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Supermarket. The ceiling soars into an industrial cathedral and gives the fresh food section a feeling of open air. Along the wall lined up refrigerated cases filled with mounds of green leaves, the mister opens up and dampens my sunglasses. The rows of fruit and vegetables snake maze-like, a labyrinth of reds and greens and oranges. The air smells scrubbed, with the earthy musk long sprayed away. Plastic clamshells form a jewel box to display perfectly formed strawberries. Five corn cobs, cleared of all extra silk and leaves lie on a black foam tray cello-sealed in. They look like clones, all sprung from the same plastic corn. The tomatoes are in season, and there is a mountain of red beefsteaks piled into a chaotic pyramid in a bin near the door. I can't find the blueberries, but I feel they must be here somewhere. 

I don't know why I remember

I don't know why I remember playing in the parked camper van.  My parents had a conveniently rust coloured Dodge camper van they kept parked in the open field of the backyard. My sister and I used to climb in and play.  I am sure we were not supposed to be in there, I am not sure why it wasn't locked.  It often was - we would reach up to the push button chrome door handle and find it bolted tight.  Those times it wasn't there was not great appeal to the interior, nothing that would particularly attract to young girls. The air was dry and dusty, smelling of trapped sunshine and stagnation.  There was a little counter with a cooktop, a small mildewy sink and cupboards covered with dark wood grain laminate.  The back of the van had two orange plaid bench seats and a table top. Sometimes the table was collapsed down and the plaid cushions spread out to make one large bed area.  It was always too warm in the van, and there were always strange remnants of the last trip cluttering up the corners - forgotten colouring books, clear green plastic salt and pepper shakers, unbreakable beer mugs. There were also sneaky spiders who crept in and made elaborate webs around the steering column. It was an odd refuge where we would play elaborate games of make believe. I can't remember the games, I only remember the playing.

Moving Along

It looks as if the whole world is going to be turning upside down. There is a huge change coming, I am going to move to the United States of America. What is it that I think about this? Some moments it doesn't faze me at all, then every now and then a mad rush of adrenaline rushes my brain and I realize that this time next year I will be surrounded by American in a foreign country. This makes me panic and I have to focus on some of the finer details, like the fact that it will be a great step for the boy. It will be a great opportunity for our family. And I will find my place in the new world order. It will all be fine.

The Books are Free Again

You know who a library strike hurts? Me. Not only is it the only city resource (water and waste removal aside) I use on a weekly basis.  It has a direct impact on my quality of life.  So when the library workers go on strike, it throws a spanner into my carefully ordered routines.

The day before the strike began, I taught the kidlet how to go online and reserve books.  So every day of the strike the little kiddo pumped me for information on when her requests were going to be filled.  Every. Day.  Often multiple times a day. There was no placating her, as labour disputes are beyond the horizon of a not-quite-four-year-old's world view.  All she knew was that the library promised Froggy and Olivia, and was taking a suspicious amount of time to follow through.

This afternoon we were able to go and renew our love affair with mashed dead trees.  I resisted the urge to grab as many books as possible and kept the consumption of word stuffs down to a manageable bunch.  This cache of books will keep us going, and likely keep me from buying Hunger Games for another week.  

An actual outline!

This is a first: weeks before the opening day of Script Frenzy, I have an actual idea and a starting outline.  I am taken aback by this remarkable turn of events.  I know what I want to do and I am actively taking steps to execute it.  It is so virtuous, I might pollute the atmosphere with my air of self-satisfaction. 

Please do not think this means I have no room for crazy exploration.  There are HUNDREDS if not THOUSAND of ways I can run this sucker off the tracks.  But the fact I have been able to focus enough to structure a roadmap of the project gives me a warm tingle inside, like drinking some very sweet liqueur. Sometimes just the act of planning gives a strange satisfaction. 

Execution may prove to be another problem, but I am curious to see if there is any difference in the motivation department when I already have a plan in place and can project what I need to write each day  - not just how much I need to write.  It should be interesting. 

I am also going to explore a new writing convention: the monologue cycle.  I am going to write one hundred monologues on a single theme.  The theme is KISS.  Hopefully there will be enough in that to keep me going forward. 

This Script Frenzy marks the first time I will crack out and really use the Scrivener software.  So far I have been impressed with the outlining and organizing capacity.  To be honest I doubt I would be working so dilligently on the outline if I didn't want to somehow impress the software that despite my months of letting it gather dust, I am in fact a serious person who intends to use it to write lots of things, lovely things, valuable and important things.  Or at least things that do not suck. 

Script Frenzy

Script Frenzy:

Gulp.  It's back.  And so am I.  Another year, another 100 pages of script.  I am still scoping out the project I want to throw down, but I am back on board.  I am determined to have a proper working outline done this time before I rush madly into the fray.  I fly by the seat of my pants too often.  Also, my butt is not what yoouwould call aerodynamic.  I think it will be a good experience to work off a strong outline.

So...go work on your outline, Laura.  Quit chatting about it and get to work.

'via Blog this'

Stop Me If You've Read This One Before

This is the book on my bedside table, the one I am currently devoted to reading.  Good one, isn't it?  I can say that with authority, since despite my efforts to explore new stories, I have read it before.

From the moment I picked it up from the library shelf it seemed familiar, but the synopsis on the dust jacket did not ring any bells.  Granted, I scanned it while the two kiddos tried to use my backside as a launch pad to climb the library stacks, so I may not have been at my sharpest. I've read several books in the lovely Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes series (one of my favourite pastiches, in fact), but I know there are gaps of episodes I have missed. It wasn't until I was about three chapters in that the shape of events began to follow a pattern that rang.  Curiously enough, it was when the protagonist started making reference to events in other books, ones I HAVEN'T read, that it dawned on my that this was one I had already consumed.  

Now I am in suspension. Should I put the book down?  I know how it ends.  It's a fine story, but not destined to be one of the books I read over and over.  The more I read, the more detail I remember of the events yet to come. I am divided on what I should do.  Right now, I am actively trying to read a large number of books to study form and narrative.  I can learn as much from a familiar book as from a new one - perhaps more, since I will be able to sit back from the drama of discovery and look at the story structure. I have a literal mountain of reading to get on with, piles and piles of books to attack.  It seems wasteful to be spending my precious reading time on a retread when I have so much I want to accomplish. 

And yet...

I can't put it aside.  It would be like leaving a melody incomplete, like knocking the first part of "Shave and a haircut" without finishing the phrase.  It bugs me to be doing an unplanned second reading, but it will also drive me batty to have STARTED the story and not finished it.  If I had the time to read as I would like I would just put my shoulder down and power through it, speed-read to sprint my way to the end of the book.  This is a question of emotional resonance, I feel the need to complete the pattern.  I need to sing the rest of the song.

Even if it means the reading mountain doesn't shrink this week. Oh, sigh.

Fishbowls of Death

I love fish.  I had a small aquarium when I lived out west, and the soothing beauty of life in perpetual liquid motion lowers my heart rate and softens the sharper edges of my brain.  I can spend hours by myself in a well-appointed aquarium, like Vancouver or Sydney.  In the Toronto abode there is not a very good place to keep a proper aquarium, at least not one of any size, and so I have been keeping my fish love contained to betta, the most beautiful disposable fish of all.

I say disposable, but I don't mean it.  The Siamese Fighting fish are gorgeous creatures who happen to live in small cramped containers and do not require filtered water.  Their sheer ease of care makes them a prime target for people like me who are not all that great at maintaining their relatively low standards of living.  I have never named a betta.  I have had a long running series of Red Fish and Blue Fish. This is really for the best.  That said, most of my fish have lasted a few years.  This is despite my interventions rather than because of my tender care. The most recent Blue Fish was dead in his vase on the counter for a very long sad time because I lacked the organization to dispose of his remains properly.  Yes, I am a terrible person. 

Today, we turn over a new fish leaf.  Accompanied by the kiddos, a trip to the ANIMAL BIG BOX STORE netted me not one new friend, but two.  Technically Pink Fish is for the kidlet and Blue Fish is for me.  I like a fish in the kitchen to keep me company when I do the dishes.  I believe the root of this is the fact I hate kitchen work, but love fishes, so a little swimming buddy improves my outlook on such dread activities as meal preparation and food area cleaning.  If I could find a way to allow the kiddos to thrive without ever devoting any time or energy to kitchen work, I think my quality of life would rise exponentially.  At any rate, I operate on the belief that a little fish improves the atmosphere. 

Over the years, the death of fish has rarely been an emotional event. I was miffed when some of my longer term fish friends bit it, but usually it is more annoyance that I will need to dispose of the remains and then go back to a dreaded ANIMAL BIG BOX STORE (there is no convenient Mom-N-Pop disposable fish store in my sphere) to choose the healthiest looking specimens from the rack of little plastic cups. I am not by nature a shopper. And shopping for things that swim around without a battery pack feels weird. 

Now that the whole question of mortality is raised for the next generation, I might have more drama thanks to the little fish and their penchant for death.  In the equation there are two little girls who aren't yet scarred by bitter loss now.  Do I teach them to see fish as temporary - and by extension, to understand that all is temporary? Or do I put the emphasis on the present, on enjoying the flashy little creatures right now without thought of what will come. Should we stand aloof and shut our hearts to the fish, or risk exposure to loss, pain, and the attendant dramas?  

I think I walk the middle path. There shall be no names.  But there should also be time to wonder at the magical beauty in the little bowl.    

Leap!

What would I do if I had an actual extra day? A single free day without daily encumbrances? Right now I don't think I can answer that with any great depth. This day was overflowing with too much daily life for my poor battered imagination to see past the drudge and envision a free moment. But it is a very good question to put forward for future consideration. It is worth letting the few spare brain cells not occupied by the minutae of small ones to rove over and gather the droplets of inspiration. Mark this down in the "for consideration" file.

Library Trippin'

This is a special day.  My daughter got her first library card, in her own name with her own late fines and everything.  She was very proud.  As was I, in a strange way.  In practical terms, this means I now have another slim piece of plastic to carry around in my wallet (three-year-olds aren't great at keeping track of stuff).  In symbolic terms, this is the moment she gets the keys to the magic kingdom.  I am talking about the real magic world of knowledge and imagination that hums and breathes within the spines of each book.  Libraries are the most exciting place on earth, because there is a vast universe of the possible available FOR FREE.  Bookstores are also exciting, but the price tags and eventual bookshelf turf wars make owning books problematic.  Less so with ebooks, of course, but ebooks are just that - less so. A library is a place where everything is possible.  You can learn anything, do anything, meet anyone and visit anywhere.  What can possibly be more magical than that?

I had my first library card at a young age, but I am pretty sure I was already in elementary school.  I remember getting the little green cardboard card and feeling full of the world.  I interpreted it as being the moment I was allowed to take out the chapter books from the high shelves.  The children's area took up a small alcove in the tiny (even by my small child perspective) converted bungalow, and the chapter books - particularly the highly desirable Nancy Drew series - were kept up and out of my reach.  I would have to drag the weird rolling footstool away from the non-fiction section and pull it into the children's nook so I could get my grubby little hands on "The Secret of the Old Clock".  I had to balance on tiptoe, reaching with grunts of effort to slide my fingertips along the edge and coax the precious books off the shelf, toppling them to the floor.  Triumphant, I would gather my haul and set up a camp on the orange bean bag chair, engrossed in the world of the titian-haired sleuth until a parent came to drag me off to the main desk.  

I held off getting the kidlet her own card until I felt she was old enough to remember the experience, to know a time before she had her own all-access pass.  She is making the first early stabs at literacy, and she can know remember things that happened in the past.  I hope I will be able to share the magic of information access with a small person, who was born in an age where more ideas and facts and dreams are available on a device in my hip pocket than could ever have fit in that converted bungalow. Books are magic, and places full of books seem somehow mystical in their collected knowledge. 

Wait until she has to learn about late fines, though.  Sigh.

Sherlocked.

I have become obsessed with the BBC series "Sherlock".  For a while there, it was kind of a problem.  You see, it's just so damned GOOD. Not only is it a brilliant update to one of my all-time favourite stories, it pushed me to detour into Holmesville for the past two months.  I have re-read all of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's original stories, and digging out as many of the pastiche and homage works as I can find.  Since the character is in public domain, there are some bizarro ones out there.  That said, I am glad to revisit the source material, because I think it helps me sort out the building of character.  Off-hand, I am unable to name another character in popular fiction as clearly drawn as Sherlock Holmes.  He is bigger than life and still completely absorbing.  I am particularly interested in the early stories that built the legend.

The BBC series is set in a contemporary London - not THE contemporary London, but a fanciful one where a flat on Baker Street is within the means of two not-very-employed men.  The series shoots London the way many American ones shoot New York - the city itself takes on a role in the story. The cinematography gives the series a filmic look, which enhances the modern day tempo of the stories.  Technology is central to the narrative as well - a blog replaces Watson's magazine chronicling, and Sherlock is welded to his smartphone (a constant source of data and impersonal texting communication).

I think I will do some thinking and writing about each episode.  Most of the episodes have so much to think about, from the problems of adaptation to the sticky questions of gender and race.  So much to consider!  I like to think that my brain is engaged on something Holmsian.  Huzzah!