Job Done!

No, I haven’t completed the first draft of the novel…

Four years ago we were getting a garage conversion. The workmen had been doing the kitchen extension for a while, and we knew  they were about to move onto the garage conversion.

And the garage was filled with junk. So I kept thinking, “I really must empty the garage so that they can do the garage conversion.”

But one day, they got ahead of me and emptied the garage onto the back lawn and covered the contents of the garage with a big tarpaulin weighed down with some rubble. So I kept thinking, “I really must sort out that junk under that tarpaulin before there is torrential rain, or it gets really windy.”

But one day, it was really windy and really rainy; the tarpaulin came away and all the stuff started … dispersing itself around the garden,

So I wedged it all down the side of the house. So I kept thinking, “I really must go through all that stuff at the side of the house before it disintegrates and becomes of no use to man or beast.”

The Passage of Time (Photo credit: ToniVC)

And, slowly, Time got out of his winged chariot and gradually began blurring the edges between “junk” and “garden”, allowing moss to grow on plastic, wood to swell and burst, metal to rust and once-identifiable objects to become …

ANYWAY

So – today – I scraped it all up, put it into the car, and took it to the tip!

It took an hour.

That’s better.

Schoom! What was that?

In this clip, Basil says, “Schoom! What was that? That was your life, mate. Oh, that was quick – do I get another? Sorry mate, that’s your lot…”

If life continues to accelerate at its current rate, by the time I have retired, I’ll be nothing but a blur.

Not that you’d think so to look at me, what with my non-paid-work lifestyle: sitting in cafes while my children do aerobic exercise under some more palatable heading than ‘aerobic excerise’.

Unless you count my exercise regime which doesn’t sound palatable at all, but is very fun, if a little DARK these days…

And all such exercise, resulting in potential calorie loss is undermined daily – and especially this weekend – as it was Son of Sanstorm’s 9th birthday! I managed to make a completely brilliant cake, complete with ganache-esque frosting that leaked all over the cake and cake stand resulting in a kind of chocolate-fountain-cum-top-hat effect. Luckily I had a squad of relatives in, so they ate it, so I didn’t have to have that ‘leftover’ thing.

So, if time is going in a bit quick, what do you do? Get younger? Do more? Do less? Travel?

I’m in my own relay race, but I am the baton, passed from pick-up to drop off to pick up to drop off.

This isn’t a moan – I am enjoying every marrow-sucked minute of it 🙂

So, like, this is how the career break is going :-)

Break?

As I suspected, the vacuum left by the removal of paid employment from my weekly schedule has not resulted in any more time in the week.  Which is insane.

Things do do, things to read, places to go, people to see, courses to attend, children’s parties to buy and wrap gifts for, house to clean, hobbies to facilitate…

And yet, I used to go to work, work, eat macaroni cheese, work some more and come home. It’s weird. But I am kind of reassurred that when I return to work in August 2013, it’ll be fine. It’ll fit right back in again.

Maybe life is always full. I have heard it said that tasks expand to fit the time available. Which I think is true – although I prefer to work on a tasks-to-timeslots basis.

My daily posting has crashed a bit – in no small measure this is the fault of this laptop that has an uncanny knack of not being able to find the internet. And my daily reading of my favourite blogs is also similarly hampered. Roll on early Christmas present…

However, for those who have asked and anyone else who happens to be passing through, here are how my career break targets are going:

1. Get fit – so far this is going very well! I ran REALLY far on Monday and then went to Boot Camp and didn’t feel any worse for having run about 10km or so in the morning. I am really enjoying it and, once I have warmed up (which is the worst bit) I can go on working hard physically for ages.

2. Get thin – no great success to speak of, although I have managed to turn the the needle on the scales in the right direction. I feel I should be thinner, but I’ve already had the fat vs muscle weight debate… We’ll see. I will go on my nephew’s “visceral weight” gadget and see if there’s any improvement… Hmm… not convinced.

3. “Operation Show Home” / 4. Go to the tip  – I have not been to the tip as much as I hoped, but, superficially, the house it not depressing me 🙂 It can be made to look presentable in a reasonable amount of time, so that is good. I don’t look at it and immediately feel the need to go to bed in a state of overwhelm.

5. Write the novel – I have planned a bit of it – that is as far as I have got. I have my two central characters and the inciting moment decided. I have a wee prequelly prologue, conceptually. But I am WAY behind on my words per week target. Way behind.

On the upside, my parents and I are making good progress typing up my grandfather’s memoir about the first world war. At the moment he is stationed near the front line waiting for his turn at the front. He and his friends have just been told off for stealing a pile of wheat to line the floor of their tent. They are near Arras, and he will soon be caught up in the thick of it.

So, that’s the state of play at the moment.

Single Minded

Sanstorm sits at the laptop. She has ONE thing she actually needs to type. It would take her about two hours and would mean that she could sit back for the whole summer, watch the rain fall, eat the brie, clean up after the arts and crafts and various other mindless and easy tasks.

SANSTORM: (to self) Right. If I promise myself I won’t post anything on Wee Scoops, surely I’ll get it done. No facebook. No twitter. That ought to do it.

PROCRASTINATION: Ah but yeah but social networks and the blogosphere occupy different time zones to actual writing. It’s just like main courses and dessert. Just because you are full, when it comes to steak and chips,  it doesn’t mean you couldn’t pack away a stack of profiteroles, now does it?

SANSTORM: I see your point. It’s that ‘mid evening’ brain space. You can quite easily warble on about some vague whim or interesting nuance without engaging whatever cortex or other it is that takes to to with ACTUAL work.

PROCRASTINATION: Yes. You should give the cream of the crop – timewise – to real writing. You should write when you are fully conscious, far from the lure of CSI re-runs and a fridge full of snacks. You’d be better of writing it tomorrow.

SANSTORM: Oh come on now, you and I both know that tomorrow is promised to no man. Carpe Diem!

PROCRASTINATION: Well, if there is no tomorrow it won’t matter. And, if there’s no tomorrow for you, I’m sure someone else will do it. You’re not indispensable you know.

SANSTORM: Yes, but I went on the facebook and said I was going to finish tonight.

PROCRASTINATION: Well, you were wrong. You need to work on your self control. Making outlandish claims of future productivity. That’s that edge of arrogance I’m seeing again. You need to watch that.

SANSTORM: That edge of arrogance has taken me a couple of decades to nurture! And, technically, it’s not arrogance. It’s an awareness of my strengths and weaknesses arrived at through years of rigorous reflection.

PROCRASTINATION: Reflection? My favourite.

SANSTORM: Yes, reflection used to be procrastination, but now it is, like, the MAIN THING needed, for, like, anything.  None of this actual DOING anything. It’s more planning, thinking and then evaluating that is the way forward. Yes, that’s it. I’ll reflect on WHY I just can’t get started…. (wanders off into the distance, considering why she thinks she will leave this task until tomorrow, when, clearly, she has been able to type something …)

PROCRASTINATION: (evil laugh) And tomorrow, and tomorrow and tomorrow…

“Hunger Games” by Suzanne Collins versus “The Handmaid’s Tale” by Margaret Atwood

WARNING!!! SPOILERS!!!

I WILL RUIN THE END OF THE HUNGER GAMES TRILOGY!

I make no apologies: YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!

Both women had a dystopian vision of the future of America, but only one was a great writer. Margaret Atwood wins this contest hands down.

Katniss. As a narrator she did a good job of keeping us up to speed with what was going on and how she felt. But she ends up with Peeta?! What was she thinking? (I know, she was thinking Gale directly or indirectly caused the death of her sister because deep down he thought that children were fair game to use as collateral in securing the success of a revolution…) But really! Peeta! Can I just say… she didn’t love him. He was nauseatingly worthy. She would never have married him.

The narrator of the Handmaid’s tale is so much more real and believable. We know she is in love with Luke – but she doesn’t know if he is alive or dead. She is, as she admits, selfish and flawed – and uses Nick – but she is consistent and her stance is completely understandable in the society in which she is placed.

The setting of Gilead was so well drawn. The red outfits so vivid, the archaic-sounding shop names, the barbaric wall of victims; the dust in the sitting room, the heat of the garden, the discomfort of all things – our narrator, therefore Atwood, made it real. I loved how the 1980s and the years that followed in Atwood’s imagination were present behind the theocratic state – the memories of “normality” that were shadows in the narrator’s memory.

Collins was trapped by her plot. We knew Katniss had to win, as she was narrating. The revolution had to come. It’s a sin to kill a mockingjay and all that. I think that was her point – that once the initial game was won, Katniss was trapped in a bigger game, playing her part to the bitter end.

The plot of the Handmaid’s tale is so much more realistic. It is one life plucked out of a hellish society and we follow it until it goes off the map. It is far less tidy at the end – but compelling nevertheless, as this life the reader has watched wander nearer and nearer to danger and “freedom” walks off the page and into a van… and then the ending. Genius.

The dystopian societies? The Capitol and Districts sort of worked – but they were a bit clumsily delineated. In “The Handmaid’s tale”, there were similar ideas – some colonies for atomic cleansing, some for cotton picking – and our narrator trapped for almost all of the novel in a perfect looking town, masking fear.

Atwood’s novel was first published in the UK in 1985 – hey – one year after 1984 and parallels aske to be drawn. We don’t have thought police, but we have “eyes”. We have the same fear of being caught thinking own thoughts and living own life. We have the same reduction of sex to an impersonal/”political” act. In “The Hunger Games”, the political control is less complete, less dominant for the characters. Katniss can jump a fence, catch a rabbit, meet dissidents in a shack… any time she wants.

“The Handmaid’s Tale” and “The Hunger Games” deal with hugely different themes, despite their superficial similarities. The Hunger Games was about media manipulation, power, fame, entertainment and values. “The Handmaid’s tale” was about women and their role in society. It was about power, corruption, influence, fear, oppression, politics, freedom… It was also about history and how any present is made up of elements of the past – and how any one life is a part of that history that feeds into the future. So, Atwood wins. As the narrator reflects on how much she did not appreciate her freedom in the 1980s, I could completely see how free she was, until it all went wrong.

So, “The Handmaid’s Tale” – hardly a pleasant read – but great.

Time and Money

Silver seconds slip by…

I’m counting the coppers
Piling them to pounds.

Wiser than a miser,
I want to buy some time.

What shape is time when it is inside your mind, and how do your memories fit in it?

Don’t blame me for this one. Someone asked.

First of all, what shape is time to begin with? Personally I go for it being a one-sided loop. From everlasting to everlasting, and all that. And a big bang. Maybe that should have come first.

I like to think of time as a limited dimension. It’s like we are monopoly pieces (I am the hat) and we are going around our temporal board so we are in time. But from the perspective of the player we can see the eternal possibilities, the round and round. But, we are caught in the rat race.

So, inside my mind, that is what time is like: there’s a notional beginning BANG! There’s a notional end BANG! and together these make up the space-time continuum on which I am living. God, however, is everlasting to everlasting so can jump about the squares on the monopoly board as he sees fit. Actually he’s not generally on it. More transcendant, apart from during the incarnation.

So, my memories, I guess 1973 was “Go!” and the 70s were the brown and turquoise properties, the 80s are the burgundy and orange, the 90s are the red and the yellow, and the noughties are the green and dark blue. And then as 2010 hit, I was back around the corner (Hey, Life begins at 37!) for another Go! at it.

Memories in my brain are in a kind of association soup. If anyone starts with an anecdote, all my relevant memories start to bubble to the surface and I can then weed out the gems for a game of anecdote trumps.

One annoying thing about memories is how the real memories can be hijacked my memories of photographs or the actual photographs – and how all I can remember about an event is the bit that was photographed.

So saying, my memory is ridiculously good. Encyclopaedic, even.

I used to think of my memory system of being in Mac like folders, from when I had a Mac Classic II back in the dark ages. You could keep folders within folders. However, memories can have multiple triggers, so I reckon the internet is a better model for a memory structure. Someone throws me a memory trigger and I internally google memories.

So, what’s the relationship between my internal construction of time and my memories?

Some years and dates are kept of a time line and I remember it in a kind of linear way. For example I can remember 1997 for gazillions of reasons: trip to India, Diana and Mother Theresa died, I worked in a couple of random places and so on.

Other things are not on a timeline, probably because I have passed Go! on them before. For example there will be a cafe or a street or a place and layer upon layer of memories are associated with that place. It’s like zillions of translucent images going down and down.

OK. That’s half an hour of my thoughts on this topic.

🙂

And to the person who asked – this is my gift to you. You have to keep it FOR EVER.

Actually, I’ve just thought of the answer.

It’s all to do with how we access information. When I used a mac, my memories were kept in mac folders. Now I am internettastic, I use an internal google function. At one point I used to visualise a filing cabinet in my brain. And now I am a wife and mother, I use a boiling of soup as an image for memory storage…

So, where does the person access their info? That is how they will construct their memory retrieval system. I suggest that time will be a timeline with gaps. Or a Monopoly board.

🙂

Telling

During Passover, the “Haggadah” is used as a guide through the Seder meal. Haggadah means “Telling” and it helps the community tell the story of how it came to be.

I am gathering props to try to recreate a tableau of a first century Seder. Here are some of the things I am hoping to use:

Doing this project has made me wonder how Jesus and his disciples carried out the traditions. I think the first Haggdah was written around 150 years after Jesus’ earthly life, but I suppose that most of the traditions outlined in the Haggadah would have been common to most Passover Celebrations.

There are two elements of the Seder that may have captured the imagination of the disciples, if the Seder they took part in followed these traditions.

In the Seder there are three Matzoh crackers. At one point the middle one is broken, wrapped in a bag or napkin and hidden. By the end of the meal it is returned to the table and shared out.

Also, on the table there is the “Cup of Elijah”. Elijah is invited into the proceedings. Here is a quote of explanation from AskMoses.com:

On the night when we celebrate our redemption from Egypt, we also express our absolute belief in the coming of the Messiah, the one who will lead us out of this exile and take us all back to our land. We are so confident of our imminent redemption, that we actually pour a cup for Elijah, the prophet who will come to announce the arrival of the Messiah.

As we know, Jesus took the symbols of the Seder and transformed them.

The remaining matzoh he claimed as his “body, broken for you”. Until today I had not realised that it was traditional to wrap, hide and return the cracker to the gathered company and share it.

Elijah had been associated with the old covenant, the sign of which was circumcision. The Cup of Elijah he claimed was “my blood” as a new covenant.

I imagine that, despite their experiences of the preceding few years, it would have been something of a shock for the disciples to see the conclusion of the familiar traditional meal so reinterpreted.

Powerful imagery.

Before the Story

Come on, step into the light. It’s all good.

Look around. Here is everything you could ever want. I have provided every element, allowed for every possible permutation, considered every beginning and every ending.

But it starts with you.

What story do you want to build? Your story.

And you write.

“The first thing I remember is the light. Initially blinding, then fading into welcome clarity. I can see, I can see it all.”

A world of possibility. In the world of possibility there is no inevitability, until the first choice is made. Then everything falls away. A choice made becomes the first of infinite dominos: little flat panels touching more of the same, though each one bigger than the last. They become like gravestones, crashing and chipping the next ones, until they slam into massive monoliths. Time thunders on, banging away into an infinite future. There’s always one more hammer to fall.

“I am here. I have a body. All around me there is sensation. I can feel the heat of the sun, the chill of the night, the pain of work, the rest of sleep. Scents of a thousand plants overwhelm me. The world is filled with fruit and berries, breads and vegetables, sweet water and grains to feed me. Life is sweet. I can hear the wind, the birds, the thunder and the waterfall.”

So, where are you going to go? What are you going to do? When do you want this to be? Nothing is set in stone. Yet.

“I want a home and company. I want work and food and rest. I want to laugh. I want to experience the things that are worth the grief of loss.”

You have a home and family. You work to grow vegetables and tend to animals. Your children make you laugh and your friends share your joy and trouble. You love and are loved.

“I want to be free.”

To give you freedom you must know the truth. You need to know who you are and make a decision. In most stories you would make a decision to leave, then later on you would discover the truth and return to what you would then see as your real home.

There would be a garden. The writer would use words like “abundant” to start with, then the vocabulary would widen, taking in words like “fractured” and “looming”. There would be a sudden jarring appearance of a rat or a snake, that would make the reader worry. A portent of doom.

There would be a love scene, much later, that the writer wouldn’t want to write and the reader wouldn’t want to read. There would be words like “awkward”, “clumsy” and “urgent”. The reader will want to put the story down. They will wish you’d never left.

“I want to go back to the way things were. I want to go back to the start”

Time has ticked on. If you have left, you have taken the past away too. You can only work from the present you are in. You can return to the first setting if you like, but you can’t take the person you were with you.

“Experience lines my face and hands. I have seen too much. I have done too much.”

Okay, for you, I’ll make an exception. You can go back. But only you.

I’ll go to the end of time and lift the last, infinitely large megalith and lever it up with my pen.

With a neat flick of my wrist, history comes crashing backwards: a roar of thunder diminishing to a million clicks like those of  tiny fingers, until the last piece falls back to the way things were.

Nothing has been done, everything has been undone.

Do you want to start again?

Time to Mess with Time

This isn’t my novel, so don’t worry. A couple of days ago I suggested how a dystopian novel could be structured. Since then I have been trying not to generate a dystopian future. Despite myself, tonight I take my first suggestion… It’s very sketchy, just an idea.

1. Mess with time to generate a feeling of anxiety, guilt and purposelessness.

In The Beginning

When this century was in its teens, time-travel had been all the rage. Rows of time-tubes, like rows of toilet cubicles lined the town square. You could feed a pound into the slot and go whenever you wanted to go.

Getting back was a different matter. But people didn’t seem to mind. It didn’t feel as if anyone was really disappearing. You knew they wanted to time travel, so you assumed that that was what they were doing.

If you stayed put, as I did, all you saw was them entering the time-tube. And then they were gone.

It wasn’t long, well, is that even the right way to put it? Soon, in some way or other I knew things were wrong. The time-tube technology had been taken into the past.

Travellers appeared from the past, bewildered with their future. Present day time-tubers reappeared, and always appeared to be horrified with our city.

Not that I could see that it was any different to the city they had left. I had never moved. The rows of time-tubes still stood guard over the city, but, in the silence of my own mind, I seemed to sense my memories shifting, becoming less clear.

History in my childhood had meant something, I was sure. Now, if people wanted to check up a historical fact, they would just go there, find a time-tube, witness the event and come back.

Of course, that wasn’t what had originally happened. But then it then was what had originally happened. History was changing. I could sense it, but I couldn’t prove it. And I lived some days with the knowledge that other days I would not know this. It would all depend.

Time-tubing came to an end, eventually. The Authority stepped in and banned time-travel, trying to steady the status quo. Having every day as an alternate version of a new past couldn’t be healthy, even if you could never prove that that was what was happening. But it must have been.

They began to search for a volunteer, to go back, just one last time, and stop man’s ability to time-travel from being developed.