It came to me in a dream

I woke up this morning with a phrase on the brain: valtameriä kuolleille tilaajille, which roughly translates as "oceans for dead subscribers", although the Finnish original is smoother. I sort of like it - can't remember what it referred to (or indeed if it did, as dreams are not necessarily that logical, my dreams anyway) but my still-sleepy mind felt it was in relation to my writing. I write oceans for dead subscribers.

(Incidentally, I have now received my official translator's certificate, so whenever you need stuff translating from Finnish to English, don't hesitate to be in touch.)

Writers' blurt

I came across an article about a woman who suffers from hypergraphia - a compulsive need to write things down. She writes almost continuously - on her computer, on scraps of paper, on her skin or her work clothes (surgical scrubs, as she is a neurologist). She often comes up with her best ideas in the shower, so she keeps a waxed pencil there to write on the walls. The opposite disorder to writers' block. Fancy that. I wish I had invented this, so I could write a story about it. Apparently, the Unabomber was a sufferer, too.

I also came across an article about a Bausch&Lomb contact lense cleaner liquid causing fusarium keratitis, a fungal infection of the eye, which can lead to blindness (and has, in some cases around the US). The company has kept it nice and quiet, since I had to read what has got to be globally regarded as an obscure little Finnish-language newspaper to receive this information. As it happened, it was the very liquid – the latest and best with "moisture-loc" – I had been using. I threw away my lenses, the bottle of liquid, the lense case. The condition particularly presents in tropical conditions. Great. I am not that surprised, given how everything goes moldy in these climates, but I must admit I wasn't expecting my *eyes* to do that.

The heavens have opened again and it is pissing down in Hilo with a tropical ferosity, solid non-stop for the second day running. If you want to see real rain, click on my Hilo Webcam link. Usually, you will see the Pacific. Quite often, you will see a vertical sea with slots (Terry Pratchett quote? Can't remember. I don't read him.) On the other hand, it didn't rain once in December.

© 2006 Anna MR

Reading other people's blogs

is better than telly. American telly, anyway. It can be truly addictive. Even having a brilliant book I actually want to snuggle up with for gorgeous uninterrupted hours, I cannot stop clicking the "next blog" button. The plethora of sites is mesmerising. It blows my mind to think about the reality of all these people, scattered around the world, whom I will never meet, but who nevertheless are real and go about their lives.

Some people write so well it's a delight, especially when online it's mostly terrible grammar and hopeless spelling. I have bookmarked two sites tonight, both of which make me cringe some more over my feeble attempts at being both honest and articulate (and quite possibly, just a little arty), and another one or two who have stunning visuals.

And of course, there are the "weird" sites - porn and stuff – and then some real peculiarities and eccentricities. One site that came up had a few pictures of a naked young woman with very good facial bone structure, sitting in what I would describe as classical artsy, non-pornographic poses. She wrote she likes to masturbate in front of people and felt this was safer than doing it on a train or something. Who is she?

© 2006 Anna MR

Flights, flights, flights...

...between Hilo and Helsinki are almost impossible to arrange without running into problems of eleven-hour stopovers somewhere (LA, Chicago, or the like). Alternatively, and even more annoyingly, when you've combed through all of the internet with a fine-toothed search engine, and something finally crops up that just could be doable - ok, an hour and three quarters' changeover before 7am at LAX is probably not ideal, but could be done, maybe, perhaps - the whole issue is rendered academic by American companies only accepting American credit cards. Guess if I have one.

I read the Wandering Scribe's blog - not all of it, but some. I am sure my (current) problems are puny by comparison. Unless she's actually a media plant, which I don't think is the case. And even if she is, there'll be plenty people living rough who aren't faking it, so that's hardly the issue. However, I really must get the children home for the summer holidays, and now that we've negotiated borrowing from my dad, why do the practicalities have to be so godawfully difficult, too?

I have a headache from too much screen exposure, and I haven't done anything creative or been in touch with anyone. I was writing a play, and thought I'd write up the last scene today, but this flight thing takes precedence over anything now. Incidentally, the play is terrible, very poor indeed, it flies in the face of all theatrical dramatic conventions by having a narrator right the way through, like a film fully voice-overed. See if I care. I'll finish it and send it to Rebecca. She'll tell me it sucks, but she'll do it in the nicest possible way, because that's who she is.

I also note that I was always intending to publish things that actually said something. To the wind with that and any other principle.

© 2006 Anna MR

On shame tolerance

I have been puzzling over my uncertainty regarding to have or not to have a blog. On the whole, blogging feels rather a childish thing to me - something people ten years younger than me do effortlessly, as a natural thing of "their generation". Only problem is, it just isn't so and I know it. Only today I read Ariel Dorfman's posting on the Guardian blogsite (on Beckett and Eichmann, incidentally). Ariel Dorfman must be a good ten years older than me, mustn't he? OK, so he is a professional writer. I'm sure that's what makes the difference, why he does it smoothly and effortlessly and why I cannot let go of the sense of perpetual self-consciousness when blogging. Right? (And of course, not being Ariel Dorfman, how can I claim to know whether he feels smooth and effortless about his blogging or indeed his writing in general? He might feel continuously crippled by a never-ending experience of himself writing, and – this is the crux here – keep writing regardless of it. I'll never know. Unless you are reading this, Ariel, and want to let me know. Aha, so *this* is why I blog, is it, for the impossible hope of being heard/read, and somehow deeply understood, of entering into a dialogue with someone, somewhere, maybe even about things that matter, things that I care about, things that open up life?)

Of course, I have had a keen sense of self-consciousness about writing in general for ten, twenty years? Not quite twenty, but more than ten. It is the reason I stopped writing, the cause of what I self-indulgently call my writers' block. I place the apostrophe where I do on purpose, to indicate the block belongs to a collection of writers, who have at some point in their lives experienced this same block...of course, one ought to be a writer in the first place, even if it was into a shoebox or a desk drawer, before one can claim to have the said block. But I did write, oh, I wrote so much, it came to me so easily when I was a child. Fantasy and fabulation, stories, characters, words, poems, the radio play of a hundred pages or more I typed out as a ten-year-old, about the concert visit of Elvis Presley to Finland, as imagined by myself, and so on and so forth. And then, enter adolescence, puberty, young adulthood, bad marriage, children, writing petering out, dreadful divorce and then, bang, instead of a freedom so dearly fought for, the rest is suddenly silence. I seem to have very little to say. I imagine nothing. All I can imagine writing about is me, my experiences, my life, no fabulation, no fantasy.

The awareness of myself writing is easing off, has been easing off during this my (first?) Hawai'ian year. Which must have something to do with the fact that I have written more, just made myself write, and it's started to feel more natural again. But by god, writing what is essentially a diary, a private collection of musings, isn't that what people (and not just me) have traditionally done as an intimate exercise, something not meant for the eyes of anyone else, to ensure a freedom from personal censorship? To post this material online? On the other hand, people keeping a diary are arguably not free of this imagined reader who will find the material stimulating, interesting, who will love the writer all the more for his/her self-revelation.

However

Even when I wrote prolifically, it was never really meant for anyone else to see. It was embarrassing, shameful, unthinkable. I recall giving a collection of my love poems to my closest friend to read when I was nineteen. (Her commentary was supportive and overall positive, so no fault can be laid at her door for my subsequent years of silence.) That is the only time I ever did so. I never sent anywhere, I never thought of the actuality of attempting to be published. And now, here I am, twenty years later, writing a fraction of what I used to, but sending it willy-nilly left right and centre. Including what is really an online diary. Which brings me to

Shame tolerance. The experience of shame I have had over my three postings before this one, plus the personal website I created, have been out of all proportion. I have literally stayed awake at night, thinking about how enormously embarrassing, shameful, stupid, vacuous, unnecessary, trivial my posting was, in its wallowing, ungenuine style of self-pity combined with selfimportance. It got so bad I actually deleted my first posting altogether. I have little doubt that this bit of writing will similarly cause me to suffer, probably beginning later on today. Which is ludicrous, of course. Ok, so the merits of my ramblings are nonexistent, but who's to know? It doesn't matter. I am going to force myself to not delete anything anymore. Shame tolerance, a concept possibly coined by my fellow countryman Ruben Stiller to explain both his enthusiasm for the Nordic walk (think cross-country skiing without the skis, done on public streets and footpaths, dressed in shell suits) and the club for men with small penises he is the founding and, to my knowledge, still years later the only member of. It is good to learn to live with my all-encompassing shame of being myself. C'mon girl, feel that shame. That's you that is. I am ashamed, therefore I am.

© 2006 Anna MR