How do you deal with a story like this?*
I completely chickened out of talking to this week's professor about an internship. I've promised myself to write him an email tonight (despite having promised it yesterday).
I also promised to study Dutch. Particularly since I failed the grammar part by one mistake (we were allowed 4) - thus failing the exam by 0.5 - and have to do a retake. But since the retake is scheduled for Dec 21 at 6 pm, and I'll be on the plane then, I'm taking the exam Dec 6. Which is way too soon for me to learn how to spell Dutch verbs. Damn double vowels! Damn them all to hell!
So instead of anything useful I tried to buy a nifty fucsia scarf for mom (replica of the one I have, but I was blindsided by the fact that mom loves fucsia). The store was still closed, so I went to Amsterdam to see if I could buy the tie I'd eyed for dad. I bought two ties, because I suck at the whole making choices thing, and... Yeah. Maybe my brother'll want be saddled with one, but seeing as he's not taking care of how he dresses at all (according to the latest reports: mom&dad are visiting him), I doubt he'll like it.
I also bought a cheese slicer (actually grater, 'cause the Dutch are serious about their cheese). This'll be for both parents, as it's cruel to give women kitchen utensils as gifts. I also got a small wooden tulip for mom, because somehow the idea of telling mom I brought her a tulip from the Netherlands just brought me to tears**.
I also got postcards and tourist mementos for folk. If you're reading this and know me personally, you'll be getting something Dutch for Christmas! If you're reading this and don't know me personally, but would like a little something for the holidays, I'm game. I offer myself up for graphics e.g. icons (I must warn I'm no expert) or fic. Physical things will be limited to mementoes, and will, of course, require full name and address. (I am totally serious about this, people. Yes, even especially about the physical mementoes.)
I've been thinking of getting a Bad Taste Bear for my brother. He's just so hard to shop for. (Mainly because I don't know the first thing about him. I didn't recognize his handwriting for fuck's sake.) I really want to get him this one, though this or this is cool. (This one's awesome.)
Btw, I find it hilarious that the pride and joy and national symbol of the Netherlands was actually patented in Norway. *sighs* Poor Norway. If it weren't for Roald Dahl, you wouldn't exist for me. As it is, all I know is that you have goats, useful for pipe-pranks on your uncle. I've never said, but a letter, of sorts, that Dahl wrote to children in 1990, explaining how he was sick and feeling tired, but hoped they'd fix him up right, is one of my most treasured possessions. As with many of my possessions, I have no idea where it is, but it's safe.
Speaking of author's letters, I was pleasantly surprised to see Four Letter Word: New Love Letters was actually a book, and not just some wierd "sign up and you'll get love letters written by proffesional writers sent to you" which is all I'd gathered when Neil Gaiman was blogging about it.
So, naturally, I flipped to Neil's story. And it's so delightfully, quintisentially Neil. I love that man so much. Oh, Neil, only you could make a love letter into something so creeptastically*** disturbing. (He can even recommend Amazon's new gadget Kimble and I'll still listen and squee.)
The love letter appears to be told from the point of view of a street performer, one of those that dresses up as a statue and doesn't move for hours on end.
He describes him love, going into details which at first seem harmless and then border into the intensely creepy. He'll be talking about her hair and how she smiles, and then go on about her sister's Facebook account and how it's not very bright of her to use her first name as her computer password and how just about anyone could create a full life history of hers through her emails and pictures.
But before you can really sink into the "What the...?" of it all, he goes on, describing how she walks by him every day, and how wonderful everything is, and how no one ever noticies, never sees him until he actually moves, slightly, just to get their attention. And then he goes into even more creepy details: what colour her underwear is, what peculiar habits she has at home, and so forth. It all gets creepier and creepier, despite the litany of love, as he describes her getting up in the middle of the night for a glass of water, how she never ever notices he's there, something in the shadows, unmoving.
And then the letter turns to the present form, and he ends it saying that, by the time she's done reading this, she'll turn around in a fright, scrutinizing the shadows, and then he'll move. Just a little. Just so she'll finally see he's there.
Also, yesterday I was all set to listen to the BBC dramatization of Ananzi Boys only to find out that they'd finally changed the scheduling and I'll never ever get to hear it. The only good that came of this woe is that I did a torrent search for Gaiman, and discovered audio books on file. *glee* Now, please, someone tell me why the hell did I leave my copy of Good Omens in Barcelona? Was I on crack?!? Insane?!? Crowley, baby, could you ever forgive me?
*keyboard flail* *spasms* Cillian Murphey was Kitten in Breakfast on Pluto *omgomgomg* Chameleonic in-fucking-deed! I bloody watched that film!
I seem to be type-swearing a lot. Hmm. Funny. Still don't do it outloud (except in the lonely privacy of my own room, after particularly bad moments). I also seem to be abusing the poor word "also". For shame.
Oh, and I did manage to save the Sylar recap of goodness vid I made, but I think it needs a fix-up and...yeah. So give me another day or two, yeah?
And finally, a couple extracts of Forget You Had A Daughter which, no, I can't read more than a page of without almost bursting into tears. (I say "almost" because I was in public. Added self-restraint, there.)
This is NON-Fiction. Events described here have happened, and Buddha on a lotus, they are happening, in similar forms even now.
Chapter 1: 'Boom, in Thai, You Die':
6 February 1993
To my dearest parents, grandparents and brohter
I am going to ask the hardest and very last thing from you all. I do not want you to fogive me, what I have done is not excusable and above all else I knew better than to do what I did... I have not been wise and I am asking you all to please forget that you ever had a daughter, granddaughter or sister. I know that this will come as a shck. I am so very sorry for the shame I have brought on you all.
I needed to come home with my pride and this seemed the easiest and wuickest way to do it. I have not been well for months nos and have been so terribly homesick. I love you all and God I do miss you, but please never mention my name again, try to do as I say and act as though you never knew me and throw any photographs of me away. I cannot do five, ten or twenty years like this. You produced a wonderful human being who wanted to change the world, but has instead messed it up.
I am so very, very sorry.
Sandra
Chapter Five: Nothing Like the Sun
Unzipping my bags, she carefully took the contents out, piling them up one by one on the floor. I had some family photographs and she delicately placed them to one side. There were some musical tapes and slowly she brought them out. Tracy Chapman. Chris Rea. Then Sting and his album, Nothing Like the Sun.
The girl looked at me and then, from nowhere, quiety started crying. It took me completely by surprise. What was wrong with her? She wiped her eyes and leaned in. She listened to the Sting album at home, she told me.
How do I say this without sounding melodramatic? Right there, at that exact moment, I understood what a terrible situation I was in and I could see that she understood too, probably far more clearly than I did. There we were, tow young women, one in leg chains and one in a beautifully tailored suit. One was going home to listen to Sting; the other might never hear him again.
Chapter 6: Suicide is Painless
Some days earlier, when I had written the letter to my parents, it had been a strange kind of relief to do so. From that point on I had told myseld I was no longer the person that I had been and I no longer had a family. It would be so much easier this wa, to do this on my own. Somehow I had convinced myseld it was possible to survive this ordeal, but the only way to do it was to do it alone. The only way to do this would be to lose my past; if I could cut muself off from my past then whatever happened in the coming weeks, months or, God forbid, years, wouldn't really matter.
[...]
One of the cameras had ITN written in large letters down the side and all I could think of when I saw that camera was my grandfather. He had always watched ITN news and I knew he would see me being bundled to court by Thai police. THe shock of it all would give him a heart attack and probably kill him.Get that fucking camera out of my face! I screamed to myself. I was pushed forward, while trying to hide my face. Don't worry, Pa-Pa, I said to myself, I'm fine.
Much later, people would tell me that as they watched me they could see how emotional and shaken I was. But I wasn't crying for myself, instead it was for my grandfather. The last time I had seen him he was already frail, already an old man.
'I am so sorry,' I shouted above the crowd. 'Please, wait for me, Pa-Pa! Please don't die.'"
Chapter Eight: The Bodysnatchers
I was never completely truthful in letters to my parents. It was just impossible to tell them how things really were. How could I tell them, for example, that a teenager had been electrocuted in the room I slept in?
She had arrived in Lard Yao the previous week with a girlfriend, looking like a couple. Both of them were young university students. The father of one of the girls had been a policeman and he had suspected them of stealing money from his house. He had pressed charges against them, in order to show them what life is like in prison.
Even the hard-faced 'mother of the room' had a soft spot for those two and she allowed them to sleep next to each other. Each night one of the girls would go to the toilet area and take a rag hanging on one of the many pipes before proceeding to wipe the floor where they were to sleep. A lot of the prisoners did this because the floor was always so dirty.
This particular evening the young girl took the cloth and wet it. Then she scrubbed the floor. A few minutes later she took the cloth back to the pipe. As she hung the cloth up, the pipe broke. Inside the pipe was a live 220-volt wire. THe girl's right hand went through the pipe and she grapped hold of the wire. There was a soft buzzing noise, then a sizzle of light. She was standing in half an inch of water and her left hip bounced off an old, metal, disused water cooler.
For a few minutes the sparks flew until her girlfriend, in a panic, grabbed a towel, twisted it into a makeshift rope and threw it around her friend's neck, pulling her off the wire. She made a short sound with her throat and a low cry as she fell onto the floor. Her young body had fried and she lay on the fround, in a puddle, with smoke coming from somewhere inside her. It was one of the most horrendous and saddest things I had ever witnessed. All of a sudden she was dead. It was as if she had just slipped out of her own skin and disappeared.
The young girl's father dropped the charges. He had taught her a lesson the hard way. The prisoner who was in charge of overseeing the electrics recieved her punishement. Following a cover-up, nothing happened to any officials at the prison.
* You've Changed, Berttie Serveert
** Lots of that going round, though. I kinda really want to go home. Or, well, Home. 'Cause it't going to be the four of us again this Christmas, but this time at home in TO - brother's girlfriend is flying to her parents', cue *ooooh* from mom and I, understanding just why bro's flying up to TO - and I really want us to be a funcitonal family. We won't and it'll suck in heartbreaking ways I cannot express, but a girl can dream, right?
*** Yes, it's a word. No, the word-monger ferrets won't eat me for this.
I also promised to study Dutch. Particularly since I failed the grammar part by one mistake (we were allowed 4) - thus failing the exam by 0.5 - and have to do a retake. But since the retake is scheduled for Dec 21 at 6 pm, and I'll be on the plane then, I'm taking the exam Dec 6. Which is way too soon for me to learn how to spell Dutch verbs. Damn double vowels! Damn them all to hell!
So instead of anything useful I tried to buy a nifty fucsia scarf for mom (replica of the one I have, but I was blindsided by the fact that mom loves fucsia). The store was still closed, so I went to Amsterdam to see if I could buy the tie I'd eyed for dad. I bought two ties, because I suck at the whole making choices thing, and... Yeah. Maybe my brother'll want be saddled with one, but seeing as he's not taking care of how he dresses at all (according to the latest reports: mom&dad are visiting him), I doubt he'll like it.
I also bought a cheese slicer (actually grater, 'cause the Dutch are serious about their cheese). This'll be for both parents, as it's cruel to give women kitchen utensils as gifts. I also got a small wooden tulip for mom, because somehow the idea of telling mom I brought her a tulip from the Netherlands just brought me to tears**.
I also got postcards and tourist mementos for folk. If you're reading this and know me personally, you'll be getting something Dutch for Christmas! If you're reading this and don't know me personally, but would like a little something for the holidays, I'm game. I offer myself up for graphics e.g. icons (I must warn I'm no expert) or fic. Physical things will be limited to mementoes, and will, of course, require full name and address. (I am totally serious about this, people. Yes, even especially about the physical mementoes.)
I've been thinking of getting a Bad Taste Bear for my brother. He's just so hard to shop for. (Mainly because I don't know the first thing about him. I didn't recognize his handwriting for fuck's sake.) I really want to get him this one, though this or this is cool. (This one's awesome.)
Btw, I find it hilarious that the pride and joy and national symbol of the Netherlands was actually patented in Norway. *sighs* Poor Norway. If it weren't for Roald Dahl, you wouldn't exist for me. As it is, all I know is that you have goats, useful for pipe-pranks on your uncle. I've never said, but a letter, of sorts, that Dahl wrote to children in 1990, explaining how he was sick and feeling tired, but hoped they'd fix him up right, is one of my most treasured possessions. As with many of my possessions, I have no idea where it is, but it's safe.
Speaking of author's letters, I was pleasantly surprised to see Four Letter Word: New Love Letters was actually a book, and not just some wierd "sign up and you'll get love letters written by proffesional writers sent to you" which is all I'd gathered when Neil Gaiman was blogging about it.
So, naturally, I flipped to Neil's story. And it's so delightfully, quintisentially Neil. I love that man so much. Oh, Neil, only you could make a love letter into something so creeptastically*** disturbing. (He can even recommend Amazon's new gadget Kimble and I'll still listen and squee.)
The love letter appears to be told from the point of view of a street performer, one of those that dresses up as a statue and doesn't move for hours on end.
He describes him love, going into details which at first seem harmless and then border into the intensely creepy. He'll be talking about her hair and how she smiles, and then go on about her sister's Facebook account and how it's not very bright of her to use her first name as her computer password and how just about anyone could create a full life history of hers through her emails and pictures.
But before you can really sink into the "What the...?" of it all, he goes on, describing how she walks by him every day, and how wonderful everything is, and how no one ever noticies, never sees him until he actually moves, slightly, just to get their attention. And then he goes into even more creepy details: what colour her underwear is, what peculiar habits she has at home, and so forth. It all gets creepier and creepier, despite the litany of love, as he describes her getting up in the middle of the night for a glass of water, how she never ever notices he's there, something in the shadows, unmoving.
And then the letter turns to the present form, and he ends it saying that, by the time she's done reading this, she'll turn around in a fright, scrutinizing the shadows, and then he'll move. Just a little. Just so she'll finally see he's there.
Also, yesterday I was all set to listen to the BBC dramatization of Ananzi Boys only to find out that they'd finally changed the scheduling and I'll never ever get to hear it. The only good that came of this woe is that I did a torrent search for Gaiman, and discovered audio books on file. *glee* Now, please, someone tell me why the hell did I leave my copy of Good Omens in Barcelona? Was I on crack?!? Insane?!? Crowley, baby, could you ever forgive me?
*keyboard flail* *spasms* Cillian Murphey was Kitten in Breakfast on Pluto *omgomgomg* Chameleonic in-fucking-deed! I bloody watched that film!
I seem to be type-swearing a lot. Hmm. Funny. Still don't do it outloud (except in the lonely privacy of my own room, after particularly bad moments). I also seem to be abusing the poor word "also". For shame.
Oh, and I did manage to save the Sylar recap of goodness vid I made, but I think it needs a fix-up and...yeah. So give me another day or two, yeah?
And finally, a couple extracts of Forget You Had A Daughter which, no, I can't read more than a page of without almost bursting into tears. (I say "almost" because I was in public. Added self-restraint, there.)
This is NON-Fiction. Events described here have happened, and Buddha on a lotus, they are happening, in similar forms even now.
Chapter 1: 'Boom, in Thai, You Die':
6 February 1993
To my dearest parents, grandparents and brohter
I am going to ask the hardest and very last thing from you all. I do not want you to fogive me, what I have done is not excusable and above all else I knew better than to do what I did... I have not been wise and I am asking you all to please forget that you ever had a daughter, granddaughter or sister. I know that this will come as a shck. I am so very sorry for the shame I have brought on you all.
I needed to come home with my pride and this seemed the easiest and wuickest way to do it. I have not been well for months nos and have been so terribly homesick. I love you all and God I do miss you, but please never mention my name again, try to do as I say and act as though you never knew me and throw any photographs of me away. I cannot do five, ten or twenty years like this. You produced a wonderful human being who wanted to change the world, but has instead messed it up.
I am so very, very sorry.
Sandra
Chapter Five: Nothing Like the Sun
Unzipping my bags, she carefully took the contents out, piling them up one by one on the floor. I had some family photographs and she delicately placed them to one side. There were some musical tapes and slowly she brought them out. Tracy Chapman. Chris Rea. Then Sting and his album, Nothing Like the Sun.
The girl looked at me and then, from nowhere, quiety started crying. It took me completely by surprise. What was wrong with her? She wiped her eyes and leaned in. She listened to the Sting album at home, she told me.
How do I say this without sounding melodramatic? Right there, at that exact moment, I understood what a terrible situation I was in and I could see that she understood too, probably far more clearly than I did. There we were, tow young women, one in leg chains and one in a beautifully tailored suit. One was going home to listen to Sting; the other might never hear him again.
Chapter 6: Suicide is Painless
Some days earlier, when I had written the letter to my parents, it had been a strange kind of relief to do so. From that point on I had told myseld I was no longer the person that I had been and I no longer had a family. It would be so much easier this wa, to do this on my own. Somehow I had convinced myseld it was possible to survive this ordeal, but the only way to do it was to do it alone. The only way to do this would be to lose my past; if I could cut muself off from my past then whatever happened in the coming weeks, months or, God forbid, years, wouldn't really matter.
[...]
One of the cameras had ITN written in large letters down the side and all I could think of when I saw that camera was my grandfather. He had always watched ITN news and I knew he would see me being bundled to court by Thai police. THe shock of it all would give him a heart attack and probably kill him.Get that fucking camera out of my face! I screamed to myself. I was pushed forward, while trying to hide my face. Don't worry, Pa-Pa, I said to myself, I'm fine.
Much later, people would tell me that as they watched me they could see how emotional and shaken I was. But I wasn't crying for myself, instead it was for my grandfather. The last time I had seen him he was already frail, already an old man.
'I am so sorry,' I shouted above the crowd. 'Please, wait for me, Pa-Pa! Please don't die.'"
Chapter Eight: The Bodysnatchers
I was never completely truthful in letters to my parents. It was just impossible to tell them how things really were. How could I tell them, for example, that a teenager had been electrocuted in the room I slept in?
She had arrived in Lard Yao the previous week with a girlfriend, looking like a couple. Both of them were young university students. The father of one of the girls had been a policeman and he had suspected them of stealing money from his house. He had pressed charges against them, in order to show them what life is like in prison.
Even the hard-faced 'mother of the room' had a soft spot for those two and she allowed them to sleep next to each other. Each night one of the girls would go to the toilet area and take a rag hanging on one of the many pipes before proceeding to wipe the floor where they were to sleep. A lot of the prisoners did this because the floor was always so dirty.
This particular evening the young girl took the cloth and wet it. Then she scrubbed the floor. A few minutes later she took the cloth back to the pipe. As she hung the cloth up, the pipe broke. Inside the pipe was a live 220-volt wire. THe girl's right hand went through the pipe and she grapped hold of the wire. There was a soft buzzing noise, then a sizzle of light. She was standing in half an inch of water and her left hip bounced off an old, metal, disused water cooler.
For a few minutes the sparks flew until her girlfriend, in a panic, grabbed a towel, twisted it into a makeshift rope and threw it around her friend's neck, pulling her off the wire. She made a short sound with her throat and a low cry as she fell onto the floor. Her young body had fried and she lay on the fround, in a puddle, with smoke coming from somewhere inside her. It was one of the most horrendous and saddest things I had ever witnessed. All of a sudden she was dead. It was as if she had just slipped out of her own skin and disappeared.
The young girl's father dropped the charges. He had taught her a lesson the hard way. The prisoner who was in charge of overseeing the electrics recieved her punishement. Following a cover-up, nothing happened to any officials at the prison.
* You've Changed, Berttie Serveert
** Lots of that going round, though. I kinda really want to go home. Or, well, Home. 'Cause it't going to be the four of us again this Christmas, but this time at home in TO - brother's girlfriend is flying to her parents', cue *ooooh* from mom and I, understanding just why bro's flying up to TO - and I really want us to be a funcitonal family. We won't and it'll suck in heartbreaking ways I cannot express, but a girl can dream, right?
*** Yes, it's a word. No, the word-monger ferrets won't eat me for this.