originally thinking South Africa, and largely still am, but now there’s a part of me that wants to go to Argentina. I won’t make any money teaching English (there’s a lot of jobs, but they pay the US equivalent of 3 bucks an hour), the plane tickets are expensive (easily a thousand euros), and by then, the story might not be a world that calls me anymore. I’ll perhaps have moved on to others. I also have Argentinean friends who have promised to read my story and tell me what they think, so they’ll be around to push me in the right direction in terms of facts. At the same time, I feel the need to viscerally feel and emotionally connect with the land, the subconscious of a culture, before I write about it.
In others, I just don’t know!
December 29th, 2011: “A Reaction to The Brothers Karamazov, but not really…”
I am in the process of slogging through the enlightening, but slightly slow The Brothers Karamazov. I find it very interesting how Fyodor Dostoevsky named the main antagonist, Fyodor Karamazoc, a maniacal patriarch that is then killed by his four sons. I wonder if these four sons represent the act of Fyodor killing himself. He did then die a year later after the book was published.
But, the real reason why I find this book badass is this sentence: “Connoisseurs of beauty could have foretold that this fresh, still youthful, beauty would lose its harmony by the age of thirty, would “spread”; her face would become puffy, and that wrinkles would very appear upon her forehead and around her eyes her complexion would grow coarse and red. She had the beauty of the moment, the fleeting beauty which is so often met with in Russian women”
SOOOO TRUEEEE!!! Although Fyodor didn’t then mention that the Russian men, two hundred years later, still bear a creepy resemblance to the Cavity Creep.
December 31st, 2011: “It’s already 2012?”
When I was in college, I would get mad when another year passed by. I hated that I was still unpublished, undiscovered, immature, etc. It didn’t help that my New Year’s Resolution for the preceding year would always begin with “I will at least get one of my stories in a magazine by the end of this year.” To this day, those resolutions have gone unpromised; I’m still not published. Yet, when 2010 became 2011, I didn’t care about these silly resolutions. First of all, I was and still am incredibly glad that the work I wanted to publish when I was an 18 year never saw the light of day; it was horrible, and got every rejection it deserved. But, second of all, and more importantly, I realized that it didn’t matter. So many amazing things happened to me in 2010, and it helped me figure out that there’s more to life than chasing my anxieties.
2011 continues that trend. I kind of forgot up until an hour ago that a new year was beginning, because my life has become so much more continuous, so much more of a path traveled rather than a set of goals checklisted, that years ending no longer bother me. I rather follow the calendar of my heart; I celebrate when I finish a work, or meet a great friend, or taste fabulous food, rather than holidays.
Nevertheless, it’d be wrong for me to ignore all the great things that happened this year. I got to travel all over Central and Eastern Europe the earlier half of this year, which filled my “jar of insight” in ways I wouldn’t be able to describe (but, if you’re really that curious about all I learned, read We Are the Poorest (Country) in the World, because that novel couldn’t have existed without those travels). I realized that there’s a part of me that seeks beauty in places that aren’t the one I grew up in, but I also realized there’s a greater part of me that is escaping and hiding. I’ve learned to catch that worm by the tail. I’ve met so many great people, and solidified already existing friendships. Some of them even became something greater.
Looking towards the New Year, for the first time today, I’m in the mood to write my New Years Resolutions, a day in advance. None of them are based in literary stuff, because I’ve realized that the writer in me is just there; it doesn’t matter if my work gets out in 2012 or 3012; it’s worth reading because Kiran says so.
Resolution 1: I want to learn proper ways to channel my energy and release my tension (or, in other words, I want to learn how to calm down), because there’s enough neuroticism in here to electrify a field of cattle.
Resolution 2: I want to learn how to cook without the use of a microwave – my real cooking sucks.
Resolution 3: I want to learn how to take my resolutions and goals lightly; after all, I’m only human, and as a human, I can’t control when the world decides to put giant boulders and colossal sand scorpions against my way.
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