Wet Ink

Fancy a Story?

Folks, I've added a new story to the blog.  Click here if you fancy reading The Moth Catcher.

Situations I'd Never Dreamed Of, Yet Now Believe

1. Laurence is sheltered by his large black dragon, on board a vessel during the Napoleonic Wars:

"The wall of water crashed upon the deck with the sound of gunfire, soaking him through to the skin immediately despite his oilskin and sou'wester.  Temeraire snorted and shook his head like a dog, sending water flying, and ducked down beneath his own hastily opened wings, which he curled about himself.  Laurence, still tucked up against his side and holding to the harness, found himself also sheltered by the living dome.  It was exceedingly strange to be so snug in the heart of a raging storm; he could still see out through the places where the wings did not overlap, and a cool spray came in upon his face."  From His Majesty's Dragon by Naomi Novik

2. The opening of "Pol Pot's Beautiful Daughter" by Geoff Ryman:

"In Cambodia people are used to ghosts.  Ghosts buy newspapers.  They own property.  

A few years ago, spirits owned a house in Phnom Penh, at the Tra Bek end of Monivong Boulevard.  Khmer Rouge had murdered the whole family and there was no one left alive to inherit it.  People cycled past the building, leaving it boarded up.  Sounds of weeping came from inside.

Then a professional inheritor arrived from America.  She'd done her research and could claim to be the last surviving relative of no fewer than three families.  She immediately sold the house to a Chinese businessman, who turned the ground floor into a photocopying shop.

The copiers began to print pictures of the original owners.

At first, single black and white photos turned up in the copied dossiers of aid workers or government officials.  The father of the murdered family had been a lawyer.  He stared fiercely out of the photos as if demanding something.  In other photocopies, his beautiful daughters forlornly hugged each other.  The background was hazy like fog."  Published in The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror, 2007 ed. Ellen Datlow, Kelly Link and Gavin J. Grant

In the light of these passages, a reminder to self:  If it's really, truly been lived in the imagination, it's really, truly been lived.

On a Fur-Lined Cup and Saucer (Cause Trouble, Please)

I viewed Meret Oppenheim's famous "Object" as part of an extraordinary exhibition at MoMA, entitled "The Erotic Object."  See a picture of "Object" here.

Dear Meret Oppenheim,

When Picasso said, on seeing your fur bracelet, that one could cover anything with fur, you responsed saying "even a cup and saucer" -- after all, you were drinking tea at the time.  But you didn't just leave this as a quirky joke; you accepted the challenge of your sharp, dreamer's mind and created, made it real.

A domestic object, traditionally female, became wild, feline, dangerous, alluring -- so much about sex as both object and act; about moisture absorbed, not contained.  Washing a tea-cup with a plastic brush would never be the same!  You transformed the domestic chore into something so suggestive.

I stand, in MoMA, amongst such fierce misogyny, like Giacometti's incredible Woman With Her Throat Cut, which lures me so unsettlingly I can't erase it... yet you, with that tiny cup, saucer and spoon cause more trouble and more questions for me as a woman.

Thank you.

I'm a Poet and I Don't Know It

My Dad always said the above when he made a rhyme without intending to.  I inherited his ear for language and (terrible!) puns.

Dad was an onstage comedian, a children's magician, an amateur drama buff, a storyteller, a cracker of dreadful jokes, and a brilliant, personable chartered accountant.  Also, he published a poem during the course of his 70 years.  The piece appeared in an out-of-print volume of "Verse and Worse," which means it's probably still sitting on someone's bookshelf.  

Sadly, it's not on mine.  And, for some bizarre reason, it's not on my mother's either.  Did Dad hide it?  Hmm, it's possible...  Maybe it'll turn up beneath a floorboard with a joke book and a bottle of ginger ale...  At any rate, I'm still trying to get hold of a copy.  I'll let you know if I have any luck.

The point is, here I am with a blog on writing, so I figure it's time Dad's poem was aired once again.  Some  would consider it sexist and a vegetarian's worst nightmare.  (The killjoys!)  Quite naturally for my father, it revolves around food.  Snort.

I believe it was untitled. Sorry, Dad, if I'm wrong.

Henry Sutton made his wife
Feed him mutton all his life.
When going to sleep his mind was rested
By counting the sheep that he'd digested.

By David Armstrong, from "Verse and Worse" (vol. ?)

Isn't that BRILLIANT?!

Dragon's Hoard

The first dragon* I remember loving was Godzilla.  He had power, nobility, grandeur -- and that's what I love in a monster.  Truth is, in many stories dragons are considered to be far from lovable.  Beowulf was slain by such a beast when he tried to separate it from its hoard and Tolkien has often shown how brutal such creatures can be.  

But here's why I'm a fan of dragons, even the savage ones:

They protect what's theirs.

I like to think there's a dragon in each of us: one that will fight, with honest fire, for what it guards.  We must know what we love in a piece and not let it go.  It can be good to fight for ownership, rebel against those who push to change the story's essence.  I don't necessarily mean the word-choice, or description, or clarity or structure, which we all need help with at times -- no, I'm talking about the stuff that's personally precious.  Ideas, perhaps.  Or emotions, or voice.  The deep-down stuff.  In truth, until the treasure's endangered we don't always know what it is.

What would you never change in a piece?  What's your bottom line?  What, if threatened, would prove to be your hoard?  It's different for each of us.  Certainly, when others go beyond helpfully suggesting and start to be downright pushy, it's time to look carefully at what we're willing to do.

We know that, if our home went on fire, one of the first things we'd save would be that novel manuscript, or the story we're crafting, or the reams of research, or the book that helps define us.  

A good dragon knows what's hers.  And she isn't afraid to defend it.

--

* Godzilla isn't actually a dragon, I believe.  But I saw him as "dragon-like."

**I'm talking about Western dragons in this post.  Eastern dragons are different beasts -- they bring luck, not aggression, and those who encounter them are charmed.  But Western dragons "exist" to guard treasure.  And you often only encounter such a beast if you're trying to get at its hoard.

See That Bear?

"The marvels and prodigies, the seven-league boots and enchanted mirrors, the talking animals, the heroes and heroines changed into frogs or bears or cats, the golden eggs and everflowing supplies of porridge, the stars on the brow of the good sister and the donkeytail sprouting on the brow of the bad -- all the wonders that create the atmosphere of fairy tale disrupt the apprehensible world in order to open spaces for dreaming alternatives."  From The Beast to The Blonde: On Fairy Tales and Their Tellers, by Marina Warner, p. XX

I once worked with a very imaginative three-year-old who saw all sorts of bizarreness in his everyday world.  His mother was beside herself, worrying her child was hallucinating.  Not long after I'd chatted with her, I was walking round the playground with her son, when he suddenly pointed towards the street.  "A bear!" he said.

I asked what colour bear.

"White," he said.

"Is it a real bear," I asked, "or a bear in your imagination?"

"My imagination!"  And he grinned.  

He knew that bear wasn't real.  The kid was just a genius -- a creative storyteller, longing for an audience.

So often, I've heard folks worry that their kids are too imaginative.  ("What's it doing to their sense of reality?" they ask.  "Why isn't she growing out of it, by now?").  But what I never, ever heard, in over eight years of teaching, was, "How can I help my kid to become more richly imaginative?"  

Truth is, I saw many kids who were depressed, unhappy, bored, enraged.  But give 'em a little imaginative space and the pain would often abate.  Why doesn't our society treasure "dreaming alternatives"?  

Heaven knows, we need somewhere to go.  

Let us have our stories.

Banksy

By the way, Banksy's still going strong.

Great work here and here.

Flashy Little Interlude

I've been thinking about the language that's around us all the time, and how easy it is to take for granted.  So... here's the content of the post-it notes that are currently stuck to my desk.  I left the boring ones out, for art's sake, but what you see is pretty much verbatim:

There aren't very many happy superheroes are there?

Vows He Regretted

Those who can't laugh at it are those who aren't

Dances with her in the rain

Last Tango

You get what you need

They're just story ideas, titles, thoughts... Kind of pretty, in its way?

This list is inspired by Found Magazine, which contains all sorts of texts, notes, letters, postcards found by folks who see meaning within them.  It's a fascinating read -- like going through someone's bedside drawers.  When I mentioned Found, a close mate pointed me towards PostSecret.  Check it out.  It's quite poignant.

There's beauty in musings.  Something intimate, I think.

Creator-Destroyer

Tonight, in the restroom at North Station, a woman started speaking to me.  All I could hear was "Sugar Kane," so I removed my earbud.  

"You," she said, pointing, "fit the only two categories I use to classify people."  She gestured towards the Shepard Fairey sticker on my bag, which says "Make Art, Not War", and told me, "You're a Creator."  She then pointed at my leather jacket.  "And," she added, "you're a Destroyer."

"Lovely," I said.  "Thanks."

She looked rather peeved.

But you know, she wasn't wrong.  Every day I destroy what I create.  Cut out paragraphs, strike out words, cull whole documents... you name it, I get rid of it at one time or another.  And yet, I'm also weaving, polishing, dreaming...  Well, I don't need to tell you.  You're probably the same.

And yes.  I wear leather.  So the lady had a point.

Her one mistake, I argue (apart from being a tadge barking) was that she didn't link the two.  After all, to create we must destroy.  

It's perhaps our greatest burden.  

If Fairies Exist, They Dig Reality Checkpoint

Did you know that fairies (or faeries) were originally green and wingless?  Oh yes, in fact there's some debate about whether the Green Knight in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight was actually a faerie.  Being pagan mischief-makers, the creatures were treated warily because, as part of nature, they had a dark, mischievous side.  Not only were they tricksters, but wise folk too.  Centuries later, fairies became magical beings who were exceptionally tall ("fairy" comes from "fair", a word that originally meant "tall"), which is why, in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, Titania can lie with Bottom without too much of a problem!  It was the Victorians who made fairies tiny.  That was their own story.

Looking back like this makes me think about today and the folklore we create.  Jung argues that we need stories/myths as a way of releasing libido or connecting with the world.  What, then, is our twenty-first century folklore?  In Andover, for example, there is a gum pole.  For years, the students at Andover High have stuck their gum on a pole near the school.  It's become a tradition.  Why?  Because it's a way of bonding?  Of breaking campus rules?  Community?  Or just a need for gum disposal, or what?  I suppose the act of thinking our way around this ritual, is the beginning of creation -- stories arise.

In Cambridge UK there is a green called Parker's Piece.  In the middle, where the cross-paths meet, there is a lamppost covered with graffiti.  More importantly, the lamp gives off an eerie glow at night.  There are muttered stories about strange happenings on this site.  In Cambridge legend, the place is actually called "Reality Checkpoint" -- mention this to anyone local and they'll know where you mean.  Once, standing at The Checkpoint, a man proffered me a teaspoon.  "Want a spoonful of nothing?" he asked.  I told him I was fine, thanks.  At another time, waiting there, I saw a man with a dog -- it was dyed entirely red, from snout to tail.

I've even heard stories of alien sightings.  I kid you not.

Who's to say how far oral stories affects our creative lives?  Jung might question whether, given the power of the Collective Unconscious, any of these strange events would have occurred had the legend of Reality Checkpoint not been part of our shared folklore?  Or, because of its rep, does Reality Checkpoint simply attract bizarreness?  

I don't know.  And I'm glad I don't.

I wouldn't wish the wonder away.

To see a photo of Reality Checkpoint, click here.