An Autopsy of the Woman as a Young Writer

"And what have we here?"

"Ms. Dita Parker, female in her mid-thirties."

"No way. Thirty-three tops."

"It says so right here, Randolph."

"No way. Older than her looks then."

"Older than her years, as well. Have a look at the report. Three lives long at least. Well traveled. Speaks several languages. Multidisciplinary education. Married with children. ATCK."

"Ouch. I hope she didn't suffer much."

"It means adult third culture kid, Randolph."

"Hmm, interesting."

"What?"

"Nothing. I'm just saying."

"You are mumbling to yourself. Shall we concentrate on Miss Parker?"

"Does it say what she did?"

"She's a writer."

"Was, Richard."

"Was what?"

"A writer."

"Yes, thank you, Randolph."

"Interesting..."

"Yes,  t h a n k  y o u, Randolph. I do believe we established that."

"Does it say what she wrote?"

"Fiction, genre and literary. Essays. Blogged, translated... Don't say it!"

"I was only going to ask what she succumbed to."

"With her history, probably some sort of multiple personality issue. 'Superfluous curiosity about too many topics, blah blah blah... Infatuation with languages, dialects and word play sometimes inhibits crystal clarity and objective output and causes confusion of the comic slash embarassing kind.'"

"Did she get to work on it? Ever publish anything?"

"According to this, she started out with Roman...Romantica. Something about some cave in...Ohio?"

"Seneca?"

"No, Ellora. Ellora's Cave. What? Do I have something in my teeth?"

"No it's just... Let me see that."

"Why are you smiling like a...like... Like that?"

"Just thinking of the missus, that's all."

"Not now, Randolph. Concentrate."

"Oh, I am. Aw lawdy, I am."

"Randy!"

"Yes, dear? I mean, Richard."

"What's in that cave?"

"A good time."

"As in..."

"A mighty good time."

"Randolph..."

"Who told me to shut up and concentrate?"

"Now Who is asking you to explain yourself. Out with it."

"You know. Romantica. What sort of rhymes with Romantica?"

"I have no idea."

"No ear for language and apparently no sex life either."

"Bollocks."

"Can't prove it by me, Dick."

"Let me see that."

"Oh, you want to see it, do you now? Caught your attention, did I? Not now, Richard. Concentrate."

"Is it cold in here?"

"No."

"Do you need to have a break?"

"No, I don't need a break. Do you?"

"Why would I need one?"

"I don't know. You look a little red. Around the collar."

"It's hot in here, isn't it?"

"I thought you were cold."

"Yes. No. I need a break. Ten minutes? No, twenty."

"Dick?"

"Yes?"

"You can't take that out. The report. Policy and all that."

"Yes. No, of course not. Have you seen my biro?"

"The who in the what now? Oh, right. Let me write that down for you. It's http://www.jasminejade.com/p-8212-alex-rising.aspx. And show it to Frances, will you. I promise she will be pleased. Several times."

"Randy!"

"What? Just show it to her. You won't be disappointed either, I swear."

"Has Franny said something? She has said something. What did she say?"

"My lips are sealed."

"They will be bleeding in five, four, three-"

"Get outta here."

"A writer?"

"A writer."

"Is that a smile on her face? Did she die funny?"

"No. It says here she wrote happily ever after."

Killing time

Remember my last entry, about how there's nothing on television? Or I think there isn't? Therein lies the problem, I was informed. That it was snobbish and what not to say so. That there is in fact loads on and maybe I haven't been paying attention and how dare I snub reality television when millions love it to death? 

Hold up. I wasn't writing off anything, merely saying in a roundabout way I don't enjoy reality TV, and believe you me, I make a point of checking out everything. Want to catch that ever-elusive Zeitgeist? Take a close look at popular culture and there you have it.

I've killed a particle of my ability to enjoy TV and film by studying them in earnest, and as with most things you set out to deconstruct, they lose some of the magic and luster in the process. Only when and if you get past the analytical phase can you go back to enjoying something in antediluvian bliss. Almost. 

The more you consume any certain form of popular culture, or any art form for that matter, the harder it becomes to find something jaw-dropping to induce goose bumps and make you want to go tell it on the mountain. But when you do, you forget everything. You exist for that moment, in that moment, wish you could hold on to it indefinitely. It may have been something as far removed from your daily experience as they come, but it rang true. It felt real. You felt it. You felt.

Those moments I enjoy. I only haven't found them watching reality television. Doesn't life and livelihood feel enough as if you're on The Apprentice and Big Brother at the same time? It's sudden death in the boardroom and it's murder on the dance floor and aren't we all glad it's not us and what the hell was s/he thinking? Gimme my fifteen minutes? Ka-ching?

If that sounds elitist or finger-wagging, so be it. If I have time to kill, I opt for reading and writing; calling the amazing women in my life I'm proud to call my friends; loving Hubby; an enredo I can dance with our babies; kicking and punching until I'd need more than Firestarter to pick me up from that mat if I truly needed to kick butt. That's what's real to me.

Stranger than fiction

I didn't take part in NaNoWriMo. What I seem to be doing is IMoMoI, as in moving images of the international kind. I also have WriAWriMo going on, writing about writing, but more on that perhaps some other time.

What have you been watching lately? Did you do your homework and go Ghibli? What next? 570 channels and nothing on, huh? Will Work for Food in Hell's Kitchen while Dancing with the Bachelor Apprentice on the Amazing Race for the Biggest Loser on the Brazilian Highlands felt like déjà vu all over again, to only marginally misquote Yogi Berra? 

Still in search of drama? Emotion?! Human interest?!! Blood, sweat and tears of the really real kind? Our human condition in all its misery and life-affirming glory? It doesn't get any more real than this, I promise you that.

I've watched some disturbing, hilarious, revealing and inspiring stories this month. Some older, some new, all timeless. I didn't set out to watch nothing but documentaries, based on a true story films and true to life tales but really, there's nothing on. 

For your viewing pleasure, amazement and horror, I give you the trials and tribulations of humankind as only life seen through an unflinching lens can deliver:


Sin Nombre (Mexico/USA, 2009)


S.O.P. (USA, 2008)


Pray the Devil Back To Hell (USA, 2008)


Waltz with Bashir (Israel/Germany/France, 2008)


Katyn (Poland, 2007)


The Yes Men Fix the World (France/UK/USA, 2009)


The Three Rooms of Melancholia (Finland/Denmark/Germany, 2004)


Let's Make Money (Austria, 2008)


Crude (USA, 2009)


Band of Brothers (UK/USA, 2001)


And that's all for now, folks. Yes, I know it looks like a list of nominees. They have all in fact been nominated for some award or several, most have won at some festival or other, and I highly recommend you look into one or all of them. 

Sorry I deleted the synopses. I didn't think you'd wade your way through to the end of the list and I happened to save the best of the bunch for last. If you have any questions or comments or you'd like to tell me to sod off for not even providing a tagline (not that all even have one), shoot. 

I'll let the pictures do the talking and you'll get to do the World Tour. Or Half the World Tour. Come on, I searched for the most representative links, in English. It'll take you a couple of minutes each (I clocked) to find out what they're all about, if you don't know already. And then some, if you have the time and the inclination to go deeper.

Stranger than fiction, indeed. 

Try them and you may, I say

I like to think I'm a tolerant person. I am. I've been around the world and decided that no culture is more beautiful or less special than the rest, only different, and any ugliness is in the eye of the beholder. And that taking anything to the outer limits, say tolerance, makes you just another fundamentalist. You know, those types who by definition take things dead serious and won't change their mind or the subject.

I like to think I'm not that kind of person. Not that tolerant at all. To celebrate International Day for Tolerance, try to come up with ten things that make you go hmmm. Or grr. Here's my list.

Yes, I too could have gone on and on. The world is by no means perfect and completely to my taste but I'm an optimist. Things can only get better! Come on, repeat after me. For Dita, please... And again, like you mean it. 

Circumcising girls with razorblades and without anesthetics, no less? I don't care how many centuries of cultural tradition back it up, it's inhumane and beastly. 

Women being beaten for flashing an ankle, caned for wearing pants and stoned to death for suspected adultery, see above.

Honor killings, a contradiction in terms if there ever was one.

Maybe we are as fat as we imagine. I'm not saying we are, only that it's a real possibility we should look into if we're feeling physically and/or emotionally constipated. 

Must you sneeze, spit and cough all over the place? You don't? So why do you?

80's fashion was ridiculous the first time around, it isn't looking any better with each revival and it will remain ridiculous with every revival to come of the ridiculous fashion of the 80's.

Some flags and national anthems aren't all that beautiful.  In fact, some are belligerent to the point of being offensive.

I didn't laugh at your joke because it wasn't funny which you of course thought it was since you were drunk but let's face it, people aren't funnier when wasted, only hammered and too drunk to realize it.

There is either too much nudity on television these days or simply not enough. I can't decide.

Your favorite band sucks.

Shakespeare's sisters

Ladies, choose your weapons, Mars attacks! Not really, but trenches have been under construction here and there after Publishers Weekly announced their Best Books of 2009 list. What's wrong with the list? Nothing on first glance, but the Top 10 has been weighed, measured and found lacking in one notable segment of writers, i.e. women. 

You probably wouldn't reject something solely on the basis it was written by a man or automatically like something because a woman wrote it. A good book is a good book. And taste is a subjective issue. So what does it matter what PW's list looks like? It's a list and for many that's all it is: just another list. But it's a list that gets coverage, sells books, helps define quality. And it's notably lacking in women. 

How many women would have made it okay? One? Fifty-one percent? What if there had been no men on that list? Impossible, you say? If it's a coincidence, if gender has nothing to do with anything, how so? So women did write inferior books, is that it? Or do men have an automatic advantage women suspect/know is there but PW categorically denies exists?

See how easily and how fast discussions like this escalate into a Mars versus Venus battle of the sexes? Come on, they do. Many women, assertive women, competent and competitive women are shrugging their so whats thinking it's nothing because they have gone through life pretending sexual biases don't exist. Or it isn't pretending, per se, but rather a self-assuredness and forcefulness born out of all that competence and a sincere belief in equality which has taken many women far and even further.  

But none of those women could say they didn't encounter at least once along the way someone who didn't share that belief, who couldn't get past the face or the figure, or who didn't carry a sexist grudge that tainted everything making it that much harder for them to get along and move on. This someone wasn't necessarily a man. 

Then again maybe it was and you see where the story is headed since all women have been there at some point in their lives. Trivial or life-altering, we tend to remember the moments we turned invisible. Because we felt senseless shame. We felt rage. We felt indignation. No matter how stupid the remark, how idiotic or inconsequential the person or the situation, it raises that "Not-this-bs-again-Couldn't-think-of-anything-else-could-you-The-more-things-change-the-more-they-stay-the-same" feeling women hate hate hate. I'm sure I had a point before jumping into a trench myself...

No, that is my point. That is exactly the feeling lists like this raise. Because art isn't an exact science, it's a compilation of subjective choices without objective meters, none that they have disclosed in detail anyway, and it's therefore easy to take it as a personal affront no matter how hard you tell yourself it doesn't matter one way or the other. 

"Really?" (SNL could take it from here.) "50,000 to choose from and not a single woman made the cut? Really?" I wouldn't want a pc consolation prize to be handed out, PW is free to choose whatever they want with whatever criteria they may or may not have, but ten men? Really? What are the odds? What is their ranking method anyway?

I've read two books from that list: Holmes' The Age of Wonder and Grann's Lost City of Z. I highly recommend them, but I could just as well recommend picking up Atwood's The Year of the Flood or Munro's Too Much Happiness: Stories. They made my list.