Baby it's cold outside

At the moment I'm listening to "Burning for You" by Blue Oyster Cult. Sadly I'm feeling rather the opposite. Any contact with the air at the moment is freezing. Lying around half naked in bed seems like a far warmer and more sensible option than going out.

With this in mind, I thought I'd select something relevant poetically,
 

Winter Morning

I watch the dragons’ breath
cloud the air around my mouth
breathing the lyrics
of a half-heard song

I gaze up at the trees
black skeleton silhouettes
stark against the sky
clinging to their last leaves

I stamp my feet
The air is chill
The world seems crisp in the frost
preserved in a state of beauty

The crow flies above
black feathers silhouetted black
His cry breaks through
the drift of my song

In this moment I see
momentary perfection
The faded dark colours
of a winter morning


This time of year is always pretty cold and miserable but it's also so beautiful that it takes my breath away sometimes.

My little acorn.

I'm trying to change something about myself. It's always nice to aim for a better world but for the most part it's quite difficult to make a difference. I am a firm believer in equal rights and anti-bullying, yet it hit me the other day that some things have become so inherent that we don't even notice that we are re-affirming horribe stereotypes.
My pre-amble over, what I'm talking about is language or more specifically, insults and negative descriptions. Here is a list of words that I'm trying to phase out of my vocabulary:

 Gay
Retard and Retarded
"Special" (in a dergatory sense)
Spastic (is a now out-dated term for cerebral palsy sufferers)
Spazzing out
Mong (comes from mongloid, an old term for sufferers of Down's syndrome)
(I'm sure I've missed some but here's a start)

Using terminology linked to minority groups as abuse is horrible. When I spent time thinking about it, I realised just how normal it is for people to say things are "gay" or "spaz" and no-one notices. Racial slurs are dealt with pretty severely yet a lot of frankly offensive language slips under the radar everyday. So I've decided that I'm fed up with being a hypocrite and I'm going to try and make some changes to my own vocabulary at least. It's only a very small thing in the grand scheme but every little helps.

This isn't going to stop me from dealing out any neccesary insults to my friends of course :)

Crossing the frontier.

Welcome to my blog. This is a place where I can write for you, for me and for the sake of it.
I'm afraid I can't promise a regular update but I will aim for once a week.
I like things that are beautiful, tatty and fragile, words that can be relished and places that feel like home. I will tell you about what matters to me and hopefully at least one person will be interested.

Welcome. I hope you enjoy your stay.