Poetry (the sort written under a veil of fatigue)

A Drifting Day

I drifted through today
It seemed like I was here but
Perhaps you imagined me?
I was smoke, not substance.
Holographic.

You thought you heard me but
I was a barely audible sigh
The concerto played around me.
I was a tentative note
Lost in the cacophony.

I was conscious but I was unconscious
I was present but I was absent
I was but I did not.
Every action was a weary exhalation
Where I was you could not be
A solitary planet.

You saw my face as I wafted past
My head was that of a dandelion
Quivering seed parachutes poised
To fly away. Anywhere.
To meander where I mused.
To drift.

______________________________

Just something I began writing in my head as I cycled home from college today. I didn't get enough sleep last night so I spent the day in a haze of tiredness, hence the sensation of drifting. Hmm... it sounded better in my head. Ah well.

Fictional characters: I keep trying to tell myself they are not real

I've been watching the BBC drama 'Five Days' this week. An hour-long episode was shown each evening, tracking five days (hence the name) in the course of a police investigation. It was all rather tense and dramatic, and I found myself getting particularly into it. I only started watching because the wireless router in my house has decided to stop working wirelessly, so I have to sit in my lounge to use the internet. I looked up from my laptop and morbid fascination sucked me in - a camera shot of blood running down the window of a train was at once both repulsive and compelling. Was the person who fell from the bridge into the path of the train pushed, or was it suicide? How was the abandonned baby linked to the case?

I finished watching the last episode on iPlayer this evening. I won't reveal what happened, but the ending left me sitting with my mouth open for several minutes. It was pretty intense.

However, as always when a series finishes, I feel a certain amount of sadness. Perhaps I become too involved in the lives of fictional characters, but having invested time in following these characters on screen, it saddens me that I can no longer see them. It's almost like losing friends. In my mind, I picture them standing there saying, "Hello? We're still here. Have you forgotten us? The programme might have ended but our lives carry on. Don't you want to know what happened next?"

Yes, I do want to know what happened next. I have so many questions - more than I had after the first episode! Does Laurie find another man? Is she happy? And her mother; how long does she have before dementia takes hold completely? What about Nusrat and Danny - do they ever get to adopt a child? Does baby Michael live a good life reunited with his immigrant father?

Of course they're not real people. I know that. But isn't it entirely natural to become attached to characters on the screen? I took a liking to one character in particular - Laurie, the police officer who is a strong woman in a male-dominated world, but with a vulnerable side. I want to see more of her. I want to know more about her. I can't simply accept that there is no rest of her life because she doesn't exist. I suspended my disbelief when I began watching, as one must when watching or reading about made-up events, and now I find I cannot un-suspend it.

One need only look at the online world of fanfiction to see how widespread unhealthy attachment to fictional characters is. Dissatisfied with the fate of a character, people take matters into their own hands and rewrite the ending. It's about gaining access to that imaginary world again, when the official writer has deserted it or moved it in a direction that you are unhappy with. Some people take it one step too far and write fiction about real people, but that's another matter entirely.

I myself was thrown into the very strange phenomena that is fanfiction after the season finale of Doctor Who. I mourned the loss of Donna, the temp from Chiswick who travelled with the Doctor and then had to forget everything. Until, that is, I found the simple but effective method of dealing with her fate that many people on the internet had chosen: change it! We didn't have to stand for the eventualities that Russell T Davies had created; we could find a million other alternatives and comfort ourselves by writing them down to share with others. Fanfiction is the ultimate geeky pleasure, and I love it. However, I was forced to acknowledge that my obsession had gone a little too far when I did a word count on my longest and favourite work of fanfiction - a fix-it, concerned with the elaborate reversal of Donna's fate - and found that I'd written 17,500 words. If only I could get that inspired when writing coursework.

No, I won't be indulging in writing fanfiction detailing what might have happened to Laurie. But in my head she will live on, and as far as I'm concerned she gets her happy ending. I am perfectly aware that I sound like a nutcase, but I'm proud to say it: I am too emotionally attached to creations of fiction masquerading as real people. I believe it was Lynn Truss, in her book 'Eats, Shoots and Leaves', who quoted someone as saying that they always seemed to become addicted to things that there is no support group for (in their case, it was semicolons). This is true of me. I should set up a group called Fictional Character Obsessors Anonymous. We mental people who care about forgotten fictional characters will unite, once and for all! Who wants to join?

...Uh, just me then.

Makeup: Lemonie fails to boycott it

Last month, I ran out of foundation and couldn't afford any more. "Fine," I thought. "I won't buy any more. At all. It's not like I need it anyway. Why should I cover up my face to conform to the unrealistic ideals of beauty that society prescribes? To hell with makeup!" And so I resolved to give up foundation and live with my imperfections, as well as saving myself money.

Well, yesterday morning I woke up, looked in the mirror and thought 'Urgh... I look repulsive'. Most of the time when I despair over a spot, it's likely that nobody else even notices it, but trust me, this one wasn't about to go unnoticed by anyone. My mother asked me whether or not it was a cold sore and my brother laughed and said 'Have you got herpes?' No, it was not a cold sore or herpes, just a spot in a particularly annoying place on my face.

What did I do? Did I resolve to drink more water and eat more healthily to make my skin better? Did I remember my vow to accept my face in its natural state? Did I remind myself that spots are normal and nothing to be ashamed of?

Ha, of course I didn't. I went out earlier today and bought some more foundation.

In fact, I didn't even stop there. Whilst in Superdrug, I found myself being unexplicably drawn towards the little sticks of concealer. And I remembered that my mascara was really old and manky, so I got another one of those too. I left the shop £13.97 poorer (eek!) but in possession of some shiny new makeup to cover up my face and conform to the unrealistic ideals of beauty that society prescribes. So much for saving money.

Why do women feel the need to wear makeup? Did I walk out of Superdrug feeling happier? Inevitably not. Besides the fact that I'd just spent a ridiculous amount of money on beauty products, I was also faced with the depressing reality that I need manufactured chemical gunk on my face to make it look vaguely okay.

People always say things like, "Makeup just enhances your natural beauty", but to put it bluntly, it's bullshit. That perfect and even skin tone that somebody might admire isn't my perfect and even skin tone (supposing it was perfect and even, which it never is). It has come out of a container. And if my lashes look long, luxurious and full of volume like the adverts say they will, that's nothing to do with me. It's to be attributed to the costly mixture of water, wax thickeners, film-formers, and preservatives (thanks, Wikipedia) that came in the little black tube. Enhance? I don't think so. There's a product for hiding every inch of your so-called 'natural beauty', because that is makeup's purpose: to hide.

I'd like to know who decided that a flawless complexion and dark, sooty eyelashes made for the ideal woman. We could just as easily have decided that the variations in a natural skin tone made for a more interesting aesthetic viewing experience. We could have embraced the variety of hues that occur naturally in eyelashes, like we welcome different hair colours (except, for some reason, ginger, which I have never understood as I love red hair). Instead we are all brainwashed into thinking that the aforementioned traits are what we should strive for. Adverts assume without question that we want to look like that - why wouldn't they, as it earns the companies selling them billions of pounds - and it seems, after my spending spree, that I'm about as far from immunue to their persuasive effects as possible.

In my defence, I don't wear makeup to impress guys. I wear it because I think it makes me look better and because looking better makes me feel better. But it's so shallow. I certainly don't feel better when I think about how easily led I am, or how my self-image hinges on putting artificial crap on my face. But until society's idea of beauty changes, I will continue to spend stupid amounts of money on said artificial crap. And on chocolate, whose artificial happiness is probably what gave me the spots in the first place, but which I won't hear a word said against.