Drought

So this is what happened. I was getting the upper hand in the struggle against my writer’s block, ideas for new posts and various prose pieces accumulating in the back of my head. Just as I was about to put pen to paper, or finger to keyboard as the case may have been, the proxy server I’ve been using just stopped working. No WordPress, no facebook, no nothing. Long live the CPC!

There I was, with a handful rough drafts and nowhere to put them. Have you ever experienced the creative expiry-date? Like if you don’t finish your piece within a certain time, it’ll just die and you can’t really do anything with it. That’s where all those drafts went. And, having yet again been kicked off track in my creative habits, now I can’t find anything to write about again.

Just to keep things flowing, here’s a rant ↑, and a poem ↓ about not getting anything out (oh the irony).

Enjoy!
◊ Alex

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Drought

Perched on the kitchen work top,
cigarette in hand.
All creativity has drained
the imagination dried up
and I feel like
the most uninteresting creature
on the planet

When nothing more comes out
no images, no words, no ideas,
no gleaming insights nor blazing visions
I get stranded in this drought;
fall between the cracks
in the parched landscape floor
Waiting for the rain and another
flashing summer storm

What is left of me then?
If I do nothing, think nothing, what is left of me?
What purpose is there to breath and blood?
What am I doing here where
droughts are constant and
summer storms rare?
Or is it not the place
not the conditions
not the weather?
Is it just

me?

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Alex | June 2011

 

 

In the Absence of Role Models

I recently had the pleasure of meeting a friend’s visiting mother. The circumstances of our two encounters were such that we had quite a bit of time to talk between ourselves, while everyone around us was wrapped up in their own conversations. After a while we were discussing things that strangers normally wouldn’t talk about. We connected, as much as strangers in a chance encounter can, woman to woman, half a world and one generation apart. Our talks, though comparatively brief, were incredibly rewarding to me. Disproportionately rewarding even, considering the circumstances.

The thing is that at the age of 20 when I left my homeland, I had barely just stepped upon the threshold of adulthood. Having thrown myself into the unknown, I had to find out on my own who I was (and it was not who I thought I was), how to take responsibility, how to make the puzzle pieces of every day life fit together, how to be an adult. At that, in a country like China, light years away from the cultural context I grew up in.

In some ways, I think the road I took forced me to grow up faster. When you have no one to back you up, you simply have got to make it work any way you can. On the other hand, the path I chose meant a longer search for stability. I’ve sometimes been lost in the fog without a light to guide the way. I’ve stumbled and fallen on my face more than just once or twice. I’ve had periods of raging regression and by some miracle, every time I’m back in Stockholm I turn into a teenager again. None the less, all things considered, I’ve done a good job and I’ve turned into a (mostly) well-functioning young adult. I’ve learned how to deal with whatever comes, to not despair over confusion, to not be scared of not being in control, to get by and how to pick myself up off the ground when I trip and fall.

My path is hardly unique and I am far from the only one. The majority of my friends and acquaintances now, live or have lived under similar conditions. We left when we were young, we’ve lived abroad for a certain amount of time, and we’ve had to figure things out on our own. Moreover, most of the time we’re surrounded by people in our own demographic.

We’re maturing into adulthood without role models. When we substitute ourselves as our own advisors, we have to go back in memory to draw wisdom shared to us by the older generation as we grew up.

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Role Models and Mothers

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Because of that, when I occasionally have the opportunity to have a conversation that goes deeper than shallow small talk with someone of my parents’ age, I treasure those moments. It’s a different perspective, a mature point of view backed up by 30 odd years more experience than I have had time to accumulate, and it is important for me to be allowed to share it. Maybe this particular role model is just temporary. Maybe it’s for a few months, or weeks, or just hours. But I will pick something up, and perhaps sometime in the future this specific conversation is what I will fish out of my memory and use as a reference when I’m calling on myself for advice.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that the older generations have all the answers. I’m certainly not saying they, or anyone else, have the answers that would fit me, or you. We don’t have to do as they say. We shouldn’t do as they do. We all need to figure out what the questions are, and then find our own answers to them, regardless of our age, or where or how we live our lives. But the older generations do have the benefit of experience, and young adults benefit from if not getting the answers served to us, at least getting an example for how you can solve the problem.

Even though I have learned to live in the absence of a role model close at hand, I still have them on a distance. My mother is my greatest inspiration to how to do it, and admittedly sometimes an example of how to not do it. When I lived in Germany my ex-boyfriend’s mother was always a source of comfort and advice, and she have continued being my “German Mummy”. Even though I haven’t seen her for a year and a half I still miss her a lot and often imagine asking her for advice and trying to picture her answer. The most recent representative of my parents’ generation is my boyfriend’s father, who lives in Shanghai and whom I’ve had the chance to get to know quite well during my many visits to the city. He also happens to be the only older person I know who lives like I do, on the move, but has been at it for 25 years longer than I have.

No wo/man is an island. Young adults, reach out for your parents’ generation, they may not know how to send a MMS, but they have a lot to share. Mature adults, understand that, like a light house, sharing your experiences helps us to find our way, even when we chose a different path than you did.

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◊ Alex

On English – How to Woe the Whore of Languages

That’s it, I’ve had it. I’ve got beef. Big time. With the English language. After having spend several years abroad using English as the primary language my eloquence in English exceeds my wordsmithery in Swedish. Not necessarily because I speak English like a native. I don’t. Rather due to the fact that I speak Swedish approximately 30 minutes a week. The result? My English is good for what it is, i.e. not native. My Swedish is bad for what it is, i.e. native. Despite my obsession and love for words, my lingual skills aren’t fine-tuned in either language.

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The thing with languages is that you can’t learn every rule, every expression.  If you haven’t realized already, let me open your eyes to the truth about English. In terms of spelling vs. pronunciation, it just doesn’t make sense. At all. A reason behind this is that English is, more than other languages, a whore. Whenever another language passes by, English will open its legs and take it all. There are so many influences from other languages, and sometimes words have kept their original spelling but gotten a new pronunciation.

The difference between native speakers and non-native speakers of any language is that natives accept that certain things just are. They don’t wonder why “pronounce” is pronounced pro-nuns although there’s clearly a noun in the middle and the word “noun” is pronounced naown, so why isn’t it pro-naowns? (And to make matters worse, “pronunciation” is spelled with a “nun” and not a “noun”. I mean, come on English, cut me some slack!) Native speakers don’t question the logic behind why a six-letter word like “phlegm” is meant to come out as a four letter sound. Do you know what I see when I see that word? I see peh-leg-umm. Native speakers aren’t bothered by the inconsistency. They know it’s pronaownsed flem and if you ask them why they’ll probably tell you that that’s just how it is. Possibly, they’ll laugh at you too.

To some, these are crumbles.

And now, I have had enough. There will be no more trying to make dirty jokes and failing fatally by mixing up appendix and appendage. There will be no more confusion between wenches and wrenches. There will be no more getting smirked at after having proclaimed that my sandwich left a lot of crumbles on the table. No more being called cute for not knowing how many Ls there are in “metal” (one, as it turns out).

My ever-supporting boyfriend, a native English speaker, has assured me on several occasions that English is surely not out to get me, but I take it personally. English has made me its bitch for 20 years and now it’s payback time –I am going native on English’s butt! Even if it means that I have to sit with dictionaries and thesauruses and take notes on words I don’t know and harass every native speaker I know about idioms, pronunciation, spelling and word-use. (And that is what it means, and that is what I do.)

So how to go about it, when you need to precipitate the speed of your vocabulary influx, without having to take classes or just twiddling your thumbs hoping that what you pick up as you go along will be enough? Expanding your vocabulary isn’t necessarily all that difficult. And mind you, this doesn’t just go out to English learners, native speakers have a thing or two to learn as well.

My best friend.

Dictionary. com has turned out to be my best friend in my quest to kick English’s butt. If you want to pimp your text, go to their thesaurus and search for synonyms to replace that same old word you have already repeated five times in the last paragraph. When you occasionally stumble over a word you don’t know the meaning or pronunciation of, write it down and pop over to their dictionary when you have time. Since they know what a bitch English can sometimes be, they also write out the word according to how it’s pronaownsed and have an audio tool for each word.

Dictionariy.com’s possibly greatest contribution to non-native and native English speakers the same is the Word Dynamo tool. In Word Dynamo, you can make a ten-question test to see an estimation of how many words you know. You can practice already existing vocabulary lists on many different levels, and more importantly, create your own flash cards. So after you have looked up snazzy synonyms and checked word definitions, take all your new words and put them in your very own word list and start practicing.

Have I not managed to convince you yet? Perhaps you’re one of those who think that learning words is boring and I’m just a big linguistic geek. Well. I am a big linguistic geek, it’s part of my charm, but words can be confusing, amazing and downright hilarious. I don’t want to sound grandiloquent and I certainly don’t want to discombobulate you, but no matter who you are, if you’re a gastromancer, ecdysiast or calliphygian, you have nothing to lose and everything to gain. After all, who wants talk like a troglodyte? I challenge you to take a word quiz on my very own list of funny and absurd words. Click on the link below, chose your quiz type (I’d suggest match) and see how many of these words you recognize. Do me a favor and post your score in the comments section of this post.

Enough with the folderol, to the Bat Mobile! Funny words | Word Dynamo.

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Punctuation is also important.

◊ Alex

Pushing Through Writer’s Block

Writer’s Block, you nemesis of every aspiring writer, you bottomless pit where ideas go to die, you dark angel of despair lurking on my shoulder… Oh, woe is me.

I have journals dating back 16 years. I have boxes filled with diaries and notebooks, short stories, novel drafts, poetry. I have archives online and on my hard-drive with all sorts of fictional and non-fictional writing. But since March I’ve barely been able to squeeze out a single well-phrased paragraph. That was when  I hit a creative full stop, a stress and restlessness induced writer’s block that hasn’t let go of me yet. Even writing articles for the local, English-language entertainment magazine feels like pushing my way through dough: slow and painfully frustrating. I’ve referred to my writer’s block as “phrasing dyslexia”. For five months the words, which have always come easy, are jumping around in my head and I can’t put them into eloquent sentences. They seem blurry, just out of reach, like something you can see only in the corner of your eye but when you turn your head you can’t quite catch sigh of it.

I’ve made a couple of attempts to break out of the writer’s block. The problem is that writing is something I need to do regularly. Creativity is not just a switch you can flick on and off, you’ve got to keep it flowing. Even days when you’re not inspired to write anything, you have to write. Sit down and write half a page and maybe that will be enough to spark your imagination so you can carry on writing another page. Despite my feeble attempts, I have not be able to get back to writing regularly. There are days when I believe that I will choke in my sleep if I don’t create something. The Block leaves me frustrated, uninspired and embarrassed. On top of that, it’s a frustration that comes sprinkled with just enough self-doubt to get a minor identity crisis rolling;  Who am I if I don’t write? What purpose does this life carry if I don’t create? Why am I here, why do I do the things I do, if it just lands me in this inspirational wasteland where ideas dry up and crumble to dust?

I want to be like this dude.

The thing is, after five months “I’ve got writer’s block” just isn’t good enough as an excuse anymore. It’s clear that sitting around twiddling my thumbs waiting for creativity to unblock itself isn’t leading anywhere, so what to do? Maybe it’s time to try to crawl out of that bottomless pit, show the angel of despair who’s boss and give CPR to the dying ideas. Today I stumbled over a blog post called Return to Writing in Six Steps which, shock smock, gives a six-step guide to how to just simply get on with it. The ideas aren’t exactly new to me, but it’s none the less good to be reminded of these simple and oh so difficult steps. Perhaps I’ll spend another five months producing nothing but heart-breaking, eye-watering rubbish, but I believe that once I manage to get into my old creative routine again, sooner or later something good will come out, even if it will just be accidental. So what’s the plan? I have no plan, just… pick up the pen and get on with it.

To the Batmobile!

◊ Alex

20 Ton Acid in Hangzhou’s Water Supply

Saturday night an overturned tanker truck spilled 20 tons of carbolic acid (phenol), which was then conveniently washed by rain into the Xin’an river 145 km outside of Hangzhou and consequently contaminated the city’s water supply. Since I’m in Guangzhou since almost three weeks the news just reached me. Apparently it’s not as bad as it sounds, though the city government said in a report that the concentration of the chemical near the accident site was more than 900 times the safe drinking level on Monday. The government has assured that the drinking water in Hangzhou itself is safe. However, I’m not prone to take the governments word for… well, anything, so I’d still suggest that you keep off the tap water.

What do you say? “Oops, I accidentally dumped 20 tons of acid into your water supply, sorry about that”? I know one truck driver who is very bu-hao-yisi right now.

Stay safe and dry people!

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• The Guardian – China chemical spill taints city’s water supply
• Wikipedia – Carbolic acid

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◊ Alex