Food and writing
I have a love/hate relationship with writing. And food. I love writing but it’s always really frustrating, because I can never quite convey what’s in my noggin. Some people think in words, they are writers. Others think in pictures, they are artists. I think in like concepts, if that makes any sense. I think in a really general sense, random colours and feelings and smells. It’s so hard to get it into English. The majority is lost in translation.
Its like when I have an idea, my head fills with this purple goo. It’s just like the stuff in a lava lamp, just like that! (Where did all the lava lamps go?) So its there in my noggin, and I try to let it out. When I pick up a pen, or go to type or draw its like a little grid opens behind my eyes in my brain, so the purple goo can drip down behind my eyes, down my neck, across my shoulder and down my arm through the veins. This is a slow process because of the viscous nature of the metaphoric goo. So it’s slowly making its way down my arm, creeping along like lava down a slight slope, or custard down the side of a bowl.
The thing is though, the tunnels it’s travelling down get thinner and thinner. They branch off and go nowhere, curl back around, stop in random bulges. By the time it gets to my fingertips only a smallest tiny drips come out.
I guess the only bodily function I can compare it to, without threading on some very dodgy ground, would be needing to sneeze and being interrupted. You still have the tingle in your nose with none of the satisfaction of the sneeze. (I do enjoy a good sneeze)
So every time I go to write I seem to get more and more back clog of purple goo. The pressure builds, my arms swells and one day it will explode purple stuff everywhere.
Yeah, anyway I couldn’t even convey that idea with the same vividness that is in my head. Very frustrating.
In a lot of ways food and writing are similar. They are both sources of extreme pleasure in our lives. They are both ways we have attempted to reach out to other individuals in our lives and try to connect with them. We break bread, we write love letters, we buy boxes of chocolates for our sweet hearts, and we write away our broken hearts.
If writing and food are comparable then blogging, or prose is definitely a big plate of beans, chips and sausages from a cafeteria; satisfying, fulfilling, and never needs a lot of preparation.
On the other end of the spectrum I guess would be the type of writing with loads of rules. Haikus are definitely sushi. Not just as a general Asian theme but the whole thing, the presentation, preparation, pretention?
I think sushi is just a very expensive way to have very little food. But maybe my tastes aren’t refined enough.
"The only problem
with Haiku is that you just
get started and then..."
- Roger Mc Gough
Unruly poetry were you throw rhyming schemes to the wind and just write, that is definitely chocolate covered strawberries.
They say less is more, but less isn’t more that’s why they are different words with opposite meanings. You can have too much of one good thing, but you can’t have too much of good things, and with the variety writing and food leaves you; you could never really get bored!
(Food critics must be the happiest people on earth..eating and then writing about it!)
When it comes to food and writing I’d rather be a big woman than a little girl any day, so I shant be stopping with either!
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Friday, September 18, 2009
Television
I’ve been sick recently so I’ve been able to catch up on many a missed hour of TV watching. I just have a very bad cold, and no, it’s not swine flu. I’m not hip enough for swine flu, it’s far too current. It’s probably bird flu, so 2006.
Television is definitely at a height, there’s always something on...usually it’s a repeat of show aired an hour previous on the non +1 version of the channel but still! You have to admire the standard of writing these days. Lost, House, The wire, six feet under, desperate housewives...all compelling shows.
You can’t commit to all of them though, no unless you have a sky plus box, but for us stone-age watch-it-when-its-on types we have to pick and choose what we are going to be in for. There’s only so much I can leave my intellectual college friends because Coronation Street is on. I’m losing face over here. Speaking of losing face, they are bringing back that show “The Swan”. It’s this American reality thing were women who have been insecure all their lives (so all women could qualify) they go for three months to get plastic surgery, work out and get some stick on emotional band aids from a psychologist. They don’t have access to mirrors so there’s a big emotional reveal at the end. I highly recommend it.
Shows these days tend to be move self-improvement than home-improvement. There’s those Biggest Losers shows were people who can’t climb up stairs get thrown into doing more training than an athlete. There’s the one were that demented skeleton woman raids your home and steals the poo right from your toilet and then lectures you about how dysfunction YOU are. (Hey, she may be horrifying but that woman has one fantastic colon).
One of my favourites had to be Gok wan and his wondrous world of fashion puns. (Don’t look old in gold, try babe in suede...etc). At least he’s better than that Trinny and Susana people who had stylists behind the scenes, so they weren’t the talent they were just the hosts! How dare they write a book on the matter?
Probably the best of the reality stuff is the property porn. You know, the shows were people who have a house think they need another one to use once year in Spain. Or the one where people get in an expert to help them sell their home and then ignore their advice.
I love also these new cop/lawyer shows. I wouldn’t say there’s too many, no. There’s only Law and Order, Law and Order SVU, Law and Order Criminal Intent, Criminal Minds, Without a trace, CIS, CIS Miami, CIS New York, CIS Las Vegas, Canterbury’s law, Monk, NCIS, Cold Case, Close to home...so many of them begin with C.
I really think the appeal here is a grown up version of The Scooby Doo mysteries. I’m very serious, you know you are going to be baffled, a little scared and surprised and relieved and it turns out to be the Janitor. Everything ends with closure, it’s great. Except a haunted hotel and missing jewels isn’t going to ring our bells at this age, so it had to be multiple rapes and stabbings, child abuse and kidnappings. Real edge of your seat, but its still ends up being the grounds keeper with a face full of scratches now doesn’t it?
Still you can never ignore the classics, friends, old episodes the Simpsons, Frasier, Malcolm in the middle and the like. That really is your TV watchers bread and butter. With the new exciting layers of House and the like, TV watching is better than ever.
I’ve been sick recently so I’ve been able to catch up on many a missed hour of TV watching. I just have a very bad cold, and no, it’s not swine flu. I’m not hip enough for swine flu, it’s far too current. It’s probably bird flu, so 2006.
Television is definitely at a height, there’s always something on...usually it’s a repeat of show aired an hour previous on the non +1 version of the channel but still! You have to admire the standard of writing these days. Lost, House, The wire, six feet under, desperate housewives...all compelling shows.
You can’t commit to all of them though, no unless you have a sky plus box, but for us stone-age watch-it-when-its-on types we have to pick and choose what we are going to be in for. There’s only so much I can leave my intellectual college friends because Coronation Street is on. I’m losing face over here. Speaking of losing face, they are bringing back that show “The Swan”. It’s this American reality thing were women who have been insecure all their lives (so all women could qualify) they go for three months to get plastic surgery, work out and get some stick on emotional band aids from a psychologist. They don’t have access to mirrors so there’s a big emotional reveal at the end. I highly recommend it.
Shows these days tend to be move self-improvement than home-improvement. There’s those Biggest Losers shows were people who can’t climb up stairs get thrown into doing more training than an athlete. There’s the one were that demented skeleton woman raids your home and steals the poo right from your toilet and then lectures you about how dysfunction YOU are. (Hey, she may be horrifying but that woman has one fantastic colon).
One of my favourites had to be Gok wan and his wondrous world of fashion puns. (Don’t look old in gold, try babe in suede...etc). At least he’s better than that Trinny and Susana people who had stylists behind the scenes, so they weren’t the talent they were just the hosts! How dare they write a book on the matter?
Probably the best of the reality stuff is the property porn. You know, the shows were people who have a house think they need another one to use once year in Spain. Or the one where people get in an expert to help them sell their home and then ignore their advice.
I love also these new cop/lawyer shows. I wouldn’t say there’s too many, no. There’s only Law and Order, Law and Order SVU, Law and Order Criminal Intent, Criminal Minds, Without a trace, CIS, CIS Miami, CIS New York, CIS Las Vegas, Canterbury’s law, Monk, NCIS, Cold Case, Close to home...so many of them begin with C.
I really think the appeal here is a grown up version of The Scooby Doo mysteries. I’m very serious, you know you are going to be baffled, a little scared and surprised and relieved and it turns out to be the Janitor. Everything ends with closure, it’s great. Except a haunted hotel and missing jewels isn’t going to ring our bells at this age, so it had to be multiple rapes and stabbings, child abuse and kidnappings. Real edge of your seat, but its still ends up being the grounds keeper with a face full of scratches now doesn’t it?
Still you can never ignore the classics, friends, old episodes the Simpsons, Frasier, Malcolm in the middle and the like. That really is your TV watchers bread and butter. With the new exciting layers of House and the like, TV watching is better than ever.
Karmic Recycling
I definitely don’t believe in fate. I don’t watch my footing as I walk down the street and hope I don’t fall off my own destiny tracks. No, I think that’s poppycock, its cock of the poppiest variety (ah thank you Dave Gorman) People sit around pondering the complexities of their horoscope I think must get selective deafness whenever Bono or Bob Geldoff talks...(not a bad survivor adaption I must say) But to suggest that we’re here and every road we walk down and person we meet and traffic light we stop at is somehow predestined and written in the stars does not translate over in Africa were people are just dying all over the gaff. Where’s their destiny? So are they just some dark background to make the niceness of our life truly sparkle?
Relax; I’m not on a “suffering of others” rant. No, no, leave that to the experts who go there and know actual statistics and can click their fingers in that menacing way. I was merely trying to convey my feelings on the bogusness of the whole concept of fate. (Sorry if this offends, but if you believe in fate then you believe you were MEANT to read this right?...ha-ha, got you there!)
So yes, not a fate believer. But lately I’ve been thinking about karmic recycling. (I don’t believe in karma either, too many good things happen to bad people for that) Karmic recycling is a term for when you take something bad and turn it into something good (usually by being selfless somehow along the way)
Example; (sex in city style) you get totally stud up for a date so you let your best friend wear the shoes you bought. Something bad, into something good!
I do think trying to spin the good out of the bad affects your whole attitude and probably means you are more willing to accept the good when it comes, which is probably what most people actually think when they say karma or fate. We have so much more control than we give ourselves credit for.
That’s why it’s easier to believe in fate and god and all that jazz. But I don’t want to get into bashing peoples beliefs. That’s Richard Dawkins job.
I gave a map of Berlin I had to my friends’ daughter as she’s doing a project on the Berlin wall. That was karmic recycling on fast spin! I went to Berlin in June and had the worst time ever! Just awful.
Long story short I went there to meet my dad for the second time ever and he wasn’t very nice, he was very critical of me and all over not very loving at all. We didn’t leave it on good terms and I plan not to see Berlin or him again...but that’s another blog.
(I will say though that I found the general crowd, and that doesn’t mean Germans because a lot of them weren’t, by the crowd I mean the type of “groovy” folk who tend to move to Berlin so they can walk their dogs at two o’clock on a Wednesday afternoon and buy beer at every corner shop and still manage to survive...that is one forgiving city. I found them to be extremely judgemental. One should be able to drink a can of diet coke without four people lecturing you on the corporate and dietary evil that lurks beneath. Especially when those four people are smoking.)
So I got to take a token from my horrible experience- the map- and give it to someone who might be able to use it for a project. That’s just fantastic. It’s like I took some negative energy and put it into a nifty little transformer and turned it into positive energy. Good times.
That’s what poetry and music and all that jazz is too, isn’t it? The nifty transformer. I picture it like one of those old fashioned washing equipments were you pull something between two rollers to de-crease it. We all need one.
Clear out your karma closet today! Give away old clothes, teddy bears you don’t cuddle anymore, and items that hold too many bad memories. Shed karmic pounds fast and easy, and you don’t even have to join a gym.
I definitely don’t believe in fate. I don’t watch my footing as I walk down the street and hope I don’t fall off my own destiny tracks. No, I think that’s poppycock, its cock of the poppiest variety (ah thank you Dave Gorman) People sit around pondering the complexities of their horoscope I think must get selective deafness whenever Bono or Bob Geldoff talks...(not a bad survivor adaption I must say) But to suggest that we’re here and every road we walk down and person we meet and traffic light we stop at is somehow predestined and written in the stars does not translate over in Africa were people are just dying all over the gaff. Where’s their destiny? So are they just some dark background to make the niceness of our life truly sparkle?
Relax; I’m not on a “suffering of others” rant. No, no, leave that to the experts who go there and know actual statistics and can click their fingers in that menacing way. I was merely trying to convey my feelings on the bogusness of the whole concept of fate. (Sorry if this offends, but if you believe in fate then you believe you were MEANT to read this right?...ha-ha, got you there!)
So yes, not a fate believer. But lately I’ve been thinking about karmic recycling. (I don’t believe in karma either, too many good things happen to bad people for that) Karmic recycling is a term for when you take something bad and turn it into something good (usually by being selfless somehow along the way)
Example; (sex in city style) you get totally stud up for a date so you let your best friend wear the shoes you bought. Something bad, into something good!
I do think trying to spin the good out of the bad affects your whole attitude and probably means you are more willing to accept the good when it comes, which is probably what most people actually think when they say karma or fate. We have so much more control than we give ourselves credit for.
That’s why it’s easier to believe in fate and god and all that jazz. But I don’t want to get into bashing peoples beliefs. That’s Richard Dawkins job.
I gave a map of Berlin I had to my friends’ daughter as she’s doing a project on the Berlin wall. That was karmic recycling on fast spin! I went to Berlin in June and had the worst time ever! Just awful.
Long story short I went there to meet my dad for the second time ever and he wasn’t very nice, he was very critical of me and all over not very loving at all. We didn’t leave it on good terms and I plan not to see Berlin or him again...but that’s another blog.
(I will say though that I found the general crowd, and that doesn’t mean Germans because a lot of them weren’t, by the crowd I mean the type of “groovy” folk who tend to move to Berlin so they can walk their dogs at two o’clock on a Wednesday afternoon and buy beer at every corner shop and still manage to survive...that is one forgiving city. I found them to be extremely judgemental. One should be able to drink a can of diet coke without four people lecturing you on the corporate and dietary evil that lurks beneath. Especially when those four people are smoking.)
So I got to take a token from my horrible experience- the map- and give it to someone who might be able to use it for a project. That’s just fantastic. It’s like I took some negative energy and put it into a nifty little transformer and turned it into positive energy. Good times.
That’s what poetry and music and all that jazz is too, isn’t it? The nifty transformer. I picture it like one of those old fashioned washing equipments were you pull something between two rollers to de-crease it. We all need one.
Clear out your karma closet today! Give away old clothes, teddy bears you don’t cuddle anymore, and items that hold too many bad memories. Shed karmic pounds fast and easy, and you don’t even have to join a gym.
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