The Scribbler

Old hearts

2011-02-04T05:20:00.002-05:00

Today was about writing, editing, researching, cleaning, meeting and greeting old friends and new.

Today I learned that an engaged couple I knew broke it off.

People break up all the time. Feet start to chill; hearts start to clog and thump slowly, words that can't be retracted are spoken and suddenly they're at the edge of a pier looking over.

Perhaps it's because only days before it ended there were small, public notes of love and a promise of a summer's eve wedding at the start of the year.

Or maybe it's because the two people involved are such wondrous souls, full of wisdom, love and courage.

Whatever it is - we're baffled. I'm baffled. My heart is sore to hear think of the bleeding pain in both of them.

I'm trying not to be Agatha Christie's Poirot here to retrace the last few steps. I'm trying to respect its mystery.

May time be kind to them.

Life

2011-01-27T07:30:00.010-05:00

Stuff...

Love my rings more each day :)

My parents are in love...

And so are we :)

My husband is a stud.

I knew Camden was full of Pirates!

We love Sunday mornings and coffee shops.

My husband likes making us fruit smoothies like this one:

Moving

2011-01-09T18:07:00.004-05:00

I've written on this topic far too many times to make any waves now but still something about knowing that this time will be for the foreseeable future has wrung out my insides.

We've lived and worked in London since April 2010. We've found a good church, made some new friends, felt ourselves (me) losing that connection with old ones, re-learned what it means to be at home with my parents and what it means to be husband and wife on the road.

The changes in the government and the economic climate has for sure dashed any hope we had for really throwing down some roots here. As the fares hike up, salaries stay low, workload increases with the impending doom of the guillotine (unemployment) it's been hard to see how we would ever start our own family and home life.

I think besides my family and a few faithful (you know who you are) the number of friends we've had has been so pitiful. It's been hard to build when everyone is so perpetually busy. For Kendall coming from a very interwoven community of friends who may as well be extended family this has been a very hard season.

And now, as we apply for my US residency it is hitting me all over again that I'm about to be flung out wide to start all over without my sweet and trying Mai, my loving but scatty Dad, my wide-eyed and wandering brother, my chatty and at times pensive younger sis, my bubbly and so strong older sister and her gorgeous boys.

It's that old feeling I had before I left England for Nashville that time- but this time peppered with the sage.

I'm missing them and I haven't left yet. I'm crying but my passport hasn't been approved for US soil.

I'm leaving so I can have a chance of home for my own family too.

If only there were a way of throwing a rope out that could draw Britain and America closer together. I would stand on the shores of New York and call, call, call, home.

Snubbed

2011-01-01T13:31:00.003-05:00

What is one to make of things when their sibling asks their husband to be a godparent but clearly has no need for the said one?

If there was ever any doubt that I am not close to my siblings then here it is. And yet, despite my age, the love of a truly loving husband and some times testing parents- feeling like the outsider amongst my brother and sisters leaves me in such loud loneliness.

P.S. Despite this blue tinged note- I wish you all a very Happy New Year.

This book may well kill me

2010-12-28T13:13:00.002-05:00

This evening I have been working on one of the chapters of my non-fiction book and getting lost in all the copious material that is now available around me.

I started with current news and worked backwards through the familiar tale of the 'blood diamond'.

I'm not a novice to all of this. I've met and spoken to former child soldiers, read articles, watched the Hollywood film, looked at photographs and even found out that Kanye-I - myself - than- sense-West wrote a song about his internal conflict with them.

And yet, reading one paragraph in a report about how the RUF (Revolutionary United Front) took to amputating women, children and teens' hands and feet (I should mention adult men were affected too) and continued to do so even when the Sierra Leonean government offered them an olive branch in the 1996 elections- broke me and made me cry like a child.

Suddenly the unbelievable cruelty that people can inflict on others smashed me over the head and reminded me that this isn't a pretty book. The things in it won't always leave you with a yummy just-had-a-great-dessert feeling. Life can be brutal and for so many that brutality has become the norm, their history, their face-whilst for the rest of us, we weep at a distance and wish it were different.

I'm still not entirely show how yet, but that's the bit the has to change. It's not 'them' and 'us', it's not 'we' and 'they'- it's just 'us'. That's what I need to find in the middle of all this mess I'm digging and burrowing through.

Help.

Lit

2010-09-19T17:34:00.003-04:00

Today I lit a candle and let its small light lift a prayer from my soul to His.

There's a dream in me that won't die. Regardless of what I do, or what happens or doesn't (as the case may be); the dream persists.

It tugs me to wake when I want to sleep and to think when I crave silence.

It makes my breath short and trapped with a bursting imagination and no magic to make it live.

This dream has been, as long as the sun has shone from the heavenlies.

I don't know if my candle will avail much bar comfort me with its fragile, little light.

Dear God

2010-09-19T13:15:00.002-04:00

Please, please, please, pretty please with sugar on top or honey if you'd prefer, can we be financially sound so I can write full time?

Could things finally pan out with my writing so that I could be spending this evening planning future books and not only English language lessons?

We would be eternally indebted to you (as we already are) and I would write and write until the tips of my fingers fell off.

In your name,
Amen.

The silver cord snaps

2010-09-12T16:21:00.005-04:00

It seems as I get older I am more inclined to dislike and truly resent death. Of course this may seem a perfectly good waste of one's energy when little is as certain as death, but it doesn't wash my mouth of the bitter bile that it leaves.

A friend of mine, Pauline O' Briain passed away recently and I found out when my phone beeped with a new email breaking the dreadful news. It's hard to describe what you feel when someone you last saw with breath in them, a wide, eye-creasing smile and glittery eyes full of life no longer has one. There are few words that can capture the way your insides have suddenly been left hanging suspended in the air- how everything about you stops as you try and reconcile that earth, and all of us has lost another soul's light.

Even as I write this I feel outraged with death. I feel maddened by its blood thirst and disregard for this most holy of gifts that God has given- so much so, am shaking and crying.

I watched two films this week that probably helped solidify this in me. Remember Me and Everything is illuminated. Both of the closing scenes in these films have gone beyond haunting me and left a sad yearning.

It isn't just the fact that moment of death is still uncharted territory until our silver cord snaps or that we go there alone but it's all those we leave behind. We leave them to reminicise, cry, lose sleep, have recurring dreams, wish and miss and hopefully, heal and carry on.

I've been worried I'm losing my God perspective on all of this. He experienced death, firsthand, on both sides of the fence and he is alive to tell the tale (so to speak). He also spent much of His human life comforting us with what would come next and somewhere in all of the riddles and rhymes, hinted He would be there to meet us.

There are those that argue that this life is it - that one day we'll be merely dust. But even despite my fury with death I refuse to believe it has the final say. Perhaps I am being a silly beatnik, but there is too much in this life of ours, too much for it to simply end in nothing.

And so that is where my hope will be - that the one who wept on his knees for his dead friend, just moments before He raised him, understands this grief that lies in me. Understands those who still remember their dead.

It's time

2010-08-29T10:33:00.003-04:00

As I sit back at my desk in London, after spending far too long reading about writers that have made it I am hit with the realisation that it's time.

Naomi has read and proofed my book. She has made suggestions and aired her thoughts. She has encouraged and constructively criticised me.

My husband, Kendall, has spent hours reading over the manuscript, finding willing 11 year-old guinea pigs, stood for ages in Staples, hole-punching and collating the pages to send to Naomi.

Everyone has done their bit. And now it stops with me. I keep thinking of other things to add, to change. I keep thinking I'm not ready yet to submit it-just a little while longer. But then I wonder if it isn't anything but fear keeping me from sending out my first three chapters as you're supposed to and allowing the agents to decide to see the balance of it.

I'm afraid after all this time of crafting it, it still won't be regarded as good enough. I'm afraid of the hole that rejections leave you in.

Yet, perhaps these fears are irrational now. I've been offered and signed a real contract to write a non-fiction book for a publisher in the U.S. (no small feat). Publishers don't invest time and money where they don't think they'll get returns.

And so this week I have to do it. Send out the first three chapters and let God deal with the rest.

This week I have to let my writing speak for itself and remember this isn't the end yet.

Hills, wood trails, yellow back spiders and heat!

2010-08-19T20:22:00.002-04:00

Yesterday husband dear and I decided to invigorate ourselves with a walk in the woods. We started on the beaten trail, went to ogle at the Bilharzia looking lake and then started to climb. We climbed and climbed and climbed, cutting through huge webs feeling like quite the explorers. (I especially felt Lord Stanley-esque when I smacked a huge black and yellow spider off Kendall's back with my bare hand!).

We reached the summit of this hill/baby mountain and took in the beautiful view. (This would have been a great place to insert a picture except we forgot to bring a camera). Kendall wanted us to stand on a huge rock that was jutting out the side (he would!) there was a lovely drop to the rocky bottom had we have lost our footing.

We then followed a semi-trail down to the old canyon which looked more to me like a limestone quarry and scaled some rocks. A swan couple squawked and told us to piss off, which we soon did because it was too hot for sense.

South Korea has a natural beauty that I wasn't expecting to find. It has hills and mountains full of fir trees and trundling through them I felt like I was in Narnia, when the White Witch's strength is starting to fade and summer is returning.

Standing in the green with just a bottle of water, a stick to beat away the webs, good walking shoes and if you're clever sunglasses to protect your eyes (I forgot mine) will make for some lovely trekking.

What one of my students wrote to me :)

2010-08-18T03:47:00.002-04:00

Hi, Erina!! I'm beth~ Do you remember me? I was your student~ Handong English camp~
I really really miss you~ I'm so sorry that I send this email so late~

Although I use wrong grammer.. I believe that you can understand! I believe.. :(

I want to go handong again~ Before I went to handong, I really hated Handong English camp

but After I went to Handong, I love this camp! hahahahhahahahah

Erina~ Where are you now? Are you in Korea until now?? or Are you in England?

I hope you are in korea~ Especially in Pohang!!

I really miss our classroom, classmate, every ELT, every cc.,....and all of Handong!

But the best person was you:< !!

Although I couldn't speak english well, you always understand me, and told me "good~" "great"!!

you are the best teacher!!!

I really miss you~ I want to see you again goodbye ~

and do you know talisa's email?? If you know please let me know talisa's email !

XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOOXOXOXOXOXOOXOXOXOXOXOO

from. Beth To.Erina~

I read that this morning and begun my day with sheer happiness :)

Don't Panic

2010-07-12T22:31:00.002-04:00

I'm in our little room in Pohang, prepping for the English Camp that's about to begin and listening to Coldplay's 'Don't Panic' and being transported to London at night.

It's so bizarre how certain chord progressions and tones of voice can do that. It's as if home wraps itself inside of musical notes and tucks itself inside of secret parts of me. It means that when I play certain music I don't feel so odd or misplaced. I'm standing sure-footed and secure.

I'm definitely an oddity here in South Korea. In a sea of pale skin and dark hair, my bronzed brown and woolly 'fro is enough to stop the old and young from eating their weird stewed kebabs or from walking down the beach promenade to literally gawp at me.

Whether the staring is disbelief, amazement, horror or fear-I can't always tell. But Koreans are a curious people. Considering they've been on this peninsula so many centuries and survived the Japanese and other empires, they still seek and wonder at new things.

Yesterday when I was walking to the cafeteria, a small old man bowed and greeted me (even though I was wearing sunglasses-usually regarded as a social barrier). I was so taken aback at his small but sweet gesture I beamed all the way to my position in the queue.

I see that as God saying, 'I see you. I like how you look. You're welcome in this place.'

And that's all I needed.

iLie

2010-06-04T03:50:00.005-04:00

The iPad has arrived- in all its pomp and glory. For a mere £340 ($499)* you can hold one of these electronic beauties in your hands and do everything from surfing Safari, look at high res pictures of friends and even some work with iWork.

This new contraption has probably pleased Steve Jobs like little else- what with it selling to 1 million merry buyers in 28 days in the US (thus causing a 3 month delay to launch here in the UK). The iPad is expected to reel in a grand profit of £41 billion ($60 billion) in sales this year.

Personally, I am not too taken by an over sized iPhone that has similar features but can't call out (a bit like iTouch). But then again I've always been a little late on these things. I only got a new phone last year because my husband thought the one I had was an affront to the noughties period we're living in.

But back to the iPad. The thing that jars me beyond its annoying fresh, clean, hip and addictive marketing strategies is what it is doing to the value of human life.

Across the plains of Asia, in recent months, in a factory city called Shenzen, China, 10 young adults have committed suicide and two have attempted it. Perhaps 10 out of a 400,000 strong employee list isn't regarded as too bad because it's within the national averages, but the leaking revelations of the conditions of Foxconn's factories leave a lot to be answered.

The average Foxconn worker (Foxconn being the biggest global electronic manufacturer, who make gizmos for Sony, IBM, Dell and Hewlett-Packard as well) starts work by being ready for the the day's headcount at 7:35 am and finishing work around 9:00pm. They may get a 10 minute break-but not in peak production times (which with the iPad's current popularity means now). They will earn an average of £2.90 for that day's work. They will not be allowed to talk to any other colleagues during the day and will be constantly watched by militant security guards. This all after they have survived the initial severe induction drills to ingrain in them, Foxconn's ethos, 'Value efficiency- every minute, every second.'

For reasons that Foxconn, psychologists and Apple are still trying to grapple with, young people are throwing themselves from their dormitory windows to their death. Some say it's mass hysteria or that China's young people aren't as hardy as the previous generation. Parents' silence is being bought, Foxconn will not comment, Apple says it's saddened, a 17 year-old girl is now crippled from the waist down in a bodged attempt and still the iPads sell.

Perhaps some may argue: "At least they have jobs..." and other economically focused reasons, but it is a little hard to ignore something is going horribly wrong in China.

We want more iPads and other iThings and Apple tells this to their manufacturers (who also happen to be able to produce a high quota to maximum quality at very little cost-monetarily speaking) then an 18-year-old worker from rural China realises that dropping a drill in a panicked moment will result in them being forced to clean lavatories with their bare hands at times.

Do we stop buying iThings to make a point? Do we turn aside and thank God the suicide numbers are at least within China's national averages?

Or could we write an email to Apple and remind them as Foxconn's biggest client that what they say holds sway and that even though we can't pronounce the deceased's names correctly their life was extremely important? Just as important in fact as the scores of others who are thinking of ways they can get over the new barbed wires and take that leap.

Six months and 15 days on...

2010-06-02T06:35:00.006-04:00

I was face-lurking earlier when I came across a friend in Nashville's comment of being married for one week and thought, 'ah bless, how sweet'.

There truly is something amazing about those early weeks, after the fanfare and fuss of the wedding has passed and you're getting used to finding your toes tangled in someone else's (as well as having to learn it is not appropriate to do star jumps in your sleep as you are now sharing a bed!).

But as I said to her, I say it here: "It only gets better." Some good friends of ours in Indy told us this. Some think the wedding day and honeymoon will be the best day of your lives-but I beg to differ. They will always hold something special in them of the gravity of those vows that are spoken but it's the next mornings for the rest of those long years you live that will be the best days of your life.

Those coming days will try, pull, tear, soothe, kiss, comfort, hold and embrace you. But the thing is, you face all those future days with your beloved. You get to dream with them, plan, talk it out, see the changes, learn your differences, find out those secret things that no one else knows (yes not even their parents!) It's in those days that those spoken vows grow deeper and anchor you in something so old and prehistoric you wonder how it found you.

And so six months and 15 days later I wake up next to my curly haired, handsome husband and best friend and think: "Ahhh, how is it possible I love you even more?" And the biggest compliment is that these short months later and he's feeling it just as strong.

Love.

Blyton's three Golliwogs.

2010-06-01T03:54:00.004-04:00

This morning, instead of getting straight into some editing work I followed a rabbit down its hole and came across an article about Enid Blyton that paints a rather different picture than the beloved children's scribe she may have made claim of.

Her apparent perchance for using the words: 'Negro, golliwogs' and when feeling extremely colloquial, 'Nigger' has given contemporary publishers a pigs ear of a time trying to update some of her stories.

Those of her most avid fans (and older readers) have be-cried such editing of those offensive terms as interfering with children's literary history. Err, whose history, may I ask? It certainly was not acceptable for me to be called or call anyone else, the 'N' word. And is that really a part of history we want to preserve?

Of course we may argue that modern rappers use of the 'N' word far surpass Blyton's strongest attempts and I feel the same disappointment in them as I do anyone who picks on stereotypes to try and create a character.

When I was writing Ridley's tale I created a Roma person (otherwise known to most of us as, Gypsies) and I fell in the hole of predictable stereotypes. At the time I just wanted to finish the dastardly difficult chapter but then I woke up a couple of months later knowing full well I had written the character completely wrong. Ivy, did not wear shawls and long dresses; she wore jeans, wornout Dunlops and an old hoodie. I'm being serious. This character, Ivy, walked into my head as clear as day in a completely different get up and I felt shamed to the core for her into the 'stereotypical' corner-because Ivy is certainly not 'typical'.

But back to Blyton. Maybe what made me want to blog about her was not even this story of the three golliwogs but rather, 'The Little Black Doll (who wanted to be pink)'. I mean-Eek! I don't think there is any amount of damage control that can rescue that story. However, maybe oddly enough she's right about us wishing we could be something or better yet, someone else. Isn't our popular culture bursting at the seams to tell us we wish we looked like so and so and lived where so and so lived and went to Soho parties with so and so?

Bah- I say.

And to think this all spurned from me thinking about the creepy Children's story my Mum bought me when I was seven- 'The Night the Toys came to life'.

Grit, interviews and the day after meeting my fiction Editor

2010-05-25T03:58:00.004-04:00

I've decided to upload some of my own drawings from my older children's story, 'Ridley Sinclair and the Fae' or 'Ridley Sinclair and the Book of the Fae'.

Why after months of having these pictures have I decided to share them now? It has a lot to do with my fantastic Editor and friend, Naomi Antony who has supported, encouraged and challenged me since I first brought my paper offerings to her.

Yesterday we spoke about the very latest draft I had given her and even though I was terrified she wouldn't like the changes I had made- the complete opposite was true. She loved it. Not the 'I'm pretending to be happy for you so you don't do anything silly', but the very simple, honest love that comes with no frills but an incredible amount of truth. She could see exactly what I was doing and how I was going about it. She understood the characters I had made and the pace on which they were taking us on this journey. She got that this was not a fantastical tale of magic, but a drama about family, loss, secrets, forests, the world around us and the people that lie therein. I knew she got this when she brought up how the book should be marketed.

I can't over emphasise how gratifying it is to be at this stage at long last. To be talking to a professional editor, getting feedback, making use of it and holding a near complete and ready manuscript in my hands.

Ridley has been with me for years-my invisible boy and I can not wait to introduce him to so many others. To have them sit at the kitchen table in Eyrely Woods Farm and listen to Grandee chatter or Liam whistle and spot Ridley sneaking off on his bike to go and meet Imogen and crack the mysterious book he has been given.

And so the work must go on. Hopefully before this year closes it will be in someone's hands who can turn my word document into a bound book that will sit open on laps, tucked under pillows, held under arms and loved like an old friend.

Besides that goodness, I have an interview today for a teacher training course-argh. My right eye is playing up due to two waves of grit being blown into it whilst standing at bus stops last night. I now feel like my entire eye is turning into a sty.

Joy.

Afros

2010-05-11T03:51:00.003-04:00

To think I've been to Morocco and back and the first thing I want to write about is my hair. Ah well, I'll come back to that dusty Med-African nation when I've uploaded some pictures.

I recently took out my weave, which I had put in to protect my hair from the harsh winter elements and to 'grow' my hair. It's funny just how dramatically a hairstyle can change not only your face but how people perceive you.

And indeed having shoulder length hair and a thick fringe, which allowed me to people stare unrestrained was fun after the scalp burning tightness had subsided but it was never going to be forever.

I have now returned to my natural tresses- those woolly, fuzzy, tightly packed, very dark brown curls and it seems to be causing all kinds of flutter - literally. I have stood cramped on the bendy 29 bus and watched people stare and then suddenly try to avert their eyes, which always look a cross between perplexed and embarrassed. I have had Rastafarian men smile proudly at me as they scan the roundness of my gravity defying hair and other beautiful brown women with glossy weaves of all shapes and sizes glance back and forth at me.

I spoke to my younger sister last night (she loves to wear her Afro a lot of the time) and she summarised it quite simply: "You can't wear your hair in an Afro without making a statement. It's always seen as political". Sadly, she's right.

What I feel like yelling at every staring eye is that this is my hair, plain and simple. These are the honest, stubborn, fragile and so delicate curls that spring out of my scalp regardless of what I try to do to cover them up. These are the curls that if I'm honest I love the feel of when I'm shampooing my hair and moisturising my scalp (something I earnestly missed with the weave-which really feels like a basket on ones head). These are the curls that are for goodness sake-just hair.

I said to my husband yesterday (who's the biggest fan of my Afro and nearly cried when I packed it away for three months under the as-said hair basket) that perhaps we Afro hair bearers have done ourselves a disservice in hiding our natural hair to don long hair that we borrow. Perhaps if we had more confidence and let it sink in deep that our hair grows towards the sun and not down our necks and backs (unless brushed quite enthusiastically or with the help of some darling straighteners) and showed the world the wonderful array of our hair it would be the norm and not some form of public transport entertainment or amusement.

That said brown women change, plait, weave, relax, straighten, bond, crimp, dye, curl, perm and comb their hair into hundreds of styles for just as many reasons and I respect that. But I am beginning to feel it is increasingly sad that so few of our colleagues know what our hair really looks like.

Besides all the health implications and strains such styles can put on our hair I think it's the feeling that Afro hair isn't pretty enough to display. For besides artists, musicians and writers, who else really gets out their Mandela combs? And let's not even open the can about the City's barely covert feelings towards this cloud like hair.

I don't think I'm trying to be political wearing my hair out, I'm trying to be good to it. To let it see the sun, feel oxygen, taste water and oils, fragrance the rooms around it and allow it to just be.

Pirates of Volunteer efforts

2010-03-19T14:10:00.003-04:00

I'm not sure about the legal wranglings of the gripe I am about to express but I am so infuriated I think it's well worth the risk.

Three years ago, I was apparently still fairly green in the sometimes shady handling of publishers and freelance writers, like myself. So, when I was approached by a publisher in Chicago for them to use an article I had written, I was so stupidly flattered I didn't bother to have the contract read by someone who could have seen the sickening holes and exploitations, and instead signed my name and scanned it back to them.

Thus resulted in having my article published in an anthology that is still sold to this day at $19 and of which I have not seen a penny.

For sure I am not the first, nor sadly, will I be the last writer to be ridden like a donkey and not even given something nice to chew on in the process, but it doesn't make the practice less bitter.

I was just about to name the shameless cads, who simply copy and pasted the hardwork of others into a book, stuck their names on the cover as editors and then go on to sit smugly in Cosi coffee house, drinking lattes or eating cream cheese bagels, but I thought I'd better check with legal friends first.

The only positive thing gained from this is that as I have now been commissioned to work on a much longer nonfiction project, I am taking great pains to thoroughly read the small print and ensure I will be paid for my efforts.

Criticism

2010-02-13T16:59:00.002-05:00

Is a very hard pill to swallow with grace and maturity sometimes. Especially when one's skin should be aged and leathery is actually as thin as rice paper.

But where would us writers be without those brave Editors and husbands who dare to tell us the truth, regardless of the royal rant we throw their way for it.

Without them, my art amounts to little.

Nouveau

2010-01-05T10:18:00.002-05:00

Happy New Year,

Here we are on the cusp of doing it all over or doing it very differently. May the year be full of surprises, presents, learned lessons, wonderful accidents, gifts, sweet love and pure beauty.

Whatever it is you've been meaning to do-do it.

Here's a wee bit of simply soothing music from my good friend-Heather Millington.

http://www.myspace.com/heathermillington

Enjoy my friends.

x

Bliss

2009-12-31T03:57:00.004-05:00

Photos by bohemianredimages.com

Just thought I would put up a few pictures of my recent adventures and life changes.

Love,

E.K. Ludwig

Carloman and Charlemagne

2009-12-04T17:08:00.002-05:00

On this day in 771 AD King Carloman died and left his brother, Charlemagne in full control of the generously sized Frankish kingdom.

I have no idea why I've just informed you of that after many weeks of silence-but it does bring back memories of my lectures at King's College and how passionate Professor Jinty Nelson was about all things Carolingian.

On another note the re-write for, 'Ridley Sinclair and the Fae' is still very much so in full swing and leading me to write whole histories, backgrounds and even myths for some of the characters in the tale. Today I've had to discipline myself to finish the latest chapter I'm on and not make notes. But it's most enjoyable so there aren't any complaints :)

And on a completely separate note-do not watch, 'The Golden Compass'. What a royal waste of time. Too much going on it too short an amount of time, a thoroughly unbelievable and confusing world-ugh didn't like it one bit. It really isn't any wonder that we haven't seen it's sequel just as yet.

Human Zoos

2009-10-27T12:03:00.001-04:00

A friend of mine made mention to Channel 4's documentary series: 'Race: Science's last taboo' on their Facebook profile status. And so naturally I went along to see what the big hullabaloo was (and you can too here: http://www.channel4.com/programmes/the-human-zoo-sciences-dirty-secret)

I haven't had a chance to watch any of it yet (still working out the whole streaming UK programmes from the US) but the thought and fact that both British and American anthropologists deemed it high science to 'collect' indigenous people from their homes and place them in zoos-made my stomach turn and my scrambled eggs return to the surface.

Ota Benga, a Batwa Pygmy, from the then Belgian Congo was taken to St Louis zoo in 1904 and then the Bronx zoo where he was gaped at by paying customers who left, probably thinking A.C. Haddon's conclusion in his 1898 book, 'Study of Man' that the white race had completely superseded the black race, was in fact true.

This is not my attempt to scream for maddened retribution, this is history and what was real and I am glad that Channel 4 have taken this acidic subject by the helm. If anything there needs to be more of this. Schools in the US and all over the UK should show this. If we are ever to break the myth that some people groups are not part of the same Human race then we need to tackle it head on. It is uncomfortable, it does make one cry and want to throttle bigots but the less we speak about certain issues the more power they get.

And I hope we can agree; racism really doesn't need anymore empowering.

Any Book readers?

2009-10-14T15:21:00.000-04:00

Fancy reading some of my work, 'Ridley Sinclair and the Book of Riddles'?

If so let me know on erina.khanakwa@gmail.com

Ta :)

Author cuts

2009-09-25T11:41:00.000-04:00

Wherever will it end?

http://www.thebookseller.com/news/97942-authors-now-publishings-whipping-boys-says-soa.html

Fie-Fi-Fo-Fiction

2009-09-24T22:51:00.001-04:00

As writing (the journalistic sort) has now become my bread and butter I think I've realized something anew. I think I have this revelation every six months or so. I'm a fiction writer first and then a journalist after. My very insides delight in the web of plots, the timbre of character's voices and the depth the color of words can take you to.

Today three good friends have asked me what's happening with the book? Is there no relief from that question? Apparently until you've done all you set out to do, no.

So now to stop writing about writing and just doing it.

Getting the sack, a flea infested apartment and moving North.

2009-09-19T11:56:00.000-04:00

I realize it's been a horribly long time since I've written, please do forgive.

After happily jaunting around Thailand (Chiang Mai heavenly, Bangkok swampy in the monsoon season and Phuket the faithfully expected Island bliss) I came home to the most tumultuous week ever. It was so knotty and fast paced, I couldn't have written or made it up if I'd wished.

The long and short is I am no longer working for Experience Worship, partly in thanks to my troublesome visa situation (if thinking of relocating to the US be prepared to have your brains, nerves and optimism frazzled by the administrative process for everything), I was kindly given the flick. In the meantime the apartment I was flat-sitting decided to explode with more fleas than there are dust mites in the London Underground and I was so badly bitten I still bear the scars all over my feet (really should get on to using some Vitamin E oil, I'm a bridesmaid in two weeks and pox-ridden feet will not do).

And so what is a girl to do when her small world is falling apart? Sit calmly and think. And in that thinking time my absolutely sweet, kind, handsome and simply wonderful boyfriend suggests we bring next years plans forward about 8 months. And so I will be moving to Indianapolis tomorrow (he's coming today to help me with the loaded drive tomorrow-a total gem), where I will be living in a wonderful community house with a friend called Julie (backpacked with her in Thailand with my beau and other friends).

This week has been such a cocktail of emotions and practicalities. I detest packing with such venom that I had to get started on it as soon as the sun rose on Monday morning. And now I am as good as done. I just need to drop some things off to the hungry and zip up my suitcase later on. Ah, that and trying to buy a car-roof rack for my luggage. Hmm I'll see how my visit to Auto zone goes and let you know.

I haven't said many byes either. I haven't thrown a party or wanted one thrown for me. I haven't called people up and told them individually what my plans are. Not completely sure why. I'm not being secretive (blogspot proves so), I just don't think I can be asked for all the fanfare. And plus I'll be back in two weeks to be a bridesmaid. Perhaps as we drink blood orange sodas at the reception and dance under the fairy lights that hang up on the church beams I'll understand then that another chapter has closed and my time in Nashville has too.

Strict Joy

2009-08-12T10:40:00.000-04:00

This title sounds like something C.S. Lewis would have written but is actually the name of The Swell Season's new album coming out on the 27th October and I can not wait!

NPR had Glen and Mar in to their Tiny Desk Concert recently and if you copy and paste this link into a new window, you'll get to hear the magic of this duo for yourself.

And it really is worth every 33 minutes of it.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=111679769

Waltz with Bashir

2009-08-10T16:07:00.000-04:00

Is the film I watched last night with a former housemate and current ones. It was feature length and panned out like many films do except unlike the others, this one was animated. This was no Disney, Pixar or Anime but something different. Something director Ari Folman and a group of trusted friends and artists thought up.

From the moment the film started with a pack of hounds racing like shadows in a nightmare until it ended with the actual footage of the aftermath of the Sabra and Shatila Massacres in Lebanon, you knew you were watching something that would be marked in memories and conversations for a while to come.

Something in it's sombre tone reminded me of Spielberg's Munich until we got to the part of animated porn. That was just strange to say the least.

As with most things it was the storytelling that captured me. The economic, restrained but poetically placed images and memories that stuck and recurred most with me afterward.

The question of the Middle East doubtlessly brings up thoughts of the Gaza strip, Israeli rockets and missiles, Palestinian suicide bombers and now with this contribution; the incomprehensible loss on every side of a bloody and ceaseless war.

The film has pictures of death that may or may not haunt. It depends how deeply you allow them into your own soul.

And what the film also did with impressive subtlety was muse on Israel's indirect and passive aggression at the genocide of hundreds of Palestinian and Lebanese lives in refugee camps that were taken by Christian Phalangists over a couple of nights in September 1982. A genocide that was enabled by the very lights of the flares those young and sometimes unwitting Israeli soldiers fired into the air.

Rants

2009-08-07T09:54:00.000-04:00

Why do people not like checking their blind spots before shifting tally-ho into your lane? Mirrors aren't enough and wearing sunglasses when the sun isn't that bright will not help either.

Furthermore why do the office powers that might be feel it is imperative to freeze their staff in glacier conditions by blasting the air conditioners to abnormal levels? Managers should know this is not conducive to high levels of production (because your workers are spending most of their day trying to avoid hypothermia!).

Finally why does Western Culture (predominantly) insist their societies should work 5 out of 7 days a week. Why not 4 out of 7? Maybe there is the fear that we simply wouldn't get as much done. But what if an extra day away from the keyboard and monitor added to people's general well being and so equated to higher productivity when they are in the office?

Therein lies the conclusion of my rant. Holiday definitely needed. Thankfully one is coming in the form of Thailand next weekend.

A Pigeon and a boy

2009-08-03T14:50:00.000-04:00

Is what I'm currently reading. It's rich and heady, invoking Israel's Middle Eastern heritage. An unusual find, as I was busy looking for, 'The Reader' by Bernhard Schlick. But is in a similar vein of Khalid Hosseini's 'The Kite Runner'.

Page 40 (I'm not copying you Abi, I honestly am only up to page 40) and I think he's starting to get under my skin in a good way.

Something about that makes me sick

2009-07-28T13:42:00.000-04:00

I'm not sure if I've simply become horribly jaded and cynical with age but I can't dispel the deep dislike of everything that tries very hard to be christian.

That whole thing of an evangelism campaign and doing certain things for others with lots of coverage because these poor heathens need to hear it.

I haven't lost my faith or even forgotten Jesus' last words on earth before he teleported to heaven but I just think that He wanted more for us. He wanted us not to make a mission out of it and a thing out of it or a campaign (incorporate) out of it, but simply to be it.

For our very core to be shaken to such disgust at the evil in the world that we do not need anymore snazzy branded ministries to join the good race.

For it not be another cleverly PR'ed staged event, with flashing lights, smoke machines and at times incredibly corny music.

But perhaps to simply meet these people on their own turf, without the fanfare and glimmer at the good work that's being done and simply slipping in the background and loving them so profusely but never for a minute becoming the headline act.

Gracious, I probably do sound dreadfully biting here, but I have seen so many gimmicky, cheesy and tummy turning objects that have Jesus's name, a branded scripture and apparently the power to change someone's life, I'm about ready to burst.

This isn't to say all these numerous ministries are solely money churning machines with the added benefit of doing a good deed. There are some amazing, truly amazing souls sacrificing their very hearts to love those overlooked and receiving no glittering praise for being a 'mega church Pastor' with a ministry named after themselves. And for all of those that go unnoticed by us, I know God sees them. He always has been about working in secret and loving expansively.

Quite simply put, perhaps people just want to be befriended and loved not to join ranks and become something but because they are God's creation.

And honestly, we really don't need stomach churning objects to do that.

Losing touch

2009-07-22T15:00:00.001-04:00

Facebook, as terrible a distraction as it is and encourager of cyber-stalking, is also a reminder to how we can fall out of contact with people.

I've never liked goodbyes, they're filled with too much and they tend to resonate in my head for seasons afterwards, but I've realised sometimes I've said goodbye without ever saying it.

I live in Nashville, TN, but there is a whole world, community and bunch of people that I used to know back in England. Indeed the very nearest and dearest have remained in contact but as I look through photographs I see the stories of so many others play out and realise we are no longer part of each other's lives.

Perhaps this is just the natural order of things. To get the new you have to free yourself up to accommodate it. To be fully part of your present you have to stop strangle-holding your past. You have to accept that this is what happens when one grows up. They move out of home, get a job somewhere, move into their own place, make new friends, find love, make life.

And yet as blissfully promising as that all sounds I still look at these same photographs and ache because I know there have been too many conversations that haven't been had, too many stories that haven't been told, too many moments that haven't been shared to keep the once friendship a now friendship.

Sad, but true.

Girl crush

2009-07-21T12:46:00.000-04:00

I wonder how many of you thought this was going to be an explosive entry of sorts ;) Go on, be honest.

Sorry to disappoint but all it really points to is my new found love for KT Tunstall. I've always liked her music and style for a good while and feel like she's been around longer on our airwaves and iTunes longer than she has, but recently my love has reached new heights of appreciation.

Perhaps it has something to do with the fact she's an instrumentalist-competent at a selection of musical devices. Or maybe it's her voice which sounds old and playful at the same time as it sings out and through her penned lyrics. Then again, it could be because she's from Scotland, a place of lore and myths and unbelievable scenery and deep, deep history.

Or perhaps it's her widely spoken about attitude to her life as an adopted child, which didn't make her feel unloved but lucky, knowing her life could have turned out a thousand different ways. Her birth's initial rootlessness paved the way for a creative mind and thoughts of endless possibilities. I think it's the richness of such hope in her that makes me think what a woman.

Plus how can you not respect someone who plays guitar (electric, acoustic and bass), drums, piano and the voicebox to name but a few?

Fear

2009-07-16T12:22:00.001-04:00

Perfect love drives out all fear.

July, thus far

2009-07-13T12:44:00.000-04:00

I have an awful cold. One of the ones where your throat is so sore if feels like you're scratching it out with your own nails.

I have survived a hugely busy period at work where I was an artist, problem solver, runner (mainly to Michael's), printer, decorator, hostess, promoter and gaffer.

I then survived Cornerstone where I managed to stay afloat during freezing cold nights spent praying in the tent whilst a hardcore band screamed again that they're doing this for the Lord, burning sun that made my forehead sting, the smell of BO, damp dank grass which made me want to heave, friendships that could never have been made any other way if it wasn't for the rains, being cramped on buses and smelling to the heavenlies.

Then a trip up to Indy where I went to see about a boy and came back smiling like a Chesire cat.

This isn't the most lyrical note I've ever written-but it has oodles of love in it. Promise.

La Fetes des Peres

2009-06-21T22:03:00.000-04:00

Father's Day is nearly over but before the evening melts into Monday morning I realised I hadn't really celebrated much with my heavenly Father.

Indeed I sang my heart out at worship this morning and hoped it brought a little smile to God's face but whereas I sent my dad in England a card and called him in the afternoon, I realised I did neither things.

Not that I know anything of a direct phone line to the heavenlies or a post code either, but you get the gist.

So I did something I haven't done since my Kensington Temple Encounter days (a weekend retreat in the sort of boonies of Bournemouth, England). I wrote God a Father's Day in multi-coloured gel pens, nonetheless.

Of course I won't be posting this belated card anywhere, but at least when He looks in He'll see a card made out to Him. And know I thought of Him today. And I was thankful that He has stuck with me through my gripe and grief.

What a Dad.

Sworn

2009-06-15T19:36:00.000-04:00

You've heard it be said, "So, I have your word?" Maybe the term seems rather archaic, but I think it shows something deeper that for some reason I missed. God's promises are exactly that, His word. Not simply as in He is the one talking but more than that, He swears on His very life and nature to fulfill His promise; to fulfill that thing He said He would do. Like a vow, giving your word can not be taken lightly, it isn't for the fainthearted. In Israel of old, if you broke a vow you could literally be cut in half by your peers.

When God gives His word as He did to Abraham and as our Hebrews author reminds us in Hebs 6:13-19 He is swearing on all that He is. He is putting His reputation, His name, His sake, His breath, on the line, to say, 'It will be done.'

English Fairy Tales

2009-06-12T18:56:00.000-04:00

Is what I am currently reading (along with The Magician's Nephew, where I get to read a lot of, "Look here, Diggory," said Polly presently. Only Lewis could do that). And so far the fairy tales have not disappointed. What with their shot length, formulaic stages of character improvement, rhymes and riddles and of course the ever present good versus evil battle; I have been happily entertained since I started reading them last night.

I can remember a lot of these stories from when I grew up. Especially, Jack and the Beanstalk and The Three Bears (I have no idea why Goldilocks doesn't get a mention in the title) and of course Rumpelstiltskin, or his cousin, Tom Tit Tot. But then there are the others that I never touched on when I was 6 years old and sat in awed silence on the itchy mat during reading hour when we would sit stock still and listen to stories (such blissful, sweet afternoons). There's, St George of Merrie England, The Black Bull of Norraway, Nix Naught Nothing and The Red Ettin; all so rich in colour and character with tales of courage, solid love, endurance and some magic for good measure. But it is the more human qualities of the characters who make stupid choices that lead to curses and adversities until rescued by others with more sound minds and generous hearts that keep capturing me. I know I'd be the one who would cut corners because of impatience and find myself in a bog of quicksand 100 yards from home weeping and wailing until rescued. I know this, because I have done this; I do this. But it seems it's okay to make mistakes, to take the wrong turn, to get confused and lose your place in the story because this big story we're in the midst of is being written by one with such keen skill, He'll have us back on track with lessons learned and the added bonus of first hand experiences.

The only thing missing from my fairy tales is who wrote them. But then where do you begin trying to narrow down the folk stories that have been shared and whispered, reshaped and passed along the ages by scores of men, women and children?

Maybe that's what gives fairy tales their timeless quality. The authors are all of us, who have ever lived, travelled, trusted, loved, betrayed and done the same or fought for something bigger than ourselves.

The authors were those. The authors are us.

Rukstar

2009-06-11T09:06:00.001-04:00

Oddly and wonderfully enough I got to see my good friend from my Pride Magazine days (and no, it wasn't a gay pride magazine).

During the twirl and whirl of her stylist job she happened to be here-Nashville, TN of all places. So of course I picked her up on one of our warm sweaty nights took her down to Hillsboro Village for a large glass of Rose, incessant chatter and laughter about our woes and joys and uniformly turned our noses up at the man in the bar who decided to heckle us (or as the kind, lovely man who took our picture said, 'Holla'.)

All in all, a fun night. I have another friend in New York right now. If only we could teleport :(

Home

2009-06-08T18:21:00.000-04:00

It seems I have grown an odd obsession with that one word. Whether for it's meaning or description; I have knitted it in my mind at regular intervals until I now have something to wrap around me a thousand times over.

It's been described as several things including the starting position of the cursor on a text-based computer display.

But I have become rather fond of this conclusion;

" A) An environment offering security and happiness.

B) A valued place regarded as a refuge or place of origin."

Sometimes it feels as if the battle in my head is won and I know where I am standing and I know who I am and I know why I am here. But then other times, there's a reprise of the same question; perhaps spun differently; but there nevertheless.

Maybe it's because I feel as if I am living a very transient life. Always scribbling dreams and packing up boxes and books. Planning farewell evenings and reconnecting over cyber letters. Collecting names and stories, faces and voices. And all the while still not quite having the sense I'm there yet.

This is not a charmed life, though it does have it's sweetness in the countless lives of those who have opened their hearts and homes to me. I have received so much and yet still I am near empty, waiting for my fill and my turn, of a place I know without doubt is that little four lettered word.

The Edit/Work on it some more stage

2009-06-03T08:55:00.000-04:00

My Editor is a jewel. She truly is. She is one of the most kind hearted, wise and honest women I know. She's also fierce and thorough with editing.

Needless to say I've had my initial response back from her regarding Ridley's story, which I really should call by it's name, 'Keepsake'. Though she genuinely loved it there are still two areas which need work (which in my mind branches out to several other smaller branches, thus creating a monstrous tree of work).

When I got her feedback back my first thought was, 'Okay not too bad.' This was promptly followed by, 'I actually have no idea how to do these suggested things (part of this thought still remains). Followed next by an extended period of wailing mentally at what a crap book I must have written not to have knocked her off her seat first time. This period was so extended that I took to feverishly trying to plan a new first story for my characters even though I have already been plotting the second book.

And finally and quietly as it always does after my brain fever outbursts of inadequacy, I realised something. I realised an old, and solid truth that I had buried away in my supposed self-sufficiency. "Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me." - Jesus. John 15:4.

It seems even writing a children's fictional tale can not and will not be a stand alone project. Of course I had always known this and in the beginning I knew the ideas and initial flurry came from God alone and then somewhere in the latter middle part and end, I simply ploughed on myself.

So God has brought me back to where He is, or perhaps brought me forward. Now I wait in stillness and try to be silent. I try to clear my head from possible character conversations and explorations and hear what the Spirit is saying. It's still very hard and I have no idea how this will pan out, but God knows this story, beginning from end, so I'm sure He knows how.

Magical people

2009-05-29T11:57:00.000-04:00

I had this thought, the other day at work (clearly induced from re-reading, 'Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince) that we, Christians, are perhaps a magical people.

Now of course I realise this statement will either make some giggle, roll their eyes or foam at the mouth in fury. Still, I think it's a thought worth mulling over.

In HP or Hogwarts land as I call it the magical people, with their aid of their trusty (though not always if you've read all 7 books) wands can perform all kinds of spells, charms and hexes. Their inexplicable abilities in the impossible make them, magical.

In our world, the unmerited favour of a brilliant, ingenious, Creator made man, who died on a cross and then confounded death by rising again left us a gift so we wouldn't be orphans - The Holy Spirit. It is through the Holy Spirit and the clever, inexplicable gifts He gives us that we are able to do and see impossible things in our very finite and fragile human lives.

Now we can't point at something and say, 'accio' and it will come hurtling towards us. But we can lay our hands on our siblings and (perhaps without all the touching for strangers) pray for them. Pray them through the valley they may be in or pray that the Holy Spirit's healing touch would bind up the sickness (or in my case, pulled back muscles). We can dream dreams and see visions, even speak things out before they come to be. We can speak in foreign and unwritten tongues and have the secrets interpreted. We can bless and curse with our tongues (see James 2 for further information) We can read Holy Scripture and get a glimpse into the heart and mind of the most Ancient of Days. In all simplicity, we can stand in the magical even whilst we live in all the mundane of normality.

When I think of the magic in Hogwarts land, I see there is and at the same time, nothing new there. It carries in it all the wish-fulfillment ability we all wish we had. But perhaps it speaks of a deeper, elder truth; that there was and already is, a great magic that we lost at the Fall, which with Christ now restoring us back into places of sons and daughters, we can now pick up where we left off.

But don't get me wrong, I don't think we've been empowered by and through the Holy Spirit solely to play show and tell with our gifts; but rather, to engage with all around us, to better the world we inhabit.

Whichever way we look at it; magic is very much so, still around.

Red

2009-05-27T12:55:00.001-04:00

Yesterday I read the second half of my, 'finished' children's story and then emailed it to my Editor friend.

And there it is. The book is finally out of my hands and in anothers. I have begun the process and now I'm free to think of Red and Imogen's next adventures.

It's strange reading back on what you already wrote in a flurry of creative contentment, particularly when what you read makes you smile, tear up or laugh out loud.

I've said it before but my characters really do feel like my little ones. I know them and what they look like, what they'll say and sometimes what they'll think. Finishing this first story made me realise I absolutely do not want to let go of them quite yet, even if they are starting to grow up as it heads into summer time in Eyrely.

Fiction, it's where my heart rests. Without a book to read I feel bereft and when telling stories I feel a happy contentment that sits merrily in this little soul.

Oddity

2009-05-26T11:40:00.000-04:00

This is my third attempt to be honest with this virtual page. Honesty, alike truth gives the body and mind a jolt in a way that little else can.

Maybe it's because I've been debating how open I want to be on a blog and whether in all that's good in heaven, I should be blabbing my insecurities. Yes, it's therapeutic and cleansing in a way, but it also has a tendency to leave you feeling that bit more bare than before.

And what is this honesty or truth that has left me wrestling when I should be working, you may be wondering? It is the fear that secretly crept up on me that I am perhaps too awkward and odd to get that sweet gift that comes in a mutual love with another.

Not sure whether this is just normal insecurity we all feel at times or a horribly deeper symptom of something horrible and deeper.

Perhaps it is merely the age old question we humans have carried in our souls since forever ago; 'am I enough? Am I good enough?'

Funny how, even though I've heard the answer to this a million times I still find myself asking it.

A beautiful world

2009-05-16T18:24:00.000-04:00

Sometimes a song and the woven notes of its melody do something strange, something unruly and simply inexplicable. Sounds and words seep into cracks in my skin and the pores in my soul, and make their home there. They create a world of thoughts and feelings that shift like seasons. Sometimes it's sunny and delightful; other times the dark of lightening storms hit hard. I have no idea how waves of sound can do that to me. Take me to a place without leaving the spot. Tell me a story with so few words. Show me something with my eyes closed.

'Don't Panic' by Coldplay is one of their older songs alike, 'Writing to reach you' by Travis but somehow, in some odd unknown way, these songs take flight and paint a brightness that few other songs do, for me.

Perhaps it's the refrain of, 'We live in a beautiful world, yeah we do, yeah we do.' Simple but a refreshing take on this mass of iron ore and water. Maybe I spend too much time seeing the desperate hopelessness of our world and so to hear the opposite makes my little heart sing in chorus.

Just perhaps.

Danish Proverb

2009-05-04T08:58:00.000-04:00

What you are, is God's gift to you;
What you do with yourself, is your gift to God.

Pocket watch

2009-04-30T10:01:00.000-04:00

I have a pocket watch. It' s a kind of burnt bronze with an antiquated lid that pops up at the slight press of the button. The same button that when pulled up moves the clock's hands.

There's also a small chain attached so I can dangle it from my pocket, like the Fat controller in 'Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends'. But there's a small hitch. The battery is dead so the hands remain at the last time I put them on. And that's the odd thing, instead of getting a new battery, I've taken to simply moving the hands to the correct time every now and again.

The pocket watch goes everywhere with me. In my jean pockets or in my brown leather satchel. In my jacket pocket or in between my fingers. On anything I can hook it on or under my pillow when I sleep.

The attachment crept up so stealthily I didn't know it had happened. My fierce loyalty to this little round bit of metal is clearly more than a mental hiccup; I think perhaps it's my way of having Anna close. Maybe that's why I like nothing more than to slip it out of my bag's side pocket and pop open the lid just to look at it and all it's detail. There's history with it, there's the story of how she acquired it, how she gave it to me and more of, the long lost age that pocket watches speak of.

I feel a bit like an old man when I take it out. No one has commented on my mild malaise yet, but that doesn't really bother me because I have secret stories and pictures all dangling off a very small chain.

The Shack

2009-04-21T14:54:00.000-04:00

You've probably heard the huge hub-bub surrounding this tale of a man called Mackenzie Allen Phillips whose daughter is kidnapped on a family camping trip and then brutally murdered. His daughter was six years old. Three and a half years later, Mack receives an invite from, 'Papa' or God to return to the shack where the last remnant of his daughter Missy was found.

There was so much hype all over this book I was most aggressive in resisting to read it. But floating about Target last Friday I came across it and dropped it into my basket. Unbeknown to me God would use those 250 pages to wreck all I thought I knew of Him.

I shan't spoil the experience of being a fly on the wall in Mack's unusual weekend with the Lord of the Universe. But I will tell you that during it you may just grasp the ridiculous depth of God's sheer pure love for His creation. You will never see such a devoted heart as God's own. And so I imagine you too will be wrecked, undone and pieced back together again in fear and trembling for the one who loves only you.

And that's the key thing here I think I learned. It isn't solely that God loves the world and the people in it. It's that He loves only you.

He loves only me.

Wine nose

2009-04-21T14:49:00.001-04:00

My younger sister has a gift. She can smell and taste any wine, whether white, red or rose and tell you what year that wine was produced. It's an odd talent and in the early years I thought she was cheating her way into our awe. But years later and several bottles tasted she can still astonish us into silence by telling us the year.

On my most recent trip home I was thinking unsuccessfully how to make money off her gift (horribly capitalist of me I know) but ever since 'You Bet' ended years ago I have really come up dry. So perhaps her gift is just for our entertainment and to make her merry and giddy. Perhaps it's just another example of the random wonderfulness of our God's power to offer and implant the strangest gifts to his children.

Hairaisers-not the holiest thought today

2009-04-12T12:31:00.000-04:00

I was cleaning out one of the folders in my Hotmail account and came across a press release sent to me by some PRs a good while ago (11th July 2006 to be exact). It was a brief paragraph about how the packages that contain 100% Human Hair are in fact from reliable sources, namely Hindu volunteers who shave their heads in honour and worship of their gods.

Now not only has this thrown me off in the sense I have maintained the staunch argument that no corporation can have that much access to flyaway hair of all colours, but it's now added the added trouble of a spiritual dimension.

Of course if we remember Christ's words to Peter when our fisherman friend was staring at a picnic blanket teeming with all kinds of critters, that praying over things makes them clean and acceptable; but what of hair? Hair dedicated to Hindu gods that now has a new journey being tied and woven to my fro?

I'm as yet to wrestle with that one and hear what God's thoughts are and do a bit more research and prayer and perhaps get a bit of an answer.

Why this is taking up valuable blog space on Easter Sunday when I am remembering that my hero is alive and well, I have no idea. Perhaps that's what happens when you've been oscillating between health and colds, deep sleep and early starts, reading in silence to too many lunch dates.

Either way; London has been a fun time.

Hope you've had a happy, 'He is Risen' day.

Live and let live

2009-03-20T10:54:00.000-04:00

It's been a week of pain, disappointment, misunderstanding, misrepresentation, belittling, shame and tears. But today the sun has shone. Not merely over us on this cool spring morning, but through me where shadows and hauntings have lain. Where my dreams have been filled with taunting and my mind addled with sadness.

I've prayed, wept, knelt, laid down, found distractions but perhaps best of all, I've run to the safest arms I've ever known.

It's in the invisible I've have been kept from falling over the edge and instead been lifted to see the sun shine, just that little bit brighter today.

Dear Frankie

2009-03-03T23:15:00.001-05:00

I'm not sure what year this film came out but it was before Gerard Butler became famous for his, 'This is Sparta' role, and devoted deceased husband in 'P.S. I love you', but it's a film that has caught my breath in my mouth and thoughts.

I found the DVD in the local library after a roommate watched and recommended it and remembered seeing the trailer for it eons ago in London. Sometimes there is a reason why things come around later and watching this film tonight as I just did I see why.

It deals with an absentee father, a mother (Emily Mortimer) grappling with being both roles to her son and fearfully overcoming the deep-rooted mistrust in others. It tackles being different, both in deafness and the new outsider. It peels back the secrets we all keep hidden and our desperate attempts to be brave. And it offers love as the tender, humanising hope we all harbour. But perhaps more touchingly; it reminds, how incredibly intelligent children are and what their little eyes take in and understand.

I can't really add more to it then that. There are awkward silences where you find yourself falling into the screen and the moment the camera captured. Or willing and wishing for a tidier ending than the one given; but at the same time loving the clever twists that it leaves.

It is a beautiful, simple film, set in Glasgow with all the overcast and sometimes sunny skies that makes the U.K, the U.K. It has dialect, folk song and people muddling along this grand long journey called, life.

An honest treasure to find that for some reason switched a light on in me.

Without a crystal ball

2009-02-24T12:10:00.000-05:00

How on earth is one supposed to plan their future when they haven't the foggiest what it will entail?

I read this, this morning and it made me pause but not necessarily think calmly on it:

"Do not those who plot evil go astray? But those who plan what is good will find love and faithfulness." - Proverbs 14:22

Perhaps this bothers me because I am in the middle of sorting through that daunting task and veiled abstract thing-the future. Trying to decide where to live, how I will afford to live there, when will I live there, how long I will be there, what I will do for work, how long to commit are questions that are shredding my every nerve and stealing every thought that could have been valuable daydreaming time.

Because all I can see with complete clarity is I have no idea how to answer any of the above nor how to thread together some sort of resolution. And with that same complete clarity I know I can not last much longer in this limbo of que sera, sera.

I have always thought plans were dubious things. You spend hours poring over them and maybe with a couple of ulcers and cold sores for extra measure and you may even write them down. Then you keep pottering on with the mundane and sometimes your plans secretly come to life and start to breath. Whilst other times they go further into deep hiding and something else sprouts up in their stead.

So alas what is one to do with all this uncertainty? Keep scribbling in pencil I don't doubt and be prepared for the one who has the ink to tell you what will make it into that veiled abstract thing.

Finishing the first draft

2009-02-17T10:59:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I finally finished writing the first draft of Ridley's story and it was the oddest moment when I typed that final full stop. Perhaps it's because I recognise there is still so much to go before it is printed, bound and sat upon shelves waiting to be taken home by eager hands in exchange for a few gold coins.

The writing process is long and arduous but the world of fiction is sheer magic. To spin out lives and flesh out characters, to know their deepest secrets before they do and see it all unfold at a measured pace makes the coming rewriting, editing and redrafting period, well worth it. Or perhaps it's simply knowing that at some point soon others will be able to share the places and lanes and hear the conversations and mysteries that have been whizzing about my head for months on end.

As I write this my little charge, one year old Aliyah is sat on my lap watching nursery rhymes and dogs, Lars and Alaska have managed to wrap themselves around my back and hip and fallen asleep (occasionally kicking out at random as they dream). This observation has absolutely nothing to do with writing a children's book except to say this was my life as I wrote that book. Us writers have been known to be multi-taskers and never have I felt it more truly as I do right now.
And now I must leave the book alone for a week to rest my eyes and brain before picking it apart from beginning to end and tying up those loose ends. Oh yes and finding out those things that I wrote in the story ages ago that for the life of me I now can not remember where exactly I did write them!

Mission-broker

2009-02-07T23:38:00.001-05:00

I'm not sure if my title is even real word but it captures in all it's 13 letters what I feel I'm about. One who travels the globe and meets souls, old and new, hidden and bold and stays with them awhile. Learns their ways, listens to their tales, shares life with them, weeps and rejoices, loves them from the bottomless pit that is God's heart and then when the bell starts to ring in the secret of their own soul, books a ticket and leaves to share the wonders learned with so many others.

Someone first prayed being a 'mission-broker' over me and saw this life for me ages ago and I was mortified. There was no shining light with choirs of angels singing in excelsis but merely me sat stock still thinking my 'missions' life was simply 'pc' for a wandering, lonesome life. To say I was not best pleased doesn't do it justice.

But they were right. I have hopped on more planes and sought more visas in the last couple of years than many do in their entire lives. I move country, I find a house, I make friends, I start all over. And when the chime rings I know it will be happening all over again soon enough.

It seems peculiar that God would design leave alone permit such a rootless existence, a life where it is hard to call anywhere home anymore. But then I see the quaint delicacy of his point. He is my home. He is the familiar street and neighbourhood. He is the favourite chair and homely scents. He is the warmth from the cold. He is what keeps me from being lost at sea every time I pull up the anchor and move on.

And so I look about my room now, my photographs, my friends, the cafe I am beginning to love and I see this is all for a time. A time and a season is all we have. In this breath of a life where nothing will be fixed and forever until we step into eternity, I see we only have a time and season.

So I will enjoy this, as long as it lasts. I will pour out and ring dry until I am spent. I will love and cry, befriend and believe and more importantly just be.

And when the ringing becomes impossibly loud.

I'll take my leave.

It's...

2009-01-30T19:27:00.000-05:00

It's the smell of asphalt after the rains
And the puddles that ruin your favourite shoes.
Sometimes overhearing the ridiculous rant of a stranger
At an even more obnoxious bus driver.

It's the cherry pink blossoms that scatter on the library path in March,
Following Spring's sprouting daffodils.
And a hot bowl of pear crumble with vanilla ices,
In the warm, wooden kitchen.

It's your laugh over another silly story,
After too much red at All Bar One.
Or the patrons who just can't find the loo near the cloakroom.
And the Orchestra pit that always rings with magic.

It's the wide, green spaces that roll out for miles,
Empty skies and cow pats.
Farmer's markets and Lancashire cheese,
And tea at six o'clock on the dot.

It's the sea at my toes at Morecombe Bay,
The salt in the air and in my eyes,
A chill through my clothes,
A song in my veins.

It's being on the Virgin Express leaving London,
The concrete fading to verde.
Tower blocks to oaks,
Bustle to the open.

It's you waiting at Heathrow,
Time and stories on your lips.
It's with you.
That's home.

Relevant Magazine!

2009-01-29T18:48:00.000-05:00

Hello lovely ones,

I finally have the link to a digital version of my article with Relevant Magazine on the Indian caste system that was printed in the Jan /Feb 2009. Have a read and tell me your thoughts!

Thanks for reading :)

http://www.relevantmagazine.com/issue/37.php

The joys of the cyber pen

2009-01-22T22:38:00.000-05:00

At present I am in heady love with the current older children's story I'm writing, 'Keepsake'. It has not been such a pleasure to write fiction since University when I would boycott writing my history essays for the sake of fun short stories about my house-mates.

I also managed to jot down some sort of synopsis to give you a clue as to what it is about.

Here it is:

Keepsake – A Synopsis

Ridley, ‘Red’, Sinclair is 11 years old and the only child of Lena and Liam Sinclair. After the abrupt and untimely death of his mother, Ridley finds himself moved to a renovated farmhouse in north England along with his father and grandmother, Grandee. It is in Eyrely Woods Farm that two very strange things happen to him. First he is given an encrypted diary from his deceased mother, one that holds her most dark secrets and one that he must unravel as requested to, by her. And secondly he comes into contact with Kirk McPhee; a dead girl who does not know how she died or why Ridley is the only one who can see her. With the help of his grief counsellor’s granddaughter, Imogen Rogers, Ridley sets about trying to find the answers and reasons to some of the most guarded secrets he has ever known.

*

‘Keepsake’ is a story about coming to terms with one of the most painful personal tragedies through the eyes of a child and how through talking, a found keep safe diary and new friendships, the heaviness of grief and guilt can be lifted.

Stars

2009-01-14T11:25:00.000-05:00

Last night at an in-depth Bible Study I've recently started attending I heard something that caught my very imagination in mid-thought. When God said to Abraham, 'look at the stars, your descendents will be like so' (paraphrased here) it is echoed in Psalm 147 to beautiful effect. 'He calls out the stars and He knows them by name.'

He wasn't talking about constellations and formations. He was talking about- us.

We were and are those stars.

For sheer pleasure

2009-01-11T14:24:00.001-05:00

Too my absolute horror I have discovered that many in my new circles do not enjoy reading. For many it is seen as a chore, something you do at school and college and then for the life and sanity of you, never to be done again in the freedom of adulthood.

Try as I may to have expressed the simple wonder of reading a good story, I can't seem to convey or even draw interest to the wonders of ink and yummy smelling bound paper. Nor the unyielding mystery of an invoked imagination to create worlds, faces, histories, loves and horrors. To make friends, to be half way across the seas but to have not moved a spot, to be invited into a secret, a hushed wonder.

Instead I've been told, 'Yeah, I'll just watch the movie.' (Insert huge strangled gasp) Despite knowing full well the art of film has to omit some of the play on words to fit into the budgeted time and film reel.

I don't know but it does make me sad that there are entire people walking about happy just to feed off one person's interpretation instead of peeling back the layers for themselves and discovering that the world around them just got bigger.

Perhaps it's because I'm reading 'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows' and have been treated to a story-tellers delight. Or perhaps it's my trade as a Wordsmith that makes me so.

Or perhaps it is that I have found that the imagination and the words that carry you there are as infinite, relentless and as pure as ever rolling space.

Felix sit annus novus!

2009-01-01T13:56:00.000-05:00

And so here it is; 2009. And it's a beautiful start; the sun is shining merrily through a clear sky, the dogs aren't making their usual psychotic racket and everyone is cheery. Perhaps it comes with all the anticipation of what's to come; a fresh page, a blank sheet, a seemingly as yet unwritten present.

I've always been one who wants or rather needs a word for the year. To have my compass set at the ready pointing me due North so that when all the windswept crap (that's guaranteed to come) does arrive, I'll be more than ready.

And yet this morning, the first of the 364 that's still to come, I've stumbled upon Isa 43:16, 18-19:
16 This is what the LORD says—
he who made a way through the sea,
a path through the mighty waters
18 "Forget the former things;
do not dwell on the past.

19 See, I am doing a new thing!
Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?
I am making a way in the desert
and streams in the wasteland.

The thing is I've clung to this word already and yes it was of help but I was hoping and expecting for something a bit more explosive. But then that's my err. God's word never changes, or old or stagnant, or dull. It remains what it has always been, a torch light.

So I'll keep it and mull over it and stew in it and wait for the pieces to come together and for me to see the relevance of a word I've already received.

One good thing though-it speaks of promised goodies, of the brand new and the impossible happening-so perhaps there is something explosive on the way?

Starting over

2008-12-31T13:56:00.000-05:00

Unbeknownst to me when you disappear off Blogspot for about two years it appears you lose your blog page too. After a bit of email banter with a good friend this afternoon, I decided to resume my former random rantings and gibberish only to discover I could not log on to that page anymore. So all those witty (well they were at times), pictures, anecdotes and other bits have vanished into a cyber grave of sorts. Quite a shame really it would have been funny to read.

Anyway, thought I would write again as a ridiculous amount has happened and I haven't kept anyone up to date.

I now live in Nashville, Tennessee; where I write for a magazine called, Relevant (though I if I don't get cracking on my latest piece I may not be for much longer-insert sheer panic and writers block here) and I volunteer with a wonderful church called, The Anchor Fellowship.

I've realised that I do not tend to write much when I'm in the middle of an emotional typhoon and moving out to the US did exactly that to me. There is a huge blank in me to find the right words to describe the excitement, anticipation, anxiety, fear, panic, concern and homesickness I've been feeling over the last two and a half months. The strange line of thoughts that keep coming which see-saw from complete confidence to 'what the bloody hell have I done?'.

Christmas and my birthday has just passed and it was different, for lack of a better word. Gone was the overheated cinnamon coloured kitchen walls with mulled wine filling the air and hot mince pies being downed very fast with ice cream. Gone was the tinkering of Bing Crosby and his chorus girls and Mum drowning out all the vocals. And gone was Dad by the Christmas tree giving his annual speech about the woes and highs of the year whilst we greedily eyed our presents.

Instead it was a more sedate affair of waking up pottering around my American family's home and quietly trying to recreate 'home' Christmas from thousands of miles away all the while begruding the fact America does not stock Bisto gravy or Paxo sage and onion stuffing!

It is now New Year's eve and I'm slowly losing the feeling in my finger tips because our house is like a fridge (all due to the fact it has NO central heating!), my nose is not sure if it wants to run or remain blocked and my mind is still trying to work out how it became the end of the year.

I do not have any resolutions so far-although that is not to say I do not believe in them. This year was about 'Others' for me and I hope I achieved in putting others first and using my gifts to tell their stories. But I just cannot work out what next year will be all about.

I am writing again. That older children's fiction story that has been torturing me for the last five years by either refusing to come out of my head or hiding so deep it had lost itself. Well now it's here and ironically is called, 'Hide and Seek', for now at least, publishers always change these things. But the best bit isn't the thought of being published; its writing and just getting all these conversations and plots out of the knots in my head and double spaced on my screen. I need to write up a coherent synopsis and put it up here for you. I have also had offers from an Illustrator so I'll put up some of their work once I have it.

All exciting stuff.

Have the happiest, truest New Year you can muster!

Thanks for reading these ramblings!