Merry Christmas and all the jazz

This year I feel a bit funny about Christmas. Or at least, I'm not particularly excited. Yes ok, I am 26, so the hysteria over the fact that Father Christmas drank every last drop the sherry we left out for him by the fireplace, but only ate half of his mince pie subsided quite a long time ago. But, I feel a little bit cynical about Christmas (I didn't want to say that but there you go).

Last year was the first year I spent Christmas apart from my family. I was on a beach in Goa with my best friend Carla, our new but already dear Keralan friend Manu, and two lovely Swedish girls Lou and Emelie. On Christmas Eve we all went to a party on the beach. We had met Manu (22 years old) in a small village called Thazhappu in Kerala. After much deliberation and talking his Mother round, Manu had decided to travel with us to Goa. It was the first time he had ever travelled outside his state in India. He was Christian and had never spent Christmas apart from his family either so this was a new experience for all of us. Christmas Eve was great. We watched fireworks on the beach and then went to the party. Lou and Emelie went to bed after an hour or so. Carla, Manu and I carried on drinking and dancing like fools until the early hours. Manu could not stop grinning. When we asked him what was so funny he said it was our dancing. Fair enough, we do dance like idiots. But, without trying to sound too cheesy, his grin was the best thing about that night and that Christmas maybe even. He had never been to a party like that and had never danced with girls (In India boys and girls don't really mix until they are married and girls don't usually hang out in social groups in public).

When we first arrived in Goa I don't think Manu felt comfortable. He was genuine and friendly to everyone but some people gave him frosty receptions and eyed him suspiciously. It was news to Carla and me. In our three weeks travelling around the South of India we had been received with beautiful heartfelt friendliness everywhere we went. Maybe our western wallets did have something to do with it but I like to think that wasn't all. We had heard of the caste system, sure, but we had never experienced the hostility of it in action. In fact, I rather naively thought it was old skool and was not really inherent anymore. In one hotel on our way to Goa, Carla and I were given a room with no further questions (payment to be made when we checked out), whilst Manu was treated coldly and had to pay for his room upfront. When we questioned why our friend had to pay now and us later, Manu looked embarassed and asked us to leave it.

On Christmas Day I was not with my family and I received an interesting and alternative gift in the form of 'delhi belly'.  In between being sick I managed to also get make-up remover in my eye. It would not stop stinging and I could not see properly so Carla, Manu and I got a tuk-tuk to the Pharmacy. The Pharmacy was full of skin-bleaching products. It struck me how strange people are. Always striving for the opposite of what we have. Indian ladies followed the Bollywood poster craze for Asian females so pale that they looked like strangers to their own side of the sun, where Brits and other Westerners lay on the beach covered in tanning oil, singing their skin to get rid of their pale winter-pallour. What was so good about the other side?

Anyhow, this year I am at home in London and Christmas seems different. A very good family friend died recently. It was totally unexpected. This year my friends are dreading Christmas, the first Christmas without their Mum.  My friend said to me that she wished she could just skip Christmas altogether.

I love the festive cheer and good spirits that seize most people at Christmas. I also love the idea of cherishing our loved ones and rejoicing in the family. And I would be lying if I said I wasn't in it for the food too. I love the food. Perhaps I should mention religion too, being the original and sole purpose of Christmas and all. But I am not religious (apart from feeling a bit jolly singing Christmas carols at Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve - the one time a year that I attend church). Christmas has become more of a festival for all these days, it cannot escape anyone's attention in England, religious or not. We can all choose how to spend our Christmas and I am re-thinking mine.

Knowing that my close friends will be having a shit Christmas, illuminating the hole in their family, I feel a little different about eating a massive dinner and then vegetating languidly on the sofa watching Christmas film re-runs and passing the Cadbury's Roses tin between my sisters and parents on the sofa. I will still do my fair share of this. Not much has changed really. But I will cherish my family all the more, and my friends and all my loved ones. I think we should cast a wider lens on our sense of community at Christmas, rather than just embracing our immediate family leaving our homes wide open for no-one else but an estranged commercial coca-cola Father Christmas. The need to pump our money into buying lavish amounts of food and excessive gifts for each other just highlights the greed that seems to increase year by year.

Yes Christmas is about sharing and giving, so shouldn't we be doing that on a wider basis? I know lots of people do, so maybe I am really talking to myself. It's loosely linked to what I experienced in India. Why do we all lust after what we haven't got? What's so good about that? When we have all that we need right here. Consumption does not satisfy. Changing our skin colour does not satisfy. We lust after being better. None of us feel good enough. We buy each other and ourselves gifts and pamper ourselves with gourmet food to try and satiate a need. The desire is never-ending and ultimately void of meaning. Maybe if we realised that many of us do not need these things and used our money and resources to turn around and face the community we would meet that need. Things are not arranged, there is no plan. People die unexpectedly, people lose their homes, people fall into pits of depression and forget how to be excited about life and how to connect. We all experience some kind of despair. Why not share our communal experiences more often. Stop hiding them and competing to appear the best.

A short piece of fiction, by Simon Hendricks (aka Me)

If anybody happens to read this and can give me quick advice about how to post up documents as PDF/ Word please do! I have just written a short piece and am going to copy and paste the text in here, but I think it is going to look messy...so if anyone can help out this technological idiot please do?!

Thanks.

My Life So Far, by Simon Hendricks

If I went missing would I get my picture printed on the side of a milk carton? That would be so cool. I could be famous. Probably not though, as they don’t do that in England. Once when I was looking through all the cartons in the shop Mum asked what I was doing. When I told her I was looking for the missing person info she laughed and said they only do that in America. But if I lived in America and went missing, I would probably become a celebrity. It would be great to walk into a shop and see my face on the side of all the milk cartons lined up on the fridge shelves. It would have my name ‘Simon Hendricks’ in big print underneath and say where I was last seen. Everybody would see my face as they ate their cornflakes in the morning, and every time they poured milk into their tea. The police and milk carton people would ask Mum for the photo. I bet I know which one she’d pick too – she keeps it in a wooden frame on the bookshelf above her bed. It’s a picture of me on my 8^th birthday wearing a blue and green striped party hat. She always says I look grown up and handsome in it. I prefer the picture of me in my batman suit personally, but I suppose if they used that for my milk picture I would have to wear my batman suit the whole time I was missing so they could recognise me.

 I don’t want to go missing though. Well I don’t want to be kidnapped, that is. If I packed the red suitcase under my bed, and cut the sombrero off from Goulash’s head and set off for Mexico on an adventure then maybe.

Goulash is my Mexican frog toy by the way. He always sleeps in bed with me and wears a straw sombrero and a multicoloured poncho. He also has a black curly moustache like Salvador Dali. Not many people my age know about Salvador Dali but we have one of his paintings on the back of our toilet door at home. I have spent ages staring at it when I’m on the loo. In the background of the painting there is a giraffe on fire. The picture really scared me when I was little. I used to close my eyes on the toilet so I didn’t have to see the giraffe. Or even better, if it was just me and Mum in the house I would leave the toilet door wide open so I couldn’t see the picture. Mum took me to London Zoo when I was five and I was nervous the whole time until we got to the giraffe cage and I could relax because none of them were on fire. I don’t mind looking at the painting now though because I Googled Salvador Dali and found out about him. He is a ‘Surrealist’ painter which means he paints silly things that aren’t real.  

I wanted to dress up as a Mexican to surprise Mum once when she was having a sad day. I tried to copy Goulash’s outfit. I made a fake moustache out of brown wool from Mum’s old wool collection in the loft. I cut a hole in my old duvet cover with the tropical fruit all over it. It had bananas, oranges, kiwis, pineapple and something Mum told me is a dragon fruit. I asked Mum if humans could eat dragon fruit and she laughed and said “of course Simon, that’s what they’re for.” But I’m not sure myself, really. If it’s meant for dragons I wouldn’t want to eat one in case the dragon can smell it on my breath or see it in my belly. Then he might come into our house to get his fruit back!

What was I talking about before? Oh yeah, so I had my Mexican costume ready, except for the most important bit. But when I tried to take off Goulash’s hat, I realised it was stuck to his head! Somebody had sewn it on!

I still surprised Mum anyway. I crept to her room, making sure not to step on the squeaky floorboard between my room and hers. I opened her bedroom door really quietly. She was lying on the bed in her pyjamas, even though it was 2.30pm in the afternoon. Her hair was all stuck together and looked shiny and wet. The duvet was covering her legs so she sort of looked like a mermaid in pyjamas. The room smelt funny, not a good smell, like old socks a bit. I jumped into the room and did a sideways dance like a crab. While I danced, I shook invisible maracas in the air and sang “la cucaracha, la cucaracha la la la la la la laaa”. I even sang in a Mexican accent. Mum looked up at me but she didn’t smile. She stared at me for a while. My throat suddenly felt heavy, like it was full of the lumpiest custard. I dropped my invisible maracas and let my hands fall to my sides. I carried on singing, even though my Mexican accent had worn off by accident. I didn’t like it when Mum looked at me like that. Her eyes were glassy like a fishbowl and they just stared at me. Her mouth was limp like a dead fish that had fallen out of the bottom of the bowl. Then her eyebrows crumpled up and she seemed angry. “You cut a hole in your duvet cover. I can’t afford to buy you another one Simon. We could still have used that. Why did you cut it up? I’m going to have to sew a patch over that hole. Go and take it off.”

Anyway, I don’t really like remembering that time. It makes me feel stupid. Maybe if I had actually cut the sombrero off Goulash’s head and worn it, Mum might have laughed. Maybe I didn’t look Mexican enough without it? Well, that was ages and ages ago, probably about a year. I’m older now and I don’t try and cheer Mum up anymore when she’s sad. I’m scared to see her so I just leave her alone until she feels better.

Mum never did sew up the duvet cover. I went to my room after she told me to take it off and hid it right at the back of my wardrobe at the bottom, under all the shoes. I threw the wool moustache and ball of wool in there too, even though I quite liked stroking my wool moustache. It reminded me of Dad. He had a thick moustache in all of the early pictures, before he got ill. But I didn’t want to look at the wool anymore. The bit I had cut out of the duvet was the picture of the dragon fruit (and a little bit of a banana too). I tiptoed outside and threw this bit of the cover in the grey wheelie bin. I didn’t want any dragons to see it in the bin in my room. We live in flats so there is a row of four wheelie bins outside that all look the same. I knew which bin was ours though because Mum had painted number 23 on the side of it in white paint. She had drawn a little flower underneath too.  

Me and Mum have lived at number 23, Gordons Avenue for 5.6 years. I’m quite good at maths so I worked out the exact number by doing a sum with all of the days. There were more numbers after the decimal place but I rounded it up to make it easier for other people who are not good at maths to understand. Mrs Phillips said we are going to have a maths test at school on Monday. Most people groaned when she said it. I didn’t though. I think I will probably be the best. I like stuff like that.

I only ever remember it being like this, just Mum and me. When I was a baby Dad and Grandpa lived with us too but I was too small to have a memory. When does memory start? I wander about this sometimes. I look at pictures of Mum and Dad, and Mum, Dad and Grandpa, and me and Dad, and all of us together and try really hard to think of the times when they were taken. I look at all of the details in the pictures. The colour and pattern of the cream and brown rug on the living room floor. Mum said she threw it away because I spilt Ribena on it and the stain was too much in the middle of the rug to cover up. She said she tried putting tables and chairs over it but they were just plonked in the middle of the room so it looked strange. I don’t feel bad about spilling the Ribena because I was little and don’t remember it. Plus the rug is really ugly anyway so I am glad she threw it away. I just wish she had kept it in the loft so I could look at it sometimes, if I wanted to. Maybe it smells like Dad and Grandpa. They walked on it so many times when it was in our living room, it must smell of them or have something of them left on it. A clue, like the Ribena stain I left. I hear people say that smells can remind you of things. Maybe I would remember them if I smelt the rug, or one of Dad’s t-shirts or Grandpa’s old slippers with a hole in the big toe on one foot. But we don’t have any of their things left. Grandpa died three days before Dad did, which is weird because Grandpa was 26.8 years older than Dad. And Dad only got to live for three more days than Grandpa, even though he was much younger and should have got to live for more time really. I was 2.43 years old when Grandpa died and 2.44 years old when Dad died. I put one more decimal place on my age because if I didn’t, you wouldn’t notice I was any older and it would look like I was just the same age, or it happened on the same day.

Grandpa was Mum’s Dad so she was really sad when he had a heart attack. She said it came out of nowhere. He was quite old, but he had been healthy and Mum says he still had all of his marbles. I don’t really know why that would mean he was healthy, just because he collected marbles, but I don’t want to ask Mum so I nod and agree that it is strange.

When Dad died it was less of a surprise. He was ill for a long time. I sometimes go up to the loft on my own and take out a picture of me and Dad when I was born and another one of me and Dad on my second birthday. I put them on the floor next to each other and count the differences in how Dad looks in the pictures. I always spot over 10 things. It’s a really easy game as he looks like two different people. In the first picture he is holding me at the hospital. Mum is in the hospital bed in the background looking really sleepy. Dad is wide awake and smiling at me. He has big curly brown hair and a big brown moustache. In the picture on my second birthday, he has no hair. None at all. He looks really skinny and tired. There are big bags under his eyes and his smile looks different too.

The Commuter Blues

I do like London so please believe me, my view of the city is more positive and rounded than these grey London-based posts suggest! When speaking to friends who have moved to London from elsewhere they have often grown hugely attached and fond of the city too. But the hardest adjustment?...it always comes down to riding on the tube. Here is a little ode to that...

The Commuter Blues

Noiseless, joyless,

blank pale moons,

eyes averted.

Making connections costs, apparently.

You can glance,

but when the other pair of eyes feel the glare and turn to meet you,

turn away.

Fight or flight.

Sometimes we want to chuck the balance,

throw in a spanner, see what happens.

Why are people so afraid of each other?

We all feel the urge to cut through the silence,

laugh hysterically on the platform,

ask a name,

stare at a stranger,

ask if someone wants to swap shoes.

See what unfolds,

carry the unknown like a trusted lover over the threshold into the known.

But I am the same too,

the risk of too many people,

of a fight, or worse,

of falling in love.

The risk of losing precious power,

of a disruption to our distraction.

Letter from Martha Graham to Agnes De Mille

I want to share the best piece of creative wisdom I have ever come across...

There is a famous letter that the influential dancer/choreographer Martha Graham (1894 - 1991) wrote to her friend Agnes De Mille (1905 - 1993), also a perpetual figure in the twentieth century dance world. This letter is often passed along in creative circles across every sphere of the art world, and no wander. I think it captures the essence of creativity perfectly. These are words to encourage everyone to develop their creative side; artist or amateur. I don't think this letter is exclusive to the art world either, the words can also be applied to how we live our lives. They struck me the first time I read them and I return to them everytime I feel lazy, bored or restless for a little kick up the bum.

“There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all Time, this expression is unique.

And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and be lost. The world will not have it.

It is not your business to determine: how good it is; nor how valuable it is; nor how it compares with other expressions.

It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work.

You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open … no artist is pleased…there is no satisfaction whatever at any time.

There is only a queer, divine dissatisfaction; a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others."

We only need to watch Martha Graham's dance works to appreciate her words all the more. Much of her choreography could easily be described as frightening, angular, and even uncomfortable. For example, her pivotal piece Lamentation (1930) expresses grief and inner turmoil. Graham performs alone dressed in a purple tube of material. Her movements are tortured and self-conscious, a far-cry from the classical ballet style typical of the 1930s dance world. The piano accompaniment is harsh and dis-jointed and adds to the morbid, drained tone of the movement. There is no averting ones attention though or gliding over the aesthetics, we are gripped by Graham. She has us completely in her possession for these few minutes. Many find her style ridiculous, pointless, ugly - 'that's not dance' is a popular reaction. There is no technical prowess or talent displayed in her movements it could be argued.

I would, however, agree with the opinion that Martha Graham was very much the founder and 'Mother' of Contemporary dance in America. She bared herself unflinchingly through her love for movement. Her work was true to herself and therefore could speak to others who understood the movements and emotions she conveyed. I am not a big fan of the style itself but I admire Graham's approach to her art and determination to stay true to herself through her dance.

Winter is coming for us...

It's getting dark outside. It's 5.46pm. There's a thick, beefy, grey night hanging around outside waiting to knock me off my still-summer-shoe-clad feet when I step out of the office in 10 minutes. Not cool.

The clocks will go back an hour on Sunday, signalling the onset of British Winter 2011 brrrr...making way for...mmm mulled wine, red wine, mulled wine, mmm repeat etc.

Incidentally, why is David Cameron trying to mess with time itself? In my opinion, nobody should be allowed to do this except God, Hiro Nakamura (from 'Heroes') and Bernard (from 'Bernard's Watch'). I don't think David is quite on a par with any of these guys. I'm not David-bashing as such, just wandering why he's thinking about long summers when we're about to enter winter? Live in the present, seize the day and all that.

Perhaps he has just been watching too many 'Bernard's Watch' repeats? In which case I don't blame him. But then why doesn't he just issue similar magic pocket watches to every Briton and we can decide Time for ourselves, "each to their own" style?

This may sound naive and silly, but this is very probably the next step in our technology-obsessed, power-hungry modern world...you heard it here first...watch this space...(didn't even intend a cringey time-based pun there oops.) 

A Day in the Life of....A Scarf

Yes..that's right. A scarf.

I am currently attending a weekly writing class at The Institute and I love it. The teacher is fantastic and puts everyone at ease and we have a great group of people so it's lots of fun. Our task this week was to hold out our hands with our eyes closed. The teacher placed a different object in each of our hands. All of these objects were everyday, boring, and obviously inanimate. We had to feel them and describe them through the sense of touch alone. Although for most of us, it was easy to tell what the object was we still had to really hone in on this sense. With our eyes open, we then wrote descriptions of the object through each of the other senses. I got a pashmina-type scarf so I did feel a little creepy holding it to my face and inhaling the scarf like I was trying to breathe in the scent of my teacher. I refrained from tasting the scarf, as I thought this may be taking it a step too far on the creepy scale...I like her, but not in a stalker-eat-her-scarf kind of way.

We then had to think of memories evoked by the object and it's texture, smell, sight, sound and taste. It was surprising and fun what some of us came up with and we learnt a lot about each other too through our stories and relationships with the objects.

For homework we have been set the task of taking this exploration further and writing 'A Day in the Life of' our object. I actually really enjoyed doing this.

The point behind this whole exercise was to learn to look at familiar objects and the world with new eyes. We have labels and such familiarity with the everyday world as we view it, so rarely find reason to stop and think about the qualities of things we see everyday.

It is also very hard to sit down and 'decide' to write something interesting and profound off the top of your head. Our teacher Elizabeth explained that by starting with something everyday and mundane and writing about it in detail, we find new ways to engage with these subjects and they often provide a path to something more interesting/ profound when we are not even trying.

If you would like to see what an animated inanimate scarf does during a typical day please read on:

A Day in the Life of A Scarf

I am rudely woken from my slumber by sharp rays of sunshine pouring in all over my body.  Sunshine is wonderful, don’t get me wrong, I love the warmth and the brightness. However, I think it is simply bad etiquette to force the transition from clammy dark slumber to the brightness of the morning upon anyone. My wearer has never learned to refrain from this habit. In my younger years, this was easier to live with, but as I grow older I worry about my colours fading in the light. I prefer the preservation and peace of the darkness. Here I can nestle amongst other scarves, socks and knickers. The drawer always smells of fresh sweet apples. When I sleep I feel like someone has draped me around the boughs of an apple tree and left me here to rest.  

After abruptly pulling open our communal wooden bed, the wearer continues her inconsiderate routine by plucking me out of the drawer. My body is still limp and numb with sleep. Her touch is rough. Can she not see that I am getting old? Sometimes when I am working for the day and I leave the house with her in the morning, I see thick brown cardboard boxes of various sizes being carted gently to front doors by delivery men. I often wonder why the wearer does not touch me like this, with caring hands. Eventually I decipher that the delivery men touch the packages gently due to giant labels taped to the boxes reading ‘FRAGILE: HANDLE WITH CARE’. I often think at a certain age, we clothing items should also get a similar label sewn to our skin. My tassles are untwizzling you see, my rainbow coloured stripes are dusty now and I have a small hole in my left corner, where someone burned through me with a cigarette at a dinner party. There is also a tea stain on the pale, cream coloured part of my body. I remember the occasion when this occurred all too well, and how could I forget? The stain is a constant reminder and has not come out despite three hand washes and one, dare I say it, machine wash since. I had been delighted that the wearer had picked me from the drawer that day to adorn her classically cut black office dress. Despite picking a lovely dress however, the wearer was clearly sleep deprived herself, and running late. We stopped on the way to work so that she could buy a styrofoam cup of tea from a street vendor by St Johns Wood tube station. Once on the train, the wearer lifted the lid from the cup to let the tea cool. Steam rose from the milky liquid and harassed me. It was hot enough on the tube without this added wet heat. Now that I have since encountered the dreaded machine with all of the common clothes, I could liken the steam to the shock of heat that rose from my skin by the end of this terrifying fiasco, when I was finally removed from the machine in a giant heap with all of the other clothes. Although my care label is now faded, the wearer knows that I am a ‘hand wash only’ item. To add insult to injury on this particular tube ride, after receiving an unwanted sauna, the tube carriage halted at Baker Street station sending scolding hot tea jolting out of the cup and all over me. Needless to say, this was ‘one of those days’ at work for both of us.

There are younger scarves in the drawer that I used to be jealous of, but now hardly care to notice. One is particularly attractive. She is made of red and pink silk and gold threads pattern her luxurious body with delicate roses. These younger scarves do get picked more often than me these days, and I am often discarded at the back of the drawer. But as I said, it is cool and dark and peaceful in here so that suits me just fine.  

It is still nice to be worn occasionally and despite my annoyance at such a wake-up call I do find that I feel a hint of pride that I am the chosen one today. The wearer drapes me around her neck. My top half is always pleased to be nestled against her warm, delicate, soft skin. But the trailing bottom half of my body is disgruntled with the wearer’s outfit. She is wearing that stiff, itchy navy blue blazer and we do not get on well. There is a sterling silver butterfly brooch attached to the top lapel of the blazer and I always scratch up uncomfortably against him and get stuck. The delicate strings of my netted middle stripe get caught on the butterfly antennae today. I am not best pleased. The wearer swirls around and parades herself in front of the full length mirror. She fidgets with me and pulls my ends this way and that. I try to cry out as she pulls me at one end and the strings wrap tighter on the antennae, the metal poking through the larger holes in my weave. The wearer ignores my discomfort. She sighs and her shoulders drop. She rips me from her warm pulsating throat violently and throws me to the bed. I flutter through the air as gracefully as I can and land on the unmade bed. “Get off” comes a gruff angry voice, muffled by the duvet. I look to my left and realise I am lying over a thick brown cracked leather belt. He’s also been discarded today by the wearer and we know we’ll be laying like this all day until she clears us off the bed later when she returns home.

An Autumnal and somewhat gloomy take on the city...

I came across this old poem I wrote a few years ago. It describes the grey, hostile side of the city, viewed from a park bench (without a bottle of cheap cider, which would have been a perfect accompaniment given the mood of the poem). I was very much playing around with the structure/ form of the lines and I am not sure it works here, but anyway:

The city.

My hands. A bursting grapefruit full of acid juice.
A half-smoked cigarette smoulders in the gutter,
rolling to and fro with the breeze in a restless dance.
Ash bleeds into the drain.

An old man cycles past on a battered bike,
wisps of silver hair
whisper his secrets to the world from his pink head.

Ten kilos of wet sand sit in hessian sacks,
slumped at the foot of a nearby silver birch tree.

Red flowers of passionate velvet create hints of sex in this grey cityscape.
Conkers lie scattered on the grass and gravel,
smashed underfoot to a bruise coloured mush.
The smattered brown skins bear broken pearls of brown and black.
Fleshy, spiked green shells are but a distant memory,
no longer a muse.

A blue-eyed child runs wide into the embrace of the wind,
mittens flying beside him,
desperate to keep up the pace.

A smug roly-poly sausage dog raises his hind leg and
trickles confirmation of his existence onto some conker mess,
making a pungent muddy soup.

Leaves paper the poop scoop bin
with their fragile veins
and deep decorative shades
of red, orange, yellow and brown.

A filthy pigeon flutters from his lampost perch to the bin below.
He stops, jutting his head from side to side,
then sweeps away into the sky,
a little dot dunked in a vat of the city's shit.

This is the city.

Beautiful in its naked ruin.
Ferocious in its pace,
fragile and lingering in its traces.
I watch in the wake of its life.

A quiet tide sweeps over the roads like a tired, maternal broom.
The debris of another city day washes over the grey tarmac
and trickles
down the cracks
in
the
pavements.

This is the city.

Note to self:

I will be writing some stories soon too. This blog is not just going to be book reviews, as I have promised to have 'words of all kinds.'

Graphic novels: I am not wearing a hat yet as it is still sort of summer, but if I was, I would take it off to you...

Three weeks since my last post! I could not have been busy enough to create a baby inbetween posts this time (If I had conceived since then, would it even be an embryo by now?) I will stop referring to my posts in terms of pregnancy, as I realise it's a bit odd, and a bit sexist for a woman to be relating everything to babies.

I have digressed. I wanted to talk about graphic novels. I have only recently discovered this medium of literature and I am hooked. I was always put off before by the comic book look when I flicked through. The first graphic novel I gave in and read was 'Pyongang' by Guy Delisle. A friend recommended and leant me the book so my curiousity caved and I succumbed. (Thank you Sophie)!

The book unravels Guy Delisle's experience as an illustrator working on a project in the North Korean capital of Pyongyang. He is assigned a 'guide' upon arrival to North Korea and is not allowed to leave his compound without his 'guide'. There are pictures of Kim Il-Sung (the deceased, but "Eternal President") and his son Kim Jong-Il (the current Leader) on every wall of every public space.
Delisle is taken to 'The International Friendship Museum' - a hilariously conceived example of propaganda imposed upon the North Koreans to convince them of their own regime? The museum is full of valuable gifts of 'thanks' bequethed upon Kim Jong Il and the late Kim Il-Sung by leading figures from countries all over the world. Gifts are displayed from over 146 countries - a supposed show of reverence and adoration to the North Korean Leaders from around the globe. (Of course, the fact that this gift-giving is mere protocol for any official visitor entering the country is a small-print fact of little relevance).
Delisle probes a little to try and dig beneath the conditioned veneer. Are the North Korean population actually convinced? Brainwashed? Too afraid to speak their true minds? He lends his guide a copy of Orwell's '1984' to see if he can open up a dialogue. I won't give anymore away...have a read.
The book is simple, funny, moving and a really interesting and eery insight into the workings of North Korea, possibly the most isolated country in the world in a day and age where people read all the versions of 'the truth' they can lay their hands on and blab their opinions in blogs like this all over the internet.

I have since read other graphic novels too. Some of Marjane Satrapi's books (Thank you Mike), including the highly acclaimed 'Persepolis' (which was also made into a film in 2007, co-directed by Satrapi). The three books I read were set in and around Tehran during the Islamic Revolution. They are based on Satrapi's own experiences growing up in Tehran and Europe. 'Persepolis' (Parts 1 and 2) are highly personal and I love the quirky, insightful and intelligent perspective cast upon life and the important political events of the time by the confused and rebellious adolescent Satrapi, who narrates the story.

J.P. Stassen's 'Deogratias, a tale of Rwanda' provides another interesting read. It was first published in Belgium in 2000 and tackles the 1994 Rwandan Genocide. The tale focuses on Deogratias, a young Hutu man who has been driven crazy as a result of living through the genocide, which saw longstanding tensions between the majority Hutu tribe and minority Tutsi tribe explode in the most tragic way. An estimated 800,000 people were killed in roughly 100 days. The story takes place before, during and after the genocide and traces the struggle of genocide survivors to continue living 'a normal life', having witnessed such atrocity.

I have just read 'Stitches', by David Small, another fantastic and highly original creative accomplishment. This chunky volume is made up more of pictures than words. Small's autobiography recounts memories of his grim childhood and strange, shockingly unaffectionate parents. The terrifying facial expressions of the Mother and Grandmother stuck with me. Small's drawings are so vivid that we experience this tale very much through the eyes of Small's young self.

I found all of these books deeply engrossing. The graphic novel is a powerful medium often used to tackle difficult and dark themes, both political and emotional. The genre seems to allow apt exploration of the dark and often repressed or less talked about face of human nature. The patchwork of words and pictures together provides a channel to focus in on these dark subject matters in a thought-provoking, but simultaneously, somehow lighthearted way. The books themselves (at least the ones above that I have read) are not depressing. Perhaps this is because descriptions in words are often kept to a minimum, with emotive but simplistic pictures weaving together the narrative. This allows for subjects that are often too atrocious to be described or adequately approached in words to be explored effectively, without tip-toeing or excuse-searching. These books are raw and vivid. I realise that I may well be generalising in a big way and these statements are rather sweeping, but I speak of the books I have read. And I urge you to pick up a graphic novel that grabs your interest and give it a go!

Long time, no see

After struggling to figure out what my password was for this account for a good 10 minutes and finally caving and resetting it (I know it was 'Pancakes' related, but just couldn't remember the finer details), I had to laugh at the one single lonely post I had put up here. In November. 8 months ago. It is now August. The snow has melted, England is past its most bitter winter in 20 odd years and thawed out again into the summer heat of the inane teenage hoody riots. During this time I could pretty much have created and fully grown a baby.

If it's any consolation (to myself), I'm almost certain I started out like a million other bloggers did. With a post about my good intentions and my love of words and my 'meaty wisdom' to all wannabe writer's to get on and just bloody write...and then...of course...by being mute for 8 months. If I had created a baby fair do's, but I haven't.

So, password reset (nothing to do with pancakes, it was making me hungry anyway), I am up for giving this another go.

Have just finished reading 'Under the Jaguar Sun' by Italo Calvino. A fantastic little book made up of three short stories. He died whilst writing the book, which was intended to be a book based on the five senses. The three stories are all consuming. They do not describe or focus on senses. They are the senses. Calvino writes through the organs of the mouth, the ears and the nose in his three pieces. The writing is unusual and fragmentary, but oh so flowing at the same time - if it can be these two contradictory things at once, which it seems to achieve. Fragmentary perhaps, because it disclocates us from the whole body. It hones in on that one sense like it was the only sense. The only perception. And then the writing, the story, the ideas, the feelings flow beautifully and intrinsically through this single organ. There were many sentences that struck me. I love books where a sentence, or a few lines here or there just stick out. A piece of art in their own right. A little truth in amongst the lovely jumble sale.  Here are a few lines, precisely like that from the first story in the book 'Under the Jaguar Sun':

"Olivia had waited for me, our teeth began to move slowly, with equal rhythm, and our eyes stared into each other's with the intensity of serpents' - serpents concentrated in the ecstasy of swallowing each other in turn, as we were aware, in our turn, of being swallowed by the serpent that digests us all, assimilated ceaselessly in the process of ingestion and digestion, in the universal cannibalism that leaves its imprint on every amorous relationship and erases the lines between our bodies and sopa de frijoles, huachinago a la vera cruzana, and enchiladas."

I even love the end bit, where Calvino drifts off into what seems like a Mexican menu. Somehow it just fits. Mouth, teeth, chewing, swallowing, consumption. The need is basic and everyday. We need food - to survive. The need is based on emotion and yearning - we need sex and comfort and intimacy. The need is greed - we desire beyond our means. Our desire leads us on an endless bid for consumption. One that can never satiate our hunger.