the addressed: Everybody's Free to Wear Sunscreen

This is a lovely thing.

the addressed: Everybody's Free to Wear Sunscreen: Everybody's Free to Wear Sunscreen or the Sunscreen Speech, are the common names of an essay actually called "Advice, like youth, probably...

Read. It's brimming with advice and sweet things to hear about yourself.

CREATIVES

So as I mentioned before, I’m currently an intern for Schön! magazine. It’s a very visual magazine, and it prides itself in presenting the talents of the most creative people from around the world. Creative.

Now this is a concept that once I stumbled upon it a long time ago, I haven’t quite been able to shake. I picture myself in a suit and a 9-5, and a sincere shudder travels from the nape of my cranium to the tips of my toes. It just doesn’t seem to fit with the idea that I have of myself.

Now, when I read and research about designers and photographers and all of the creatives in between who have forged for themselves a credible and successful means of supporting their gorgeous lives, I can’t help but want to join the club. But where to start? Don’t get me wrong dear readers – I am not one of the idiot youth of our city who expect the world in exchange for zero work and effort. I’m fully aware that true success will not materialize until a great deal of hard work has first been entered into the equation. I’m eager to sweat and bleed into the road that leads me to my riches. But where does the road begin? Has it indeed even been forged yet? Will one more rhetorical question be overkill?

So frustration is the emotion of choice as I write to you this morning readers. General annoyance at the riddle that life seems to be taunting me with, and full-on annoyance at the answer that I’m sure is just on the brink of my consciousness.

But fear not – once I’ve worked it out you’ll be the first to know.

Pensive as ever, your friendly neighbourhood PensiveBuddha.

AH, SWEET SWEET LONDON

So I've noticed that my last few blogs have been 1) a long time ago, and also 2) a bit lengthy! So I'll ease back into things...

So I've started an internship with Schön! magazine (it's sick, check it out) as a journalist/copywriter. Very exciting. Now, the office is in London's W1, and coming into work everyday is one long list of funny observations about the London that seems to have developed around me, and of course, it's inhabitants. Here's a few to start with:

Yes, it's official. The case is dismissed. The judge has gone home. Chivalry is long dead and gone.

The majority of normal people that you might happen upon on the street simply will not return a smile if you smile at them. Just won't happen. Nothing can be done. It's out of our hands. In fact, out of a dozen people (yes I did some field research) two people returned my smile. TWO! One was a liberal looking lady wearing a gorgeous pair of patent, heeled Doc Martens. The second was a kindly looking older gentleman, who incidentally walked back passed me mesmerized by the Daily Mail's page 3 spread. Yep.

Gorgeous, tall, Brazilian-looking men with green eyes and a cashmere jumper to match (green is my favourite colour by the way readers) will have an equally gorgeous and tall blonde woman attached to his hand. Blonde - specifically! This is simply a fact of life.

So this is what I have observed dear readers. I look forward to reporting my further stalker-isms.

Much love from your friendly neighborhood PensiveBuddha, who has indeed returned back to the neighborhood.

BEAUTY ETC

Humans as a race, I think, are naturally attracted to beautiful things. It’s an intrinsic part of what it is that we are. The sweetest and most nutrient fortified foods are bright, enticingly coloured gems, evolving to use us as walking fertilisers. New born babies have evolved to be as numbingly damn cute as possible, making it physically impossible to not take care of them and generally keep them alive. We will always gaze for longer at a flower in bloom than at a dying thorn bush.

And this is not a bad thing. It’s the way that the human mind has developed to navigate the world and pursue the things that will be of most value and benefit. Today, however, this has a slightly different everyday application. What it means today is that the fashion industry is among the most profitable industries in operation. This means that an artist can justifiably sell a piece of work for millions of his or her chosen units of currency. This means that if you happen to have shining green eyes, or a dazzling smile, or a perfectly formed body, having people stare at you constantly and generally try to be a part of your life will be amongst the most common occurrences that you’ll encounter.

So this leads me to wonder how we might take this natural tendency and relate it to enriching the general quality of our lives. I think perhaps the happiest person is he who can see beauty in the most varied and frequent places. For how better might a human life be enjoyed than by constantly encountering delights and articles to treat the senses?

So the recipe for happiness? Look harder, I think. Happiness awaits you, if only you can find beauty in as many of her different guises as possible.

CASUALTIES OF CONVERSATION

Ok, so I’m a pretty sociable kinda gal, when I’m in a sociable kinda mood of course. I thoroughly enjoy a bit of banter, an amicable conversation, a raucous anecdote exchange. But it’s the casualties involved in speaking to some people that make me awfully warry to even bring up the condition of the weather with a friendly looking bystander.

“Casualties?” I hear you scream in confusion. Yes dear readers – casualties. I’ll explain. A casualty of conversation may occur when I’m asked a question in conversation, and before I’ve gotten through the prefix of the first word of my answer I’m brutally cut off with a new question or the start of a brand new conversation topic, usually about something ridiculous like whatever jib happens to be floating through the questioner’s mind. Another casualty? Well, another may occur when you are seemingly engaged in a stimulating conversation and you look over to find your conversation buddy’s gaze drift off as lazily as a cow chewing the cud, your existence seeming to phase out of this reality that we’ve all come to know and love, and into the Realm of Disinterest. “Another!” I hear you shout, Thor style. And perhaps the harshest. The old nod-and-smile-until-it-seems-like-her-lips-have-stopped-flapping-and-therefore-stopped-talking-so-I-can-jabber-on-about-my-favourite-topic: me!

Now this may simply seem like the rant of a really boring and unexciting conversationalist. But this is simply not the case I assure you! I’m a regular social butterfly, who will win a bet every time that I can make you smile after the briefest of exchanges. A conversation is a dance with words, be it a waltz or full on street dance routine, crew and all. And without tooting my own horn, I’d have to say that I know a few moves.

But it seems that some individuals out there reckon a conversation is actually a full on street fight, where anything goes and any weapon is acceptable. This is not the case dear readers! If the conversation consists largely of your own voice talking about you and your general comings and happenings, then try your best to reset this balance, for all you’re doing is sending out a jab, jab, hook combo out at your poor convo associate. And when you feel like your attention is drifting off to what you’re about to eat later on (I understand, we’ve all been there), then give yourself a couple seconds to imagine that ravioli and fresh wholemeal bread (traveller’s dinner) melting in your mouth, then snap back to this realm I tell you! And finally, if you’re simply not interested enough in what the person is saying to actually listen while you wait your turn to speak then politely excuse yourself and jog on!

For the sake of world peace, readers (ha!), avoid these casualties! There’s enough pain out there in the wild world without you adding to it with sloppy conversation skills.

Just some friendly advice from your local (though currently international) Pensive Buddha!

TRAVEL SICKNESS

Warning! Understatement of the year coming up: life is a difficult thing. No matter how hard you may try to solve issues and overcome difficulties, one problem seems to just get swapped for a new one. Take me for example. I left the country, continent, even the hemisphere to try to escape the things that were proving to be barriers to my happiness. And indeed i escaped them completely. But in their place, a more tropical variety of problems slotted straight in. Like being so very far away from your most cherished ones and missing them more than words will allow. And like missing your baby nephew’s first steps and first words. And like being forced to see exactly the type of person that you are when it gets mirrored back to you by the reactions and responses of your travelling partner. And like feeling epically alone, when the magnitude of the world dawns on you and you realise the connections that you have are as feeble in comparison as the softest lace.

Now don’t misunderstand me readers – I am having an amazing time. I’ve met the coolest, funniest, most interesting people that are trotting the globe right now. And I’ve seen some sites that have literally made my voice box shrivel up and take a nap, and my jaw drop and hang like a post pubescent boy’s junk. And I’ve overcome some personal challenges that I had previously assumed were to be permanent tenants of my psyche. It has been wonderful. But boy has it been tough.

So I guess this is me raising up to the heavens my gratitude for allowing me to be where I am right now. Though I think this is also me sending out a friendly notification that the grass isn’t always greener on the other side, but look up – there may well be more on offer above the ground.

DON'T HATE ME 'COZ I'M SICK.

So something mildly startling has come to my attention. And hear me out on this theory before you start throwing stones and rotten vegetables at me. So a couple of days ago I was rushed to hospital (dramatic pause) – gastritis or some other kind of horrifically painful thing. And as I writhed around on the hospital gurney, a nurse attended to me, followed by the doziest doctor ever known to man. And at the time, through the haze of pain and general sadness and disappointment, I didn’t quite grasp the extent of the treatment that I received. However, after the pain, morphine and fatigue wore off, I realised a shocking truth: nurses and doctors don’t like sick people.

I’ll explain. As I mentioned earlier, I was a-writhing and a-moaning for quite some time, and understandably I choked out to the nurse that I would quite like some pain relief. Her response? ‘Well, I can’t magically make the pain go away. You’ll just have to hold on’. Now call me a pleb, but surely magic needn’t be considered when we were a building brimming with medication of every kind and degree. Woman screaming in pain should usually = some kind of compassion + some f-ing drugs, no?! She followed this startling rebuff with a request for me to stand up to perform some kind of demoralising thing or other. As I tried and failed to even sit up, let alone stand, my trusty friend Chloe ran to my assistance as the nurse looked on in mild boredom. As Good Friend Chloe tried to help me up, the nurse stopped her in her good-deed-tracks and assured her that I was perfectly capable of getting up on my own. Just for the record, I wasn’t.

And I won’t even go into what the doctor had to say to me. I’ll just say that he called me a drug addict and a raging slut, in about two breaths. He used different words of course, but you can only really dress up such accusations so much.

Now I’ll stop there with the doctor’s brutality and the nurse’s general unkindness, though trust me, there are several more examples. The crux of this post however is that the next morning, when the writhing and moaning had stopped, they were as sweet as punch to me! My name became ‘love’ or ‘darling’. The nurse’s face muscles remembered how to smile. Her rough handling became the touch of my very own mother. And why dear readers? Because I had transformed over night into some semblance of a healthy person. It’s messed up, but that was the only difference between the night before and the morning after. Same Pensive Buddha lying in that bed. Same Mrs Nurse on the same shift. Same dozy doctor doing his rounds.

So my advice, from me to you: next time you encounter a nurse or any kind of practitioner of medicine, I suggest you pretend to be an individual with a perfect bill of health. You act and pretend till your face falls off, because otherwise, you may well be treated like a person who secretly likes to have intercourse with cats. Yep. You heard it here first.