Review: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I've been slogging through books I found difficult and alien to me this years and returning to this one after so much time had passed was like a homecoming.

I know the book deals in harrowing subjects, in terribles hardships, but the way she writes welcomed me back like a warm blanket.I breezed through the book when I've plodded through others, because in spite of everything, I found it comfortable and comforting. I knew her voice, and her fears and joys seemed infinitely familiar. I don't mean to imply that I can ever understand or sympathize with plights I've never known: rape and racism. What I think... is that she writes like a woman, in the best sense of the word.

I read Maya Angelou and I am reminded of what Virginia Woolf said about women having to find their "sentence", their way of writing, just as men had. She reminded me of "To Kill A Mocking Bird" not because of the similar subject matter of oppression, or even the time periods, but because their "sentence" was so similar. They seemed to know how to write about being young girls in the same intimate and conspiratorial manner. This is a book I can see myself returning to, re-reading the way I re-read Mocking Bird, because of how lovely its sentence is.

This is a book I feel I can learn from, the way Woolf said women should learn from other women.

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Review: Farmer Boy

Farmer Boy by Laura Ingalls Wilder
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I read somewhere that one of the most noticeable differences between Mrs. Wilder’s account of her own childhood and that of her husband was the economic prosperity, especially in regards to the plentiful variety of food available to little Almanzo. I also noticed the radically different AMOUNTS of money the Wilder and Ingalls family were dealing with. Ten dollars is a lot for young Laura but Almanzo keeps hearing his family talk about dollars in the hundreds.

However what I found most surprising was Almanzo’s liberal attitude towards school. It is startlingly clear that for Laura, school was a way out of poverty, while Almanzo found it constraining. I thought it surprising because I think we can still see an echo of that attitude going on today. Women have become a majority of college attendees and graduates, mostly because the professions not requiring a college degree that pay well remain deeply male-coded professions.

Considering I had skipped straight from Little in the Big Woods to The Long Winter, it was surprising to see a young Almanzo and a long Eliza Jane. I still love the writing and how she can make the everyday into great drama. I did miss the familiar characters though, I had grown quite fond of the Ingalls.

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Review: Little House on the Prairie

Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

When I was a kid, my school had a pretty neat system for handing out reading assignments. They brought in a huge box of Scholastic books and you chose whichever one struck your fancy and wrote a report on it. At around first grade I stumbled upon Little House in the Big Woods and immediately fell in love with Laura, Mary, Ma and Pa. I grew up in Mexico so I was completely unaware of the TV series, my whole experience with Little House was through that box of scholastic books.

Unfortunately, the box didn't have ALL the Laura Ingalls books so I had to wait until fifth or sixth grade to read any more of them. I found the Long Winter and devoured it in a few days. Sure I wondered where Grace had come from and why they were in Dakota and what the heck had happened to Mary's eyes, but mostly I was once more engrossed in Laura's domestic life and her family's struggle for survival.

For a long time I've wanted to catch up on all the things I missed in between books and I have, of course, started with the famous Little House on the Prairie. It's much harder to read these books through adult eyes because you begin to see all the problematic bits. The treatment of Native Americans is a big one here. It was easier to let go their brief appearance in the Long Winter, but here, the unfairness of the Ingallses' views and actions towards Native Americans is left, front and center. You can't ignore Ma's disparaging comments. You can't forget their charming little house stands on stolen land. You can't unsee the tragic passing of a doomed people.

I still love the Little House books, though, in spite of wishing, in this day and age, that they could be published with a forward or introduction that could give a little more historical context for children who stumble on them unaware. Still, I hold these books close to my heart. From them I take the lesson that daily life, domestic life, the minutae of preparing a meal or studying for school is as fascinating and delightful as the most heroic battle, the most tragic death, or the farthest, most foreign land. To my writing I wish to bring Laura's gift for including the everyday into the great adventure, for it is in our small, daily interactions that we build our lives.

I look forward to catching up with these old friends.

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Review: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

One of my favorite plays during my pretentious adolescence was Waiting for Godot. So when my drama teacher handed me Rosencrantz and Guilderstern Are Dead and touted it as the "Shakespearean Godot" I was sold. However, and quite ironically, I never got past the first scene. I wasn't required to since we were only supposed to suggest a staging for the aforementioned scene and there was a bunch of other school reading I needed to tackle. I never forgot that first scene though, and even today I remember thinking myself very clever when I suggested using chocolate coins for the coin-tossing contest in it.

When I reached college, one of my favorite professors mentioned this play again, in the context of praising Shakespeare in Love. Back then, I didn't know Tom Stoppard had helped write the screenplay or that in addition to being a playwright he was also a Shakespeare scholar. I was considerably impressed, but once more, found myself short on time to dive into RGAD.

This year I've been working on my thesis, dedicated in part, to King Lear. I finally decided to finish the play so I could watch a couple of stagings of it and maybe talk about it in my thesis.

Usually, I despise Hamlet, for being a slow play centered on a protagonist who reminds me too much of every troubled intellectual dude you meet in college, who thinks he knows more than you and refuses to go to therapy. But I wasn't disappointed by Tom Stoppard.

I think what a lot of people forget about Shakespeare is how much humor was a part of his plays and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are full of humor. This play has in it that circus and vaudeville quality Waiting for Godot had. It doesn't forget it has to be entertaining.

I think there's a wonder in shining light to the inbetween places of great works of literature, of using canonical works as tools to write about our own preoccupations. A part of me still thinks it dreadfully CLEVER to use the predetermined nature of R&G's life in order to explore the meaninglessness of our own.

I hope I do get to use this text in my thesis and I hope to see the movie and other stagings of the play. My university professor always said plays should be seen and not read.

But mostly, I hope wherever he is, Alfred finally gets to use his skirt.

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Salubri

I dreamt of a scene right out of World War II. It happened in a farmhouse and looking back I think it must have been located in France. But maybe that impression has been colored by movies I've watched since. I thnk it was cold and dreary, a place going through a rough season.

Nazis had occupied the farmhouse I think, though it belonged to a young girl, just edging into adolescence, and her sick mother. The mother's sickness wasn't a small thing, she was cadaveric, barely alive. She couldn't even move. All she could do was look at the soldiers with fear, especially the captain.

It was as if I was watching a movie and had arrived just in time for the climax.

Because I could see a man arriving on the scene, a tired, dejected man who doesn't look like much, and the young girl running to him with her friends. Perhaps the movie had been a story about her and her friends and their youth in Nazi-occupied France and the strange friendship they had struck with this strange man.

She had run straight into his arms, frightened, but telling him her mother was ready, telling him about the capitain and the soldiers and how terrified her mother is but that she knows HE will protect her little girl.

The man tells her it will be alright, but that she and her friends must leave now. He must do this alone.

Into the house he goes, where only the sick mother and the captain wait for him. There was a sense of menace, of barely averted disaster. The Nazi captain would have done horrible things to the mother. Or maybe to the young girl. But the man calmly picks the mother up, light as a feather, as if she weighted nothing at all. The captain stares, dumbfounded.

"What we must do, let us do in the comfort of your own bed," the man tells the woman as he lays her down in it. And I am not sure if the next part was a memory I could see, a flashback, running through the sick woman's mind but I could see her in her bed, weak, so weak, with her terrified daughter, who she couldn't even talk to anymore, who she couldn't even comfort.

But the man is speaking for the mother as if he can read her thoughts. "You will be brave and I will be alright. Hold me now, because I don't have the strength to hold you."

That was how they had said goodbye.

But we are back in the present, with the man and the woman, and he asks her: "Is it time?"

And she answers: "It is."

He pounces on her then, just as the Nazi captain is climbing the stairs to confront them. (I suspect the captain wanted to get rid of this man because he had stopped him in town, when he was ransacking the place and terrifying everyone there. The captain was sick and tired of this man and he was ready to put an end to his problem.)

But he found him now, with the sick woman, in the middle of feeding. And it wasn't that delicate, romantic vampire feeding we are so used to by now. No. The dying woman convulsed and the creature intent on her made terrible, wet, predatory noises... the sort of noises a wild carnivore makes when feeding.

In that moment, the captain knew he was a dead man.

I woke up before the end, but it isn't hard to guess.

When considering the dream and the dream-logic in it, I think it's one of my most coherent dreams. I fear I might have stolen the idea from somewhere else, it is so well constructed. Perhaps the vampire was staying in that dreary village, because he wanted to avoid brighter, sunnier places. Perhaps he hadn't gotten rid of the captain and his soldiers before because he was starving, hadn't fed in a long time. But the woman and her daughter had so moved him that he had agreed to feed at last. Maybe he had sworn not to feed from the unwilling, maybe he couldn't, maybe he could only feed on the dying.

Whatever it was, I think someday it will make for a good story.

Daring Escape

It started with my friends, just a normal day of hanging out, waiting maybe to roleplay or just shoot the breeze, and then those weren't my friends and I wasn't an adult, and we were just siblings hanging out. Maybe I wasn't even me anymore. I know that I wouldn't have had the guts to do what she did.

It was a stepfather or a friend or something along those lines, who came into the little reunion, pushing his weight, making sure things went HIS way. And I, or she, saw it happened with increasing trepidation. Everyone around moved to accomodate him, the little family suddenly turned upside down. It couldn't exactly have been the father because I remember than when the guy finally scared her, she asked to talk to her father in private, now, URGENTLY. (He might have been the mother's new boyfriend and the father was trying to help him fit into the family.)

He wanted to tell him that this guy frightened her, he made her feel uncomfortable, and more than that, that she was scared of where it could lead to. She wanted to tell her father that if HE was staying, she was leaving. She was near old enough and they had just recently moved into a small town where everything would be cheaper and she could make it on her own.

But then the guy came in, cool as breeze, just want to hang out, whatcha guys talking about, here I saved you some pizza, why are you looking so upset?

I think I would have lost my nerve then and there, that's how I knew she wasn't me. I would have waited for another moment alone with my dad, some other situation that wouldn't be quite SO awkward. But SHE? She was fearless! This was the hand she had been dealt so she would play it. She continued talking, told her father everything she wanted to tell him and when he didn't side with her, she didn't wait to hear the guy complain. How could she SAY these things? How could she think of him so badly? He'd never done ANYTHING to her!

No... not yet...

She left the room and asked her siblings and friends to please help her make a going-away bag, help her get her things, help her get away. She didn't wait and didn't give him a chance to screw her over. She left and waited for a friend (not a sibling now, but one of MY friends, I remember that made sense in pure dream logic) to bring her things. He was able to do that only halfway, and suddenly the guy and her family were looking for him and she was terrified now. She knew in her heart of hearts that there would be retaliation and that it would get UGLY. She didn't even want to have to see the guy, or give him the chance of knowing where she was going or where she was staying.

So she didn't.

She walked around the little town and it was at times Queretaro or Cuernavaca where I have friends living there, and she was at times a stranger or a friend I know and admire very much. At the beginning of her dream story I had thought her young, just barely an adult, but now she was my friend, bound and determined to prove she had previously supported herself before and would do so again now. She didn't need any of them.

In my dream she moved from place to place, waiting for her friends to bring her things. Quite evocatively, some of thise places were churches. She made sure he never found out where exactly she settled down. She escaped him completely.

I recently heard a story very like this one and it might have colored my dream perceptions. I remember waking up energized, with a sense of purpose and hope. I'd gone to sleep late last night, reading, knowing that I would pay for those reading hours the next day at work. I wonder if this was my mind's way of bailing me out?

Love Me Harder

During my early twenties I thought I would be terminally single my whole life. I listened to love songs, determined not to feel left out, and I felt they were a dialogue between myself and all the other parts of me. I sang and tried to convice me to love me.

It never quite worked out.

I've recently discovered The Weekend and love just leaving him on the background while I go about my life. And quite suddenly, out of nowhere I found myself nearly crying because "Love Me Harder" came on.

I've been obssessed with that song for some time, finding in it more than just a family-friendly susbtitute to saying a cruder "fuck me harder". I've been thinking of all the people I would just like to grab and say that to, "I need you to love me harder", I need you to love me better, because the way you're loving me sucks... I've been thinking about all the people who would probably want to say that to me, the people I've failed, the people I didn't love like they needed me to love them...

Sometimes it's been a combination of my fuckups and theirs, sometimes it's been all me. I've hurt others, and I've meant to sometimes, and haven't cared at others... I guess I'm sorry about those, though it seems a little empty to apologize for things you've done and can't seem to find a way around. It's easier to accept mistakes done in error, unconsciously, by neglect or simple carelessness. I gained nothing from those mistakes, I wouldn't be letting go of anything wonderful if I said I regret them.

It's harder to repent sins that gave you growth or freedom or even just simple pleasure. It's harder to say I'm sorry for biting into sweetness and pleasure, for trying to be happy and unburdened.

I get the feeling that what I need to do most of all, is letting go of my own idea of myself as a good person. But somehow that seems deeply tied to gain as well. Because all my life I've been told I don't deserve love or kindness UNLESS I am good: a good daughter, a good friend, a good student, a good person...

A good girlfriend.

Perhaps these last years have been about that, not being good for someone ELSE, since I can't seem to find someone who is good FOR ME. I've had good times, good friends, good fucks, good loves. But there's been so much caring to do, so much to pour in, that sometimes it feels that it pours out of me directly...

Being alone at the moment, working towards the things I want, knowing who I am when I am patently NOT GOOD to anyone but myself... maybe I AM loving myself harder.

I want to think I do.

Review: Adaptation and Appropriation

Adaptation and Appropriation by Julie Sanders
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

After having to slog through an entire month of Foucault I have to say Julie Sanders was a veritable life saver! Every wonderfully short chapter was clearly labled and divided. She was concise and to the point. A lot of it I had already read with Gennette but it was really useful in regards to placing intertextuality in the context of postmodernism.

And precisely because she was so clear and concise I got loads and loads of illustrative quotes for my dissertation.

It's a great introductory book but I wouldn't recommend it for an in depth look at any of its subjects. I got some nifty names I'm going to look into, but Gennette was by far more detailed and complete.

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Marlene

About five or six years ago I used to go to and from school while listening to Suzanne Vega a lot. I remember walking in the brisk cold and thinking how beautifully and perfectly the music was written. Once I went online and looked up not just the lyrics but what Vega had to say about her songs. I was surprised that not only had she written about them but she had extensively described the process of how she came up with song ideas. I found it fascinating.

Beautiful music leaves me despondent; especially music that I find evocative, music that reminds me of stuff I’ve been reading or of stuff I’d like to write. I feel a sort of impotent desperation when hearing music I feel a particular affinity with: Suzanne Vega but also Yann Tiersen, Mumford & Sons, sometimes Ed Sheeran, lately Lord Huron…

When I was a teenager, I would write a lot while listening to The Cure. Frantically I’d put on Wish or Disintegration and try to write out all the emotions and images that came with the music. I always used to associate certain songs, certain bands with characters, with stories I was conceiving. I remember very clearly how my discovery of The Smiths coincided with the crystallization of a character in my head who I always imagined as a sort of sociopath. Morrissey’s apathetic melancholy, his cry of “I was only joking when I said, I’d like to smash a gritle in your head” in a sweet, tired voice made me excited. I thought: “There! That’s the character as I’ve always envisioned him! That’s the core of him! Not just the words but the music and tone, the tired, helpless cheerfulness with which he says it. I’ve caught him!”

It feels like I’m getting old. Thirty-two and I haven’t written any books. Thirty-two and still no degree. Thirty-two and there’s so much I want to do and haven’t done.

What used to elate me now fills me with anxious dread, as if I half suspect I’ll never get to write the book or finish the degree or see the world I want to see. I’ve been working so hard and I still feel woefully inadequate. I still long for so many things I haven’t done yet.

Five or six years ago, when I listened to Marlene On The Wall it used to haunt me even when I knew my favorites were World Before Columbus and The Queen And The Soldier… it must have been a sort of prescience, seeing myself in the lyrics, in her song, as she sees herself in her poster of Marlene Dietrich. I feel a little like that now “but the only soldier now is me, I’m fighting things I cannot see, I think it’s called my destiny…” She speaks to a lover as so many songs seem to… I have no lover now except past ones, but sometimes I feel I am in dialogue with the future ones.

During these last couple of years I’ve told most people I have no interest in falling in love or finding a partner and that is and isn’t true. Falling in love… building a relationship, dreaming of a future… it all takes a certain level of effort and work that I’m not willing to put in at the moment. I am unsatisfied with myself… the truth is, I’d like to become the sort of person I would like to date, or else how will someone I fancy, fancy me back?

No degree, no books, no traveling…

I have to fix that. I have to look for the things I want and dream of. I have to be the person I aspire to be… if I wish to demand all this of someone else, how can I not demand it of myself?

Review: Historia de la locura en la época clásica vol. 1

Historia de la locura en la época clásica vol. 1 by Michel Foucault
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I have a deep and abiding hatred of French literary criticism... and Foucault isn't even a literary critic. I don't know what he is. I don't know what THIS is! I thought I was suffering with Gennett but JEEZ! he organized his ramblings! He was concrete and to the point!

Foucault is...

Well... he sounds really smart, I'll give him that, and some of what he says WILL be useful for my dissertation's subject. I am learning A LOT about history and where our idea of madness comes from... but half the time it feels like I'm struggling through the swampy depths of someone who just DOESN'T KNOW HOW TO ORGANIZE HIS THOUGHTS.

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Zombiefest

I dreamt I was traveling and the place I was staying at (I think it was Santa Cruz?) was organizing a festival. It was a make-believe zombie invasion. We were given the rules in advance, including that our hotel was going to be "closed" and full of zombies, so it was better not to go back for your stuff after a certain time. "Zombie attacks" would be announced.

I had forgotten some of the rules but had arranged to meet a couple of friends away from the crowds (there was a sort of fair). In this fair I found various friends including my roommate P and an ex-boyfriend, let's call him G. We stopped at a stall selling hot punch where you could choose what fruit would be added to your punch. I think an old high school buddy was with us, let's call him S.

I was moving away from the crowds and at some point made the mistake of trying to go back to the hotel for my things. I had to go through some labyrinthic hallways and ended up stumbling upon a locked door that was obviously hiding zombies. Fortunately, it was only a few of them that heard me and they didn't manage to open the door. I ran away from there.

Outside, scared, and without the things I had meant to pick up at the hotel, I found another ex-boyfriend C. I was very relieved. He's big and comforting and knows loads about the supernatural. He looked nicer and handsomer than I remember him looking. I have no idea why I was so anxious considering this was all supposed to be a game. Accompanied by C, I even asked if we could use some sort of "wands" to kill the zombies (they looked like Potter wands). There was a sort of "arms dealer" fair stand that explained wands would be available but only 10 spells per wand. I told C not to bother because I had never bought the wand merchandise.

What was weird was how seriously everyone was taking it. There was looting and people stealing from each other. (No wonder the hotel was closed!) A lady and her daughters tried to steal my "gun" (it looked like a plastic toy) by claiming my bag was theirs when I laid it down.

I left the place with C and my high school friend S. We heard the signal for a zombie attack. Like I said, I had forgotten all about the rules and C reinded me the sound of drums meant zombies. So we left in a hurry. It was crowded at the fair and this made it a bad place to make a stand.

(There was an interlude at some point, I don't know whether before or after the zombie festival, with my mother and her boyfriend, at the hotel. And then just my mother. I think we were at our old house in Santa Cruz and she was cutting some flowers for someone, HUGE flowers.)

We made it to a street that was not so crowed and I tried to get inside a house but when I got in, it seemed like a labyrinth with trick mirros and everythings, so I got out as quickly as I could.

We ended up in an empty street and found a group of people sitting down. It was a church of some sort. They welcomed us and we were able to sit down and rest. Then, we saw them bring in some of the "fake" zombies to keep them somewhere, maybe cure them, maybe get rid of them humanely.

That's when it struck me...

They didn't look fake AT ALL.

New Year's Resolutions

I've never been a person who wrote down her New Year's Resolutions. I've never been a person who's kept an appointment book either, or a journal to write my To Do lists in. My mother used to write hers down in pieces of recycled paper and her pleasure was in crossing them out, not elegantly maybe, but satisfyingly enough.

I've always hated being trite and doing what everyone does just because everyone does it, but I've also always mistrusted people who snobbishly dismiss popular things just because they're popular. It's a bit of a catch-22.

Last year and this year, I've decided to start bullet journaling and to start my Bucket List. These are some pretty trite ideas and I've decided to crown them with even more stereotypical glee by writing down, for the very first time in this blog, my New Year's Resolutions.

This year, I want to be aware of what I'm doing and of why I'm doing it, because during the last few years, maybe since 2011 (meaning almost a decade now), I've just come to the realization of how little time I have left in my hands. In these last eight years I've had more existential moments than ever before. By existential moments I mean those flashes where you realize that one day you will die and are not quite certain you'll become anything other than stardust (courtesy of two very atheistic parents who never bothered to instill in me some sort of religious protection against Schopenhaurian dread). In short, I've come to realize how brief life is and how much we have to make each moment count...

But also, I've come to realize that I CAN make those moments count.

During my early twenties I had a very long and very stable relationship (for a twenty-something) with a man who gave me every sort of companionship and comfort I could then wish for. I was going through some tough realizations about myself and his presence in my life was the one fixed blessing I could count on. I felt that this relationship could define me. I had always felt I wanted to transcend (having, once more, no religious insulation from the harsh reality of my insignificance) and, in that relationship, I felt I could transcend through love. The mess my life was in, at school, at home, in my head, the sheer intellectual MUDDLE I was going through didn't matter because I had him. We made meaning together, he and I, we made sense, we made STORIES and in those stories we made a whole that somehow, kept the darkness at bay…

I used to dream of lots of things before that relationship, before that point in my life. I can remember some of them and looking back, very few included that all-encompassing, transcendental love I thought I had.

I dreamt I would travel, that I would see and experience all the places I wanted to write about. I dreamt I would be a polyglot, able to read all my favorite authors in their own language. I dreamt I would be a writer, an artist, that I would leave my mark in the world through my thoughts and MY stories. I dreamt of such an ADVENTURE.

I did not dream of the wonderful, homey relief I would have with this man, the first real love of my life. Before him, I thought I’d fall in love in my travels, while living abroad. I thought (and still half think) that like so many of my friends, the grandest prize I could aspire to would be a foreigner, possibly an American, quite certainly a European. Like Eva Khatchadourian says in We Need To Talk About Kevin: “How lucky we are, when we’re spared what we think we want!”

I cannot for the life of me regret loving this man, with him I learned how it felt to be complete, in his arms, I was, at long last, enough. But I do regret all the dreams I left behind because I thought all I needed was him.

It wasn’t his fault. Like I said, my life was a mess at that particular moment. I had come to realize that I could not be the particular student, writer or daughter that my mother and I had imagined and wanted me to be and it stung, I stung PAINFULLY. So for a moment, I don’t even truly remember how long… maybe half of those six years we were together, maybe more, I just gave up on everything I wanted. I couldn’t write, I couldn’t pass my classes, I couldn’t make my mother happy, I couldn’t fathom how I was ever going to support myself without my parents and I resented them for making me feel, increasingly, like an imposition in their lives. I wasn’t the brilliant intellectual I thought I was when I started college (amazed at how easily I could get wonderful grades in subjects I loved, as opposed to my dismal struggle through high school), I went into the literary criticism classes and I drew a blank. It was all nonsense to me, smart-sounding nonsense that never failed to make me feel inferior but nonsense nevertheless. I wasn’t able to handle anything then, all I thought I wanted was slipping through my fingers.

So I let it all go. I stopped going to college, I stopped trying to write… I stopped trying to dream… And the worst part was how ashamed I was of myself and how often I pretended that none of it was happening. I was only able to tell my parents all I had stopped doing during those years, long after the fact. If it hadn’t been for my friends and my boyfriend I would have died of despair back then. I remember obsessively thinking of these lines from a P.J. Harvey song:

Please don't reproach me 
For, for how empty 
My life has become

That was me, circa 2009, 2010. I was 24 and I was TERRIFIED.

I left home, moved in with this man I loved and broke up with him. And in that process, away from the constant criticism and source of dissatisfaction that my relationship with my mother had become then… I found out I didn’t have to give up at all.

I took up my studies again and stepping away from literary criticism I focused on translation and found out I EXCELLED at it, as I always had ever since I started this degree. I even lost some weight, took up swimming… But most importantly, I started writing again… I started writing AND getting published… Before then, never mind published, I’d never actually managed to FINISH anything I wrote. Suddenly I was confronted with the truth that I COULD do and become all the things I’d always dreamed I could be. I didn’t have to transcend through love, I could transcend through myself, I could accomplish the things that could give me meaning, completeness, and a sense of purpose all on my own. I could make stories that were just mine.

Since then, I’ve managed to finish all my classes and I’ve managed to get professionally published (got paid!). I have accomplished two things I never thought I would: strangers have read me and I neck-to-neck with most of my peers, educationwise.

But all of last year, which I took as an almost complete rest from writing and studying, I felt a small discontent begin to grow again. I’ve left my lands lay fallow too long. I’m ready for the next step. I’m itching for it. Not diving straight into it, has in fact, made me feel like somehow of a fraud. I want to graduate and I want to write a novel. I want to live abroad like I always dreamed and I want to learn new languages. I want to be a published artist like I am a published writer. I want… meaning, completeness and a sense of purpose.

And somehow, up until now, I’ve managed to get these (when I’ve gotten them) by sheer, fumbling luck. I’ve never set down to write what I wanted out of a year. I’ve had grand life plans but never a schedule. Like I said, no new year’s resolutions, no appointment books. I always just thought the grand design of my life plan would carry me through…

One of my best friends turned forty on 2018 and she told me something I had never considered. She told me she needed to sit down and write what she wanted out of the next decade, that she had done it when she turned thirty and needed to do it again now. Since she is one of the most accomplished and happiest people I know, I think I’ll take her up on this one.

(A propos of nothing. More in my style and less organizationally, I’ve been recently remembering Neil Gaiman’s Keynote Address of 2012. Other than being a huge fan of his and considering him one of my role models in what I want as a writer and as a person, I’ve always found what he has said about writing to be extremely useful and relatable. In the Keynote Address he described never having any sort of life plan, but rather, having a list of everything he wanted to write and an idea of the sort of writer he wanted to be. I’ll make that list soon, but today I want to remember this idea of himself as a writer. He called it his mountain. The mountain of being a professional writer of mainly fiction. He said: “And I knew that as long as I kept walking towards the mountain I would be all right. And when I truly was not sure what to do, I could stop, and think about whether it was taking me towards or away from the mountain. I said no to editorial jobs on magazines, proper jobs that would have paid proper money because I knew that, attractive though they were, for me they would have been walking away from the mountain. And if those job offers had come along earlier I might have taken them, because they still would have been closer to the mountain than I was at the time.”)

2019 New Year’s Resolutions 

The three most important ones, which will supersede all others are:

1. I will finish my thesis.
(My thesis is the only thing keeping me from graduating now. Graduating would mean being able to apply for scholarships in Master’s Degrees, it would mean not having to write any more school related things and having the time and freedom to write a novel, it would mean the time and money to invest in learning a new language, in finding a job that will let me travel… it will mean being able to change my life and not living “on hold” anymore, until I finish my degree)

2. I will eliminate debt and save an emergency fund.
(I know I can do this. I did it last year before I took half the year off to rest from the never-ending stress that my life had been since 2011. Doing both of these things will mean financial freedom, I will never again have to stay in an ugly situation because I don’t have the cash to escape it. And I will be able to start saving up for language classes and living abroad as I’ve always wanted)

3. Live the mountain philosophy and say no to stuff that’s not taking me close to my mountain.
(I want to be a professional writer, a university graduate who speaks other languages and has seen the world. I want to be a creator and an artist. Anything that takes me away from this, is not worth my time.)

And in no particular order, these are the more specific ones (those marked with an asterisk will be needing scheduling and planning soon, if it doesn’t have a deadline it’s not a goal!):

*Finish my pending craft projects: Rhino amigurumi and bracelet for C.
*Crochet something for my friend Millie and her impending baby.
-Go to a science museum (Planetarium).
-Have an artist’s picnic.
-Draw at an art museum.
-Go to free culture stuff more frequently (every 2 months).
-Clean out my closet and donate stuff.
-Donate money to a women-focused organization.
-Have everything in my apartment working (dryer, plumbing, toilet seats, etc.)
-Exercise 5 days a week by midyear (June).
-Start an amigurumi business
*Get really cool presents for my parents, saving up for them and planning them with time.
-Keep up with my bullet journal to the end of the year.
-Keep a dream journal in my blog.
-No buying more notebooks until I finish at least ONE.

Conspiracy to Murder

I had the weirdest most stressful nightmare... I dreamt that some of my male friends murdered a girl and hid her body.

What a horrible thing to see a person you love doing! But not so much, as in most dreams, what you "know" is not quite what is real in the waking world. I was at a party, and parts of the setting looked simply like any garden, parts like the old garden at my grandparent's house which always features prominently in my dreams. I knew the guys at the party were "my friends" but I could honestly not recognize many of them. I recognized my exboyfriend whose nickname prompts me to dub him C. and one of my friends from high school, an artist who I very much admire, let's call him S. Both of them are among the nicest people I've met and neither murdered anyone... even in my dream. They were just at this fateful party.

I remember walking around and seeing a group of these guys talking and chopping something up with an axe. Next day I was to hear them discussing the incident and was able to put two and two together and figure out that what they were chopping up was the body of a young woman. She had died as a result of a stupid party accident, was the vague idea I had in my dream.

I remember being furious at them, absolutely FURIOUS. I remember a bunch of "adults" were discussing the event and had the typical justification of "let's not ruin the lives of these young men" and I was LIVID. My father was among these parents and miscellaneous adults and that made me particularly hateful of the whole reaction.

I got into a fight with one of my friends. I think I got the stressful feeling from this bit, but also a bit of exhilaration, because I knew that what I was doing was the RIGHT thing. I told this friend that what he and the others had done was an EVIL thing and that I wanted no part in it. I took my stuff and left.

I was very afraid in the dream but also so angry I managed to avoid the fear. It turned into one of those dreams where you are running from someone. I knew my friends knew I knew... They knew I disapproved and would go to the police even if what I had seen was not very clear and even when I really didn't know quite what happened. So I was running because I was logically afraid of someone trying to do something to get me to shut up.

I remember how determined I was and I remember, strangely enough, thinking that they couldn't scare me! I lived alone! They had no leverage over me! (I have no idea why this had any sort of relevance to my dream predicament)

I woke up just after sitting down someplace and meeting someone who was to play the role of good Samaritan. They would help me out. It would be okay.

Another friend of mine appeared in the dream as well, a girl we'll call Y. She appeared when I was very angrily throwing rocks at the house where the party had taken place. She came out the backdoor, which also looked very much like the back door of my grandparents' old house. She wanted to tell me she very much supported me leaving and calling the police and I told her very emphatically that she should come with me! She couldn't stay here! It was dangerous!

For one reason or another she wouldn't come with me, but she told me what the stupid party accident had been about. The guys had made this girl climb into an air vent.... because she was small and thin? For a bet? As a dare? I don't know, but she had died there and they had panic and somehow they were very much responsible.

I think Y had decided to stay at the house because the young girl had a baby and neither of us had any idea where the baby was or who had kept it.

At the moment it was a maddening and stressful and outrageous... but I woke up half-relieved, that I had done the right thing and not let my friends get away with murder... even my oniric friends...

Dream Libraries

(Transcribed from my iPhone voice notes)

I dreamt of a huge library. I think in my dream it was the Library of Alexandria or something like that. It was hidden underground and we were going there through an expedition... It looked a little like the Disney movie Atlantis.

There were lots of boxes and chests, colorful containers of great secrets. Eventually I had to fight... Well, no, it wasn't me. The main character of my dream had to fight some sort of Satan-like figure. There were lots of motifs in the dream that looked kabbalistic. The main character character of the dream was like an angel of wisdom, who started out as a human being, incarnate... she had to wake up to this identity of hers.

There were tarot motifs and it reminded me a little of the movie the Ninth Gate.

In the end, she had to take all the objects that had survived the fight, the disaster. They were huge chests full of things. The chests opened like puzzles (in real life I have a wooden box that opens like this). And it was not just that these huge chests were full of books and scrolls, or even full of magical things... they were like doors, providing access to other dimensions. They were magical themselves.

And one of the chests... someone was going to have to become the guardian of this chest. Little by little they were going to have to release the information in this chest. The way it opened, this chest... this puzzle... it could take you to different places, if you opened it correctly or in different ways.

When we opened it, people who weren't the guardians of this chest, it took us to see a place that looked like the fields of Elysium... and there was an enemy of ours there (must be all the Saint Seiya I've been watching lately).

The guardian of this chest was Polly, my cat, and she had to learn how to use it and teach me how to use it myself. And it seemed like I wasn't the first person who had to... well, once more, not me, but rather the main character of the dream... The main character was not the first person who would have this role, as guardian of all this information, all this knowledge, but rather, it was something to be inherited, something to be remembered.

There was a sort of battle in the dream, and we lost a lot of this informaton, of the chests and treasures carried by the expedition. And it was a tragedy, because so much knowledge was lost. We had lost these things because of that devil-like figure, this dream-Satan who kept trying to trip us up.

It seemed like a sort of illumination, like reaching an awareness of one-self. The protagonist of the dream had to realize that she was the guardian of all this knowledge, all these magical things, these talismans, little by little. She had to wake up, little by little, to her role as the person chosen to take care of all of this.

(Told you I had a cat puzzle box)

Review: A Brief History of Time

A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I used to look at this book and think that it was written for very smart people who understood math... which I obviously didn't. That's why I never set out to read it. I'm a literature student, and I naively thought that science, especially science as "complicated" as cosmology, was not meant for me. But recently I've had to do some research on astrophysics related stuff and I decided to give myself a chance and just try and read the damn thing. It was popular science book, so it should be simple enough?

HA!

Well, half of it I understood and and the half that I did I probably misinterpreted totally, BUT it was incredibly interesting and I learned so much! Even though somehow I feel LESS smart after reading it, I'm very glad I took the chance. As per the advice of some people, I'm going to be watching documentaries on some of the topics that were most difficult for me; mainly the chapters on quantum and particle physics. I flew through the chapters on black holes, they were super interesting and not quite as hard to wrap my head around.

I'll probably have to read the whole thing again with a pencil in hand and three other books, but I don't regret starting my research with this. If nothing else it taught me that even though I'm bad at math and understand half of what I read, there ain't no such a thing in science as "not for me".

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Review: The Virgin Suicides

The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Having been a suicidal teenage girl, being friends with lots of suicidal girls, still suffering from depression... this is a strange book to me. I remember watching and being fascinated by the movie. I loved the book's prose, what lots of people have written about it, how evocative, hazy and sensual it is.

But while reading I kept remembering that it was written by a man. Someone here wrote that the book is more the story of the boys watching the Lisbon girls than of the girls themselves and I believe that. I like those sort of books though, the ones written by men romanticizing and idolazing women, showing us how they view us as incomprehensible but tantallizing creatures.

I guess that's why Sofia Coppola wanted to direct it, thought at times the sheer distance and bafflement of the boys is faintly offensive. Girls locked up in a house and not permitted to go to school or get a job or find any way out of their situation and you wonder why they killed themselves? No shit Sherlock...

I thought the most real bit of insight the boys had on the Lisbon girls was when they realized Lux had made advances on them only to give her sisters time to die in peace... I wonder why the author let Mary live only to kill herself again? I would have let her live, the way the author let Lux have sex: a reminder to the narrators that their mythical suicidal virgins weren't as suicidal or as virginal as they wanted to imagine them to be.

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The Garden and the Riddle

As always I've abandoned this blog for the last four years. Half of it is because I had a horrible anxiety crisis that left me BARELY hanging on for a couple of years, with just enough energy to work and finally finish my studies (all I need to do now is finish my damn thesis!)... but also because said anxiety made it supremely DISTRESSING to attempt the introspection required by journaling. I HATED having to think of my life and avoided it when at all possible.

I got very into audiobooks because they let me exist without having to face the silence. Even music wasn't cutting it anymore...

I'm feeling better now. I feel like this last month of August I took the first REAL break from working I've taken since 2011 when I decided to work on my degree again. Last year I managed to finish the last bit I needed to graduate other than thesis writing. But I was in a financial hellhole since my job wasn't really paying me anymore. There was a huge earthquake in Mexico City and I felt very much adrift and uncertain...

For the first time in years I have savings and was able to take a LONG vacation where I didn't have to work at all and where I could just read whatever I pleased and draw whenever it stuck my fancy.

I hadn't realized how much I needed it. I needed it so badly that I'm finally ready to start journalling again. I needed something to jumpstart the journaling so I decided to start writing down my dreams again, as long as they seem at all interestin. I might eventually just decide to do a physical dream journal, the bullet journal was fun.

This is what I dreamed last night:

I dreamt of a girl who was very beautiful. She seemed wealthy too, a real catch. The sort of girl who is always being pursued by someone in a shakespearean play. She lives in a garden she was building herself. She seems to have servants, handmaidens... friends, certainly someone who could serve as a confidant. She is hiding but doesn't know why? There is a pond and flowers and trees in her garden but she shares it with others. There are animals in her garden: tame iguanas (probably because I just saw a couple of them during my holiday), her pond has fish in it and of course there are kittens frolicking around, though I am not sure of these last.

She is speaking with someone, gossiping, beneath a canopy of trees when she sees a man come inside her gate, over the cobblestone path.

She knows this man.

He is tall and very handsome and he is looking for her. She greets him warmly... too warmly. They have been intimate before and she wishes to be intimate again, but he stops her kindly. He hasn't come to see her for this but on behalf of someone else. Is it his lord? Yes and no. Certainly the person he speaks for is important but I sense they are more equals than not and that this man is doing the lord a favor, because he knows her. He comes with a marriage proposal for her.


She has never seen this lord, she much prefers the man instea. But the man says: Marry him and he can make you a garden just as beautiful as this one and you won't have to share it. Somehow this is important to her; after all the work she has put in here she is loath to leave her home, but a garden she won't have to share sounds lovely. She is intrigued. The lord lives far away though... in the moon? It gives me a sort of Sailor Moon vibe, with a beautiful, powerful home where none should be possible. Her new garden would always be among the dark and the stars, no beautiful blue sky, though a night garden has its own peculiar charm...

The man brings her another token from her suitor: a riddle! And this truly catches her attention with an element of vanity. This lord has sought her out not for her beauty or her wealth but for her intelligence. Somehow this riddle is as much a gift as a cry for help. The implication is that if she marries him and solves this riddle for him, she will set him free. From a curse? From a promise? It's not terribly clear.

There is a sense that her suitor cannot appear to her until she has solved the riddle. I have been reading about Eros and Psyche and might have gotten the idea from them. They are also a love triangle like Tristan, Iseult and King Mark, in that the girl much prefers the envoy to the suitor, but also like Cesario, Olivia and Orsino. Yet this suitor is smarter than the other two, for he offers her gifts that will interest her as well as flatter her and that show her he sees her clearly for what and who she is.

I don't remember the riddle, but it was long and very beautiful. It had sumbols, letters, and numbers. The symbols turned into letters, turned into numbers. They were both at once. It seemed to be an animated riddle rather than a spoken one, appearing on a screen... but also like a shadow play. I remember the last two digits of my year of birth appeared, 8 and 6.

The girl was very much intrigued and would consider the suit.

Though kind to her friends, her confidants and the envoy, she reminded me in her intelligence and beauty and vivacity of the more insolent and headstrong version of a character I am working on right now.

I woke up as she considered the marriage proposal.

Review: Assassin's Fate

Assassin's Fate by Robin Hobb
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I can't be objective with this book.

Maybe with all the other books of the Realm of the Elderlings series I was able to measure and consider things carefully. I still think the best are the Liveship Traders books. They have a tight storyline, well divided among it's ensemble cast, where every character finds a satisfying ending, even when they don't get what they wanted.

The book that had made me cry most horribly was Fool's Fate. That was the book that made me utterly fall in love with Fitz and Beloved's relationship. I still remember the final scenes and all my favorite dialogues. I still hold it as an example of how to write a selfless character or deep-hearted love, even when it's unrequited.

At first I wasn't happy with the ending. I never liked Molly and Fitz together because of how troubled and sometimes even abusive the relationship was. On both sides. But I read those books when I was in college, sometimes during class when I should have been doing something else. Since then I have grown and matured and somehow it seems so probable and natural that Fitz might want something that isn't exactly what he needs. People don't always love the person who loves them most or best, but we can't control it. It is to the Fool's credit that he accepts this and let's Fitz live the life he wants, even if it's a boring life and a settled one. I cried about as much when the Fool left as I did when he died. Their parting left me bitter and melancholic.

But this book broke my heart.

I was expecting it. I had feared it. Bee was a protagonist now and we didn't absolutely need Fitz alive for the end. But I didn't think she would dare. If nothing else I'll take to heart Hobb's cold blood when killing characters. It wasn't a massacre the way Martin's deaths are, but she killed exactly who she needed to kill, no more, no less.

People say Kennitsson wasn't exactly necessary, but I felt for him and I was as angry and proud of his death as I was for Fitz and the Fool. I imagine Etta and Wintrow and Sorcor and the promise that Paragon Ludluck's life represented, somehow a life free of cruelty to bring light to his father's dark history, and I think only such a life would have been fair exchange for a dragon's rebirth.

There was nothing fair about how Fitz died.

I was furious. I read all night trying to get to the end of the book and prove that he couldn't really die like this, so painfully, so soon. I cried from 8 am to 11 am. I cried because Fitz deserved his rest and a clean death, to fall asleep by Molly's side and never wake up. Fitz deserved never to have to leave a child of his yet again.

But Fitz so rarely got what he deserved in life, why should he get it in death?

This was as tight a book in its own way as the Liveship ones were. The dying messenger was there so we could know how Fitz would die. Kennitsson was there so Paragon would live.

And the Fool was back, so that he and Fitz could be together in the stone wolf, the way they had never been when alive.

It was bitter and not satisfying. I felt a horrible dread to think that one could love someone so deeply and desire a life with them and know they would never be loved back and in the end have to settle for an ugly death and an eternity in the memory stone. But Fitz and Beloved's lives were never about living them, but about giving them away for a greater purpose.

I felt cheated and heartbroken and desolate... but I also felt vindicated. This book did not end with the hope and happiness of Fool's Fate, but it ended with a future. Bee's future and the world's future, both bought with the lives and suffering of two of the characters I have loved most in all my life.

I hope you hunt well Stone Wolf.

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Review: Jurassic Park

Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I grew up in the nineties, which means I was a huge Jurassic Park freak. I was the original dinokid. And I still love the movie like mad and watch it every time I get.

I'm not going to say the book was a disppointment because it actually wasn't. It was exciting and interesting and the dinosaur info was awesome! What I love about reading the book of a movie is how much more extra information you get on the setting and characters. I got that. But what I think was lacking in Crichton that Spielberg managed to do so wonderfully is likeability. Malcolm was among the funniest parts of the movie but here he just rambled on and on and seemed to be nothing more than a mouthpiece for Crichton's own views. And Jesus, was Lex annoying! I mean Tim was too in the movie but he was intentionally so and he had as a friend of mine said, "impeccable comedic timing".

I don't know if it's true but I had the distinct impression of reading about kids written by someone who didn't remember much of his childhood and wasn't all that used to hanging out with kids.

But it WAS exciting and it was thoroughly enjoyable. Crichton is an easy read. In fact he helped me get through Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes, because even Malcolm couldn't compare to THOSE philosophical ramblings!

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Review: Something Wicked This Way Comes

Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I have a weird relationship with Ray Bradbury; while I tend to really like his concepts and themes the actual writing always leaves me sort of dissatisfied and I mist admit a bit bored. I never did enjoy Farenheit 451. However, I enjoyed what little I read of Dandelion Wine and since this was another coming of age story I wanted to give it a go.

I've always loved stories about faustian deals and considering it was adapted by Disney, I had high hopes for it.

As always the themes and ideas are lovely, the setting out of the story and characters was delightful and excited. I loved the contrast between the two boys and loved the imagery used to describe Jim, half in light, half in shadow. But this is my problem with Bradbury, a lot of imagery and not enough action. There's so much philosophical rambling in this book that it ends up eating away at its suspense and excitement.

I hated how instead of having the children figure out the carnival themselves, Will's father ended up telling them everything in a huge info dump. I though it was a waste of good characters.

I also got very little sense of tension when dealing with the temptation supposedly presented to Will's father and Jim. I never felt like Will's father was in any danger of being seduced by the carnival and that seemed a bit of a let down after being privy to his fears of aging and his longing for boyhood.

But what I DO love is how utterly quotable Bradbury is. His screed on the autumn people is fantastic and the way the book ends with the idea that taking possession of the carousel and using it, even without the manipulative influence of Mr. Dark, could turn them into autumn people themselves. Now that's temptation right there!

All in all and in spite of its flaws I'm glad I read this book. It's a classic of faustian stories and its influence stretches all over. Finally I know where one of my favorite roleplaying games got the term "autumn people". Also, now I'm finally allowed to watch the Disney movie!

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