writing

Thug Lite

/ aliciaashcroft / 3 Comments

My epic weekend has been followed by long days of work.  Well, so far just two days. I’m not toiling away in a sweltering cotton field, but you know how it is.  Aren’t we all more fabulous while not at work?

So…the writing feels a bit like a homemade airplane, sputtering and failing to reach great heights. Mostly it sort of hovers over the runway with the same kind of awkward rigidity of a teenaged boy getting a girl’s bra off for the first time.  Fumbling like fuck.

But fear not bitches, it can only get better from here.

Can I call you “bitches”? Are we friends like that? I don’t know. YouTube recommended Curtis Mayfield’s soundtrack to the film”Super Fly” to me, which I feel is the website’s way of saying “I respect the hell out of your taste, here’s something groovy for you while you don’t write your blog”.

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Funnily enough, I also have a plan to “stick it to the man”, so that’s just another thing that Super Fly and I have in common.  Otherwise it’s nothing but guns, drugs and hos.  Or is it ho’s? Or hoes like in gardening?  I can’t remember I missed that day of Pimp School.   I also missed the course of pimp ultimatums, when Fat Freddie doesn’t have his money, up and coming drug kingpin Priest warns him that either he is going to get his money by robbing someone or he will put his wife out on “whore’s row”.  Now that is one hell of a threat.. in fact, it’s kind of a lose/lose situation. I bet Fat Freddie never thought, “Could I get a full time job and pay you back in weekly installments?” He’s like “Honey? You still got that dress you wore for Halloween last year?”   Don’t worry, there’s a song on the album “Freddie’s Dead”, so you just know that someone popped a cap in his ass.

Am I saying that right? Pop a cap? Like am I actually shooting him in the butt, or is ass a general term?  Are people still getting jiggy with it? Is that still a thing?

I’m not even going to lie to you, when I came here tonight, feeling like one major blah-ger, I was going to write about James Spader in Pretty in Pink.

JamesSpader_4209Don’t you just want to knock that ashtray right off his knee into his smug face in the same way you’d like to sweep an arm across a cluttered desk to make out with him on top of it.  “Pretty in Pink” James Spader confuses me.

tumblr_lu2ev4qhap1qzoaqi“I can’t do this right now James Spader, I’ve got a blog to finish”.

It’s 8:30 at night, and this is not usually my style to post so late.  I actually just received a phone call from my mother, demanding the whereabouts of said blog.  “Mom–I’m writing about pimps, R&B concept albums, and I cannot figure out out to spell ‘ho’ –just back off!”  And then I talked to her for twenty minutes while surfing the internet for pictures of various pimps and thugs…and young James Spader.

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But that’s the beauty of blogging, sometimes you think you are going to write about Beyonce and Jay-Z’s “Bonnie and Clyde ’03″…

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And you write about “The Shining” instead…

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You think it’s scary when you read my edited thoughts, you should see what it looks like inside my head…

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You better believe that’s not alphabetized.

The disorganization and time wasting is all part of my plan for sticking it to the man.

tumblr_m4610cmJCS1rn4ypvo1_500All Images Courtesy of Google

Last Minutes & Long Hours

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Though my growing book collection is strictly non-fiction,  my favorite novel is “The Hours” by Michael Cunningham.

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The language is like a symphony of  collective suffering and misplacement, passion and poetry.  The agony of being alive.  The exquisiteness of existence.   The story follows three women in three eras; Virginia Woolf writing “Mrs Dalloway”, Laura Brown reading “Mrs Dalloway”, and Clarissa Vaughn becoming Mrs Dalloway.

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I’ve read “The Hours” several times, and once followed it immediately with Woolf’s “Mrs Dalloway”.  Mrs  Clarissa Dalloway is to host a party, and the novel follows the day in which the festivities are executed.  But as she buys flowers and runs small errands, her memory travels all over the place.  And you have got to watch each of Woolf’s lines like a hawk.  This ain’t a book for the beach–look away mid-sentence, and then look back at the page–you have no idea where you are and where you’ve been.  This book is beloved, revered, it’s on Time Magazine’s list of top 100 best English novels since 1923.  For me, it’s pretty impossible to sit casually with her work.   I once suffered through “In the Lighthouse” in a women’s literature course, and I swear, I was foaming from the mouth with frustration, I couldn’t deal with the text.  Woolf is someone I like to read about, but not read.

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What I did like is how Cunningham took the source material, studied Woolf’s life and letters, and wove this beautiful story, stretching the work across three generations and tying it all together in a heartbreaking bow.   There are minute details that link both texts, and reflections of characters in a new context.  (Also, Woolf’s original title for “Mrs Dalloway” was “The Hours”). Woolf, who suffered from depression, committed suicide at the age of 59.  She filled her overcoat pockets with stones and drifted into a river.  She feared that she was going mad and could not stop the torrent heading towards her.  I wonder about Woolf’s reasoning; if her thought patterns were anything like her writing, it would be hard to live with, hard to make sense of.  And this desperate act, Woolf’s last minutes is how “The Hours” begins.

woolf passport There is one passage about Woolf that fills me with so much emotion, that the page is dog-eared, and the words are underlined.  There’s a copy of it on the cork board above my desk,  the most poetic rendition of writer’s block.

This is one of the singular experiences, waking on what feels like a good day, preparing to work but not yet actually embarked.  At this moment there are infinite possibilities, whole hours ahead.  Her mind hums. This morning she may penetrate the obfuscation, the clogged pipes, to reach the gold. She can feel it inside her, an all but indescribable second self, or rather a parallel, purer self…It is more than the sum of her experiences, though it runs like veins of brilliant metal through all three.  It is an inner faculty that recognizes the animating mysteries of the world because it is made of the same substance. and when she is very fortunate she is able to that faculty.  Writing in that state is the most profound satisfaction she knows, but her access to it comes and goes without warning.  She may pick up her pen and follow it with her hand as it moves across paper; she may pick up her pen and find she’s merely herself, a woman in a housecoat, holding a pen, afraid and uncertain, only mildly competent with no idea about where to begin or what to write. 

And when this pin up picks her pen up, there is a memory of feeling that way. But I don’t anymore…and it feels like stones pulling pulled from my pockets.

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All Images Courtesy of Google

Down the Hatch

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In Tina Fey’s “Bossypants”, she lists the things she learned from Lorne Michaels.

‘The show doesn’t go on because it’s ready; it goes on because it’s 11:30′

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This is a testament to doing your best, getting it right the first time, but fine-tuning your work til the last possible second, and then letting it go.

You can’t be on that kid standing at the top of the water-slide, overthinking it.  You have to go down the chute”

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I have a big weekend coming up, two shows and a literary festival.  While I’m excited at the possibilities, fear creeps into my head like a gas leak of self doubt.  But then I think of Tina, who has done alright for herself, who also says:

What I learned about “bombing” as an improviser was that…[it] is painful, but it doesn’t kill you…you will still be physically alive when it’s over”.

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I think about her metaphor of a child at the top of the water-slide, frozen with terror as everyone else zips by–gliding down the chute, and bolting back up the stairs for another go.  I know that kid.  I’ve been that kid.  When my husband and I were traveling with my best friend and her husband in Prince Edward Island, we were in a hotel with an amazing pool and slide.  Being wise, respectable adults, we naturally got a little bit drunk and made that slide our bitch. We were hooting and hollering, splashing and swimming, when a father came in with his young son. The boy looked in awe at the water-slide.  It took ages for him to even get up the stairs but once up there, he just stared into the black void of the chute.  The four of us rallied around the boy, explaining how fun (and safe) it was.  But he just stood there, unable to scale the wall of his own fear.

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I was up at the the top at the slide, alone with the serious looking boy, who had now grown a small beard.  I leaned down to get ‘on his level’, and said “I understand why you’re afraid, but you should know that the other side of that coin is regret.  You’ll regret not giving it a try–and that’s worse than being afraid”.  His jaw slackened, his eyes widened.  I was really getting through to him.  This is when I noticed that my ‘getting on his level’–crouching down, leaning forward with my hands on my knees,  meant accidentally squeezing my bikini-clad A-cups together.  And this boy had never been so close to boobs before.  Or maybe he’s around breasts all the time, and was horrified by how tiny mine were.  (He strokes his beard, Really? That’s all you’ve got?”)  Still,  with my inspirational, boob-tempered speech, his confidence lifted, and he raced down the chute.  There was this brief second where we all waited silently for the boy’s rebirth; and when he came out on the other side, splashing into the water, we all applauded his bravery.

And then there was five.

That little boy, having conquered his fear, made an endless circle: up the stairs, down the chute, in the water, and  back up the stairs.

And when I think about fear, fear of failure, of choking, I just think about what I told that boy–and that it is something I must tell myself.  The last thing I want to feel is regret for not even trying.  And I think again of Tina Fey, and the phrase that I have tacked to the cork board above my desk.

You have to let people see what you wrote.  It will never be perfect, but perfect is overrated”.

And this can apply to anything…but you never know, if you get over the fear, you might make a huge splash.  You might even see some boobs.  Anything is possible.

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Day in the Life

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My co-worker Jessica, who I have not seen for a week, approaches me in her usual jovial manner.  “Hey–how are you? I’ve been reading the blog…lots of movie reviews huh?”  She makes the kind of face you wouldn’t want a doctor to make while looking over your chart.  “I mean…they’re good…but, I want to know more about you.  What did you buy at the grocery store? How do you spend your days? What’s your routine like? These are things you should explore”.

Those are excellent questions Jessica, and my apologies to those who read my words voraciously, but crave further knowledge about my “inner life”.

I start most mornings by walking about the property…

Duchess of Cambridge takes Lupo for a walk in Kensington Park Gardens.

I’m going to stop you right there.  Yes, I do look exactly like Kate Middleton. Is it frustrating to be her super attractive doppelganger? Of course it is.  People ask me all the time what it’s like to be as beautiful (if not more so) than the future Queen…and I say that I simply don’t know any different.  Even as a tiny baby in my pram, I was elegant and breathtaking.  So what’s it like to be so beautiful? That’s like asking what it’s like to breathe…I just do, I just am.  But I’m not Kate, and I’d really appreciate it if she’d stop calling me for beauty tips and fashion advice– get your own look girlfriend!

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When dressing myself, I really like to take my time crafting my look.  I have a hair and makeup team, there’s a dozen or so individuals, working tirelessly to polish the diamond that is…well, me.  My closet, oops sorry closets, there’s one for every home, but wherever I am, these spaces are large enough to land a plane if necessary.  At the beach house, it’s a lot of linen and silk, lots of white, lots of  flowing dresses, you could imagine, my kind of wealth affords you only the finest fabric.  In my city home, it’s a lot of black, but again, only the most luscious material.  I’m not a hobo darling, so I don’t dress like one.

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Definitely not me, that’s Paula Abdul, a very dear friend who I call “Crazy Sauce”.  Look at her sitting on my belt holder and sunglasses display case.  What a hoot!  (PS-Do NOT let her mix Percocets with tequila, though–you will lose her for at least an 24-hours, and will most likely have to post her bail).

In order to keep my body in it’s peak physical condition, I have the most magnificent trainer: Johnny Hardbody, but those of us in the know call him “Johnny Bod”.   But because my body is already impeccable, I mostly just watch “The Bod”  punch large slabs of meat a la Rocky while I smoke cigarettes. By my third morning cocktail, its probably ten-thirty or eleven in the morning, and I’m feeling pretty loose.  I start to get ‘hands on’ with my trainer.  Sure, it makes him uncomfortable, but I just throw fistfuls of dirty money at his washboard abs and insist that he dance for me.  And he does dance…they all do.  If I’m feeling a bit bloated, like I maybe  I accidentally ate something the week before, and it’s really pushing the limits of my couture, I just sort of lay there as “The Bod”  stretches my limbs to and fro.

Once the hard work has been accomplished, I am ready to head into the office and do the real work, the writing.  But first, I just sit in front of my many leather-bound books and ooze sexuality.

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At the end of the day, I make time for my husband.

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Whoops! sorry, wrong slide. Not my husband, though George was rather persistent.  I said “George, you don’t love me, you love the idea of me”, and then I got on the jetliner, not looking back once.  Naturally, he was  devastated,  he sent endless cards and presents–claiming that I was “the best he never had”.  He then dated every other brunette under the sun, searching for a suitable substitute.  Get over it Clooney, I’ve moved on…so should you.

As a general rule, I don’t eat much, so by nightfall, I usually go Gwyneth on this one and have a Guinness because it says that I’m posh, but also “down to earth”.

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But, at the end of the day, when it’s time for bed, that’s when the fun begins.

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Pajamas are for sissies darling, you haven’t lived until you’ve slumbered in an evening gown and high heels.

So, dear Jessica, I hope this glimpse is sufficient.  Of course, this is an average day without press junkets, visits from my many celebrity friends, or when the nanny insists that I look my children in the face.

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But despite the unearthly beauty, the money, the fame, I’m just a regular woman trying to live life to the fullest.  Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to check on the groundskeeper, he’s been giving me so much grief lately, and you know how hard it is to get good help these days.

http://www.dreamstime.com/-image20878393All Images Courtesy of Google

Late Bloomer

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The other week, I was in a funk; feeling discouraged and lost.  My shoulders stooped and face slumped in a frown, I was acting in a way that my husband described as “being a grumpy goat”, (you headbutt someone once while bleating and that’s the nickname they give you).  Although I think it more references my inability to cause any actually damage, my bleat is no worse than my bite. Lifting this mood required some heavy artillery: “Julie and Julia“.

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Following a big dramatic sigh, I make mention of the movie as being the antidote to my mean reds.

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Ben scrunches his face like being offered that fifth helping at Thanksgiving dinner.  “You know? I’m good on that”.

How can you be good on J&J? It’s quite possibly my favorite movie ever–top five at least.  I love Nora Ephron.

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I love Meryl Streep.

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And I love this story.  And I love how these two women find their passion in unexpected places.

When I was really working overtime on my writer’s block, I would bake.  Muffins, scones, slices, cookies, and organize them in little Ziploc bags for the freezer.  It can be very soothing, baking–but it doesn’t get any writing done and it makes your pants tighter.  In fact since I’ve started the blog, I’m rarely in the kitchen, and I haven’t baked in months.

Now this is Ben’s turn to sigh audibly.

He’ll open the freezer, and heave a sigh of disappointment.  “Remember those meat pies you made? They were good…and those cookies, I miss those”.

But I don’t have the time, the patience or the kitchen bench space.

Neither did Julie Powell, who started her food blog in a tiny kitchen in Queens.

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In a year’s time she did 524 recipes, and then wrote about it.  No wonder she drove her husband nuts.  I’m just writing about writing and some days I can be a prickly pear.  I really don’t know how she did it–not five minutes ago I accidentally pressed publish on this blog when there was barely a few lines.  I then mashed buttons desperately, as if trying to turn back time(–and listen if Cher can’t pull it off I don’t have a hope in hell).   I screamed at my computer like in one of those slow motion sequences you see in action movies when someone is hanging out of a helicopter and your grip on their hand is loosening.  So, I’m pretty sure I shouldn’t be trusted de-boning ducks and molding meat aspics.  But as both Julie and Julia know, sometimes you just have to eat your mistakes.  Or as Julia Child once did, if you drop food on the ground, just scoop it up and pop back in the pan, it’ll be fine.  We’re all human here, put up your hand if you’ve never made a mistake.

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Okay, guess who’s being a show off.

So now that I’ve slopped this blog back in the pot, I’ll try to shape it into something appetizing, or at least, edible.  “Julie and Julia” is by far one of my comfort food movies, and I saw it a solid couple of times when living in Australia.  I really identified with Julie as she was turning 3o, and was a sort of non-writing failing writer.  She connected with Julia Child because she was a late bloomer, she didn’t become a fixture in popular culture until she was in her fifties.  Her success story has a ‘its never too late’ kind of flavour, which is a real comfort to gals like Julie and myself.  And within a year of writing her blog, Powell found success as a writer.  Everyone wins at the end of this movie.  And it always makes me cry.

Another thing about this film that I love are the husbands… some one the most supportive husbands in cinema are in this movie.

Stanley Tucci as "Paul Child" and Meryl Streep as "Julia Child"

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I also have an extremely supportive husband.  He is the reason I am able to work on this blog daily.

When I first saw this movie,  the thought of having a blog seemed so foreign, so “that’s something that someone else would do” that it’s remarkable to think that its now a part of my daily routine.  But he has supported me, and loved me and made countless meals, and is a champion in the face of my occasional grumpy-goatness. It makes me realize that the poor bastard really deserves a lovely meat pie now and again.

And I will head straight out to the shop to get him one, because I’ve got more writing about writing to do.

Julia Child's Kitchen Meryl Streep plays All Images Courtesy of Google

Reader’s Block

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Stephen King takes a pretty firm approach when it comes to the writer’s reading agenda: “If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.”

Okay, calm down Stephen, how legitimate a source are you? How many books have you published? Oh a million you say…okay, well I’ll be sure to chisel out a bit more time.

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Of course I read…street signs, labels, tweets and the back of the cereal boxes…but who’s got time for a whole book?  I have a growing pile on my nightstand, but there’s this funny thing that happens when I climb into bed.  I fall asleep.  Or I read the same page about seventeen times before I drift off to dreamland.  The other evening, I  took to the couch, curled up with Sylvia Plath‘s “The Bell Jar“, and–no offense to the incomparable Ms Plath, I read three pages before snoozing with the book splayed open on my chest.

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

As far as I know I didn’t absorb the story through osmosis.  But holy frick, how fantastic would that be?  Just tuck Dostoyevsky under your pillow, and the next morning, BOOM! “Crime and Punishment” is already in your head.  And because you were asleep–your mind is relaxed and unburdened, and therefore you were able to keep track of all those Russian names.

Don’t get me wrong, I love to read, and often fantasize about being alone in a hotel room with two weeks and a stack of books.  In fact, when I was in the throws of writer’s block and inactivity, I would say that when I couldn’t write I would read…but then I would watch TV.

And now that I am writing, blogging daily, which is not always an easy feat, I find there is little time for the other side of that coin. So I have spread the books across every corner of my life, and simply flip through the piles whenever possible.  I’ve got Nora Ephron  in my work locker.

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Caitlin Moran on the nightstand:

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David Sedaris is sandwiched between Moran and Chelsea Handler, which must be a change for him.

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Is it wrong that I haven’t even cracked into Chelsea Handler?

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I recently reread “Bossypants” by Tina Fey, which is on top of the pile in the office, above notebooks, “The Bell Jar”, and a book detailing the making of Fleetwood Mac’s “Rumours”.

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I love Tina Fey, and I think her writing is excellent. It’s clean and concise and very funny.  When I first read the book, I had just attempted to tackle Russell Brand‘s “Booky Wook 2“.

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Lord help me, I could not get through a single chapter of this book.  Everything I learned about good writing I learned from this book…as in “what not to do”.  Of course I’d like to know how Brand to came to shag Kate Moss, but I shouldn’t have to work that hard to get there.  And that’s when I realized, nobody cares how fantastic the story is, if it’s difficult to follow, if it’s a slog to read, few people will get the the promise land. (I’m looking at you Dostoyevsky).

fyodor-dostoevsky_eK44ZI love that moment when your eyes have gazed the last sentence of a great book, and when you close it, and revisit the cover.  “I know all your secrets”, you whisper creepily.  (Oh you don’t do that? Me neither).

When I read “Bossypants”, I appreciated the clean style, and I wanted to emulate it.  And this is what Stephen King is talking about.  If don’t read “good” writing, you won’t write well.  You can’t just write in a bubble (though my team in currently working to build one for me), you have to know what is good–or bad, and construct your writing accordingly.  And therefore, with limited time, you have to know your genre. In a pinch I go straight for non-fiction.  I enjoy humorous essays, as you get a whole story in ten pages, and then can walk around for the rest of the day feeling smug because you actually read something besides celebrity tweets and the back of a Shreddies box.  And then you have something to write about.  And hopefully the writing improves as the pile of books on your nightstand grows higher.  But maybe someone will develop my literature through osmosis idea, then you would be an unstoppable force, your head full of fact and fiction, with so much spare time to write for others to absorb.

That’s not a bad idea. When my bubble is complete, I’ll get my people on it.

Reading, vintageAll Images Courtesy of Google

Landslide

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Feeling very Stevie Nicks–“climbed a mountain and turned around” –a la “Landslide” today. It has been three months since I’ve started the blog, and I’m feeling reflective.  Three months of writing every day–with the occasional meager sentence or brief paragraph.  It has been a labor of love, and I have no intention of stopping.  But what I’m realizing is that I still have so much to learn about writing, about patience, and most importantly, about confidence.

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Last night, before we went out for dinner with friends, Ben and I were pushing against an Eastern Standard Time deadline for a creative non fiction contest.  It wasn’t an issue of leaving it to the last minute…though it certainly looked like it.  I didn’t get struck with writer’s block, which has become less and less a problem.  It was more an issue of not feeling capable, or somehow unworthy of being an appropriate candidate.  But, I pushed forward, worked diligently on the piece over the last week. Last night, I sat at my desk, reading aloud, combing through each sentence with my husband.  And then I sent it…and I felt so much relief, not because it was over, but because I actually submitted.  Whether I win the prize, or am even published (though both would be nice) I am out there trying to make it happen.  No one will do it for me–and I’m not getting any younger, and as Stevie says–” time makes you bolder…and I’m getting older too”.  She wrote that song before she was famous, about whether to pursue a career in music.  And aren’t we all glad she didn’t become a dental hygienist? People drift towards where they are meant to, and I hope that the landslide brings me down to a better place…where I occasionally get to sling a tambourine and dress like this.

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All Images Courtesy of Google

Last Train To Plathsville

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Oh dear.  This is the danger of a daily blog; the confessional aspect leads to texts and emails from concerned loved ones.  Surely everyone is allowed an off-day?  It couldn’t have caused too much concern, there was a Kim Kardashian joke, an “A-Team” reference, some fabulous shots of Audrey Hepburn, it was hardly Sylvia Plath‘s suicidal precursor “The Bell Jar“.

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Plath, 30, famously left her two small children with buttered bread and then popped into the kitchen to stick her head in the oven.  “The Bell Jar”, and her other books of poetry had a small following, but her fame blossomed after her suicide.  (Because isn’t that always the way?)  She was being swallowed into deep waters of madness, where I was dipping my toes in pools of discouragement.  Plath gave up; and I’m not giving in–sometimes frustration can feel claustrophobic, and all one can do is find an appropriate outlet to let that out instead of holding it in.

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After writing the blog, I walked down to the nearby yoga studio, and had a lovely class. Once home I curled up with some mac-and-cheese and ‘Eat, Pray, Love‘ on NETFLIX. Ben came home early, and watched the film with me, cracking the occasional snide remark but not judging me for taking this movie a bit too seriously, or for referring to Javier Bardem as “hunky”.

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Settled by a few creature comforts, I was able to just relax and not worry so god-damned much.  What can I say? I have a big, bruisable heart and I feel and want too much.  I think Sylvia Plath says it best:

“I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want. I can never train myself in all the skills I want. And why do I want? I want to live and feel all the shades, tones and variations of mental and physical experience possible in life. And I am horribly limited.”

I hear that girlfriend, but what are we meant to do with these limitations?  My friend Robin says of some actors, that it is the audition where the really satisfying work is done.  That, even if the part is not won, that you performed within every inch of your capacity, and are still a success.  As it is with writing, whether there is a flush of readers or publishers, that the work is being done faithfully and with great joy.  And so I will never be a sailor, doctor, astronaut–or even a professional writer, and I will probably never get to all the places I wish to see; but what is there to do with this moment, right now…when few things are in your favor.  Focus on the things that matter most; feel grateful for those few pebbles in your pocket, and keep moving forward into this continuous present state.  sitting plath

Images Courtesy of Google

It’s Not You–It’s Me

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My co-worker Jessica is one of my favorite people; she’s bright, funny, silly, and she is an avid reader of the blog.  The fact that she reads it is not why I like her, but because she always has constructive feedback.  She is also about ten years younger than me and has a view of the world that I do not have.  I wrote a piece that referenced “Dirty Dancing”, and the fact that she had never seen the film made her a perfect reader–like, if you never heard of that movie, would the piece make any sense.  She read it, gave her thoughts and I immediately sent her home with the DVD.

Prepare for your life to be changed girlfriend!

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Anyway, today we were ticking along with our duties, and she mentioned that she had caught up with my recent ones; including “Yesterday’s fuck you“.  She gives me a look that says, “Yeah, you know what I am talking about”.  “No, not fuck you–not at all.  I just wanted to finish “The Great Gatsby”…did it sound bitchy?”

Cripes, how much nicer could I be?

“No–not bitchy, but I got the subtext”, nodding knowingly, again with that look.  Though I’m pretty sure she’s just riling me up out of boredom, of course it sends me into an emotional tailspin from which I might never recover

(Even after I introduced you to Johnny Castle, really nice Jess, really nice)

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I insisted once again that no, I did not flip the bird to my beloved readers; I just wanted to finish my book, and sometimes there are not enough hours in the day to read and write.  This lead to her next comment, “Yeah, so what is ‘The Great Gatsby’ anyway?”.

Oh my god–how much time do we have?

“Well, the story takes place during the sweltering summer of 1922…”

I talk on, and she listens intently–“Who’s side are we on?”, when I explain that Gatsby is trying to court an already married Daisy.

“Well, the husband’s a bit of a brute, and he’s got a little slice on the side as well”.

“He’s cheating on his wife too?”, she says this in a way that sounds like these are real people we know.

I try not to give the whole story away; just that it’s a famous American tragedy regarding a self made man in one of the most decadent eras in recent history.  And why I simply had to re-read the book after seeing the film, and admittedly, that I was even thinking about seeing it again (because everyone knows that certain films are better the second time).

And just like that, the work day passed, and my head swirled with happy thoughts and stories, and despite the difficult day, I was smiling.

So–dear readers, know that when there is a pittance of a blog, it is not you, it is me: reading, sleeping, working, spending time with my husband.  But understand that my brain is always dreaming up new words and ways to thank you for taking the time to check in on me and my silly little stories.

gatsby

harvardclub.com

for when there are no words; pictures will do

/ aliciaashcroft / Leave a comment

key hole pin up

Just a peek through the keyhole today my friends; it’s a reading kind of day.

All the best for Monday xx

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