Wednesday, 18 July 2012

You are my sunshine

I have this compartment in the relationship-y bit of my brain, made up of a special category of people called 'the sunshine people'. It's easy to spot a sunshine person but hard to describe why; because it's not that they're always happy, or smiling (sometimes sun goes behind the clouds y'know) but there is something inherently organic, sweet, nurturing, and kind about them. They're the kind of people who make hand gestures like Penny Lane in Almost Famous, spreading their fingers out like flowers, or smile at nothing in particular. They listen to pop music and Nick Cave too and dance all arms and legs everywhere, unselfconscious and sweaty and sometimes you blink and it looks like they're flying or something. You know what, they are the most content beings on this earth. 


One of the saddest things in life, I've found, is when one of the sunshine people are not actually from the sunshine land. Or they once were, and now, for whatever reason, aren't. The mother of someone close to me was attacked last year, and I won't ever forget the way, when he first told me, he furrowed his brow a little, and smiled one of those awfully sad smiles and said 'She's not the same.' 


And even just the other night, I met someone who I could have sworn was made of sunshine and the song 'I Wanna Be Your Lover' by Prince, but later found out from those who knew her well that she was not, that her life was hard and complex, and so much worry had been spent on her - and it made me so sad! To watch her bounce away like a child and to realise that mostly, no one is ever as bright with the lights turned on. 


I've never been one of the sunshine people (too nervous for that). So I do wonder what it must be like over in sunshine land...


I do believe, also, with the pretty hope of someone who has not lived long enough to know otherwise, that it would be possible to return to sunshine land, should something happen that is awful enough to take you away from there. 


Similarly I guess I believe in the immigration of the not-so-sunshine-y people to the sunshine land. I don't know why I think that it's such a simple and straightforward place to return to and to come home to, but I figure that it kind of has to be. I don't know. 



“I had no reason to be over optimistic,
But somehow when you smiled
I could brave bad weather”

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3 comments:

  1. grace18 July 2012 at 06:00

    you know, the thing i've noticed about people like that, or sunshine people, is that try as you might, it's never as black and white as it seems.

    the sweetest and kindest and most giving people tend to be those that struggle the most. but then again, what makes someone's struggle bigger than someone else's? rainer maria rilke sums it up nicely i think:

    "Do not assume that she who seeks to comfort you now, lives untroubled among the simple and quiet words that sometimes do you good. Her life may also have much sadness and difficulty, that remains far beyond yours. Were it otherwise, she would never have been able to find these words."

    but at the same time whilst having that opinion, i'd much rather live in relatively simple naivety and snuggle up in bed after a supper of milk and chocolate chip cookies and believe that happy people are from happy land and that's that.

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  2. Anonymous19 July 2012 at 00:29

    The white text can be difficult to read on the background, not the best idea if you're planning on writing a lot. Put something behind the text or make the background darker, like this: http://i.imgur.com/fhpZy.jpg

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  3. Eilish Gilligan19 July 2012 at 02:16

    hey there, thankyou, kind stranger! i will take you up on that dark background! xx

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