The dangerous blahs.
Wednesday, November 29, 2006 , 4:37 PM
Apologies for my short temper and complete lack of humour lately.
Brain chemistry? Seasonal Affective Disorder? A pre-month-long-absence-from-my-UK-life-freakout? Whatever it was, I was burnt-out, had no coping resources, and just couldn’t shake it. So instead I stayed at home, slept in late, read books, read meanings into random Internet posts that I don’t see now, and ate an incredible amount of food. Somehow I’ve managed to not put on weight (probably because I only eat once a day), but this eating also ultimately marked the end of this funk: Last night I sat on the couch watching telly, and I ate so many burritos that I started laughing at myself. That’s when I knew the storm had broken.
Sorry.
My trips to Canada have this gravity well around them. I think what disturbs me is this idea of being away from my everyday life for protracted periods. I’m scared that these interruptions are going to keep my work and my life from building, because just when I’m about to do something, I end up going away. There’s no point starting anything, which, as a fairly goal-orientated person, is not a comfortable place for me.
I want to promote the last novel. I want to put together booklets about novel-writing and self-publishing. I want to start work on this new story. I want to find out if this fella I’ve met is… y’know. But I’m leaving, and none of this stuff can get done on the road, because my time in Canada is so busy, and I’m a guest there. I don’t have my time, my space, my stuff.
Invariably these trips turn out to be inspiring, fun, an opportunity to connect with people I love and to see more of the dynamic, unique culture Toronto supports. But from this side, there’s always a tearing away. Place is important to my sense of where I am in life, literally and figuratively, and this is a hard one to leave behind.
But now, perhaps because my trip is so close now and I’m not stuck in the waiting room, what I’m feeling is best summed up in the Zen expression “circle with no remainder”: it’s all one life, there’s nothing to lose, move along…
~
Patrick sent me a text message and an e-mail today to tell me how much he loved The Willies, which he’d brought along as travel reading. He confessed that he’d never managed to get into it before, but was hooked this time. (I’m always fine with that; my stuff is not for everyone.) I was thinking about that book just last night, how I’ve already covered much of the territory I tend to be preoccupied with. So with this next story, I’ve got to set out for open waters so I don’t just bump around in the harbour with old ideas. It’s scary (I’ve no idea what form the story will take yet), but it’s exciting.
I had to smile, seeing Patrick in the picture on his blog: helooks Australian in it.
Finding salivation.
Sunday, November 26, 2006 , 5:04 PM
You never think of yourself as someone who drools in his sleep. But then you launder your pillows, and you learn something: You were wrong. You do drool in your sleep. A lot.
X marks the soft spot.
Thursday, November 23, 2006 , 12:14 PM
Last year, I made everyone’s Xmas presents, crafting variations on hand-bound books for all the people on my list. But now I’ve done that, so I had a big think about how to follow my own act. In the end I decided not to.
After spending so much to set up the micropress this year, I seriously feel like getting any more “stuff” would make me ill. So I asked my family to take the money they would have spent on me and give it to charity. I did the same, and bought Oxfam gifts for them. I broke out crying looking through their catalogue, thinking about what “Meals for 100 schoolchildren” really means, compared to “Electronic gee-gaw with an obsolence shelf life of about two years”.
Oxfam also do a lovely job of sending you a little something to give the other person to represent their gift, like the fridge magnet in the “Alpaca package”, which features a really cute down-angled picture of one of these bizarre llama-like natural wool machines — one of which can provide a family with an income and teach them essential farming skills. They also have donkeys, goats (I love goats), and lots of other practical gifts like “Train a schoolteacher” or “Provide 10 people with clean drinking water”.
I’m sick of hearing about the Nintendo Wii, the Playstation 3, and whatever talking, jiggling sweatshop toy mommies are going to get into fist-fights over this year. We’ve become so disconnected as a race that we’re a danger to ourselves. I’ve been blessed with a surfeit of good fortune, and it feels like time to share it.
Many downloads.
Monday, November 20, 2006 , 7:44 PM
Despite the fact that I’ve had several conversations with my friend Kirsten about the dangers of ego-surfin (as is evidenced by Anne Rice’s public meltdown on Amazon.com over bad reviews), I couldn’t help following a link I just found in an old e-mail from an e-book website host, and discovered that the e-books of my novels listed there have been downloaded nearly a thousand times!
(*shakes head*)
The Willies has been downloaded 683 times. The funny thing is, I never hear anything from these people. I suppose downloads don’t by any means equate to reads, but one person posted a review of the book that’s better than the book jacket blurb that I wrote!
Interesting biotech story that doesn’t take itself too seriously (and thus redeems itself.)
Hugh and Simon are friends with a chequered history that leaves them separated for years, however events are bringing them back together again. On the trail of an elusive geneticist who is experimenting in cloning Hugh discovers more about himself and Simon than he would like to.
The narcissistic twist of falling in love with one’s clone is a tad disturbing, perhaps it’s meant to be.
Overall a gentle read worth a download.
Thanks, Goldfish Stew, whoever you are!
One down…
Friday, November 17, 2006 , 10:21 AM
That horrible building on the corner of the Royal Mile and George IV Bridge is being demolished. Yay!
Not-so-yay are the articles I read every other day about the Council saying yes to any developer who waves some pound-notes under their nose (the most recent attempts being another go at the Caltongate development and the Grassmarket in the Old Town).
It’s happening on a national level, too: an article in yesterday’s Scotsman claimed “Historic Scotland should open up its portfolio buildings and monuments to the private sector or they will face a future of ‘stagnation and under-use’, the Policy Institute said today.” Because we’ve seen what a great job private industry does of investing in infrastructure over, say, seeking short-term profits.
An award for “Best new building” is going to the Scottish Storytelling Centre. I have mixed feelings on this one, because the space inside is actually nice — bright, airy, and useful — but the outside is another giant concrete box with brushed aluminium fittings, and it’s bolted onto the John Knox House, one of the oldest buildings on the Mile. It’s completely incongruous.
I learnt a great word yesterday from a German friend:selbstbeweihraucherung*. It means “throwing incense over yourself” — and that’s exactly what it seems the architectural community likes to do: drop these robot-nightmare buildings around the town and then congratulate themselves for the great job they did, with no meaningful conversation between them and the existing communities in those places.
These bureaucrats are auctioning off the cultural commons for “deals”, and it makes me angry.
*There should be an umlaut over the A, but Blogger garbles them.
The weirdness of the leaving.
Wednesday, November 15, 2006 , 11:59 AM
I’m in that pre-leaving-for-Canada vortex again. At least this time I recognise what’s going on. It’s tough starting new projects, I’m experiencing existential angst (Oh my God, everything is pointless! Everything I love will die. All is impermanence — except impermanence!), and I’m hating my accent, wondering why I’m not more involved with things here in Scotland. I’m casting my eye about — why, moments before I’m to leave?
Maybe it’s to anchor myself here. Maybe it’s because I want to have all the hallmarks of a life before I go back to Canada and get the Twenty Questions. (“So do you like it there? What are you working on? Are you seeing anyone?”)
In truth, this is a “lying fallow” period: I’m reading a lot, I’m making lots of diagrams and plans, my role in my paid work is changing from a gun-for-hire to more of a generative one, and I’m thinking about storylines for the new novel as I put things in my shopping basket. It’s not time for creating things now; anything I built would be a temporary structure. So on the outside, there’s no news to report, nothing going on that anyone could see. Very busy on the inside, though.
P.S. I just had a chat about all this with the flatmate-weasel. Except he’s in Australia. You’ve gotta love the Internet!
At freakin’ last!
Monday, November 06, 2006 , 11:49 PM
I have been struggling to get the next issue ofDunderheid to print for ages. Patrick was wonderfully generous and did the layout work for me. It looked great, too. There was only one problem: I couldn’t print it.
The background images to the pages were enormous files at high resolution, and all my equipment kept fainting whenever I tried to send the job through the imposition program I use, which shrinks and rearranges the pages to make a book. Or one side of the print-job would be faded out, or…
So this project that should have been a fun cakewalk turned into a black hole: nothing, not even time, could escape it!
Which highlights something nice: When I say I’m going to do a thing, it does tend to happen. So having to put a project aside, one that I’d committed to others that I would finish, was not a good feeling.
And now I’ve done it!
Bwa-ha-ha! I can do anything! Now I’m going to build a laser that can destroy the moon!*
*OK, I’m not going to do that.
I know what’s next.
Friday, November 03, 2006 , 1:50 PM
I attended a second talk by George Monbiot last night, who writes for The Guardian (no, not PEI’s newspaper, the one that used to be called The Manchester Guardian). He was speaking on climate change, and listening to the talk, something clicked.
I know what my next novel is about.
I tried to use this idea for a short story to submit to an anthology earlier this year, but I didn’t tell it right. They knew that and rejected it, and while I knew there was promise in it, it did feel like “plot logic” was forcing events along for a reason; they weren’t emerging naturally from the setting and characters.
I hate writing short stories; it’s like trying to f**k in a phone booth.
What a great feeling, knowing what I have to do next. Sure, it’s intimidating, because I could screw it up. But the even better thing is that I know that’s a lie: I’ve already got a couple of books under my belt, so that pervasive voice of worry has no foundation in fact.
I spent far too long trying to sell the last book to people who weren’t interested. And this last year has been about learning how to produce my books myself, starting the micropress. That’s all been good and right. But the whole time I’ve had this niggling feeling: I’m a writer; shouldn’t I be writing something? I knew it wasn’t time, and I know that it’s still not time: right now I need to gobble up research and ideas and inspiration.
I also want to create a workbook of my process, because I do have a process and I’ve used it successfully three times. First, it’s for me to use, as I write this next book. Then I want to share it with other people.
I’m sitting in a juice shop, sipping on a carrot-apple-parsley juice (which is better than it sounds). I’ve got my wee mobile office all unpacked and am ready to work… except I realised that the file I need didn’t synchronise with my Pocket PC. It’s still sitting on my PC.
Damn.
La Bo-homb.
Thursday, November 02, 2006 , 2:41 PM
Madama Butterfly and Die Fledermaus are coming to The Edinburgh Playhouse, and I got a circular in the post, presumably because I was foolish enough to give them my address when my mates and I went to see this company’s production of La Boheme.
This company has got its priorities so ass-backwards. What are they proud about with these productions? The singing? The orchestration? No…
Die Fledermaus: “…including two champagne fountains”!
Madama Butterfly:”…with an equisite authentic Japanese garden”!
La Boheme‘s big feature was “real gypsy dancers”, who were more like bored extras, awkwardly coming to the front of the stage once or twice to do a few moves in group scenes. Meanwhile, the Bohemian garret where the characters lived looked like it was made of mud, and in one scene it “snowed” so much that the actors were covered in several inches of plastic flakes and the show ground to a halt while the curtain dropped and the crew swept it all up, then the show could start again.
At the end of this incredible story, whose music I’ve known for a while, though this was the first live opera I’d seen… I didn’t feel a thing.
You really have to f* up to have people not cry at the end of La Boheme.
People wonder how I could have studied theatre yet don’t like going to it anymore. It’s because people cheat the audience out of good experiences. They big-A act instead of committing themselves personally to their parts, and they layer their productions with stuff instead of taking away everything that could obstruct the raw, human story in them.
People don’t care about fountains and gypsy dancers and helicopters and chandeliers, they care about people.
Samhuinn 2006
Wednesday, November 01, 2006 , 12:06 AM
Tonight I went to Samhuinn with some friends (Liz, Sheila, and Liz’s new flatmate Jenny). Samhuinn — pronounced sow-WAIN — is a Celtic celebration marking the death of summer and the coming of winter. It’s the opposite bookend to the vernal event Beltane.
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p>God, I love local culture.
