No Cure for Curiosity

The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity. — Dorothy Parker

Oh Ms. Parker, how I wuv you. As if I don’t have enough to do and never enough time to do it, my latest fascination is ancient Rome, pre-Celtic Ireland and Britain, and trying to learn Latin. And you know whose fault this is?

These boys.

I have become obsessed with this movie. It came out almost a year ago, and apparently vanished before I ever heard of it. Parts of it are weak, some of the performances are not the greatest, but Jamie Bell as the Brigantes slave Esca stole the show. He was brilliant. If you don’t recognize the name, you may know him from “Billy Elliott”. Yep, that’s him. Channing Tatum as the Roman Centurion Marcus Aquila is a stalwart soldier, single-minded in his duty to Rome. He has some good moments, the fireside chat between Marcus and Esca is one of the best I think. It’s been on HBO’s “On Demand” now for a few weeks, and I think I must have watched it six or seven times already. Since it’s going off OD soon, I betook myself to Amazon and ordered both the The Eagle DVD and the soundtrack CD. Oh yes I did. Wonderful soundtrack, nothing I like better than some mournful uillean pipes.

The movie is based on a young adult novel, The Eagle of the Ninth Chronicles by Rosemary Sutcliff, published in 1954. This probably accounts for the complete lack of smut in the movie (which I find is a relief). I admit I was surprised to find out it was based on a YA novel, but then I haven’t read any YA in a really long time. I’ll be picking up these books, though.

No one actually speaks Latin in the movie, but this is not relevant. There is a great deal spoken in Gaelic, with English subtitles, although this is probably historically inaccurate. The painted Seal People would more likely have been Picts, rather than Celts, but the Picts disappeared as a people a long time ago and their language is lost completely so they speak in Gaelic in the film (and after several viewings I’m starting to catch a few words of that language). It was probably related so maybe it’s not too far off.

My interest in Latin is partly curiosity after hearing about it all my life. I’ve always felt my education was lacking in the classics, and I have a fascination with languages (plus isn’t there cachet in being able to say you know Latin? Seriously, only hardcore scholarly types even bother with it anymore. I think this restores some geek cred I lost recently). Plus,  this movie also gave me another idea for a story (TADA! there it is). Like an actor immersing themselves in a role, I like to research for my stories. But really, the idea of studying Latin just fascinates me. (It wasn’t offered in high school. We had German, Italian, Spanish, French, and Russian. Four years of German and two of Italian were all I managed then).

I’ll see how far I get with the Latin. I also want to learn Irish, somehow I’ll delve into that as well, but that’s actually more familiar to me than Latin.

For now, I leave you with my writing motto:

Nulla dies sine quingentis verbis!

(Never a day without five hundred words!)

Now, back to the movie…

I have to see if Andrej would approve…

But this is the direction I’m thinking of going with the dollhouse:

This is the Bennett house, from brinca dada.  Go check them out and look at all the different views. It’s what I imagine Frank Lloyd Wright would have done if he’d done dollhouses. Unfortunately, it’s not the 1:12 scale that the sofa and chair are that I already have. The houses from brinca dada are 3/4 scale (1:16), so a smidge small for the furniture, which is 1:12, or 1″. The 3/4 scale is an uncommon size, and as I’ve discovered also difficult to furnish. You can see more about dollhouse scale here if you’re interested. Most furniture in that size apparently has to be custom made. But this is definitely more the style I’m going for, rather than the Victorian farmhouse which is so prevalent. Somehow I doubt I’ll be able to find a replica of a Czech building with a pretty red-tiled roof unless I make one, and it may yet come to that… not that I have the vaguest idea how to go about that.

Here are stunning Thorne Miniature Rooms at the Art Institute of Chicago. I nearly hyperventilated when I saw the ‘California Hallway’ (click on “Featured Works” and it’s second one down on the right). I’m still trying not to fall out of my chair. Go. See. When you can pick yourself up off the floor, Report Back. I think I’m having an out-of-body experience. Four pages of “American Rooms” and don’t miss the Asian rooms.

Gratuitous picture of Prague:

Virtual Writers Colony

A handful of us on Twitter (@NateCrowder, @BeritEllingsen, @SolangeNoir, @GrumpyMartian, @ChrisGNguyen, @MelissaDominic ) have banded together… um, decided to consider ourselves part of eachother’s Virtual Writer’s Colony (#ViWriCo). Since we’re spread around the world and across the country, we’re probably all going to have to travel, so location is wide open. Nate tweeted out his own ideal of what this would look like, and asked us what ours would be.

So herewith, my personal take on the ideal setting for a real world writer’s colony, should any of us somehow find ourselves in possession of millions and millions of dollars not earmarked for anything else.

I would set it in Mendocino, California (I thought about going someplace more exotic like Greece, but then nobody would want to stay indoors and write). I’ve always wanted to go there, and for those who remember “Murder, She Wrote” that’s where it was filmed. I have a thing for rugged coastlines. It’s similar to the Oregon coast which I love, but the weather is better! I like Nate’s idea of separate cottages for each of us, so I’d put a row of cottages overlooking the ocean, and there would be redwoods nearby for hiking. The town is bikable, or walkable, plenty to see and do if we get bored or need to get a massage. The beach would be right there for those mandatory long walks while we work out plot details.

The cottages would have a bedroom, sitting/work area with desk and chair, kitchenette if you want to closet yourself away. They would all lead to a ‘clubhouse’ building, where we could gather to talk, get critiques, take meals together indoors or out. I’d have each cottage decorated in a different theme -

1920s art deco,

Victorian hunting lodge,

French country,

Spanish mission,

contemporary,

American colonial,

1950s,

Southwestern (for Nate)

I think we’ve got a spare there but no doubt the colony will increase by one or two.

I’d also have a fabulous library built on the property. If you’re gonna dream, dream big!

Being Single

This was prompted by an article in the New York Times, about why men can’t stand to be alone.

I’ll admit the article is a little confusing to me. First the writer said men feel they need help when they’re down and out whereas women get on with things. She also says men are hard-wired to feel danger,  but women aren’t. I can’t get on board with that. Most of the personal safety tips you see and hear on the news and elsewhere are directed at women (don’t walk alone at night, have a friend walk you to your car, park in a well-lighted area, be aware of your surroundings, carry pepper-spray, take self-defense classes, etc.). I strongly disagree that women “do not walk around alert for danger.” If you as a woman don’t, you should. Women, she says, are ‘hard-wired to read the signals that keep us from danger”, yet a sentence above that says women don’t walk around alert to danger. Either we’re alert to it and reading the signals, or we’re not.

Men I’ve talked to about this issue have NEVER incorporated those things into their existences. It is a foreign idea to them that they should ever feel threatened when out in public. They are men. They are strong. They can handle whatever comes their way. They’re not even aware of the safety precautions I mentioned above. It’s never occurred to them. The article makes it sound as if men walk around frightened all the time if they’re alone (i.e., single).

But I agree that men can’t stand to be alone. This may seem counterintuitive, since women in their younger years are the ones looking to get married and settle down, not men. The switch comes after people have been in a long-term relationship. I’ve seen it, and experienced it, first-hand. Most women do not remarry after divorce (yours truly is a case in point. My ex had hooked up with someone before our divorce. He’s since moved on to someone else. I’m still single). Men, however, can’t seem to remarry fast enough. They want someone to take care of them, do the child-rearing, the cooking, the baking, the cleaning, the shopping. I watched one manager where I work get involved with someone before he divorced his first wife. The new Mrs. Manager now does all those things for him (although she still works as well).

A second co-worker whose marriage had a spectacular melt-down, was terrified of being alone with his kids. As we were chatting about his situation one day he pointed out how Mr. Manager had his then-amour to help him out, and he didn’t know how he could manage on his own. He also hooked up with someone not long after his divorce was final (if not before, still not clear). They are now married.

Yet a third co-worker who had been divorced for a brief period confided to me one day that he wanted to find someone and remarry because who was going to take care of him when he was old? Women outlive men most of the time, and he was probably going to need someone to nurse him in his old age. Hand to god, I am not making this up. This is why men marry. Not for love, or even the sex. They want a nurse-maid. It’s not out of a sense of fear for their personal safety, they want to know who’s going to wipe the drool off their chin when they’re old and incapacitated, should they live that long. I believe that guy is still single, but he’s in another part of the country now so I can’t be sure.

I was on a first date with someone years ago, and one of the first questions he asked as we sat chatting over dinner was was I a good cook. “Are you looking to hire a cook?” I asked. Needless to say, I did not see him again.

Marriage used to be a social construct, two people banding together to survive. One did the nesting, the other did the hunting. It’s hard for one person to do it all. These days it’s more about… well, I’m not really sure. Read an article the other day defending the idea of dating after marriage. Umm… so why get married? So you always have someone to fall back on if you can’t find a date for Friday night? What if the other person does? I’ll never understand that one.

Would I ever get married again? :::grimace::: Not sure.

A Walk in the Park

I’m really bad about doing much of anything when I’m on vacation. I’m like a Vulcan, I want my time off to be truly time off, with as little activity as possible. I spend so much time on the road commuting to and from work, and frantically rushing around to get things done when I am home that the greatest thing for me would be to have a single day with absolutely nothing to do. Like a Vulcan, I’d rather meditate and not use up more energy.

However, this is not good for the body or the mind. We need daily exercise for the body, and sitting around the house for days on end can, quite frankly, get depressing. So yesterday when the sun peeked out after some heavy rains I hustled and got my brand spanking new walking shoes on and headed over to the park by the library for a quick walk and some photo ops. No sooner did I park the car and hop out than I saw this:

All righty then, good decision so far. I got sprinkled on just a teensy bit, but not enough to drive me back to the car. I had hoped it would be all frosty and snowy there, like it was the last time I was there even though there had been no snow at my house, but this was not the case. Perhaps next time. In the meantime, here are a few more shots of What I Saw At the Park Today:

It must have worked because I did a couple of writing sprints last night with a Twitter buddy and cranked out about 2600 words in less than two hours. Not too shabby.

Live Long, and Prosper. \\//

I Resolve Not to Resolve

Much is made of whether or not one should make New Year’s resolutions. The prevailing fad these days seems to favor not making any, probably for good reason: They’re almost universally instantly forgotten.

But how to keep your focus? If I don’t make any resolutions, I feel like I’m drifting aimlessly from one year to the next, not really accomplishing much. It’s so easy to get lost in the day-to-day routine. Most days I feel like I’m swimming in the ocean, caught by a sneaker-wave and repeatedly pulled under, being dragged further and further out to sea, no matter how hard I flail and kick. Who doesn’t have a ‘to-do’ list that’s longer than their expected life-span? Just getting through the basic daily grind of rising and preparing for and commuting to the job, only to reverse it all at the end of the day, and repeat it again the next four days of the week is almost more than I can manage at times. The futility of it feels paralyzing. It’s that whole ‘There has to be more to life than this.’

I think the only way for me to transcend the paralysis is to focus on things that actually matter to me. I need to list out what I want to have happen this year, and formulate plans to make it so (thank you, Jean-Luc Picard). I won’t call them ‘resolutions’, I will call them my goals for the year.

1. Finish revising Revenants Abroad, get it beta-read, and start querying.

2. Write and submit at least one short story to markets every quarter, and keep at it. Period.

There. That’s it. I think that’s enough with a full-time day job and house to look after. No ‘exercise more’ or ‘lose 20 pounds.’ If my greatest accomplishment at the end of my life is that I stuck to a diet or only weighed a certain amount, I would call my life a failure and a waste. Lots of books to read, but that’s perpetual.

The only thing meaningful enough to alter my life for (apart from my family) is my writing. This means less time on the internet. I’m a Twitter addict but I need to restrict my time there. It’s too easy to lose hours distracted by links and conversations. So back to the NaNoWriMo mindset of head down, blinders on, and type.

So let me leave you with this. Please click the photo below, courtesy of Jacquie Lawson. Let’s make those goals happen. Happy New Year, one and all!

Les Chansons des Roses – 5 – Dirait-on

I heard this on AllClassical.org this morning and wanted to share it. It’s the final movement of a larger work by Morten Lauridsen, based on the work of Rilke.

Holiday Greetings

To all my friends and blog visitors around the world, wherever you are: down under in Oz, over in the UK, Scandinavia, Germany, the US, or anyplace else, this is for all of you. Please click on the photo below to see a little ‘thank you’ to everyone who has visited my blog this year.

Andrej’s moving in

The first shipment of his furniture arrived today:

It’s bigger than I expected, actually. It’s 1/12 scale (1″ to 1′). The giant red Christmas ball there is one inch in diameter. I don’t know where I’m going to put it, probably just keep the two in their boxes until I get some kind of display set up. I can almost hear my mother yelling at me for wasting money on this stuff. Sorry, Mom, this is only the beginning.

I can just see Andrej sprawled out there, shirtless, smoking a cigarette. He’d better not burn a hole in the leather… It’s real leather, too, so soft! Quick, someone shrink me so I can sit on it! Where’s Rick Moranis when you need him?

Miniature Mania

Has begun.

I’ve ordered my first pieces of furniture to begin building my darling vampire Andrej’s apartment. And thanks to Submerina I’m now looking into making a few things for this new venture. At the moment I’m interested in making tiny books for the apartment (Andrej collects books) and hopefully other things. So in my search for how-to’s and ideas and inspiration, I ran across the Miniatures Museum of Taiwan. This place is massive:

The Miniatures Museum of Taiwan (MMOT) is the first museum in Asia that has a collection of modern miniature artworks covering an area over six hundred and sixty square meters. The museum was founded on March 28, 1997 by Mr Lin Wen-ren and his wife; it is located in Taipei City, Taiwan.
For more about the Miniatures Museum of Taiwan http://www.ottini.eu/Miniatures-museum-taiwan.htm

The level of detail is breathtaking, down to lighted miniature candelabras on the dining table. It’s a long video, and frankly I would have preferred a slideshow to click through at my own pace, but there doesn’t seem to be one.

I have a feeling I never should have started down this road.