Masooma Kulsoom

London… One of the biggest and busiest cities in the world. Every breath of the city, every heartbeat is filled with speed. People are always in a hurry in this city, in a hurry to leave home, in a hurry to get to work, in a hurry to start the day. Always in a hurry to be one step ahead of life. Racing against time has become a habit for all of us. In this fast-paced world, one place that allows us to escape this hectic, chaotic life are books. Where do you find them? Libraries? As soon as one steps their foot in the library, they are in a new world. Walking towards a library allows a person to walk through their own life, their own moments and their journey. Stepping into a library turns that single journey into many different treks of others past, present, future and mind. But one book that looks at many different minds and how they work is ‘The Power of Habit’.

‘The Power of Habit’ is a book by Charles Duhigg. It’s a book about how habits form and how to change them. The book is split into three sections ‘The Habits of Individuals’, ‘The Habits of Organisations’ and the last is ‘The Habits of Societies’. One thing that we usually don’t recognise but we know is there is what Duhigg calls ‘The Habit Loop’. Which is broken down into three step process that is basically that habits are triggered by a ‘cue’, which then leads into a ‘routine’ and then the routine ultimately calls in a for a ‘reward’. Three lessons learnt from this book are:
1. Habits are delicate things, they don’t trigger unless the cue triggers them, so if you don’t expose yourself to a cue, you’re not going to form a habit. This is important for both good habits and bad habits. You need to build cues that trigger good habits and you want to try and avoid the cues that trigger the bad ones.

2. The brain receives a dopamine spike as a response to the reward when a person is in their initial stages of forming a habit but as the habit gets stronger, the dopamine spike in the brain happens right after the cue is triggered in anticipation of the reward. Duhigg calls this ‘Craving’ and classes it as the fourth component of ‘The Habit Loop’.

3. Some habits once built have the power to help people form other habits. They do this by helping people create ‘small wins’, in their lives like the ‘reward’ in ‘The Habit Loop’. These ‘small wins’ motivates people and creates a structure for building new habits. These habits are classified as ‘Keystone Habits’

Overall, reading this book made me realise that there’s so much to every little thing. I would’ve never thought that a little thing such as a cue can help you form a habit or break out of one. This book taught me that forming a habit or breaking out of one can be so easy and complex at the same time, all you’ve got to do is dig down deep to find that little cue.

Olivia Lambrou

It seems everywhere we turn there’s a new crime drama, whether it’s a documentary, TV drama, podcast, novel, you name it and I promise you they’ll have it. A drama dedicated to crime is around every corner and we can’t get enough of it. We’re intrigued by the works of a serial killer and the thoughts that drives their actions. Netflix’s latest documentaries Don’t F*ck With Cats and Killer Inside: The mind of Aaron Hernandez contribute highly to the rising rates of true crime drama. Both documentaries were listed in Netflix’s top ten in the UK, and I can admit I watched and loved both of them. This kind of popularity raises the question: why are we so obsessed with true crime?

1. Women fear crime
The Sony Crime Channel viewers are mostly women and psychologists have found that women prefer crime drama more than men. Experts have suggested that our interest in crime exists around fear and our need to feel prepared. Knowledge is power, true crime drama gives us an opportunity to understand crime and we find comfort in confronting our fear. It’s like a vaccination, we need to be treated with immunity against the disease. It gives us a sense of protection from the monsters.

2. Fascination with evil
Crime dramas allow us a glance into the minds of people who commit the most gruesome and inhumane acts. Psychologists have stated there’s always been a human fascination with good versus evil, and true crime embodies our obsession. We want to know what makes a serial killer a serial killer, what feeds their sickness and how it all began. We enjoy watching the killers get caught and how good conquers evil.

3. Compassion
Most of the time we hear about the victims and we wonder, that could have been me. We feel compassionate for the victims and their families. We have an innate desire to empathize with other human beings and one of the basic reasons we enjoy true crime is to know how and why killers commit these extreme crimes. This allows us to understand the monster and their purpose, giving us the chance to sympathize for what caused them to become who they are.

4. Guilty pleasure
Psychologists have proposed our obsession revolves around thrill seeking, the same thrill seeking we feel when we ride a rollercoaster, go sky diving or bungee jumping. We have a fixation for violence and disaster, even though the acts of a serial killer may be horrible, we enjoy the guilty pleasure we feel from tragedies and we can’t take our eyes off it.

Our complex obsession with serial killers is continuously growing, but its safe to say there’s nothing concerning about this interest. We’re still normal, even if we are fascinated by evil. If you’re obsessed with true crime it does not make you likely to become a serial killer. You don’t need to worry, you’re perfectly ordinary.

by Alisha Taylor

In the age of Love Island and First Dates, it’s undeniable that we live in a couple-centric society. With the big V-Day itself rapidly approaching, it can be hard to get through the romantic season unscathed as a single individual. That’s why I’ve compiled 5 of my personal favourite anti-Love poems, for an alternative take on St. Valentine’s Day!

1. A Pity, We Were Such A Good Invention
By Yehuda Amichai (Translated by Assia Gutmann)

They amputated
Your thighs off my hips.
As far as I’m concerned
They are all surgeons. All of them.

They dismantle us
Each from the other.
As far as I’m concerned
They are all engineers. All of them.

A pity. We were such a good
And loving invention.
An aeroplane made from a man and wife.
Wings and everything.
We hovered a little above the earth.

We even flew a little.

Amichai’s beautiful poem, ‘A Pity, We Were Such A Good Invention’, perfectly encapsulates a feeling that I’m sure is familiar to most people; helplessness. The use of specialist language, i.e. ‘surgeons’ and ‘engineers’, is far-removed from what we would typically expect from a break-up poem, choosing a more practical outlook on the relationship’s shortcomings, rather than a mushy outpour of heartbreak.

2. Oh God
By Michelle Tea

spilling water from my back,
you call and i come.
that exhausted walk to reach you
breathless and no i didn’t run
to see you, i’ve been smoking
too much, same thing.

another awkward hug in the car
as my face smashes your cheek
that i can feel it leaving now
is the saddest, a beautiful eruption
you could have picked it off the tree
and chowed

but you weren’t hungry.
feeling it dying away all day
much worse than the straining
against the leash, another gorgeous
thing that should not have happened,
gone again.

Michelle Tea’s aptly-named ‘Oh God’ relates to anyone who has been the person putting 100% into their relationship, whilst the other person struggles to put in 1%. She presents the image of a lover who is desperately clinging on to a partner that has lost interest, which is a painful situation that is difficult to portray.
3. Symptom Recital
By Dorothy Parker

I do not like my state of mind;
I’m bitter, querulous, unkind.
I hate my legs, I hate my hands,
I do not yearn for lovelier lands.
I dread the dawn’s recurrent light;
I hate to go to bed at night.
I snoot at simple, earnest folk.
I cannot take the gentlest joke.
I find no peace in paint or type.
My world is but a lot of tripe.
I’m disillusioned, empty-breasted.
For what I think, I’d be arrested.
I am not sick, I am not well.
My quondam dreams are shot to hell.
My soul is crushed, my spirit sore;
I do not like me any more.
I cavil, quarrel, grumble, grouse.
I ponder on the narrow house.
I shudder at the thought of men….
I’m due to fall in love again

Unlike the other two poems so far, Parker’s ‘Symptom Recital’ takes a slightly more optimistic approach, with the speaker concluding that they’re ‘due to fall in love again’, rather than swearing off relationships forever.

4. I Feel Horrible. She Doesn’t
By Richard Brautigan

I feel horrible. She doesn’t
love me and I wander around
the house like a sewing machine
that’s just finished sewing
a turd to a garbage can lid.

Whilst Brautigan’s ‘I Feel Horrible. She Doesn’t’ may be the shortest poem on the list, it certainly still manages to pack a punch. The use of a ‘sewing machine that’s just finished sewing’ invokes such a clear image of someone who has lost their function in life. The poem’s title is a stroke of genius, also.

5. The One Thing I Asked You Not To Do
By Alisha Taylor

Trust weighs
The volumetric mass of the Earth

Three pair of un-paired socks
a half-eaten Cadbury’s bar

You can measure it in tears
Snake eggs, road sweepers

Fifty-two pairs of earrings
or just one, not mine

Some days, it’s an entire large pizza
With three sides, garlic bread
Other days, it’s barely even a slice

Sometimes, it becomes the entirety of Hackney
or Vauxhall
then, it’s less than the 6×9 room we share

It could be twenty-two missed phone calls
Four shots of tequila, a pint of Peroni

The intake of breath
directly before you told me lie after lie

The smell of perfume
The taste of a kiss on your lips
and maybe something else

You, sitting on the bathroom floor
Me, on the toilet seat

the sum of unspoken words
between us

For the final poem on this list, I’ve chosen to include one of my own, (sorry!). This poem is modelled on the great poet Helen Mort, who wrote an incredible poem called ‘Scale’. I instantly fell in love with the piece and chose to write my own interpretation of the weight of trust.

Finally, to everyone who is in love this Valentine’s Day; please spare a thought for those who Cupid didn’t think to bless this year! I hope you’ve enjoyed this little anti-romantic collection I’ve pulled together here. Just remember: Valentine’s Day is nothing more than corporate greed taking on a sappy loving face, anyway!