Realists and dreamers

We have this self-sufficiently book, The New Complete Book of Self-Sufficiency by John Seymour, and today for the first time I noticed the sub-heading: "for realists and dreamers". Which struck me as very apt in our case, because we have been thinking about growing more veg and fruit, and also planning to live in a more rural setting and maybe having some chickens and/or a goat and trying to 'live off the land'  more for quite a while now, but so far it's mostly been dreaming. And also, were realists enough to see that it will remain just dreaming for quite some time to come. So in a way, we're both realists and dreamers.

Dreaming isn't bad, I love to dream about many things: taking a year off to sail around the world, or just backpack around it, or going to Africa to film things in the Big Cat Diary way, or doing a fantastic internship at Penguin or just moving to the English countryside to write novels, or to New York and be a sort of Desmond Morris-like city-biologist/anthropologist, or any other variation that does not involve the job I currently have, the house and city I currently live in, and the things I currently do every day. And I know there are people who actually quit their job and sell their home and start up a little farm/restaurant in the middle of France, or start a diving school in Mozambique, or write novels on a mountaintop in China. But then, that's not really me. I'm not the one to leave everything behind and start somewhere new. I need a firm base, a mother ship so to speak, to return to. Also, I'm not the kind of person who can just drop their cats and books and tea off at someone else's and not return in a year. I need a lot of things to keep me happy and comfortable. So even though I would love to do all those things, I'm both a dreamer and a realist, and I see it's not really going to happen any time soon.

But that does not mean I'm not a little bit jealous at those people who actually do do these things. But I comfort myself with the thought that in the case of the little cottage/farm with the vegetable plot, fruit trees, and chickens, there is the smallest chance of it actually happening one day.

September in the air

Joe Fox: Don't you love New York in the fall? It makes me wanna buy school supplies. I would send you a bouquet of newly sharpened pencils if I knew your name and address. On the other hand, this not knowing has its charms.

Famous lines from a famous film (You've got Mail, in case you were wondering, which is still the only proper film Tom Hanks ever made, maybe apart from Forrest Gump).

Strangely enough, the atmosphere it conveys, of autumn and falling leaves, of crisper air and new beginnings, that atmosphere has been hanging around for the last week. Somehow, it's September weather in the middle of August. The nights are getting properly cold again, the air smells wet and faintly rotting, and somehow all around people are talking about new beginnings, about changing things in their lives, about doing things differently.
Now autumn is still my favourite season of the year, so I'm not complaining, but it is a bit worrisome that somehow this years summer only lasted about 3 weeks. We had cold and snow until well into May, then we had cold and wet, then we had some heat, and now we're down into cold and wet again.
Also, I am still feeling faintly worried about not having re-applied to university, as this is the first time in 9 years I won't actually re-enroll, because I've graduated, but the nagging feeling of I-still-have-to-do-something-really-important-but-I-can't-remember-what-it-is is still lingering.
About the new beginnings: several colleagues are planning on eating less sweets, exercising more, etc, with the really ambitious planning to work less the coming year (by 'less' I don't mean 'less than they're supposed to work' but rather 'less outrageous overtime'). I like this atmosphere of new chances, it is always more energized and hopeful in September than in January, when the obligatory New Year's resolutions come around. We all know it's not going to happen, but the motivation and energy it brings is helpful to us all.

But still, I wouldn't mind a couple of days (maybe a weekend?) of nice, sunny, warm summer weather!

Holiday novels

Someone asked me whether I'd had a relaxing holiday and read lots of books. I said yes to both, but when they (jealously, as they had been on holiday with 3 small children) asked me which books I'd read, I couldn't remember any of them! They were quietly amused, and I sat there cracking my head at which ones they were all through the rest of the conversations.
Finally I managed to remember 3, and including the one I'm still reading now that makes 4. Somehow the fifth book has completely disappeared from memory.
I think that is quite interesting, because I remember liking, enjoying, and maybe even getting a little emotional at all novels I read. So they had some impact while I was reading them, but not enough impact to actually remain with me?

One of the novels I can remember is a Dutch book by Bert Wagendorp called Ventoux. It is supposedly about the 'magic of male friendship', and the author has stated in several interviews that he thinks male friendship is deeper and more special than female friendship, because only men could not talk to each other for 30 years and then meet again, pat each other on the back, and go drink a beer. Which is probably true, but that does not mean female friendships (or male/female friendships, of which I tend to have more) are not as deep as the full male bonding, it just means that the author is male and had enforced his male perspective.
While a fun read, it was not really life-changing.

I am currently still reading Wolf Hall, because I read Bring Up the Bodies and then discovered that this is actually the sequel to Wolf Hall, so I decided to read them in the wrong order because the main plot line is known anyway: Henry VIII kills or disposes of everyone in his way to marry Anne Boleyn, and in the sequel he does the same to marry Jane Seymour. Also, the novels are great anyway, whichever order you read them in.

The novel that made the most impact was Ghostwritten by David Mitchell, which can be seen as a sort of study for his real masterpiece Cloud Atlas. You can see the same sort of techniques and interweavings at work, but also where he will improve and how he will learn to give his characters more depth of personality. Still, a brilliant novel.

Then I read a non-fiction work about how the digital world is destroying all our mental capacity, which was fun and disturbing. And then there was the fifth book, which I cannot remember.

So really, the novel that had the strongest impact on me recently must be The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman, even though I bought that as an afterthought and finished it in an afternoon. I even cried a little towards the end, which is in my eyes the mark of a really good novel. And it just goes to show that great authors keep on getting better and producing better things, even when it's just a novella, even when it's fantasy. Which makes me very hopeful about David Mitchell's upcoming works.

Not dead!

So every blogger has to do one of the obligatory "I'm not dead, just really busy!" posts, and this is my first one here, so that's pretty good considering I've been going at this for 1.5 years. Even though I haven't posted anything for the last 2.5 month (seriously, didn't realise it was that long!), there are still quite a lot of viewers, mostly Postcrossing-directed. Don't be afraid, I will post more in the (near) future!
But for the last couple of months I was just too busy with work (36 hours a week, plus 8 for the editing work I'm still doing), and then we went on holiday to France. Which I will probably write some stuff about sometime, but not now, otherwise this wouldn't be a not-dead post anymore.
So keep tuned.