A love affair

The cure for anything is salt water - sweat, tears, or the sea.

~Isak Dinesen

I lick my lips and taste salt. The water rushes towards me and I dance away - acutely aware of my clumsiness because how can any human have grace when compared to the sea? The waves crash angrily against the pier. The wind sweeps by, carrying with it the smell of the ocean. I close my eyes and breath in deeply.

I am having a love affair with the ocean. It has been going on for years. It started long ago with waves and fresh water, the beautiful crisp smell of a lake on the breeze. It’s culminated in this - I feel better when I’m around water. In Galway, I lived minutes away from the ocean and beside the river. And when I got lonely or sad or a little too drunk, I would walk down to the infamous Galway Bay and listen to the swans fight, watch the waves crash into the rocks. Suddenly, you feel small and your problems unimportant. You feel freer, imagining that you can hitch a ride on the wind and explore the seemingly infinite ocean.

Last weekend, I had my first encounter with the North Sea. It was beautiful. The waves were so strong that they crashed into the Pier and sometimes splashed over. It was cold and windy, but it was awesome, in the truest sense of the word.

I spent longer in Tynemouth, on the coast, than I had planned. After exploring the Priory for a couple of hours, I decided I need to explore the coast. So I climb down this small staircase from the Pier and picked my way through seaweed and stones to watch the waves crash against the rocks.

I started picking up rocks to keep as a reminder of my trip - the beach was full of round pebbles, smoothed by the restless sea.

On the other side of the Pier was a small bay where people more adventurous than I were sailing, and a small boat rental place to serve them. But there was also a mass of rocks, covered in seaweed, and the ruins of something at the bottom of the cliff. I decided I wanted to walk over. It was treacherous.

I slipped and tripped and had to be very careful. The worst rocks were the ones covered with the slimy green seaweed, because if you stepped on it wrong you slipped and lost your balance. I only had one slightly scary experience, though, when my foot slipped and ended up wedged between two rocks. But I caught myself, and remained largely uninjured. Thankfully.

By the end of the day I was windswept, cold and hungry. And far too late to go explore St Mary’s Lighthouse like I had planned. But it was worth it. The North Sea made me feel better, the trip reminded me why I was here - to explore.

For whatever we lose (like a you or a me),
It’s always our self we find in the sea.

~e.e. cummings

Top Ten Reasons to Love a Geeky Girl

So, this is a list that I sent to Seb to help with his newest post. Almost all of my friends are geek girls, and I think it’s time that people realize we’re awesome - the ones who speak Elvish (Fae), those who speak binary (Kaitlyn), the gamers (there are too many I can’t name you all!) and the role players (me, of course). With movies like Superbad and Sydney White, there’s a sudden increase in the love of nerdy guys. But there are so many geek chicks out there too, and we need our recognition!

1. Smart is sexy. There’s a reason Sexy Librarian is one of the top Halloween costumes every year. Because there’s something mysteriously sexy about what lies behind those thick rimmed glasses and beneath that cardigan. Smart girls are sexy because they’re not expected to be sexy. They’re a nice surprise – a reason to look up from your studying, even to pay your library fines.

2. She can probably beat your high score/redesign your blog/do your math homework/has a better comic book collection than you. A real man loves a challenge. And what’s more challenging than a woman who not only shares your interests, but even beats you at them? You have a lot to learn from a geeky girl. She can beat you at Star Wars trivia, you two can spend the afternoon in her favourite multiplayer or she can entertain you with fun historical facts. And just think – together you can probably fix anything. Or take over the world.

3. You speak the same language. You don’t have to bother yourself with explaining acronyms or characters, because she already knows what it means. Whether html, Latin, binary, computer specs or WoW, to your geeky girl it’s the language of love.

4. She’s not clingy. A geeky girl isn’t as clingy as the average girl. She has her own commitments, her own WoW character, her own convention buddies and her own programming to do. She’s happy to spend time with you, but she doesn’t need you to be available 24/7. Which is great, because you have your own geekery to tend to, and these things take time.

5. Won’t hate you for going to a LAN conference/comic book convention and will probably come with you. That’s right, you could be that guy who brings the girl. Worshipped as a God, you’re the nerd who gets some at the conference or convention. You’re the dude with arm candy. And you didn’t even have to pay her.

6. Will gladly dress up as the Princess Zelda to your Link for Halloween (or Harley Quinn to Joker, Mrs. Lovett to Sweeney Todd, Princess Leia to your Han Solo, Cleopatra to your Caesar.) There’s nothing better than pair’s costumes. Remember how lonely it was to go solo as Solo? Remember last Halloween they laughed at your elf ears? That’s solved by bringing your very own sexy geek counterpart!

7. Willing to role play. In and out of the bedroom. Enough said.

8. Your favourite activities are now sexy activities. Imagine adding sex to all your favourite nerd pastimes! This is now possible, with your nerdy girlfriend. Multiplayer? Check. Wii Fit? Definitely check.

9. She’ll settle for being serenaded with Rock Band instruments instead of real ones. Because she’s geeky, all of your geeky ideas of romance will have her swooning. What better way to say Happy Valentines than with a new website design? Or Happy Birthday with tickets to the opening night of Wolverine? Nothing says Merry Christmas like battling the forces of evil together.

10. She’s looking for you. Above all, the best thing about a geeky girl is that she’s probably looking for a geeky guy. After trying her hand at dating jocks and jerks, she’s probably looking for someone who’s actually interesting and who’s interested in her. For once, your chances increase directly with your nerdiness. You can impress her with your geekery.

Six Word Memoirs on Love & Heartbreak

I bought myself a Valentine’s Day present yesterday. Six Word Memoirs on Love & Heartbreak is the new release from the people of Smith Magazine, who did Not Quite What I Was Panning and have an awesome website you can post your own six word memoirs.l

I love these. I love the idea of telling a story in a limited number of words, the same way I lov the idea of trying to tell it in one sentence. Because if journalism has taught me anything, which I’m sure it has despite our mutual hatred, it’s that people use too many words. It comes to be that we waste words, that they don’t mean anything anymore because we’re always saying things. Things we don’t mean. Things we don’t need. Words are cheap. And when you only have six of them, well, you agonize over the meaning and validity for every single letter in the sentence. And the result means more than 600 words you wrote for the sake of it.

Some of the best:

“A kiss can write a secret.”
“It never hurt as good again.”
“Maybe some pots have no lids.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll make myself come.”
“I loved the idea of you.”
“Will always follow you. On Twitter.”
“Romance remembered often better than experienced.”
“Leap of faith. Shit, no parachute.”
“You were my Little Red-Haired Girl.”"
“Shh. You won’t feel a thing.”
“May I have the last dance?”

And mine?

Never loved, doesn’t mean I can’t.

Not looking for a miracle, just a reason to believe…

I spent a little time today with my first love, Savage Garden. And I think I’ve rekindled the flame.

Is there any thing that can ever compare to the first song you fall in love with? That’s what music has always been for me - falling in love. And Savage Garden.. there’s this melodramatic pop music 13-year-old-girl part of me that aches every time I hear Hold Me, Crash and Burn, Affirmation, Tears of Pearls, Moon and Back… all of them. There is not a single song on those two CDs that I don’t love, don’t know every single word to. When I was younger, I went to North Carolina with my family. Fifteen hour drive. The only CD I listened to was Affirmation. And I never once got tired of it. To this day, those songs have never gotten old for me. I’ve given a total of 7 Savage Garden CDs as presents. The only close runner up is Something Corporate, I’ve given four copies of Leaving Through the Window.

Savage Garden holds a place in my heart that no other band or song ever could. Honestly, like a first love. It was the music I loved when I was hopeful and 13, when I was hopeless and 16. I firmly believe that you never love music more than the music you loved when you were young. I’m still young; I’m still falling in love with new songs all the time. But there are few that compare to the songs of my most fragile teenage years: Savage Garden, Something Corporate, Brand New, Sugarcult, Death Cab for Cutie, Bright Eyes.

Savage Garden has always reminded me that you can learn from pain. Start Static by Sugarcult always made me start off angry, and end up crying. Still does. Brand New was one of the only tapes I had in Blanche, in the last year of high school, that I played really loud when I was pissed off. I used to listen to Something Corporate’s Leaving Through the Window for hours. I would just lie on my bed, stare at the ceiling and listen. To every line, every bar… I could isolate each instrument on that CD. And I would dream and think and just… feel. Bright Eyes is the most hopeless times in my life, so potent that just listening to a favourite Bright Eyes song can make me cry. Death Cab for Cutie was about hope and love and hope for love and, for me, is the sexiest music I’ve ever heard, it seduces me every time.

I have new loves in my life; Regina Spektor, Ingrid Michaelson, Gregory and the Hawk, Jack Johnson… But nothing ever feels the same as Savage Garden.

…is love alive?

from asofterworld

It’s so me. I’m definitely lactose intolerant but I eat ice cream anyway…. What does that say about me and love, if love is ice cream?