Journals

I was at my parents' last night. I looked for my music teacher's required material, and found it, plus a lot of other music material I had either played or planned on playing in the past. Most were kept in plastic boxes that I had obtained from a Japanese products store that was opened near that house years ago. They're gone now, but there's always more of those types in Chinatown. Anyway, the point here is that while I looked for and through the music materials, I started to think about writing on paper again, and used my time to look for all the blank books that I had amassed over the years, some bought with the sole intention of filling up for a particular story, other ones were gifts from family and friends.

All of those items, I am asking myself, can I still use them? Do I still want to use them?

The answer is building up to be a very loud YES.

Why hello there again

I've been ignoring writing in this, only because I got out of my writing groove between graduation and a few days ago. Why couldn't I update lately? Let's just say I had to get some items done fast on my to-do list that is the length of forever. (To me, to me! I'm not going to live forever in terms of you.)

So, yes, hello there again.

I still didn't do the blog about my vacation in July. I didn't upload any pictures concerning it. But I am getting back into this groove (as previously mentioned), so this may all change within the next few weeks.

What kind of stuff am I reading lately? Fashion magazines, especially Elle because of a number of its smarter articles, and re-reading the last volume of the Harry Potter saga. I have a nostalgia for the latter, and as for the magazines, I've been finding I need new fodder for thoughts, characterization and they give advice that I can't seem to ask for...yet. I don't think the right people have come along for them, or maybe just not the right times. I've yet to figure this out.

Then there are comics. I grabbed a translated version of Clover by CLAMP, all four volumes clad in paperback and with colored cover and extra art the group did for it. (I have the Japanese ones, except for ONE volume, but I have a feeling I'd never read it properly. I did, however, figure out words I was translating on my own by drawing my conclusions from it, in my reading the English one...) By way of recommendation from a Twitter user who also has a blog, I started reading Ikigami, but with the 2nd volume, because that was the only one available at Borders near work.

I'm trying to write a fiction story that I deliberately put myself and my boyfriend as characters in, and so far, I keep having all these neat adventures to write about...but only in my brain. I am terrified of putting anything down on paper just yet. (Read: Just really SLOW about it.)

OMG! 20th Post!

Not really a highlight but it's all good.

Someone asked that I post my recommendations up. So, here they are, without my descriptions or reasons for why. :) Next post might have them!

• Reading Like a Writer, Francine Prose
• Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro
• Coin Locker Babies, Ryu Murakami
• American Gods, Neil Gaiman
• Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, Haruki Murakami
• Suppli, Mari Okazaki
• What Dreams May Come, Richard Matheson
• Atonement, Ian McEwan
• Unabridged fairy tales, Hans Christen Andersen
• Ramayana

Sorry about the fairy tales, but there's one version of it with these beautiful pictures. It'd be an oversized book at a bookstore. Personally, I read this when I was much younger and took it out again for one more read from the Fort Hamilton Brooklyn Public Library Branch, before moving from Bay Ridge to Bensonhurst. I don't think I'll ever forget it.

Been a month and all I have is a list

I'm serious about this list. It's a big list.

I'm in the middle of cleaning my living space, and lo and behold, I come across papers of some importance. But, before I chuck all of these papers that were on the left side of my desk, I'm typing up the book titles that I have highlighted on them. The deal with these papers is that they were from classmates in a fiction writing class I took last year. They contain book recommendations that our professor said we should bring in on the last day of our class. I looked at them again just about an hour ago and decided I should write down the highlighted ones for my own future reference. Hey, you can use them, too. If you have a review of the stories behind the titles, please feel free to comment. I'd be more than glad to see opinions from you.

• Close to the Knives, David Wojnarowicz
• Geek Love, Katharine Dunn
• Crying of Lot 49, Thomas Pynchon
• Vow to Poetry: Essays, Interviews, & Manifestos, Anne Waldman
• Nightwood, Djuna Barnes
• The Writing Class or anything else, Jincey Willett
• A Colour Out of Space, H.P. Lovecraft
• No One Belongs Here More Than You, Miranda July
• House of Leaves, Mark Danielewski (This has been recommended to me by those outside of the class.)
• I Capture the Castle, Dodi Smith
• The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Oliver Sacks
• The Stranger, Albert Camus
• The Trial, Franz Kafka
• Dune, Frank Herbert
• The Godfather, Mario Puzo
• A Complicated Kindness, Miriam Toews
• All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque
• The Mystery Guest, Gregoire Bouillier
• The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway
• Ham on Rye, Charles Bukowski
• The Complete Poems of Edgar Allen Poe (Really, do I have to put an author?)
• Hazmat, J.D. McClatchy
• Under the Banner of Heaven, Jon Krakauer
• The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Diaz
• A Spot of Bother, Mark Haddon
• The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time, Mark Haddon
• This Way for the Gas, Ladies & Gentlemen, Tadeusz Borowoski
• Infidel, Ayaan Hirsi Ali
• Factotum, Charles Bukowski
• Women, Charles Bukowski
• Fortress of Solitude, Jonathen Lethem
• American Psycho, Bret Easton Ellis
• Less than Zero, Bret Easton Ellis
• The Cold Six Thousand, James Ellroy
• American Tabloid, James Ellroy
• A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, David Foster Wallace
• Tenderness, Robert Cormier
• Speak, Laurie Halse Anderson
• Drown, Junot Díaz
• Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston
• The Friends, Rosa Guy
• The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison
• Love Medicine, Louis Edrich
• Anthem, Ayn Rand
• Jasmine, Bharati Mukherjee
• I Never Promised You a Rose Garden, Joanne Greenberg
• Oranges are Not the Only Fruit, Jeanette Winterson
• The Liars' Club: A Memoir, Mary Karr
• The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner
• Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad (Though I think my brother hates this book? What? Maybe I have that information completely wrong?)
• Mansfield Park, Jane Austen
• The Westing Game, Ellen Raskin
• Out of the Dust, Karen Hesse
• The Plot Against America, Philip Roth
• The Girl Who Owned a City, O. T. Nelson
• The House at Riverton, Kate Morton
• The Art of Fiction, John Gardner
• Writing Down the Bones, Natalie Goldberg
• Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, Tom Berendt
• Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, Jared Diamond
• Gödel, Escher Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, Douglas R. Hoffstadter
• Ishmael, Daniel Quinn
• The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, Michael Chabon
• Sherlock Holmes, Assorted short stories, Arthur Conan Doyle
• A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce
• At the Mountains of Madness, H.P. Lovecraft
• Salem's Lot, Stephen King
• Good Omens, Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
• The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins
• The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, McCullers
• The Road, McCarthy
• 1984, Orwell
• Various Novels by Sarah Waters
• The Passion, Jeanette Winterson
• Native Son, Wright
• To the Lighthouse, Woolf
• Bastard Out of Carolina, Allison
• Desperate Characters, Fox
• The Price of Salt, Highsmith
• Song of Solomon, Morrison
• Othello, Shakespeare
• The Color Purple, Walker
• The Age of Innocence, Wharton

Really, back to cleaning now.

Borchert Interpretations in German and English

Okay, as shameless as this is, I want to post them the way they are, so I can show you a bit of my writing style in both languages. I feel foolish about German, though, since I am still learning. If you are a German-born person or are very much advanced in German, and if you would like, please provide some constructive criticism; but before you do that, please comment first that you would, and we can come to arrangements.

The original short story that this assignment had been based on was "Der drei dunklen Könige" by Wolfgang Borchert. Somehow this story really made me pay attention to German and I told my professor this. She's letting me have an indefinite borrow (so to speak) of her book of short stories by him. I'll write about my readings of his other stories eventually, but in the meantime, here's my...take on one of his characters, der Soldat ohne Hände, or the soldier without hands.

A note about my German: I am at an intermediate level and slightly struggling to memorize all that I can, all the time. I am learning to be patient with myself in terms of German. So, my work is not as elaborate because I do not know it as well as I know English.

---GERMAN

Ich heiße Kaspar und ich war ein Soldat in am großten Krieg so weit. Aber jetzt, ich bin ein sehr alt Mann. Meine drei Enkelkinder rennen, während ich schreibe an dem Maschineschreiben, aber habe ich keine Hände. Ich habe viel Glück in meinem Leben, und ich möchte euch es erzählen.

Ich kämpfte in dem großem Krieg, dass der meine Heimatstadt untergegangen. Mein Kommandeur sag mir, alles waren das Werk der Feind. Ich fühtle mich kummervoll. Aber fand ich Trost in meinem Freunden, sie heißen Melchior und Balthazar. Sie waren von der gleiche Heimatstadt und in der gleiche Truppe. Wir trösteten einander und wurden am engsten Freunden sein. Wir gingen zu der gleiche Schule und kannten die gleiche Personen. Personlich, ich hatte einen Grund zu streiten, weil sie Freunden waren und ich ein gute Soldat werden mochte. Ich war junger als Melchior und Balthazar.
Nach am Ende von Krieg, wir wollten zusammen nach Heimatstadt kommen. Wir wollten sehen, ob jemand von unser Familien war noch da. Wir hatten ein bißchen Hoffnung auf ein Chance, dass wir jemand fanden, irgendjemand.
Es war ein warmer Herbst, dass wir leicht reisten. Wir waren sorgenlos, weil der Stress weg gang. Der Krieg, es war zu Ende. Aber vielleicht waren wir so optimistich. Wir dachten, vielleicht mehr Soldaten wie uns wurden in gleicher Richtung reisen. Wir erwarteten das. Personlich hoffte ich, dass jemand mit einem Auto uns aufheben konnte.
Aber wir gangen zu Fuß und hatten wir Pech. Wir abhanden zu viele Zeit gekommen. Viele Straßenschilder waren nicht da oder unleserlich. Immer schlecter waren falsche Straßenschilder, die niemand nicht korrigierten hatten. Es waren falsche zu austricksen die Feinde. Auf einmal wurde das Wetter sehr kalt. Wir sollten es besser kennen, wir begannen durch dem Anfang des November.
Denn hatten wir etwas unglücklichen und wichtigen Sachen. Melchior, ein sehr gute Schnitzer war, verlor seine Handschuhe. Melchior hatte ein Esel für ein Kind, von seine Träume- er sag. Balthazar, ein Arzt war, verlor seine Nervenmedizin. Ich mochte sie helfen, so gab ich ihnen meine Handschuhe und Zigaretten. Ich mochte, dass Melchior den Esel für das Kind beenden und Balthazar besser jeden Tag fühlen. Damals ich dachte mir glücklich- ich hatte nichts verlor. Aber ich hatte kein Auswechslungen und denn hatte ich mein Pech.
Ein Nacht in Anfang von Dezember, wann wir in der Nähe die Heimatstadt, ich fühlte nicht meine Hände. Balthazar sah, und sein Gesicht sag, dass es meine Reihe Pech zu haben war. Ich sag ihm, ich vertrauen ihn, aber bitte, tue es schnell. Für meine Hände, es war zu spät. Er stoppte gut die Erfrierung.
Meine Freunde halfen mir gut und ich vermutet, dass Melchior mir seine Essen gab. Er hatte Schwellfüße. Ich wollte, dass er Essen hatte, aber er wurde nichts hören. Es ist eine nicht gute Idee, er sag.
In der Mitte von Dezember traffen uns in der Stadt. Die war sehr ruhig, untergehend und sitzengelassen. Zussamen besuchten wir nach Hausen, und ich sah, niemand legten tot an dem Boden.
Wir blieb in der Stadt und machten die Hausen sauber. Ich hatte keine Hände aber ich trat den Abfall, und ich hatte noch meine Augen. Weil meine Augen, dass wie wir das Kind fanden in der Nacht.
Es war sehr kalt und immer noch hatten die Stadt bewegte. Wir fanden mit Glück ein Pappkarton mit gelben Bonbons, und bald hatte wir mehr Dinge fanden, die Melchior in seinem Sack gelegt hatte. Balthazar mochte ein Zigarette. Er rauchte und bald er ging zurück. Er hatte gesehen ein kleines Licht in einem Haus.
Wir hatten fanden ein kleine Familie mit drei, ein ein Kind war, er sehr jung aus sah. Die Eltern sah ängstvoll aus, aber Melchior hatte Ehrfurcht vor das Kind, und gab das Holzesel. Direkt gab Balthazar die Frau zwei gelbe Bonbons.
Ich war sehr nahe zum Kind und er lachte. Nach immer fühlte ich schön. Bald wir sind zurückgelassen, aber wir fühlten dankbar, dass, ebenso die Familie war in ein schreck Platz, die hatte viele ihre Glück und Zufriedenheit.

---ENGLISH

My name is Kaspar and I was a soldier in the biggest war so far. But now, I am a very old man. My three grandchildren are running, while I am writing on a typewriter, though I have no hands. I have much good luck in my life, and I would like to tell you about it.
But I found solace in two fellow soldiers, named Melchior and Balthazar, who came from my hometown and were in the same unit. We consoled each other and grew to be close friends. I found we went to the same elementary school and knew some of the same people in our childhoods. Personally, talking to them caused me to have a reason to fight- I wanted to show I was just as capable as a soldier and a man as they were, though I was younger than the two by a couple of years.
After the war ended, we decided to travel back together, to see if there was anyone from our families who could have come back, too. For some reason, we had a small bit of hope that there was a chance we would find someone waiting for us, any one.
It was a warm fall the year it ended, so we travelled light. In a way, we were carefree, because the stress was gone for the meantime and the war was over. But we were slightly too optimistic- we thought that maybe there would be more like us travelling in the same direction. We expected to be able to cross paths with others who might be travelling the same direction. I personally hoped we would get to ride with someone, somewhere.
But we did not have so much luck and we were on foot. We ended up getting lost too much. Many signs on the road were either blown away or unreadable. Worse yet were the false signs that were meant to confuse any incoming enemy. They were not replaced with correct ones yet. Our luck became worse because of the sudden cold weather. We should have known better, we did start out in early November.
Then we had some important unlucky things happen to each of us. Melchior knew how to carve wood very well, and I always admired him for it. He was trying to finish a project he started while we were still deployed. I think he said that he was doing this for a child and told me that he had been inspired by a dream. At night, while we rested and it was his turn to be a lookout, he would carve it. When the nights got colder he worked with gloves on, but somehow he lost the pair. Balthazar was a meticulous medic, but somehow he actually lost his personal medicine for his nerves, though it was normally placed with his regular medicine. I counted myself lucky- I lost nothing at that point, but I wanted to help.
I gave my gloves to the carver and all of my cigarettes to the nervous one. I did all of this because I thought I could get along without them. I wanted Melchior to complete his dream. And as for Balthazar, I noticed that cigarettes calmed my nerves but really wasn’t so bad as his, so I thought he could use them better. I did not tell them I had nothing else to replace either of these things, so they would not refuse me.
One night in early December, when we were so close to arriving back at home, I felt nothing on my hands, and had Balthazar look at it. His face told me that it was my turn to have bad luck. I told him, I trust you, please be quick about it. He stopped the spread of frostbite and made sure I lost nothing else, but for my pair of hands it was too late.
Still, I think I was lucky to have them as my friends. They always made sure I was eating and cleaning my wounds. I can’t help it, but I suspected at the time that Melchior was having less to eat because of me, and eventually his feet became swollen out of hunger. I insisted that he eat my portions but he would hear none of it- to travel while injured, he said, is already a bad idea but it was something we had to do, so he wanted to minimize the damage.
By mid-December, we came to our destination. Our hometown was quiet. There were many ruins in the main part of town, and on the outskirts I saw more whole buildings but abandoned. It seemed that there was no one around. We came to visit at each of our houses, together. We all saw evidence that our families abandoned the places and no one lay dead on the floor.
Saddening as everything was, we still stayed put and started to fix things. I had no hands but I kicked rubbish into piles for the others to move, and I used my eyes to find things out. Because of me, that was how we found the child Melchior dreamed about.
It was one of the coldest nights, yet we were still busy moving around. Somehow we had been lucky enough to find a cardboard box with some bonbons, and carried that around, hoping there would be more stuff. Melchior had a sack with him and soon we were filling it with basic things we needed. Then we took a break, in which Balthazar stepped away to have one of his cigarettes. He came back a minute later, saying he spied a light houses away.
We followed this tiny light and found a family of three, one a baby who looked very young. The parents looked fearful of us. We still had our uniforms, but they were becoming worn out. I think that we looked dangerous as well as shabby. Melchior was awestruck but I saw that he made no hesitation to produce his carving, and Balthazar promptly handed over two of the golden Bonbons to the mother.
We looked closer at the baby and he started to laugh when I was the closest. It was as if he was happy we were there to visit.
We soon left but were grateful that at least, even if the family was in a terrible place, they were blessed with some of their own good luck and happiness.

BORCHERT, I HAD TO...

I am saddened that I could not write to the full extent in German that I wanted! VERY ANGRY with myself, but what am I gonna do. I'm going to wait for my comments from my professor to really work at improving what I left out, but in the meantime, my progress...will be...posted. SOMEHOW. ARGH.

I'll figure this out...

Writing Cycle

After several years of contemplating on the same stories and ideas, I decided to own up and create for myself a cycle. I'm not even sure if the stories are going to qualify as short stories or novels, or just fragments after a while.

The cycle is somewhere close to the realm of reincarnation, but not so much as the dying and rebirth idea behind it, but for the second-chance aspect that it seems to grant. I'm not saying that every particular rebirth means a second-chance at something, but there is the idea that there's something to make up for from a previous life. I like that very much.

I'd have to say that a book was the cause for a budding interest. In high school, I started reading Richard Matheson's work, and one of those was What Dreams May Come. It left a very strong impression. While I was at Adelphi, I even started to do research about it. Of course, researching all that, I didn't really have much else to talk about and I think I was pretty bad at coming up with palatable conversation topics. And now, I want to write much more about it? My friends will get more death-related talks than they ever want, maybe.

However, I don't remember exactly what sparked that particular topic to keep popping up so frequently. I think it can remain a mystery, anyway, and I am quite excited to actually embark on this writing journey, now that I'm comfortable with it. Stories that I can safely include in this cycle are The Puppet Project and Fifteen Souls, titles that I am comfortable with for now while I'm working on them. Who knows if I will ever come up with something better? I am certain that The Puppet Project will be a novel, while Fifteen Souls might look nice visually, if I could find a partner to help me in that aspect. In the meantime, it's in a planning stage that kind of makes me feel like I'm going crazy whenever I write down stuff about it. It's this story that also makes me NOT want to read anything else while I'm working on it, so that aspects of other work does not affect it.

I understand that I'm writing about these stories without any specific details concerning them, so I will attempt to summarize with one (awful) sentence for each one.

The Puppet Project: A family, unwilling to be the way they turned out from a recent tragedy, adjusts to another, sudden unwelcome addition, who has to earn his way back into having his own skin again.
Fifteen Souls: A young woman finds out that what she thought was multiple-personality disorder, wasn't.

My gosh, those summaries...are kind of lame. Oh well, that's all I'll reveal.

In related writing news, I am planning to use next month to finish up “The Little Girl Who Ate Nuclear Warheads.” It's been two plus years since I started that story, and only last year did I start to fix it through workshop classes. It's so close to completion, but it's the end that's jarring me. I want to make sure I have everything consistent in the flow of the story and characterization. I'm very excited! When I finish it, I will create a file of it that can be distributed on the net, so everyone can read and see if they like it or not. This short story is about a little girl with an acquired appetite.

The Five Things About Me [That Shakti asked for!]

Hallo there everyone, I have some downtime before I get back into studying. So, I choose to write a long-awaited and long-owed entry.

My friend Shakti actually responded seriously to a note on my FB above five things that I should talk about on a blog entry. So, below is the list with her requests, verbatim! Thanks friend! :)

We talked really briefly about your interest in German and orchestral music, but I'd love for you to write about it here.
- German: My interest in this was practically late in adolescence. I was in orchestra classes from 2004 to 2006, while I attended Adelphi University, and in those classes there were German songs selected by singers. The professor/conductor (one and the same person!) would let us know about details about the song's background and language, which I found myself getting more curious about. Then, there was this classmate, a flautist named Sara, who was taking German at the time. She taught me and other orchestra mates how to say "excellent" [ausgezeichnet!], and we'd have our laughs about it because of the way we used it everywhere. After I transferred to Hunter College, I saw that I had to take a language for a requirement, and picked German because not only was it available on their list of offerings but it was something new that I wanted to try because of the past from Adelphi.

-Orchestral music: I was about five years old when I started listening to classical music, on the radio. Around third grade to fourth grade, I started taking piano lessons. I eventually stopped taking piano lessons but, courtesy of school, there was still the recorder (hahaha gotta start somewhere), chorus, and a year on the trombone. Eventually, during high school years, I got into playing the violin (though my initial interest was in the viola, that did not work out in my favor because my mother bought a violin from a Philippine store that did not carry violas). That was when I actually had a good time- all four years were musically-filled. In short, I'd have to say that this all started due to elementary school- there were many music-type of trips! Plus, as I got older, I'd have to say that the orchestra as a body of musicians working together is just plain attractive.

what sort of fiction do you write? amazingly, we haven't spoken about this!
I write whatever comes into my head, so I'm not really into one particular genre; but I can tell you that I cannot write military fiction, nor do I want to attempt to do it. I think I would generalize what I have finished in the past as modern fairy tales, in their own ways. I like making my own worlds in the stories. I think I would say that short stories are my thing for the past several years, though I've been working on a few novels whenever I have the chance. I hope this answered your question!

list your fandoms. ones you're in and ones you wanna be in. i would LOVELOVELOVE to eventually share one with you.
:)
-Current Fandoms I'm in- Scrubs (Up to Season 6!), Chuck (finishing up current season using the internet- please don't cancel this series, NBC!), Perfect Girl Evolution (The Wallflower, a manga), Koukou Debut (another manga), Studio Ghibli film offerings, Life on Mars, Dr. Who, Coupling, Charlaine Harris's Southern Vampire Mysteries (the books, not True Blood storylines)
-Fandoms I'd LOVE to be in! (lack of time, have not started yet, etc.) - Battlestar Galactica, Hana Yori Dango Japanese live action, Goong live action

There's definitely more but I have to say that these are the ones on my mind lately. Always subject to change, right?

---

WHEW time to nap before prepping for German class! Posting again soon!

Decisions

I made some decisions this past week (spring break).

Again.

-2nd Degree HOPEFULLY going to come through (pending application status still, it's only been a month filed and two more weeks 'til I ask "Please tell me if something went wrong?") for PRE-NURSING
-Finishing a piece of writing is harder nowadays.
-Take some lazy days seriously, too.
-Cleaning the room is a forever-type of thing, but heyyyyy can't be cleaning all the time (see previous dash.)
-This summer will be filled with writing, working with families, then vacationing, then working with families again. It will be soooo gooooooooddddddddd. (Trust me.)

If you know Elbert, please congratulate him on scoring Developmental Engineering (Electrical) for the US Air Force. He commissions next year. :)

I lag

I'm very bad at blogging, as you might have already guessed by the timestamps. I thought the title appropriate a few seconds ago. I'm leaving it like that and going on with this entry.

I think it's more from the inconsistent (Question: would I rather have consistent?) lack of sleep, but I've been feeling this kind of pinch on my motivation. What I want to do right now is have some consistency with schooling, working, and my free time activities. For the most part, I do, yet I can't shake this feeling that I'm either not doing enough or I've got to be doing some more things. There's not enough energy to do everything that everyone wants, that's for sure.

I hope people can understand where I'm coming from (albiet vaguely). If not, then I hope they will learn.