Philip Larkin says LIVE! (Happy New Year!)

Happy New Year everyone!!  I am happy to say that I will be spending the evening with friends- new friends, in a new city, in a new country.  So, pretty cool.  

Our plan is to go to my friend's gig, then we're all going to a secret abandoned warehouse party, hidden in east Berlin.  We have to get an S bahn to a certain station, where we then stand in a certain location, pay our dues (a measly 3 Euro, which is insanely cheap tonight), then we get picked up and transported to the party.  Cool, right?

Anyway, I just wanted to wish everyone all the very best- if you had a shitty year, I hope 2013 holds better things for you.  If you had a good year, keep riding the wave!

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I also wanted to share a poem by Philip Larkin.  He's a right grumpy sod, who writes really stark, bleak poems, often dwelling on missed opportunities, misery and loss of youth.  I bought his famous collection 'High Windows' this year, and whilst it IS bleak, its also pretty inspiring.  It makes me sad to think of this lonely old man full of regret, so consequently, makes me determined to live life to the fullest, and enjoy the brief flash of youth that we all have.

This poem I like...well, I'll not turn this into a poetic breakdown.  So yeah, read this, make of it what you will.  I know probably most won't like it, but... c'est la vie.  I just really like this collection of poems and...well.  If you can't nerd out on a blog, where can you?  I have a reputation to protect, so this is as public as I'm going with this! ;-)  

xx  Cat


Sad Steps

Groping back to bed after a piss
I part thick curtains, and am startled by
The rapid clouds, the moon's cleanliness.

Four o'clock: wedge-shadowed gardens lie
Under a cavernous, a wind-picked sky.
There's something laughable about this,

The way the moon dashes through clouds that blow
Loosely as cannon-smoke to stand apart
(Stone-coloured light sharpening the roofs below)

High and preposterous and separate--
Lozenge of love! Medallion of art!
O wolves of memory!  Immensements! No,

One shivers slightly, looking up there.
The hardness and the brightness and the plain
Far-reaching singleness of that wide stare

Is a reminder of the strength and pain
Of being young; that it can't come again,
But it is for others undiminished somewhere.