I was chatting to a friend on MSN yesterday and he asked me what >.< meant. Not a little surprised, I explained that it represented an expression of exasperation or frustration. To that he remarked that in his day, they didn't use pictorial expressions to say what they meant.

Ouch.

Does that mean our ability to communicate with words has deteriorated so much that we feel the need to add visuals to get our message across? Disappointedly, I have recently noticed how many times I inject 'emoticons' into my everyday casual written communication. Sticky out tongue to indicate I'm joking or teasing, smiley face to say I'm happy and wink for the cheeky comment.

Back in the olden days, reams and reams of letters would be painstakingly scribbled with perfect margins and identically looping letters. None of these symbols that almost look like a face with a bit of a squint and a lot of imagination. What's changed?

It would be easy to say that it means we don't know how to convey our feelings effectively with pure written word. It would be easy to say that we no longer have a command over language. But that would be to suggest that we have become dumb. It would mean that we literally can't voice our feelings with the very language that we have cultured over the centuries to express what we mean and what we want people to understand.

I have faith in the human brain.

I refuse to believe that our language skills could have gone backwards. Devolution isn't a word in the human vocabulary. To me, it's clear that written language has become far more ephemeral. We don't expect to look back at the messages we sent to someone in the past. In this disposible lifestyle we now indulge, written communication is now an extension of spoken communication.

I remember that statistic people were throwing around in the nineties: body language is x% of communication. I don't remember the exact percentage but I remember it was a pretty high proportion. Scientists analysed the crossing of arms, the flicking of hair and the rolling of eyes - the unspoken words in a conversation. So there's no reason why this body language can't be transferred into the written word.

Any fluent speaker of Instant Messenger or Text will know that you can't write a dictionary or user's guide to the style of language you'd expect to find there any more easily than you can write a convincing guide to the language you'd expect to find in the playground or outside the chippy. At the end of the day, spoken language is full of inflection and idiom. Every speaker is different and so every Instant Messenger is different. It's reasonable, therefore, to assume that some people will use more physical expression in their written language than others.

Looking at it another way, the use of these visual represenations could show a heightened understanding of this cross-over between written and spoken language. The use and comprehension of body language, facial expression and eye contact shows that we're one step closer to understanding not just what people are saying but what they mean. If you put it that way, written language is becoming more of an expression of your feelings than ever before. Poetry is thought to be closest form of human emotion. In that case, I guess we're all slowly becoming poets because these days, there's nothing stopping us from saying what we really mean.

It's Only Words

One thing I've noticed is I don't think people give enough attention to words. It seems that nothing can be conveyed without action - but in my opinion, doing without thinking can never end well. Anyone who knows me will know I will, can and have fallen in love with words. What you say and the way you say it can change everything. It can make someone stay or leave, love you or hate you, cry or smile. Entire empires have been raised (and collapsed) on mere words. So why have people disregarded the strength of it?

Take the phrase 'making love'. Once upon a time, the most physical making love got was passing a perfumed envelope of declarations into the hands of your paramour. I don't need to tell you what the connotations are now. It makes me sad to think that people have forgotten how to get a message across without throwing a chair through a window. And people have forgotten how to make people listen without wielding a trunchon.

Basically, what I'm trying to say is that we shouldn't neglect the power of the spoken and written language. Afterall, our ability to interact in this way is what separates us from animals. People can move me in the ways unknown by what they say to me. Action may leave the most visible impact but our capacity to remember means that words will stay with us long after the cracks have healed. I still have hope that we will remember and regain our capacity to evoke these memories so we don't have to resort to smashing another window, picking another fight or hurting another loved one. I have hope that people will take the time to remember how it feels when someone utters those life-changing words to you and pass that feeling on.

~*~

On a completely unrelated but equally emotional topic...either my personal Alan Titchmarsh and/or his helpful gnome pulled out my tulips in my front garden! Ouch! Maybe someone will replace my favourite flowers of all time with a bunch in my vase? That's what you call WORDS speaking loudly!

Moral of the day: Never leave a man unsupervised.

The lines on the digital clock morphed into 00:01 and it was today again. She rolled over and and tried to get back to sleep but the drip-drip-drip continued to remind her of her promise to fix the tap tomorrow.

The digit flicked to 00:09 and she realised that sleep was out of reach for today so she jammed on her scruffy trainers and pulled her oversized cardigan over her goose-pimpled arms. She peeped through the curtains and the sky was still dark. It seemed like daytime was still a distant dream of tomorrow. Her feet shuffled towards the door and she grasped the door handle. Nothing. She realised her pile of mess had been shoved against the door and the door couldn't move. Mentally, she scrawled 'tidy room' on her to do list and kicked her books out of the way.

The landing was eerily quiet and she found herself holding her breath, waiting. Then she heard the deep exhalation of her housemate next door and she released her breath in time. Carefully skipping the squeaky steps and dodging the shafts of moonlight from the window, she finally made it to the front door. The chain rattled noisily as she slipped it off the safety latch and within seconds she was surrounded in starlight and midnight blue and whispering tree leaves.

Pacing the glittering pavement, she slide open her phone and scanned her contact list. Who would be awake at this hour? She clicked down, down, down. Highlighting briefly faceless names one by one. A, B, C...she skipped each one with a frown. No one she could wake up, no one who would appreciate her welcoming them into today. And she realised that although she had started her 'today', everyone else was still in yesterday. She felt buoyant. She was one step ahead of the rest. She had this glimpse into what today would bring her before everyone else. She needed to get someone else to enjoy it with her. Opening her phone up again excitedly, she knew exactly who to call. She jabbed 'call' confidently and held it to her ear.

The ring seemed to echo every direction, invading the night, breaking the peace and she guiltily slid shut the phone. She silently apologised to the lamp posts, the sleeping cars, the dandelions nodding at her ankles and carried on walking. One foot in front of the other, she started to grow bored and her brain read through everything she was meant to do tomorrow. She knew it off by heart, she'd scanned it that many times. The list grew longer by the day, always something to do tomorrow.

She needed to call her dentist, she needed to get her car MOT'd, she needed to visit her sister's new baby...well, not so new anymore..., she needed to sign up for the gym and of course that tap. She wasn't worried though. There's always tomorrow.

And as she counted the tasks on her fingers, she skipped off the high pavement edge into the road. Timed perfectly, another person enjoying today, rounded the corner in his 4x4. As they met, both their minds were thinking about tomorrow. For that split-second, they were both simultaneously isolated in their own futures, one step in front of everyone else.

For her, today only lasted a few minutes. For her, tomorrow will always be tomorrow. For her, tomorrow never comes.




My attempt at fiction!! I don't normally do fiction...as you can probably tell! I know serious writers of fiction are very careful to plan and structure their stories before writing them but I just wrote what came to me so it probably doesn't read well! I thought I'd give it a go anyway :) This theme came to me the other night so...there we go!

Oh yeah, moral of the story - don't leave things to tomorrow. If it's worth doing, do it now! It might not end as dramatically as it did for "Her" but you never know if the moment might pass and you wish you told that person how you felt, you wish you sorted things out with an old friend, you wish you helped your mum move that shelf like you promised.

LBD

They say that every girl has a signature little black dress. The timeless piece of clothing that gives the perfect silhouette to any figure. There is no rule to the shape, the cut, or the length of the dress. It's all about the image that it exudes. The self-confidence that you look good. Not just that - that you look great.

But is that all it is? Is how you look the most important thing? We're constantly being confronted by the outer image. The must-have handbag, leg-lengthening killer heels, the extra-shine shampoo. It's no wonder shopping's an addiction. It's not just the thrill of hitting the shops, it's the thrill of physical improvement.

And I've gotta admit, I have bought into it too. I stare into my wardrobe, fit to bursting and what's running through my head is, 'I've got nothing to wear'. I scan my shoes with discontent and sling handbags over my shoulder with reckless abandon. My eyes linger over the glossy adverts in the magazine, careful to ignore the airbrushing and the hidden pins, and some part of my brain whispers to me, 'I could look like that'.

Of course, another part of me is full of disapproval. The angel on my shoulder tugs at my purse-strings and I remind myself that I don't need to fall into Commercialism's lap. It's what's on the inside that matters, right? 'Beauty is only skin-deep' and 'underneath it all, we're all the same'. The voice of reason is always a little bit closer to my ear and I'm thankful for that voice.

But at the same time, I can't stop my feet from slowing down when I walk past shop-windows and I can't help trying on those heels, these jeans and that dress - just to see how I look in them. And you know what? I don't think there's anything wrong with that. I always try to look past appearances and I know that the most important part of a person is their personality. At the same time, I know the importance of presentation. We all love the bows and wrapping paper just as much as the present inside. And I realise that although I don't think I've found my signature Little Black Dress yet, it's not the physical dress that we're looking for but our wrapping paper to the present within.

I guess they weren't far off when they said 'Clothes Maketh the Man'.

Perspective

The other day, a little early for a friendly gathering, the boy and I drove down to the reservoir. More than a little windy, we parked up the car in the gravel car park looking out at the expanse of water.

We stared out in front of us, the radio murmuring quietly at our feet, behind out ears and from other locations around the car that I can never find. I asked the boy what he could see and the noted the level of the water, the picnic bench which, although he couldn't see it, he knew still bore the tell-tale scorch marks of a disposable barbeque, the red-nose girl clinging on to her father's anorak as they flew past our windscreen on a bike.

Turning to the same direction, I noted the seagulls swooping and diving, milimetres from the water, milimetres from the treetops and milimetres from each other. I saw the muddy track that disappeared behind the curve of the reservoir covered in the mix of anonymous footprints and I saw the golden retriever weaving in and out of the protective railing - safe one second, verging on the danger the next.

I realised that although we were looking in the same direction, sharing the same air and within touching distance of each other, what we saw was totally different. Thinking back to those art lessons in the dusty art block at school, I remembered those lessons where we circled our subject with our paper and pencil, each drawing exactly what we saw. At the end, the teacher would hold up our drawings side-by-side and everyone's was slightly different. Even the person sat next to you saw a different curve to the bowl, or a different reflection on the vase.

And I looked to my left and to my right and I surveyed the different cars, all a different colour, shape and model all facing the reservoir. I wondered what they could see. I could see that some had their engines on, with fumes curling out of the pipe for a second before being snatched away by the wind. Each would have a different sound greet their ears, from the burble of their engine, to the screech of the chart-topper, to the whistle of the wind through the gap in their window.

Some were closer to the water's edge and some were sat up taller in their car seats. They might have seen the water lapping the side of the reservoir wall. But I don't know for sure because that wasn't my perspective.

Everyone sees things differently. It's not only what you see with your eyes that is different. Your own perception is based on your history, your background, your experiences. No matter how close you are to someone physically, they'll always be a little to your right or your left, in the next seat along or one centremetre taller and what they perceive will be that little bit different.

I can't always understand why someone has done something, or why they have reacted to an event in that way. But I don't think I need to understand. From now on, I think it's best to keep an open-mind. You can't see things through the eyes of anyone else but yourself so maybe it's best to just accept that.

Vive la difference.

Heav'n has no Rage, like Love to Hatred turn'd,
Nor Hell a Fury, like a Woman scorn'd.

- William Congreve The Mourning Bride, 1697

I think it's pretty clear what Congreve meant when he composed these immortal lines. Hurt a woman and you'll end up in the hot and sticky clime of the Underworld. The thing that puzzles me is why Congreve has engendered Fury. Is Congreve suggesting that the sex of the person makes them more or less vengeful?

As little Miss Specator I've seen how people have coped with being hurt. Sadness, depression, denial and anger. So are women getting more and more inclined to turn to anger these days? And if so, why?

It's as if it's a defence mechanism. If someone hurts you, intentionally...unintentionally...the distinction isn't clear through the tears...the only option for some is to hurt that person back. In a way, this links back to my previous post. If a woman's wrath really is worse than a man's, does this mean that women are less inclined to forgive?

It's very easy to dismiss this as the outpouring of female sensitivity and emotion. But following this same stream of thought, is anger not considered a masculine reaction? So perhaps the reason Man is so fearful of Woman Scorned because they don't want women enpowered by one of the few acceptable emotions for men.

I don't really want to start on a feminist rant against the oppression of women over the centuries. Truly, I think that men and women are just as capable of commanding Hell if scorned. The difference, I guess, is that at the end of the day that the very contrast between the rosy-cheeked, cherubic female waif that men idealise and the Medusa that men can create scares them.

Congreve not only created poetry when he composed these lines, he made a very relevant social comment. Does forgiveness show strength or weakness? On observation of two separate instances, I've seen both sides of the spectrum. Love and Hatred are as powerful as the other so it's no wonder that they can evoke similar reactions. I've seen and shared a shadow of the pain when love breaks down. And I can't help but admire the strength of prevailing forgiveness.

Corresponding to this, I've heard, and admittedly, joined in the semi-jovial, semi-serious mocking of the 'ex'. Surely it can't hurt when it's said in jest. On the outside, it seems to show strength - a couldn't-care-less attitude can only prove that you're over it, right?

At the end of this blog, I'm no closer to telling if Woman Scorn'd really can bring Hell to the surface. What I have discovered is that, having weighed up both sides of the human reaction to 'Love to Hatred turn'd', I think I do prefer forgiveness.

So I guess the subtitle to this post can be Forgive and Forget pt.II

Forgive and Forget

Isn't that what they always say at the end of a relationship-gone-sour? Or even when someone knocks into you in the supermarket. Just forgive and forget.

The question I've been thinking of is which one is easier to do? When I think of the word forgive, I think of removing all feelings of hurt or upset that someone or something has caused me. To me, forgiving someone seems the hardest to do because emotion is the driving force of many of my decisions. How can I force myself to do something that my emotions won't let me do?

I know Dawson's Creek was the fountain of all teenage wisedom with its longwinded and pseudo-profound dialogue (pysche!) but I must say one line has stuck in my head all these years. Cast your minds back to the days when Pacey was going out with Andie. I'm not ashamed to admit I remember the names of the characters, so work with me ok?

Anyway, once Pacey discovered that Andie had betrayed him, he said the immortal lines: 'I can forgive, but I can never, ever forget' (possibly paraphrased).

It's weird that just one line out of thousands, and trust me - there were thousands of lines in that show - would stay with me all these years. It's like a lingering smell on your fingers after you've chopped onions, or a kink in your hair that you can't flatten even after brushing it till you're almost bald.

Could it be possible that it is easier to forgive than forget? According to trusty dictionary.com, to forgive is "To give up resentment or claim to requital on account of (an offense or wrong); to remit the penalty of; to pardon; -- said in reference to the act forgiven."

They say people have an amazing ability to forgive. If you consider forgiveness as remitting the penalty of something, I guess forgiveness means to stop punishing yourself as well as those around you for something that has happened.

Someone recently spoke to me about something that they were having trouble forgiving. After all the memories and the history, forgiving seemed like the last thing they wanted to do. But once we started thinking about it, we realised we had forgiving and forgetting mixed up. No one said that we had to pretend that the hurt never happened. No one said we had to forget about the person and the memories and what caused the pain.

In actual fact, I think it's important that you don't forget. I've always said that your past makes you who you are. To have survived your personal history can only be a positive thing. Memories are like Girls Guide badges - war scars that prove that you've been there, done that. To remember is to accept that something happened. Denial is just as bad as hurting yourself by refusing to forgive.

At the end of the day, I don't think it's easy to forget things. Little things can prompt a memory to resurface. A song, the touch of a material, some memories just manage to work themselves to the top all by itself. It's almost impossible to forget so I say you shouldn't fight it. I'm not going to say that it's easy to forgive. But sometimes it's just easier on yourself.

Forgive and forget? Let's just take one step at a time.