Saturday, August 30, 2008
old things
A gas pump. Notice that the highest possible price for a sale was $9.99.
An ancient typewriter, in a rather terrifying state of deterioration. I expect that it mutters eldritch stories to itself in the middle of the night.
It has been raining in the early morning here, torrential spills of rain that half wake me up; but then I fall asleep and when I wake up again, it is warm and sunny, and I keep thinking that I only dreamed the rain until I accidentally soak my foot in a puddle.
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Friday, August 22, 2008
a good read
Thursday, August 21, 2008
cloaks of invisibility
Advice is very useful, because you can use it or ignore it as you wish, and either way it gives you a hint of what is up ahead. So, these are the things I'd say to someone who is on the way to Clarion, for what it's worth:
1. If you have the opportunity to go to Clarion, and you can make it work, timewise and moneywise, then snatch it up and run with it. If you aren't sure what Clarion is, then read through the website and just know that it is more wonderful and intense and exciting than they can possibly get across in tidy website language.
2. This worked for me, but may not be the thing for everyone: Don't get too buried in the pre-Clarion internet social madness. It's so much more exciting and delightful to properly meet your fellow travelers when you stumble off the plane, or into the room where you pick up your keys, or wandering around trying to find your apartment. There are the refreshing moments of awkward recognition, the fumbling conversations, the subtle slide into familiarity. You think I'm joking, but these things are wonderful. Or, I may just be internet-challenged.
3. Bring a few story ideas that excite you and creep around at the back of your head. I didn't do this, and each week was a bit like leaping off a high cliff and hoping that there would be a handy rope to catch on the way down. But don't clutch at your ideas. If something new comes along and follows you around, see what it has to say. It might be stranger and more fun to chase after.
4. Bring many pens. Stories and critiques eat pens like you would never believe. Or, be very clever, like Emily and Neil, and bring a fountain pen, with a bottle of ink to refill it.
5. Bring comfortable shoes because there is much walking to be had. Walk down to the beach and see the odd squirrel creatures that live there. Walk out to where the Torrey Pines Paragliding Center launches their customers over a cliff and watch a sunset. Wander around campus at night and look at all the strange sculptures. Try not to get lost while going from classroom to cafeteria, and if you do, just keep walking until you find a friendly looking person and ask them to point the way (likely behind the building that you had just passed three times).
6. Try to write a story each week. This causes sleepless nights, dependence on many cups of strong tea, and possibly panic as the story becomes more and more recalcitrant, but it is entirely worth it. Each instructor helps you to look at your work from a different angle. They stand next to you and focus the lens, just so, and suddenly you see all sorts of things that you can take in for that story, and also for the next. Also, if you write a story each week, your classmates get familiar with your habits. They know the direction you tend to lean, they figure out your weaknesses, and they are not fooled by how you might cover them up with things you are better at. They figure you out as a writer, and then they help you tell stories better.
7. Sunscreen is your friend.
8. You don't need to bring too many books. There is a very well-stocked library that looks like a spaceship and is named after Doctor Seuss.
9. Take copious notes. I've just read over my notes from the first week, and there were a couple pages about sentence structure from a talk with Kelly and Jim that I had already forgotten the details of (then again, I have a really dreadful memory. Notes are my friends).
9. Have enormous fun. In six weeks you will: meet several new best friends, have ideas and realizations explode your head every day, stay up much too late talking about impossible things, write and write and write, examine many stories closely so that your brain is forced to learn a bit about how stories work, and go slightly crazy so that you can see things properly again.
If you want to hear my Clarion mates, who are much more sensible and articulate than my ramblings, give their advice, have a listen to this.
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
science fiction invades my life
And then today, while waiting to see Tropic Thunder, we found this:
Which made me wonder how many people feel the burning desire to read about "500 Out-Of-This-World" baby names. I did quite like the green tentacles holding the bottle though. I didn't look up anyone's name though, since, according to the Fortune Teller's Name Book in the same store, my name connotes something along the lines of "an end of tribulations coinciding with the end of a significant relationship." What sort of fortune is that?
Saturday, August 16, 2008
golden boy
Here I am, sitting eagerly in front of my television, ready to watch the whole, long evening of Olympics coverage just to see Michael Phelps swim for his 8th gold medal.
I swear that it's the Countdown To Michael Phelps that pops up on the right of the screen during any sport. "9 MINUTES TO PHELPS," it flashes. "5 MINUTES TO PHELPS!" Hallelujah, everyone, "2 MINUTES TO PHELPS!!!"
The swimmers look like alien sea-people to me, faintly disturbing in the boneless way that their arms and spines move, but I'm still here, waiting for the countdown. Someone in the NBC marketing department knows their stuff.
Thursday, August 14, 2008
and home again, with appearance by knight in shining armour
My sister was in this amazing piece of choreography by Ohad Naharin. It's a group dance done in chairs to a Jewish echad. The movement is visceral, explosive, and the sort of thing that makes me lean forward in my chair so I can feel the music vibrate my through my chest a bit. There's a snippet of the choreography in this video of Nederlands Dans Theatre.
Since then, I've been fitting myself back into this other life. For six weeks we were in an odd bubble, a suspended chunk of stretched out time cut off from the rest of the world, and coming back to a land where other things besides writing and story-telling exist is entirely strange. I miss my writing people. I spend too much time online, keeping up with our long email conversations and chatting (chatting! I never chat). I miss having them all there, just through the next door, or upstairs, or in the spaceship library, or ahead of me on one of our mad walks through the night... They're all still there though, just a bit more spread out, and that makes me indescribably happy. I love knowing that if I have the weird desire to talk about stories in the middle of the night, I'll have at least one wonderful somebody to call, no matter the time, because we're scattered across so many time zones.
An adventure:
While driving home from the city this afternoon, the car in front of me swerved and almost took out a car in the next lane. I had time to think, "why in all the world did they do that?" and then I saw that they did it to avoid the very large and flat piece of metal on the road in front of me. A truck prevented me from doing the same, so I just shrunk down into my seat and drove straight over. It was very loud. A few minutes later, I was driving along on a flat, rattling tire. I pulled over to the shoulder and rang up AAA for assistance (yes, I'm one of those lame girls who has absolutely no idea how to change a tire), when, miraculously, what should appear behind my car but a shiny white towtruck.
Apparently, there's a Freeway Service Patrol made up of lovely, helpful people who drive around the freeways in shiny towtrucks, looking for people in vehicular distress. My personal knight, a G. Menendez, put my spare tire on and sent me on my way with reassuring words. Then, he got into his towtruck and drove away. I felt like I had just seen a fairy godmother.
Hurrah for the Freeway Service Patrol.
Saturday, August 9, 2008
goodbyes
Sometimes, goodbyes are really, really hard. Like when you’ve just spent six weeks with some of the most fascinating, intelligent, and wonderful people… and now you’re leaving them, without knowing when and if you’ll see them again. It’s quite distressing.
Saturday, August 2, 2008
beneath the cliffs of doom
Stairs or road, either way you get one of those breathtaking and entirely Californian views:
Though, if you take the stairs, you get to pass the Salk Institute, which looks like nothing so much as a place where mad scientists breed nightmare creatures for nefarious ends. It is a gloriously forbidding building made up of cement blocks and very few windows, with turrets and sad patio furniture and signs that say "NO LAB COATS IN THE CAFETERIA".
We've taken Kelly, Mary Anne, and Nalo to the beach. Other times we've just skipped off there on our own and admired the sunset. It's a nice, sandy beach, but it is at the bottom of some cliffs, and one of my favourite things about it are the signs telling you to beware the cliffs that may fall on top of your head.
We went to the beach this morning (down the stairs this time), and then we had some Mexican food, and then I fell asleep on the couch in the middle of reading a story, and now I'm having a think about what I'm going to write for next week. There are little hints of lycanthropy, Victorian circuses, and fairy tales swimming through my head, but nothing solid enough to start writing on yet. Hopefully, I'll find a trail to follow this evening and pick my way along the messy bits that are my first drafts.