Remapping the Writer’s Muse with Edgar Allan Poe and Killing Eve

Image via Spoiler TV

“Yet I am not more sure that my soul lives, than I am that perverseness is one of the primitive impulses of the human heart – one of the indivisible primary faculties, or sentiments, which give direction to the character of Man” The Black Cat, Edgar Allan Poe

It’s one of those days with a slight chill in the air. One of those lazy days that are perfect for bran rusks and a cup of tea, far away from the madness that is marking second year university Wordsworth/ Blake scripts.

One of those perfect days to catch up on what is fast becoming a personal fave TV show, Killing Eve. For those of you that have been living in a Hobbit hole somewhere and have yet to come across this gem : watch it now. I’m currently on Episode 5 and it has me deeply questioning everything I thought I knew about life, about my life, about the lives of others.

In a nutshell, Killing Eve is a British drama series based on the Villanelle novels by Luke Jennings. It follows an MI5 officer as she tracks down a sociopath leaving a trail of destruction and blood behind her.

The TV series, produced by Sid Gentle Films, is utterly fascinating. It digs down deep into the kernel of our inner desires, all the things that lay repressed and haunt our lives, and the nature of obsession as liberation. Thus, it questions that age-old debate that I’ve been ruminating over : the female muse. What if the ‘muse’ need not be an object to be attained or sexualized according to standard forms? What if the muse was a spectral figure like the women in Edgar Allan Poe’s texts? You needn’t have to see or hear her but she stalks your dreams and inner recesses nonetheless…slicing and mutilating your inner corridors till the genius that exists inside is set free. A perpetual psychological fever, that only you know about, that lies hidden. Clawing through maggots and graveyard soil. Constantly on the verge of your understanding and tangibility…but barely ever there. A murderess…or a corpse…instead of ‘girlfriend’ ,’lover’, ‘mistress’, ‘one night stand’ or ‘wife’. This muse then, defies all categories, and is a special type of energy that requires an almost spiritual, psychical channeling. What is the cost for such creative impulses?

 

Art by Abigail Larson

This brings me to Edgar Allan Poe. We’ve been dissecting his two short stories, The Black Cat and The Tell-Tale Heart, in class recently and it had reverberations as I watched Killing Eve. Yes, I can’t just watch a series/movie or read a book without overthinking. I call it the Gilmore curse…

Image via HelloGiggles

Granted, Poe’s short stories aren’t for everyone. But those that find joy in-between the frenzied lines, usually find that it resonates – not with an appeal for evil or ‘perverseness’ as may be read on a surface level- but with things we wish we could say or do…things not necessarily socially acceptable, things that will end most likely with judgement and vilification. Poe himself was a deeply troubled soul, plagued by alcoholism and a life of grief and abandonment…which makes one wonder…how troubled does the mind need to be in order to achieve brilliance? Or, can it be achieved without total disintegration? Perhaps, all one needs is the mere push of a tentacle of things that rear their heads from murky depths…

Photography by Stefan Gesell

 

…or the character of a deadly assassin smiling at you, blade in hand…to nudge you in the right direction? The character of Villanelle or Oksana in Killing Eve is a psychotic playground of trauma, desire and the ability to switch off one’s emotions. Yet the TV series manages to bring out  the humane aspects of the antagonist through her curiosity and ‘affection’ for Eve, the protagonist of the story. In turn, Eve starts to realize important, enlightening, things about herself. She comes face to face with aspects of her Jungian shadow that dispel the normality of her mundane job, her easy marriage and herself as plain or unappealing; intimating that sometimes, you just need a psychopath or foe to remind you that you are indeed special.

You see…you could feel like the colorless podium upon which more tantalizing pieces of art sit. You could feel like everyone else around you are thriving with imagination and life as if they just stepped out of a television show. But if Killing Eve has taught me anything, it has taught me that sometimes the most fascinating people are keeping it all in. And all they need is an outlet.

So, if you are a writer and lack the ‘colorful’ or ‘traumatically-induced’ life that people often say makes a good writer…fear not. You just need to turn inwards, take a trip down the darkest corridor that you never even knew was there…and find your spectral lady muse. She may be devoid of blood, she may require a limb or three…but it’s a small sacrifice to pay to reach one’s creative spirit.

 “It is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain; but once conceived, it haunted me day and night.” The Tell-Tale Heart, Edgar Allan Poe

Video via JoBlo TV Show Trailers

Marvel’s Infinity War : Spoiler Free Philosophical Night Musings

Can I just take the time to agree with half of humanity right now that Marvel’s Avenger’s: Infinity War has left me too with the same three words : “what the F*#@k?”. I walked into the movie with an optimism for life, and left completely floored. Of course I was expecting many plot twists and I was completely ready to say goodbye to some of my favorite characters if need be…but I wasn’t expecting to have whatever it was that happened there…

…and also to somehow have a version of my reality seep into the story line. As promised, this is completely spoiler free

…more of a philosophical night musing of sorts as my Gamora doll and I try to fit the narrative pieces together. The quote that keeps coming to mind is the infamous Oscar Wilde one that states “life imitates art”. I wonder if that’s the secret to writing a successful piece of text…its ability to resonate with its audience. ‘Perfectly balanced’ indeed it was, as the fantastic elements of super powers and inhuman strength combined with genuine human concerns. The most striking scene in the movie effortlessly portrayed the frustration and pain of loving someone who will always put you last. And that is how hearts become hardened I suppose…over time the futility turns from despair to pattern to nothing…and this poem I heard in high school echoes through my brain :”a fountain empties itself into the grass”. Life continues. There’s a certain sadness to that. That things get lost so easily. Things that could have endured if only someone had said the right thing at the right time, or done the correct thing when required…hells, even just shown some appreciation. Been a hero instead of the villain. Perhaps the greatest thing one can learn from Infinity War is this: life continues to move…no matter what we do…no matter who we are. And I suppose there’s a certain comfort to that when the end rears its head.

Well, there’s always Deadpool 2 to put a smile on our faces this month!

Till then, let the music inspire you, the characters on screen and in text baffle you…and the shock of Infinity War not traumatize you too much!

Video via Vincent Berthome Hellraiser Core YouTube

The Psychology of the Double Woman in Writing: Fear and Fascination in Alias Grace.

 

Image via Mmpratt99 deviantart on CreepyPasta Wiki

“…for it is the fate of a woman
Long to be patient and silent, to wait like a ghost that is speechless,
Till some questioning voice dissolves the spell of its silence.” Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The ‘double woman’ in film and text often leaves you burdened with a barrage of questions. Was she telling the truth? Was she lying? Could I help her? Did she know that I wanted to, and did she spend her nights laughing at that?…

Was she an angel or a demon?…

The ‘double woman’ then, is the woman that enters a chapter or scene and leaves it permanently disrupted. She is there to make you question everything you think you know…and forever alter the way you view life.

As promised, I’m here to discuss my views on the television series Alias Grace. I finished it last night, and it left me with many thoughts that seem to have pervaded my dreams, or nightmares…one can never tell.

In a nutshell, it is based on the Margaret Atwood novel of the same name published in 1996. The novel itself follows the real murders of a couple in 1843, said to have been killed by their servants, James McDermott and Grace Marks, in Canada. Whilst James is hanged, Grace is sentenced to life in prison. Atwood’s novel questions the events of the murder, and in turn lays bare the nature of narratives, told and concealed.

The television mini-series was adapted for screen by Sarah Polly and follows the same line of intense questioning of the female mind. The opening narration begins

” I think of all the things that have been written about me: that I am an inhuman female demon; that I am an innocent victim of a blackguard, forced against my will and in danger of my own life; that I was too ignorant to know how to act and that to hang me would be judicial murder; that I am well and decently dressed, but I robbed a dead woman to appear so; that I am of a sullen disposition with a quarrelsome temper; that I have the appearance of a person rather above my humble station; that I am a good girl with a pliable nature, and no harm is told of me; that I am cunning and devious; that I am soft in the head, and little better than an idiot.

And I wonder: how can I be all these different things at once?” Grace Marks

Each episode begins with an epigraph from a famous poet, that underlies the struggle of being a woman. Women are forced to play roles in society, even now in the 21st century, in order to maintain any semblance of power or true self. Grace could be haunted by real spectres, a vehicle for the dead, an innocent victim. Or, she could be suffering from a dissociative personality disorder, an insane woman, deserving of punishment. To be a woman in this world…it is one or the other…because that is what makes people’s lives easier: if they can categorize you into a neat little box, that follows their neat little paths and that allows them to sleep securely at the end of the day.

Whilst I don’t wish to give too much away regarding the series, I found it interesting that the letter ‘J’ was highlighted. At the beginning of the series, Grace and her new friend Mary, play a silly old wives’ game that entails cutting the skin of an apple in one long sweep and throwing it over one’s shoulder, asking for guidance on who will be the lucky girl’s future husband. The skin forms the shape of a ‘J’ and it is agreed that Grace will eventually marry a man whose name begins with a ‘J’. Then we begin to notice…the names of the male characters; Dr Jordan the psychiatrist, Jeremiah the peddler, James the so-called partner in crime, Jamie her adoring fan. And all the while I’m thinking to myself this letter represents the various men that interject Grace’s life. Their wants, their needs and their ways of seeing Grace as a person.

J…to be judged… the jury that sentences…the jail they keep you in… the justice that you crave. You’ll have to watch the series in order to ascertain for yourself whether Grace ever achieves this justice. Whether she is worthy of justice in the first place. But then again women are more likely to achieve persecution for their knowledge, intelligence and power…

All in all, an utterly fascinating psychological thriller that I would recommend to anyone with a taste for intelligent plots and characters. And if you’re a writer, the inclusion of the ‘double woman’ character in your writing will most definitely shake up your fictional world. I leave you with some musical inspiration as you trace the forms of her mind, both cunning and curious, with the ink of your pen…and you remember that the most memorable women always have an alias…

              Video via Think Up Anger on YouTube 

 

 

 

The Muse Doth Speak Back: Writing Your Truth

‘The Vizier’s Daughter’ by Abigail Larson

In life, we have many chances to be honest with ourselves. To be honest with the world. Often, people strip us of our honesty, our faith and our trust. And then there are the rare individuals who manage to strip us of our self-respect. They don’t do it intentionally (or I’d like to believe so) but it is done nonetheless. In moments like these, one can be left feeling confused, worthless or angry. It is when these moments come along that you should stop and ask yourself, “why have I let myself come to this?”

Whether you believe that we live in a dystopian world of chaos, or you believe that this is all a part of a divine plan…respecting yourself, loving yourself and allowing yourself to be treated with love and respect from others, are basic human rights. Don’t ever let anyone mislead you into believing otherwise. I had the misfortune of being challenged in all these things. The sad truth was, that I just didn’t know myself back then. I allowed people to feed off my friendship and creativity. At what price? The price of my art, my power, and my voice.

As I began to distance myself from the webs of others, I started to find that voice again. I started to find me. The world looks so very different when you begin to live your life according to natural rhythms…there is freedom in that. Not only did I notice a physically and emotionally healthier version of myself, I started to figure out all the things I wanted to do in life, the places I would go and the people I would help. I want to share my creativity with others…but not at the cost of who I am. This blog gives me a platform to do just that. My academic research will hopefully allow me to achieve this too. But there is something else, something I’ve always wanted to do…but was too scared to be brutally honest…and that is to write my experiences as a muse of sorts. My journals are full of short stories and poems that I’ve written in the last few years, and that I’ve reserved for my own eyes…ashamed of how weak these expressions might paint me. Writing about painful experiences, about your weaknesses, is a big part of your path to individuation: to an integrated sense of self, that you can be happy and proud of. I love my life right now. I’m learning new things every day, and I feel like age is transforming me into the best version of myself. And I’d like to help others reach that point in their lives. The pain you go through, doesn’t have to kill you, it can heal you in ways you never knew you needed healing.

So I’ve decided to put my poems and short stories into a book, which will obviously be illustrated by moi as a partial response to the Priscilla Frank (2018) article I mentioned in a previous blog post, What It’s Really Like To Be An Artist’s Muse and an inspirational post by Celeste Smucker (2018) entitled How to Honor Your Calling (Even When Life Gets in the Way)

Whilst my story is hardly sordid, in comparison to what these female artists have had to endure, we as women, should be aware of the little (and big) ways that we may be used and abused. Anything that makes you question who you are…is not OK. It’s perfectly fine to be selfish sometimes and say no to people. It’s all part of opening yourself up to whatever plan the universe truly has in store for you. Just think : what would Wonder Woman do? 🙂

So how will you be living your truth in 2018? What are the things that no longer work with your own unique purpose in life? And are you brave enough to let them go, so you can find the magic within yourself?

“If you were a king up there on your throne, would you be wise enough to let me go, for this queen you think you own…” Dido

Video via Ciaran Walker on YouTube

“I’m not the killing type…” Goth Lit Problems in the Big Bad World.

Featured image via lavah.deviantart.com

As I write this post, I feel like there should be ominous rumbles of thunder and banshee shrieks from the wind, yet I shall remain satisfied with the gentle purr of my psychotic black cat and Amanda Palmer on my current playlist. Now I don’t know about you, but the majority of people that inhabit this earth (sometimes I feel like we should be calling it earth-x) seem to be under some strange illusions and misconceptions regarding anyone, especially a young damsel, studying Gothic Literature. But hold up! Throw in that you’re studying Children’s Gothic Literature, and that you really really really have a passion for it…and it’s all strange looks and…wait,are you making the sign of the cross at me?

Then there are those that nod and listen as you prattle on about the transgressive abilities narrative structures like ‘Stranger Things’ offer the modern day adolescent. These people actually don’t do the whole eyes glazing over thing.

So that’s how it goes in the world of a Goth Lit student… we’re treated with the polite suspicion usually reserved for mental patients and serial killers. Did it ever occur to anyone that we may just be care bears with fangs???

Image via josephschmalke.com

Seriously, most of the time we’re pretty normal people.

Unfortunately the stigma attached to studies in Gothic Literature seem unwavering in its ignorance. The cherry on top of a very Burton-esque cake is that sometimes the prejudice comes from within the academic field. Like when peers get that haughty look and in a Regina George fashion tell you ‘we do serious work here, work that will actually get us published’…riiiiight…you’re about to see my Wednesday Addams impression girlfriend!

Gothic studies is currently breaking borders in literary criticism. Not only is the genre well suited to hybrid morphing, it has an uncanny ability to access those liminal spaces within society: spaces that allow the marginalized, the minority and those who are able to think outside the box a way of narrativizing their unique thoughts and ideas. Gothic hybrid forms are also suitable for mirroring the process of growing up, current socio-political traumas and conflicts, and a world that is rapidly moving towards a monstrous loss of self. The Gothic form thus allows us to ask ourselves profound questions concerning the nature of humanity, whether the ‘Other’ is really a villain, and perhaps most importantly, it teaches us about what happens when the boundaries we construct for ourselves disintegrate and shatter.

So you see… Goth Lit students are doing some pretty darn relevant and interesting things…

So don’t hate us or ridicule us. So what if our pick-me-up-morning-theme-song is Amanda Palmer’s ‘The Killing Type’. So what if we sometimes identify with our inner Asgardian goddess when we’re having a bad day.

In other news, I’ve talked your ears off regarding what a major Neil Gaiman bookworm I am, and I am happy to say that quirky love of all things Gaiman is taking me across the ocean and to the land of tea and Shakespeare himself. My abstract for the International Gothic Association Conference 2018 was accepted, and I will be presenting my paper “Transformation and Children’s Gothic Fiction in a South African Context” at the Manchester Metropolitan University. Sometimes the West just needs to be reminded that witches, curses and malevolent forces are still very much a part of some cultures and countries. I insert myself into the debate of Children’s Gothic as serving a ‘reparative’ function within a fractured culture where political oppression has forced a large percentage of the country to cling to superstition and witchcraft in order to navigate their disordered lives and find a sense of agency (Ashforth 2005). I’ll be comparing Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book (2008) with South African writer Charlie Human’s Apocalypse Now Now (2013)…watch this space to see what I come up with as a voice for the ‘Rainbow Nation’.

As you can imagine, I’m beyond excited, to be surrounded by so many interesting minds, possibly attending a Gothic convention in the works as well, and yes I’m super nervous that so many prestigious academics that I’m currently using in my MA thesis will be within sniffing distance of me. Play it cool. Just play it cool.

Lots going on beyond the veil where I sit and type this post, but here are a few things that are currently keeping me bright eyed and bushy tailed on the imaginative brink of the creative world…

Currently reading: This might sound silly, seeing as though I read it just last year, but I’m rereading Daphne du Maurier’s My Cousin Rachel in an attempt to gather the wisps of an idea I have regarding the relationship between obsession and identity. I’m focusing on Philip’s character in particular…but what I’m searching for precisely, I can’t yet be sure. I’m also nerding out hard on Gogol short stories at the moment. It’s currently part of the 2nd year curriculum for a course in Romanticism, but there’s so much for the goth-hearted to relish in his weird and wonderful sentences. I’m interested to see how my students interpret the texts and my wild-eyed enthusiasm for Gogol. That might be a post of its own soon.

Currently watching: Alias Grace. But of course. When I’ve watched enough episodes you can expect there shall be words…

I can tell you though…it is based on the Margaret Atwood novel of the same name. So you might want to add that to your future must-reads.

Currently contemplating: The recent Priscilla Frank (2018) article that’s been tearing up my twitter feed, regarding the ‘female muse’ and the men who feast on them. See What It’s Really Like To Be An Artist’s Muse , just in case you thought hungry vampiric predators were the stuff of ‘silly novels’ and Hollywood screens.

 

And if you don’t believe me about my morning theme song… here’s something to bide the time till my next post! 😉

Via AmandaPalmerVEVO on YouTube

My Cousin Rachel: Something Wicked This Way Comes

 

 

“How soft and gentle her name sounds when I whisper it. It lingers on the tongue, insidious and slow, almost like poison, which is apt indeed. It passes from the tongue to the parched lips, and from the lips back to the heart. And the heart controls the body, and the mind also. Shall I be free of it one day? In forty, in fifty years? Or will some lingering trace of matter in the brain stay pallid and diseased? Some minuscule cell in the bloodstream fail to race with its fellows to the fountain heart? Perhaps, when all is said and done, I shall have no wish to be free. As yet, I cannot tell.”  Daphne du Maurier, My Cousin Rachel

Video via Sound I Love on YouTube. Art via Pinterest.

 

Sacrifices and the Other Side: Book Quotes and Tiny Poems.

Art via Pinterest.

“Real magic can never be made by offering someone else’s liver. You must tear out your own, and not expect to get it back.”  The Last Unicorn, Peter S. Beagle

 

On the other side

there is no clinking of glasses

only voices with no faces.

Time extends herself like a whore.

But somewhere

a little girl will laugh

and someone will hold her tightly in his arms.

Safe.

The witch’s headstone remains intact.

 

Vampire Diaries FanVideo via KristinaOrtutova on YouTube.

Bookworm Minds in the Real World

 

As a bookworm, people often accuse me of living in a world so completely far away from human reality that they’re not sure whether I’m real or not. Which reminded me of…

“You’re wrong. She is a phony. But on the other hand you’re right. She isn’t a phony because she’s a real phony. She believes all this crap she believes. You can’t talk her out of it.” Breakfast at Tiffany’s

Do we have to conform to the world’s expectations for a semblance of normality? Must we keep our authentic (creative) selves shut away tightly in a little box so that we can feel suppressed and suffocated till the day our bodies expire? Or can we just be. Be.

You be you. Me be me.

Free.

Art via Pinterest

 

Being free is a basic human need. Ideally, we should be able to feel free whether we have family duties, are in a relationship or a part of the working environment. Ideally. But people are always chaining and shackling, stifling others from expressing who they really are. Perhaps it’s a human thing. The desire to control or tame another. The desire to stay in safe spaces and never really feel alive. Maybe it’s fear. Bookworms tend to have an ability to subvert that though. Our imaginations extend to all sorts of weird and wonderful corners of this world and others, which lets us be a little more elastic than the average person. We welcome those spaces for others and ourselves to find and free ourselves. And if we happen to bring out the weird in each other, well then perhaps that is a part of our authentic selves too.

Studying Children’s Literature, particularly through a psychoanalytic lens, gets all sorts of strange remarks from the ignorant and jaded shell-people of this land who zombie lurch through their lives. “Grow up. The real world isn’t a book or movie kid. That glass is empty.” Yeeeeah…unfortunately, as Goth as I can sometimes be, I can’t let go of my imagination. To me, imagination is inextricably linked to possibility and that beautiful thing called hope. It’s the essence of who we are. Living the humdrum life, we tend to forget to nurture it. We forget to dream. And we forget where those dreams can take us if only we’d open ourselves up to the little sparks (magic or energy?) calling our names. Pleading with us to find our potential. A potential that each and every one of us has.

I like being a cartoon character. Or walking through my life like I just stepped out of a movie or tv series. I like structuring my deadlines according to building a DIY Millennium Falcon that has the Jedi fate balanced in my hands.

I wasn’t procrastinating, I swear!

 

I like having my imaginative abilities to get me through the boring, the real or the just plain bland.

Sometimes life is full of suspense.

Sometimes it’s funny. Brain and mouth often not connected.

Sometimes it’s a little…dramatic.

But mostly…it’s just super fun. Especially if you actually have a tiara and don’t mind the stares while you’re drinking your morning cup of coffee.

And did I mention how badass it can be? Like when people don’t respect personal space in queues. #petpeeve

So if you’re a bookworm or you have a colorful imagination, DON’T let anyone belittle you for it. You don’t need to conform, and you definitely don’t need to be like everyone else out there. Be yourself. And if you believe you have super powers that just haven’t been unleashed yet…well, as long as your particular type of crazy isn’t harming anyone then just go with it. Be the person who changes lives and makes living fun again. And maybe you’ll find others out there who remind you to take the rainbow instead of the train. 😉

Dylan: “You’re really gonna carry my bag? You’re that girl?”

Jamie: “No. I’m gonna change your life. I’m THAT girl.”

Friends With Benefits

Freedom. Beauty. You.

“I’m not very good at making specific plans. Just meet me under the sky somewhere and be alive with me.” Victoria Erickson

The following blog post snippet stole my heart this evening…words of wisdom from women who love to run with wolf hearts. Reblogged from RHAPSODYBOHÈME.

” The dictionary defines abandon as a complete lack of inhibition and restraint. A wildness and impulsiveness, impetuous in the pursuit of your dreams that I relate to thinking less and letting the heart rule your happiness. To turn off the noise by overthinking everything and to just take the leap of faith to feel young and innocent as you felt as a child. To cease to support and desert, which means for me letting go of the conventional demands of society and to give up completely the things that tie me to a life filled with expectations and demands.”

 

Images via Pinterest.

Books, Coffee Musings and Kitty Pouts

My Catwoman pout FAIL but I’m still a crazy cat woman with my ‘too cool for school’ coffee mug.

My day was completely book crazy! I’m sitting amongst a heap of books I must (in my over-achiever sort of way) get through for my master’s dissertation. We’ve got Freud, Lacan, Kristeva and some exciting literary exploration with Louise Rosenblatt this week. If you had to meet me in real life, you’d probably think I stepped out of a cartoon- that’s how excited I get when talking about my thesis. #majornerd

However, somewhere between the delish sips of coffee in my crazy cool black cat coffee mug (I mean serioso how CUTE is it!?) and meandering through my local bookstore, I decided I needed to make time for some recreational reading as well. Yoga has been helping me immensely in the de-stressing department but I love getting lost in bookish worlds…it’s the greatest way for me to unwind. So today I started reading…

Post-Easter bunny coffee art by So Whipped Coffeeshop, Durban.

The Watchmaker of Filigree Street by Natasha Pulley. I hadn’t heard anything much about this novel to be honest…it just sorta fell off the shelf and stared at me, so I said okie doke I’ll take you home little book. Yes, I speak to books. Don’t judge me. I’ve only read a few pages so far but I’m already interested to see where this tale takes me. The male character seems familiarly cynical and it’s set in dreary England. According to the interweb, it’s steampunk, historical, witty…yes yes you’ve spun your webs, I shall read you till the very last page. Despite the fact that I have a thesis deadline looming this week. Must keep sanity intact. I’ll keep you guys updated on whether the book is a hit or miss with Of Tales & Dreams.

In other news, I was excited to befriend April Mullen on Instagram. She’s a Canadian director that has filmed a few episodes of one of my FAVORITE SHOWS EVER –Killjoys. And she recently gave us a sneak peek of the filming for Season 3. Check out our girl Dutch on the instavid here : April Mullen

I don’t think I have the proper words in English (or any of the languages I speak including Meow) to tell you how excited I am for Killjoys Season 3! Anyhoo, I should get back to my thesis and how I plan on saving the world through Neil Gaiman texts 😉

Stay inspired…lock and serve your warrants Killjoys-style and remember to look out for the small things in life. And do let me know what you are reading!

Via heartfeltquotes blog.