Do You Persevere?

“Perseverance is not a long race; it is many short races one after another.” Walter Elliott

Many times in life, I’ve been guilty of not hitting the finish line– and I’m trying to change that.

I started this year with one of the toughest things on my list of aspirations: learning how to swim. I’ve spent more than three decades being scared of water (even of a bathtub)– but last December, I decided enough was enough.

January found me at the swimming pool, terrified of dunking my head in water, choking and spluttering.

I let myself float a few times that month, gave up completely in February, dragged myself back to the pool in March, and swam my first lap– in the most ridiculous tadpole fashion, in April.

Swimming against the odds

Today I swam a 100m lap without any distress. I may not be the most elegant swimmer in the pool, and I’m certainly the slowest, but I can make it from end of the pool to the other, and I can’t believe it.

Though a whole large chunk of the credit goes to my swimming instructor (you know who you are, and I can never thank you enough for your relentless patience!),  I feel some of it goes to my refusal to give up.

I plan to take this to all aspects of my life– whenever the urge to give up on something strikes me, I know I’m going to think of how I learned to swim.

So, when it comes to an endeavor, do you persevere? What inspires you to stick to it? When do you give up?

How Paranoid Are You?

Paranoia?

I’ve been called paranoid time and again. I try and avoid plastic as much as I can, I avoid canned and packaged food as much as possible, and I shop organic for stuff like apple, greens and peaches, because I believe they absorb the most pesticide.

The husband has forbidden the use of any food products made in China, so I diligently pore at labels to make sure of this…then, I open the New York times, and read this article:

A widely used herbicide acts as a female hormone and feminizes male animals in the wild. Thus male frogs can have female organs, and some male fish actually produce eggs. In a Florida lake contaminated by these chemicals, male alligators have tiny penises.

These days there is also growing evidence linking this class of chemicals to problems in humans. These include breast cancer, infertility, low sperm counts, genital deformities, early menstruation and even diabetes and obesity.

Philip Landrigan, a professor of pediatrics at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, says that a congenital defect called hypospadias — a misplacement of the urethra — is now twice as common among newborn boys as it used to be. He suspects endocrine disruptors, so called because they can wreak havoc with the endocrine system that governs hormones.

Endocrine disruptors are everywhere. They’re in thermal receipts that come out of gas pumps and A.T.M.’s. They’re in canned foods, cosmetics, plastics and food packaging. Test your blood or urine, and you’ll surely find them there, as well as in human breast milk and in cord blood of newborn babies.

So, should I get further alarmed, or just dismiss this as paranoia? As a writer, I’m tempted to ask the infamous “What if” questions—I bet science fiction writers have already done that and produced excellent stories/ novels/ scripts.

What sort of things do you do/not do in order to avoid ‘harmful’ chemicals?

When Your Shoes Want to Take a Walk

Singapore Skyline

I live in a country I could walk across, end to end, in less than a day. All twenty-two kilometers of it. If I were fitter, I’d probably do the other way across: 44 kilometers.

Living in a tiny young country like Singapore makes me want to step out every so often, take a flight to a place where the beaches are not man-made, where the history is longer than 200 years, where culture is not a mishmash, where the food is cooked with more emphasis on the quality ingredients than the procedure of cooking.

Travel is irreplaceable when you’re looking for a certain buzz of the body and mind, when you want to be relaxed and enriched at the same time.

“The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page.” – St. Augustine

How often does the travel bug bite you? Do you go on yearly breaks, or take a vacation whenever the mood takes you?

What does it all mean?

What does it all mean?

When I write a story, (especially flash fiction like this one, that I wrote on the spur of the moment for the A to Z Challenge) I often wonder what it means—what I as the writer meant it to mean, and how does the reader take its meaning.

I’ve written stories which I thought were literary, were the subversion of a myth, and been congratulated on writing a fairy tale; I’ve written about a boy suffering abuse and have had folks root for the abuser; I’ve killed a character and then had the readers wonder what he would do next.

The problem, as I see it, can lie in two things:

I suck at writing: My craft could be undeveloped enough not to be able to support my muse—the story hovers inside me, a shiny hummingbird, comes out on the page a slimy, slow-moving slug.

Counter-argument: Some of the folks get exactly what I’m trying to say—how do they see the hummingbird instead of the slug?

Reading fiction on blogs demands too much attention: And some readers just can’t focus well enough to read the whole story. They comment on the few words they have read, move on.

Counter-argument: Doesn’t that show my weakness as a writer, because I wasn’t able to grab the reader, pin him or her down till my story was done?

This leaves a very confused writer. Do I suck at writing? Do I give up writing fiction on my blog?

Over the last weeks of writing a story a day, I have come to the following conclusion:

I will keep writing fiction on my blog, because it challenges me, and I enjoy it.

Yes, the writing process is never complete without the readers and their reactions– but there is something to be said for perseverance.

If my craft is lacking, practice would help. If blogs aren’t the best place for fiction, well, they’re still the best place to play around and experiment. Most of the stories I have written during the challenge are in genres I wouldn’t have written but for the prompts I was sent.

It is all good.

So has this happened to you?

As a reader, have you ever come across a meaning in a story which you discovered was different from anyone else? As a writer, have you had a reader give you back a meaning to your story that you never intended?

After it rains in Singapore

I’ve lived most of life with four seasons, so the first stay in the tropics was a revelation. In the tropics, there is the rain, and the sun—two seasons, in alternative fashion, through the day.

As I write, outside it pours, with the peal of thunders, lightning flashes. It is dark. The sky means business, you’d think. It will rain though the day and in to the night, and maybe the next morning.

Wrong. In a few minutes, the sun will laugh it all away, people would dip into swimming pools and play basketball below my apartment, the trees would gleam, and the only trace that it had ever rained would show for a while on the wet roads. And then that would be gone too.

So when it rains in my heart, no matter what country I’m in, I wait. I know that for now, raindrops pelt the glass and weep their down– the overcast skies pour down their anger, but it Will pass.

In the minutes it has taken for me to write this, the sun is out, bright and shiny, because that is what happens right after it rains in Singapore.

 

 

What is Normal?

What is normal?

Normalcy has many definitions— probably as many as there are people in this world.

Recently, I heard a statement: Anything or anyone can be normal no matter how bizarre or extreme, you just have to get used to it.

In some societies female infanticide is normal, in others cannibalism used to be normal, in some societies equality between men and women is normal, in others, patriarchy or matriarchy. For a thief, stealing is normal, for a priest, praying is normal.

Should we define normalcy? What are the advantages of defining it? Disadvantages? Is there something that is normal for you, and is completely abnormal for someone else?

Is ‘normalcy’ the name for ‘what we’re used to’— if not, then what is ‘Normal’?

Everything I want to say today, to me, and to you, my friends

Life is Short. Credits @unknown, via FB

Of Soups

I was looking through soup recipes today, and went on to imagine how each would taste and smell, the thyme, the garlic, the meat rolling off the bone, the simmered fat, the pillowy potatoes, and why and how I cooked soup…because sometimes I did it for unusual reasons. Like the time I wrote about cooking soup just after my uncle lost his battle with cancer.

And in a coincidence, I read a Mother’s day story by a blog friend, all revolving around a mother making soup.

This reminded me of the time I had taken part in a Blogfeast: it was a Blogfest on Food...and I wrote this fiction excerpt, in which the soup takes centre stage:

———————-

She looked out from the pale intensity of her being, her face neither man nor woman, neither happy nor sad, neither silent nor yet unspeaking for her eyes said what her lips did not as she stirred the pot of soup. Her upper lip pursed over the lower, her square jaws tight on her unwrinkled but leathery face, she looked up from her pot at the wall behind me, and then back to her cooking. Her left hand wiped itself on her dull, tattered apron, and reached for the thyme she had chopped and left on the block of wood she used as a cutting board. With her right hand she stirred, never looking up, her short curly hair falling over her brow and her eyes, making of her gaze a secret thing, a secret also of her cooking.

Under the thyme, I could smell the chicken (I had spotted it running out in her backyard not two hours ago when I entered her hut slung on her shoulders,) which had now become simply flesh and bone, food, nourishment. It had lost its blood, been made to give up its feathers, and now lay simmering in her crock-pot, the water bathing its unfeeling skin, its fat melting slow and easy, mating with the salt and pepper. For a minute I forgot her, my rescuer, and focused on the chicken I could not see. I could imagine its bones, and I knew its marrows will do me good, force a bit of warmth into my muscles, expand my stomach, give it something to linger over other than its steady fare of water, dirt, and roots for the past weeks.

She had not spoken to me, the woman who bent into the river and fished me out, who murdered her chicken for my sake. I could see plenty of smoked fish she could have eaten, so I assumed the soup was in my honor, to work on me on the inside as the poultices and bandages joined and soothed on the outside. My bed of rags must be hers, for I could see none other in the room.
I watched her as she dropped potatoes and carrots into the pot, and they fell with soft swishes and plops. Still she did not look up and greet my eyes.

I wanted to read her look, but had to content myself with watching her as she dipped her finger in the pot, snatched it back to her lips, sucked it and added a pinch of salt with her right hand. Her lips became slack as she let go of her finger, and on her face spread the faraway look of a mother suckling her child, her jaws fell, and for an entire minute I watched her as she let the steam rise from the pot and dot her brows with shining beads, of mingled sweat and soup.
She did not feel my look, or ignored it if she did, for her eyes stayed inside the pot, as if she were cooking the soup from the heat of her eyes and her mind and not over a fire. I tried to speak, but my lips felt sealed with something like mud, and my arms  too weak to lift my hand, touch my own face. The afternoon light from the windows receded. Over the bubbling of the soup and the roar of the river in the gorge beneath her kitchen, I heard footfalls.
I felt too weak to react or move, so I did nothing to alert her. The soup had entered me through my nostrils and now played with each tendril of emotion in my being, toyed with nostalgia, and for a minute in the rising aroma of the chicken soup I could sense my mother, the woman who must have given birth to me, some time some place, and then left me for dead on the jungle floor. The door behind her opened with a sigh, and still my rescuer did not look up.

Writing about the way I’m feeling now

I have talked before about having an anonymous blog, and today, more than ever, I feel the need for one. But I’m wiser now, and know that to start another blog I have to retire either this one or Amlokiblogs, and I’m not ready to do either. Yet. A new blog will soak up too much time, and more importantly, energy.

The Way I'm Feeling Now

So I’ll just content myself with posting an image, and telling my readers that that pictures exactly describes the way I feel these days. Off to work now. Yesterday, I finished most of what I had planned, so here’s to another productive day today as well!

Writing a Letter to the Creator

Dear Creator,

It is hard living in someone else’s head, spattered all over.

But what would you know about that? I live inside your head, not the other way around.

You dress me up, change my gender at will, you parade me in different countries, and sometimes, I’m not alone, you put me in there with other bits of me, dressed as other people, and have fun watching how I talk to another of my avatars.

For that is what they are, Avatars. The protagonist, the antagonist, the supporting cast, the bit roles. It’s me, all of them, depending on the time of the day, what you think up, how morbid you’re feeling or how happy.

“Be cruel to your main character,” you’ve stuck in bold letters on your table, and you sure take your advice seriously. You bash me up, kill me, make me wait to die, jump over hoops, lose the woman I love, make me dress up as a woman, a child, a dog, make me crash a car, lose a fortune. You know the drift.

But that’s not all. You chase me with a questionnaire, and I have to answer in character. You dress me up in skirts, ask me to pretend I’m a woman, and then ask me what I want. When I tell you, you make me wait for my own execution instead and then rescue me only if the reader would enjoy my rescue more than my death.

Bottomline: as long as you’re having fun, or getting something written, or published, all is right with the world. Who gives a rat’s ass what happens to me?

I wouldn’t say I don’t have fun. Even though it is me wooing an avataar, I love the romantic bits you let me play, though I hate it when you leave a sex-scene half-written and walk off to do your laundry, and then forget about the whole thing entirely when your friend calls. Have you any idea what it does to a man, being frozen in that position?

And then there’s the editor to think about. Just when I’m convinced I’m so- -and-so to whom such-and-such happened, the editor comes and makes you chop entire bits of my life, dream up others, mostly more unpleasant than the ones before.

Editors can’t stand me having cups of tea. I like my cups of tea dammit. They won’t let you let me rest either: Make a scene, they tell you, Show us through his actions what he is thinking, don’t bloody Tell us! There Must be some Disaster, he Must Fail, what do you think you’re doing, giving him such a cosy life, whoever would want to read that??!!

Now, I can stand you doing things to me, because I owe you my life after all, such as it is (or they are…thanks to you I have multiple lives, and things never get boring), but I owe nothing to that editor!! Why does he have to come and poke his nose in my business I don’t know.

So, I’m calling it quits. Going away. Holiday. Vacation. Ciao ciao. Heading for the exit.

Won’t be around to wake you up in the middle of the night because I’m having a nervous breakdown. Won’t follow you around as you water the plants or go out with friends. Won’t tug at your skirts and remind you to finish a scene so I can get on with things.

You don’t like it? Bah…fat good that will do you, Almighty Creator! The most you can do is kill me, so have at it. Sick of life as it is.

You’ll have to beg me on bended knees to come back. I’ll watch you grovel alright, and If I come back, it would be on my Own terms. I know better than anyone else you need your fix. I Am that fix.

So long then, and happy pushing around the Writer”s Block!!

Yours truly,

C

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