How about it?

I don’t understand poetry much, but I still love the popular ones like “How do I love thee let me count the ways”, or that one by Yeats that goes “ I have spread my dreams under your feet, tread softly because you tread on my dreams”, or any of Pablo Neruda’s bittersweet poems (Because of you, in gardens of blossoming flowers I ache from the perfumes of spring. I have forgotten your face, I no longer remember your hands; how did your lips feel on mine?)

But, I am a big fan of love songs. HUGE fan. Maybe that was one reason why I was so keen on songbooks and writing down song lyrics (and eventually losing the songbook). It could be any song, any love song, sung by anyone, The Eagles or Taylor Swift or John Mayer or Zirsangzela or Maroon 5. If it has beautiful lyrics that makes you want to grab a pen and write down the lyrics, it is good enough for me.

And once in a while you come across lyrics that just blow you away. Completely. Off the seat of your pants. And sometimes the lyrics are not even that sweet or sad or melancholic. Some geniuses have a way of putting together words that just feels so right, so perfect, that you want to write that song down on a chart paper and stick it on the wall beside your bed (Actually I have done this, and I think it was a poem, don’t remember which one, it was millenia ago).

So who is this week’s lucky winner? It is an old song, well, that really depends on when you were born. Do you know that the songs we listened while growing up are now played in the Retro channel? Makes one feel ancient and old fashioned and not-with-the-times, but anyone who knows me knows I'm not really bothered about being hip and wearing the latest clothes and listening to the latest songs.

Romeo and Juliet. Dire Straits. 1980. I will not bore you with the facts like who wrote it and why and who covered it and all that stuff. Google it.

The song is soo soo sad, and, to use a word for the second time in a blogpost, bittersweet. Lost loves and people meeting at a wrong time in their lives. And the Romeo and Juliet title makes it even sadder because we all know that R&J were the personification of true love. In the song Juliet is portrayed as a fickle girl who throws away Romeo’s love. Uses him and leaves him once she tastes success and fame. And poor old Romeo roams the streets singing about the old times and serenading girls who do not want to be serenaded, much less from under a balcony.

The lyrics, oh the lyrics!

When you can fall for chains of silver,
You can fall for chains of gold,
You can fall for pretty strangers
And the promises they hold.
You promised me everything, you promised me thick and thin, yeah!
Now you just say, "Oh Romeo? Yeah, you know I used to have a scene with him".

Juliet, when we made love, you used to cry.
You said, "I love you like the stars above, I'll love you 'til I die".
There's a place for us, you know the movie song.
When you gonna realize it was just that the time was wrong, Juliet?

I can't do the talk, like the talk on TV
And I can't do a love song, like the way it's meant to be.
I can't do everything, but I'll do anything for you.
I can't do anything, 'cept be in love with you!

And all I do is miss you and the way we used to be.
All I do is keep the beat... and bad company.
Now all I do is kiss you through the bars of a rhyme,
Juliet, I'd do the stars with you any time!

And a love-struck Romeo sings a street serenade
Laying everybody low with a lovesong that he made
Finds a convenient streetlight, steps out of the shade
He says something like, "You and me babe, how about it?"

You and me babe, how about it?

What the F?

It all started when I went home for my annual holiday. Thirty uninterrupted days of not doing anything, not worrying about the rent, or about how well stocked your fridge is, or about how far behind you are in paying the electricity bills resulted in the scale tilting a bit to the right. Everyone remarked how plump I’d become, and I happily laughed along because being thin never really suits anyone, or so I believed.

Wait. I take back my words. It all started before I went home, but another month of inactivity resulted in it being blown out of proportion. Literally. Cheeks, arms, thighs, tummy, even the ankles, everything got blown up. And it is not funny at all.

Changing your clothes ten times every morning is not funny. People thinking you are the mother of your 22 year old niece is enough to send the most jovial of persons into a deep depression from which one can never recover. Discovering your favourite pair of jeans now feels a little too tight can almost make you swear to wear only wraparound skirts, which by the way you think is the world’s ugliest piece of clothing, and roam the earth like someone stuck in the 70s.

I wish I was one of those brave souls who could laugh and just shrug it off and say “This means there’s more of me to love!” I wish I was one of those energetic individuals who get up an hour early and tie up their running shoes and go jogging in the middle of the night. I envy those happy people who accept their extra tyres and heavy forearms and do not care about the additional layers of fat they carry around.

I know, I know, I sound like a whiner, an unhappy unaccepting un-selfloving person. Give me some time, will you? Let me get used to living with my chubby body and fat ankles and triple chin. Let me stop automatically comparing myself with every fat person I see. Let those feelings of happiness stop washing over me when I see someone fatter. Let me slowly learn to love and embrace this F word. Maybe the sun will then shine on me once again.

Thank God my shoes still fit.