Psychogeography – understanding and awareness of place/people for setting a story. 

https://litreactor.com/columns/the-psychogeography-of-crime-fiction by Gabino Iglesias

I wonder if perhaps writing is about obscuring self? Stepping away. Inhabiting other people, other places without bring your own mores, sensibilities or agenda and if possible erasing personal experience to re-imagine.

Have been reading David Joy an Appalachian writer and the almost visceral experience of his part of the world which he brings to his stories and characters in Where All Light Tends to Go and The Weight of this World is inspiring and humbling.  

https://www.david-joy.com/

Acceptance

Nice weekend - my poem about the seasons here in Cyprus, In Exile, was published in the wonderful Cabinet of Heed. Just spent the morning reading the rest of the issue. So many astounding pieces, especially by Alicia Bakewell, Sophie Flynn, and Carrie Danaher Hoyt.
https://cabinetofheed.wordpress.com/



Also got an acceptance for my highly commended piece at Word Factory last summer, albeit with a little reworking, and that will be published online in July at Fictive Dream.
https://fictivedream.com/

Come the Apocalypse

In these uncertain days, some stockpile batteries and candles, some food and water, me, I'm stockpiling books new, current and old. We will need the words.

The Ballad of Everyday Life.

E iti noa ana, nā te aroha - although the gift is small, it is given with love.

I found this draft which I failed to publish, written back in 2009

My first day in Paris, I walked from Notre Dame to the Pere Lachaise Cemetery. It was a long walk through accidental streets and interesting corners. On the way I bought the obligatory baguette and bottle of water for half the price the vendors were selling them around Notre Dame. The streets I crossed were less Belle Paris and more Paris Ordinaire, with a definite increasing ethnic presence from Africa and North Africa. At last I reached the cemetery, which was quiet and had a steady small straggle of visitors.
It was obvious, like me, most were seeking out the grave of Jim Morrison. Middle-aged couples, younger couples, groups of solitary young men in black T-shirts and a slightly wild feel to them, and teenagers, pimply and in their own minds, probably dangerous. We oldies know that feeling and know how quickly it passes. There are graves of many great and good authors, artists and musicians spread throughout the vast cemetery, but unfortunately Jim’s grave is probably closer to the entrance so unless a visitor has a definite agenda these immortals get ignored. I confess I did the same because I was hot and tired and my camera battery was about to give out. Next time.
Despite a plan at the entrance, Jim’s grave was difficult to find, everyone went in different directions. I found myself a shady step at the feet of Faure to eat my baguette, drink my water and to smoke a leisurely cigarette. Refreshed I wandered off to find the grave of my hero during my intense teenage years, many moons ago. Along the way there were some lovely mausoleums, many dilapidated, others pristine.
Family tombs from an age when life was so much more serious and worthy. Inspiration for their architecture varied as did the influences for the tone of decoration. Greek classicism featured heavily. Some of the statuary was striking – overblown or sombre in turn.

After much ambling and back tracking I found Morrison’s grave. It was virtually hidden, tucked behind other graves almost out of sight. I happened upon it accidentally. Spookily, just when I was sure I wouldn’t find it and could not face a trek back to the master plan, I heard the briefest snatch of the opening chords of Light My Fire. It was enough to convince me I was close. Was it Jim letting me know or merely some other fans nearby who were playing the song in tribute? The oddity was that it was so brief. I had heard that it was a bit of a circus around his grave, with graffiti and tokens left by enamoured pilgrims, but it seems the authorities had had enough and cleaned it up. What interested me most was the Greek inscription which I had never heard or read being mentioned before. It reads KATA TON DAEMONA EAYTOY - which roughly translates as ‘against his own demons’. I wonder who chose it.

James Joyce

A few days ago, I chanced on readings  of James Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, broadcast on BBC Radio 4.

In Paris, 1924. Portrait by Patrick Tuohy.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09rx6hl

Of course, who hasn't heard of Joyce and his canon of work, but like many, I'd not read  more than a few what seemed to me obscure lines. The closest to Joyce I ever came was reading Dylan Thomas's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog.
The readings - wonderfully read by Andrew Scott - although abridged into ten 15 minute readings, the writing, the language, the content are quite astonishing (yes, I know, I am very late to this party), and I am captivated. I immediately ordered hard copy of the book as well as Ulysses, and The Dubliners (which hasn't arrived yet).



Last year I read Eimear McBride's astounding novel

Eimear McBride: A Girl is a Half-formed Thing: On BBC R4 Bookclub https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09qb1j6

Something about these two writers resonated; their use of stream of consciousness and interior monologues and references the the character's 'psychic reality rather than his external surroundings'. Inspired is probably too grandiose term but I can feel their energy eating away at me, deep inside, and if that sounds a little dramatic, tough, because it is exactly how I feel. After years of corralling my writing into a style (not that I have found 'a style') which I was convinced was correct or commercial (it's definitely not) or readable, more clever (to me only) or accessible, I am on the edge of understanding the truth in the sagest writing advice, that a writer should be true to his/herself, not mold their words to the accepted norms, because there are an awful lot of accepted norms out there. Why bother if you can't bring another way of looking, feeling, writing?
But, to be free takes effort and even if it is shit, it will be my shit. I feel like those animals kept captive and caged who have the door swung open and they hesitate, unable to rush out into the light.

Watch the link below and check from about 50 seconds in - this is me.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExEjXLMd4VA

Winnie-the-Pooh but not as you know him.

https://twitter.com/lavietidhar/status/971164407270125568

Resuscitating this blog

I haven't touched it for a few years, and realise I need to devote some time to sorting it and updating things. But, I have a couple of deadlines to aim for so once they are done, it'll be the spring clean of blogs.

Pandybat

Here is the definition of the brutal instrument.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/pandybat

And I thought getting whacked on my knuckles as a five-year old with one of those thick bevelled wooden rulers was bad enough. Ah the nuns and priests and brothers. Lessons in barbarity.

James Joyce

Listening to this, a reading on BBC Radio 4 of Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man - this second episode is so incredibly painful - especially the second half but the writing, the style, the whole is breathtaking.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09rybgh#play

Greek Food

Anyone wanting amazing vegetarian Greek inspired food follow halloumitracksuit on Instagram - I signed up just so I could access his recipes.

Lunch

 Courgettes/zucchini with herbs and eggs

Aubergine/eggplant with tomato, garlic and parsley.

This is how I should write.

First poppies of the year. Swallows have arrived. Anenomes have begun popping up. The fields are still lush with fresh grass and are splattered with gold - Lazarus daisies, mustard (rape-seed) known in Cyprus as lapsanes and electric yellow oxalis known as oxynouthia.

Now I'm getting desperate

In the past year, writing has flown out the window. Oh there have been bouts and spurts of writing. Those twenty minute, once a day pages, which made me feel wonderful and probably had some good stuff in them but which ultimately I wrote and then abandoned, lacking the will to go back and work on them. I have my current notebook, full of sporadic and at times page prolific scribbles, with some interesting ideas. What I don't have is the focus or courage or energy to run with those random thoughts. I've lost it completely. Is this writer's block? I don't think so. My thoughts are constantly turning phrases, ideas, story lines - running through my head like a manic ticker tape (I suppose that little image dates me) - churning them out like a factory production line, except there is no production. I feel daunted to take up any challenge. So many documents started and saved (ever hopeful) of the next best idea, so many fresh/false starts to the eternal book which will not let me go, but nothing completed. This feels like something other than a block. It is as if I've crossed a river, found a new country of living and life and everyday distractions but long for and miss the 'old country'. I am at a loss.



I wish for a long period of isolation, just me and my laptop (oh and a printer, wifi, phone signal, a warm comfy bed, a clean modern bathroom, maybe a little car to run into the nearest town for supplies - food and stationery, because we all need to eat and some of us just love brand new blank pages and full pens), what I don't want is meals to be cooked for others, supermarket runs, social obligations, dogs and cats to be fed and walked, unsolicited conversation or any of the other precious ordinary everyday ripples which I would probably miss but just get in the way.


I suspect I am not alone out there with these feelings. But because I'm  over the sixty-year hump, I know there is no longer the time for dreaming or what ifs or if onlys. There isn't much time full stop and I am wasting it every day, watching it trickle from my fingers and am paralyzed to do anything about the waste - not the time, even I know I can't stop that.

Nano

It's November and it can mean only one thing - no not Christmas decorations, not putting away the summer gear and getting out the winter (winter comes late here in Cyprus and then mostly it's just a ghost) - no November means Nanowrimo.
Thirty days to write and write and write. Permission to write rubbish, freedom to wander down any old path, no detention if you mix tenses or throw in a few cliches. It's like skinny dipping on a warm summer night in the sea of words. Bliss.
I've decided to forget everything I've written so far about my novel of a thousand names and write as if it is a whole new story.
Any suggestions or tips on how to gag, sedate, make disappear a husband and his I-need-you-along social life would be greatly appreciated.

Sunday in the Heat

What to do when the heat is high and the ants invade - spray, swim and cruise old favourites? Finished a Poke Rafferty book - The Fear Artist http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13330314-the-fear-artist Revisited music from my youth the good, the bad and the cheesy from Jefferson Airplane, Juicy Lucy, the Troggs, Spencer Davis, Tremeloes, Allman Brothers band and so, so many more. Read poems by Charles Simic - my favourite The Great Horned Owl - watched YouTube with the Charlie Daniels Band, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNSljt0i3TI Janis Joplin, Santana. Watched Christopher Hitchens dismantle the myth of Mother Theresa https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65JxnUW7Wk4
The ants have been beaten back for a few hours, sat around in my wet swimsuit and had an eclectic afternoon of fun between walking the dogs, cooking dinner for husband arriving home tonight after 10 days away and offering the corpses of said ants and one spider to the gods for Greece to triumph tonight. 

Because I can

My beautiful grandchildren whom I won't see this time  - the only downside to not travelling with the man to UK, Brussels and Paris.

 Alex wowed by the lobster for lunch on Spetses in May 2014

 Allan (Panos for the Greeks) and Daniel (holding Allan's new baby Constantine).

Ellie Belly just being beautiful.

CHECK NO MATE

Husband deposited at airport - CHECK
Drive home with Janis Joplin at full blast - CHECK
Supplies ready:
                                       

                                                         
                             
     Vices: Cigarettes -  CHECK  Chocolate - Uh oh - forgot to buy - no  CHECK
               E-cigarette for when the lungs get weary -  CHECK
                   

  Tomatoes and salad -  CHECK
                                  Fruit -  CHECK 

Food:   Peanut butter -  CHECK Marmite -  CHECK  Cheeses -  CHECK
             Bacon -  CHECK  Sausages -CHECK  Ice-cream -  CHECK  Eggs -  CHECK
             Bread -  CHECK
             Souvlaki and Gyros takeaway numbers -  CHECK

         Entertainment:
         DVDS: Seasons 1 & 2 of The Bridge (Swedish version) -  CHECK
                      Season 2 of The Killing (Danish version) -  CHECK

         Books:  The Illuminaries (that's a maybe) -  CHECK
                      Kindle with new books by Tim Hallinan -  CHECK
                      Cockroaches by Jo Nesbo -  CHECK

        Music: Janis -  CHECK Gin Wigmore -  CHECK  Dylan -  CHECK
                    Neil Young -  CHECK  Doors -  CHECK  J.J. Cale -  CHECK

    Drink:  Coffee CHECK   Wine - CHECK  Assorted softies - CHECK   Water - CHECK                  

   Pool ready for cooling off in the 30C plus days -  CHECK

       Ready to work like crazy to finish current draft -  CHECK  CHECK  CHECK

        Reading corner -  CHECK

A room of my own

16 June 2014

How can you mourn the potential loss of a room? I didn’t realise I was doing just that until my room – my ‘room of my own’ – received a reprieve. It’s not even really a room of my own. It is the main thoroughfare between the kitchen and garden – but over the last couple of years it has evolved into my (and the dogs of course) space.

I’ve squeezed in the old dining room table and covered it with stars. I have a comfy chair- a birthday present two years ago. I have an arm chair and foot stool for reading, a sofa, three book cases and walls filled with family photos, pin-board nonsense, gifts from friends, artwork by my sister and paintings by unlauded artists. 

A coffee table holds my printer, magazines (mostly about food), the too many notebooks, a zipped pouch with Mexican Train (still waiting for people drunk enough or idle enough to play it with me). I have files and boxes full of ideas for stories and projects, my mother’s letters to her mother sent from New Caledonia when she was a young girl serving in the military hospital there during World war Two. I have the letters sent by me to my mother from England, Greece, Saudi Arabia and Cyprus – full of events, people, opinions and thoughts I’ve long since forgotten. I never kept a diary so these are precious reminders of my life when I was too busy raising my children to think about who I was. I have pots and pots of pens, sticky notes, as yet unblemished exercise books all ready for the future. I have too many paper clips, staples, index cards, highlighters, and everything else I can justify buying from the stationer’s, but just as some women can’t have too many shoes or hand bags, I can’t have too many blank notebooks or coloured pens. I have a sweet two-tiered cheapo Ikea bench (with wheels courtesy of the husband) which holds my thesaurus and precious battered two volumes of Webster’s Comprehensive Dictionary (Encyclopaedic Edition – replete with the blanking of certain words by Saudi censors). The double glass doors to the dining room double as my notice board to chart the progress of chapters and scenes.

I look out onto the window boxes of pink and red geraniums, if I look right I see the pool and the oasis of my garden which has flowers all year round and is enclosed with a high dense hedge and trees, to my left is the kitchen, convenient for cooking while I work, handy for the endless cups of coffee and the jars of peanut butter which I eat by the spoonful.

A month ago, my husband decided unilaterally that he wanted to do stuff to the upstairs verandahs which included building me a ‘writing room’. At first I was excited, but then a doubting Thomas worm did what worms do – it wormed its way into my heart. A room upstairs would be nice but inconvenient. When husband came home, I would still feel obliged to shut up shop and come down stairs and say howdy. If I wanted to cook, either I’d be running up and down the stairs or have to decamp for the duration. The proposed room would look out on the growing body of new houses springing like mushrooms and by day the room would be in the full glare of the brutal Cypriot sun. The dogs, who follow and stay with me everywhere, would need letting out and no longer be free to wander at will.

So what if my husband doesn't understand the sanctity of being left alone? So what if he doesn't understand that when he comes in to just sit, drink his coffee, put on opera or talk it breaks the spell and I have to stop writing, turn and face him and sit, sometimes in silence, until he decides to move? So what? I’d miss my place downstairs in the heart of the house.

Yesterday, my husband decided that maybe the renovations he planned were not such a good idea. Had he sensed my reluctance or lack of enthusiasm? I don’t know, but I do know my heart sang a little off-key tune. My room is safe. I’m staying put.