Description

How would you describe yourself?  It's easy to label, categorise and make assumptions about others, but in my experience we rarely get ourselves right. Especially if we set a word limit!  Like - say- one word.
If put on the spot I would certainly err on the side of idealism - and it couldn't be accurate.  Perhaps the best solution is to avoid specific descriptives altogether and leave something to the imagination.

Curves

or

Hazmat

or

Shoe

All joking aside, pinning oneself down without resorting to cliche or delusion is difficult. I wonder sometimes if just riding instinct and treating each day as a rare and tempting treat is good enough. Is it really essential to truly know ourselves? Is it enough to see ourselves reflected in how others respond to us?  Does a critical lack of personal insight shape our core values and ultimately moral behaviours?
Or does it liberate us.
I personally suspect the latter. And I suspect that we are so continually changing that having a strong sense of who we are can be a kind of lifetime sentence. There is a real tangible joy that comes from the knowledge we can change in a heartbeat. And change for our audience.
And so I shall continue to revel in all that I am, and aim to restrain myself from condensing my world into a series of one word wonders.

Curled

Paper, hair, fries, ribbon, toes, flames, lashes.  Bodies. Curling up whilst awake - under a down duvet and around myself. Ten years ago it might have been around another. Ten years from now it might be too. But right now this feels good.
There is safety and warmth in a curl. The sensation that all the soft bits are protected and what is turned to the outside world is impermeable. Unless of course willed or willing to unfurl and expose.
But that is by choice.
And tonight, I close in on myself leaving decisions for tomorrow.

Awake

It's been years. And I have slept. But the title of this post is a dream. Of the desire to whittle down the hours of unconsciousness in order to recapture, retake, and greedily savour a few extra hours all to myself each day I live in this incredible city.  Tonight I dropped the book that I resent and despise, and took a careful look at my Brazil posts from years ago. I slept too much there too. But life is different now and I feel as if I am a different person leading an entirely different life. A more difficult life but better. Unquantifiably better.
A colleague questioned my claim to happiness recently. And it made me think.  And reconsider the elusive definition of that blissful chemical state. I believe am I ready to conclude that a definition is irrelevant if the underlying feeling exists. Tangible or no.
Ben Okri spoke a few years ago of the significance of the opening lines of the Rubaiyat. The implication that until the reader has heard the call, "Awake!", their life has been lived consciously in the haze of sleep. As I age, the significance of that one line increases until it keeps me from slumber - calling me to consciousness and urging me to get up, get out, and get on with it. Or just get away from the things that feel wrong or a waste of those hours that creep ever steadily on.
Tolerance wanes with the waking of this feeling and urgency that tiptoes in unawares. And with it, there is a release that defies description - the feeling that washes over you when you realise that nothing matters at all except what you think and feel and love and want. And that it's about time things moved in that direction. With a modicum of care, affection, and warmth of course. But enough of putting yourself last - or putting others always first - an awakening indeed.