Happy Sunday
Sunday, May 30, 2004 , 1:30 PM
I woke up this morning with a head full of things to say about myself
and my book, so I composed two manuscript cover letters — one for a
press in Scotland, one in Canada — wrote a synopsis of the book, and
sent it all off.
As soon as I hit ‘Send’, I heard a knock at my door. It was David…
with breakfast!
Life is sweet.
P.S. What a lovely, lazy day. The fella slept on the couch, and I got some things done, including finally,finally posting my pictures from this year’s trip to Spain, which you’ll find in the Pictures section.
Friday, May 28, 2004 , 11:26 PM
I’m such a freak. After wandering around town all day, figuring that David was finished with me, that I was too intense and came on too strong (Jesus, I even said the L-word!), I went out tonight with my friend Karen, who heard me and understood me and drank many drinks with me and watched, laughed at, yet somehow appreciated the Bohemian entertainment night we went to at an upstairs pub tonight. Then I came home and found… a note from David, saying (in devastatingly simple terms) why he hadn’t called last night. A friend came over, they got drunk. Nothing of the “you’re freaking me out with your writerly overexpressiveness” sort at all.
Why can’t I just shut up, externally and interally, and be a simple person?
, 7:31 AM
I hate dating.
He was supposed to call me last night, and didn’t. How can I be nonchalant if I care? I’d filled my evening with Plan B, I-have-a-rich-and-full-life activities, but by the end of the message-less night I was crestfallen, thinking “Oh well, I guess that was that.”
Home again
Wednesday, May 26, 2004 , 11:23 AM
I guess I didn’t let enough people know that I was going to be away last week, because I received a few “Where are you? Are you alright?” e-mails. I’m fine, I just went to Spain. It was wonderful. Last year’s trip was more of a spiritual journey, as I tried to digest the experience of losing a friend. This time, it was just a fun vacation with friends. I took lots of pictures, which I’ll post soon, along with some commentary about what we saw, so I won’t get into specifics just yet.
The last two days of the trip, the others went on without me, as Lisa and Jaime’s flight left from Portugal, and Alvaro headed back home to A Caruna. So I found myself in this strange resort town, kind of like Cancun or Fort Lauderdale — you know, one of those drunken straight people party towns — except full of Germans. As I sat having acietunas y cerveza (olives and beer) by the beachfront, I experienced an uncommon thing for me — the feeling that it wasn’t right for me to be there alone.
I’m usually very happy in my own company, and a lot of my activity (well, the main one, writing) is based on spending time on my own. But sitting there watching the sun go down, I had the disturbing sense that there was no point being in Spain by myself. This flies directly in the face of how I normally think and feel. It was compounded, too, by the fact that I wanted someone specific to be there with me: Just before I left, I met someone new at a club and we spent every moment together until I headed for the airport. I really, reallywasn’t looking to meet anyone, and had just told someone very nice that I honestly wanted to be single. So, of course, BAM! — the Universe let me have it.
I got back to Edinburgh and wanted nothing more than to see him, only I had no way to reach him. He contacted me yesterday, though, which made me stupidly giddy. My friend David Playfair and his partner Gordon arrived yesterday, too, and are crashing at my place while they’re here, but the other David, my insta-boyfriend, was good enough to share the living room floor with me last night.
I can hear my mother now: “Why don’t people date anymore?!” I don’t know, Mom, I really don’t. I also can’t say why I already love this person who’s practically a stranger. It’s silly, but I think I have a lot to learn from being silly for a change.
Saved by the Beltane post…
Tuesday, May 11, 2004 , 8:25 AM
Thank the Queen of May, someone else posted pictures from Beltane (the Celtic festival on Calton Hill marking the end of winter and the arrival of Spring). It was an amazing thing to witness, this wholly uncommercial, traditional, edgy Bacchanalian evening up on a hill overlooking the city — a cross between Christmas andThe Blair Witch Project. You’ll get a taste of it when you see the pictures.
They’re far superior to my photographs, and linking to them also saves me having to create a $#%@ HTML photo gallery.
I did, however, also make a recording of the drummers drumming (lords a’-leaping were absent). It’s an MP3 file (right-click/contextual-click to “Save as…”).
P.S. My friend Malcolm just pointed me to another sitewith good pictures from Beltane.
Monday, May 10, 2004 , 1:03 PM
Cool. Blogger just revamped their services, making them very pretty, and adding some new features. There’s a new kind of information-gathering method out there called RSS, or “Really Simple Syndication”. You can use it to subscribe to your “feeds” of your favourite news sites and even blogs… hint hint. If you’d like to subscribe to my blog using one of the “news aggregator” programs (like the freeware Sharp Reader), you can use this address:
http://www.hame.land/feeds/feed.xml
I printed out the manuscript of Idea in Stone on the weekend. It’s as big as a house! How am I going to afford to submit these to publishers? I dunno, but I’m going to find a way!
Thursday, May 06, 2004 , 8:49 PM
I baked! And it doesn’t suck! (It just looks like something you’d see dead on the road.)
It’s a carrot-raisin loaf thingy.
, 10:05 AM
YAY! I got it!
I hung out at Lorne’s last night, editing my manuscript while he worked away on his computer. I’m just busting to read bits of the story to people, which must be quite annoying. I’m just so happy with it. I figure in two or three more editing sessions, I’ll be finished. And then I’ll really deserve… a trip to Spain!
Yesterday I gave up a grudge I’d been carrying around my neck like an albatross. You know, you think you’re standing up for yourself, protecting yourself from harm, but there’s a point where it’s easier just to give up a beef with someone and get on with life. Prolonging this thing cast me as this angry, vengeful guy, and I don’t want to be him. I’ve got other stuff to do.
Like finishing books and going to Spain.
P.S. I just booked my tickets! I’m going to meet my friends in Barcelona, and we’re going to stay here.
Wednesday, May 05, 2004 , 8:56 AM
Holy crap! I got an e-mail today from one of those pesky (“Upgrade your account to see this!”) classmates websites I signed up to once, reminding me that it’s the fifteenth anniversary of my graduation from university.
Yeah, I guess it has been.
My friend Kirsten e-mailed me yesterday. She and I went to theatre school together. She was asking me if people thought of me as a failed actor — something she gets from people she knows. People can’t relate to the fact that she’d done a thing, done it completely, and decided to move on. I don’t get that response from people, probably because I’ve moved around too much to have anyone around who ever knew me as an actor.
Studying theatre was probably the best training for the life and art that was to follow, and many of the same principles I learned still apply to the things I do today, although my life looks nothing like what I imagined back then. It’s much more fun being one person all the time. In fact, as Joseph Campbell said, “The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.”
[An aside: Kis and I were also talking about movies yesterday, and she wrote this, which I think is brilliant: “I’m tired of this martial arts, people running up the walls and leaping to the roof thing, and doing thirty back flips. Too many superheroes. And the sound effects in movies are getting outrageous……way too loud…..when a punch is deafening or kissing-saliva sounds louder than the ocean in films the film makers should be fined “too loud” fines.” She’s got a book coming out, which should be very funny.]
I’ve been doing edits of my book the past few days — a really slow and laborious process, though it’s fun to read the story again and to experience it as something alien (“Ha! I wrote that?”). Last night, I edited the part of the story that involves a theatre production, and I got that feeling of camaraderie again, of company. I miss that intensely sometimes, and that’s about the only thing I miss from theatre.
I had a conversation with my editor yesterday, though, and we spoke about what she sees as the next level for me in my work with the company, and we were both pretty excited about that.
I’ve committed to a friend that I’m going to send him the manuscript on Monday — a structure I needed to light a fire under me. I want to get this finished, and I want to get it out there in the world where it can make a difference for me, and where other people can enjoy it, too. I will see this one in print. I’m also seriously considering self-publishing my second novel, which seems like it was too genre — or something — for a publisher to take on. I’ve done this before, and I know what I’d do again or do better this time.
Funny, though, I also find myself feeling like a “story slut”: I have all kinds of ideas for short stories in my head, and after the long commitment of novel-writing, I feel like having a bunch of short, fun flings with these ideas — which is handy, since that’s what I should be doing next for my fiction career, getting work out to publications.
Tuesday, May 04, 2004 , 11:20 AM
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p>I’ve been in Scotland exactly three years today.
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