I have been in love acting like I am not in love for countless years (well, I can count them for you, but do you want me to? They certainly felt uncountable) and now I am not in love but acting like I am in love. If anyone wakes you in the night and asks you which state is better, tell them from me that it is the second one. As a bonus, add that in Tourmaline's experienced opinion, 'tis better to give unrequited love than to receive it; two answers for the price of one. Oh yeah, and while that mysterious interrogator is questioning you in the middle of the night on Tourmaline's love philosophy, tell him or her that lapsang souchong tea is really good stuff. Really. And that categorial grammar is darned cool.
Sure, this is a self-maintained state of mania, but it ain't a disorder if I know perfectly well what I am doing when I do this to myself ("I don't suffer from insanity; I enjoy every minute of it.") And meanwhile I have had the best bagelshop morning shift ever for that reason; usually when I am manic at seven a.m., I fade by ten. Nope, smooth sailing, oiled by cheerful willingness to flirt with absolutely everyone, man, woman, child or toy poodle, in the place.
Rohinton was opening. An unusual lad in numerous ways, he is the brother of the lad who used to always accompany my high school choir on the piano, and who is now an organ/piano music major at either Queen's or McGill, and I can never remember which one. Rohinton looks nothing like his brother (I was very surprised to learn of the relationship) and is a first-year nursing student at Ottawa U. His personality is interesting in its good-humoured gentleness and emotional forthrightness, combined with a certain oddness I can't quite put my finger on. Probably the fact that he likes cold and doesn't like chocolate is a major component of the oddness.
R: So what did you enjoy most about England? And don't say the whole being there rather than here. I knew you were about to say that.
T: I wasn't going to say exactly that, but you were more right than you know. Hmm, the museums were amazing. And...and a friend of mine took me to a meeting of the science fiction book club in Cambridge, and we hung out with them at a pub until really late, and that was fun!
R: Oh, I wish I knew someone like that!
(I am used to Rohinton's aforementioned emotional forthrightness, but I stared at him in surprise then.)
R: I wish I knew someone as ridiculous as that, who can take me to such places.
T: Ridiculous?
R: I mean, someone who knows what they like and is willing to do things about it, be it crazy or not. Like, liking science fiction.
T: [% a few minutes later, studying the tea aisle] Oh, and in London, I went to Twinings!
R: Twinings?
T: The original store! The one that had been around since 1706! Tea! It was a pilgrimage.
Rohinton came up behind me and discovered that our heights are such that perfectly allowed him to rest his left elbow on my right shoulder.![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
athaira9 is going to read this and ask me why I did not flick his arm away, or punch him at least lightly, instead of doing what I did, which was absently patting his hand. Maybe I was in a contrary mood. He asked me what I was doing, and I asked him what was I supposed to do, when someone plonks their arm on my shoulder. And I am not interested in injuring that someone; that someone sorted the thrice-darned New York Times that morning, and restocked most of the pastries, too, and unlike me knows how to change the paper roll of the cash register, so is still useful uninjured. athaira9 may still wonder what happened to the Tourmaline she knew and loved.
One strange thing did happen to the Tourmaline she knew and loved; the Tourmaline of yesterday was rereading her novel draft after some months' hiatus --- and couldn't get back into the characters' heads. It was as if someone else had written the passages, and not me. Certainly the style needs some polish but it's decent, but...that darned novel #1 had been, well, not exactly my life's work, but my biggest project of intermittent but persistent labour for the last 6.5 years, testament to any doubts that I have the endurance to write a novel or a doctoral dissertation if I so desired, and I have often quoted Catherine Earnshaw Linton, in my letters to the aforementioned athaira9, that it is "always, always in my mind." To feel a disconnection from it is strange, to say the least. I know I haven't lacked practice for my writing skills, but it is the novel-as-entity that I felt disconnected from.
Well, as the lovely Hebrew-lesson jingle may have gone, ein breira, tsarih lilmod lihtov --- there is no choice, one must learn to write; or, more bluntly, "the art of writing is the art of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair." If there is one thing that 6.5 years of bringing this thing out of its idiotic outline and through the near half-million words I now cannot believe it was at one point, and back to a more reasonable number, has taught me, it is that writing problems can only be cured by more writing. As in, if you feel a disconnection from your characters, honey, for the love of Thoth, Apollo, and the Two of Pentacles inverted, sit thine arse back down in front of the keyboard and write about them more until they come back to life for you. If you want this to be your lifelong work, eventually, then it takes work. Can't wait for the right connection to come back, or for the right mood to strike. "Mood's a thing for cattle or making love or playing the baliset." Counterintuitively, mood is not a thing for any art you truly want to do for a living. Which, I suspect, is what separates the dilettantes for the professionals in any creative field: you have to think, "I am doing this right now while I'd rather be doing something else, but I am doing this in my life because there is nothing else I'd rather do."
Which is why I am ending this entry here and going to commit some actual acts of fiction.
ETA: No, the voices came back as soon as I began typing. Which is why I look around mere moments later and discover I am late to dance rehearsal. The irony is that I had just verified the time of the dance rehearsal for Lizaveta earlier that day, and now I'll be the late one.
Sure, this is a self-maintained state of mania, but it ain't a disorder if I know perfectly well what I am doing when I do this to myself ("I don't suffer from insanity; I enjoy every minute of it.") And meanwhile I have had the best bagelshop morning shift ever for that reason; usually when I am manic at seven a.m., I fade by ten. Nope, smooth sailing, oiled by cheerful willingness to flirt with absolutely everyone, man, woman, child or toy poodle, in the place.
Rohinton was opening. An unusual lad in numerous ways, he is the brother of the lad who used to always accompany my high school choir on the piano, and who is now an organ/piano music major at either Queen's or McGill, and I can never remember which one. Rohinton looks nothing like his brother (I was very surprised to learn of the relationship) and is a first-year nursing student at Ottawa U. His personality is interesting in its good-humoured gentleness and emotional forthrightness, combined with a certain oddness I can't quite put my finger on. Probably the fact that he likes cold and doesn't like chocolate is a major component of the oddness.
R: So what did you enjoy most about England? And don't say the whole being there rather than here. I knew you were about to say that.
T: I wasn't going to say exactly that, but you were more right than you know. Hmm, the museums were amazing. And...and a friend of mine took me to a meeting of the science fiction book club in Cambridge, and we hung out with them at a pub until really late, and that was fun!
R: Oh, I wish I knew someone like that!
(I am used to Rohinton's aforementioned emotional forthrightness, but I stared at him in surprise then.)
R: I wish I knew someone as ridiculous as that, who can take me to such places.
T: Ridiculous?
R: I mean, someone who knows what they like and is willing to do things about it, be it crazy or not. Like, liking science fiction.
T: [% a few minutes later, studying the tea aisle] Oh, and in London, I went to Twinings!
R: Twinings?
T: The original store! The one that had been around since 1706! Tea! It was a pilgrimage.
Rohinton came up behind me and discovered that our heights are such that perfectly allowed him to rest his left elbow on my right shoulder.
athaira9 is going to read this and ask me why I did not flick his arm away, or punch him at least lightly, instead of doing what I did, which was absently patting his hand. Maybe I was in a contrary mood. He asked me what I was doing, and I asked him what was I supposed to do, when someone plonks their arm on my shoulder. And I am not interested in injuring that someone; that someone sorted the thrice-darned New York Times that morning, and restocked most of the pastries, too, and unlike me knows how to change the paper roll of the cash register, so is still useful uninjured. athaira9 may still wonder what happened to the Tourmaline she knew and loved. One strange thing did happen to the Tourmaline she knew and loved; the Tourmaline of yesterday was rereading her novel draft after some months' hiatus --- and couldn't get back into the characters' heads. It was as if someone else had written the passages, and not me. Certainly the style needs some polish but it's decent, but...that darned novel #1 had been, well, not exactly my life's work, but my biggest project of intermittent but persistent labour for the last 6.5 years, testament to any doubts that I have the endurance to write a novel or a doctoral dissertation if I so desired, and I have often quoted Catherine Earnshaw Linton, in my letters to the aforementioned athaira9, that it is "always, always in my mind." To feel a disconnection from it is strange, to say the least. I know I haven't lacked practice for my writing skills, but it is the novel-as-entity that I felt disconnected from.
Well, as the lovely Hebrew-lesson jingle may have gone, ein breira, tsarih lilmod lihtov --- there is no choice, one must learn to write; or, more bluntly, "the art of writing is the art of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair." If there is one thing that 6.5 years of bringing this thing out of its idiotic outline and through the near half-million words I now cannot believe it was at one point, and back to a more reasonable number, has taught me, it is that writing problems can only be cured by more writing. As in, if you feel a disconnection from your characters, honey, for the love of Thoth, Apollo, and the Two of Pentacles inverted, sit thine arse back down in front of the keyboard and write about them more until they come back to life for you. If you want this to be your lifelong work, eventually, then it takes work. Can't wait for the right connection to come back, or for the right mood to strike. "Mood's a thing for cattle or making love or playing the baliset." Counterintuitively, mood is not a thing for any art you truly want to do for a living. Which, I suspect, is what separates the dilettantes for the professionals in any creative field: you have to think, "I am doing this right now while I'd rather be doing something else, but I am doing this in my life because there is nothing else I'd rather do."
Which is why I am ending this entry here and going to commit some actual acts of fiction.
ETA: No, the voices came back as soon as I began typing. Which is why I look around mere moments later and discover I am late to dance rehearsal. The irony is that I had just verified the time of the dance rehearsal for Lizaveta earlier that day, and now I'll be the late one.