The Holy Grail (Cup of Life) was made of wood! (Remember Indiana Jones?!)

The world is so superficial and drowning in exterior that it makes me sick. Many take a peek at my blog expecting fashion and style updates. Pah. No, dahhhling, you have come to the wrong place.
Apparantly, the latest in my life is that I don’t want fancy cars such as a porsche or fendi bags or louis vu’ luggage because I can’t afford them and my engagement ring has diamonds far too small. Grrr. I am being accused of sour grapes. If you can’t beat ‘em, have a go at ‘em and pretend you don’t want to be like ‘em.

Unlike many, I live what I believe and WALK THE WALK; I do not just talk the talk. If I became a millionaire tomorrow (and I would be new money honey, so would still be deemed ‘unworthy’ in the eyes of some – can’t please all the people all the time) I would still not hanker after prada or chanel. What is wrong with the World? Does NOONE get it? THINGS DO NOT DEFINE ME – OR YOU! MAN made the money, money NEVER made the man, You can’t buy class. Are these just witty anecdotes spewed from the mouths of those wishing to seem to have depth or do they actually mean something? My fiancee LOVES me. He decided to propose irrespective of whether he could afford the big fancy ring or not but still wanted to brandish a ring to show me he was serious and to wear to remind me that (if I said yes) I would, indeed, be engaged. He tells me he will buy the biggest he can when he can (Yes, I said Yes.) I don’t want another one. I want the one he gave to me, on bended knee, the day he proposed, sincerity painted across his face and heart. I said yes because I love him, not because of the ring. And what the F do I want with a diamond mined by some poor human being who nearly died to get it? Love? Is that what a diamond represents? If so, where is the love in that? In some poor human dying for it? They don’t call ‘em blood diamonds for nothing. And if you think yours was mined in any other fashion then I suggest you do your research. The same goes for the gold. So the smaller my share in blood adorned across my finger to declare love, the better. And when I become a millionaire I will back my talk about the designer clothes. Not saying I would not wear these things or buy them. But I do not pine after them in order to feel ‘worth it’. And buying a four thousand pound bag to drape across my arm would just make me feel worthless considering a small child needs feeding somewhere and could use not even a fifth of that to really help them. So NO, You who claims I am materialistic just not in a position to be. You have never seen my wardrobe. I am no perfect person and have been brainwashed as much as the next person but my mother’s soap was far stronger than the kind instilled throughout society. I am happy in anything once I feel good in it and it looks good. I wear the trousers, the trousers don’t wear me. So there.

Can’t take it with you…

Does anyone out there get it?
Do YOU realise that NOTHING MATERIAL can be taken with you when you pass on/over/die??!
Death is just the end of MATTER and the beginning of MIND.
Which means what you do take with you are the lessons you learned, your character, the forging of the soul.
All that you have in your heart and mind IS ALL THAT YOU HAVE.
Therefore, is it not better to hone and refine these things rather than hone and refine the shell? The shell is the temple of the soul, so make no mistake, you should take good care of it. However, again, the same ‘ethos’ applies; the WITHIN of the shell (heart, liver, lungs, mental health) rather than the WITHOUT (hair, face). There is a clue to all that is important in everything!
One clue in this case (apart from the one just demonstrated) is in these very terms; within implies something deeper, more important, whilst without implies something lacking.

Happy thinking people…

SmokeScreen

Do not allow yourself to be used as a smokescreen, my friends. Think! before you are used as a pawn in a game you are not aware is being played…
The masses are herded and influenced; we have to be! There are more of us than them. ‘Them’ being the ‘powers that be’. In order for motions to be passed, they have to be seen as required by the masses otherwise the powers that be have no power at all. Be discerning and do not allow yourselves to be spoon-fed. All you have is what you have within you; your feelings, thoughts, opinions and beliefs. These are the things that are required and desired of you! You are sold many items, much material goods, whilst in the process you are shaped and moulded. The things you buy display what you feel about yourself. Hence our beliefs about one another based on how we dress, for example. Do not allow yourself to be distracted from what you need to be mindful of. Why do you think so many people cannot stand to be alone or remain or in silence? They are not used to thinking as thinking about anything within rather than without reveals the truth. And we have all been sold a lie…Please ponder on these things before you dismiss them as something ‘you know already.’ Do not feel one thing whilst doing another. Do not say you are one thing then show you are another…more on that next time…

A book and it’s cover…

Travelling on the bus I usually travel on to get around in my part of town, a bus that is frequented by artistic, always-going-to-audition types, happy to fit into the category they have chosen for themselves and quite smug that they are in the ‘correct’ one, I happened to overhear a conversation that riled me somewhat. I was not eavesdropping; this person was talking openly and for all to hear so i was meant to overhear it. I was perhaps not meant to comment as I was compelled to do, but comment I did anyway. It was a sunny day, about one week before the London Riots and had I been the owner of a crystal ball fast forwarding one week into the future, I would have certainly elaborated on what I pointed out.

“I got on the bus the other day and some ridiculous CHAV got on, you know the type, playing his Hip-Hop loudly, with his trousers below his arse and he was playing it so loudly, I decided to crank up my classical music and drown his shit out”

This person seemed to believe that his reaction to this CHAV – cranking up the classical – was an act of defiance that demonstrated his superiority to this lower class citizen of society. I am very familiar with HIS type. Before I continue, yes, I am doing what I claim to hate which is fitting him into his pigeon hole and so I used this as an example of what HE was doing. When I do it, I am aware I do it, for a sleepwalker, I am not. I proceeded to state – not as loudly as his statement, but loud enough – that he was acting like what he was stating he abhorred; loud, obnoxious and childish. He sheepishly fell silent. This riled me some more so I continued. “I could look at you and perhaps decide that you are a metro-sexual, but you probably wouldn’t realise that that is a label like any other because you deem it to be a worthy one rather than what it is; a narrow judgement based upon how you look and what music you are listening to at any given moment. I listen to Hip-Hop now and then; does that make me a CHAV?”
This fellow, I will admit had more substance than to just shrink away like a dying sunset. He said:

“Well no, it was a bit more than just the music he was listening to-”
“It was more of the persona he was displaying?” I finished the statement for him.
“Yes. I actually listen to Hip-Hop occasionally too, believe it or not”
“I do believe it” I replied. “Because that is exactly my point. We are all many things not just one dimensional human beings, or at least, I hope not. I listen to rap, big band and I like classical music too, so to box people in to what we believe they are, is I think, a bit rash and short-sighted.”

Being, I assume, a man with at least half a brain, he understood and the conversation ended with us alighting the bus and parting ways amicably and, I felt, genuinely so. However, I was annoyed as I always become with society in general because of what this human being had said so arrogantly and flippantly and I wished I had said, to him, the following.

“I am sure you pride yourself on being an intelligent man, of around thirty three years of age, who comes from a good home and prides himself on his good education, no doubt having gone to University and working in a profession that allows you to live in this part of London and dress in the way you feel best expresses your persona. You no doubt also pride yourself on your intellect and you seem to me to be a Guardian Paper man rather than a Daily Star one, which you probably see as a paper that does not match your intellect. Do you feel that Chav has had the same experience and beginnings as you? We both know the answer to that. Most likely not. And, if that is the case, WHICH ONE OF YOU IS WORSE? THE ONE WHO IS PRIVILEGED ENOUGH TO BE ‘WELL-INFORMED’ AND OF GOOD BREEDING AND WELL EDUCATED, WHO PRIDES HIMSELF ON HIS SOCIAL VALUES AND AWARENESS AND BEING WELL READ AND CULTURED OR THE (no doubt from your description at least) YOUNG CHILD WHO DOES NOT HAVE THE SAME PRIVILEGES AS YOU AND UNLESS SOMEHOW GAINS THE GUIDANCE YOU DID, PROBABLY NEVER WILL?” (I do not however write off this individual as who can tell what and how one is from the exterior alone? I may walk out of my house tomorrow dressed in Sid Vicious style black leather punk gear just to satisfy myself with this point.) If I saw this gentleman who listens to classical music (Dear God, the sheer stupidity confounds me) at a time when he is rapping along to Hip-Hop, what then would I think of him?

I implore us all to think before we speak and to more importantly stop thinking to ourselves that we are so much better than the fellow next to us. We are not. We are spoon fed a series of categories and images to BUY into every day and we actually base ourselves on these externals. That Chav could well be an A Grade student. I KNOW that I have been seen as a Chav on certain days and as a ‘nice, middle class intellect’ the next, according to whichever facet of myself I have portrayed at any given time. We are constantly told by advertisers who saturate our TV’s and billboards that if we BUY into the LIES they are SELLING , we will somehow be better, more beautiful, smarter, more accepted, stand more chance of getting that job/guy/girl/invite/insert here. IT IS ALL A LIE AND WE ARE ALL DECEIVED AND THEN IN TURN DECEIVE EACH OTHER WITH IT EVERY DAY. It is what drove hundreds of even ‘normal’ people to join into the free for all fest of the London Riots. We are greedy, judgemental human beings who all mingle with one another, silently complying with each other every day whilst harbouring deep contempt and fear and malice towards the next person based upon how we view them. (Like us or not.) WE ARE ALL GANG MEMBERS, ALL WITHIN A TRIBE. But I ask you – who is worse? The misguided, perhaps not as fortunate MAJORITY, or the ‘should know better, privileged?’ If we wish to blame anyone for the way our system/country/world is, we need to stop and look within ourselves and our motives before we look elsewhere.

“Why do you bother about the sawdust in your brother’s eye when you have a plank of wood in your own?”

Before you say it, I am not somehow perfect or superior or more knowledgeable than you, but I do have a critical thinking brain pattern and I do insist on using it. We all should. Yes I have my faults but I am aware of them. Instead of being so smug or begrudgingly hateful towards the next man because he HAS got or HASN’T got (Yes, think about that one) let us just try to be understanding and thoughtful and problem solvers rather than pontificating commentators. Easier said than done, but nothing worthwhile is easy. After all (and do not worry about where the quote comes from if that too prompts you to conjure up a pigeon hole) “Let he who is without sin, cast the first stone…”

Do as I say, not as I do…

Rioting and mass mayhem in my hometown. In the innercity. I am not delighted as I might have been had this been a political stand. This was not a political stand. If jobcentres and tax offices had been targeted for attacks, although still wrong and the cause of criminal damage I would have perhaps said it was not mindless and indeed an extreme measure of political outrage, but political none the less. I would have perhaps agreed that, indeed this was anger and unrest at the current unemployment figures, frustration at the lack of hope felt amongst the youth, a political outcry for change. What transpired in London, a city that literally became The Big Smoke in a matter of two consecutive nights and was then ‘copycatted’ throughout the country was NOT down to need.

Only shops were attacked. Certain shops. This alone, demonstrated a free for all, jump on the bandwagon and get what you can, thieving fest.
It was driven by greed. Ipods, the latest fashions and mobile phones, flatscreen TV’s and sporty footwear.
This sickening display of greed says so much about our society and culture as a whole; if this is how our children behave, what does that say about those who are raising them or failing to raise them at all and just allowing them to grow into misguided, so called disaffected youths/young adults?
Grown men joined in with the looting of material goods and alcohol; objects of desire. MOTHERS were seen encouraging their children to STEAL (For taking what is not yours NO MATTER WHAT THE CIRCUMSTANCE IS STEALING). Nothing taken out of NEED only GREED. No one seen looting was starved of food or water or shelter. In contrast to the scenes of real suffering in East Africa where people are dying out of NEED and still have such dignity and poise – just watching this juxtapositioning of entitlement vs REAL entitlement brought tears to my eyes. We vilify people in the UK for suffering hardship and applying for help in the form of state benefits and vilify them for applying for this help as though they are thieves, help which is within their rights, within the law, which is what it says on the can (HELP) yet tried to dream up reasons for theft, for this totally unacceptable behaviour?
When the tax cuts came there was no outcry. Nothing reached boiling point, for places of significance would have been attacked and looting would have been a by product not the product itself. It was all driven by getting something for nothing. It was and is a display of what I wish to discuss and explore within this blog.

Society seems to value itself on externals and in pictures.

It matters more what one wears on their feet than the steps they take in their daily lives. The outside of the pot appears to be clean whilst the inside of the pot is filthy. It is a culture – a disease we are all suffering from.
I do not wish to judge or condemn. What I do wish to do is provoke thought.
The short-sighted vision of the people who took part in what they saw as fun were not angry about taxes or any other issues such as the police and their disassociation from the youth and communities, taxes or the social divide. They simply saw an opportunity to get something for nothing and decided to seize that opportunity. I am not considering this as a possible cause. It is a fact. I am still unsure as to what initiated it for who knows if this was initially an extremely clever organ grinder initiating an incident for his monkeys’ (unwittingly or not) to therefore follow suit? What I wish to explore is the deeper vein of why our society is like this. You see, whilst it is likely that we will all feel repercussions for these people’s actions in the form of further infringements on our freedoms and liberties (and likely welcome these further infringements as a result of these riots, thus have the wool pulled over our eyes willingly) I have to examine this strain of greed more closely.

Lawlessness is everywhere.
It is all around us and discussed every day, as though it is normal.

Lest not forget that our leaders, our examples of how one should behave, those who are in a position in which they are bound by duty to demonstrate morals and civility also displayed flagrant disregard for the law.
Outrageous acts of criminality, theft and abuse of circumstance.
IS IT ANY WONDER OUR SOCIETY IS FAILING WHEN THOSE WHO ARE SUPPOSED TO BE OUR ROLE MODELS EXPECT US TO DO AS THEY SAY AND NOT AS THEY DO?? The M.P’s of this country committed crime for years until they were caught. They thought it was acceptable to steal money which they were not entitled to time and time again. They were allowed to simply pay this money back – or rather a proportion of it and carry on as normal. They were willing to behave in a deceitful and corrupt manner. They too are thugs. Thugs of a different nature. They do not have to rant and run amok in order to gain their greedy desires. They can carry out their equally unjustifiable actions discreetly and ‘tastefully’; in a way that secretly causes mayhem rather than out and out chaos.

The thugs on the streets put many in danger. But do they claim to be in positions of social standing and responsibility?

I do not know which is worse; the wolf who bares his teeth for all to see or the wolf who dons sheep’s clothing…

Hot or Cold?

How do we remain authentic? REAL? True to ourselves whilst remaining true to others?
How can I be your friend whilst being your foe?
How can I love you and sabotage you at the same time?

Ponder on these questions before you dismiss them.
We are taught, latently and blatantly (blatantly, but without stating the obvious) that duality is key to survival and succeeding.

Duality serves no purpose other than to confuse. You cannot serve two masters at the same time, to the best of your abilities, without compromising one or the other.
Yet we do it every day of our lives – we don’t WANT to do something, we may even resent it – yet we still do it. The thoughts and acts are not synonomous, not unified. What can this achieve? If your thoughts and words do not match up with your actions, you are confused or in a state of transistion, which can be extremely confusing.

Duality is all around us, we are so used to it that it goes unnoticed. Contradictions are everywhere and we sleep walk right through them, as we do with most things. Take my name for example – Liberty. Liberty is freedom. How can the same word mean an act or comment regarded as SOCIALLY UNACCEPTABLE? Where is the freedom in that??? Yet my name defines me beautifully because that is what I am; free and free enough to feel free to more than likely, say something you don’t like.
Why don’t you like it? Examine the words that make you uncomfortable – they have a purpose to serve, a factor they wish to highlight within yourself. Whilst on the subject of what defines you, I implore you to ask yourself this question – What Defines Me? Is it that Gucci bag or box-fresh Nike Air Force Ones? If I take away these definitions of what define YOU, what will you become then? We are ALL subject to these impositions the World has created. We are ALL at fault through no fault of our own. However, extra spanking for the one who knows! Meaning, if you know better then what is your excuse? No man is an Island. We are all connected and we all know it – it is what keeps us going, what makes us still mingle and go out into the World everyday. Our consciousness is collective – a wonderous thing and a hindrance. We look at society and each other in order to ‘define’ what and where we are in life and in the World. We use these markers and benchmarks as means to get to know ourselves and who we really are.
Looking within is the key to this definition and the only way we will ever truly know ourselves and who we are.
It is the only way to achieving true peace and acceptance of ourselves…
until the next time.

Square in a circle..

As I look around me, I am acutely aware that I do not fit in here; this much is obvious. They are all perfect smiles and pristine lipstick. Hair ironed so straight it’s homophobic. A bit Stepford Wives without the flowers, frills and controlling husbands. These women have offered up themselves to the box in which they wish to belong. Shoes that look as though they’ve stepped through a bloodbath judging by the soles of these ‘killer’ heels..hmm – how apt. These are apparantly an excellent status symbol. Bags that cost the arm they drape it over, not forgetting the leg. Do not begrudge these women. They seem to begrudge me. Do not coo over these items with the lust they would desire I emit from every pore upon sighting these ‘accessories’.

They all have names like Tilly, Amy or Poppy-Seed. All beautiful names if that was all they were. But, these too are symbols. These names mean something other than being the kernal of a flower. They and we buy into it…
They all speak with soft plums in their silver spooned mouths. They don’t care that I speak perfect English, spell, write, and breathe it. They don’t care that I could spank them under the table when it comes to politics, history, psychology or the art of argument.They don’t care that I am a multi-faceted being who could go anywhere in the World and not just get by but get on. I am an excellent communicator, astute, capable and warm. What I am NOT is ONE OF THEM.
It doesn’t matter that I could have got a 1st at university standing on my head, that I was heralded by teachers as brilliant and gifted – I didn’t go and gain the certficate that says so – another symbol.
My hair is long & curly (symbol!) and I like it that way (sadly – another symbol).

I am overheard using the odd slang word on the phone to my sister one lunchtime and I am immediately designated to gang status – they are the only people who use slang afterall; young, demonic, hood-up-wearing gang members.
I can hear the thought-processes now; trying to figure out what I am (‘what I am’; how utterly ridculous that the same people who call themselves intellects are still so concerned with such matters. ‘Always say human’ to quote Dada), what box I belong to, deperately trying to define me and “BINGO! Think it’s that one”..see myself wedged tightly into a fisher-price type learning tool – a square inside a circle.
It doesn’t matter that tomorrow I could be the next Jilly Cooper and still do my job – and theirs – asleep.
Today I am the receptionist.
First point of contact?
Very important role, representative of the company?
Blah, Blah, Blah.
The receptionist is the one you are allowed to give a bit of shit to on a bad day and get away with it. She is the teasmaid, odd-job jackass and general dogsbody.
Over a converstaion about french, a conversation I am not a part of, I comment that it is common to say ‘s’tu plait’ in Paris rather than the full ‘Sil Tu Plait’ with your friends. Sally retorts, her dark eyes squinting suspiciously
‘How do YOU know that?’
There is a pause in my World as my mind scrambles at this question, ripe with ill intent.
This person does not know ME.. She has judged me to be what she deems and neatly packed me away in what she feels is the appropriate box, sealing it tightly shut. To engage her in a conversation about how much time I have spent in France and that I actually am much more cultured than she could ever hope to be would only make me as bad as her – worse. I know better. I hate pigeon-holes and resist ALL of them. So, I smile sweetly and act the way she’d like me to. Dumb.

Packing away my things at the end of the day I contemplate whether I should come in tomorrow – I am not like you – I am bound by nothing and noone, not even the rent. If I want to leave I will because I am Liberty Merit and industrious is my middle name. I have not got a fabulously wealthy daddy to lean on financially but I do have my wits and savvy. Something will come through for me..it always does.
‘Bye Sally’ I smile again as I whip my scarf around my neck, ready to leave for the night. She flashes a smile back, cyanide tinged on her lips.
‘laterz blud’.
She and her sidekick Rowena giggle but it sounds like cackling to me. I bite back the venom on my own lips as I smile again.
‘Ciao’.
The two witches pause at this response and acting unphased I swiftly exit the building without looking back and leave for the cold commute home.