I babysat my sister’s brood recently. The sisterly offspring currently numbers two; the Niece and Tiny. They were both overly excited, the Niece especially due to my pretty, red nail polish (High Roller by China Glaze, highly recommended for impressing little girls).
Tiny is going to be three this summer and he loves cars. Tenderly. He puts them to bed and tucks them in and makes them kiss each other. True love, if you ever saw it. Cars is his fave movie of course, and Lightning McQueen is his absolute hero. He has two McQueens, one big that he calls “Mommy McQueen” and one small that he calls “Tiny McQueen.” They are the light and air of his existence. He can’t sleep, eat or brush his teeth unless they’re both there.
Anyway, after a few hours of aunterly storytelling, child tossing and other exciting adventures, Tiny crawled onto my lap and yanked my hair to attract my attention. Looking me deeply the in the eyes, he said with great sincerity: “You are just like Lightning McQueen!”
I mean, whew. Have you ever had a better compliment?
Chess is often used as a shortcut to showing that someone is smart in novels. Like the flighty heroine or rakish hero – putting them in front of a black and white board and having them whup ass is a very convenient and simple way of showing that there’s more to this Duke of Slut than just hot buns enclosed in a pair of smexy angsty pants. He’s smart with a capital ‘S’ as well, because, eh… I guess we all know that smart people like shuffling bishops across squares. Or something.
If this sounds like sour grapes, it totes is. I suck at chess. Always have.
When I was a child, my father would sometimes play chess with me on Sunday mornings. This was for a very brief time, you see, because he soon grew tired of it. I was an impossible opponent because I simply refused to grasp the rules.
See, I liked horses. The knights were little horses. Ergo, I did everything to conquer dad’s knights and everything to preserve my own. When I had all four of them, I considered myself a winner. That whole check mate business – I couldn’t be bothered with that. I just sat down to play with the all pretty horses, ignoring the board.
Today I can’t even be bothered to care about the horses. I suppose I’m a lost cause. Please tell me I’m not the only one.
Tuesday was one of those days.
To kick it off, I had forgotten to turn on the alarm so I woke up an hour too late, which also meant I didn’t have time to style my hair, which in turn meant I spent the day looking like Edward Scissorhands (or rather, Edward Scissorhands on a bad hairday).
It went downhill from there. Everything that could go wrong did. You know, just barely missing the train, banging your knee on your desk, having the printer refusing to cooperate. Etcetera.
One of those days.
So, getting home that night, I figured I had earned a nice dinner, just to make up for all the bad things that had happened. I prepared a very nice meal and put the potatoes in the oven. Then I brought a glass of red wine (that was how bad my day had been) and sat down on the couch to write.
That’s when the phone rang.
In my surprise, I jumped, sending the wine flying all over my white carpet. It now looks like I’ve performed some sort of peculiar ceremony, involving the ritual decapitation of a goat, right smack in my living room. At least, seeing that, one will hope it was a goat and not a small child.
The phone call was of course one I had dreaded that forced me to put the writing aside and do something I’d been putting off for ever (note to self: never again try to convince elderly ladies that it is fine to send email addresses in emails, because apparently, they know better than that and your empirical data will not make them change their minds). Anyway, once that was out of the way, I went to get my dinner.
That’s when the oven door came apart in my hands.
I’m not kidding. It did. The handle came off and the glass pane fell off and there were screws and thingymahbobs everywhere. I just stood there, like an idiot, resigning myself to the idea that I might have to get a new stove.
And that, my dear friends, is when I gave up. The day was meant to be absolute sh*te. Nothing I could do would ever change that. So I confess I didn’t write that night (which was just as well as the WIP would likely have exploded if I had). I just curled up on the couch and watched Van Helsing and know what? I put it up as research, because if you can’t do that, what’s the point of being a writer? You might as well get a hobby cleaning pipes if you’re not going to let yourself get away with watching Hugh Jackman and calling it work every now and then.
So, how’s your week going?
Ten bucks says you don’t know this flag. You don’t, do you? But you may be excused, as it’s actually not the flag of any existing country, but the Sami nation.
Now, cue the question – what the heck are the Sami and why do you prattle about them suddenly?
Well, to answer the first question, the Sami are an indigenous people of northern Europe inhabiting northern Sweden, Norway, Finland and the Kola Peninsula of Russia. This area is called Sápmi, which means Sami land (kinda). Their traditional languages are the Sami languages, which are classified as members of the Finno-Lappic group of the Uralic language family. Traditionally, they’ve been semi-nomadic hunters, fishermen and sheep-herders, but they are most famous for keeping herds of reindeer.
Picture of Sami family, around 1900
And why I prattle about them? Well, today is Feb 6, which is the Sami national day. And the reason I care is because I am one – or at least my ancestors were. Personally, I don’t own a single reindeer, nor even a gákti, which is the traditional clothing of the Sami. But today, I still feel vaguely proud that my people survived years of persecution – times when they were killed for executing their traditional shamanic religion or when they couldn’t use their own language or practice joik, the traditional music. So I’d just like to give my brethren (and sisters) a shout out today.
Finally, a sample of joik – Mari Boine’s classic Gula Gula
*In case you wonder what that means, it’s “hold this reindeer” in one Sami dialect. Always a useful phrase to know, that…
I’ve said it before – I’ve been neglecting this blog. Why? I think the problem is that I can’t find what to do with it.
It’s not that I don’t like blogging. I do. I’ve done it before with great results (that is, if you consider riling up young men with a preference for expander ear rings who like music with -core in it, a success) I think the problem is that I don’t know what I want this to be – am I to talk about writing? My writing? Writing in general? About books?
Or should I talk about me?
Here’s the thing – I’m not very focused. I’m all over the place; writing, me, books, music… I chatter. It’s who I am. I suppose I could press myself into the mold of some other writer, but guess what? I’m not some other writer. I’m me.
In Booklife, Jeff VanderMeer says that he’s seen lots of people trying to start a new blog and to turn it into their vision, only to see how slowly, it returns to the writer’s usual style. I think that’s true. Besides, either you like me or you read someone else’s blog. I have nothing to promote, no advice to dispense and no real agenda. I’m nobody. Just me.
I’m a charming, somewhat over-intellectualizing, music-loving geek who writes books with girls, ghouls and gizmos in them, and I don’t think I can pretend to be anything else. Actually, I don’t even want to be anything else.
So here’s what. I want to find out what my voice is and what I want to use this for. I’ll experiment a little. Try writing about my writing, about the fascinating facts I stumble upon while researching. Maybe I’ll post cute videos and generally chatter about musings on life, books and whatever strikes my fancy. If you want to give me feedback, like tell me I’m boring or funny or interesting, do. Otherwise, I’ll just prattle on anyway.
So grab a cup of coffee, huddle up by the fire and let’s chat!
This is Captain Insomnia. She lives under my bed and quite regularly kicks my butt. She’s sly about it – she doesn’t barge out and yell ‘kazaam!’ She sneaks up on me – subtly, slowly. And the ‘paow!’ No sleep ’til Brooklyn (which I live nowhere near).
It sucks. I mean, I’m more or less used to it, but let me tell you, operating on three hours of sleep is no fun experience. So I’m looking for weapons to help me counter the almost-lethal attacks of Captain Insomnia.
Do you have any tips on how to battle Insomnia?
picture made here
I’ll be the girl:
1. Listening to Dillinger Escape Plan on my iPhone
2. Reading Amanda Palmer’s twitters on my iPhone
3. Googling James Stuart on my iPhone so I can gawk at his wonderful hair.
4. Reading the memoirs of the Duke de Saint-Simon, also on my iPhone
5. Texting my bff about ordering a new MacBook
Let’s face it. I am a captive of the Apple empire and loving it.
Everyone is afraid of failure. It’s a common trait all humans share. There are, however, different ways of dealing with the fear. Some people just get over it and toddle along just fine, but most people employ one of two possible strategies – preparation or avoidance. The first strategy is risky and painful, but it still has one major advantage over the other – it actually allows you to succeed. You may fail too, it’s true, but at least it gives you a chance at success. It’s like winning the lottery – buying a ticket doesn’t mean you’ll win, but not buying it? You can be pretty darn sure you’re not winning jack.
There is a poem I love by Hannah Szenes. If you don’t know her, she was a young Jewish girl who volunteered to do espionage work during WWII. She was caught and tortured and finally executed. She was a poet, and she wrote the poem I’m thinking about while in prison, awaiting her execution:
- One – two – three… eight feet long
- Two strides across, the rest is dark…
- Life is a fleeting question mark
- One – two – three… maybe another week.
- Or the next month may still find me here,
- But death, I feel is very near.
- I could have been 23 next July
- I gambled on what mattered most, the dice were cast. I lost.
Once upon a time, when I was going through a very rough patch in my life and regretting some very fundamental choices I’d made, I asked myself if I’d wasted years of my life because of them. Then I remembered this poem. And I realized something: you never know what is going to happen. You can’t control everything. You may win or you may lose, no matter what you gamble on. The only thing you can control is what you do. And if you look at it that way, isn’t it pretty obvious that all you can really do is ask yourself what would make it all worthwhile if you succeeded? And that you have to close your eyes and go for it?
Once I realized that, I knew that I could never have made any other choices that the ones I did. Sure, I’d lost but at least I could look back at my choices and say: I gambled on what mattered most. How then could I have regrets?
All this leads up to my one simple promise for 2010: I will go for it.
I will be brave enough to reach for what I want, what really matters to me, and I won’t sabotage things for myself by asking ‘what if’ or worrying about failure. I’ll gamble. And if I fail, so be it. In one year’s time I’ll have one less year to live anyway so I might as well make the most of the time I have.
Picture by: pfala
I don’t think I’m alone in having experienced a little snow lately, am I? Seems large parts of the world are snowed in at the moment. Right now, a few days before Christmas, it’s pretty cozy. The kids are playing around in it, making snowmen, and the neighbor’s dog gets an apoplectic fit of happiness every time he comes out and OMG, it’s SNOW out!*
I’m less enthusiastic. Besides liking the idea of having a white Christmas, the snow is just there for me. It’s not something I think about. But I did the other day – I stepped out of the door and thought: “Oh, the temperature’s dropped.” It wasn’t because I was freezing, because it actually felt warmer than the day before as the wind had stilled. No, it was the snow. I stepped on it, and I could tell from the sound and texture of it that it was colder than the day before.
That gave me pause. I never reflected on it before, but when I thought about I realized that I can mostly tell the temperature within a degree or two just from the feeling of the snow. I know the heavy, wet snow when it’s getting warmer. I know the fine, dusty feeling of newly fallen snow. And I know exactly how cold it is when you start getting those “knirp-knirp” noises when you walk.
There’s more. I know how a particular sort of white skies means snow, and lots of it. I can smell snow in the air before it falls – that sharp, clean, almost electric smell that always heralds its arrival. And I know how ice sounds when it’s safe to walk on it, and what sort of creaking means you need to watch out.
I know all of those things, and I never reflected on it. They come so naturally to me that I never even noticed them. But they’re not instinctive. I learned them. Someone from Kairo or Bangkok or even Rome wouldn’t know them.
They don’t make me unique, but they are part of the very many tiny things that make me me. Even more, they’re part of a sensorial world that I can describe and make come alive for those who don’t know them. I can write snow.
Hm. I wonder how many other things I know that I’m not aware of?
*It’s one of the nice thing about being a dog, getting all these great surprises. Like having your Mommy return to you with bags with cans of dog food AGAIN instead of having abandoned you to dying alone and unloved like you had resigned yourself to after she left twenty minutes ago.
I got this silly mail called SEE WHO YOUR ROLE MODEL IS a while back. It contained the following instructions:
Grab a calculator.
Choose your favorite number between 1-9.
Multiply it by 3.
Add 3 and mulitply it by 3 again.
You now have a number consisting of 2 or 3 numbers. Add them and see who your role model is, using the list below.
1. Einstein
2. Nelson Mandela
3. Abraham Lincoln
4. Helen Keller
5. Bill Gates
6. Gandhi
7. George Clooney
8. Thomas Edison
9. *the name of the person sending the mail*
10. Abraham Lincoln
And yeah, of course I got 9. Haha. So I put in my own name and sent it to my older sister. Less than five minutes later she replied:
“It was kinda funny, but I’m embarrassed because it took me several minutes to figure out how come ((X*3)+3)*3=X*9+9=(X+1)*9 always yields a 9.”
Right.