September 6, 2008

"It’s interesting" he said.

"Interesting" is a replacement word for "I don’t really like it and I don’t want to tell you that". I agree. It sucks. I’m disappointed myself. It was not supposed to look like a leopard shed its fur on it! Well, this should be my lesson that without continuous practice, I’m never going to get what’s in my head on paper the way I want it.

At least I read a fun book yesterday. I wonder what I bought that Amazon recommended to me "The Year of Secret Assignments" by Jaclyn Moriarty. Anyway, I trusted the Amazon’s software suggestion and I had a great evening. I laughed out loud! It reminded me of the time when I used to have international pen-pals, though my letters never got that outrageous as in the book. They were funny, I have a few I didn’t send because in Romania the one dollar that would cost to mail a letter across the seas was quite a fortune. But my letters were not offensive or shocking because I wanted to write them and of course they were also not part of an entertaining book; I wasn’t forced by an English teacher to write them, so I had no resentments when writing. E-mails and all the social websites that exist nowadays are nowhere near as exciting and romantic as a plain letter with a stamp that takes two weeks to get to destination. I used to wait for the mailman, now he only brings bills. It’s not his fault. If I don’t write letters anymore, I can’t expect to receive any.

September 3, 2008

I have been very slow working on this drawing. I must be waiting for something before I can finish it, but I am not sure what. It has been sitting on my desk for four months now. Here are some of the latest pictures. There are multiple things that went through my mind while working on this. Initially I started on it when I reconnected with lost family. It was an expression of my broken connections and of how much they can hurt. Blood is not always thicker than water. I also tried to integrate in it the wish and the idea of a perfect family that I’ve had as a child. Later on, I also thought more about the hard work involved in building a family and like every house that doesn’t have a solid foundation, it will fall apart.

In looking for books for my book club, I read The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd and The Birth House by Ami McKay. I am not sure which I liked best. An interesting thought occurred to me that all the books I’ve read so far for this club, including The Witch of Portobello, were about women who challenged the views and beliefs of the society around them. This was completely unintentional. The Witch of Portobello was picked by the club, the other two books I bought at the same time based on their cover and title because I don’t like reading the back flap before reading the book. I like jumping straight into the story knowing nothing. I think that’s why I also try and keep from saying too much about the plot of these books. I’d hate to ruin it for anyone.

When I started reading The Secret Life of Bees, I thought I was going to have to pull an all nighter. The first 100 pages were a rollercoaster ride and I had a very hard time turning off the light and going to bed. The book slows down, but it’s filled with so many beautiful details of home, love, companionship and of course bees and honey that it’s mesmerizing till the end.

I didn’t cry reading The Birth House, but I silently suffered, hoped and laughed along with the women in it. Books like this make me wonder what my life would have been like had I been born a century earlier. Something tells me that I probably wouldn’t have gone to school and unless I were a spinster, would probably have had a few children to care for already. I was amused by some of the ideas the characters had on how to get pregnant or on how not go get pregnant.

I felt cheated by the ending in The Witch of Portobello. I was hoping for a Jesus like ending, but now that I think about it, it kind of was like that, but in a 90’s kind of way.