Wednesday 25 January 2012

Live Every Day as Your Last? Not Bloody Likely, Mate!


‘Live Every Day as if its Your Last’. Famous expression. I have been known to try and do this on occasion but not very often. For years, I have beaten myself up for not doing it, for not being more happy-go-lucky and more feckless. But now I’m kind of glad. While I agree with the sentiment to a degree, on the other hand if you do live like that, chances are your last day will be fairly soon because you will starve to death.

Let’s face it, if I lived each day like my last, you wouldn’t be getting this blog post! I would probably be in a Den of Iniquity seeking out some sexy person to make all my dreams come true. Very, very fast. And I would be smoking like a trooper, drinking like a party girl and probably trying to eat a lot of chocolate and cheese. It’s not like I’d have to worry about the migraine. But those are not all the things I love doing, they are not even the tip of the iceberg. But they’re all you can do on your last day. I mean, who wants to start a book and not know the ending? Who wants to write some beautiful poetry and not have time to read it? Alright, climbing a mountain and watching the sunset is doable and worth it, but it sounds like a lot of exertion for one’s last day.

That style of life would soon wear out. For a start, I’d be really fat and have bad lungs. But I’d have no money, no job, no food on the table and no future. Spending everything and doing everything I wanted would cost me all that.

Living like this is what got the world into this mess. Living as though there is no tomorrow has left us in a precarious situation where tomorrow is looking less and less appealing by the second. Is that really what one wants from life?

So no, I don’t want to live every day as if its my last and I don’t think it’s a good message to give our children or anyone else. Live each day as if you have a future, a wonderful future filled with possibility. It may not be happen and it may not be as wonderful as you would like, but in the off chance that it is at least you’ll be around to see it!

Friday 20 January 2012

Unnatural Cities

Who decided that cities were unnatural? I mean, they are a product of the brains, needs and creativity of things that occur in nature, i.e. us. So what makes them intrinsically more unnatural than, say, a forest? Well, granted, they do take a bit more active work to create (although I’m sure creating forests is no picnic) but that work is done either by us naturally-occurring humans or creatures we have created, from chiefly organic parts. I am wondering where exactly the line is drawn. And who draws it? Take glass, its created by the application of heat to sand – at what point does that become unnatural? Sand is not unnatural and heat is not unnatural, so why does the combination warrant the term?
In a scene in Terry Pratchett’s Fifth Elephant, Sergeant Colon tells Vetinari that he ‘doesn’t hold with unnatural things’. Vetinari is genuinely perplexed and asked ‘so you eat your meat raw and sleep in a tree?’ This is precisely the point – when do things become unnatural? Who decides? Why do they need to decide? And more importantly, what if they change their minds? Do they then issue a bulletin to every city in the world? How would it read?
‘Dear Dublin,
We have called you unnatural for many years now. We have believed your population secretly wants to escape the gridlocked prison and spend the rest of their lives rearing chickens on a farm in Wicklow.
We apologise for this mis-representation. From now on, we will hold you in high esteem much as we do the country.
Sincerest apologies for any inconvenience caused.
Yours,
The Board of Unnatural and Natural Liason.’
Bam, suddenly cities would be the most natural things in the world! And when you think about it, they are. Humans are naturally social creatures, so it surprising we choose to live together in one place and to share amenities? Personally, I am fed up with people telling me that some day I will wake up say ‘Argh, get me out of here’ and go haring back to the Wilds of Beyond. I spent seventeen years in the Wilds of Beyond and they are not all they are cracked up to be, believe me.
Unnatural or not, I’ll take the city over the muddy, wet and desolate countryside anyday!

Monday 16 January 2012

My Cold Hard Writer.

There’s a side of me that I call the ‘Cold Hard Writer’ part. And sometimes I hate it. I walked along the canal at lunch today and I have this tendency not to look to closely at the water. Just in case. I don’t really want to see a body floating there. Now, firstly it’s a very unlikely occurrence but – and this is the nasty bit – my ‘Cold, Hard Writer’ (henceforth CHW) wants to know what it would look like. It wants the story to tell its friends, it wants to know what happened and how. It wants to experience every damn thing in the world and it doesn’t really care much for the sensibilities of the person carrying it!

Because I am very sensitive. I don’t watch horror movies, I don’t like any form of violence. Hell, I even find Tom & Jerry distressing. But the CHW doesn’t think like that, it’s like a hungry dog gulping back everything it’s been given and yearning for more. It’s the bit that wants to see a volcano erupt, feel an earthquake shake the world or watch a tornado pick up a farmhouse (or whatever they do. Ireland doesn’t get many!). The rest of me, of course, is more practical; if it wasn’t, I’d probably be dead by now. A sobering thought, but not for my CHW who immediately gets out pad and pen and says ‘Yes, but what is being dead like? What do you experience?’ (Granted, my CHW is not alone in that query).

I wonder do all artists feel like this? Like there’s a core of them that is steely and will record every little detail even while the world ends around them. It’s quite a fascinating little creature and it come to fore for me a couple of times in my own work. The example that springs immediately to mind is a scene involving a horrible big moth. I hate moths, I despise them with every fibre of my being, and yet I managed to write the scene. I can only assume CHW is to be thanked for that. Of course, editing it should be a barrel of laughs but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. I’m sure when we do, CHW will be looking eagerly over the side to see if any corpses got caught underneath.


Thursday 12 January 2012

Obligatory Introduction Post!

Buses. They feature a lot in my life. I spend at least an hour and a quarter a day commuting to and from work and whenever I want to visit my parents, we’re talking at least four hours each way.  I find its where I do my best thinking. So the time has come to turn that thinking into something productive; something more than just idle thoughts pondered on in an effort to ignore the heat/cold, the rain on the windows and that passenger who just has no concept of personal space.
A brief background about myself, other than my commuting habits: I am an unpublished writer in my late-twenties. I am working on two writing projects at the moment – both fantasy. I write poetry, fiction and occasional non-fictional articles. I’m attempting to study journalism but I’m afraid I’m not very good at it! I’m from Dublin in Ireland (where it rains all the time! Though thankfully not today) and I work in one of those jobs you are glad to have but that aren’t really what you intended to end up in!
I plan to update this twice a week, although as my mother likes to say ominously ‘the best laid plans of mice and men…’  I am hoping to use it as a way to watch my writing style and get some practice at having my writing available for public consumption.  The idea of starting it has proved more daunting than I had thought it would.
So here I am, taking the plunge!
See you on the bus. Maybe.