Check him out here on his website: http://www.robertjwilson.com/ or, if you have time and funds to take a trip to Edinburgh, I really recommend paying a visit to his Helmand exhibition in the National War Museum.

I’m loving this ‘high-definition’, close up work at the moment, so if anyone does see something worth looking at out there, do please suggest!

Tarra for now xx

Take today - in fact, the last few days – in  my own wee life. I’ve been fairly low for the past couple of days. After thinking on it a while, I’ve narrowed down the causes to having, firstly, little to focus on aside from staying at home doing zilch, no job, money in the bank that is not really mine, that I haven’t earned, and my nearest attempt at anything love-life-wise being limited to cyberspace (and love is far too green a term there I think. Think of it more carnally-centred than that). I had lost focus, I thought, and thus self esteem went plummeting into the floor. Secondly, it has been raining. Raining raining flipping raining. I have realised recently that my mood is definitely affected by the weather. I’m much more likely to feel down on these days now, whereas I can happily skip through sunny days with few cares.

These two things have an unquestionable effect on how the world physically appears around me: essentially, it becomes a trap. My home city, even though I love it, becomes samey, monotonous, the stereotypical little place you want to get away from because it’s become so stifling. I become much more aware of sounds and movement – today on the way to my interview, having already had a funny five minutes and potentially late, the sound of lorries, buses and cars rushing past was deafening, and I felt like every time Mum changed gears I was being thrown about like a ragdoll. It makes you want to scream. Added to this, I feel trapped within myself. Like there is another me attempting to escape from the parts of me that I loathe (these parts I tend to have invented for myself, because it appears my imagination is also used for evil), these parts having become a shell, so to speak.

It is completely mad, therefore, that things like that can change utterly. The sun coming out can do the trick sometimes. But it can be the act of simply letting all that has wound you up out and pulling through to the other side that really changes your world view. On coming into the office where my interview was scheduled, flustered from lateness, family squabbles and many other things, I looked in through the door, panicked and burst into tears in the middle of the hallway. I phoned my dad, convinced I couldn’t go through with it. He snapped at me to go back, tell them I couldn’t do it and just leave, obviously I’d made that decision. It was lucky he’d been so matter-of-fact, and luckier still that my interviewer just happened to come down the stairs for her cigarette break and found me, still in a state, mascara running down my face. I thank her for giving me a few moments to get myself together and really make the decision to stay (and my dad for the arse-kicking), because somehow, absolutely miraculously, I dabbed away the rogue mascara, dried my eyes, walked into the interview and came out with a summer job. Incredible, then, that at that moment, my world view transformed. My city, my mind, the world seemed without end again, full of colour, hope and possibility. And I barely noticed the traffic.

So I suppose if there is a lesson to be learned here, it is this: even at the lowest times when it feels like you’re about to fall off the precipice, giving yourself one huge haul up, even if you are afraid of losing grip entirely, can be your route to freedom, and living.

She
May be the beauty or the beast
May be the famine or the feast
May turn each day into a heaven or a hell
She may be the mirror of my dreams
The smile reflected in a stream
She may not be what she may seem
Inside her shell

She
Who always seems so happy in a crowd
Whose eyes can be so private and so proud
No one’s allowed to see them when they cry
She
May be the love that cannot hope to last
May come to me from shadows of the past
That I’ll remember till the day I die

She
May be the reason I survive
The why and wherefore I’m alive
The one I’ll care for through the rough in ready years
Me
I’ll take her laughter and her tears
And make them all my souvenirs
For where she goes I’ve got to be
The meaning of my life is

She
She, oh she

Elvis Costello’s ‘She’ is one of my absolute favourite songs, not only a nostalgic souvenir of when I discovered Notting Hill, but because as I’ve listened and relistened to it over the years, to me, it sums up the incredible nature of womanhood. Our shifting selves, skins and sensibilities. We can be, and are so many different things. We are a fathomless, ever-moving mystery. Not only to men but even to each other and ourselves. I can’t understand half of myself most of the time, I probably don’t even have any idea of my capacities. I say the same for my mother and my sister, my friends. We come as a great surprise to ourselves a lot of the time. The trick is accepting and embracing this as a good thing. Elvis Costello’s ‘She’ is a noble, powerful and mysterious force, present in all women, I think, and we must take pride in it.

This is kind of the aim of this blog. I don’t want to preach to anyone on how they should be thinking or feeling about themselves. I want to write this kind of as just a representative of a ‘she’, just recording thoughts, rambles, observations and things that I find. Hopefully, it will all be different. And more hopefully, you might read this and want to contribute your own rambles etc, or perhaps you will identify something of yourself.

Ta ta for now, and enjoy being a million different things tomorrow :)

I went for my first ever run this morning. 8:30 A.M. I jogged around a field near to my house, Ipod firmly in my ears, and despite the fact that my jogger bottoms did not want to stay up, discovering my choice of sports bra didn’t quite meet my well-appendaged standards (ouch) and some general gasping for air like a beached trout, I made it almost all the way round. 15 minutes of solid jogging! Go me. It’s a brilliant feeling jogging alone, with nothing but Teddy Geiger and Pink in your ears, completely setting your own pace and relying only on yourself, setting yourself the challenges.

I’d recommend it to anyone. But - can’t stress this enough – don’t purchase your sports bra from BHS, even if it is only £14 and you think you’ve pulled a flanker. Your chest won’t thank you.

With special thanks to: Cascada (Evacuate the Dancefloor), Teddy Geiger (These Walls), Pink (So What) and Madonna (4 Minutes) for helping me through.