I have a bizarre habit of writing suicide notes - sometimes just one, directed at everyone, sometimes one for each person in my life. I used to save them but now I tear them up and throw them away.
I wouldn't leave a note. There's nothing to write.

On paradigm shifts

Some of the best things I've ever written, speaking as a narcissist, came out completely unexpectedly. Some of the best features I've managed to incorporate into a text were not intended when I started writing it. Some of the most interesting plotlines or simply word conjunctions were written without prior planning and in contrast to the general intention and direction of the piece of writing.
Although I assume the situation is the same/similar for most people, I find this quite interesting. Is it the sheer act and volume of writing that has to be completed before an illumination, stroke of brilliance, clever juxtaposition comes along, or is it that the act of setting out to write itself that brings about an unexpectedly well written passage? More specifically, do you write to achieve these moments, or do these moments prompt the writing, but simply are not discovered before the writing is initiated?

From school essay experience, sometimes really good conclusions can be achieved in the absence of planning and without particular passion for the book. But from personal writing experience, it's the love you have for the story and the words that bring out a particularly powerful aspect of your language, uncharted by neither linguistics nor psychology. I'd call it the language of love if this phrase wasn't utterly pathetic and overused.
I will call it spinal language - when words you yourself write send shivers down your spine, when you get exhilarated, aroused and depressed by your own sentences, when you become so organically involved in your writing that it stops being writing and becomes a transcendental experience involving not so much creation as it does giving birth to a sequence of words.

About veganism

Did a massive weekly vegan shop yesterday and bought about 20 pounds of fruit and veggies for about £11 - basically an insane amount of amazing home grown food for a stupidly small amount of money. I’m always amazed when people say being privileged or financially well-off is a prerequisite to becoming vegan when clearly tins of beans and veg could hardly get any cheaper. Although I do understand that some people do not have easy access to markets (and especially cheap ones), it’s about sending a message and changing the supply and demand chain wherever and whenever we can. Meat and dairy industries actually have quite small profit margins so even the smallest changes in consumers’ diets - and therefore purchasing power - are registered quickly.

When it comes to boycotting firms that test on animals to stop cruelty against animals, everyone vigorously nods their head in agreement. When it comes to boycotting the meat, dairy, and egg industries to stop cruelty, rape, abuse and exploitation of animals, everyone just kind of shrugs and cries about their right to eat whatever they want.

The murder of sentient beings is not a right. 

flashbacks splashbacks

You know what's really disgusting about memory flashbacks?

The same thing that's so disgusting about bulimia.

You think you're done with something, you got it out of your system, it doesn't matter if the enamel of your teeth is completely worn off, it doesn't matter if everything stings and hurts and aches, you got it out, finally.

But then the splashback hits you in the face.

And your entire day is marked by that mixture of disgusting water slapping you in the face. A cold shower you never even knew you needed.

That's what's so disgusting about memory flashbacks.

random book quote of the day

"Randomness - events occurring unpredictably without apparent cause - has been seized on to rescue the nervous system (or rather our view of it) from being a machine without volition or free will."

- Richard L. Gregory, Eye and Brain

Sometimes I wonder about people's background stories and why they say the things they do the way they do.
I think there's something profoundly sad in the way our lives unfold - it's a closed book with filled pages for one person and the imprint, but absence of a wedding ring for another.
Long sleeves and bitten down nails or plastic-filled lips.
A messy bedroom or a chronically clean kitchen.

Failed intentions and unsaid words or explosions of emotion that leave nothing but dust behind?

We all have stories we don't want to have.

random book quote

"Distorted body images are common and demonstrate that there is a difference between the body image and the body itself. Anorexics experience their bodies as fat when they are on the edge of starvation; people with distorted body images, a condition called "body dysmorphic disorder," can experience a part of their body that is perfectly within the norm as defective."

- N. Doidge: The Brain that Changes Itself