Stuff
This past weekend, I was given the challenging opportunity to work on storylines. From beat to beat, I realized that most of what I am doing is make things almost impossible for my characters. What is that thing that is keeping them away from that which they desperately desire? Obstacle, to obstacle, to obstacle. Cliffhanger to cliffhanger.
Making by unmaking. It’s how we move from here to there.
Such is the world we live in. None of that all-happy story. There is no motion in a happy story.
"I miss you. I miss our friendship."
Books and shoes (either flat or very high. I prefer extremes) And an occasional lemon. And tea, black.
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1. There will be several days that you daydream about stepping in front of a city bus. Don’t. It will not be beautiful. It will not be brave. It will be selfish. It will be broken. Your mother will cry.
2. Don’t write for him. Write for you. Write for others like you. Write so the girl that thinks about stepping in front of public transportation doesn’t. Don’t be selfish.
3. When you will yourself to sleep and it doesn’t come- get up. It doesn’t matter that it’s 3 am. There will be other 3 am’s. Take a shower. Take two. Wash him out of your hair. Write a poem. Read the same book you’ve read 202 times again. The 203rd time might tell you something different. Don’t stay in bed- you will think about the bus again.
4. Don’t kiss him because he’s broken. Don’t kiss him because his laughter never reaches his eyes. Don’t try and fix him. Fix yourself first. Be selfish. He can’t save you.
5. Date yourself. Take yourself out to eat. Don’t share your popcorn at the movies with anyone. Stroll around an art museum alone. Fall in love with canvases. Fall in love with yourself.
6. Dress up and wear red lipstick and get drunk with your friends. They’re the ones that will pick you up. Don’t kiss him. Or him. Don’t fall asleep on strange couches with strange boys. When his hand slides up your dress walk away. Hit him. Don’t kiss him. He can’t save you.
7. Get another tattoo. Get five more. Get another hole in your ear. Don’t listen to your dad. You will still be able to get a job. Did you really want to be employed by someone like your father? Haven’t you had enough of judgmental old white men anyway? Get fuck you tattooed in tiny letters on your hip.
8. When you feel the yearning for a new city- start over. Take 200 bucks and a three suitcases. Work anywhere that will have you. Meet strange people and forget your name. Call yourself Ruby. No one will know the difference. Remember to call your mother. Don’t be selfish. Come home when you find yourself in the strangers and the small one bedroom apartment.
9. Don’t whisper evil things into your own ear. Other people are going to shout them at you. Be your own hero. Keep a sword on your key ring.
10. Don’t step in front of a city bus. It will not be beautiful. Live. Stay up all night with a boy that promises you everything and means it. Live. See shitty local bands with a friend. Wear a different band’s t-shirt. No one will care. Live. Have a baby girl with tiny fingers and tiny toes someday. Pour love into her until it’s overflowing. Live. Wake up. Staying in bed all day is not poetic.
Live. Live.
Live.
Do you hear that? It’s me. It’s your life. Wake up.
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(via victorielle)
(via thesapiosexual)
We went to see my maternal grandmother today. While conversating, we tried to remember my mother.
My sister does not remember her. Not even her face. She asked me to tell her bits of how mother was like. I can tell her about her favorite clothes, what a great body she had, how she’d listen to rhumba on Saturday afternoon, how she looked so good in her fro, and how much I see her when I look at myself in the mirror.
But I can’t tell her that even though I remember these things, I too am beginning to forget her voice and the sound of her laughter.
Death is nothing. It is the forgetting that’s more harrowing
Someday, I shall visit Florence. 
The quick way of working out if you’re a feminist. Put your hand in your pants.
a) Do you have a vagina? and
b) Do you want to be in charge of it?
If you said ‘yes’ to both, then congratulations! You’re a feminist.
Creating characters, amplifying the conflicts, making sure that things go wrong especially for the most likable characters. This is the stuff we talk about in our story-lining meetings. I wonder if the gods do the same thing.
Let’s create. Let’s make sure that things go wrong at every possible opportunity. Let’s make it almost impossible for our characters to reach their goals, and when they are just about to give up, let’s redeem them. No one wants to see an easy win. It’s boring.
(via literatilust)
“If you don’t like someone’s story, write your own.”
“Nobody can teach me who I am. You can describe parts of me, but who I am - and what I need - is something I have to find out myself.”
“We cannot trample upon the humanity of others without devaluing our own.The Igbo, always practical, put it concretely in their proverb Onye ji onye n’ani ji onwe ya: “He who will hold another down in the mud must stay in the mud to keep him down.”
“When a tradition gathers enough strength to go on for centuries, you don’t just turn it off one day.”
“When the British came to Igbo land, for instance, at the beginning of the 20th century, and defeated the men in pitched battles in different places, and set up their administrations, the men surrendered. And it was the women who led the first revolt.”
“When suffering knocks at your door and you say there is no seat for him, he tells you not to worry because he has brought his own stool.”
“While we do our good works let us not forget that the real solution lies in a world in which charity will have become unnecessary.”
“It is the storyteller who makes us what we are, who creates history. The storyteller creates the memory that the survivors must have - otherwise their surviving would have no meaning.”
“I would be quite satisfied if my novels (especially the ones I set in the past) did no more than teach my readers that their past - with all its imperfections - was not one long night of savagery from which the first Europeans acting on God’s behalf delivered them”
“That we are surrounded by deep mysteries is known to all but the incurably ignorant.”
(via corvinus)
