Monday 18 March 2013

extremely loud.

For the past two or three days, I've been reading this.


And it is good. A book has not touched me quite like this in a long time.

And since, I've kind of been researching furiously about trauma and memory and the-sometimes-long-forgotten Dresden bombings. I'm permanently astounded by the depth and breadth of these things. By what they mean both nationally and personally--by what gets forgotten in the rubble of these things and of these new atrocities that move and shake and overshadow. I'm grateful for both the absences of these words and the presence of feeling--for that new perspective.

I'm kind of on board the Foer bandwagon, now.

(image source).


Wednesday 6 March 2013

an update.

I want to start writing again. I want to write the sort of things that I am inspired by, daily. I want it to soothe and restore and focus. So I've decided to start writing, and today, largely without any process of revision. 

Here's the thing: we made it through the winter. We made it through the hardest months of heartbreak and solitude and chill. And we made the same mistakes as last year, and we suffered the same toils as last year, and we look forward, now, with the same confusion and bewilderment as last year. Last year is this year but it won't be the next. We have learned. We have hope. We are trying.


A while ago, I stumbled across this. It seemed apt, that day, just as it does today. Almost everyone I know is going through some kind of crisis of confidence and crisis of hope. We've all entered a state of not knowing; of trying to create a space and navigate a future. And it is hard. Where we thought we were we no longer are. What we thought we wanted we no longer lust after. How we thought we'd get there no longer exists. So twenty-thirteen is a year of trying again. We will try and try again.


"So maybe my dreams are smaller than I think. Maybe they are more practical. Maybe this ferocious struggle I wake up inside of every day--the effort to figure out what I should be doing and the old, sour fear that I made the wrong decision--maybe that's just looking through the wrong end of the telescope. My life is bigger than that. There are mountains in the distance, and the ocean, and I am going to follow my stupid, incessant dream right up to it.


Sometimes life isn't about failure or success or one path or the other. It's not about doing the right thing or being remembered or the title you have or don't have or whether or not you got the degrees you were supposed to or if those degrees opened up the right doors. It's about what you are, fundamentally, underneath all of that. And I am a writer who needs to write a book about a girl who lives in a big, open world. I am a goddamn dreamer."


Kate Fridkis, the lady behind Eat The Damn Cake. She's quite a treasure.