Sunday, 26 October 2014

Autumn Dreaming: a Sunday Shoe Story

I

O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being,
Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,

Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,
Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou,
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed

The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low,
Each like a corpse within its grave, until
Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow

Her clarion o’er the dreaming earth, and fill
(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)
With living hues and odours plain and hill:

Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;
Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh hear!


II

Thou on whose stream, mid the steep sky’s commotion,
Loose clouds like earth’s decaying leaves are shed,
Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean,

Angels of rain and lightning: there are spread
On the blue surface of thine aëry surge,
Like the bright hair uplifted from the head

Of some fierce Maenad, even from the dim verge
Of the horizon to the zenith’s height,
The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge

Of the dying year, to which this closing night
Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre,
Vaulted with all thy congregated might

Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere
Black rain, and fire, and hail will burst: oh hear!


III

Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams
The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,
Lull’d by the coil of his crystàlline streams,

Beside a pumice isle in Baiae’s bay,
And saw in sleep old palaces and towers
Quivering within the wave’s intenser day,

All overgrown with azure moss and flowers
So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou
For whose path the Atlantic’s level powers

Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below
The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear
The sapless foliage of the ocean, know

Thy voice, and suddenly grow gray with fear,
And tremble and despoil themselves: oh hear!


IV

If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;
If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;
A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share

The impulse of thy strength, only less free
Than thou, O uncontrollable! If even
I were as in my boyhood, and could be

The comrade of thy wanderings over Heaven,
As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed
Scarce seem’d a vision; I would ne’er have striven

As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.
Oh, lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!
I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!

A heavy weight of hours has chain’d and bow’d
One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud.


V

Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:
What if my leaves are falling like its own!
The tumult of thy mighty harmonies

Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone,
Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,
My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!

Drive my dead thoughts over the universe
Like wither’d leaves to quicken a new birth!
And, by the incantation of this verse,

Scatter, as from an unextinguish’d hearth
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
Be through my lips to unawaken’d earth

The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,

If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

~ Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ode to the West Wind
Converse Chuck Taylor All-Star Hightops in Red Tartan; Silver jeans

Tuesday, 14 October 2014

What Happens in Vegas...

Sorry kids, I totally missed last week’s post, but I have a good excuse! I was in Las Vegas with my BFF, and decided that shopping-adventuring-being weird was more important than blog-writing. #Priorities!

It’s hard to put Las Vegas into words, but over the last week I’ve tried. Kind of successfully… I’ve described it as “full of fake trees” (palm trees aren’t real trees to this Canadian), “so hot it made me sick” (in reference to the temperature change going into a/c-ed stores), “full of temptation" (I mean the Dior, YSL, and Louboutin boutiques), and my personal favourite “like walking around in a cloud of cancer” (in reference to the smoke anywhere you want rule). 

Surprisingly, once I got over being travel sick on the first day, I had a lot of fun. Lots of shopping, lots of sights to see, and lots of unusual people to be seen. More surprisingly, I only had to get cranky with one pushy club promoter. (He should know better than to repeat “Excuse me girls” over and over, as he will be told that he is in fact excused). For all the fun that I had though, I don’t think that I’ll go back for a long time; there are just too many places in the world that I haven’t been to yet (*cough* everywhere in Europe), so I’ll cross a good bunch of those off my list before I bother to go back to the City of Sin. 

Waking up in Vegas

You can't go to Vegas without seeing a Cirque du Soleil show.
We saw The Beatles Love at the Mirage!

Tigers and lions and dolphins, oh my!
(Siegfried & Roy's Secret Garden & Dolphin Habitat)

Our hotel is very, very tall... And some people bungee jump off of it
(The Stratosphere)

We gambled a total of $4 while waiting for our table at 9 Fine Irishmen

Tears were shed... But our wallets stayed closed
(Crystals at Aria)

Those are just a sample of the many many many photos that I took during the trip, and if you’re so inclined to see the rest click the link RIGHT HERE :)