myz_lilith

Day 30 - One last moment, in great detail
I can't pick one so here's a whole load of them:

Wrexham. 18. Shy as hell. Previous time I'd been home Mum was throwing out an old black hat and on a whim I claimed it. Wore it when I nipped down to the shops and found I was walking differently - you stand up straighter in a hat. On the way back, two (drunk) girls stopped me in the street to tell me I looked beautiful. (They were going on about cheekbones, which I didn't think I had.) When I got home, I ended up staring at the mirror for a long time, without once thinking I was hideously ugly. (For the first time ever.) Thank you random strangers.

Uni. 19. Making a really dumb joke and having someone laughing uncontrollably at it, and realising for the first time ever that the people around me were friends because they liked me (and thought my bad jokes were funny) not just because they felt sorry for me, or felt obliged to be. Huge moment.

Australia. 21. Middle of the desert. Washed my hair in a wood-powered shower (with the smell of woodsmoke drifting in over the door) and dried it in front or a campfire built out of whole trees. Later that evening I and two other girls liberated a box of wine and snuck off to talk about how our lives had brought us there, under a sky carpeted with unfamiliar stars.

Wales. Twenty-something. Up all night at one of the Ladybird parties of legend. Three of us still alive, still drinking, at dawn, standing by a fishpond in the amazing never-ending garden, talking the world apart and watching the sun emerge.

On a train. Sometime. I'd been getting very heavily back into photography, and had reached the stage I was at at Uni, where I saw more of the world through a camera lens (and in stop motion, because every photo opportunity meant click - move - click - move - click like a fractured marionette.) Was on a train from somewhere to somewhere, that had made an unexplained stop in the middle of nowhere. It was late summer, so the wheat was high and gold in the surrounding fields. And the wind had come out to play, and the entire field was dancing, twisting and bending in great rolling waves, over and over and endless. I had the urge to rush and get my camera, only to realise that even if it would take a decent picture through the window pane, it could never capture that moment. All I'd have to show for it would be a rather uninteresting looking field, and a year later I'd have wondered why I even took it and the moment would have died forever. I started leaving the camera at home a lot more after that.

Dragon*Con. A few years ago. A game involving plastic laminated droid tags that you had to keep out of sight of any stormtroopers. And there were a LOT of stormtroopers. (One of whom was Elvis.) So many stormtroopers that I ended up blind to them, and so had my droid confiscated pretty quickly. The confiscating trooper was a bit on the petite side, so I just had to ask 'Aren't you a little short for a stormtrooper?' Quick as a flash, he whipped the helmet off, revealing ~that~ haircut, and replied 'Luke Skywalker. Here to rescue you, Ma'am.' Moment of genius. Memories from Dragon*Con tend to be very hazy for obvious reasons, but I remember that one clearly. (Some of our friends managed to keep hold of their droids that day - they countered with 'These are not the droids you're looking for' cards, which the stormtroopers obeyed without question. Of course.)

Now. Sitting here having read through all my old Livejournal posts. At first it was slightly depressing, seeing that I seem to have been going round in the same few circles forever: need to sort my CV and get a new job; need to do more drawing of my own; need to get serious about writing; need to paint the wardrobe/cupboard/luggage. But then I look at where I actually was then, and where I am now, and I think: I'm getting there. Not just that, I'm accelerating. Flying.

(These things are always self-referential in the end.)

Topic list is here

I finished! I'm quite impressed by that, as usually with these things I get distracted halfway through and forget all about them. Although I've run a day over, which is (stopbeingabloodyperfectionist) disappointing. (Of course, I can get round it... I just need to cross the International Date Line without noticing.) Now need to line more stuff up to keep up the writing every day thing.

Day 28 – Something that you miss, in great detail
I miss friends that I don't see enough of (and must visit more often). I miss relatives that I'll never see again. I miss being 18 and having the whole future open to me. (And no, I wouldn't want to actually be 18 again, and yes, I know I have the whole future open to me right now, it's just the principle of the thing. Just because it makes no sense doesn't mean I don't feel it.) I miss living in a house with a dog in it. I miss the sea.

But what I've been increasingly missing recently is academic study. Not necessarily academia itself, just the study itself. Hunting complex ideas, struggling with something almost incomprehensible and wrapping your brain round it until it pops into a new shape, piling concept on concept until they collapse into fresh understanding. (Always with petals round the edge.) And doing all that within a disciplined, evolving structure, not haphazardly. Building something big.

It's not as if my job isn't mentally stimulating - on a good day there's a lot of analysis and conceptual thought involved. But it's not quite the same. Building as opposed to excavating, or something. Even if one turns into the foundation for the other, it's a different flavour of thinking.

I'm slightly suspicious of motivations here: I've got several friends at various stages of graduate and post-grad study and I always want to be doing everything that everybody else is. And part of me never forgave me for not getting a first, so I suspect that part of it's just a hunt for validation, which isn't always healthy. (Ironically, part of the reason I studied Fine Art was because it was the one thing I didn't feel like I could just sail though - I'd always been good at it, but didn't have the same level of total control as I had over more academic subjects - it was terrifying and exhilarating.) But now that I get paid to do art I'm now increasingly missing the more academic stuff... and have mid-term plans to do something about it (which really comes into tomorrow's topic).

In the meantime I'm mostly doing haphazard. Which is better than nothing.

Topic list is here

Day 25 – A first, in great detail

So there's a reason why this one's been delayed a few days. The first in question is first short story submitted to a paying market. And I've finally sent it off today. It's a very short flash fic piece that I wrote ages back (there's a couple of people here who volunteered as test readers who have already seen it but probably long since forgotten it!)

Somewhat appropriately to this post, the title is 'First love'. And going by the experience of every other writer ever, it will probably also end up being my first rejection. But still. After years of talking about it, I've finally taken the first step towards trying to get fiction professionally published... now to keep it going.

(I was going to say 'properly published' but not sure such a thing exists any more, and I know several people who are doing really well with print on demand and the like, but I want to try the traditional route first, just so I can decide where to try to take this whole writing thing based on reality rather than fear...)

Topic list is here

Day 23 – Something that makes you feel better, in great detail
(In no particular order)

Blue sky
High places (looking down over the world)
Driving too fast
The sea
Hysterical giggles
Adventures (getting creatively lost)
Writing
A good morning kiss
Stars on a clear night
Thunderstorms
Pub + pint + friends
Little Earthquakes
Duvet
Monkeyboy
Eeyore
Proper hugs
Talking until sunrise
Running on the cross trainer
Mum (Dad too)
The smell of autumn
Dogs
Bubbles
Genuine apologies (giving or receiving)
Chocolate
Charles Bukowski
Great sex
Magpies
Zim
Unexpected texts
Freshly dyed hair
Horror stories
Sunlight (or failing that, SAD lamp)
Tea
Kris (because he deserves to be on here twice)

Topic list is here

Day 21 - Another moment, in great detail

New Year's Eve, 2003. Phono with all the usual crowd, including RJ and Sel, who were staying at ours that night to save them trying to trek back to the middle of nowhere. I don't remember much about the night... not an alcohol thing, just passing time and the difficulty of pinpointing one Phono night - or even one Phono NYE - among so many. There would have been cheap vodka and absinthe, cheesy goth and 90's alternative, kissing Kris at midnight and as many people as possible after that. The usual. What wasn't usual was when we finally emerged into the night, only to find the darkness had turned white. Not only had snow fallen heavily while we had been in the club, but it was still falling - great soft white flakes drifting down in the streetlights (frozen ghost moths falling from the stars). It was like the ending of every soap opera christmas special ever, but real and cold and melting on our cheeks and setting everything tingling. (Wonder and delight and cold dark fairytales and inhuman beauty in an everyday place.) There were other memorable moments before we made it home (the incredible sticking power of New Rocks as a short slope became a mountain, and the slowest, most stately taxi ride home ever, which only added to the dream-like atmosphere) but it was that first glimpse of snow that stretched out forever that will stick with me always.

Topic list is here

Day 19 – Something you regret, in great detail
I'm really struggling with this one.

The thing is, to me 'regret' includes actively wishing something had gone differently. And I can't honestly say that I do. Because I quite like who I am now, and where my life is, and every single thing in my past - whether good, bad,painful, embarrassing, I-was-an-idiot, they-were-an-idiot - was part of what brought me here. There's probably a lot of smaller things that I could change while still ultimately ending up in the same place - particular arguments, actions, events, choices - but without knowing which would be safe, and which would trigger some kind of butterfly effect, there's nothing I regret enough that I'd risk losing me by changing it. And at the other end of the scale, the big 'regretful' things which were obviously bad (bulimia, for example, or periods of drinking way too much) were so much wrapped up with who I was over a long period of time, that regretting them would be as futile as wishing the sky a different colour. In those cases regret is too small a word for something that took a determined, long term transition to overcome.

Even the old classic: the things I never did, chances I never took, missed opportunities, all the things you're supposed to regret the most - they were all part of making me me, here and now. And while it's possible that if I'd gotten myself sorted out faster I might be bigger, brighter, better, more successful right now, I still wouldn't be me.

Also, there's the influence of my Mum's advice: don't worry about anything you can't change. Once you've taken the exam, sent the letter, rolled the die, then that's done and you can't change it, so any kind of worry, regret or wishing otherwise is a waste of time and emotional energy. And somehow that advice made a real impact - I generally don't worry about anything in the past. Of course, the present and future are a whole other matter - I'm an expert at paranoia and second guessing myself when it comes to making a decision about what's happening now, or what to do next... but not when it comes to stuff that's fixed and gone.

The one thing I do continually regret is letting time slip by too quickly, and not cramming as much as possible into every available moment. But it was that kind of thinking that led to me putting myself under immense pressure in the past, and pushing myself to burnout and breakdown. So I'm not meant to regret that, I'm supposed to accept and even enjoy it. Okay, so deep down I still think I should be able to do far more and that I'd achieve far more if I only stopped being so damn lazy and started doing ten times as much, and that of course I can keep it under control and walk the line without ever quite tipping over the edge. But then I remember my therapist said that's exactly what driven people always say, and that they're always wrong. (And then waited a moment, and went on to say 'and of course, you're now trying to find a way round that, aren't you?' Which of course I was. Which makes me think he may have had a point.)

So overall? No regrets.

Topic list is here

Day 17 – Your favorite memory, in great detail
I'm not so sure about this one. Favourite memory. Is that the one that means the most to you? Or the happiest one? Or one that pinpoints a hugely significant moment in your life? Or the one that's the most unforgettable? Or the one that you like to play over in your mind as you're drifting off to sleep? Besides, memory isn't static, it comes in chains and loops, one memory often comes with many others attached, sometimes from years apart. (One of my very earliest memories is a memory of a memory of a memory, to the point I'm not even sure it's real any more.) And it wouldn't matter, but that cat's cradle of memory is part of what makes me. Picking out a moment and writing about it is one thing, because a moment is a moment. Picking out a favourite memory is like picking out a favourite body part. Or more like a favourite strand of hair.

So this isn't necessarily my favourite memory (I've never been very good at favourites anyway) but it's the first one that popped into my fingers:
Very young. A tiny holiday cottage in Scarborough, I'm sitting at a kitchen table with a red plastic check tablecloth. There's steaming pile of paper bundles full of fish and chips on the counter, and grown-ups clattering round fetching plates and cutlery. Nan and Gran are arguing about who will get out the salt and vinegar out ('I'll do it, Rose.' 'No, sit down, I'll get it Margaret.') and for the first time ever I realise they have first names...

Topic list is here

Day 15 – Your dreams, in great detail
There's a city. I don't know if it's the same one or different each time, but I always know I've been there before, sometimes only a few minutes ago. There are stone walls, and underpasses, and dark skyscrapers, and graffiti, and rain, but no maps.

There's a building. It's usually built around the plan of my old high school (three interlocking buildings, one of which contains a complete loop, with staircases all at cross purposes) but is frequently weirder on the inside. Sometimes it actually is a school, staging those 'oh my god, I'm late for class and three months behind on my homework' anxiety dreams. (But rarely naked - three months behind on homework was usually anxiety enough.) Although I've found that recently if one of those does crop up, dreaming me stands up, declares 'Sod this, I've got a degree and a good job', and walks out. So they've mostly given in. But the building - or at least the ground-plan - remains: as a headquarters, as a museum, as a grand ballroom, as a liner, as a spaceship, as a cavern, as a prison, as a temple, as a home of the future, as a starting place for somewhere else.

There are high places. Cold and empty. Sometimes storms, and sometimes starlight. Not really anywhere, more somewhere else.

There is usually at least one person I know from real life, even if it's from an old real life, long ago. (Kris hates it when he appears in my dreams, because of the times he does something hateful and hurtful there, and I spend half the next day pissed off with him, and feeling semi-justified in doing so. He also objects to the times he has fun in my dreams, because he feels cheated that he misses out on it.) But usually it's just a few familiar faces appearing alongside a vast cast of people created purely for that moment, complete with faces and bodies and voices and personalities and histories and selves, and not necessarily human. I don't know if they reappear from one dream to the next, but if they do I don't recognise them, and they don't recognise me.

There are dreams that someone other than me wakes up from, and they sit there in the dark, looking at an unfamiliar room through my eyes, looking at my life like an actor unsure if they want to carry on with this role or just break the contract and skip town. I can remember those thoughts they think, but never the dreams they wake out of. I'm not entirely surprised at that. I'm not sure they're mine to remember.

Dreams eat the world outside, digesting the train journeys and club music and half finished films that play on, outside in the waking world. They're particularly fond of alarm clocks, which they can devour three at a time. I've lost count of the number of times I've been on a secret mission to stop the wailing sirens before they bring the enemy upon us, or wake the beast, or set the walls tumbling down.

Some dreams protect themselves in other ways. One dream in which I was perfectly aware that I was dreaming, and everyone around me was aware that they were a figment... and they were all begging/threatening/cajoling me to stay asleep, because being dreams, to wake up would be to kill them all. I tried to save them until I realised it was a trap. Strangely, it never felt like a nightmare.

True nightmares never let on that they're dreams. The worst ones slip through levels of waking and sleeping, so that each escape into wakefulness slides into a fresh horror, until awake can no longer be trusted. Even in daylight, the world isn't quite trustworthy, and anything could come slipping in through the edges. The worst ones can linger for days. The very worst one still haunts me 15 years later.

There are also the wearying dreams, which are far less terrible, but far more insidious. Dreams which involve running a series of thankless tasks, on a neverending treadmill of mundane, that make a soft night's sleep feel like a hard day's work, and are twice as exhausting as staying awake. (I was getting a lot of those a couple of months back.)

There are also visually overworked dreams that depart from the usual cinematic illusion into whatever screen I've been staring at during the day: design dreams, where one action advances into the next through layered inDesign frames; illustrator dreams, where every action has to be drawn in rather than taken; writing dreams, where words are the object rather than the symbol.

(Can you read and write in dreams? I seem to remember hearing once that you can't. But if that's true, you can certainly dream that you can read and write well enough to fool yourself.)

There are creative dreams that hold together on waking. I once dreamt a full-length Disney-style cartoon musical (complete with a chirpy main character on a voyage of self discovery, a comedy subplot, and a full chorus of operatic snowmen). Somewhere I still have the plot notes, and the sketches. I also once dreamt i was the author of the most incredible stage-play, which played to sold-out houses and mass acclaim, and won many critical awards. Someone in my dream then pointed out to me that it was such a shame that in real life, this play had already been written by one of the greatest playwrights of all time. So I forgot the script upon waking, only to realise that no such playwright had ever such existed, and the play - that genuinely had been mine - had been lost forever.

And there are erotic dreams, that usually get condensed down upon waking into one striking detail (a glance, a word, a scar, a meeting on the stairs) which I can later work up into a full-length story (in all its unashamed Mary Sue glory, for my mind only) for use whenever I please.

But most dreams are feature-film dreams: heroic and drama-filled; chasing and running from; fighting off enemies, rescuing allies, hunting down lost treasures; missions and puzzles; glory and vengeance; dreadful doom and ultimate rewards; sudden twists and dramatic reveals; and always, always full of gaping plotholes that don't matter at all. Dream logic is far stretchier and stickier than Hollywood logic, ensnaring disbelief in a web of self-empathy, because nobody knows how to fool you better than you. I can usually remember a portion of any dream upon waking, but the rest always slips away like fairy gold in sunlight.

Topic list is here

More catch up, in ever decreasing detail.

Day 13 – This week, in great detail
Post-weekend fall over. Northampton refugee horror stories. Medicinal curry. Writing. Masterchef. Throat attack. New red is old red is still mostly pink. More writing. Revenge of the killer throat. Plottings and plannings. CV. Tonsilitis. Another one for the grievance list. Ginger-honey-garlic-lemon-broccoli-chilli-brandy. Salt and steam. Mostly apples. Rain. London. Old friends. New friends. Very good friends. Collars and corsets. Talk. Red wine for breakfast. Margaritas for breakfast. Art fail. Sambuca. Death to the juke box! 69. Tube fail. All Patrick's fault. How to scare a barista. Magical mystery East End tour. Neon rollercoaster. (Broken.) Shoes vs sprite. wekillany(blank).com. Plottings and plannings part two. Beer fail. Tube win. Home. Fall over.

Topic list is here

Day 11 – Your siblings, in great detail

I have one brother, Gavin.

My brother is two years younger than me if you count in school years, one year and eight months younger if you count in real years, and one year, eight months and 11 days younger if you're counting exactly.

This was an important distinction when we were younger, as our eldest cousin was eleven days older than him, so she and I used to invent games that you were only allowed to play if you were at least seven years, three months and two days old. Girls are cruel, but on the other hand as everyone knew, boys smell of wee and have cooties. We did used to let him join in and play on anything that was more fun with three though, or if we wanted to use his toys. In fact, toys were one of the major advantages of having a little brother - as well as all my own girlie toys (which mostly got used as footsoldiers in the never ending and surprisingly bloody battle between the Care Bears and the My Little Ponies) I also got to play with all his Star Wars and Transformers as well. I once kicked him in the head while trying to demonstrate a karate kick, and we'd squabble happily, but overall I think I was a pretty good big sister. He's still talking to me, at any rate.

My brother always seems to come up from behind to outdo me. At school, I stunned my maths teachers by getting near-perfect scores on the A-level mocks, two years later, he got 100%. When I did the rounds of London art school interviews in the sixth form (they don't accept you without a foundation course, but it's traditional to apply after A-levels too just for the practice) St Martins loved me and my work, and said 'Come back after you've done a foundation course and we'd almost certainly want to take you on.' My brother had exactly the same experience at Chelsea, only just as he was walking out of the interview the tutor in charge of foundation studies walked past, and his interviewer said 'Ooh, talk to this guy'. So he did his foundation course at Chelsea, whereas I was stuck in Wrexham for a year. If you think I| sounds bitter at that, well, you've obviously never been to Wrexham... (On the other hand, by the time I finished my foundation course I had no interest in any of the London art schools and made a beeline for Leeds, which far better suited my weird eclecticism. By the time he finished his foundation course at Chelsea, he quit art and went to Manchester to study Computer Science instead.)

In Leeds, I turned wild and got a 2/2 (and a life, which I still consider a fair trade off), he studied hard (but not ridiculously so) and got a first. After Uni, he set up a company with a couple of tutors and a few fellow students to develop further the binary translator they'd written for their final year project. He went on to win the IOCC twice in a row, once as best newcomer and once as best in show. (It always makes me vicariously happy when I meet someone who knows what that means.) He got headhunted by one of the top guys in Apple and whisked across to California, whereas I still feel like I'm fighting to prove myself in the design world.

I sometimes think that wanting to get back into academia, and study up to PhD level, is partly as a way of jumping ahead again, academically. But then even if I did, he'd probably just go on to win a Nobel Prize or something. Which would be kind of cool, so I'd probably forgive him.)

We're both terrible at playing devil's advocate, so have ended up in long intense and even vicious debates where we've both been arguing the opposite of what we believe in just to prove a point. He's my little brother. I reserve the right to argue with him to the end of the earth. Ultra-competitiveness. It's in our nature.

It's also slightly irrelevant. He's not the artist I am. (He was always a good painter, but I have a talent for bringing drawings to life.) He's not the writer I am. (Not that he necessarily couldn't be, if he'd gone that way, but then I may have ended up where he is if I'd gone for computer science - we're both good at being very good at a ridiculous number of things.) He tends to be cosy in a small circle, whereas I like exploring the unknown. He focuses closely on one idea, I like to pull together a million chaotic strands and see what happens if you mix them all together. I like to show off (writing does, after all, involve a large element of screaming 'look at me!') wheras he tends to be more private. (If you google him, all you tend to get is a couple of patent applications and the occasional development log in high-level gobbledygook, google me, under the Myz Lilith name at least, and there's photos of costumes and artistic creations, and scatterings of writing and debate and opinions left out there all over the place, for all the world to see).

My brother is easy going, but incredibly stubborn. He is incredibly caring, but only on his own terms. He's practical, but even worse than me at leaving things to the last minute. (I catch the last possible moment - he misses it and gets away with it.) He works incredibly hard, but has a charmed life. He has a dark and whimsical sense of humour, and is capable of moments of extreme silliness. (A group of him and his friends, snowboarding down the side of a French mountain, playing brightly coloured ukeleles all the way, springs to mind.) He moved away, and I got left behind.

I don't see enough of him now that he's living in San Francisco. I never used to see enough of him when he lived in Manchester come to that - we were both brilliant at promising to visit, rubbish at actually jumping on a train. (Which is one of the reasons I'm so much better at making the effort to go visit people now... if you don't the years just slip by until they move to the other side of the world.) But even now, I don't stay in touch with him in all the ways I should - I really do need to get my webcam set up (in spite of the fact that I'm allergic to them) so that I can talk face to face again.

(Especially since he how haas a girlfriend who I like and get in with and could also chat to online - it is the duty of all big sisters to conspire with their brother's girlfriends...)

I love him. I miss him when I remember to. I envy him when I forget not to. And I'd defend him to the death. Because he's my little brother.

Topic list is here