the cycle of life & new forest boots

I am hopelessly romantic for the trees that once bore leaves and berries, for now they appear naked with the same amount of nakedness I have when standing without a coat. I admire them. I learn from them. I could never forget the shiny colors they wear when the weather was at its best. Trees are like people. No matter how hard you work to keep yourself from feeling naked or without the safety of pleasant things like fruit or colors, you still have to be bare sometimes. This is the cycle of life. Our hair it grows, our hair it falls out, our kneecaps develop so we can run, then time changes us and soon our kneecaps don't bend the way they used to, soon we cannot run like we want to. This is the cycle of life. The trees are green and food to the hummingbirds and ladybugs, but then they are not. You blink without choosing to, and when you open your eyes again, the view is not what you thought it was. Where there used to be home, there is a for sale sign. This is the cycle of life.

We can have names for it. We can curse it. We can wish it away, but nothing can stop time from wearing sneakers and riding runaway cars. We can sit at a window thinking of somebody, but only when we speak to them, will they know. This is the cycle of life. You wake up one morning crying because you don't want to be thirteen anymore, you feel more like twenty, you want adult responsibilities, you want to drive across the mountain highways like you read in some book and you want to drink spiked soda from a bottle. When the wind whispers into your hair, you feel alive, but then you remember how your mom used to wake you at thirteen for school, and although at the time it troubled you to rise so early and sit in a classroom, now you wish you could experience it again because of you, because of your mom, because you want nothing more than for time to take off its sneakers. This is the cycle of life. 

There used to be an old man who sat at a bar where I sang sometimes. He had wrinkles deep as sea water and although only a few words ever came out of his mouth, when he did talk, I tried my best to understand him. He sat there with a cup in hand whether the people around him were eating lunchtime sandwiches or the kitchen had closed. I often tried to imagine what he felt like before the wrinkles formed, did he dream a bright dream? Did he ever go fishing or look at the pine trees that grow outside of the city? What did he want more than anything in life? Did he ever get it? Where will I be when that much time has passed? Last I heard, he fell down a flight of stairs and nobody found him for three days. It is a sad thought, one that feels as cold as December's coldest winter. To imagine a baby being born just like me, learning to walk, talk, stick out its tongue and one day, the heart does not beat and yet the world goes on with only memories made of the living. More babies are born, more mothers are made, and we'll keep riding the train not knowing when it will stop.

This is the cycle of life.

I was recently gifted a pair of Dr Marten boots that are nothing like the other boots I wear. I'm so used to lace ups and ones that meet at my knees, but these green suede ones have me singing 'yeah yeah yeah let's go to the forest or town without having to stop to tie them up fifteen hundred times like my other boots.' They are also incredibly comfy and warm — it's a lot like walking through my own little fireplace which is needed if I am to survive a Canadian winter.

outfit details: Chicwish jacket, Union Jack shoes, topshop hat

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