Mirrors That Make You Look Fat

Mirrors that make you look fat

Some comic relief on the ancient artefacts known as mirrors. This is something I wrote a couple of months ago, and I think it's quite funny. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did writing it!

I swear, some mirrors are out there to get you. You see, there are two types of mirrors in the world. There are the good and kind ones…and then there are the evil ones. I have absolutely no problem with the good and kind ones, obviously. They make you look good, feel good and ultimately help you succeed in life. ‘Coz lets face it, once you feel good about yourself- you can conquer the world. These mirrors make your thighs look like Victoria Beckham’s and your stomach as flat as an ironing board. Very, very kind mirrors. No matter what you wear, these mirrors will make you feel like Cheryl Cole on her day off. My ultimate wish would be for the world to be filled with these considerate and kind things, and believe you me- the world would be a happier place.

However, I am here to talk about the OTHER kind of mirrors. Frankly, I don’t know how this phenomenon takes place. I mean, aren't all mirrors made from the same materials? How does it happen that one mirror makes you look like a diva, and the other like a turkey on Thanksgiving day? Are they cursed to make you look fat, for all of this Earthly life? Do they possess powers to make you look fat/bigger than you are? Or are they just being brutally honest? Well, if they are trying to be honest- I urge them here to stop it, right now. They’re not doing any good. I don’t want see the burger I engulfed the night before staring right at me, bulging through my stomach. The secret of that burger died within me, the moment I took the last bite. Evil mirrors have NO right to cruelly barge in on the secret. They should really mind their own frikkin’ business.

Also, there really is no need for them to accentuate imperfections. I KNOW that I have ‘love handles’, THANK YOU VERY MUCH. I don’t need a stupid mirror to remind me. I look at a mirror with the hope of seeing a beautiful, god-like creature staring right back at me- and not my emphasized flaws all over the place. If I wanted to see that, I would just stare down at my body… I really don’t need a mirror for that! Seriously, I don’t know how these mirrors are allowed to exist in the first place. I’m quite sure everyone has noticed that some mirrors are just pure evil…then, why not just destroy them? Why let them roam the world, sucking the happiness out of poor people like me? They’re a clear violation of the basic fundamental human rights! The right to a happy life! These violators have to be destroyed, and I say something should be done…right away!

Auschwitz

Below is an old piece of writing back from 2007. Written right after my first visit to Auschwitz, it mainly depicts my feelings and reaction towards the place. I had visited the site on the 24th of December 2007, Christmas Eve- not a cheery visit, although it was snowing heavily...which somehow made the day...less dreary. Also, keep in mind that I had written this at the mere age of 18, my naivety at the time might somehow show itself in the writing.


(photo taken by Alex Saliba, Auschwitz Birkenau, September 2012) 

" Although the snow has long washed away the blood, sickness, and murder which prevailed in this camp, the fear, anxiety and terror are still felt to this very day. The snow has made everything white and clean, but history can never be erased. The barbed wire which surrounds the camp is but a tiny fragment of what happened. Apart from this, there are also certain parts of the camp in which these emotions have long been choked down by the touristy feeling and the modern exhibitions constantly present.

But what struck me the most was this feeling, which seeped right through my heart. It made me calm, serene. It was as if the camp, the site- was resting, finally at peace. It had been marked with atrocities, vicious acts which are unforgivable and unforgettable. But now, in the year 2007, it was sleeping a peaceful slumber.

What also overwhelmed me was the feeling of Hope. This could be felt throughout the whole place. The sense of doom and hopelessness mingled with hope. It was such an odd feeling, something which I had no knowledge of. It made my troubles seem so trivial. I did not know whether to smile or cry. I wanted to smile at the happy faces on the photos at the exhibition; the cute gypsy girls, Anne Frank's pictures...And cry, at the dreadful, unimaginable fate they were destined to pass through...the never-ending list of murdered people.

Feeling courageous, I entered the gas chambers, and yet again- was overcome with a sense of ...death. Of course, thousands and millions of people had died in that room- and there I was, alive, breathing, red in the face- from the cold.

I will also never forget the thousands of pots and pens on display. The millions of pairs of shoes, the spectacles, the suitcases. All belonging to these innocent people who have suffered in a way we will never really know. I almost lost my breath at the sight of them. These human beings, treated as animals, were robbed of all possessions, to the last strand of hair on their bodies.

Then again, I ask myself...have we learnt anything at all? Concentration camps may be a thing of the past, but the same atrocities are committed all over the world to this very day. No one is free and no one is equal. This is the world and its harsh reality.    "

The Beatles

The Beatles. 
Of course, a post on my favourite band is way overdue.



Why 'The Beatles'?
Because they are EPIC . Four kids from Liverpool who have radically transformed the music scene and created a legacy which would last forever. Their music is genius; the lyrics make you think and feel, and their sounds to stand up and dance your troubles away.
However, what is inspiring the most is their era : The Flower Power, and the revolution for social change and peace. The Beatles represent a part of the 60's and 70's revolutionary spirit; which in this time and age, where apathy reigns like an endemic in most of the youngsters, is something I look up to, admire and hope for.

Love and Peace x

(Attaching one of my utmost favourite songs: 'In My Life')

London

Source: difame.tumblr.com

Sir, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.” 
― Samuel Johnson, The Life of Samuel Johnson LL.D. Vol. III

“I had neither kith nor kin in England, and was therefore as free as air -- or as free as an income of eleven shillings and sixpence a day will permit a man to be. Under such circumstances, I naturally gravitated to London, that great cesspool into which all the loungers and idlers of the Empire are irresistibly drained.” 
― Arthur Conan Doyle, A Study in Scarlet

“Go where we may, rest where we will,
Eternal London haunts us still.” 
― Thomas Moore

“Unreal City, 
Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many.
Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,
And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.
Flowed up the hill and down King William Street,
To where St Mary Woolnoth kept the hours 
With a dead sound on the final stock of nine.
There I saw one I knew, and stopped him crying: 'Stetson!
You, who were with me in the ships at Mylae!
That corpse you planted last year in your garden,
Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year? 
Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed?
Oh keep the Dog far hence, that's friend to men,
Or with his nails he'll dig it up again!
You! hypocrite lecteur!-mon semblable,-mon frere!” 
― T.S. Eliot, Selected Poems

“Come with me, ladies and gentlemen who are in any wise weary of London: come with me: and those that tire at all of the world we know: for we have new worlds here.” 
― Lord Dunsany, The Book of Wonder

“London has the trick of making its past, its long indelible past, always a part of its present. and for that reason it will always have meaning for the future, because of all it can teach about disaster, survival, and redemption. It is all there in the streets. It is all there in the books.” 
― Anna Quindlen, Imagined London: A Tour of the World's Greatest Fictional City

“One feels even in the midst of the traffic, or waking at night, Clarissa was positive, a particular hush, or solemnity; an indescribable pause; a suspense before Big Ben strikes. There! Out it boomed. First a warning, musical; then the hour, irrevocable. The leaden circles dissolved in the air. Such fools we are, she thought, crossing Victoria Street. For Heaven only knows why one loves it so, how one sees it so, making it up, building it round one, tumbling it, creating it every moment afresh; but the veriest frumps, the most dejected of miseries sitting on doorsteps (drink their downfall) do the same; can't be dealt with, she felt positive, by Acts of Parliament for that very reason: they love life. In people's eyes, in the swing, tramp, and trudge; in the bellow and the uproar; the carriages, motor cars, omnibuses, vans, sandwich men shuffling and swinging; brass bands; barrel organs; in the triumph and the jingle and the strange high singing of some aeroplane overhead was what she loved; life; London; this moment in June.” 
― Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway

“I like the spirit of this great London which I feel around me. Who but a coward would pass his whole life in hamlets; and for ever abandon his faculties to the eating rust of obscurity?” 
― Charlotte Brontë, Villette

“I like walking round London at night, I do it all the time. Not for no reason, just cos... it's home, innit? It's brilliant, you can't ever get bored of London cos even if you live here for like a hundred and fifty years you still won't ever know everything about it. There's always something new. Like, you're walking round somewhere you've known since you was born and you look up and there's an old clock on the side of a building you never seen before, or there's a little gargoyley face over a window or something. Don't you think it's cool?” 
― Richard Rider, No Beginning, No End

Vintage-Inspired Living

Loving all things vintage, it comes as an obvious fact that I'm highly fascinated by vintage furnishings and decorations. Having lived all my life in a house full of antique furnishings and vintage inspired rooms, it became somehow ingrained into me... I guess, with my grandma's incessant brainwashing on the value of such furnishings, I too, became a convert. It was not always the case, as a younger girl I preferred the modern houses, with their simplicity and plain decorations. I used to daydream about having a bare and minimalistic house, filled with modern appliances and equipment. Nowadays however, I have realised the homely environment vintage houses can create. Don't get me wrong, I do NOT like big gold statues, or highly complicated ornaments, or grotesque angels looking murderously at anyone crossing the front porch. One has to find the right way to make a house look vintage, and yet not shabby or too crowded with trinkets. In other words, it has to be artistically decorated.

As an example of the kind of vintage-inspired rooms I would like to one day decorate, I have copy/pasted a couple of photos from a tv series I'm in love with, called Pretty Little Liars. One of the characters, Aria, has a vintage-inspired house which I drool over, every time I catch a glimpse of. And I'm  especially in love with her Victorian room, and have made a vow to myself to make a replica of it, once I grow up (...) and have my own house:

I
I especially LOVE all the books strategically strewn about.

    Utterly love the curtains and windows, which give a sort of tree-house feeling.

    PRETTY butterflies...

Of course, this is just one example. Had I to copy/paste every 'vintage-inspired room' photo I have fallen in love with, this post would be never-ending. A simple google search can give great ideas for vintage-inspired rooms and decorations. However, had one to discuss the common elements- I would probably sum it up like this: Old books, darkwood furnishings, lots of pillows and rugs with ruffles, and accessories to set the vintage mood; Victorian-style chandeliers, candles, mirrors, lamps... And ultimately, any old artefacts (easily bought from antique shops) such as typewriters, old cameras, and possibly...a gramophone.

Voila, vintage heaven.  

'Quarterly-Life Crisis' Rantings

It's so easy, being young. You wake up every morning, get out of bed- with no particular difficulty, and start the day, quite oblivious to the fact that, when the day ends...it can never, ever come back again. It's natural to take days, and time, foregranted -when you are young and not counting your days. But then, there are times when we get hit by what seems like lightning, when we realise that one day, we too will get old. And we get gripped by this awful sense of foreboding. The feeling of mortality.

We live as if we're here to stay, forever. Of course, we do know we are going to die too, one day. But it may not hit us, the reality of it. As if death is a mythical creature, waiting far, far away. Until a loved one dies,   this usually brings us back to our senses, making us aware that life has an end, and somehow, someday, we too will cease to exist. And then what happens? Is there life, after death? And if there is, how can it be eternal? Or do we just...die? Sleep forever? Thoughts of these sort can make anyone go crazy. Us homo sapiens sapiens, the 'all knowing' social animals, do not feel comfortable with death. Death is the unknown, and we hate not knowing.

People say that the elderly are much more comfortable with death than most people. They probably have no choice, but to accept it. It's easier to accept the death of an old person than that of a younger one. It changes our cycle, our way of thinking... it is unnatural, a sort of abomination. A young person, full of life is not meant to die. But it happens anyway, and this is probably what scares us the most. And yet, we pity the elderly, for they seem to do nothing all day but wait for death. But maybe that's how it's meant to be, you get to live your life, make the most of it- and when the time comes, you'll be ready.

Oh, how I hope so.

English Villages

They awaken my soul. They inspire me beyond anything else. They possess all the ingredients for my idea of a happy life.