As it's just about the anniversary of my reading my first proper book (Jane Eyre, I was not quite 5 and a half and just a smidge precocious) I thought I'd do a little blog about reading.
I love Reading. Have I ever told you that? It's my number one hobby - no wait, it's more than a hobby. It's so much a part of me and who I am, that it's more like a part of my DNA than a thing I do. I have to do it, like breathing, to stay alive. It was and is my first love. I'll be reading until my eyes stop working or I die. In the case of the former, then I'll learn me some braille and get that shit on! In the case of the latter, I won't be around to mind much. I'll be too busy being stardust. I'll have a go at reading pretty much anything. Noir, SF/F, Romance, Horror, Biographies, Religion, Philosophy, Art, whatever. It's all reading to me and I need it in my brainpan. I want it all. That said, I have finally learned to put something down when it's just not doing it for me. You know, the times when you look at a book that's been sitting there for a week and you feel like your fingers will snap off from its sheer weighty not-for-youness if you so much as try to pick it up? Some books are just like that for me, but I used to make myself finish them regardless. Now, however, I'm not so sure there's enough time left for me to even get through all the books that excite the shit out of me, so why would I bang my head on that brick wall of book just because I "should finish it" - yikes, I can hear my mum's voice saying it to me! She's the Evil Queen when it comes to books; that woman cannot let a book go unfinished. She's a word sucking machine (and that's just one more reason why I love her) I'll give a book a fair go, but I'm not finishing it if it looks like it'll finish me first.
As with any great love, however, there are problems. Books make me panic. I have a lot of books. I mean A LOT - I confess that I tend to judge my friends on their attitudes to reading - tell me you don't read and I'd really rather you left me in peace. Sometimes I look at them, the books not the philistines, and I get palpitations. What if I can't get through them all? What I've read in my 33 year reading history is still only the tip of the iceberg anyway, so what if I can't finish the ton I have here in my apartment and can never even get onto the next step of "everything else"? The panic flutters in my tummy like exam morning anxiety and I know I'm going to fail. I can't read everything. No way ... but then that little voice, the one that so often gets me into trouble, pipes up. "No," it says, all sweetness, " but you can try". And so it goes.
Then there are other times, when I look around my rooms (there are books in every one, except the bathroom after a most unfortunate incident) and think, "this is it. This is how life is supposed to be. For me. Look at them all. I'm going to read that one, the cheeky minx, and you can smile at me all you like over there, you big black spined gorgeous, because you know I'm not going to miss out on you either."
I dream about books, I smell them, flick through their pages, touch them with my fingertips and sigh.
This is why I spend the majority of time on my own.
Monday, 30 January 2012
Monday, 16 January 2012
Skiiing - an aside
At the ripe old age of 38 and after living in Switzerland for nearly 6 years, I went skiiing for the first time yesterday. I only fell over twice, a result, but I have to confess that at times in the first hour or so, I would happily have poked the ski poles where the sun does not always make itself known and stomped off in a huff. But I had forgotten how stubborn I can be when it comes to these things and kept on going. I wasn't ready to ski on the slopes in the afternoon (Yates gave me the stern face before telling everyone no, I should say) so I spent an hour soaking in the sun in the freezing cold on top of a mountain in the middle of the Alps. It was a beautiful thing. I was so tired when I got home that I only managed to make it through twenty minutes of Sherlock before dribbling a sufficient amount to wake me up and send me off up the little wooden hill.
I woke up this morning to find that my chest had clearly been stamped on by a giant. It soon became apparent that I was never going to be able to sit myself up again because my arms appeared to have been subject to the same gigantic mistreatment. The same story sung itself from almost every inch of my screaming flesh, except the bottom of my feet which are peachy. All in all, it was brilliant! One of the best feelings I've woken up to for years. It's easing off now, stretching exercises seemed demented but boy were they worth it. The serotonin stimulated by my day of sweating, swearing, skiiing and sunbathing has left me slightly high and very determined. I'm going to run later, in training now donchaknooo, and I'm going skiing again at the end of the week. In the meantime, I'm reading some skiiing advice and watching videos, because I'm going to become a proficient skier, baby. Oh yes indeed. BOOM!
I woke up this morning to find that my chest had clearly been stamped on by a giant. It soon became apparent that I was never going to be able to sit myself up again because my arms appeared to have been subject to the same gigantic mistreatment. The same story sung itself from almost every inch of my screaming flesh, except the bottom of my feet which are peachy. All in all, it was brilliant! One of the best feelings I've woken up to for years. It's easing off now, stretching exercises seemed demented but boy were they worth it. The serotonin stimulated by my day of sweating, swearing, skiiing and sunbathing has left me slightly high and very determined. I'm going to run later, in training now donchaknooo, and I'm going skiing again at the end of the week. In the meantime, I'm reading some skiiing advice and watching videos, because I'm going to become a proficient skier, baby. Oh yes indeed. BOOM!
Friday, 13 January 2012
Love is Not All
Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain;
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink
And rise and sink and rise and sink again;
Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath,
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;
Yet many a man is making friends with death
Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.
It well may be that in a difficult hour,
Pinned down by pain and moaning for release,
Or nagged by want past resolution's power,
I might be driven to sell your love for peace,
Or trade the memory of this night for food.
It well may be. I do not think I would.
- Edna St. Vincent Millay
This is my favourite poem. It addresses something that is very important to me; it sets forth an idea of Real Love™ It's not the ridiculous hearts and flowers of impossible expectation, but the kind of love that lasts, grows, strengthens. The kind of love that you don't know you want, or know that you should expect, until you have it. It's flawed, sometimes angry, sometimes confusing, sometimes it is the most tender feeling you will ever know, and it is able to grow because of the very flaws that would make many turn their backs on it.
Love is a funny thing. We all want it (or mostly all) and yet it seems so elusive and delicate that our clammy hands can never quite get hold of it - not without breaking it anyway. To many, it's a dream, a hope, and it often ends in disaster and heartbreak.
Here's my theory. Something smooth and perfect has the tendency to be brittle. Something flawed is often hardier. Love works when you understand that the person you love is not perfect and never will be - and that you yourself are a thing of imperfection should not be ignored. Love is the deal you make, the point where you decide "you know what? I don't care if you X, Y, or Z, I still want to be with you, even though that X,Y or bloody Z keeps coming around like a scheduled train. I can live with it. I have to live with it, otherwise it would mean being without you and that just doesn't sit well with me. Sometimes I do want to cave your skull in with my shoe, but those times pass and when they're gone I remember all the reasons why your skull is beautiful just the way it is. When those jolly old chips are down, I might fight to save myself, I might tread on you to get to the surface or sell you out to make sure I'm okay. It could happen, I'm not perfect. Neither are you. But I do not think I would."
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain;
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink
And rise and sink and rise and sink again;
Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath,
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;
Yet many a man is making friends with death
Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.
It well may be that in a difficult hour,
Pinned down by pain and moaning for release,
Or nagged by want past resolution's power,
I might be driven to sell your love for peace,
Or trade the memory of this night for food.
It well may be. I do not think I would.
- Edna St. Vincent Millay
This is my favourite poem. It addresses something that is very important to me; it sets forth an idea of Real Love™ It's not the ridiculous hearts and flowers of impossible expectation, but the kind of love that lasts, grows, strengthens. The kind of love that you don't know you want, or know that you should expect, until you have it. It's flawed, sometimes angry, sometimes confusing, sometimes it is the most tender feeling you will ever know, and it is able to grow because of the very flaws that would make many turn their backs on it.
Love is a funny thing. We all want it (or mostly all) and yet it seems so elusive and delicate that our clammy hands can never quite get hold of it - not without breaking it anyway. To many, it's a dream, a hope, and it often ends in disaster and heartbreak.
Here's my theory. Something smooth and perfect has the tendency to be brittle. Something flawed is often hardier. Love works when you understand that the person you love is not perfect and never will be - and that you yourself are a thing of imperfection should not be ignored. Love is the deal you make, the point where you decide "you know what? I don't care if you X, Y, or Z, I still want to be with you, even though that X,Y or bloody Z keeps coming around like a scheduled train. I can live with it. I have to live with it, otherwise it would mean being without you and that just doesn't sit well with me. Sometimes I do want to cave your skull in with my shoe, but those times pass and when they're gone I remember all the reasons why your skull is beautiful just the way it is. When those jolly old chips are down, I might fight to save myself, I might tread on you to get to the surface or sell you out to make sure I'm okay. It could happen, I'm not perfect. Neither are you. But I do not think I would."
Shame
It's been a week since I saw it, and I have to say that I'm very glad I did go to see Shame. Cracking acting. Really cracking, from both Fassbender, who's getting all the attention, but also from Carey Mulligan. They both actually "acted" and for the first time in a while I was watching people on the screen, not actors pretending. I hate when you watch a film and you're distracted by who's in it, rather than being taken along with the story or situation. There was none of that pretty tying up of loose ends; McQueen doesn't even try, and that's part of what impressed me - that and that there was no attempt for a bad ending either. Hollywood these days seems to try to establish credibility by replacing a trite happy ending with a "dark" ending ... which ends up being every bit as trite most of the time. In some ways it has a cathartic end, but, on the other hand, one does wonder if this isn't simply how the obviously damaged brother and sister carry on, that they're stuck on this merry-go-round.
It did keep going round in my head, however, that this might have been a much different film if Fassbender's character had been female. It might not have worked with a female protagonist as its reception would certainly have been much different. There likely would have been more than a few "Cor blimey's, she gets her tits out, cracks one off in the toilet every five minutes and goes around nobbing all the time, fnar", and the amount of cellulite on her thighs would have been red circled in every publication with crayons.
Shame is an observation. I can't say that I liked it, but it did stay with me. Made me think. Gads, I might actually have loved it, but I'm still not sure I liked it. Which is a result. A good film doesn't have to be liked. It just has to be watched.
It did keep going round in my head, however, that this might have been a much different film if Fassbender's character had been female. It might not have worked with a female protagonist as its reception would certainly have been much different. There likely would have been more than a few "Cor blimey's, she gets her tits out, cracks one off in the toilet every five minutes and goes around nobbing all the time, fnar", and the amount of cellulite on her thighs would have been red circled in every publication with crayons.
Shame is an observation. I can't say that I liked it, but it did stay with me. Made me think. Gads, I might actually have loved it, but I'm still not sure I liked it. Which is a result. A good film doesn't have to be liked. It just has to be watched.
Wednesday, 23 November 2011
Anne McCaffrey
My heart is heavy. The sad news of Anne McCaffrey's passing was one of those moments you wish never to come. While I can't profess to have read all her work, my mum has and is an enormous fan. So much so that we went along to one of her book signing many moons ago - the kind of thing that is not my mum at all. I've never seen my mum be a fan girl, except for that one time. Mrs McCaffrey was a gracious lady and seemed to take a shine to Mum. She sought us out after the signing and they chatted for ages. It was one of those lovely moments that you don't forget. Mum was so chuffed.
Dragonquest was my favourite Pern book (I had a real thing for F'nor and Brekke) but I think the Crystal Singer books were my favourites. Anne McCaffrey wrote cracking female characters that defied traditional stereotypes. They always felt like real women in extraordinary circumstances rather than weak-wristed bosom-heaving heroines or strident harpies. They could be either or both, or something else entirely. She, amongst others, worked to take Sf/f into new territory in this respect. She was an enormous influence on me as a teenager and was one of the writers that made me want to explore the fantastic and the alien. She was one of those writers that made me believe I could write the things that excited me too, that being a girl did not have to exclude me from the male-dominated world of Sf/f.
"... we build the worlds we wouldn't mind living in. They contain scary things, problems, but also a sense of rightness that makes them alive and makes us want to live there."
Anne McCaffrey wrote worlds that stretched my imagination and that could make my heart pound. She left us a rich legacy and the world is a better place for her having been in it.
Dragonquest was my favourite Pern book (I had a real thing for F'nor and Brekke) but I think the Crystal Singer books were my favourites. Anne McCaffrey wrote cracking female characters that defied traditional stereotypes. They always felt like real women in extraordinary circumstances rather than weak-wristed bosom-heaving heroines or strident harpies. They could be either or both, or something else entirely. She, amongst others, worked to take Sf/f into new territory in this respect. She was an enormous influence on me as a teenager and was one of the writers that made me want to explore the fantastic and the alien. She was one of those writers that made me believe I could write the things that excited me too, that being a girl did not have to exclude me from the male-dominated world of Sf/f.
"... we build the worlds we wouldn't mind living in. They contain scary things, problems, but also a sense of rightness that makes them alive and makes us want to live there."
Anne McCaffrey wrote worlds that stretched my imagination and that could make my heart pound. She left us a rich legacy and the world is a better place for her having been in it.
Wednesday, 2 November 2011
It's been a long time ...
Yes it has. I've been slack lately at most things because my brain has been going a hundred miles an hour with work. There has been writing, there has been the scribbling of notes, there has been the divine lure of whiteboard pens moving impatiently over whiteboard, there has been An Idea! It has been, and still is, glorious. And all it really means is more work! Hurrah!
Also my diet has ... well, not floundered, but been in a kind of stalemate. My "maintenance" period has gone on for nearly two months instead of the usual one and while I'm only a couple of pounds more than I was on my birthday (when the great Grind-To-A-Halt began) I know that I put on half a stone on top of that, but I also lost it again. Pretty quick too, but if I hadn't wallowed in the excuse of "maintenance" where might I be now? I've been using that one to kick myself with for a week or two - "I would have been so much thinner/fitter/healthier/sparklyandnew, if only, if only" and so on. I'm seeing some folks I haven't seen for a while soon and I've been angry at myself for not being better for them to set eyes upon. For having lost focus and, therefore, having lost some of my worth. And then it happened - something else that has been a long time coming - my realisation that I'm not doing any of this for anyone but me. That's the only person I should be doing and can do it for. That, no matter what I do, whether I continue or stay right here, it doesn't matter what anyone else thinks, whether they think I'm fat or thin, bonkers or smart, whatever I do, I do it because it's been making me feel better, it has been improving my life.
I've talked about this kind of thing, this freeing yourself from the shackles of your past, of your present, of your possible futures, of yourself, the dead choking weight of the expectations of others (or your perceived version of them) but I'm not sure I've ever truly realised it for myself. I knew how I should be thinking, but I never felt it deep down inside. Not really. The past few days, the tiny cry of "hot dang! I'm an idiot, what are THEY going to think?" in my head has been getting louder. And then, all of a sudden, it stopped. Just like that - and *poof* so did a fair portion of the anxiety I've carried for years. Maybe it's the benefit of getting older. The realization that time is a-wasting and that means my time, no one else's - so why am I wasting it worrying about Them? The only thing I really have is my life and that fucker's on a countdown to oblivion as it is. Being wrapped up in what people might think of me, in the shadows that I fear, in the million different ass-kicking minutiae that I've let dog me for so long, is fat hairy balls.
Big fat hairy balls.
Pfft. Let them think what they want. Bite me. It's time for this show to get back on the road, but only because I say so. If I fancy a large slice of chocolate cake (vegan, natch) and not running for a week, then that is up to me. As long as it makes me happy. And not that superficial face-tiring grin-toothed happy; I mean the sort of happy that lives deep down inside you, in the place that fuels you.
For most of my life, I've been living under the fog of believing that I'm a fraud, an impostor, a shrill wannabe who is just trying to grab the headlines (figuratively speaking) What bollocks. The sort of thinking that has allowed someone else's childish jealousy stop me living the life I deserve. How can I be a fraud? I'm ME. What else could, should, would I be? It's all I've ever been and all I ever will be. I'm not concerned with tearing down other people and never have been - although I do have a capacity for being a bitch that makes old Peter Parker's spidey-sense look like a spoonful of mashed potato. I simply want to live and have fun doing it if I can. That's all I've ever wanted, but I've let my own insecurity (not to mention stupidity) and other people box me into a kind of atrophy. And the kicker is, they didn't even have to try very bloody hard!
Really, in the end, what else do we have but ourselves? Every day you tear off the calendar is a day less you get to take care of you. So do it now. Stop kicking yourself over shit that doesn't matter, stop letting the shitdickery of others get to you, and try to focus on how fucking unique and wonderful you are. Because you are. I am too. Where's the shame in saying so? No one is perfect and anyone who says they are needs some kind of serious professional help. But you are the most perfect you there is. The only you there is. You might consider yourself a work-in-progress, but that doesn't mean that in this moment you are not valuable, that you are not beautiful, that you are not worthwhile. You are. I am. We are.
Except for you. You ugly.
Also my diet has ... well, not floundered, but been in a kind of stalemate. My "maintenance" period has gone on for nearly two months instead of the usual one and while I'm only a couple of pounds more than I was on my birthday (when the great Grind-To-A-Halt began) I know that I put on half a stone on top of that, but I also lost it again. Pretty quick too, but if I hadn't wallowed in the excuse of "maintenance" where might I be now? I've been using that one to kick myself with for a week or two - "I would have been so much thinner/fitter/healthier/sparklyandnew, if only, if only" and so on. I'm seeing some folks I haven't seen for a while soon and I've been angry at myself for not being better for them to set eyes upon. For having lost focus and, therefore, having lost some of my worth. And then it happened - something else that has been a long time coming - my realisation that I'm not doing any of this for anyone but me. That's the only person I should be doing and can do it for. That, no matter what I do, whether I continue or stay right here, it doesn't matter what anyone else thinks, whether they think I'm fat or thin, bonkers or smart, whatever I do, I do it because it's been making me feel better, it has been improving my life.
I've talked about this kind of thing, this freeing yourself from the shackles of your past, of your present, of your possible futures, of yourself, the dead choking weight of the expectations of others (or your perceived version of them) but I'm not sure I've ever truly realised it for myself. I knew how I should be thinking, but I never felt it deep down inside. Not really. The past few days, the tiny cry of "hot dang! I'm an idiot, what are THEY going to think?" in my head has been getting louder. And then, all of a sudden, it stopped. Just like that - and *poof* so did a fair portion of the anxiety I've carried for years. Maybe it's the benefit of getting older. The realization that time is a-wasting and that means my time, no one else's - so why am I wasting it worrying about Them? The only thing I really have is my life and that fucker's on a countdown to oblivion as it is. Being wrapped up in what people might think of me, in the shadows that I fear, in the million different ass-kicking minutiae that I've let dog me for so long, is fat hairy balls.
Big fat hairy balls.
Pfft. Let them think what they want. Bite me. It's time for this show to get back on the road, but only because I say so. If I fancy a large slice of chocolate cake (vegan, natch) and not running for a week, then that is up to me. As long as it makes me happy. And not that superficial face-tiring grin-toothed happy; I mean the sort of happy that lives deep down inside you, in the place that fuels you.
For most of my life, I've been living under the fog of believing that I'm a fraud, an impostor, a shrill wannabe who is just trying to grab the headlines (figuratively speaking) What bollocks. The sort of thinking that has allowed someone else's childish jealousy stop me living the life I deserve. How can I be a fraud? I'm ME. What else could, should, would I be? It's all I've ever been and all I ever will be. I'm not concerned with tearing down other people and never have been - although I do have a capacity for being a bitch that makes old Peter Parker's spidey-sense look like a spoonful of mashed potato. I simply want to live and have fun doing it if I can. That's all I've ever wanted, but I've let my own insecurity (not to mention stupidity) and other people box me into a kind of atrophy. And the kicker is, they didn't even have to try very bloody hard!
Really, in the end, what else do we have but ourselves? Every day you tear off the calendar is a day less you get to take care of you. So do it now. Stop kicking yourself over shit that doesn't matter, stop letting the shitdickery of others get to you, and try to focus on how fucking unique and wonderful you are. Because you are. I am too. Where's the shame in saying so? No one is perfect and anyone who says they are needs some kind of serious professional help. But you are the most perfect you there is. The only you there is. You might consider yourself a work-in-progress, but that doesn't mean that in this moment you are not valuable, that you are not beautiful, that you are not worthwhile. You are. I am. We are.
Except for you. You ugly.
Friday, 2 September 2011
On Gothic
I wrote the following (very) short piece some while ago for writer Theodora Goss, who asked her blog readers to define "gothic" for her. Gothic fiction has always been my bag, so to speak, and when I remembered that I'd scribbled this, I thought I'd share it so you would see that I sometimes think about things other than the size of my arse or my neuroses.
For me, 'gothic' is that which makes us feel unsettled or uncertain, that seems to take pleasure in wrong footing us or makes us itch to look back over our shoulder so we are sure it's not gaining on us. It’s an artistic representation, in whatever form, of the oppressive shadow of the unknown, or even the unknowable, that dogs the human race. It tantalizes us with its familiarity, making us certain that we are within reach of rational explanations concerning the mysteries it claims, while reminding us that we are woefully ignorant about both the world we exist in and the psychology of our own species. It is a precursor and a cousin to the Romantic idea of the sublime; that indefinable quality which while it beguiles us can also, somehow, threaten us. It makes our heart beat a little faster and although we know we shouldn't lift the curtain or take the candle to explore the dark recesses beyond, we simply cannot help ourselves; it is the war between our rational and instinctive selves. It's the promise or threat of that which is just beyond human reach, the "what if".
I was trying to think of or find something that for me defines the Gothic. I was wracking my brain until I watched a programme on the BBC this evening - someone was on a quest to witness the Aurora Borealis. It occurred to me that the Aurora are something really quite gothic in that they have an entirely rational, scientific explanation and yet they are sublimely "other" and supernatural to us mere mortals. Could a gothic heroine be more trapped in a dark and musty castle than we are on a tiny planet in a forgotten corner of the universe?
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