All the lonely people

It would only seem fitting that 2008 ended with the death of Harold Pinter. The greatest playwright of the 20th century in my opinion.
Sadly, 2009 has begun with another death. A one year old, beloved of his parents, grandparents, uncles and all who met him, Rohan Kelly departed this earth in the early hours of January 1, leaving behind devastation.

Travel well, Rohan.

Strange as it might seem, after this, 2009 can only get better. Sure, the Cheeseburger Gothic site had to be rebuilt because JSpace went the way of the economy. Fair enough, the Indian and Chinese economies are feeling the pinch. We might all be affected, but we can only do one thing: keep on living. And if we live, we must do so embracing everything that means to live.

Rohan, thank you for your brief presence in my life.

May we all rise above our grief to watch a young angel return to the heavens in peace.

I’ve been reading Final Impact, by John Birmingham. I won’t spoil it for you, but I am now convinced that JB is a member of the Chrysanthemum Club, just like me. His depiction of Japanese culture is loving, delicate and humanising. Even in their moments of greatest despair they rise above the hubris of the other Axis powers and even of the Stalin’s USSR.

The individual cruelty of particular officers on the field is shown as just that: individual. It sits alongside the human savagery of 21st Century US Armed Forces, as well as the mercy displayed by their 20th Century counterparts.

The main thrust here is, that Hiroshima and Nagasaki are not nuked. Other targets are designated, putting pay to the theory that Japan was the target due to racism and a shared European culture with the other Axis power. For some reason, the Italians do not figure in the picture at all, nor the Romanian, Hungarian and Bulgarian collaborators who sent millions of Jews to the ovens in Auschwitz.

My beautiful, gentle Hiroshima is spared. I have not yet finished reading the book, but I am hoping that Tokyo is spared and that the US triumphs over the madness of Stalin.

Well, what can I say about her that isn’t me? How do I breathe life into my creation?

Now that I’ve opened with the abuse scene… do I go backwards? Or should I just power on, regardless?

Working on character is always hard. But I want this to be character driven, not plot driven. It is way more interesting like that. I want her to surprise me. I want her to make fall in love with her all on her own.

She’s vulnerable. She’s tough. She’s sensitive. She’s confident. She’s unsure about her place in the world. She wants love. She still hopes [deep inside where no once can see it] that there is love out there. She’s lost her biggest chance at happiness, she thinks. When Filip appears on the scene, she’s willing to believe that it can happen again. Despite all the evidence stacking up on the opposite of the spectrum.

Filip whisks her off her feet. He flatters her. He appeals to her emotions. He reminds her of their past. What little there was of it. She tries to remember him, eleven years prior to now.

She refuses to believe that this is not fate. After all, here’s someone she knew when she was younger. Someone who she could have fancied then. She really fancied his brother, but that’s besides the point. Or is it? Who dates a man because she was initially attracted to his brother? Is it twisted? Or is it normal? Is it not what every single one of Shakespeare’s tragedies is made of?

Big tip off: tragedies. Is this what this is? Or a melodrama? Where is Sandra taking us? What kind of ride do we have ahead: a cruise liner, a rollercoaster or a private jet?

Well, I’m going to continue to explore her motives and rewrite her story until I get it picture perfect. Or picture dysfunctional.

I’ve been trying to figure out why I’m hooked on Sex & The City. I think I’ve cracked it.

It’s all that reflective thinking. It’s all that relationship talk. It’s all the insight into the emotions of the characters. You can relate to them. You see yourself in them.

Which is what I’m trying to do. I’m trying to make my character, Sandra, someone everyone else can relate to.

It’s hard, because she is a reflection of who I was four years ago. I have to delve deep into my reasons for behaving the way I did.

Why does someone who has been brought up by loving parents in a loving relationship to each other end up so dysfunctional?

Could it be that witnessing my mother slowly take the reins of power in the household and completely obliterate my father’s personality scarred me? Or better yet, scarred Sandra?

Why is it that the word love strikes fear into her heart? Is it because she doesn’t consider herself loveable? Is it because she never forgave herself for hurting the two men she has loved the most? Why did she hurt them?

Could it be that she was afraid of them seeing all of her? Seeing that part of her that is vulnerable?

Then why fall in love with a cad? Then why throw herself into a relationship with a complete arsehole? She felt it from the beginning, that he could be one, when and if the mood struck. It also became apparent early on that he was possessive, deceitful, and sick. Why then, fall in love with the gilded cage he prepared for her? Why fall into his trap?

Was she punishing herself for her previous relationship? For having pushed away the one man who loved her without reserve and who accepted everything about her? Why did she push that one day away? Was it because she couldn’t forgive herself for having hurt her previous love with him?

Is this a pattern that I discovered only after beginning to write the play? Is this why I could have a healthy relationship, in fact the healthiest relationship I’ve ever had, after that? Because I had cracked my own code?

Now the question remains, should I do a Carrie Bradshaw treatment on Sandra?

I’ve opened the play with the initial trampling of the consent line and the hook, line and sinker she swallowed in the process of falling in love with a serial abuser. Now what? Do I look back and reflect on why he was able to do it so fast? Or do I slowly release tidbits of information?

Stay tuned. Just like I do for sex and the city.

I’m in the middle of the first draft of my story. It’s a great idea I had at the time, to use my play for a short story idea. This way I get all the feedback I can about it, turn it first into a short story and then adapt it into a drama production. Easier said than done.

It took two nights to decide where to start after many false beginnings. I decided to appeal to the lowest common denominator: sex. It works well, though. Here is a sample, meant to draw you in:

We all think we know how to receive love. We don’t.

Sandra had known love before. She had lost it. Now, as Filip stroked her thighs, she thought she had found it again. Her legs spread wide, her back arched, Sandra pushed her crotch towards Filip’s face. He kept up a steady stream of verbiage. “You’re my soul mate”, he murmured at her vagina. “You’re perfect. In every way. You’re everything I’ve ever looked for.”

I’m still not sure how much sex to put in. I’ve got around 400 to 500 words of it at the moment. I have to cut it down to 200, with characterisation and a scene setting in there. Argh!

The process of writing is an arduous one. First you vomit onto the page. Then you clean up the vomit. Then you find the nuggets of gold. Then you polish them. Then you melt them. It’s a never ending thing, until you end up with a beautiful jewel.

Hopefully, these chunks you’ve just read will help create something of value.

I’ve recently started blogging for a travel guide blog called The Bloggers Guide. It is a quick and dirty guide to cities around the world. It’s fantastic, and I might be able to use some of my remaining knowledge of cities like San Francisco, Seattle, Vancouver, Toronto, Halifax, New York, Denver and London. Sweet, beautiful London, who calls to me in the long dark teatime of the soul.

Some people swear by New York. Having been there a couple of times, with New Yorkers guiding me around and following my own path, I still think London is it. New York is all about image. London is about style, exterior and interior. Although it fosters eating disorders, I have never been fitter or more frugal than when living in London.

Which brings me to the question: what is the longest journey I have ever undertaken?

I would have to say it was the journey into the murky depths of my own heart. Darkness lay within my heart for many years. My fear of getting hurt prevented me from committing or getting in too deep. Then, one day, I met someone who would never hurt me. I was so suspicious, I pushed that someone away. Since that day, every other relationship has been about delving into the reasons why I pushed.

It has been a long and arduous trip. I think I have almost reached the end. I am almost ready for happiness. Better still, I AM ready for happiness.

David Suzuki. Environmentalist. Personality. Responsible for making everyone aware of our carbon footprint.

I thought I knew what he was on about. I was wrong. I have since discovered his daughter. Another commmitted environmentalist, she has a video on YouTube which was taken in the nineties, when she visited Rio de Janeiro.

She’s blown me away. She speaks to the United Nations General Assembly in the video, exhorting them to do something about climate change, water shortages, environmental degradation and its consequences. It is so powerful. She’s angry. She’s passionate. She’s articulate. And she’s 12 years old. It is so moving.

I’m embedding it here, for future reference.

So we’re back to Children of Cain territory. I’ve been too tired to post and I could not think of stories, but this one is one I keep under my hat.

My aunt used to work for the U.S. Embassy. She had a job which anyone who has read Emergency Sex and Other Desperate Measures (known from here on as EXAODM) will recognise. It is a bit romanticised in EXAODM. It is probably no news for anyone working for the UN or the Red Cross or any NGO that requires this sort of macabre bookkeeping.

These were the 80’s, after all. Ronald Reagan had to show Congress tangible evidence of guerrilla activity in El Salvador to continue to fund a losing war at the tune of $2 million US Dollars a day. Paltry sum these days, but quite a lot in the early 80’s.

They [the CIA, the Department of Defence, the Pentagon and of course the office of the US President] needed some numbers. One of the figures required was the number of people dying from terrorist activity. This was a difficult thing to obtain, considering that by 1983, half of El Salvador had been completely “liberated” by the FMLN, or was under “guerrilla occupation”, depending on whose rhetoric you wanted to listen to.

So, instead of sending my dear, sweet, flirtatious and incredibly beautiful aunt out to San Miguel, Usulutan, or La Union, which were no go zones, the U.S. Embassy chose a much closer target.

Every town in El Salvador is built on the side of a volcano. Stupid but true. There is very few arable land that is not covered in volcanoes. So there is no alternative, really. On the other side of the Boqueron, the huge volcano outside San Salvador, there was a slope where all the bodies of the desaparecidos were deposited.

These desaparecidos reappeared headless on the side of the volcano. My aunt’s job was to count the bodies and if she could find the heads, count them as well. She wrote reports for the U.S. Embassy to justify the military support given to the Salvadorean army.

Things did not stop there. Wherever headless bodies appeared, my aunt went, armed with a clipboard and a blindada, a bullet proof 4WD owned by the U.S. Embassy, complete with escort.

You would think this would cause her years of trauma, but human beings can get used to anything. After 12 years of living in a civil war, and 16 of enduring a physically abusive relationship with a former corporal, the only indication of trauma is her slowly deteriorating health. She has Parkinson’ s disease.

The hands that held a clipboard as she stood in a field of bodies can no longer be trusted to write. The hands which later painted beautiful craters of active volcanoes can barely draw now with the skill of a child. Yet, she’s still there, enduring and living.

Shh! This is top secret. Today I went on an undercover mission.

A tasty mission. Our spymaster was the famous John Birmingham. He’s sworn us to secrecy until Thursday.

All I can say now is, there can be too many donuts.

This will be on of those rare times when all I say is: I found a story for a script. I’m probably writing it in collaboration with Dave. It’s fun, it’s exciting and easier to write than my play.