If it seems like you haven't heard from me lately

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Analemma

I love this photo from today's APOD. And what a cool word for it, analemma – a Latin word meaning "the pedestal of the sundial" – which is the figure eight shape obtained by recording the position of the sun in the sky at the same time of day through the course of a year.  One day I will get around to learning how to make a sundial... add to the list along with welding large pieces of metal. One day, one day.

The Studio

I have these ideas all the time, I just never do anything more with them.

Why, I think is really not that important – it's the usual combination of uncertainty (is it *really* a good idea?),  not knowing where to start, and waffling (am I or am I not prepared to commit). 

Today's idea came from talking with a friend who was telling me how she needs more space to herself. I told her she could always come and write in my place – the girls would be at school, I would be writing at my own desk or off to work; she could have the dining room and full use of the kitchen and we would agree not to talk or anything. I don't know whether or not she will actually do this, but it got me thinking:

What if she did? What if there are other people like her, too, who need a space to create?

A space to create... (Credit/Source.)

So the idea came: what if I/we/me and whoever else created a writers studio? It could be like a yoga studio, only instead of coming for yoga classes you come to write. Kind of like the library when you were at school: there'd be big communal tables, and some smaller, one-person tables, and a kitchen where you could take a break (quietly), and reference books, atlases, and wifi. The atmosphere would be quietly inspirational. There'd be an agreed vow of silence except in the kitchen. Financially, it could work like a yoga studio, too: buy a month, three months, six months or a year of access. Or something like that. Something that would finance the place and running costs. Essentially, it would be a place to be alone away from home, kind of like Arvon, only in Brussels, and you could come every day and not just one special week. It would be a dedicated space for writers to come and practice their art, in peace, in calm, among other writers.

Inspiration: the library at Arvon Foundation's Lumb Bank. (Credit/source.)

There could possibly be readings and other events from time to time, but these would not be the main focus.

Would this, could this work? I wish I could buy the flat that's for sale downstairs from me, and maybe find out.

And if I didn't get enough writers at first, I could always give a couple of yoga classes....

The Middle

So:

Having been in a state of quasi-crisis that was entirely self-imposed (and possibly brought on by working through the exercises in The Prosperous Heart, more of which later), the crisis finally reached its peak and I was able to see it for what it was:

I am in the middle, and the middle is a tough place to be.

The middle is where your arms get tired and your back aches and you're sweating.

The middle is where you can see neither where you've come from (and anyway there's no going back), nor where you're headed – not least because the shape of the future is constantly shifting.

The middle is where you have to remind yourself: this is why I am doing this. This is why, this is why, this is why.

I feel like I'm in the middle of precisely everything that's going on in my life, with little more to show as achievement than some good beginning, some auspicious starts. 

Now comes the crunch, the follow-through....the perseverance, the maintaining of momentum. This is no time to crack up, but the time to knuckle down, and not be distracted by what other people have done or the choices they've made – why is it that these things start to look so attractive, despite being the things I didn't want, paths I consciously chose not to take? I don't know, and I've decided that trying to find out is not worth pursuing. It's just part of the minefield that is being in the middle, and the best thing I can do is observe, take note, and move on.

Call Out to My Bad Self

"You should sure stand strong in your bad self," wrote a friend of mine, in an email to me, over the summer.

So I've been thinking about that.

I have often bemoaned being out of touch with Bad Self. Standing strong in my Sweet Self doesn't always cut it. My Bad Self has been out on one hell of a long lunch. Bad Self has been out gallivanting, while Sweet Self holds down the fort. Bad Self maybe shouldn't run the show all by herself, but basically, she needs to get her bad a** back here! Sweet Self is hanging on, but she's digging in with her fingernails, the cliff is crumbly, and the mothereffers are out there and on the move. Bad Self, we need you.

Flaneuse 3 - the morning walk to work

The morning walk to work is a fundamentally difficult concept. A morning walk to work is a walk inside brackets, is fenced in by time, is a trade-off between mindfulness and speed. The walk becomes an act to maintain a balance between these two things. It becomes a challenge to stay in the present, to not rush ahead to the tasks of the day, to prevent your mind from getting to the office before your body. It is also a challenge to pay just enough attention so that the walk can end at the right time and place. But you don't want to be too conscious of that, because then the lovely free feeling is repressed. Not la Flaneuse's first choice, but it is a very good reminder of how time-poor we are, if a simple unplanned unhurried walk is a luxury occurrence.

Really something

The kind of short stories I like best give something up – reveal or yield something that is not otherwise, not by any other means, explicable. You couldn't get there, for instance, with a poem; you couldn't get there with a novel. The "something" might be a single resonant image or a moment of nuanced emotion, but whatever its nature it is so utterly itself, so utterly belonging to the story, that we (the readers) know it is true, and therefore universal. Not every short story is like this but this is the kind I like. I like the revelation and I like it best when it is simply there and the writer isn't hitting me over the head with it, or pointing all kinds of arrows to it, or screaming it in neon. I like the moment when the skin of something is pulled back just a little bit and I get to peek inside. I don't want to necessarily be inside. But I don't mind if it gets inside me, you know – if it gets inside my own skin, then it's really something.

Flaneuse 2

Again I walked for no purpose other than walking. I walked a walk that is a chain of parks -- the Bois de la Cambre (the edge of it), Parc Wolvendael, Parc Brugman, and Parc Montjoie -- with a minor detour into Dieweg Cemetery. Hergé is buried there, Tintin's creator, and Paul Hankar, the architect -- though I have to say that I have never found Hergé's grave. The Cemetery was very dry and dusty -- the driest and dustiest I have ever seen it. It must have suffered in that week of heat we had. But once deep inside, the dust gave way to moss and shadow and the overrunning vegetation filtered the light.

Back on the streets, it was quiet and in some places nearly deserted. Usually things start to pick up again about now in Brussels, but my impression today was that this was not the case. The turn has not yet occurred...

I am not complaining.

Flaneuse

This week I walked with no other purpose but walking. I had not done this in a very long time. I usually have a walk in the morning but it gets justified with a purpose -- the bakery, or the post office, or walking with the youngest daughter to school. The other day I needed nothing, needed to do nothing, apart from walking. At first it felt strange: Where would I go? How would I know? As I walked, ideas came. One street beckoned, another didn't. One direction felt wrong, another right. I even walked down a street that I may have never walked down before, despite having lived in and around this neighbourhood for 15 years. It was a surprise achievement. But ultimately I was happy just to have been walking for the sake of walking. I don't think I can satisfactorily explain how liberating it feels. I think that I have broken through some kind of barrier, one that I didn't even know was there.

This Week's Haul from the Second-hand Store

It was so stifling in the office the other day that I had to go out and walk for a while during my lunch break. I decided to go to a second-hand book shop; there was enough time to get there and back on the tram. The results were good: "The Sense of an Ending" by Julian Barnes, "The Lying Days" by Nadine Gordimer, and "No Night Is Too Long" by Barbara Vine.

The Vine book is one that is especially hard to find, and has not been reprinted like her other, even earlier books, so that was especially lucky. "The Lying Days" is Gordimer's first novel, and I have to confess I have not read more than one or two of her short stories. Am currently reading this and it is lovely and loose, with beautiful language. It's the kind of book I wish I had time to take to the woods and find a clearing and read it all day. I am completely convinced by the voice of the narrator.

"The Sense of an Ending" is brilliant. I read it first, in about 24 hours -- it is short for a novel, but that only makes it better: it is hard in the sense of compact, concise, every word working for the overall effect, and -- a thing that can be all too rare, I want to read it again. In fact I wanted to read it again right away, but I made myself wait and read "The Lying Days" first.

Thank goodness for second-hand shops.