Crying - because I haven't got a clue what I'm doing with my life! No, not really. I'm trying to force myself to go to bed. It's half past eleven here, and I should try to get a proper diurnal rhythm for when I get a job. What are you up to?
I'm making sure my emergency radio is still charged and good to go if I need it and mentally debating on whether I should make tea or coffee or if I should shower first, then make tea/coffee. How about you all?
Halfway through a chapter of writing attempting to figure out how best to articulate what is going to happen next. And Carly it is absolutely natural to feel slowed down in the winter. When I lived in Alaska a lot of people I knew suffered from it.
You don't have a bath-tub? Because then you could just bring some bags with you! Because that is totally how you make tea... Heat the water - shower - make tea?
I have had a terrible cold for four days spent the time in bed. I am a little better now. Actually I just reread comments on my silly "I wasn't". Comments from no one less than @Carly Berg . You are very good. But just now I think I have 15 minutes before I fall asleep. I write all my text on a tablet. So I have already my pyjamas on and can go from writing to sleep in 15 seconds. What I am trying to write now is for the short story contest. At the moment I have three sentences of diauloge. One of them is the actual prompt. So now I only need to write everything before those lines, and everything after. I have three weeks so it's not impossible, just hard. I have coughed so frequently for 3 days that i have sleept very bad. But tonight is going to be better. When I get to little sleep I get stupid. So even resting in bed for 3 days I managed to write 400 words on another story. Tomorrow when I an not stupid I will probably throw away most of them.
My writing partner and I finally decided on the third animal; as each of our three protagonists (three 12 year old girls) have an animal companion they've come by in odd ways, and it was Mabel, a girl who lives with her family on a rustic farm in the countryside that we couldn't come to an agreement on... until now! So it goes, Rosemarie has her one-eyed tomcat she calls Achilles, Adeline keeps a thieving magpie by the name of Josephine, and Mabel will have a mongoose at her side. Mabel's older brother is a sailor who travels the trade routes to distant lands, and upon his return from India after many months away, gives Mabel a critter only a farm girl could love... a mongoose by the name of Shikaaree, which is Hindi for Hunter. An hour or so ago I jotted down the passage below, it's for the 'Campfire Scene'; in which the three girls are getting to know each other and drinking wine and telling stories in the wilderness, as young girls sometimes do. Mabel hunkered down on all fours and crawled a serpentine path toward Shikaaree. She stopped just short of the agitated mongoose and then shot upright on her knees; with hands cupped behind her ears she began to bob and weave and hiss. Her impression of a hooded-cobra that always sent her pet into a rage. Rosemarie and Adeline shared a dumbfounded glance. Who was this girl who behaved like a heathen boy! I am now going to my reward, the one little decadence I allow myself... a warm bath! I'll watch Antiques Roadshow on my little tv, and wonder who the fuck would pay $7,000 for an old flower vase!
@Iain Sparrow I would totally read that. And probably the same guy who spent 14,000$ on John Lennon's broken toilet.
Just logged in. Bad weather has begun and more on the way, so I plan on hunkering down for the night. Also gonna spend some time on the phone with friends who are feeling shittier than myself. Overall it has been a reflective sort of day, - wait that isn't news.
I don't know how many antique shops I've been to in my life, but quite a few... and I never find anything that amazing. Last week I watched an episode of Antiques Roadshow wherein a couple had bought a cheap print of some painting in a nice frame. They just wanted the frame... they took the print out and discovered an oil painting under it by a famous Californian impressionist who did lovely landscapes and seascapes during the early part of last century... the expert on hand appraised it at $30,000! That kind of thing never happens to me. ... I'm now going to take my warm bath.
No, Iain (EDIT: ASCHENDALE!!! Shit, I didn't realize @Iain Sparrow was going to chime in, I was insulting myself, sorry) , you moron:
Agreed & absolutely correct. (you know I am about to become a smart ass here, right ?) But, being straight up as Iain proposed, we would all be repetitive and everybody here would sound the same in being honest and factual, and we can't have that here on a writer's forum. And I am sure that we all feel like we have at least something to say that differs slightly from the god-dam norm, lest we have not been paying attention to the forces that be and which constantly attempt to group us into targets, markets, products and such. Hell, I am sure that a sitting duck thinks its free until the bullet hits, even after it takes flight and is knocked back down to the ground or water. Time for a phone call.
I have two sources, can't find either one, but... Turn of the 2oc, researchers arriving in tiny Pyrenees villages - described residents as literally 'hibernating.' That's from a pop history of France. The other is from my dissertation, this would be a very, very and very long time ago, researchers again - asked Arctic tribespeople what they did in the winter - 'we sit' was the reply...I can' t back it up, just enjoy the imagery, wrapped together all shivering in fur coats. ... I'm editing 40 000 words, hoping to get a grant/deal to take the heat off my back after I walked out the latest hell job, tch. Writing's a cerebral activity, hardly move all day, smelly & happy in my chair counting the bounce of words, madness requires tangible...tangible. Feb 1st is the deadline, then back to the hunt for manual labour. I think so :/
Just finished watching The Killing of a Sacred Deer. Here's my review: So... I had a hunch from the title where this story was going to go, or at least the analogy being made. It's a retelling of Iphigenia in Aulis. I have to be completely honest and state that I don't hold to the school of literary thought that treats classical literature as unquestionably superior, excellent, enlightened, etc. If it fails to speak to me in a way that I can canalize and interpret through my own experience, then it fails in the same way any literature from any era fails when the above doesn't take place. I rather enjoyed Yorgos Lanthimos's other film, The Lobster, precisely because - as bizarre as it was - it presented questions to me concerning the human condition that I found intriguing. For me, the best fiction, be it on the screen or in the pages of a book, presents questions, not statements, and The Lobster certainly did that. The Killing of a Sacred Deer left me rather cold. There are no questions, only ugly inevitabilities and a failure to own up to one's past. That's real, it happens, it's a genuine part of the human experience, but... so is going to the bathroom. This one wasn't for me.
Cast Away is one of my favorite movies, and my favorite scene in the movie is when the bit of a portable toilet washes up and he just sits there, looking at it, for quite some time. Sitting is a skill that primitives not infected with books and televisions and the goddamn internet have that the rest of us have lost.
I am still coughing like a steam-engine. So after taking the dog to his daycare I lay in my bed and try to finish a flash piece. But I am stuck. I would not call it procrastinate but i have to do something else. So I fixed the thermostat on the radiator in the big tv-room upstairs. It has been hung in the no heat position for several weeks. The room is only used when our grown up children visit at weekends and there are blankets so it has not been urgent. But now that's fixed. Then I started reading my English grammar. There are so many details, but I find that I actually know awfully much of it. Now, writing this is procrastinating reading the grammar.
I'm debating whether I should go for a walk or not. I know I will have to leave the apartment today because I need to go down to the store. I also know that a long walk would be good for both my body and mind - especially since I'm a bit stuck in my writing. However - there is snow outside and I'm not the viking I'm supposed to be!
I'm procrastinating by burning some Tom Petty to disc. I'm supposed to be getting out to plough some driveways before people have to go to work, but every time I look out the door, I'm just all, 'meh.' I don't think my viking ancestors would be terribly proud of me either.
