. Uncompromising. Gutsy. Sharp. Difficult. Extraordinary.

Oriana Fallaci

'On every professional experience, I leave shreds of my heart and soul.'

When covering the Vietnam War, she was asked where she would like her body sent if killed in action. She answered, 'The White House.'

'I am sick and tired of wars. Wars are always the same.'

'Writing is a despicable thing to do. It's an unbearable thing. I hate writing. It's such a masochism that I become a masochist.

'They're gone [my family], so who is going to hold my hand? It's okay, it's okay. I'm ready. I'm going to hold my own hand.'

'Happiness is a lady I never really met.'

'I never gave a damn about a successful life, I wanted an adventurous life, an interesting life, a life in which I would write...success is something that deprives you from freedom and the most important thing for me is freedom. If you deprive me of freedom I'm dead.

'I sat at the typewriter for the first time and fell in love with the words that emerged like drops, one by one, and remained on the white sheet of paper... every drop became something that if spoken would have flown away, but on the sheets as words, became solidified, whether they were good or bad...'

Flashes in Time

On the weekend, a friend asked me 'If I can't remember things that I experience, what's the point of them even happening? If I just forget these things, do they even really happen?' I thought this to be a...well, profound question. It took me a minute to process. Eventually i told her if a moment evokes a certain emotion, does that not give it significance? If this forgotten moment has at one point created happiness, agnst or anger (etc.) it has to mean something.

...Days later i'm sitting at my computer, still thinking of this question. Thinking of the weight of memory and time. The memory is hardly infallible; things are lost through the holes of consciousness all the time - I mean, i'll often walk into a room, look around and think 'now why am I in here again?' But to question the purpose of those many forgotten instances - that is unsettling. All the kisses, the touches, the tears, the moments of laughter, the moments of agony that have been left in the past, they cannot be completely worthless...can they?

A Little Birdie.

I have a little birdie friend, he is small, and black, with a face the colour of summer skies.

I watch from my desk as he taps on my window, flirting with his reflection. He momentarily flits about my mandarin tree, before taking off for wherever he so chooses.

He is a pretty little birdie, of a breed I am unsure. I wish to take his picture, but his visits are short and spontaneous.

I like that my birdie friend always keeps me guessing; our relationship shall never be a monotonous one. He comes and goes as he so decides - days are brightened by his sporadic visits.

One day I know he won't return, and a sad day that will be - but remember him I always will, my small, black and blue birdie.