Because It Really Has Been a While

Public Announcement: Having at last learned how to type an em dash—the code is alt 0151—Donny is almost as pleased as the day she figured out that she could indeed create a faint snap if she used her middle finger instead of her index finger. Honour for both these discoveries is due Ema-nee.

 

~ ~ ~

 

This is my letter to the world

   That never wrote to me—

 

After the close of Sunday's service I remained in my seat as the sanctuary emptied, head bent low to avoid unwanted attention from any who might be searching for an unoccupied person to pounce; as the rush for the door subsided I returned to scribbling in my notebook, continuing to expand upon the thought interrupted by the ending of the sermon. The place had for the most part emptied when an older man, imposing in height and carrying a cane, came shuffling along in the row before me. As he passed directly in front of my seat he bobbed towards me slightly, as if peeking at the book on my lap, and said, "So you're a note taker, are you?"

 

Somewhat taken aback by the uninvited address, I glanced up at him and replied, "Not officially."

 

He continued on his way, explaining as he went that some people liked to take notes during the sermon and he simply wondered if I would perhaps be one of those and so on and so fort; I, meanwhile, stared down at the two ink-laden pages to which the notebook lay open in my lap and shook my head wryly. On the left-hand page unfolded a sketchy outline of the points I planned to use in making reply to a recently begun online debate; on the right, notes for a one-shot between two minor characters in this year's CleanPlace ECP project filled a neat square, then extended backwards into two lengthy paragraphs of exposition on the newly-discovered back story of one of those characters. The upper and lower halves of the right page had been divided by a heavy line of ink, beneath which I had continued both the argument from the left and diverged from those notes in order to write a journal entry that began with a question and resulted in the comparison of the Almighty God to Fitzwilliam Darcy. Beneath the entry I had reconstructed a passage from Romans in order to try my hand at adjusting the punctuation so the thought actually made sense.

 

All in all, I had made two notes from the sermon itself. One read simply, "chump?" and had three lines beneath it to distinguish it from the rest of the scribbled margin. The other, a number, noted the statistics proposed by the pastor to be the odds of Jesus actually fulfilling all the prophecies He made about Himself. Do they make me a note taker? I think not.

 

 

~ ~ ~ ~

 

While browsing a linguist's blog I happened upon a link to the Perseus Digital Library, an online collection of historical resources that includes Germanic, Arabic, early American, and Renaissance texts, and proceeded to poke around a bit to determine whether I should bookmark the page or let it go by the wayside. Seeing that it contained a number of journals from civilians during the War between the States as well as five years of a Richmond newspaper from the 1860's, I added it to favourites before proceeding to fribble away more time on the site and procrastinate my tasks further (one of those tasks being the completion of this blog post before the evening's end).

 

After opening the first issue of the Richmond Times (The Daily Dispatch: November 1, 1860. [Electronic resource].), my glance lands upon the table of contents; instinctively I skim them before coming back up to click the first thing that attracts my attention: Killed. There is one entry, reading as follows: James Brooks, baggage master on the Nashville and Chattanooga Railroad, was killed near Murfreesburo', Tenn., on the 26th ult. He was standing on top of a car as the train passed beneath a bridge, when his head struck the lower beam of the bridge, and he was killed instantly.

 

Moving from that grammatically and realistically painful entry, I continue on to a promising entry partway through the the list—Overworked Women, written by one Dr. O. W. Helmes, a name which a cursory Google search reveals to be present only in that particular Perseus document. (Might it have been a pen name, ironically assumed to match the acronym of the title?) He has much to say on the general state of the female sex and her toils.

An over-worked woman is always a sad sight; sadder a great deal than an over-worked man, because she is so much more fertile in capacities of suffering than a man. [An interesting observation indeed, Dr. Helmes, and an interesting use of your semi-colon. I do wonder whether the people uploading your text to the server were typing late at night and are therefore to be excused for any errors or if copy editors in the eighteen-hundreds were as careless as they are today. While I am at it I shall applaud your interesting expression of the emotional depth of females in comparison to males and then cease interrupting your paragraph, saving further comment until after you are finished.] She has so many varieties of headache, sometimes as if Joal were driving the nail that killed Sisera into her temples, sometimes letting her work fall with half her brain, while the other half throbs as if it would go to pieces; sometimes tightening round the brows as if her cap bands were Luke's iron crown; and then her neuralgias, and her back aches, and her fits of depression, in which she thinks she is nothing, and less than nothing, and those paroxysms which men speak slightingly of as hysterical convulsions, that is all, only not commonly fatal ones; so many trials which belong to her fine and mobile structure, that she is always entitled to pity when she is placed in conditions which develops her nervous tendencies.

 

The latter paragraph when slimmed to its barest structure reads as follows: She has so many varieties of headache that she is always entitled to pity when she is placed in conditions which develops her nervous tendencies. (I admit that sentence entitles me to pity, because I am now distracted from my original point to writhe over the agreement of verb tense with subject—Koala, can you spot the error in that final dependant clause?—and longing to fix the paragraph in general.) Of course, keeping to that puny statement could not be tolerated, so the good Dr. Helmes cleft the sentence in two and wedged it full of ailments, in which he summarizes most amusingly the misery of women.

 

First comes the many varieties of headache, which include the nail driven by Jael into the temple of the mighty Sisera, the tension headache behind the eyes, and the mental suffocation by way of iron cap. Then come the neuralgias (which a quick jaunt to Google reveals to include shingles), the back aches, and the depression. The last I found to be the most humorous of the three, especially when imagining it uttered by Rex Harrison in the manner of his infamous "Why Can't a Woman Be More Like a Man?", with particular emphasis on "nothing" and "less than nothing". And that conclusion to the discussion of depression, that passing mention of hysterics and the thoughtful observation that they are "not commonly fatal ones", is impressive in all its detached, absurd realism. Yes, this ought to have been included in My Fair Lady.

 

~ ~ ~

 

This afternoon, being unflaggingly grouchy (digusted at the life in general), I decided to set about writing out a list of things for which I was joyful. To adequately understand the depth of the funk which rendered me sprawling useless in my bedroom you must realize that, not only had I been relishing quiet solitude for at least a full hour, I had turned down sweeping the kitchen, dismissed the offer of doing another puzzle, and brushed away a suggestion to engage in making a set of graphics. I had even been reduced to tantruming at WeHeartIt, and writing, fiction or journaling, proved impossible. Obviously it was time to attempt some drastic intervention; hence the list, in which I sought to follow popular recommendation and help myself out of the mood.

 

First I pulled up Helen Jane Long's album Intervention on YouTube, then I flipped to a clean page in my notebook and jotted at the top both my intention and the reason for it. I even fetched Ann Voskamp's One Thousand Gifts calendar from aholyexperience.com and set it up so I could see the prompts for the month of July, and from there I waited, pen hovering over the page.

 

And waited.

 

And waited.

 

And wandered back to WeHeartIt and poked through a few more photos before rage-quitting and closing my windows.

 

And rubbed my face.

 

And flopped backwards on the bed.

 

And started to write and crossed it out and scribbled something else and scribbled that out.

 

And waited.

 

At last I decided that the exercise was entirely pointless and threw the notebook aside with a groan. Then it occurred to me. I couldn't write the list? I was too tired and cross and ornery? Well, why not let someone else make use of my hand for a little while, someone inside my head? Why not slip into Katerina's mind for a while and let her do the writing?

 

So that is precisely what I did—I grabbed her elbow, pulled her away from what she was doing, and dragged her over to work on the list for July until she had finished all ninety items. While she was not entirely pleased at being interrupted, she quickly took up the task, and that persistently white paper darkened quickly as her fingers drew pen over in quick strokes. It was amazing to realize the amount of trivia which I learned about her in the course of the activity.

 

Despite my own reclusive tendencies, she is quite the social butterfly, and it amazes me to have someone that unfailingly cheerful and friendly in my head, especially when facing her elation over social events and [pink] frilly clothes and listening in on her simplistic, congenial perspective of the world. I can only ask myself, parent-like, How did she become so independent? as I tap my head and consider that there really is a different world inside that place. ... Anyway. At least I know what to do next time I need a bit of list therapy; I shall set a character straightaway to making one for me.
 

Items from her list are included below.
 

the breeze in my hair and through my sweater as I walked the last few blocks to work

finally getting ahold of Darcy after the third phone call

persuading Lizzy not to dye her hair just yet

the rain pattering on my bedroom window

the potpourri in the employee bathroom at work

citrus kombucha Mom picked up at [Bent&Bent]

fresh cold-frame veggies served on our table

Lifestyle Changes: Random Notes from an Insomniac

Today I picked up a nail clippers to trim my fingernails, and while it is rather embarrassing to be so excited about such a mundane thing, I am pleased. After all, cessation of nail biting is a momentous occasion of itself, and the cutting of nails a month later -- for the first time in years -- is a repetition of the celebration. (Now I merely gnaw the skin off of my fingers instead of chewing the nails themselves; decide for yourself whether that is improvement.)

~ ~

Tonight, in lieu of cannibalizing my hands, I am making an impromptu one a.m. dinner (or is it an unsually early breakfast?) of breadstick and yogurt. Hopefully that will soothe my cranky stomach. After yesterday morning's mad dash to the water closet, pursued from bed to loo by intestinal convulsions, I have no desire to incur the further wrath of my digestive system; however, if this peace offering of food is not favourably received, I shall throw a tantrum and indulge in a week of spiteful starvation.

~ ~

Some time during the remainder of this summer I am going to undertake the venture (or, as nee-chan aptly described it, lifestyle change) of getting my hair cut. While the thought of shoulder-length hair has boasted varying degrees of appeal over all those months of consideration, sticking with the base of my shoulder blades is probably the wiser idea; the truly drastic lopping can wait for a braver year.

~ ~

In other news, hard studying is to be commenced, as I have made off with a stack of music books and my anatomy text, not to mention my Japanese course and notebook. The materials are at hand; let the action begin. There is much that requires learning, and at last -- at last! -- there is drive to accomplish it. It's about time.

Log of a Day

[[There you go, Koala, Maman. Have a peek at my Monday, incomplete as it is, and enjoy.]]

Something rather unexpected occured last night as I huddled over a Tumblr blog, gaze fixed upon the lovely notebook images I had discovered: Katerina hooked her chin over my shoulder and peered around me to the screen, then proceeded to spaz out over a certain image that she appreciated. I'd given the photo passing glance myself, then started to sweep on down the screen, so her showing up in such a matter startled me quite badly. "What? What? You've never done that before and I'm not working on your story and for heaven's sakes I didn't even think of having you in my head right now." But there she stayed, as coolly as if she belonged, commenting on a few more pictures before retiring for the night, and after the initial start I could scarcely contain my delight, as sharing your mind with a character, however brief the span of time may be, is a privilege indeed.

I have set myself a goal for the morning, and made breakfast the incentive; one thousand words must be entered into the document for The Sapor of Ink before I may go scavenge in the kitchen. I am already hungry, but not terribly so; this lack of urgency is of course why I am meandering lazily through Tumblr and scribbling in Blogger. The continued scene involves Marlowe Higginson encountering a ghost for the first time in her life, and it will be an interesting thing to observe, especially as he is so matter-of-fact about his lack of substance in the world. Really, I am fond of that boy. Ghost-hood and a tragic romance was the very best I could give him by way of reward for being so enchanting.

After the thousand words have been written and breakfast obtained and consumed, I shall crack the cover of the thirteenth volume of Fruits Basket (Rin, as it happens), and resume the story, hopefully getting through that and the fourteenth volume by the end of the day. At some point in the afternoon or evening I should set myself goals for at least two more stints of a thousand words apiece, because I have much catching up to do. Eventually playing with the story will be less of an option and sitting down to churn out four thousand words at a time will be a necessity; until that happens, I shall continue enjoying Marlowe's weird preoccupation with the process of fermentation. What ever do you do with characters who insist on being geeks?

~ ~ ~ ~

And now, forty minutes later -- hair braided, teeth brushed, face washed, loveseat straightened, VM read, laptop cord plugged into the outlet, the plate from my one a.m. supper relocated from the living room bookshelf to the kitchen counter -- I pull up Ellie Goulding on YouTube and begin writing. Such is life.

~ ~ ~ ~

Half an hour has passed, and the required words written. I go now to eat breakfast at one twenty-five in the afternoon, leaving Gallix to flail in excitement because Marlowe insulted him by calling him a quidnunc. He is so very fond of humans who make use of archaic words, especially if they happen to be directed at him, and even more so if they are intended derisively. He has a curious obsession with self-deprecating humour, and a fondness for taking verbal jabs; I do wonder if this makes him British. It would explain a few things, anyway, though I can't have him running around in my head with a British accent just now. It wouldn't serve either of us one bit. The American accent must remain intact for the time being.

~ ~ ~ ~

Another half hour has passed (minus breakfast), one which included a conversation about HelloKitty hair clips and another thousand words, because I kept telling myself "I'll stop after another hundred. Just one more paragraph. Well, maybe another sixty-seven words to even out the word count..." Marlowe has just been informed that she is carrying on a less-than-casual conversation with a ghost; I shall discover her reaction to his announcement after breakfast and a volume of Fruits Basket. Two thousand words has earned me that, at least, or so I like to imagine.

~ ~ ~ ~

At two forty-three in the afternoon I return to the living room, having thoroughly swept the kitchen floor and made and eaten a tasty breakfast involving beef strips laid out on a hamburger bun and toasted with mozzarella cheese. It proved a worthy reward for those two thousand words, and a satisfactory precursor for reading volume thirteen of the Fruits Basket series. On to Rin I go, after indulging for the tiniest bit in the further Tumblr archives of The Written Road.

~ ~ ~ ~

The adjective "finifugal" belongs to the Doctor, as he is one who attempts to prolong relationships and books in futile attempts to thwart endings. It is going into my "Words" document for further investigation and employment.

It is a bad thing that I must make myself drop the pen, turn away from the keyboard, and stop writing to begin reading a story I love. Perhaps it has something to do with what T. Coraghessan Boyle astutely observed, that "Writing is an obsessive-compulsive disorder." It certainly seems to be so, at least today when I cannot seem to get enough of it.

~ ~ ~ ~

Three fifty-three p.m. and volume thirteen is finished. All I want to do at the moment is go to sleep. Perhaps I will fetch a bowl of cheerios instead, or keep working on The Sapor of Ink. Only nine thousand, two hundred and fifty-one words to go to make up the difference between what I have today and what I should have today -- this goal feels so doable. But first, back to Tumblr.

~ ~ ~ ~

Four forty-one p.m. Ghost has been introduced to human, and the two are getting acquainted. Marlowe is handling this remarkably well; I suppose her capacity to take these things in stride has something to do with her curious interest in zymology and her lack of imagination. If she had significant ability to fantasize she would probably have much more difficulty taking Gallix at face value. I'd worried at first that she would prove difficult and insist on being the sort of person who could not have a ghost as a companion, given her detachment and her [mostly] scientific attitude, but she is turning out to be much more appropriate than the dreamy girl with whom I had originally intended to play spook.

I now have eight thousand, six hundred and ninety-three words to go to meet par for Day Eight. Back to writing [a.k.a. scribbling a paragraph here and there between any number of jaunts to YouTube, Tumblr, email, and Quotable Quotes, not to mention the occasional 'wander' into the kitchen for a drink of water. That bowl of cheerios is still waiting. I think I shall have it for lunch instead of second breakfast after all].

~ ~ ~ ~

Five oh-two p.m.; I have just consulted with Google-san to determine the appropriate usage of "effect" and "affect" in this particular instance. How gratifying to know that my grammatical instincts led me correctly.

~ ~ ~ ~

Five ten p.m. A flying ant has been effectively smashed between the body and wing of a handily situated paper airplane; what an inspiring experience. I return to my OpenOffice document refreshed by my daily dose of murder.

~ ~ ~ ~

Five thirty-one p.m. Seven thousand, eight hundred and sixty-one words to go. No, I am not intending to finish it all tonight. There are other, better things to be done today, and those need attention as well. Such as eating a few bites of cheerios out of a blue plastic cup for lunch, something that one does not get to do every day of one's life. I am indeed a privileged human.

~ ~ ~ ~

Six twenty-two p.m. Six thousand, nine hundred and two words stand between The Sapor of Ink's total and the par for the day. Eventually Marlowe will have to face the fact that Gallix is not an underdone potato and she is not Scrooge, but until then, they make a delightful pair. She does take conversation with a supposed figment of her imagination in stride; I suppose it helps that she gets to insult him and he gets to look offended. She's been alone too long, that girl. Rather spoiled the shock of talking to a ghost, since she, being her practical self, had to take it in stride and decide that she is merely suffering from a brief lapse in synapse continuity. Realizing that she is not the only one who sees him will come as a bit of a surprise, I think, but by that time she will be so accustomed to his presence and personality that it will seem quite obvious that her narrow minded little brain could not come up with such a pleasing companion.

Gallix, on the other hand, has just informed me that he has an unpleasant back-story, and that I did not expect: discovery is ahead.

~ ~ ~ ~

Eleven ten p.m. The kitchen has been helped along to rights, the string has been wound, and the floor swept. Back to scribbling it is, unless the night has other plans, and after scribbling... dinner. I am having difficulty deciding between a bowl of cheerios and a compilation of leftovers. Fortunately, there will be at least another hour between now and that decision.

~ ~ ~ ~

One oh-six a.m. Two hours between the quondam "now" and that decision, apparently; I have just been into the kitchen to place a piece of chicken between two halves of a bun before holing up in the living room, and that is dinner. I rather wish I had gone with the cheerios, as poultry at night is hard pressed to sit well with me, but with cereal the milk would have induced a transient sore throat. Can't win for losing, it seems, at least not when it comes to the digestive system. However, I have reached seven thousand and eight words, and that is a pleasant feeling. Even more pleasing is the fact that, in seven thousand words of NaNo, I have used "was" three times, and that only in dialogue. Yes, the writing is trash, and no, I have no delusions of grandeur in prose, but to so naturally and thoroughly avoid "was" in the first draft gives a true sense of accomplishment.

In The Sapor of Ink, Marlowe is attempting to understand why her perceived bit of underdone potato is so ornery. It would make much more sense if she would relinquish the stubborn belief that she is hallucinating and simply accept the ghost for what and who he is. Perhaps another thousand words tonight will usher in better mutual understanding for the two of them. I shall see.

~ ~ ~ ~

Two eighteen a.m. That final thousand words has been written, and I am signing off for the night, as it is about time to sleep. Marlowe is that much closer to making friends with Gallix, and I am that much closer to an intimate relationship with my pillow.

Inventing Foolishness

In a fit of venturesome inspiration I have done something exceptionally stupid: on the sixth of the month, I have signed up to write fifty thousand words by the end of July. Yes, I am now officially a participant in Camp NaNoWriMo, stowed safely in a cabin with a number of strangers who, at this hour of the night, are sound asleep and shall not be encountered until morning. It is probably a good thing they are occupied by staring at the back of their eyelids, as it may have been rather off-putting to watch me stumble into the cabin lugging my growing file of ideas in one hand and brandishing a partially-drained can of Canada Dry ginger ale in the other. Would have been, that is, had I been tottering into an actual cabin; as is, I merely sit back and await the assigning of cabin mates by morning. While I have no significant expectations regarding other camp members, it shall be amusing to see who exactly is assigned where, and to peruse their novel summaries to see what sort of stories they are venturing to write.

 

Yes, it is pure idiocy to take up a fifty thousand word writing challenge six days into a very strange and synchytic month of life, especially when one must come up with plot and characters approximately twenty-five minutes before delving into the inky act of production. It is certainly one of my more absurd ventures, but I think it will be well worth my while, if only as a fluffy little distraction during a chaotic time in life. The writing quality will suffer from speed and lack of focus, and the plot will be lame, and the characters will fall flat, but hey. When the alternative is doing nothing in particular, why not engage in some form of useful activity? If I am to become a writer I must first develop that curious habit of writing, and what better way to develop it than to do it.

 

In a few short minutes I have scrawled the first two paragraphs into my graph paper notepad, the same one which is functioning as writing journal and scribble sheet in lieu of a proper journal (this I mean to rectify shortly, as I have reason to believe I will be able to pick up a few select items from home). However, instead of proceeding with Marlowe's adventures after finding the notebook I am wandering through WeHeartIt and Google images, looking for a specific cloth-bound journal to use as visual reference beside the prose. The cover is pale blue and a bit tattered, Gallix tells me, and he insists that it must look just so. I ought to banish him from my head for the time being, the scampish imp, and tell him to go scrounge for it himself if he wants to give me such unbending specifications; already we have encountered two blue, cloth-bound journals and both times he has refused them, batting them away without so much as a second glance. In the future I shall suggest that he go searching for pictures before he tells me how the books are supposed to appear; this way, we shall avoid much confusion and delay, as Sir Topham Hat loves to announce.

 

Writing from Marlowe's mind is going to prove most enlightening, as I have never really engaged with such a narrow minded, idiosyncratic character on my own. There is much about her that aligns with ordinary girlhood, but the number of her more exotic characteristics exceeds her normalcy. After all, what sort of girl finishes high school early, skims through college in two years instead of the standard four to five, then completes her graduate thesis in the field of zymology? I am afraid Gallix was not at all impressed, something that did not stand him in good stead with his fellow character; while she did not expect him to be thrilled about her study of the process of fermentation, she rather disliked the mockery he made of her chosen studies.

 

To be quite honest, I side with Gallix in this dispute. While he should not have ridiculed her so relentlessly, she should have thought through the implications of using all her time in the lab to observe the clabbering of milk and the effects of white vinegar on non-acidic edible substances. Her lab partners would have laughed a great deal more had she not been so frugal in her experimentation; almost every new hypothesis resulted in the elements being recycled as ingredients in a batch of peculiarly tasty cookies, which were peddled around to the lab occupants with good will. She never did eat any herself though, and I wonder that they failed to question that, as it has much to do with common sense.

An Arbitrary Entry

July 2nd

 

In trying times, when writing proves rather beyond my capabilities and I am too exhausted to drag myself onto my feet to indulge in a frantic, stress-relieving house cleaning, music becomes a solace incomparable to anything else. Many a night I spend sleeping curled around my laptop, since sleep is impossible without something going, and last night was no exception. Granted, sleeping on a loveseat, even a broad one, does not allow for much room, and, as I played something off of YouTube and therefore had to leave the laptop open to keep it from glitching, I am now paying the price of indulgence with my aching hips. (Speaking of indulgence, there is lemon tart on the kitchen counter, the wheel half gone, and I want some before it disappears entirely. This means I should go fetch a sliver before other people venture into the kitchen; however, I am not quite certain that my digestive system can handle the food quite so early in the morning. And yes, eight-thirty a.m. is early, and I never thought I would see the day when I would say that. Considering, though, that bed-time has hovered somewhere between three and six for the past handful of days, it makes perfect sense; when one has only had four and a half hours of sleep eight-thirty is early.)

While several songs from Within Temptation and Evanescence are my go-to pieces when in need of emotional reinforcement ("Lost", "Lithium", "Missing", "A Shot in the Dark"), I have recently rediscovered the depth and power of simplistic instrumental music, a la Helen Jane Long. Her album Intervention is one I have played repeatedly over the past few days, even going so far as to use it for sleeping instead of my traditional Night playlist. Some of the songs are better than others, but the whole album is worth hearing, unlike some of the other piano albums to which I've listened. Of course, George Winston is excluded from that; his albums so far have been entirely worthwhile, with no song easily discarded to slim down the playlist. This may or may not have something to do with the fact that I have been raised on his CDs. It breeds good taste, it does, when one has such music entwined in the fibres of one's soul.

~ ~ ~ ~

Supper has been made and consumed, and the clean-up awaits. I would be at the dishes if such a thing were allowed, but I have been informed in no uncertain terms that, while the house is cleared for cleaning to my heart's content, the dishes are not to be touched. Therefore I will not, on pain of death, wash them. However, I have so far gotten away with organizing the dirty dishes on the counter to my heart's content, and, if I am very, very good, I may even be allowed to do a token dishwasher load, offered as a gesture of kindness and bribery from a certain royal highness. Though I should like to know when being allowed to load a dishwasher constituted a bona fide bribe.

 

 

July 5th

 

There is nothing quite like falling asleep at three-thirty a.m. only to be waked before seven by a fly with a disturbing fixation on your facial orifices. As I know well the fruitlessness of attempting to roll away from an intrusive fly in order to grasp at three more hours of sleep, I dragged myself up off the dining room floor and marched upstairs to take care of washing my face and brushing my hair before returning to my waiting laptop. (Yes, yes, I am aware that the fly swatter should have first been obtained and an execution ceremony commenced; this I would have done with pleasure had not the quiet time of someone else been at stake. Diving after a tiny buzzing creature, brandishing a well-used swatter, is not exactly behaviour conducive to a satisfactory personal Bible study. Of course, if one is being bothered by such a persistent fly during personal Bible study, the only action preserving the last fragments of quiet time would be the immediate termination of the miserable creature's existence; however, as it departed upon my rising and did not seem to be afflicting the other occupant of the room with such intimate attentions, I chose peaceful coexistence over a potentially bloody -- though swift and just -- killing. Next time I shall not be so merciful.)

 

Last night before falling asleep I had pulled up an OpenOffice document on my desktop and marked it as a word storage file. While I usually prefer to jot down interesting discoveries on paper, I am currently lacking my word notebook (Why ever did I neglect to pack my notebooks when those, apart from my laptop and my books, are the most important possessions I have? Facepalming hereby ensues.) and the impracticality of preserving any number of paper scraps has been firmly impressed upon my memory by a series of losses. So I have capitulated at last and formed a computer document for the collection of eccentric and previously unknown words.

 

Some people take morning strolls through the neighbourhood; I believe I have just discovered the pleasure of meandering through the dictionary at an early hour, and it is an addicting pleasure. Instead of finding one or two to tide me through the day I ended up tripping over another every time I attempted to extricate myself from the clutches of the word finder, one word leading to another until I found myself elbow deep in a document scribbled full of exciting new adjectives, nouns, and verbs. No, I do not have a photographic memory, and no, I am not going to recall more than two of those by the end of the day, but the delight of laying hands on words that I will most definitely be learning and using in the very near future is not to be questioned.

 

Getting caught up in the 'S' section proved a helpful change of plans, as I proceeded to stumble over such gems as 'sockdolager': a hard hit (this word belongs unquestionably to Kit Baxter), sordor: refuse, and sophomania: the delusion of exceptional intelligence. Despite the dullness of the sentences themselves (how is one supposed to be eloquent at seven in the morning, I wonder) I had fun constructing a few just to be able to use certain words, like 'somniloquacious' (Try as they might, Charlie's parents could not break him of his somniloquacious habits, and he continued to ramble about any and everything that entered his mind as he slept.) and 'slubber' ("Don't slubber that tablecloth, boy!" Molly shrieked, flapping her hands at him as if to shoo him off like the common crows that pestered her laundry, attempting to prevent him from spilling his slumgullion over her freshly pressed linens.). Engaging these words in quotidian conversation will be even more gratifying than playing half-asleep with contextual sentences, pleasurable as that employment may be.

 

~ ~ ~ ~

 

It has been suggested to me that I attempt to assume the voices of various friends and write pseudo-blog posts from what I would perceive to be their perspective. While I do not think I have the capacity for such a venture, I am curious about what it would be like to shift focus enough to write, as it were, from the mind of someone outside my head. Perhaps if I lack inspiration on a sunny day I shall pick up my pen and indulge the idea.

 

But Yield Who Will to Their Separation

I want to write.

The more I do in life, the more I see, the greater becomes the yearning to have a pen in my curled fingers, paper smooth beneath my hand, and the more I realize that no matter what I choose to do in life words will always take precedence. It is a recurring conclusion, one that gains clarity in much the same way as a rolling boulder increases its speed as it moves downhill, and there is not much to be done by way of escaping it; there is always the possibility of denying the urge, of returning to the more practical pursuits of science and culture (in this case, midwifery), but there will never be opportunity to throw the same depth of passion into midwifery as comes with literary pursuits.

There is no place I would rather be than in my corner, laptop at my disposal and notebook in my lap, ideas flowing from mind to page and back again. While I am almost ashamed to call myself a writer, knowing that the quality of my craft is so poor as to merit, in many cases, nothing but scorn and the relentless marking of an honest red pen, I cannot help the near-physical longing to be writing, to set words down and hone the thoughts expressed by them until word and thought unite in piercing unity. The urge cannot be repressed. It wells up at the most inopportune times, forcing my attention away from my surroundings and drawing me deep into a world of intense mental stimulation and excitement. After all, what is more exciting than encountering a particularly overwhelming turn of phrase or grasping the appropriate usage of a rare word? What provides more satisfaction than capturing the very essence of life in a graceful progression of letters, those curious building blocks of our written language?

There are no outings more thrilling to me than the ones involving the local library, where I can only stand transfixed before the shelves, poring over book after book, usually in the nonfiction section where there are any number of memoirs, historical tomes, journals, poetic volumes, and witty essays. I have fond memories of browsing the Philosophy and History sections in my old library, of spending hours crouched in the middle of an untrafficked aisle, perusing the contents of dozens of books. Occasionally, lacking time to sufficiently glean from a certain volume and being unable to reserve it through more acceptable channels, I would take the book and conceal it in an obscure cranny, bidding it stay put until the next time I visited. Many times, upon returning, I would discover it there, and book and reader would reconvene with a sort of cheerful camaraderie.

Handling good books, like touching blank notebooks and shopping for journals and stationary, is sheer pleasure. Many a volume is not worth touching, much less reading, but the joy of caressing a book that meets both aesthetic and literary standards is unbelievable in its intensity. While I have not always had the finest taste in reading material, having begun with cheap adventure series like the Nancy Drew and Hardy Boy mysteries, I cannot remember a time when holding a book in my hands did not send a thrill of delight from my toes to the top of my head. Even as a toddler there were specific books that elicited nothing but happiness (here I recall a small paperback of nursery rhymes, prayers, and songs, beautifully illustrated, a hardcover book of substantial size, filled with small platitudes and stunning pictures and reserved for special occasions and clean hands, and the inestimable Doctor Seuss, permanently imprinted in my memory as the author of the "vug under the rug", an undepicted monster of frightening proportions from the book 'There's a Wocket In My Pocket').

Even though I did not realize that I needed to write until I had already entered high school (unless you take into account my fervent devotion to composing poetry as an eight-year-old brat, a venture that proved quite remunerative as I obtained a twenty-five dollar prize for one such attempt), my life-long love affair with books and their stories, not to mention the technicalities of writing itself, has shoved me squarely into the act. And why not pursue it? As a child, my father told me regularly that he could not imagine me filling any other career than that of a librarian, as I always had a book in hand or a story in my head. However, I could not see why I should play caretaker for a community's books when I could open a notebook and write a tale of my own; I recall informing him more than once that, yes, I would take the librarian's job, but only because I would have plenty of time to sit behind the desk and scribble out literary works between attending to patrons.

Throughout these past two and a half years of midwifery apprenticeship I have worked hard, but in every situation I have found myself disconnected in an odd sort of way, observing the situation, as it were, for translation to paper later; many a time I would quietly fill whatever place I had to fill at a birth only to slip away afterwards and put down the words I had stored in my head while working. There were times when I asked my mother if something was wrong with me, because, while everyone else would be obviously caught up in the emotion of the present experience, I would be calmly surveying the event, steadily transposing life and death into words while the others laughed or wept. Not necessarily good words, of course, because there was -- and is -- much lacking in my wordcraft, but I still saw the world through a lens of ink. Many a postpartum hour I spent in a shadowed corner, scribbling away for dear life on my crumpled little notepad, making life experience fodder for my pen.

Of course, there is not much to be said on matters of career choice: I have invested several years in the more tangible pursuit of midwifery, and I do not expect to give that up at the drop of a hat. Part of growing up, I am discovering, is integrating every aspect of life into one unified whole, which means no part of it excludes the others; however, I know full well that, no matter how hard I try to focus on something else, writing will always draw me back, forcing me to throw all else aside and pour my heart into story, into the art of words. Perhaps someday it will prove a remunerative pursuit; perhaps I shall never get beyond spinning fanciful tales and recording snippets of life for myself and the people closest to me. Does it really matter?

There are many aspects of writing that set my heart to pounding and my fingers to tingling: the physical act of creation, the vibrant explosions of plot and story, the ramrodding power of a well-turned phrase. I love the words, the metaphors, the parallels; I thrill over the characters and the depth and complication of their stories. Tragedy stirs me, hope enlivens me, and words set me fairly to dancing, and when I am holding a blank book in one hand and a pen in the other, I know as I know nothing else that I have no choice but to write.

I want to write.