Stories

I can't do it.
I can't just post a ranting post and disappear.
I was so pissed off I didn't even twitter about it. It is a blemish.

So here's my real post for today.

I noticed my writing has gotten somewhat more elaborate. Being a nervous little creature, this made me wonder: do I sound cocky?
Because I used to.

I re-read my old diary from when I was 15/16.
I was young, and kind of unhappy (miserable), and thought a lot of myself. As a very wise man once put it: "I am not young enough to know everything." Well, at that point, I was convinced I knew a whole lot. I was a melodramatic whino, really.

Meet 16-ish-year-old Sado, not yet using that name (which, by the way, is an inside joke and doesn't mean I'm into hardcore BDSM), all goffik and "intellectual".
I could show you a picture... but I won't.

I'm torn between laughing and crying when I re-read those pretentious, long drawn sentences. I re-read them occasionally, a page at a time because that's all I have the balls for.

My point here (yes, I have one! Don't look at me like that!) is that sometimes - actually, more often than not - we look back on our smug old selves and are embarrassed. I still haven't written any poetry since that time.
(I was told it was good.
E, The Cousin and I were in constant disagreement over whose was better.)

That feeling of embarrassment for the smug sentences of my 16-year-old self make me wonder: will I be embarrassed likewise, when as a 25- or a 30-year-old I look back on my writing of today? I think I will. Is that a bad thing? I'm not sure. I mean, it does indicate growth, doesn't it? Even if just a little. Nevertheless, it's not a fun feeling, mostly because suddenly, you're convinced that at the time, everybody was laughing at you behind your back.
Which triggers the paranoid idea that people are laughing at you behind your back now, when you think you're not so ridiculous anymore.

Or is that just me?

I should just let go.
This blog is one of the first things I've written in about 3 years. No more poetry (even though I can assure you it was all teenage angst), no more stories, no more novels.
I think about writing sometimes, but I'm not sure I have a good story to tell.
The only story I do have is my own, and I'm not always sure how to look upon it. Furthermore, will people want to hear it? Will they want to take time to read about it?

Vanilla Tea was made as a try-out, to see if I still got it. The magical, metaphorical it. And more to the point, if I did, whether or not I could keep up with it.

I think my 30-something-th post proves that I'm alright for continuance. It's a habit now, which is good.
Can I deal with a story? Do I tell my own, and if so, how and in what light? Do I tell someone else's? Isn't that stealing?
I read a lot, but can I write?

And more importantly: If I write something, will I be ashamed of it later on?

Just asking questions is all.

Sweet dreams, loves.

Feelgood Part III: Nostalgia

Dearly beloved,

we are gathered here today to celebrate and reminisce no wedding though.

I was thinking about what to write my 3rd Feelgood post about, and then - for some reason - I got nostalgic.
So let's talk childhood memories.

We all have them. Some are good, some are bad (in those instances, a good memory is unpardonable, as my favourite heroine says). Let's talk good memories.

Like the time we all went to the Brussels Museum of Natural History to look (mainly) at the dinosaurs.
The time when I was ten and we were on a holiday and my dad gave me a pendant of lapis lazuli, which I held on to for about 7 years (and is now sadly no longer in my possession).
Oh, or when my mom and me actually connected about something (which is hard, admittedly, for a grown-up woman and a 12-year-old child) over how sad and sweet A Little Princess was, and how we both cried.
(or that time, several years later, when we both swooned over Jon Bon Jovi's appearance in Ally McBeal)





My, in retrospect, highly disturbing childhood.

Even the not so good memories gain some lustre over the years.
It horrified me at the time, but when I think of Roald Dahl's The Witches now, I'm smiling. At the time I was 7 or 8 years old and very moved by the book. In a bad, scary scary way.
For several weeks nothing or nobody could convince me that the Upper Witch was not, in fact, hiding behind my closet, waiting to eat me. I think my hygiene actually suffered (for they only smell clean children).
I didn't even dare watch the movie version until I was 13 or 14.


The stuff of nightmares. That's Angelica Houston, by the way. I'm just saying. Also, mice!

The soundtrack of my youth, too, is something precious to me.
I hadn't any musical preference at all until I was 15.
When we went on holiday (which, with just 1 exception, was invariably to some part of France, and always by car), my dad would play Marco Borsato (back when he still made really beautiful songs that actually meant something), Stef Bos, who is to this day a favourite with me, and Crowded House, whose lyrics I had even MORE difficulty understanding. Mrs. Hairy Legs? Is that what they're singing, dad? I don't get it. What is... what?

In fact, even though he, for years and years, detested the way I dressed (all goff and individual), he was the one who introduced me to the scene, by way of an Evanescence CD, which at first, he would play (in a darkened room, I kid you not!) and I would hate, and then somehow I started to like it.


conformist!! Like, yeah, dude!


I still like Evanescence. It's like ice pops and certain children's novels. Like how I wanted to dye my hair bright orange when I was 14 (incidentally on the last family vacation before my parents divorced) because Rose McGowan had hers bright orange on Charmed, and I loved her but not yet in a dirty dirty way.


RAWR.

But I believe I'm somehow steering into melancholy.

The apartment is ours, as I wrote yesterday, and on the very month that we take possession of it, it will be two years since I spoke to my father.
Sometimes I wish I could invite him to come see my new house (and The Boy) when we're settled in, just like my mom and her new partner are coming to see it.
I don't know how to fix the problems we had, and still have. I don't know how to make contact when, in truth, I don't want it all back to the way it was, because I felt terrible back then. I just want for us to occasionally call each other. I want to know whatever big thing happens, even if I'm not included in the small ones.
If I ever get married, I want to invite him to the wedding. If I ever have a child, I want him or her to know their granddad.

Good things come to those who wait?
We shall see.

Goodnight.