A silly story for a change.
Happy new year everybody.
Friday, December 31, 2010
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
52/250 A Year of Flash - twentysix
The second quarter review of 52/250 A Year of Flash is now online. As one of the newest flashers of the second quarter, I was invited to write a reflection on a flash story of mine. The one I chose was 'Equilibrium' and you can read my response here.
Four of my stories are also featured in the 'Best of' line-up, in week#17, #21, #22 and #24.
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Friends (II)
Some photos for a change.
Polly's first visit to our tango studio and her debut on the dance floor. Polly loves languages, movies and art and she hosts the monthly Kubrick Poetry readings at a local bookstore. These days she works for a private school and recruits students who study to improve their English and their lives, something she is proud of. Last time I hanged out with Polly, we were at a poetry reading and I made a less-than-appreciative remark about the 'motivational' work that was being read on stage, to which Polly replied: 'Oh, I like this kind of stuff.' Our conversation ended up in a giggly embrace and that tells you something about my friend. Good-hearted, hopeful and well-behaved Polly who cherishes her dreams.
Jason Lee and me at the aforementioned poetry reading. Jason is a dedicated young poet and he is working on a book-length poem about Hong Kong. As writers we are at the opposite ends of the spectrum. He sets stringent requirements for his writing, churns out long narratives in verse and follows his own voice rather closely. I write in bits and pieces, or space and absence; I stop once I reach the heart of the story and just live the day. As two persons who have known each other for a little while, Jay and I have our similar traits and differences that intersect in interesting ways: he is slow-moving with an impulsive streak, while I am decisive but also meticulous.
With Phoebe and Kathy at a recent milonga (tango party). I wrote about them briefly in my entry about my tango friends. Phoebe lives her life in tango, writing, art and her moments with friends. Kathy is a young doctor and a carefree girl (in a good way). Both are very popular on the dance floor, except poor Kathy still has not learnt to turn away weirdos who spin her around just a little too hard. I look forward to going back to my tango classes in 2011!
Speaking of tango--here is a photo of me dancing with Bond.
My dear girl pals Christine and Claire again. The three of us had a little house party around Christmas at Claire's place and here's her cat DD, a little aloof and curious about the strange girls who invaded her space for the night.
Sunday, December 26, 2010
52/250 A Flash Year - Week#32 - Silence is
Look here.
I had no idea what I was going to write when I typed 'Silence is' on the page--then the image of a droplet came to me and that's that.
Happy holidays to everyone.
Friday, December 24, 2010
The Voyeur
This is a story I wrote two years ago about an episode from my graduate school days, now published on Asia Writes. It happened during the times of SARS: schools were shut down, people roamed around in masks and panic, some were quarantined at the hospitals or in their homes (including someone who lived in my building), others fled the oppression by going on shopping sprees when the city's economy was going downhill. Of course, it's all relative--even at its worst, Hong Kong's economy has always been fairly solid, despite the horrendous gap between the rich and the poor in this town.
Like everyone else I was sick with worry and frustration during that summer. I came down with the flu and suffered a monstrous migraine that wouldn't go away for a long while. It took over my consciousness until I went blind walking up the stairs; then it invaded my sleep and I woke up in tears, anguished over not graduating on time and getting out of the rut I'd been in for years and years.
One night the story began. I did live in Room 422.
MY ORANGE DRAPES are thick and they don't breathe, not in the summer heat of Hong Kong. They flutter when the wind blows; they fall and get sucked between the rusted metal frames that have withstood the last thirty, forty years. Run your hand along them. You'll get a tainted taste on your skin.
The hissing cuts through the evening air. The long and insistent sound jumps and lurks from seven o'clock to midnight every night. In the past two weeks I've looked out of the windows many times and strained myself to hear. It's impossible to tell where the hissing comes from. These flats are long, endless rows of cells overlooking one another in this public housing estate. My search points to different directions, mainly to the lower left of the opposite building where my neighbors have old bed sheets for drapes that leave small and careless openings to their lives.
It sounds like a young man and his stubborn expression of misguided strength. Faceless, the figure is a vague shape and intensity in the dark. There're respites of silence when the hissing seems to stop for good. Then it starts again.
The footsteps unnerve me in the same way. The postman comes at lunchtime and delivers my bank statements, alumni newsletters, commercial printed matters, occasional postcards from an old friend on the other side of the world. The housing authority staff comes in the evening with rent payment notices and newsletters, government propaganda in grey and orange prints.
There's a rustle in the slot of my wooden door. I see an odd piece of paper on the floor. Beneath childish handwriting, a panda dances at the bottom of the page.
‘Dear Miss Room 422,
I'm bored. Will you be my friend?
Sometimes I see you smile. I think you're always happy.
Call me. 9746 3804.
Wait for you!
Mike'
TONIGHT I WEAR a ponytail for a change, though my floral pattern shirt has a similar cut to the one I wore yesterday. It makes no difference to my trip. Between the two fast food places downstairs, I've shown up in short-sleeves and long-sleeves, straight hair and curly hair, explored most items on the menus for take-away and quick dine-in over the years. The cheaper, self-serve place has old light bulbs bustling in the high ceiling. Phantom Chinese horses run wild in a painting on the wall. There're two elderly cashiers on different shifts. The dark-skinned one counts the banknotes with a permanent pout; the other, grey-haired and smiley, chain-smokes and sips milk tea.
The more upscale place is dimly-lit and has green floor tiles, which makes the waitresses look rather prominent in their white shirts. At night a sterile air wraps around the restaurant despite the grease on the floor. The owner is a short chubby man with thick eyelids and lips, pale skin a flitting shade of grey as he bounces around the restaurant wearing a round-collar T-shirt and a sly smile, the kind of smile you remember from a bad stage actor. He's always there to open the door.
“Spaghetti Bolognese with cheese?” he asks.
I sit down at a corner and wait. The cheese costs extra. Sometimes they forget about it and the meat sauce tastes like sugar and salt and water.
There's time to go to the Park'n Shop, but I can't bother and there's enough grocery at home for tonight. The Park'n Shop has its charms for me. The cashier with the great 80's perm and bright lipsticks is my favorite. She looks at the customers in the eyes as she speaks, her voice deep and burnt from prolonged smoking; then she takes the cash or inserts a credit card into the reader. I see her at mahjong with three other ladies, a white cigarette between her red lips and a glass of tea on the side table. In life she might be a dominatrix, a woman one remembers and fears; or she might be harsh-voiced and faint-hearted as her husband and children turn a deaf ear to her pleas. The other cashiers look generic to me, just as I'm one of the numerous customers coming in and out. We pass one another by in our invisible private zones.
I can use more of that anonymity now. Beyond the regular characters at the fast food places and grocery stores, it never crossed my mind that anyone in this housing estate would recognize me, leave alone follow my daily routine. My faith in oblivion is clearly mistaken. We live in twelve-storied buildings: anyone can poke their heads out to see who's smoking in the playground, who's marching into the lobby with shopping bags from a day out. My neighbor must have seen me at different times of the day. Early afternoon I'm a tall and thin girl in jeans and sandals, wobbling beside the bushes in the park. Early evening I have take-away dinner and I'm scurrying for cover, eager to get out of the sight of strangers. My moments of grace are late at night when I hop out of a cab, still radiant with make-up and from the evening's company. My shaky, light-hearted gait is proof that I have a life like anyone else that is more regular and grounded than me. I, too, have my happy times.
IT'S UNFAIR THAT my secret friend should know so much about me when I haven't wanted to show myself. I must have been crying at my desk when they saw me and mistook my shivering for laughing. I could be walking in circles to the strum of an electric guitar or the distorted tone of a violin of a post-rock band. I was mustering anger and grief, and some creep thought I was dancing with a smile on my face. What gives this person the right to judge and exploit me?
My only prize is suffocation. I keep my windows shut most of the time now even though I have no air-conditioning at home. My plastic fan sways, buzzing and stirring dust on the floor. The day unfolds a constant turmoil. I try to sit perfectly still at my desk. Sweat runs down my neck and my back, tracing an insane urge to tear down the drapes and scream. When night falls I want to spin around and breathe; then I remember the prying eyes and that I'm protected in my seclusion. There's satisfaction to my surrender. The watcher can stare at my drapes every night. My absence is all they see now, blanks of a presence they can no longer hold onto.
It's a big price to pay to live in this heat. I'm a fragmented soul and I drift behind the thick orange fabrics, living the resemblance of a life: reading, writing essays, eating take-away, wiping the sweat off my face. My mind is blunted; I pass each day as it comes. I remember the hissing too. I wonder if it's grown stronger since I shielded myself from the outside. In my fantasy it's a sly young guy, more pervy-looking than the restaurant owner or anyone I know. He lives in a receding abyss of boredom; hissing by the windows, he seeks unknowing victims to his glare. He sees through anyone he looks at because everything plays out perfectly in his head. I almost feel sorry for this guy, but not at all for my spying neighbor who's causing me so much pain. I don't think they're the same person. The strength of sound and the childish handwriting don't come together.
I can probably find out if I do my own spying. Still, I wouldn't risk exposing myself when nothing is private in public housing in this town. Past midnight I open my windows and clip the drapes to the frames with laundry clips, so I can peep without being seen. These are my only moments of freedom: I seal myself in again before going to bed. The night is a giant metal bed that creaks and conceals the lovers' identities. With every echo the interspace closes in a little more. Just as the throbbing is about to burst, it takes on a slow, monotonous rhythm; one loses track of time and it promises to last forever. When their love is over there's a man seated on the couch by the windows in a different flat. A calendar hovers over the TV set on a wooden cupboard. There's a never-ending soccer match on screen. The players, wet-haired and flushed, are running or pushing or curled up on the ground in pain and glory. The man is a perfect silhouette; he's eluded me for years and he'll remain a mystery.
The mating calls of stray cats are whirling. It sounds like children crying, like the boy who gets beaten up by a screaming mother in the afternoon. It could be him: his moans and cries on rewind, the same fate running through each day and night of his life. In the glow of the streetlamps a young couple emerges on a bench. The girl is drinking from a can of coke when the guy puts his arm around her shoulder. Such peace is a gift. On occasional nights the lovebirds get into drunken fights, crying and pushing each other like sumo wrestlers in a video game. I once saw a young man throw his arms up in the air at his girlfriend, in a dramatically loving or cruel gesture. He shouted: “What have I done wrong?”
BLACK INK TRAILS along the dotted line under an imaginary child's hand. These are neat letters masking a sense of urgency: “Call me. 9746 3804.”
Did my young friend scribble this second note after he finished his homework, under the gaze of adults, full of blame and malice? Or did he just return from a hasty porn voyage in his small bedroom, his cheap and privileged access to autonomy?
What kind of person would my voyeur be: a youngster stripped of privacy at home who seeks to violate space, or a precocious child looking for his counterpart? A thin lad with faint light on his bare chest, envisaging an intimate encounter with a woman twice his age, dreaming her curves and moves until the curtains fall, cutting short the echoes of his loneliness. Or is it be a girl who cries long cries like the child protagonist in the afternoon drama? A girl punished for everything she does and doesn't do, who cries as her mother thrashes her on the back; a girl who leans against the rusted window frames and imagines herself a dancer in the dark to a ferocious song; a girl so bent by anger that she thrives on playing the victim's role to justify her spying and living a lie, to seek the attention she'd never receive so she can grieve over the lost opportunity for friendship, a window to laughter and colorful self-pity.
Did she walk up the stairs to my flat with a pounding heart, or simply a thirst for adventure? Or was it a he: Did he dart down the stairs after he left this note, anxious for contact, for a fantastic opening in life?
The anticipation is the bleeding in my mouth. I open the drapes and the dusty windows to see. There's nobody looking at me.
The hissing cuts through the evening air. The long and insistent sound jumps and lurks from seven o'clock to midnight every night. In the past two weeks I've looked out of the windows many times and strained myself to hear. It's impossible to tell where the hissing comes from. These flats are long, endless rows of cells overlooking one another in this public housing estate. My search points to different directions, mainly to the lower left of the opposite building where my neighbors have old bed sheets for drapes that leave small and careless openings to their lives.
It sounds like a young man and his stubborn expression of misguided strength. Faceless, the figure is a vague shape and intensity in the dark. There're respites of silence when the hissing seems to stop for good. Then it starts again.
The footsteps unnerve me in the same way. The postman comes at lunchtime and delivers my bank statements, alumni newsletters, commercial printed matters, occasional postcards from an old friend on the other side of the world. The housing authority staff comes in the evening with rent payment notices and newsletters, government propaganda in grey and orange prints.
There's a rustle in the slot of my wooden door. I see an odd piece of paper on the floor. Beneath childish handwriting, a panda dances at the bottom of the page.
‘Dear Miss Room 422,
I'm bored. Will you be my friend?
Sometimes I see you smile. I think you're always happy.
Call me. 9746 3804.
Wait for you!
Mike'
TONIGHT I WEAR a ponytail for a change, though my floral pattern shirt has a similar cut to the one I wore yesterday. It makes no difference to my trip. Between the two fast food places downstairs, I've shown up in short-sleeves and long-sleeves, straight hair and curly hair, explored most items on the menus for take-away and quick dine-in over the years. The cheaper, self-serve place has old light bulbs bustling in the high ceiling. Phantom Chinese horses run wild in a painting on the wall. There're two elderly cashiers on different shifts. The dark-skinned one counts the banknotes with a permanent pout; the other, grey-haired and smiley, chain-smokes and sips milk tea.
The more upscale place is dimly-lit and has green floor tiles, which makes the waitresses look rather prominent in their white shirts. At night a sterile air wraps around the restaurant despite the grease on the floor. The owner is a short chubby man with thick eyelids and lips, pale skin a flitting shade of grey as he bounces around the restaurant wearing a round-collar T-shirt and a sly smile, the kind of smile you remember from a bad stage actor. He's always there to open the door.
“Spaghetti Bolognese with cheese?” he asks.
I sit down at a corner and wait. The cheese costs extra. Sometimes they forget about it and the meat sauce tastes like sugar and salt and water.
There's time to go to the Park'n Shop, but I can't bother and there's enough grocery at home for tonight. The Park'n Shop has its charms for me. The cashier with the great 80's perm and bright lipsticks is my favorite. She looks at the customers in the eyes as she speaks, her voice deep and burnt from prolonged smoking; then she takes the cash or inserts a credit card into the reader. I see her at mahjong with three other ladies, a white cigarette between her red lips and a glass of tea on the side table. In life she might be a dominatrix, a woman one remembers and fears; or she might be harsh-voiced and faint-hearted as her husband and children turn a deaf ear to her pleas. The other cashiers look generic to me, just as I'm one of the numerous customers coming in and out. We pass one another by in our invisible private zones.
I can use more of that anonymity now. Beyond the regular characters at the fast food places and grocery stores, it never crossed my mind that anyone in this housing estate would recognize me, leave alone follow my daily routine. My faith in oblivion is clearly mistaken. We live in twelve-storied buildings: anyone can poke their heads out to see who's smoking in the playground, who's marching into the lobby with shopping bags from a day out. My neighbor must have seen me at different times of the day. Early afternoon I'm a tall and thin girl in jeans and sandals, wobbling beside the bushes in the park. Early evening I have take-away dinner and I'm scurrying for cover, eager to get out of the sight of strangers. My moments of grace are late at night when I hop out of a cab, still radiant with make-up and from the evening's company. My shaky, light-hearted gait is proof that I have a life like anyone else that is more regular and grounded than me. I, too, have my happy times.
IT'S UNFAIR THAT my secret friend should know so much about me when I haven't wanted to show myself. I must have been crying at my desk when they saw me and mistook my shivering for laughing. I could be walking in circles to the strum of an electric guitar or the distorted tone of a violin of a post-rock band. I was mustering anger and grief, and some creep thought I was dancing with a smile on my face. What gives this person the right to judge and exploit me?
My only prize is suffocation. I keep my windows shut most of the time now even though I have no air-conditioning at home. My plastic fan sways, buzzing and stirring dust on the floor. The day unfolds a constant turmoil. I try to sit perfectly still at my desk. Sweat runs down my neck and my back, tracing an insane urge to tear down the drapes and scream. When night falls I want to spin around and breathe; then I remember the prying eyes and that I'm protected in my seclusion. There's satisfaction to my surrender. The watcher can stare at my drapes every night. My absence is all they see now, blanks of a presence they can no longer hold onto.
It's a big price to pay to live in this heat. I'm a fragmented soul and I drift behind the thick orange fabrics, living the resemblance of a life: reading, writing essays, eating take-away, wiping the sweat off my face. My mind is blunted; I pass each day as it comes. I remember the hissing too. I wonder if it's grown stronger since I shielded myself from the outside. In my fantasy it's a sly young guy, more pervy-looking than the restaurant owner or anyone I know. He lives in a receding abyss of boredom; hissing by the windows, he seeks unknowing victims to his glare. He sees through anyone he looks at because everything plays out perfectly in his head. I almost feel sorry for this guy, but not at all for my spying neighbor who's causing me so much pain. I don't think they're the same person. The strength of sound and the childish handwriting don't come together.
I can probably find out if I do my own spying. Still, I wouldn't risk exposing myself when nothing is private in public housing in this town. Past midnight I open my windows and clip the drapes to the frames with laundry clips, so I can peep without being seen. These are my only moments of freedom: I seal myself in again before going to bed. The night is a giant metal bed that creaks and conceals the lovers' identities. With every echo the interspace closes in a little more. Just as the throbbing is about to burst, it takes on a slow, monotonous rhythm; one loses track of time and it promises to last forever. When their love is over there's a man seated on the couch by the windows in a different flat. A calendar hovers over the TV set on a wooden cupboard. There's a never-ending soccer match on screen. The players, wet-haired and flushed, are running or pushing or curled up on the ground in pain and glory. The man is a perfect silhouette; he's eluded me for years and he'll remain a mystery.
The mating calls of stray cats are whirling. It sounds like children crying, like the boy who gets beaten up by a screaming mother in the afternoon. It could be him: his moans and cries on rewind, the same fate running through each day and night of his life. In the glow of the streetlamps a young couple emerges on a bench. The girl is drinking from a can of coke when the guy puts his arm around her shoulder. Such peace is a gift. On occasional nights the lovebirds get into drunken fights, crying and pushing each other like sumo wrestlers in a video game. I once saw a young man throw his arms up in the air at his girlfriend, in a dramatically loving or cruel gesture. He shouted: “What have I done wrong?”
BLACK INK TRAILS along the dotted line under an imaginary child's hand. These are neat letters masking a sense of urgency: “Call me. 9746 3804.”
Did my young friend scribble this second note after he finished his homework, under the gaze of adults, full of blame and malice? Or did he just return from a hasty porn voyage in his small bedroom, his cheap and privileged access to autonomy?
What kind of person would my voyeur be: a youngster stripped of privacy at home who seeks to violate space, or a precocious child looking for his counterpart? A thin lad with faint light on his bare chest, envisaging an intimate encounter with a woman twice his age, dreaming her curves and moves until the curtains fall, cutting short the echoes of his loneliness. Or is it be a girl who cries long cries like the child protagonist in the afternoon drama? A girl punished for everything she does and doesn't do, who cries as her mother thrashes her on the back; a girl who leans against the rusted window frames and imagines herself a dancer in the dark to a ferocious song; a girl so bent by anger that she thrives on playing the victim's role to justify her spying and living a lie, to seek the attention she'd never receive so she can grieve over the lost opportunity for friendship, a window to laughter and colorful self-pity.
Did she walk up the stairs to my flat with a pounding heart, or simply a thirst for adventure? Or was it a he: Did he dart down the stairs after he left this note, anxious for contact, for a fantastic opening in life?
The anticipation is the bleeding in my mouth. I open the drapes and the dusty windows to see. There's nobody looking at me.
Friday, December 17, 2010
52/250 A Flash Year - Week#31 - That Girl
My latest piece at 52/250 is up here.
I wrote it at the end of a long and frustrating day--my need for detachment came pouring out of me as I wrote and that girl was born. It's strange how one's language can surpass itself when one's writing against oppression.
My days are full of surprises.
Thursday, December 16, 2010
> Language > Place blog carnival
Language > Place blog carnival: a BluePrintReview project and a joined blog cyber journey featuring international perspectives on language and place.
The second edition of > Language > Place blog carnival features over 20 writers from around the world. It unfolds between directions, detours and codes to arrive at fictive domains that are made real by the yearning for souls adrift. The journey continues, looking into private places and eccentricities, to trace slipping boundaries and the sense of one's ever shifting homes.
For info on how to join the next carnival, related links and notes on the project, visit the > Language > Place info page.
Nicolette
Detours/Directions
Dorothee Lang lives in Germany. This summer she flew to Vienna for some days. The lingual fun started on a day trip to Bratislava, once a trilingual city and now capital of Slovakia. Through a misunderstanding, she got lost in “Nove Mesto”, the 'new part of town' with a friend. 'The day trip to Bratislava indeed felt like a trip through history, and the Slovak language made it special, and more "abroad".' She blogged about the trip in: ‘Vienna, Bratislava, Istanbul’.
Karyn Eisler from Canada finds herself in foreign places where languages become music. Sometimes they dance in images, as in the Hungarian spa town of Hévíz. Look here.
Steve Wing from Florida grew up in a mono-linguistic place and grew to love other cultures and languages. In ‘road signs’, he muses on the relationships between words, directions and origins: ‘Even where there is one predominant language, though, there are traces of other tongues. So it is with the words on these road signs, which open like doors onto other cultures...'
Exchanges Decoded
Christopher Allen, an American writer and teacher living in Germany, travels the world with his ‘linguistic advantage’. He blogs about his adventures at ‘I MUST BE OFF’ and for this month’s blog carnival, he sent ‘Taksi or Fright’, an entry about his attempts to make himself understood in Southeast Asia in November.
Parmanu is from India and his job with a multinational company has brought him to Germany. For December’s blog carnival he sent ‘Super 8’, an entry about a brief conversation in English he had with a German passenger on the train, the charm and complexities of exchanges spanning cultures and languages.
‘It is with us humans, we fall into our language in times of emotional communication,’ notes Abha Iyengar, a poet and freelance writer from New Delhi, India. During a Writing Residency in Tamil Nadu in Southern India from 2009 to 2010, Abha navigated between the differences in sounds, sights and people in her temporary dwelling and those in her hometown. Follow her discovery in ‘An Ambassador Mercedes in Pondicherry’.
'I love the idea that multiculturalism--or is it duoculturalism? is alive and well and on my back,' Matt Potter notes in his entry 'Dyeing for it’ about his love for the 'trans-global warriors' T-shirts that accompany him across Germany and Australia. Matt loves sex, fashion and words--and he flaunts his stuff with flair (ignore the adult content warning note).
‘It is with us humans, we fall into our language in times of emotional communication,’ notes Abha Iyengar, a poet and freelance writer from New Delhi, India. During a Writing Residency in Tamil Nadu in Southern India from 2009 to 2010, Abha navigated between the differences in sounds, sights and people in her temporary dwelling and those in her hometown. Follow her discovery in ‘An Ambassador Mercedes in Pondicherry’.
'I love the idea that multiculturalism--or is it duoculturalism? is alive and well and on my back,' Matt Potter notes in his entry 'Dyeing for it’ about his love for the 'trans-global warriors' T-shirts that accompany him across Germany and Australia. Matt loves sex, fashion and words--and he flaunts his stuff with flair (ignore the adult content warning note).
Fictive Domains
Marcus Speh is a native German who mostly writes in English because he thinks in images and a foreign language is a wonderful plaything. He blogs at Nothing to Flawnt, a reference to his long-time nom de plume, Finnegan Flawnt. While on vacation in Texas this October, Marcus wrote whimsical stories on different objects found on a Texan beach. Check them out here.
‘One day, he thought, his postcards to his wife would be found - these drawings would be his last words to her,’ writes Stella Pierides in her short short ‘Postcards’, which looks back on the cruelty of the Greek Civil War from 1946 to 1949. You can also read her notes on the story in ‘Language, Trauma, and Silence’. Originally from Athens, Greece, Stella now divides her time between London and Bavaria.
Linda Simoni-Wastila crunches numbers by day and churns words at night in Baltimore, and much of her writing explores health, in particular the societal and personal facets of medication and medicating. She participates in the blog carnival with her flash fiction ‘Lost in Suomi’, which was inspired by her memories of a distant trip to Finland.
Souls Adrift
Sherry O’Keefe is a poet and she writes beyond the confines of beautiful Montana. She asks the questions whose answers we keep to ourselves: What is common among all languages? What commotions happen in life that no language can adequately express? in her entry ‘In Case of a Bad Day’ and the poem ‘Mike’.
Len Kuntz lives on a lake in rural Washington State, and his writing paints vivid pictures of human suffering and loss. ‘Canto Del Sol’ is an account of his family trip to a remote part of Mexico. While there, they came face to face with extreme poverty and a community whose existence is dependent upon the discarded garbage of others. Len finished a novel this year and he blogs at People You Know by Heart.
‘Australian Friend likes to say, “Bloom where you’re planted.” It’s good advice for anybody, but I think it applies double to expats,’ writes Jennifer Saunders, who is originally from the American Midwest and now lives in The Bernese Oberland in Switzerland. She weaves impressions of US-styled Thanksgiving and memories of homes and traditions in her entry ‘Expat Thanksgiving. And Pie.’
Private Places
Julien Tatham is a filmmaker and experimental arts artist based in Paris. Julien lives for love and stories as he seeks truth in his personal space, an empty place that rings with questions: ‘...often you are alone in front of this silent place, outside we hear the rumor, a city, through the window. I’m surrounded by these objects in the apartment, rooms are stanzas of life.’
‘Behind that door could be anything, but at the same time, the possibilities have already been decided,’ Trang Nguyen writes about her private space in Melbourne in ‘(un)fettered territory’. Trang moved to Australia with her Vietnamese parents when she was two months’ old. Now she draws, takes pictures, writes, dances and loves in a surprising vacuum.
‘At night I take solitary walks. My mind curls up into a warm embrace for myself and the promise I would give, against the wind...I live a different kind of life,’ writes Nicolette Wong in an entry set in a back alley in her neighborhood, ‘Spring’. Nicolette is a Hong Kong-based writer who wavers between solitude and connection, destinations and abandon, solidity and wound in fiction and in life.
‘At night I take solitary walks. My mind curls up into a warm embrace for myself and the promise I would give, against the wind...I live a different kind of life,’ writes Nicolette Wong in an entry set in a back alley in her neighborhood, ‘Spring’. Nicolette is a Hong Kong-based writer who wavers between solitude and connection, destinations and abandon, solidity and wound in fiction and in life.
Slipping Boundaries
Natalie d’Arbeloff is a multi-lingual artist and writer living in London. From January to February this year Natalie was an artist-in-residence at the Casa 5 Centre in Tavira, Portugal. ‘Tavira Experienced’ is her visual journey around the city with the natives. Check out the complete archive of her entries on her stay in Tavira here.
‘Green and opaque with a hint of turquoise when the sun lights it. I stare at it and it is a surprise when the waves break in a froth of white foam and not in semi-precious stone chips,’ Julia Davies writes about the China sea in ‘Musing on travelling’. Julia is an English writer living in Germany where she juggles different sides of her personality.
‘...I’d come in the house, where Grandma kept a huge jar of old buttons for which I came to visit. I’d dump them onto the carpet and make up my own worlds full of button people, button animals, and button things...That was the Fajal of my imagination.’ Cathy Douglas ponders the history of his Portuguese immigrant family in her post ‘Faial’.
Foreign Eccentricities
Rose Hunter from Australia is a witness to strange scenes wherever she goes. In ‘El viento! El viento! Report’, she gives us glimpses into her ‘domestic situation in Mexcio--her sneaky neighbor, her apartment with an open front view and Rose shrieking about her everyday life: ‘It’s like camping!’
‘One day not long ago I drove home wondering how we were going to eat till Friday, payday...We had 300 baht, which, technically speaking, was not no money. It was $8.81,’ writes American writer Court Merrigan in ‘Democracy for $11.74, or, Serendipity’. Court’s household almost played a part in corruption in Thailand, where he lived his American adventure with his wife, two kids and his writing.
Rachael Fulton is a Scottish girl who writes from Jakarta and other corners of the world. She participates in the blog carnival with an entry on her earlier days in Logrono, Spain, which began with her sharing a place with a man who was a member of the Guardia Civil and another who had strange mystical pictures on his walls and said the flat was protected by spirits.
Shifting Homes
‘When one returns home after a gap of two and a half years, how much does one carry the ‘home’ that one left behind and how much does one carry back the ‘foreign’ one has been a sojourner in?’ Mosarrap Hossain Khan recalls his journey to home in India a year ago. Morsarrap is pursuing his doctoral research in English Literature at New York University.
Originally from Nigeria, Mary Shorun now lives, studies and writes in Texas. Mary calls the Nigerian and American cultures her ‘unique culture’ and their shared language of sport has particularly fascinated her. She captured the transition and familiarity between cultures in a blog entry after having watched an American frisbee game on a pleasant Friday evening.
Latha Vijaybaskar is a writer and educator living in Dubai. Having grown up in a multi-linguistic country like India, picking up new languages should have been a joyride for Latha. Yet modern times have made it too easy for some to grasp the spirit of learning languages, Latha writes in her entry ‘Paradigm Shift’.
(Photo credits: Dorothee Lang, Christopher Allen, Marcus Speh, Phyllis Ho, Trang Nguyen, Natalie d'Arbeloff, Rose Hunter)
About + How to Join + Links
> Language > Place blog carnival was started by Dorothee Lang, editor of BluePrintReview, in November 2010. Visit the > Language > Place info page for Dorothee's notes on how the carnival came together and related links.
> Language > Place blog carnival was started by Dorothee Lang, editor of BluePrintReview, in November 2010. Visit the > Language > Place info page for Dorothee's notes on how the carnival came together and related links.
The December 2010 edition is hosted by Nicolette Wong, fiction writer and art writer from Hong Kong. She is in the editorial teams of Negative Suck and Dark Chaos.
The third edition of the carnival will be edited and hosted by MiCrow editor Michael J. Solender at not from here, are you?
Submissions are open on December 20 and the edition is planned to go online at the end of January. Check out the guidelines here. Note: please address all submissions to Michael, as the carnival switches editors and hosts with every edition.
Check out the carnival contributors' blogroll here.
Language > Place blog carnival is reviewed as a BluePrintReview project on Folded Word blog. Read the interview with Dorothee and Nicolette here.
Saturday, December 4, 2010
Dark Chaos - Mirage
New flash fiction out in Dark Chaos. Read it here.
This story was inspired by a conversation I had with Amy about mirrors (and then Eno chimed in for a few comments as well). If mirror is what separates us from our alter-egos: How do we go over to the other side?
Thursday, December 2, 2010
Calls for Submissions: Language/Place, Negative Suck & Dark Chaos
Seriously, it's time for you to submit something to the December edition of Language/Place blog carnival. On how to participate: find a post from your blog archive or put together a new entry that revolves around the themes of language or place. It may be a poem, a short story, a piece of travelouge or reflection or a photo which illuminates your relationship with language, a place you visit/inhabit, like or dislike, a sense of connection or dislocation, being at home or away from home.
Send a link to your blog post and a brief description of it and yourself to langplace@gmail.com and you're good to go.
On a different note: by some indefinable logic I've become 'affiliated' with Negative Suck and Dark Chaos, two online journals edited by Jeffrey S. Callico. Negative Suck celebrates its first anniversary and its December 2010 edition is now online. For those of you who're unfamiliar with NS, 'Negative Suck' is actually a medical term which Jeff adopted as a very loose metaphor for his literary venture (see his interview on Fictionaut here). Dark Chaos embraces artists who only come out at night--you get the drift, so check it out and send your work to Jeff.
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