rainofthenight

I miss London, I want to go back. Who's coming?

As they rode through the empty landscape, she was silent and thoughtful. With a sharp eye she looked around and took in everything there was to see. She spied for roadkill, getting out of the car to remove the dead flattened rabbits with soft hands and a tender eye, scraping ran over and dried birds from the tarmac and carefully putting them in the back of the car, securing their stiff wings and remnants of fur as if they were living, beautiful and asleep. And in a way, they were. Her cat accompanied her. With his missing eye and ear he looked a bit brought back from the dead as well. It would not have been a bad guess to assume that he had just entered his fourth life, with five left to go still.

 

The silent hills and stones left a lot of their inhabitants behind on the one road that had found itself a meandering way through the sharp lands. Drivers chased their cars over the road in a hurry to beat the empty hours that led from one village to the next. Later, she came. Her wide hat protected her eyes from the sun, her skirt and coat brushing against the leaves and bushes as she passed, fluttering in the winds that came from across the Atlantic.

 

At home she drove into the driveway, parking the car close to the house and bringing her dead animals one by one in to spread them out on the table in the living room. A lamp hung over it for work at late and early hours of the night and morning. Late in the evening, she would dissect her animals, performing loving autopsies until she had found their souls, torn loose from the macadam and often only barely held together. She’d knead them whole again and stored them, one by one, in jars. They stood on a shelf, labelled and alphabetised on animal. She had named them all though the names were not of her invention. They were theirs, from before, kept to them by her grace. Their bodies, she’d clean up and return to glory, though of another realm than that of the living, without betraying how they fell victim to the road. They could be found here and there in the country, souls travelling at night bringing her the messages she asked for. She smiled at them, and they glowed a bit, her silent companions.

 

She was the witch of the road. 

 Death is, unfortunately, for most people a chronic condition they suffer from even though when considered from a technical point of view, their hearts are still beating and they're breathing.

That is what I thought this morning upon waking, receiving a book from the mailman (Who Killed Amanda Palmer - I have been waiting a long time for it and undoubtedly will mention it later again), eating pancakes, drinking tea, making a shopping list (Tagus Creek 2007 red wine on it), hoping that a month has passed and I get to collect my repaired fountain-pen again, reading my, today scarce, email. Sometimes, I really like mornings.

Long time no seen, my lovelies. I have been to Ireland for twelve days and this is what I brought back:
Pictures
Shells
Stories to go with them.

I think I will post them, one every week, until I have run out. Do you think I should? They are all rather marvellous and fantastic and short. I like them but some I find very strange. I want to do something with them but don't know what. They would make nice postcards, perhaps. I could send them out? If I throw a bottle from my bedroom window and throw it hard enough, where would it land? The clouds are not the sea, I know that.

Baking has always fascinated me, and these days I have dedicated some pages from my notebook (just the one now, actually, but the list is growing at a frighteningly rapid pace!) to my wild new muffin combinations. Favourite of the moment is strawberry - white chocolate, but I bought some almond flakes for a next round of experimenting. My muffin pan finally feels he receives the due amount of appreciation, and the poor thing is entirely justified for feeling that way because in my dictionary, brownies are much more winterfood than muffins.

I have a little question I hope some of you might help solving. Inspired by the EA forum I really want to try making muffins with maple syrup as an ingredient, yet I have no idea how to go about this. Anyone?

The divine combination of strawberry and white chocolate works for many summer recipes, by the way. I've used it to make smoothies, but my favourite is a thick, creamy milkshake. The trick is to melt the chocolate in au bain marie and add it to your fresh chopped up strawberries. Mix really good and add enough milk because when I said creamy, I meant it. Some honey or vanilla sugar work wonders to complete an otherwise rich flavour pallet. Don't be economical on the ice cubes. I call it liquid sin.

And you know... white chocolate brownies with strawberries sound amazing in their own right as well, don't they?

There’s shoe polish on my first volume of Foucault’s History of Sexuality, white chocolate dissolves in muffin batter resulting in divinity on a whole new level the Norse pantheon would fight gargantuan battles about and Julia Kristeva, mistress of intertextuality, would have a word to say about this last caelestic figure of speech.

Here come my thoughts behind this last string of apparently incoherent musings. As you probably know, in the Norse pantheon the enemies of the Gods are the giants, and they threaten this world. Gargantua and Pantagruel are giants as well, literary characters created by renaissance author Rabelais. Can you feel the intertextuality breathing down your neck?

If mythology still has a right to be actively present in our minds and lives, Intertextuality should be the tenth muse and she’d wear black jeans and when you’d meet her on the streets she’d smile. If Neil Gaiman’s Death wanted to do something else for a change, she could apply for the job and I’d hire her straight away. Hasn’t she proven to be more than apt at it already, after all? I cannot immediately think of a name this shapeshifting lady would have though... Possible suggestions and fun ideas are welcome!

Read away, my lovelies!

I started writing a story with a vague idea of some elements that had to be in it. At a certain point I felt I had to start a new paragraph, and that paragraph turned into something that didn't fit in the story at all. The story ended up being quite different than what I expected it to become, but in the end it was meant to be like this all along.

Now I have to start a new story for the occasion I had started the first one for. I still know which elements I want in it, but maybe I shouldn't stick to those too closely or who knows, next my characters end up on a unicorn in Alaska. But those don't live there, do they?

I like writing in trains. I also like webcams as the ultimate tool to fix your hair when the need arises.



And read this. Believers in Norse mythology get their own graveyard.

Politics. Elections. Naturally these would be two topics that raise concern in everyone, but unfortunately this is not the case, and honestly, are you surprised?

 

In Belgium you are obliged to vote. A good thing, if you ask me, I find it only normal that people invest some time in what’s happening in your own country. We all pay taxes, and you do care about what happens to your money, right? Then again, if you see what stunts they pull off and how they present these to the public, it really is no surprise at all that people simply stop caring. Some opposition parties pick the fruits of this mentality and gain votes through undisguised but otherwise void populism.

 

I am a sociolist by principle, because I like to call myself a humanist despite everything (If you stop caring about people, then what’s left?) and no other party’s ideology is about people. Liberalism? Liberalism is about the economy and capitalism, and if you’re a selfish person you could perhaps vote for them, except that it is a system that doesn’t work and self-destructs. This worldwide crisis is the result of global free market capitalism, try to deny that. Not only that, but the liberalists aren’t that liberal at all. (A distinction must be made between Europe and America) Issues like gay marriage and abortion have gained ground in the blue parties as of late, but that is a recent evolution.

 

Socialism then. Allow me to explain that I’m not talking about the socialist party as we know it today in the next few lines, but about its history in Belgium. It is because of socialism that the working classes earned holidays, pensions, health insurance. Belgium is a country known for its social care, and however much we may whine about the annual financial contributions we all must make, without it we would whine even more. A scan in a hospital costs an awful lot. Without this system, you’d have to pay this from your own pocket. Medication is incredibly expensive. We all reap the benefits from this system, but we have come to consider it so normal we never think about what life would be like without it and we simply do not realise this fact.

 

As for now… That is something different. I am convinced that the socialists are not socialists anymore. Those measurements that are taken and labelled socialist are populistic devices, in my opinion, and not realistic. I’d like to be able to earn more money and work more days a year, but this system prevents me. Some laws are unfair. Most decisions are moronic. If 18 year old girls can have a prominent place on the election lists, girls who have no idea of life or politics and have the IQ of the goldfish in my garden (I don’t have golfish, manner of speaking), something is very, very wrong. I think this ticks me off the most even. People without any qualifications or intelligence can be the next in line to make decisions for this entire country? That’s fucked up…

 

But nevertheless, I stand by my principles. I have been thinking though. I refuse to vote for a non-red party, I definitely am of the opinion that especially in these days it would be a very stupid idea to vote for a party that counts among its ideals those rules that have caused this economical recession. Even though I hold no illusions, I still care about the environment because I think it’s worth caring about. And yet, those who call themselves socialists today, I will not vote for them. I might bring out a symbolic vote for the green party. They will not win these elections and they are not realistic, but I find them sympathetic and as I said, they will not win. Or I might leave a poem on my ballot, even though I have to look into that. When you cast no vote at all, I believe your vote is divided between the winners, but if you vote null, it simply isn’t counted. I think.

 

Now it’s pouring rain, and bloody hell if it wasn’t for global warming I could be dry right now!

 

We wake up, longing for tea. We wake up, drowsy with sleep, trying to prolong the moment. We have tea. The day has officially begun. We speak in the first person plural because grammatical conventions interdict it, because Satan is such an amazing character in Paradise Lost, because sometimes it is so much fun to address yourself according to a hierarchy of your own making.

 

There lives a man near my house. He is a preacher of profession, not originally from around which reflects in his speech, and a semi-professional ice skater. I have thought it before but the character he plays in life is one worthy of a novel. With his big white beard and loud voice the streets have become his stage.

 

A professor once told us that if literature was as complicated as our lives are, we would never believe a single word of what books tell us. Our novels and stories sometimes are difficult to understand. Modernism has made sure of that. Psychological evolutions in Thomas Mann, complicated love affairs in Flaubert or Tolstoi, painful losses in Virginia Woolf, ... Mirrors of things that could happen to us, would happen to us, do happen to us, yet sometimes we think these situations to be extreme compared to our own lives. Follow the threads, think again, and tell me what you’ve come to realise.

 

We have a hard time deciding whether we will drink pink tea or purple tea. 

This is a picture of me drinking tea whilst being partially naked. I thought the whole affair was rather silly yet highly enjoyable. Drinking tea does give this special flaunting flair to virtually every occasion, doesn't it? No wonder all my idols seem to simultaneously have become obsessed with such business.

 

 

  I got the chance to interview Emilie Autumn at her show in Antwerp on April 24th '09. In this lovely interview she tells us a lot about herself, her interests, her history and her music. I loved doing it and love watching it, and I hope you do too.

Camera and montage by Kris. 

Doing this was absolutely great. I met one of my greatest idols, and more will probably follow. Travelling and having these little adventures are what make life worth its while, isn't it? And being able to hear some very interesting people's thoughts and visions on the way is tea for my thirsty little soul. Pink tea. Or, as right now, red wine. 

Let me also take a moment to hype this wonderful short story. Someone on the Emilie Autumn forum posted a link to it and I absolutely love it. If I was Titania, this story would be a flower I'd cup in my hand, and I would look at it and poke it and try to understand. Maybe I wouldn't see that the flower had come to understand me instead?

 I also linked to it from my facebook account and wrote this little summary to go with it:
"This short story was written by an oncologist and tells the story of the rulers of Fairie, Titania and Oberon, and their little changeling, who falls ill with leukemia. Their reactions offer surprising insights in the human character. "A Tiny Feast" is a beautiful, tiny feast of storytelling that deserves to be read and thought about. Cherish it!"

 I thought I had lost the scan, but different keywords when looking for one tiny email in a cluttered mailbox do help. So hallelujah, this is a very unclear scan of a picture that was in a local newspaper of Emilie Autumn being interviewed by me. She is an extraordinary lady, full video interview will appear online soon, and I'm very annoyed at the national media. They aired a short report of the show as well and naturally, managed to portray every single goth or whatever non-conventional person as complete looneys once again. Then again, why would I have expected anything else, really. Call me delusional but don't worry, this faith in humankind is dwindling as we speak and perhaps someday, I too will be a perfect example of the perfectly adapted citizen. Which means, in other terms, completely dead and devoid of any passion, thus posing no threat for society or my fellow human beings' emotional capacities. Yeeesh...


I was to picspam you some more but alas, the internet muses refuse to stand by my aid today. One thing I really would like to show you but unfortunately can't, is a house I visited yesterday. If the concept Design lives in heaven somewhere and dreams of how it would like to be incorporated in a house, well, that was Design's corporeal form on earth. I compared it to an Apple store to live in (pretty iMac enhanced that illusion) and the owners were very proud indeed of that comparison, and rightly so. My explanation would pale (or rather, grey) next to the snowy white enormous desk space, different levels between the living spaces, stairs to dream of, ... As it is private living space, pictures are out of the question of course. But WOW. Interior architects (but it was an architect who helped realise the plans, I heard), architects, design lovers, ... this was your wet dream I set foot in.

Apart from that I have fallen victim to this modern world's salt of the earth, quickly conquering, absolutely necessary tech thingy called Twitter and tweeting is easy and fun indeed! Random quotes from obscure and not so obscure (mostly academic, these days) texts find their way there, the sneakily masked comment on real life situations smuggled in between. You may find me and lots of other time-consuming mind-twisting material at http://twitter.com/evihoste. PS: Neil Gaiman tweeted incredibly hilarious stuff about tea and Armageddon. It was well worth your five minutes of sacrificed virginal time.

And here a very interesting question for you: what is your computer's gender? 
I've been wondering about my macbook for months now, but have not reached a decision yet.

 So I get to interview Emilie Autumn next week!

Apart from that there is dinner with some nice African people who offered to cook traditional Ghanaian this evening, burrito evening with the ladies next week, upperdare party (yes, I know) in two weeks, weekly drinks evening with some other people, games evening with yet some other people and oh yes... lots and lots of school work. Despite not having actively planned anything my week is full again! I really shouldn't do that at the moment...

And then I feel obliged, no, compelled, to inform you of how wonderful the new Helium Vola cd is. As I am a great admirer and fan of your local small independent bookstore and music store, I wish to point you in the direction of De Bard. The website may not be the prettiest, but they have everything you could possibly be wishing for in the specific genres they specialise in. Also, the service is really quick and the owner is an extremely nice guy with a passion for what he's doing. Well, I've only known it for two weeks as the tip was given to me by someone else, but I really had to share this with you.

Then I discovered a wonderful small bar this week which I had actually known for a very long time but had never set foot in... The father of a good friend of mine is a double bass player and he plays in a very nice jazz band, so naturally we had to go and see them play again. Sitting outside on a hot spring evening pretending to be mid-August is great.

I also had a short study afternoon in a great library in Antwerp, bought the old Nightwish dvd I once possessed but lost again in a music store in Almere, the Netherlands, had great tea and soup there, cooked and sunbathed together with a friend at my otherwise empty home, drank Starbucks coffee twice this week, started reading a wonderful novel I bought at the seaside last week, baked pancakes with some friends, came to a decision, was scared for a moment, despaired over the non-existent meaning of life, laughed out loud, missed a concert I had wanted to attend, thought long and hard about the content of a paper I have to write, was careless, and looked forwards to the summer.

This is as close an account of my life as I will probably ever write again. It's pretty neat, isn't it?

 Hello, and look. I like this picture. It’s me all right, taken in Italy two weeks ago, at the lago superiore in Mantova. If metaphotography is not yet a term, I coin it now! In truth, the view was much more beautiful than this picture could convey. I love the Alps.

 

Being there was exactly as I thought it would be: doing the things you like without any of the stuff on the fringes, to see the world in the simplifying colours of academics that render complex systems to simpler ones. It is an addicting feeling, the one of displacement. No later than when you have arrived home, you long to leave again.

 

I think I soaked up culture, stories, geographical formations, people, like a sponge. I would share them all with pleasure, but somehow that seems tedious as well. Some things are experienced only for the experience, not for the recounting. I’d rather decide to see them again with you, as no story could do justice to any sort of sentiment that could have been involved at the time.

 

It was also a great time to think about the events of the last couple of months. When you’re twenty-something, you might begin to wonder about what this whole life is leading to - with excitement at times, fear on other days. I must say I am not much troubled by this sentiment, but people around me seem to be. One thing I do cling to, and that is the belief that if something doesn’t work out right away, there’s still plenty of time to try something else. 

 

That is, until someone your age dies. And a month later someone else. It’s a bit strange, but I never quite had thought that I’d see my former class thinning out so soon already. Even though I have very few personal feelings regarding the matter, it still remains a bit disconcerting. 

 

And it makes one wonder about the people around you. Some seem to be screwing up their lives masterfully as of late. It happens, just like that, naturally, but sometimes I wonder why we waste time on trying to fit certain things into ordered systems of thought, things that obviously don’t fit into such defined categories. We would save ourselves a lot of trouble if only we could overcome this bad habit.

 

Maybe we’re all just characters in a Douglas Coupland novel. And the truly tragic yet hilarious fact is, we write it ourselves. 

I saw a production of Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream yesterday evening, brought by our local theatre group. It was the first production I've seen this year and luckily, the climate decided to cooperate. Watching such a play on a cold winter night simply wouldn't be the same, would it? It was good, really good in several aspects, and for the occasion I re-read the original text. 

And this story too is just one other example of why an Elisabethan playwright with not so much of an education or ancestry has managed to live throughout the ages to reach us with his texts in all their splendid glory. Its fairy tale atmosphere is sure to enchant audiences of all ages, the story itself is light and enjoyable. But as always, here too Shakespeare shows us so much more about the subjects we as human beings care about.

If you are not familiar with the story, take a quick look at a synopsis or perhaps even the whole text. It is not a very long play and the language is relatively transparent. It is a story about love and its many faces and appearances, making it a universally interesting play to see. The difficulties of love are touched upon in the forbidden love between Hermia and Lysander and the unrequited love between Helena and Demetrius, but also present is the contrast between the passion of freshly discovered love and the longstanding marriage between Oberon and Titania. It is interesting to see the differences between the young love of Lysander, Hermia, Demetrius, Helena and the duke and his fiancee and the love between Oberon and Titania who have lived many years together already. The fact that we see their stories unravel next to each other enlarges these differences and makes us reflect on how our relationships develop and change over the years. How do we make it work?

Oberon and Titania trick each other in a battle of wills to reach their goals but in the end, they are and remain a couple. It is amusing to watch their disputes - I think many married couples and long standing relationships will find this too - and gratifying to see the end unfold:

"Oberon:
Sound, music! Come, my queen, take hands with me,
And rock the ground whereon these sleepers be.
Now thou and I are new in amity
....

Titania:
Come, my lord, and in our flight
Tell me how it came this night
That I sleeping here was found
With these lovers on the ground.

Exeunt. "
(Act IV, Scene I)

Shakespeare does give great relation advice, doesn't he? Everyone has their disputes now and again, but in the end they have a shared past and mutual understanding. The contrast between Oberon and Titania who know the rocking of the boat and are not afraid of a little storm at sea now and again and the young lovers who have only begun to explore their relationship and the hardships of relationships in general provides food for thought, and a renewed admiration of mine in Shakespeare's insight in the human character. Then again, when it came to love, he certainly was no stranger.

 I was reading an anthropology text for university about the social function of cockfights on Bali, and during a lengthy paragraph about various traditions one would immediately connect to Indonesian life, I remembered a scene from a novel I read a long time ago. It had an Indonesian shadow play in the story, and I remember that scene so vividly I can feel smoke and hear sounds and see images of a street and kids and people everywhere. I think the child was hiding in the audience and was moved so much by the play, which told about ancient gods, that he cried, thinking about his family. I have never seen shadow puppetry in my life.

It must have been a young adults novel and I can't have been older than eleven or twelve. I have no clue as to what it was about, or its title or author, but that I suddenly remembered this. In a flash. Much more than just letters on a page too.

Mysterious, isn't it?

 An excerpt,

De prinsessendrama's, Elfriede Jelinek.

De dood en het meisje III  (p. 30 - 32)

(Rosamunde:) "Nu ik zo lang heb gezocht, over de wereld heb gedwaald zonder mijn schrijftafel te verlaten, zo lang en hoe dan ook alleen, nu zal er toch niet op het laatste moment nog iemand wonen, even ongemakkelijk als ik, op het scherp van dit mes? Hoe komt het dat er hier opeens zo veel ongemakkelijken wonen? Veel ongemakkelijker dan ik? Dat kan niet waar zijn! Mijn meeslepende vaart heeft mij hier gebracht, en nu blijken ook al veel anderen vaart te hebben gezet zoals ik zie, nee, dat is niet mogelijk! (...) Eens zal ze koningin zijn, en dan wiegt haar hart pas goed, veroordeeld tot zichzelf, zo heel alleen op de golven. Geen ogen blikken vriend'lijk neder, geen woordenvloed waar zij op drijft, geen bliksem flitst voor haar alleen, geen omwolking, speciaal gemaakt van die grijze stof die ik mij heb toegeëigend omdat hij vrij goedkoop was. Schreeuw niet zo, ik heb er nog stapels van! Golven die mij lieflijk spieg'len, die kijken mij tenminste aan, nou ja, dat dacht ik, maar het was een ongeluk met de auto. Zelfs van het remlicht van mijn voorligger kon ik niet echt genieten. Ik hield het voor mijn eigen licht en volgde dat zo vele jaren, kwiek en lui tegelijk, een koppig licht dat voor mij uit fladderde, en toen bleek het toch alleen maar het mijne te zijn! En een wijzer zie ik blinken, wijst mij op de steden toe. Eenzaam zal ik echter sterven. Zo. Maar dat spijt me nu, dat er met mij wordt gespot alleen omdat ik me vastklamp aan die watermassa die mij slechts naar binnen wil trekken, daar wank'len alle bloemen, geen ster die mij iets vraagt. Ik deed zoals het beekje, dat nooit zijn loop vertraagt. Dat had ik dus beter niet kunnen doen, met die volkomen versleten banden van mij, vandaar dit ernstige, volstrekt onvermijdelijke ongeluk, eigen schuld. Iedereen zou meteen gezien hebben dat dit water alleen maar wachtte tot het mij kon vermoorden. Alleen ik was weer eens blind. Ik heb beweerd dat ik een zieneres was, maar wat ik daar voor mijn ogen voorbij zag vliegen, dat waren slechts de uren van mijn leven. Ik moest thuis blijven als een hond die geen lam heeft om te verscheuren. Ik lees zo mooie boeken daar in het hoge dal, maar wat doe ik nu in het water, ik heerlijke vrouw, al moet ik bitter wenen?"

***

This is a novel containing five theatre dialogues between famous fairy tale women and their male counterparts, the princes. (Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, ...) They talk about death; death in the most literal sense as being juxtaposed to life, and death in a more metaphorical sense: the death of a woman's identity living in a patriarchal society in which her husband's name overshadows everything she ever embodied, every shred of identity that was once hers. If you know anything about fairy tale analysis, this should come as no surprise, and if per chance you are a subscriber  of the exquisite website Project Muse you can look up some articles there. (it is quite possible that your university has a subscription)

Apart from these themes and the theoretical frameworks that inevitably accompany them, it is also a novel that picks out words from their paradigms with consideration and touches them as if they were feathers - such carefully selected language - and that chooses or abandons metre at all the right moments. It treats universal subjects, holds pieces of wisdom and plain human stupidity and looks for answers people always have looked for. It is delightful.

Originally written in German.
 

However modern our means of transportation are, my imagination needs very little help to feel as if I've entered the 19th century when travelling by train. It's a very design train, a double decker, with power plugs for laptopped people (sounds funny, doesn't it), but I don't think the essential feeling of travelling ever changes if only you let it in. The boundaries between reality and imagination become a tiny bit more fluid, it is easier to let go of reality and enter that shady world in between your waking subconscious and fantasy. Who knows what could happen. You depart from a certain fixed point at a certain fixed time, and arrive at similarly exact coordinates, but everything in between is less demarcated. As if you're floating between here and there, not quite as defined.

And your modern train needs not much help at all to travel back in time during that two hour journey. (to cross Belgium from west to east you don't need any more time) I like to work creatively when going somewhere, and ideas stream in like water in my shed during a heavy downpour, but to work with them is much more difficult. Too many things swarming around your mind is not a good thing, just you try to pick one out to focus on... they're all fighting for equal attention.

Anyway, I've seen Valkyrie yesterday and if you can get over Tom Cruise and over the language issue (which I had a hard time doing) it is a good film! With language issue I mean that the Germans are speaking American, British, and everything in between. Except German. Seeing Tom Cruise as Stauffenberg makes this very hard, as the Hollywood hero tends to take over more than once. But don't get me wrong, I was impressed at a proper level. And I had ice cream. Which was great as well.

More film news from my small corner of planet earth in me learning that Coraline opens at my birthday in Belgium, which would be a wonderful birthday gift if only it wasn't that unhumanly far away. I am most grumpy about that on this otherwise wonderful Friday morning. Then, I want to go and see Brendan and the Secret of Kells next week, as well as The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Let me promote the first one to you: here is the film blog by director Tom Moore, and here is the official website. The animations are based on medieval manuscripts and are as such just as authentic as the story, which is unsurprisingly very much infused with the epic Irish mythology as we know it from the Book of Kells itself (which you can see in Trinity College, and I have not done so myself but was told by several people that it is smaller than one would expect. Of course, an object with as rich a history as this one cannot but take on unrealistic proportions before our mind's eye.) It is a small film, probably not venturing outside of Europe, but it deserves every bit of attention it gets and much more as it is such a beautiful production. That is why I shamelessly wish to promote it and encourage each and everyone of you to see it and say how wonderful it is. Which is also why I will make this black and white blog a bit more colourful with this image:


Let me move back to my train with which I begun. I'm one of the laptopped people I mentioned, and it is an ideal moment to do some things you otherwise never do because internet is so very distracting. So here is my question of the... week is not it, nor is it month... Here is my question which sometimes appears at irregular intervals. How do you prefer to work on a text, whether it is personal of academic in nature and everything else that flies somewhere in or around that spectrum. Here is my own answer: iWork '09 has a wonderful new option called full screen, which disables any possible distractions and just gives you your sheet of people, surrounded by pretty black. I love it.

Time to move to some things that really beg to be done now!



 

It’s amazing how relative time is in connection to writing. Sometimes it takes mere minutes to type several pages, other times I literally struggle several hours to find just one word or to find the perfect balance in a paragraph of only a few lines. Writing an opinion never costs me much time. I love the written word so much in this area as well. Whether it is the form of a column, some biting sarcasm and harsh words strewn around deceivingly casually to spice up your text, or any lengthier textual medium, structure is never an issue when it comes to these texts. They form themselves in exactly a shape I feel is right whilst being written. Conclusions and paragraphs fly of their own accord to the right spots. I think if someone was to measure my brain activity at such moments, it would be considerable. It is hard to explain but thoughts simply spike up and down on a piece of paper, hitting their marks like stubborn lightning in a thunderstorm. And texts I write in such a fever rarely disappoint me afterwards.

 

I rediscovered a band today I had forgotten about and dismissed even quite some time ago, and I wonder why I did that. They are from Australia, are mostly known for their live performances and can be classified as dance. I see two elements in this sentence which may explain the past dismissal (kidding about one of them of course) but I haven’t finished yet. Their music is very creative in the genre, and they use a real didgeridoo and a real violin and as you may or may not known, organic elements in music are something I always appreciate. Loonaloop is their name and a friend of mine once spoke very highly of them which is how I learned about them. Give it a try if it sounds like something you could possibly potentially like. 

 

I started clearing out my bookcases today. (For a proper cleaning and categorization) It is quite the job and I fear I may not finish before the end of the week, as I still have to go to work and continue my research for my thesis a bit as well. And then there are the social post-exam meet ups of course.

 

Oh, ideas running rampant...

 

By the way, I still need to recommend a book in the light of an earlier discussion on this blog. After I spoke about the image of the dead woman as a messenger from beyond I forgot to recommend Margareth Atwood, who has written several acclaimed novels and who is known for her feminist writings. In The Penelopiad she rewrites The Odyssey from Penelope’s point of view and her dead maids play a significant role. It’s an easy, fast read, which holds many meanings and masterfully blends text types to give you as a reader much more output than it demands input.  

I was tagged by anarianothren . 

Rules:

1. Go to www.urbandictionary.com and type in your answers to the following questions.
2. Post the first definition it gives you.
3. Tag 3 people.

1. Name?
Evi: See also Sexy Beastess 
The 'Evi' are known for their intelligence as well as their exceptional fencing capabilities. The Evi can be extremely dangerous if you get on their bad side. If one were to by chance become the enemy of an Evi, it would be easier for them to just commit suicide on the spot, the Evi are a cunning foe. They are also known to be good friends in time of need.

2. Age?
21: The age at which one is finally considered human.

3. One of your friends?
Jasper: 1. The name of the coolest fucking person alive, usually one to have sex with all of your friends' girlfriends 
2. Someone with a huge penis 
3. One who owns all others at everything forever

4. Favourite colour?
Crimson: 

only the most kick ass color.

(All right, I admit I shortened it a bit...)

Well... one lives and learns, I guess?

Tagging time: shaitanah and anyone else who needs some divine insight in their mortal complicated affairs.

And I received my bachelor degree today through the mail. It's only four months late!

 Which kind of story do you prefer? The ones you read to know how the story ends, or the ones you read for the text as a whole?

And just to inform you of this basic fact of life: after thinking about Poe I went to buy his collected works this evening as I realised I did not yet have them.

One of the nice things of blogging is finding a way to keep the writing vibe alive, but equally precious is the possibility for an exchange of thoughts. Interesting turns as my mind might take, it gets boring after a while talking to yourself. Ah, indulge me :)