(no subject)
Jan. 2nd, 2009 06:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thanateThe handful of other people posting about their last year's resolutions triggered a faint memory in the back of my brain, which, when tracked down, yielded this. Strangely, I have managed both of my mandatory goals (although finishing the novels did not happen in January, nor was the second one the same one that I meant at the time) and done some towards a few of the others.
This year, I need no fresh resolutions: I am getting married, moving to a house which as yet has only a semi-functional kitchen, trying (if in a sadly unfocused manner) to build a business, write novels, be things and do things that involve my reaching out of my little world and becoming noticeable. Tonight, I have made curtains for the bedroom. They are long blocks of unbleached muslin, still unhemmed, but they are ready to be put onto the curtain rods (once those are up) so that I can sort out where (and whether, since they end on the selvage) I wish to hem them.
My mother says that she always liked unbleached muslin curtains, but the last time that we had them was apparently in the house that we moved out of when I was two and a half. I miss the industrial iron in the costume shop at college, which might have got all the wrinkles out of them before I began to sew. And I need more muslin so I can do the smaller bedroom as well.
But then there are the other things...![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
jazzfish, talking about reflections on ringing in the new year, posted a link to O human child (which, I'm sorry, I've been sort of busy thinking about in my back-brain and never bothered to reply to new years' entry) and I had one of those moments where I read it and said, but... that's me. The princess hair, the small children watching me, the inability to touch people in a casual context.
And because it was beautiful, I did my usual brief check to see if this was a journal of someone I might know, or had heard of before, and found another essay on saving lives, and what comes after happy ever after, and an author bio website, and I look at it and think: this is me, through some other prism lens. Refracted into blue light, rather than green. The girl who aced greek instead of nearly failing it, and then wrote (in isolation, married to the wrong person in a foreign land) and wrote more, instead of trying to do everything else as well.
Normally I avoid learning about authors whose work I love, because I will always find that they don't mean the things by it that I take from it, and it disappoints me to see their overlay of what they meant by things distorting my dream. It's sort of the same reason I gave up playwriting, after coaching people through a dramatic reading of my one-act and watching them turn it into something I didn't so much like. Just like the prism, every reader takes something different out of fiction, and I don't want the person who wrote it involuntarily telling me that my refraction is wrong. But in this case, I'm seeing a journal that reminds me how much I loved writing for violivia, in essays that (some days) had breadth or depth or occasionally research. The sort of things I never seem to post to lj, because I get tangled up in the little "this is what I did today" entries and don't expect the people on my friends list to appreciate long rambling essays, even in the moments when they are well-constructed. Even though I suspect that not writing this sort of thing leads my brain to fall out of practice with critical essay structure, and forming coherent thoughts that aren't bound up in a narrative.
At any rate, to return to Ms Valente, whose work I intend to look into, the local library system only has two of her books. And although they are the two I am most interested in starting with, the first one is owned by nine libraries in the Fairfax County system, and eight copies are in branches I have no idea how to find, while the ninth, at the local branch, is checked out. Perhapsjazzfish or uilos will have something I can borrow at gaming on tuesday. Although for some reason I am convinced that it is currently sunday night, so it will be somewhat of a longer wait than I might like, in my impatient distractability. Because, of course, I can't be bothered to go in search of a distant library...
I may be disappointed; the rainbow spread out beyond the prism diverges rapidly from its initial starting point. And there is very little "like me" around in the world; someone who writes amazing journal entries may not write fiction that I care for. But I have to see, don't I? One always ought to go and see, in hopes of not missing something wonderful. Because a classicist who writes fairy tales and poems is worth investigation without any further recommendation.
Perhaps I should add to my list for the new year, to include writing more thoughts, as well as more fiction, although the things like this take longer. And I suspect this one, at least, is rather less coherent to those of you who live outside of my head than might be ideal. That, and I need to create functional desk space, and spend less time sitting on the floor to sew or write or glue things together. My knees will appreciate it. So, by extension, willgrauwulf.
This year, I need no fresh resolutions: I am getting married, moving to a house which as yet has only a semi-functional kitchen, trying (if in a sadly unfocused manner) to build a business, write novels, be things and do things that involve my reaching out of my little world and becoming noticeable. Tonight, I have made curtains for the bedroom. They are long blocks of unbleached muslin, still unhemmed, but they are ready to be put onto the curtain rods (once those are up) so that I can sort out where (and whether, since they end on the selvage) I wish to hem them.
My mother says that she always liked unbleached muslin curtains, but the last time that we had them was apparently in the house that we moved out of when I was two and a half. I miss the industrial iron in the costume shop at college, which might have got all the wrinkles out of them before I began to sew. And I need more muslin so I can do the smaller bedroom as well.
But then there are the other things...
jazzfish, talking about reflections on ringing in the new year, posted a link to O human child (which, I'm sorry, I've been sort of busy thinking about in my back-brain and never bothered to reply to new years' entry) and I had one of those moments where I read it and said, but... that's me. The princess hair, the small children watching me, the inability to touch people in a casual context. And because it was beautiful, I did my usual brief check to see if this was a journal of someone I might know, or had heard of before, and found another essay on saving lives, and what comes after happy ever after, and an author bio website, and I look at it and think: this is me, through some other prism lens. Refracted into blue light, rather than green. The girl who aced greek instead of nearly failing it, and then wrote (in isolation, married to the wrong person in a foreign land) and wrote more, instead of trying to do everything else as well.
Normally I avoid learning about authors whose work I love, because I will always find that they don't mean the things by it that I take from it, and it disappoints me to see their overlay of what they meant by things distorting my dream. It's sort of the same reason I gave up playwriting, after coaching people through a dramatic reading of my one-act and watching them turn it into something I didn't so much like. Just like the prism, every reader takes something different out of fiction, and I don't want the person who wrote it involuntarily telling me that my refraction is wrong. But in this case, I'm seeing a journal that reminds me how much I loved writing for violivia, in essays that (some days) had breadth or depth or occasionally research. The sort of things I never seem to post to lj, because I get tangled up in the little "this is what I did today" entries and don't expect the people on my friends list to appreciate long rambling essays, even in the moments when they are well-constructed. Even though I suspect that not writing this sort of thing leads my brain to fall out of practice with critical essay structure, and forming coherent thoughts that aren't bound up in a narrative.
At any rate, to return to Ms Valente, whose work I intend to look into, the local library system only has two of her books. And although they are the two I am most interested in starting with, the first one is owned by nine libraries in the Fairfax County system, and eight copies are in branches I have no idea how to find, while the ninth, at the local branch, is checked out. Perhaps
jazzfish or uilos will have something I can borrow at gaming on tuesday. Although for some reason I am convinced that it is currently sunday night, so it will be somewhat of a longer wait than I might like, in my impatient distractability. Because, of course, I can't be bothered to go in search of a distant library...I may be disappointed; the rainbow spread out beyond the prism diverges rapidly from its initial starting point. And there is very little "like me" around in the world; someone who writes amazing journal entries may not write fiction that I care for. But I have to see, don't I? One always ought to go and see, in hopes of not missing something wonderful. Because a classicist who writes fairy tales and poems is worth investigation without any further recommendation.
Perhaps I should add to my list for the new year, to include writing more thoughts, as well as more fiction, although the things like this take longer. And I suspect this one, at least, is rather less coherent to those of you who live outside of my head than might be ideal. That, and I need to create functional desk space, and spend less time sitting on the floor to sew or write or glue things together. My knees will appreciate it. So, by extension, will
grauwulf.
no subject
Date: 2009-01-03 04:48 pm (UTC)For me it's difficult stuff to verbalise at all, so I can certainly understand it taking time for anyone else. No rush, and I'm happy to hear about anything that germinates in the back-brain.
Sadly we have none of Ms Valente's books. We do have the Complete Works of EBear, who originally pointed me at the essay, but EBear's. . . different.
(Also? I'm enjoying reading things like this one, on the off chance that convinces you to write more of them.)
no subject
Date: 2009-01-03 08:44 pm (UTC)Oddly enough, someone else linked to EBear's journal recently, as well. Possibly I should borrow some of those as well. (I just made the pilgrimage out to the new Fairfax regional library, which turned out to be the only one that had both Valente books actually on the shelf.)