Friday 26 February 2010

Hamlet quotes

"The lady doth protest too much, methinks."
- Hamlet by William Shakespeare

"O, That this too too solid flesh would melt,
Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew."

"Frailty, thy name is woman!"

"Thrift, thrift, Horatio! The funeral bak'd meats
Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables."

"Do not, as some ungracious pastors do,
Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven,
Whiles, like a puff'd and reckless libertine,
Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads.
And recks not his own rede."

"Neither a borrower nor a lender be:
For loan oft loses both itself and friend."

"This above all — to thine ownself be true;
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man."

"Something is rotten in the state of Denmark."

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

"More matter with less art."

"Doubt thou the stars are fire;
Doubt that the sun doth move;
Doubt truth to be a liar;
But never doubt I love."

"There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so."

"What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form, in moving, how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? man delights not me; no, nor woman neither, though, by your smiling, you seem to say so."

"Use every man after his desert, and who should 'scape whipping?"

"O! what a rogue and peasant slave am I!"

"The play's the thing,
Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king."

"We are oft to blame in this, —
'Tis too much prov'd, — that with devotion's visage,
And pious action, we do sugar o'er
The devil himself."

"To be, or not to be, — that is the question: —
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? — To die, to sleep, —
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, — 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep; —
To sleep, perchance to dream: — ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despis'd love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would these fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death, —
The undiscover'd country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns, — puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know naught of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought;
And enterprises of great pith and moment,
With this regard, their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action."

"Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind."

"I say, we will have no more marriages: those that are married already, — all but one, — shall live; the rest shall keep as they are."

"Why, look you now, how unworthy a thing you make of me. You would play upon me; you would seem to know my stops; you would pluck out the heart of my mystery; you would sound me from my lowest note to the top of my compass; and there is much music, excellent voice, in this little organ, yet cannot you make it speak. 'Sblood, do you think I am easier to be played on than a pipe? Call me what instrument you will, though you can fret me, you cannot play upon me."

"Tis now the very witching time of night,
When churchyards yawn and hell itself breathes out
Contagion to this world: now could I drink hot blood,
And do such bitter business, as the day
Would quake to look on."

"Let me be cruel, not unnatural;
I will speak daggers to her, but use none. "

"My words fly up, my thoughts remain below;
Words without thoughts never to heaven go."

"When sorrows come, they come not single spies,
But in battalions."

"Alas! poor Yorick. I knew him, Horatio; a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy; he hath borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is! my gorge rises at it. Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft. Where be your gibes now? your gambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one now, to mock your own grinning? quite chap-fallen? Now get yet to my lady's chamber, and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favour she must come; make her laugh at that."

"Lay her i' the earth:
And from her fair and unpolluted flesh
May violets spring! "

"There's a divinity that shapes our ends,
Rough-hew them how we will.
The rest is silence.
Now cracks a noble heart. Good-night, sweet prince;
And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest."

The Media and Eating Disorders

"I grew into it. It grew into me. It and I blurred at the edges, became one amorphous, seeping, crawling thing."
- Mayra Hornbacher

I have been working on this for nearly two days and I still don’t think I’ve articulated myself as well as I would have liked. I’m not very good at writing out of anger or irritation; I tend to come across as harsh and bitchy and completely up my own arse which I apologise for. I’m not a journalist, I’m barely a fucking writer!

Today is Campaign Day and the whole of this week had been Eating Disorder Awareness Week, as well as the 21st birthday of b-eat, the UK’s biggest eating disorder charity which is a fantastic organisation that provides amongst other things information, help lines, and pressure on the government to provide more treatment. A lot of people are writing/blogging/making videos/promoting and generally making a noise and raising awareness about these diseases that are stigmatised, glamorised and still largely misunderstood by society.

I am happy and more than willing to give them my support and to take part, and something keeps coming up time and time amongst all the interviews and articles that have taken place this week that I especially want to contribute my own understand and experience to: That is how much responsibility the media have over the development and rise of anorexia and bulimia.

It has been said that the media are not to blame and that eating disorder’s have nothing whatsoever to do with girls wanting to lose weight. I disagree.

To say that a media that consistently promotes thin as in is blameless is wrong. They are NOT the cause of these illnesses; people are born with a predisposition to develop ED’s, just as they may be to develop cancer, but the bombardment of images of skinny, successful women, of the Special K diet and Weight Watchers, of Jamie fucking Oliver and his healthy eating plans for school cannot walk away scot free from the rise of anorexia and bulimia, from the average age that they develop dropping and from a culture that gives super skinny a pat on the back and makes perfectly healthy, average sized people feel clinically obese in comparison .

We all have problems in our lives that are at the root of our disorder; whether its trauma, bullying, low self-esteem, depression, anxiety or just the wrong thing said at the wrong time. But I honestly believe that the reason that some of us turn to food and weight loss as ‘the magic cure’ to everything is because of how thin is promoted and celebrated amongst our society and our media.

Beauty magazines promote low self-esteem, and if you’re young and vulnerable and feeling a little bit bad and insecure about yourself and the way that you look, this wall of dreams at the newsagents can easily fuel your distorted perceptions.

Every single person is an individual, with their own story, their reasons, and to say that it is never influence of the media that made someone sick is as big an invalidation to their illness as it is to say that someone is ‘too fat’ to have an ED.

Tuesday 23 February 2010

Withnail and I quotes

"I want something's flesh!"
- Withnail and I

“I don't know, I don't know. Oh God, I don't feel good. Look, my thumbs have gone weird! I'm in the middle of a bloody overdose. Oh God. My heart's beating like a fucked clock! I feel dreadful, I feel really dreadful!”

“I don't advise a haircut, man. All hairdressers are in the employment of the government. Hairs are your aerials. They pick up signals from the cosmos, and transmit them directly into the brain. This is the reason bald-headed men are uptight.”

“Free to those that can afford it, very expensive to those that can't.”

“I feel like a pig shat in my head.”

“Don't threaten me with a dead fish.”

“We want the finest wines available to humanity. And we want them here, and we want them now!”

“I must have some booze. I demand to have some booze.”

“I could hardly piss straight for fear.”

“Right, here's the plan. First, we go in there and get wrecked, then we eat a pork pie, then we drop some Surmontil-50's each. That way we'll miss out on Monday and come up smiling Tuesday morning.”

“I'm going to pull your head off, because I don't like your head.”

“Even a stopped clock tells the right time twice a day, and for once I'm inclined to believe Withnail is right. We are indeed drifting into the arena of the unwell.”

“I have a heart condition. If you hit me, it's murder.”

“This place has become impossible. Nothing to eat, freezing cold and now a madman on the prowl outside with eels.”

“-Those are the kind of windows faces look in at.”

“These aren't accidents! They're THROWING themselves into the road gladly! THROWING themselves into the road to escape all this hideousness! Throw yourself into the road, darling! You haven't got a chance!”

“A coward you are, Withnail. An expert on bulls you are not”

“I must say, that represents a level of hypocrisy in you that I'd previously suspected, but not noticed due to highly evasive skills.”

“Speed is like a dozen transatlantic flights without ever getting off the plane. Time change. You lose, you gain. Makes no difference so long as you keep taking the pills. But sooner or later you've got to get out because it's crashing, and then all at once the frozen hours melt out through the nervous system and seep out the pores.”

“I have just narrowly avoided having a buggering, and have come in here with the express intention of wishing one upon you.”

“Nonsense. This is a far superior drink to meths. The wankers don't drink it because they can't afford it.”

“We've gone on holiday by mistake.”

“Give me a Valium, I’m getting the FEAR!”

“Politics man. If you're hanging on to a rising balloon, you're presented with a difficult decision: let go before it's too late, or hold on and keep getting higher. Posing the question, how long can you keep a grip on the rope?”

“There must and shall be aspirin!”

“How dare you. How DARE you!”

“You can stuff it up your arse for nothing and fuck off while you're doing it!”

“I'M GONNA BE A STAR!”

“How can it be so cold in here? It's like Greenland in here. We've got to get some booze. It's the only solution to this intense cold. Something's got to be done. We can't go on like this. I'm a trained actor reduced to the status of a bum. I mean look at us! Nothing that reasonable members of society demand as their rights! No fridges, no televisions, no phones. Much more of this and I'm going to apply for meals on wheels.”

“I've got a bastard behind the eyes.”

“I have of late - but wherefore I know not - lost all my mirth; and indeed it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory, this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it appeareth nothing to me but a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason! How infinite in faculties! How like an angel in apprehension. How like a god! The beauty of the world! The paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me: no, nor women neither. Nor women neither.”

Wednesday 17 February 2010

Blessed are the forgetful, for they get the better even of their blunders.

"When I was a kid, I thought I was. I can't believe I'm crying already. Sometimes I think people don't understand how lonely it is to be a kid, like you don't matter. So, I'm eight, and I have these toys, these dolls. My favorite is this ugly girl doll who I call Clementine, and I keep yelling at her, "You can't be ugly! Be pretty!" It's weird, like if I can transform her, I would magically change, too."
- Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Sometimes I feel like I'm good enough for someone to fuck or go on a date with or other or 'mess around with'. But I never feel like I'm good enough for someone to fall in love with and want to be with for any significant length of time or to find consistantly beautiful and engaging.

Wednesday 10 February 2010

The times they are a' changing

"Our greatest glory is not in never falling but in rising every time we fall"
- Confucius

Uni is going well, at least Creative Writing is! Lit is not doing so well, not just grades wise but motivationally it's a bit of a struggle. I want to change to language but not sure how to go about it.

I'm doing well, better than I have in a long fucking time! At the minute it just feels okay to be and not overthink or overfeel all the time... I think for a while back there I was trying too hard to be better and to do it perfectly and it really wasn't the best way to go about it. I think because the people I was involved with before put so much hype on the fact that uni would change me, I felt like it had to be an instant, blindingly obvious shift and it really hasn't been like that. Yes, I have got better, but when you get hung up about all the details and all the things that are going wrong it really doesn't feel like you're improving at all when really you've come a long fucking way. I've stopped wanting to do this recovery thing perfectly and instantly and started just wanting to let go gradually instead and it’s definitely stopped me feeling like complete shit for having a bad day, which of course means that the bad days are easier to contain and control just to ‘a bad day’ rather than the guilt driving me to fuck up completely. That’s something that I’ve really not ever felt before and I wish I could pinpoint exactly how it’s happened but I really can’t.

It is true what they told me, even though I never believed it, that getting a life outside of being sick would be the only way to really make positive changes. I know some people probably think that you should wait until you’re ‘properly well’ to get on with things but really... I don’t think that’s the case for me. That wouldn’t have worked because having no life fuelled my destructive thoughts and behaviours and even though sometimes they are still there, but at least now I have something ELSE as well.

I think accepting that I couldn’t change the last however many years or make everything go away just by not doing it anymore was the big thing that helped. I sort of stopped resenting the fact that I’d been ill, or needed professional help, or medication and that stopped a huge amount of crap feelings.

I know it would be foolish to think that all the negative stuff isn't going to ever be a part of my life again, I have been sick for way too long and just not being ever again is an impossibility and even in the 'now' it's also a huge identity shift that takes some getting used to. To anyone on the outside it is apparent that the identity you had before, 'the sick person' is unfavourable to the 'okay' person. It is not always that obvious for you though and it definitely isn't that obvious to me.

For the first time in my life though I feel validated as a writer, not as an anorexic or a psychiatric exhibit.