Hidden In France

brittle Feng shui

I feel like a racer on the starting block, waiting for that gunshot and that gunshot ain't coming and i'm so PUMPED for it! So much needs to move forward but is stalling.

Snow getting in the way in Vermont (Nadia you know what I mean.)

Waiting to hear from colleges so that we can plan Spring break visits.

Burning with impatience for my book cover, so that I can send my novel out. 

Waiting to hear from the people whose life I just adapted into a screenplay hoping that they loved it (but what if they... gasp... hated it?)

And my nose is clogged shut by a monster cold i cand breede!

Rhahh this is torture!

In an attempt to remove blockage from my life, I decided to clear feng shui,  beginning with the unbelievable amount of crap accumulated under my bed.  

The junk I found there was mind-boggling. There was the extended family of dust bunnies, no wonder my nose refuses to unclog, then the scrunched-up content of four boxes of kleenexes, heavy with dried-up snot, fruit of a winter's worth of colds and a spring's worth of allergies. And then, and I had to marvel at the symbolism, there, under our marital bed were enough sharp/cutting objects to shred a 20 year marriage to pieces: three kids plastic swords, an exacto knife, a board filled with dozens of pins (I use those to map out storylines), and this was not symbolically bad enough for my relationship, a huge guillotine-looking paper trimmer I did not even remember owning.

I guess in the process of making sharp and dangerous things inaccessible to small children I crafted the mother of all toxic relationship feng shui. 

So now you could have a picnic under the bed it's that clean.  The bunnies have found a new home in the belly of my vacuum cleaner, the kleenexes were recycled (is it morally reprehensible to put kleenexes in the recycling bin?) and the sharp things are to be moved under Brad and Angelina's bed because all that passion they are displaying is making me feel insecure.  Now good Feng shui can freely flow in and out of the room.  I'll let you know if things become unblocked and make a Feng Shui believer out of me.

namesless pictures

Has this ever happened to you?  You have discovered all kinds of lovely blogs.  You have all those windows open so that you can give credit where credit is due as you post pretty images.  You think you should clear your history because it is too full and the computer is acting sluggish. You click erase and WAHMO! Safari quits, all the windows close and you are left with pretty images and no source to credit.

So what do theses images have in common?  me liking them I guess. If you know the source please tell me. 

I found my mascot!

Her name is Evangeline and her expression reflects exactly my outlook on life at the moment, minus the  man cold affecting me.  Look she's even holding a kleenex, a cup of tea and a cookie, just like I am.

She was created by Vanessa of do you mind if I knit.  I think she rocks! Here is Vanessa's etsy shop for more goodies. 

 

 

Valentines day His and Hers

Humans are silly. They actually came up with a Set Yourself Up For disappointment Day, which is all Valentines Day really is when you think about it.

Here is how it will play itself out at my house:

The only thing I REALLY want for Valentines day I can't have, namely chocolate.

source

 

And the reason I can't have chocolate is that it's fattening.  

And the reason I can't get fat is that when I look like a tub it kills my libido (not his mind you.)

So the very act of giving me what I want for Valentines Day would ruin his chances of him getting what he wants.

source

What we should do then, is take turn getting what we want, every other year. 

source

... so Valentines day 2011? I say, pass the Toblerone!

source

Multi-color cake

love it!

source: one charming party via inredingsbloggen.

The holocaust, then and now

Three months later and i am FINISHED with the second draft of my screenplay. Yippiiiii! My whole body is humming with the glee of accomplishment!  (The other humming sound followed by blood-curdling screetches is the sound of my printer which insists on jamming every five page.)

As a writer and as a person it has been a journey as harrowing as it has been enriching. It's been an intensely emotional experience because --there was no other way-- I had to put myself in the skin, brains and bodies of the characters as they suffered every loss imaginable being, as they were, Jews during the holocaust.

What made it impossible to distance myself from their pain is that it is in fact the story of real people that I have personally met. Every time one of them suffered torture, lost a baby, a mother, a brother, a limb, there was no way to pretend this was 'just fiction'. I cried a lot over it, and was in a bad mood a lot too.

As I said I did not want to take this on at first.  I felt it was not my business, not my thing.  But it presented itself to me and it became clear soon enough that if I did not take it on, no one else would. And I could not live with the guilt, basically.  I felt it was my responsibility.

What has happened in the process of this work is that I had to stare my worst fears in the face.   I am the kind of person who never wanted to see Shindler's list because i was afraid it would be 'too depressing' . I am the kind of person who lies awake at night imagining all kinds of morbid things happening to my loved ones for no good reason at all. I am the kind of person who used to read mostly sci-fi because everything else felt a bit too real. Finally, I'm the kind of person who can easily be sucked into depression and i don't want to go there. ever. again.

So imagine.

To refuse to face my fear and my ignorance all this time was idiocy, i can see it now. It didn't make the fear go away, it just amplified it. I think now i'm wiser, stronger, not to mention a heaping lot more educated about the war years. 

It is so essential to me that we don't forget the holocaust, but it also transcends the holocaust.  The idea of the extermination of one segment of the population of the world at the hands of another is neither new nor original. But this one is recent, we have it well-documented, we have plenty of first-hand accounts, and there is so much to learn from it about what humanity is capable of, good and bad: resilience, love, the human spirit, and the kind of butcher man can be for man given just a little push.

People, this ain't the past. Genocide is still happening every day, on this planet. Hell-o! And we're looking away.  We feel it's not our business and it's not our thing, and anyway it's happening far away, in Africa, in Eastern Europe, what do we care?

What, am I annoying you now?

I think writers, historians, artists, feel compelled to understand what is impossible to understand, and shout it in the ears of people like my old self who refuse to listen. Why the compulsion I'm not sure but it sure is strong.

This screenplay will probably never be made into a movie, but to use the (real life) words of one of the protagonists, "Tell it to the world, please tell everybody what happened to us. This was the most fervent wish of those who died."

So I feel i learned, I worked, I contributed and now I feel like I might have helped repair a minuscule part of the tear.

Lulu Guiness interior

Inspiration again today coming via the awesome Di of Designer's block.  For the 'befores' (in 2008 i think) click here  and see what was added, moved or taken away.

Lulu, if you ever tire of your coffee table, (it's time for a change don't you think?) give me a call. I've been hunting flea markets for years of its sister with no luck.