i have the discipline to write 750 words a day

for 37 days in a row, i have written a minimum of 750 words on 750words.com. i do usually more or less stop when i hit 750, but it's not always exact, i tend to finish my thought. and that means that as of today, i've written 30,729 words, 19,582 of them have been in february. i began mid-january. it's been very good, re-establishing a daily writing habit. i'm not sure how it slipped away from me the way it did and i'm grateful to have it back. i am very motivated by the badges you can achieve on the site. these are the ones i've gotten so far. in a few more days, i'll have the turquoise horse as well, for finishing the monthly challenge. maybe it's easier to complete when that month is the shortest one, but i've signed up for march as well, so i intend to continue.

and speaking of march, instead of my usual stream-of-consciousness, in march i'm going to write 750 words a day on our novel. whether i write a snippet of the story, or a character sketch or just a description of a location or try to capture a feeling, it will move us closer to shaping our story. it's time to get all those ideas that have been swirling in my head, fed by various readings, observations, discussions and research onto the page. this story isn't going to write itself and now i've proven that i can write at least 750 words per day. that adds up. i will have at least 23,250 at the end of march and that is definitely something.

ghost ship

photo from the Irish Times article

i'm a bit obsessed with the story of the M/V Alta, a ghost ship that washed up on a remote shore in ireland after last weekend's storm dennis. it was unmanned and had been abandoned and floating derelict in the atlantic for 17 months. it's 77 meters long, built in 1976 and last registered to an unknown company under tanzanian flag. its last voyage was said to be from greece to haiti, which seems a strange route. it had some kind of irreparable engine failure somewhere off bermuda and the 10-person crew (i cannot find any info about the nationality of said crew) first had supplies air-lifted to them and then was rescued by the US coast guard ahead of an oncoming hurricane in september 2018. the owner was supposed to tow the ship somewhere for repairs, but it seems that never happened. there are rumors that it was being towed to guyana when it was hijacked and then left to drift again. none of the reports mention what cargo was onboard at its abandonment, nor have i been able to learn the nationalities of the crew. it's all very mysterious. the last sighting of the ship was by a british navy vessel at some undisclosed location last august-september (they're very cagey about precisely when and where). in a couple of the articles, it was mentioned that it was sighted off africa and spain (possibly out near the azores or canaries?) in recent months. it must have been caught in the gulf stream and carried north. another article i read suggested it went north along the US coast and then crossed the Atlantic from higher up.

the other night at the bar, an old maersk captain came in and i asked him what he thought about it. he immediately grinned and said, "it's the flying dutchman!" - the legendary ghost ship! he also said that such vessels are not at all unusual. some nefarious character picks up a ship for cheap, hauls one illicit cargo - drugs, weapons, supplies that are under embargo, etc. - and then abandons the ship. it would stand to reason that sailing between greece and haiti, it could have had some unusual cargo on board, as that doesn't seem like a normal trade route. but, i wonder what happened to that cargo? perhaps the reports of the ship being towed to guyana are actually a rendezvous with another ship that offloaded the cargo and sailed off with it, leaving the ship.

it seems strange that the owner is so hard to trace and strangely enough, an owner seems to have presented themselves to the irish authorities and was awaiting verification. that could be anyone, wanting a ship - that was my brother-in-law's first idea, that we should claim it and then we'd have a ship - a 44-year-old ship that had been abandoned and drifting for a year and a half. when i showed the maersk captain the picture, he said, it was a "russer" - at least built in russia, just by looking at it. i haven't read that, but it could be. none of the articles have talked about earlier names or owners through the years, but there must have been many. i just can't stop thinking about it. there must be more to the story. so many unanswered questions.

if it was a nefarious owner, wanting to use it for one illicit cargo, i imagine the crew was filipino and i wonder what their fate was - how did they get back home if the owner had abandoned them and the ship? and what about the cargo? they hadn't yet reached their destination when they broke down, so there had to be a cargo on board. i'm imagining all kinds of stories for this! maybe i need to work in such a storyline to our story. we have lumke's voyage in 1723 and a contemporary voyage - hmmm, how to connect them? or is this a whole new story? i was always fascinated by the kursk sinking as well and voraciously read everything about that back when it happened. if you told that story, you'd want them to be rescued though, as the ending there wasn't a good one for everyone on board. that was in putin's early days and he didn't handle that very well - he handled it like a KGB agent, not a leader.

but, back to the alta. what was it that broke down and couldn't be fixed? were there no spares on board, so the crew couldn't get it running again, or was it a cheap, third-rate crew that didn't have the know-how? the owner, wanting it for just the one voyage, didn't plan on needing to repair it. anyway, it's all very interesting and would be a story worth telling - even if i have to make up most of the details.

----

new information from marine traffic - it was panama flag, not tanzania. and there is a list of the names the ship has had...

very weird with a norwegian flag and name after the alta name...this story is so very curious.

wait! more from marine traffic: "She was also in the news in 1983 when she sank off Norway. Raised and repaired she continued trading." this story gets better and better!

on tricking myself into writing and finally reading ulysses

a big thank you to judith for turning me on to 750words. it's a site with a lovely blank canvas (weirdly less intimidating than an open, fresh word doc), where you attempt to write 750 words per day. i tried it out for the first time this morning and got to 557 words before it told me the day was over and i would have to start a new day. this, at 9 a.m. my time. turned out my time zone was set to pacific time in california, so i cheated and pasted my 557 words (which i had written in 10 minutes) into the new day (after all, it had been friday for me all along) and continued. my stats will be a little off, since pasting it in takes a bit less time than it did to write the words in the first place, but oh well. i found it surprising how quickly i got to 750 words. maybe this writing thing isn't so hard after all?  it was just a bunch of drivel, recounting my day yesterday, so there's that, but nonetheless, it was a start.

i'm finding that reading and writing go hand in hand. i knew this, but i think what with obsessively reading the news on my iphone since mid-2016, i'd gotten out of the habit of reading books. i've been fixing that thus far in 2020 and i've already read four books. i'm currently reading hemingway's moveable feast, which contains a lot of advice about writing. i've also joined a book club through the library. we will read just one book - james joyce's ulysses. i took a semester-long course focused on just that book and wrote a 25-page paper on it without finishing the damn thing, so i decided that now is the time. it's one of those you probably should read. but already i can feel myself thinking i have to read a bunch of other stuff first - like i really should refresh homer's odyssey before i begin. and maybe dante's inferno too. and that would lead to goethe's faust, wouldn't it? where will it end?

just get reading already.

just get writing already

thanks to my old bloggy friend, lynne, of wheatlands, i read a magnificent piece by helen brain on her writing process of her forthcoming post-apocalyptic YA trilogy. it had me thinking all day. thinking about building imagined worlds in clay, or at least drawing them as a map, maybe drawing up a timeline on the wall. you see, lynne, judith (also from the old bloggy days) and i are working on a project together - a project that we hope becomes a novel.  or rather, not that we hope will become a novel - a project that WILL become a novel.

but for that to happen, we need to get writing and i'm weirdly struggling with that. it's strange, because i actually love to write and although i'm out of practice, i feel it's like riding a bike, i will be able to do it again if i just try. but, i'm having trouble sitting down and doing it. and i'm not sure why.

i listened to stephen king's on writing on audible and he basically says that you just have to sit down and do the work, day after day. and look at all that he's produced! and he did it drunk, high and hung over for many years, so surely i can manage when i'm none of those and have plenty of time to devote to it.

so what's stopping me? fear that what i write won't be good enough for my writing partners? fear that the words won't come? distractions - the internet, master chef, netflix, litterboxes to pick, laundry to do, dinners to make. i think, "today i'll be able to settle in after i make a nice coffee for myself. or just after i have some lunch." but somehow, the settling in doesn't happen. i get fidgety in front of the keyboard and the writing doesn't come.

i sometimes wonder if i'm in the midst of a mild depression. i'm not sure i'd be able to discern the difference between it and everyday life. january and february are the darkest, most dreary months in these northern latitudes and that doesn't help me. you'd think a steady rain outside would be just what i need to keep me indoors in front of the computer, but alas, instead it renders me sluggish and uninspired and a bit grey myself and as much as it should, it does not make me sit down and write. (that's not strictly true, as i am sitting down and writing this.)

i love the story we're working on - a story of a brave, amazing young dutch woman who sailed as a man with the dutch east india company, was exposed along the voyage and put ashore in the burgeoning cape colony. there she met abraham, an aging pillar of the new community, who married her and they had a child before it was revealed that she was already married and she was sentenced to bigamy and banished back to europe. and all of this is true! we just have to weave it into a historical novel and bring her story to life.

maybe it's there that the pressure lies - the idea of telling her story and doing it justice is a bit daunting. she must have been so brave and adventurous to set off on that journey, how do we find her voice?  all i know is that i certainly won't find it by sitting here, not writing anything.

and so i turn back to helen brain's good advice to herself..."Maybe all that was needed for my book was the courage to push myself into unknown territory. Maybe I could immerse myself in my subconscious, and let the book filter up from the depths, instead of trying to force it to conform to my conscious process."

or maybe i should just get writing.

a work for poets

A Work for Poets

To have carved on the days of our vanity

A sun

A ship

A star

A cornstalk


Also a few marks

From an ancient forgotten time

A child may read


That not far from the stone

A well

Might open for wayfarers


Here is a work for poets -

Carve the runes

Then be content with silence

--George MacKay Brown

working on a writing project with two friends from the good old blogging heyday and i'm struggling to get started. it's an absolutely fascinating story and research keeps revealing new and interesting angles and possibilities, but that makes the story elusive and hard to grab onto. perhaps i just need to carve a few runes and then listen to the silence and see what happens.

five things friday :: november 1

#fivethingsfriday
🔸
thing 1: it’s a new month, so i took a new route today, exploring roads that were new to me. husband says it makes our brains grow. and i’d like to think he’s right. at the very least, i saw some fall colors and this church, which looked pretty despite the drab, grey day.
🔸
thing 2: new episodes of queer eye! in japan! it makes husband being stuck late at work on a friday night more bearable. #imnotcryingyourecrying #teamyokosakuma
🔸
thing 3: when husband said he would be late and foiled my plans of a dinner out, i decided to make myself some soup. husband isn’t a fan of soup (one of his few faults), but i figured i could just please me, since he wasn’t home. and please me i did -i roasted two eggplants, a whole cauliflower and a head of garlic in the oven. they were drizzled with olive oil and sprinkled with sesame seeds and herb salt. meanwhile, i sautéed three leeks in butter and bit of my homemade herb salt and thawed out a container of herbed chicken broth I had in the freezer (thank you past me). once the veggies were roasted, i popped them into the broth, along with the buttery leeks and blitzed it all up with my immersion blender. i had planned to add a bit of cream, but it was so rich, smoky (thank you, eggplant) and delicious that it didn’t even need it.
🔸
thing 4: learning new things these days. it’s stretching my brain in the best ways. it is as much a physical process as a mental one.
🔸
thing 5: i’ve been thinking this week about The Muse - who it is, where it is, how to make it appear. i suspect it’s really just about hard work and regular practice -whether it’s an artistic muse or a writing muse. the muse might actually just be discipline and practice. #revolutionary #impracticing

art journaling lately

a limited palette. a feather as a brush. painting with acorns. white and gold gel pens. my art journal as of late. a kind of meditation. letting it carry me where it will. payne's grey. astoriabraun, bordeaux. ink.

so this is christmas...

the best gift so far? loads of notes for future blog posts. there's something about trauma that inspires like nothing else. let's just say that thomas vinterberg's festen is quite demure and underplayed in comparison to the reality. more soon...

and merry christmas one and all! hug your families! enjoy them for all their eccentricities.

in which she ponders writing and literary theory and feminism and doesn't come to any conclusions

i can tell you that when every experience is fodder for your character sketches, it makes meetings ever so much more amusing. even better when you can actually sit with your laptop and type the scenes in directly, a sort of simultaneous transcription. i'm gleeful. and leaning increasingly towards fiction rather than anthropology. but it's a fiction that will contain an awful lot of truth. i'm hoping a plot will develop out of the character sketches, as i've got no idea of one at this moment. i'm just riding the waves of inspiration. and figuring that writing it is the best way to make sense of it all.

* * *

i fear i may be a member of the theory generation.

we thought we were so smart.

and we still are.

but at what price?

* * *

one of my facebook friends shared a link to this blog, which suggests that there is a new era coming - one in which women will take the lead and heal the earth. while i think this is a wonderful (if fanciful and slightly new agey) notion, i wonder if this person has spent any time at all with groups of women. because there's no one more hard on one another than women. we do more to keep one another down than any man ever even thought of doing to us. there is more manipulative game-playing among groups of women than anywhere else. if we're not sneering at one another, sniping, talking behind one another's backs or outright treating one another as invisible when we feel threatened by another woman's intellect or viewpoint or very presence, then we're scheming and jockeying for position. it would take a miracle for women to truly embrace the role of healer and begin to heal through peace and love. there might be less bombs, but i am absolutely certain the number of poisonings would rise.

i should note that i am by no means anti-feminist and i most fervently wish that women would start working together and stop dragging one another down. it's just that when i look around me, right here in my own community, i don't see it happening anytime soon.

i think i like the brand of feminism and femininity presented here (and embodied in lady gaga) much better. as halberstam says: "Gaga Feminism as embodied in certain eclectic performers does not promote a new liberal version of femininity, rather it inhabits wild terrains of sonic and political chaos in order to bring new forms of politics, culture, and gender to life." that sounds much more interesting than the earth mother, sit in a circle and gaze at our vaginas kind.

* * *

sabin and i are madly in love with the mean kitty.

* * *

the k boards (sorry, there are no j boards) on pinterest: kitchen goodness (this is one of the early boards), kulturhus inspiration related to my involvement in my local community).

fog brings clarity

i love a foggy morning. with the fog, there's a hush, a dampening of the noise of the world. out of the fog comes, most strangely, a kind of clarity. likely due to the stillness and the quiet - we finally breathe deeply and our heads clear in the silence. as i wandered the yard, taking these photos, only a few minutes ago, the only sound (other than the occasional crow of one of our many roosters), was the occasional plop of big drops falling from the trees. it brought such a feeling of calm over me.

i find my thoughts already turning to the end of the year and to the new year ahead, from what has been to what may yet be. looking towards what may be approaching out of the fog, but feeling quite unafraid of it, instead, looking forward with a tingle of excitement that comes of the stirrings of imagination as to what may be.

* * *

slavoj zizek is a lunatic. he keeps his clothes in the kitchen cupboards.
(hmm, might be worth pondering why i feel that's a symptom of lunacy.)

* * *

it was time someone said this about anthropologie. 

* * *

the meeting i attended on wednesday (which, for the first time i can remember, has actually inspired me to think i have a novel in me and not just non-fiction) was well-reported in our local paper.  (only in danish, but if you can read it, you should). the best bit about it that you should know is that while brock is a name, if you leave out the c, it means both complain and hernia and that in pronunciation, the two words are indistinguishable. and if you only knew how very fitting that was in the context. there is a changing of the guard from old to young and it's painful for all concerned. don't you think that's a good underlying story for a novel?

* * *

the e boards: Education (a shared board, work-related, hence the capital letter), environmentally conscious. ethnic. excess of eggs.

shadows on the wall

we all have shadows on our souls that haunt us. sometimes in the wee hours of the morning, sometimes in the middle of the day, sometimes when we're under pressure, they cloud our judgement or make us behave in bewildering ways. i think my primary shadow is having grown up in a small town where everyone knew everyone. and while that was good in many ways, it makes me overly eager to be accepted and liked, because it meant too so much in that little society. but this isn't really about my shadows, more about how we are affected by the shadows around us.

spending time with a whole lot of people who are long-term unemployed and interviewing them for my book on the danish welfare state, i have seen and felt a lot of shadows in recent weeks. and i think that it can't help but cast a shadow over your own soul and your own existence, to be in contact with so many sad stories and depressed people. it drags you into a kind of darkness yourself, no matter how much anthropological distance you try to have. there is something to the notion that the people you hang out with have a big affect on you and how you view the world (and i knew this, but i didn't realize how hard it would be to keep it separate). and i think it's also difficult, when you're in the midst of a situation, to realize what's really going on, especially one like this, where at the same time i'm very grateful to these people for opening up to me and telling me their stories.

by the end of last week, i found myself feeling short-tempered and crabby. and i couldn't help but be hyper-critical of everyone and everything around me. it was like all those shadows ganged up on me and gave me a very bleak outlook, expecting the worst of the world.

so today, i stepped back from my project and worked on something else - a whole stack of new stitched-up photos that i actually started last week. i hope to get them backed and photographed tomorrow so i can show them to you. there are a couple of new themes...hedgehogs and mushrooms (unsurprisingly) and some travel dreams. it was just the the thing to push those shadows back where they belong...against the wall.

*  *  *

and don't forget, the last batch of stitched-up photos are 25% off - and i've made it easier...the price you see is the sale price, no code necessary. if there was one you were wanting, now is the time to pounce! and there aren't any aliens or fish in this second round, so it's the last chance at those (for now).

believe it or not

an equally random photo for a random post

i am consistently amazed at people's need to tell their stories. seemingly especially if the stories are full of strife and sorrow and woe. they have a great desire for commiseration and in being confirmed in their sense of having been done wrong. it makes it easy to gather material for a book, but i have to say that it is making for a rather bleak story. but maybe there simply aren't any bright spots in the welfare state, even the lauded scandinavian kind.

* * *

believe it or not, there are still people (in this otherwise very prosperous ostensibly western society) who don't have any education beyond primary school.

* * *

it's election day in denmark today. the race is close, but it looks like after ten years of the blue guys, it will go over to the red. because denmark seems to have adopted those same colors as they use in the US elections. tho' the politicians are all well to the left of the american ones - blue or red. i don't get to vote, as i'm not a citizen, but i'm confident husband will vote correctly.

* * *

believe it or not, there are people who don't know how to type.

* * *

it's sometimes really, really hard to maintain anthropological distance. but absolutely essential for maintenance of sanity. (this is really a reminder to myself, so if you don't understand it, that's ok.)

* * *

believe it or not, there are people who still have nokia phones.

* * *

my drunk kitchen is totally cracking me up.

thank you bill.

* * *

i'm feeling much better now. sometimes you just have to clear your head of all the little stuff.

putting things out there

potential title sighted in copenhagen

i have something that i want to say out loud. both because writing is the new praying and because sometimes it makes things more real to put them out there and share them (there's probably a whole 'nother blog post in why that is).

i'm writing a book. it's non-fiction and it's about the famous and much-lauded danish welfare state. it's in the style of barbara ehrenreich's kind of under-cover journalism, best exemplified in her nickel and dimed: under-cover in low wage usa.  in this vein, i'm trying on the danish welfare state first hand, experiencing what they put people through myself, as well as interviewing a wide variety of people and gathering their stories. it's shaping up to be a rather fascinating story - one of humiliation and hopelessness and busywork and earnest people who want to do the right thing, but whose hands are tied by bureaucracy and it's also a story of wasted, misplaced funds and consultancies becoming very wealthy on the backs of the poor sods who are out of work. but it's a story of good people too - people sincerely interested in helping and motivating.

i don't have a publisher or an agent and i honestly don't know the first thing about getting either one of those, but i know that it's a very interesting story and i feel compelled to write it. and i think that in light of a lot of political conversations going on around the world, there's a place and a market for it. and while initially, i thought it was a rather dry subject, it turns out that it's full of humanity and shaping up to be just a really good story.

if there's one thing i'm learning from this process, it's that your network is everything, so any and all advice is appreciated.