Vivienne's+writing+space.


 * Free complaining, on Tuesday 29th January, 2008**

YIKES! It was -35C today. Yesterday it was only -31C, but the wind chill was -47. This is insane. The air has completely dried out and I can't get rehydrated, no matter how much water I drink. I think my eyes are going to rub themselves dry on my eyelids and then deflate. When I go outside, my nose and lips stick to my scarf because the moisture from my breath freezes. Creeping leprous lizards on pogo sticks! Gah! (It will be interesting to see how I manage salty language in a PG-13 blog.) When I walked across the pedestrian bridge this morning, I couldn't see the city at all through the cold haze. The city isn't that far away. It was like our campus was encased in a ball of spun ice, and the sun was a brightly polished ivory stain on one side. I believe the best we can look forward to is -19C on Friday...


 * Freewriting on Sunday, 27th January, 2008**

Winter came back today. We are currently at -38 for windchill, but the actual temperature is significantly higher: somewhere around -24C I think. Anyway, our building radiators have kicked into high gear after weeks of just-below-zero, and all the dust that I haven't cleaned off the radiators is getting cooked. yergh. Cold weather makes demands on housekeeping that hot weather does not, including the incessant cleaning up that is the result of muddy, gritty, snow-encrusted footwear. Thank goodness I got into the habit in Japan of removing my footwear before I enter the house proper.

There have been minor snowstorms all day. Sometimes the snow just blows horizontally, sometimes it swirls round in the air like the innards of a snow globe. The smoke/steam from the chimneys opposite dances to the same tune. There was one perfect moment this morning when a quick gust of wind messed up the patterns and made the chimney on the left blow to the left, and the chimney on the right blow to the right. It was momentary, but amusing.

All the snow outside is very picturesque, but it adds insult to injury: Stu and I JUST cleared all the snow off the pathways, front and back. Bah. Stu got up this morning and exclaimed in horror at the snow. His wife, instead of supporting him, just made happy noises about how pretty the winter wonderland looked. Stu looked stunned, but then collapsed in laughter when she added, "I've already gone through anger and denial."

This is a day to remember: a slow Sunday morning, with french toast and hot tea, looking at snowstorms and chatting... mmm... Sunday's just not the same without the rampant bad weather outside. Winter does have the compensatory habit of making everything inside seem cosier.


 * Freewriting for Monday, 21st January, 2008**

Oops, I forgot!


 * Freewriting for Monday, 14th January, 2008**

I have been reading the Economist for a few years now, because it gets delivered to our place, and I find that I end up reading the book reviews and the science and technology articles. Most of the magazine doesn't interest me in the least, because I have little or no interest in politics and economics. I wonder sometimes if I SHOULD be more interested, given that politics and economics are such strong forces in the world, but I comfort myself with the thought that there are many people out there who are making it their life's work to sort out politics and economics, and that the world needs people like me who are interested in food, knitting, pictures and stories.

It is a little disingenuous of me to describe my interests as pictures and stories; most people would probably say "Art" and "Literature", and some might say "Illustration" and "Narrative". I'm interested in how people describe the world in words and colour/texture. I love reading because reading gives me more words and more word pictures, and more stories. I'm a very impatient reader when I first get a book, and I devour it at great speed, sucking out the bones of the story and ignoring the rich, meaty descriptions. The next time I read that book, I read more slowly, more gently. I try to let the book exist in my mind. But if I haven't read a book for a while, I always dive right in to story-searching.

One side effect of these loves of mine is that I read a lot of comic books. I can call them "graphic novels" if I'm trying to sound more literate, and there is little comic about most of the books I read. I like illustrated stories. I find that the description (all those tedious adjectives and adverbs and such) is presented as Art, and the story finds its way through the collision of pictures and words. And I read them too quickly. And then I read them slowly, and I savour each panel of art. And then, perhaps, I read them again and savour the words. Part of me loves the freedom I have to put //my own words// to the pictures; a freedom I do not have in a conventional text novel.

One day, I should like to write and illustrate a graphic novel. It will be short. In it I will draw all the things I cannot put into words, and write all the things I don't have pictures for.