Art and Literature – Nastasya Parker

Dreaming Spires

This Week’s Bite of String: Noise in an Oxford museum

While I was admiring Japanese cloisonné vases in the Ashmolean this half-term week, a family came along. They had a couple of primary school-aged girls shining cheap little laser torches everywhere. The slightly older of the two girls was quietly singing to herself, but the other was shouting and running around.

“Beatrice!” her parents kept saying in upper middle class tones, ever surprised at unconventional behaviour. “Beatrice, you’re getting silly… Beatrice, we’re in a museum. It can be quiet and peaceful…”

“It CAN be quiet and peaceful,” retorted Beatrice, without slowing down a bit.

Gotta love a girl no more than 6 who’s already dismantling arguments on semantic grounds.

The brief clamour enhanced my experience. I was on a solo overnight trip, and spending the afternoon in the massive Ashmolean with only myself to set the pace was a treat. I’d browse a couple of galleries, then sit and scribble about my finds, then repeat. Favourites were the ancient Assyrian and Babylonian exhibits, complementing the several Nimrud temple panels at Dartmouth’s Hood Museum in my home region of New Hampshire, and examples of Islamic and Indian geometric patterns and art.

There are exhibits predating those civilisations, and it inspires me to see how early humans, too, were compelled to preserve and create beauty. Feeding my brain on such exhibits felt rejuvenating, certainly unlike revising for standardised GCSE exams. But feasting on snippets of real life conversations thrills me, too.

Rest and Change

People like to say, “Change is as good as a rest.” It’s not strictly true; I think change enables us to push ourselves further without rest which we may need. Long-term, it’s possibly not of equal restorative value.

*A little bit of reading time, Worcester Shrub Hill station*

That said, it felt as if changing up my brain’s intake for a day or two rejuvenated me. In addition to visiting the museum, I read Mslexia magazine on the train rides, wandered along the canal in Worcester during a stopover, explored both the busy streets and the tranquil parks of Oxford totalling 43,000 steps in less than 36 hours, and enjoyed a theatre production of Little Women.

Seeing the literary classic on stage was the main purpose of my journey, which I learned about thanks to well-targeted Facebook ads. It was a terrific show, with energy and heart. They made use of birch trees as set pieces, and seeing those made me feel connected to New England from afar.

After the play, I went hunting for ice cream, as is my late-night, post-show wont, and I didn’t go to bed till midnight. But I didn’t leave my hotel for the next day’s explore until 10:30, and that is pretty luxurious for me.

Spending Time Well

So I took a bit of the morning to recuperate, and keep up with my daily scribbles. I have some novel-planning to work on, but I didn’t get to it; didn’t even read much. As usual when I travel, making the most of the experience involves a lot of walking and a fair bit of writing down what I want to remember.

Before visiting Oxford, I’d made an effort to put all my new novel work into a Plotting Table, with columns for each character and rows for each chapter. The Plotting Table is super helpful for seeing where stakes may need to be raised for some characters, and so forth. I wanted to print this out and pore over it on paper while out of the house, undistracted by chores.

But our printer is at least 10 years old and is suffering memory loss. It no longer recognises paper. I’ll be poking pages into it and it insists said pages do not exist. Or it will pick up a sheet of paper (or heck, two or three at once), load it an inch, then suffer a fresh bout of amnesia and say it’s out of paper anyway.

I had to give up on printing my Plotting Table. I had nearly 2 miles to walk to the train station, with my rucksack of overnight necessities, and I couldn’t risk missing the train. Turns out I was a bit busy, anyway.

Like Beatrice at the Museum, I would say vacations CAN be quiet and peaceful—but they certainly don’t have to be. Just this once, I think I struck a decent balance.

Have you given your mind any change lately?

Mythology and Me

This Week’s Bit of String: Candles on a motorbike

At nearly 11 pm on Easter Saturday, the taxi driver from Athens airport told me about the seasonal traditions in Greece.

“From the execution Friday until midnight when it turns to Sunday, many people will not hammer, or cut, eat meat, or do anything with violence. It’s out of respect because of the crucifixion.”

*Inside the Byzantine Panagia Kapnikarea on Easter Sunday*

Then, at midnight, there are fireworks and prayers, before family feasts on Easter Sunday. Freshly arrived in Athens for a city break, my husband and I wandered out at midnight. Down a narrow street we saw the bobbing lights of a candlelit crowd, and we heard the prayers chanted in a nearby Greek Orthodox church. People poured from its marble steps carrying lit tapers—all manner of people: goths, senior citizens… One middle-aged woman came out with a bouquet of 5 lit candles, and climbed behind a man on a motorbike and they rode off.

Not everyone participates, I’m sure. As Iakovos said, “It depends what you desire.”

And of course there’s the other side of the coin, be it Euro or drachma. He told me how much he loves being a driver, especially for tours when he takes people to further ancient sites, such as Delphi or Mount Olympus.

He has particular praise for Mount Olympus. According to him, there’s a spot up there known as the Throne of Zeus, where no wind or snow or rain ever strike, as if it’s divinely protected.

“It makes you think they really knew something,” he says of the ancient Greeks.

Building a Religion

How we interpret such things and act upon them does, as he said earlier, depend on our desire. How often do we believe something we really don’t want to?

When we first learned about Greek myths in school, I was in 8th grade. That’s a lot older than British students learn about them, and maybe for that reason, I did not enjoy the subject. To me, the gods seemed selfish, not to mention cruel and misogynistic. My opinion hasn’t changed much on that, to be honest. I had to read lots of ancient Greek play in high school and college, and I like the genre of modern retellings, but the original stories don’t appeal much to me apart from being cultural references.

*Gorgeous weathering on these pillars from Hadrian’s Library*

I do think myths have huge value in what they might tell us about the people who believed, maybe even created them. What does it say about people that they would make sacrifices from their own, struggling lives to such seemingly callous deities?

What we found breathtaking in Athens were the monuments made by people. The stunning Propylaea, the Odeon of Herodes Atticus, the Porch of the Maidens alongside the Erechtheion. How incredible that parts of the Pantheon still stand after almost 2500 years of invasions and natural disasters. And the beautiful little Byzantine church the Panagia Kapnikarea, nearly a millennium old. These are marvelous places, designed and built by humans with much toil and cooperation. Yet they make me wonder about a presence even more powerful.

I guess that’s what art can do, inspire you to believe in something greater, even if it’s just a previously unimagined hope for the future.

Likeability Vs Relatability

Looking down at the city of Athens through the Propylaea above, or through the Roman arches behind the Odeon, we had a stunning view over the chaotic crush of buildings, the worn, aged mountains, and the sea beyond. I imagined ancient people coming up here to sacrifice, worship, or be entertained, and wondered what their view was like. Maybe that was enough to keep them worshipping.

Raised in a Christian family myself, we were always deeply attuned to the suffering that Easter springs from, and I like the Greek orthodox idea of acting on that seriousness by refraining from aggressive activities for a couple of days. Maybe my upbringing contributed to my complete horror and aversion of anything execution-related. I am still mystified how Christians sit with the belief that an innocent deity suffered and died for their sins personally, and don’t constantly agonise over that.

*Getting the right balance… Porch of the Maidens, Erechtheion, Athens*

I once wrote a novel scene between American educators preparing for the 7th grade mythology unit. The Christian teacher describes the Greek gods as “petty and selfish—no better than people.”

On the other hand, he says, “Jesus actually became human, and that’s as accessible as it gets.”

But He never sinned, thinks the teaching assistant. Being human would be a cinch without guilt.

Could it be that ancient Greeks appreciated having dieties with lusts and impulses that reflected their own?

Conveying a religion must be like the constant political tussle over how to best message people. Meet people where they are, or urge them to strive for better? And as writers and creatives, we work to establish that same balance: creating characters who are likeable and also relatable, events that are dramatic and also recognisably everyday. It’s getting that juxtaposition between majestic ancient ruins and the settlements below; the prayers on loudspeaker and the candles on motorbikes. Our ability and taste for this will vary, one might say depending on our desire.

What do you think of the classical myths? Do you find the supernatural accessible?

A Flaw-Finding Mission

This Week’s Bit of String: A 30-year-old reading list

Last week when I couldn’t sleep, I invented a new game: Trying to remember which books we studied each year of high school, back in the mid-1990s. This joins other such spectacular entertainment forms as How Many Second Grade Classmates Can I Remember? and Recall the Layout of All the Holiday Cottages I Used to Clean for a Living.

One of my British secondary school system gripes is the paltry amount of books read for English. Two whole years studying nothing but Lord of the Flies, Macbeth, A Christmas Carol, and 15 war poems is such a drag.

On the other hand, we read quite a few books in our slightly deprived rural American high school. In 9th grade alone, we read Romeo and Juliet, Animal Farm, Of Mice and Men, and I think some form of The Odyssey. We also read Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, which I didn’t like much, and Cormier’s The Chocolate War, which I detested. It seemed clear he’d written it, with masturbation references and stupid boy behaviour, to impress his teenage son. Not my demographic.

*“Everyday Use” is about historic quilts–whether to display them, or use them. These quilts are part of the annual show at Billings Farm, Vermont.*

In 10th grade, we read Macbeth, Lord of the Flies (sound familiar?), Old Man and the Sea, and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. I was not a fan of the latter. We also read a volume of memoir essays and short stories, the first things I loved reading in high school. My favourite was an Alice Walker story, “Everyday Use.”

If we hadn’t been required to read such a broad selection, I might not have connected with any of it. I’m glad I didn’t lose interest, because the curriculum had terrific offerings in our junior and senior years.

I don’t remember what I was reading for fun during the first two years of high school, or if I bothered. I had plenty of homework, and my own made-up story-world I constantly nursed. Maybe that was why I resented certain assigned books. I preferred my own stories, woven around my experiences.

So at 3 in the morning a few days ago, I realised: my adolescent self was a narcissistic reader.

Inconvenient Truths

I see it in a couple of my students. Simon Armitage’s war poem “Remains” is great for spotting narcissistic readers. It’s written clearly in the vernacular, sometimes using collective pronouns which almost make you feel complicit. Most of the chatty girls and fidgeting, shouting-out boys stop and fall under the spell.

But one boy from our Trio of Fortitude has to always be the victimliest victim who ever victimmed, so he slouches through the succinct tale of war, PTSD, and substance abuse. This boy can’t pick up a pen because he has a cut on his finger, or his stomach hurts. He is cross that no one has helped him during class with his homework yet, and he might get a detention because obviously he’s not going to do it in his own time.

Now, as a teen I generally behaved myself in class and did the work, mostly on time. Ish. But I wonder if I had it in for Maya Angelou because at the age of 14 I, too, fancied myself the victimliest victim.

For at least a couple years of my adolescence (I think I got better), I was limited in my ability or desire to truly support other people. I became painfully aware of this years ago. I hadn’t realised that maybe this self-centeredness affected my reading. I just kept assuming the books weren’t very good.

Ready or Not

I’m a big advocate of reading for fun. So I won’t begrudge adolescent me for being self-involved 3 decades ago. If we’re honest with ourselves, we all have phases even as adults when we don’t have the strength to read certain things. It’s useful to remember that’s not the books’ fault.

Against the backdrop of negative news in my native country, I like to read books of plucky individuals banding together. I probably won’t attempt rereading Maya Angelou’s memoir of tribulation at the moment, but I do know now that I actually like some of her poems quite a lot.

*These caged birds were painted on a Glasgow wall, 2019.*

While there are always plenty of reading options to suit any mood and even, I daresay, any impending apocalypse, what to write can be a conundrum. I had this issue during the pandemic as well. When the world is suffering severe pangs, and we don’t know what it will give birth to, how do I bring forth a new big project? If I plot and start a novel referencing the current situation, that’s going to change by the day. If I start penning a contemporary novel without referencing current circumstances, is that callous? Does anyone even want to read more about the present chaos, after exhausting ourselves with the news?

Considering all this, I’m setting my next project in a place I love, and I’ve decided to set it during the first Trump election and administration, 2016-2017. We still had the “Not My President” fig leaf that he’d lost the popular vote, and we thought some people just didn’t realise how greedy and racist and misogynistic and authoritarian he was. This parallels the journey of my characters, as they wrestle with learning that maybe they’re not as kind and upright as they have tried to present themselves.

Which brings me back to my discovery about myself. Recognising our own flaws opens us to appreciating more outside ourselves, and I feel as if starting with my characters’ flaws makes me a little less protective of them, a little more open to the courses their journey can take. They say we should never judge a book by its cover. We shouldn’t judge by our adolescent opinions, either.

Have you encountered any books you ended up really changing your mind about?

Seven Wanders of 2024

Welcome to a new year, fellow adventurers and creatives. Here are my favourite, most inspiring walks from the last journey round the sun. Sometimes the timing of a walk matters almost as much as the place.

Hetty Pegler’s Tump and Bluebell Woods, Gloucestershire

We started a spring Saturday by traipsing through woods near Coaley viewpoint, where fiddleheads unfurled into ferns. Emerged opposite bright yellow rapeseed crops and traversed a clearing to a neolithic burial mound, Hetty Pegler’s Tump (below, centre). You can peek inside the narrow passage leading to chambers of ancient bones. On our way home after lunch in the Cotswold market town of Nailsworth, we lingered in more woodlands with carpets of bluebells in an electric shade of purple.

Oxford

We’ve never spent much time in Oxford—and this is despite me spending a uni term at Oxford Brookes. I remedied that with a sunny June day trip, motivated by an exhibit at the Ashmolean Museum. After viewing sketches by Flemish masters, and finding our way through the ancient statuary to the toilets, we left the enormous museum to explore outside a while.

We walked through the Christ Church College grounds to The Meadow, wandered streets and glimpsed a pub where Tolkien and C.S. Lewis liked to drink before coming back to the main avenues to view the Bodleian Library and then the Sheldonian Theatre, with rainbow Pride flags in its tower windows and the iconic Emperor Head statues guarding it. A few months later, when I read R.F. Kuang’s Babel, Oxford’s imagery remained fresh in my mind.

Warren, New Hampshire

The population of this small town near the White Mountains peaked in 1860, but we enjoyed our family visit. The Baker River runs behind the houses on one side of the main street, and the Ore Hill Brook behind the houses on the other. A recreational trail shoots through the town as well, directing snowmobilers and bikers and pedestrians straight to the Congregational Church and the massive ballistic missile rocket standing beside it. There’s also an excellent ice cream eatery, complete with friendly porch cat. I enjoyed my early morning walks and met a retired French teacher who comes out every dawn to pick up litter.

Cerne Abbas then Durdle Door, Dorset

We celebrated our 20th wedding anniversary near the Jurassic coast in the South of England, and on one of our day trips trekked around Trendle Hill to view the Rude Giant. The path led us below the chalked soles of the180-foot long figure, dug into the slope since the late 17th century at least. We walked up and over the hill, down into the lovely town of Cerne Abbas. Its streets are lined with little streams and footbridges take townsfolk from the roads to their pretty old homes and gardens.

After our stroll there, we drove further to the coast and joined hundreds of tourists, from all nations and races it seemed, to walk down the cliffs to see the magnificent stone arch of Durdle Door. The sight was also enjoyed by a big, blissed-out seal sunning himself on the beach.

Uley, Gloucestershire
This is one of my local walks, a long circuit that comes to about 7 miles. Hilly views, horse pastures, manor estates like gingerbread houses, and old Cotswold buildings in the village of Uley. The walk has been momentous in my writing life in the past, and I reclaimed it for that purpose somewhat this year.

At the end of the summer holidays I hiked to the Prema Gallery and Cafe to start a new short story there, now complete and submitted to competitions. In November I walked through beautiful autumn sunshine to the craft fair to buy a few cards and gifts, and just before Christmas I hiked to the village and sat scribbling new novel ideas in St. Giles church while a few local ladies set up an assembly line of oranges, dolly mixtures, and candles to prepare for the Christingle service.

London: National Theatre to Holborn and Lincoln’s Inn

I love London and its juxtapositions of old and new, native and diverse. Visiting in October half-term to see the excellent West End theatrical production of Dr. Strangelove, we spent the next afternoon on a HiddenCity James Bond-themed quest leading us around west central London.

We crossed Waterloo Bridge from the National Theatre, discovered an art park on a rooftop, and the little green houses, now dwarfed by skyscrapers, that used to be refuges for cabbies. Our clues guided us behind the Courts of Justice and around the London School of Economics campus and Lincoln’s Inn. It included stops at different pubs, welcoming even while stunningly ornate, such as The Princess Louise with its mosaic floors and intricately carved wooden booths, and the majestic Last Judgment, which makes an excellent amaretto sour and has bathroom stalls like confessionals.

The Pinnacle and Post Pond, Lyme, New Hampshire

A New England lake and/ or mountain inevitably makes my annual top wanders. But this one’s special because it’s the lake I grew up on, the summit I grew up under. For years I believed the sun couldn’t truly set unless it was between two hills and reflected over a pond, because that’s how I saw it every day of my childhood.

Post Pond is smallish, but deep enough to be considered a lake; deep enough to house snapping turtles with shells over a foot in diameter. We stayed in a cabin at Loch Lyme Lodge, the rustic resort where I used to work for the summers, and I watched the sunset from a picnic table up the hill while scribbling in my notebook. My husband and I climbed around on the Pinnacle, the hill behind our cabin, and found fairy castle tree stumps, and milkweed cradles, and fantastic views. I completed the day by swimming the whole length of the lake and back.

This year, I hope to work on a new novel set in a similar location, because really, there’s just no place like home.

Where did your wanders take you this year?

2024 Reading Round-Up

I had some ups and downs in my reading year. My first Didn’t-Finish in a few years (because there wasn’t enough STORY, dammit!) and a couple stretches of 2-4 weeks with no time whatsoever to read. But I always balance those out with a voracious spell after. It feels so good when reading time opens up again, like diving into a cool lake after overheating. Here are my favourites among all I read. I’d love to hear what you think!

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers

Direct and unobfuscating, McCullers introduces us to various misfits about town, starting with the iconic opening line about the “two mutes, [who were] always together.” The story represents the voiceless in many ways, and emphasises the need to be heard.

“The words which are surely the root of all human grief… ‘I have done those things which I ought not to have done, and left undone those things which I ought to have done. So this cannot truly be the end.’”

Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler

*Wintry Moomins at Octavia’s Bookshop, Cirencester*

Working at a school, I’m somewhat bombarded with young people’s moods and stories, so I don’t go for too many books written in teen voice. I’m so glad I read this one, though. Lauren, the young narrator of this novel, is incredibly driven, and practical even while being compassionate. I wrote about her more in an earlier blog post because she became a favourite character of mine, and Butler’s take on empathy is an exciting one.

“Show me a more pervasive power than change.”

The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell

A glimpse into someone forgotten by history, this resonated with me partly because of my Eve novel. It delves deeply into the Duchess of Ferrara’s story, whom Browning alluded to in his poem ‘My Last Duchess.’ We see the plight of women in Renaissance Italy, and also explore a love of art that sets someone apart from the crowd.

“She is absorbed in her work; she is her work; it gives her more satisfaction than anything else she has ever known; it intuits the need, the vacancy within her, and fills it.”

Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus

I feel as if I’m the last to read this, but in case anyone else has yet to discover this novel: It’s excellent. There was tragedy in it and unfairness that I didn’t expect. I should have though, as the book is about an exceptionally intelligent woman trying to pursue a scientific career in the mid-20th century. Ultimately, the opposition she faces makes her later alliances and triumphs that much more thrilling.

“Their odd, tell-all friendship was the kind that only arises when a wronged person meets someone who’s been similarly wronged and discovers that while it may be the only thing they share, it is more than enough.”

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

It’s got an exciting scifi premise: the world is in danger, so a delegation must be sent to space in search of a fix. Once there, the lone surviving voyager meets someone from another planet, as different as can be. They develop communication with each other, and the results are breathtaking. I’m eager to see the film once it’s out.

“Sometimes, the stuff we all hate ends up being the only way to do things.”

*An artsy trip to the real Oxford, this past summer*

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

Another book about art… This became a bit of a theme for me, and I really enjoyed it especially as I attended a couple of art exhibits at the time. Art unlocks emotion, and feeds creativity for our own art of writing. This book is a David Copperfield-style journey through a boy’s misfortunes, uncanny encounters, and striking characters, propelled all the while by a deep, tragedy-induced connection to a single painting.

“Immediately its glow enveloped me, something almost musical, an internal sweetness that was inexplicable beyond a deep, blood-rocking harmony of rightness, the way your heart beat slow and sure when you were with a person you felt safe with and loved.”

Midlife Without a Map by Liz Champion

This book made me laugh the most this year. In addition to being funny, Liz (who also has a brilliant Substack) is incredibly relatable. I love how she doesn’t hold back disclosing her highs and lows. She’ll get swept up in something but be completely honest if it doesn’t work out, and that’s rare and refreshing both online and in literature.

“But now I’m halfway up the mountain, facing hairpin bends and vertical drops with a driver who missed his Formula One calling, I’m wondering if I was ever fit and fearless. Maybe a book by the pool would have been adventurous enough.”

How to Build a Girl by Caitlin Moran

A hilarious and heartfelt coming of age story, but also a great look at art and how we respond to it. The main character, Johanna, wants to save her family from poverty, so she becomes a music critic as a teen–a scathing one. Could passionate fandom make her as much money as trashing every band she sees?

“‘I feel like I can see the operating system of the world–and it is unrequited love. That is why everyone’s doing everything. Every book, opera house, moon shot and manifesto is here because someone, somewhere, lit up silently when someone else came into the room, and then quietly burned when they weren’t noticed.’”

Babel by R.F. Kuang

Language and revolution entwine in this speculative novel. In an alternative Oxford, colonial powers rule through silver. Once silver bars are engraved with pairs of translated words, magic imbues them, resulting from the disparity in meaning. The plot follows young trainees in this art of translation, and as readers we join them in their enchantment, and their horror as they recognise the injustice at the heart of the system.

“That’s just what translation is, I think. That’s all speaking is. Listening to the other and trying to see past your own biases to glimpse what they’re trying to say. Showing yourself to the world, and hoping someone else understands.”

The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern

This novel is about books, about books of lots of stories, and the stories are alive but they must be protected…It’s a stunning work to read, as all the little pieces fit together, reminding us that no story really stands alone. I found it incredibly lovely to sink into the universe of this book.

“We are all stardust and stories.”

Use Your Words

This Week’s Bit of String: A particularly memorable Christmas gift

The Christmas when I was ten, my family were hosting a gathering for our local relatives. My dad’s brother was a fire captain so kept a busy schedule, especially since he split his time caring for his fiancee’s family. But he stopped by when he could. Everyone wanted some of Uncle Mike’s attention.

As one of 4 kids, I was somewhat resigned to not being a sole receiver of attention, though I occasionally did cringey things to attract it. (You’ll be shocked to hear that, I’m sure.) That Christmas, I was fetching something in the kitchen just as my uncle departed, so I was on my own when he passed.

He took that moment to tell me, “It was good to see you today. Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without you. You make it really special.”

Our Uncle Mike was later diagnosed with a brain tumour, having the biopsy on my kiddo’s first birthday. His illness and death at the age of 54 devastated us. I wish I could remember his face more vividly, without the vague unease of being heavily dependent on photos.

We all have people like that whom we think of particularly this time of year. I know I’m lucky to even have the pictures, and I’m spectacularly lucky that he bestowed kind words on us long before he knew that his chances to give them would be curtailed.

Christmas Treasure

The holidays can heighten sensations and emotion, packing extra power into our words and gestures. I always think of the line from the book of Luke in the Bible: “Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart.”

You would, wouldn’t you? Everyone from redneck shepherds to esteemed astronomers turning up to pay tribute to your child…

*Knitivity, Gloucester Cathedral*. *Note there IS an octopus present at the birth of Baby Jesus, bottom left…*

As you can see, I’ve preserved my Uncle Mike’s words in my internal Christmas treasury. I’ve also preserved that verse, Luke 2:19, because it was recited toward the end of the Christmas pageant every year in the little town where I grew up. The verse is tangled with memories of candlelit windows upstairs in a New England church, of the choir singing “O Holy Night” and elementary school students dancing in angel costumes. And then knitted blankets in the car, hot chocolate and my mother’s Christmas cookies at home, and Christmas lights reflected across a lake.

If You Can’t Say It Now, When Can You?

Christmas films have programmed us to expect great emotional fanfare at Christmas. Confessions of love, heartwarming reunions, the sudden cessation of being taken for granted. It doesn’t usually end up this way, as we’re still busy and stressed and full of ourselves at Christmas. But how much better are our holidays, how much more comforting and lasting are our memories, when we do take time to share moments and kind words with each other?

These are, after all, the true things to treasure. Because I’m somewhat cut off from my family most of the year, the interactions I have with my siblings and parents are generally focused on the present, or the near future. We don’t get much time to reminisce over lost loved ones, and I wonder what memories they treasure which could augment my own. Then there are my cousins who I barely manage to keep in touch with, and I’d love to better know even what’s going on for them currently.

So, in addition to my extremely important (and incredibly taxing!) hot chocolate challenge, I’m doing a little version of an advent calendar. I’ll write a relative or friend’s name in my planner for each day remaining in December, and send a message to see how they’re doing, and let them know that although I’m rubbish at showing it sometimes, I really do think of them. And that when I do, they help make my memories special.

I hope you have some treasured memories of kind words at Christmas, and that you’ll join me in creating more.

My Life in Libraries

This Week’s Bit of String: 14 million books

We finished a half-term weekend in London with the realisation of a dream for me, walking up from Lambeth to Camden so I could visit the British Library. I browsed their Treasures collection, a variety of artefacts displayed to the public with no admission price.

There’s one of the original Magna Carta sheepskin documents, a Gutenberg Bible, and a couple of the earliest Greek translations. Each of Shakespeare’s folios, a copy of the Emancipation Proclamation. They’ve curated manuscripts of writers ranging from George Eliot to Oscar Wilde to Andrea Levy to Siegfried Sassoon, and musical notations from Mozart and from the Beatles, plus gorgeous ancient texts from every religion. Fantastic examples of moveable type in Asia (a century or two before Europe managed it), and 2000-year-old homework of an Egyptian student.

The library also has a philatelic collection, vertical tabs so you can pull a sheet out with examples of money or stamps from all around the world. There are the reading rooms, which I’m sure I can find an excuse to utilise one day, and on every, open storey, there are seats all along the walls and overlooks. Each one was occupied by someone studying or working, mainly young people.

There’s a central, multi-storey cube just beyond the foyer. It’s massive, and full of the old, vellum and leather-bound volumes that were King George III’s collection. We’re talking at least 5 floors of this, 4 walls facing out, each many metres long. I wonder if a librarian there knows every book in that collection and where they’re located. I wonder if I could fill my brain with something like that instead of obsessing over how the election will go.

Library History

Yup, I’m still stressed about the state of the world! However, I’m on half-term break so at least I’m not stressing about work and the state of our students. I am carrying on in the vein of last week’s post, by writing about something quite happy. Books!

As I looked at the enormous hoard of books the ‘mad’ King George had amassed, I was intrigued by his motivations. Did he enjoy actually reading the books? Were they merely a status symbol? I felt, for once, a bit smug about my native country because I remembered hearing that Benjamin Franklin started one of the first American libraries and I thought, How perfect that a Revolutionary would counter the tyrant King’s greed by sharing books.

Only, wouldn’t you know it, Franklin’s library wasn’t free. It was a subscription library in Philadelphia, so you had to pay dues to check out books. On the other hand, Britain established its first free public library in Manchester in 1653, thanks to a bequest from a textile merchant, Humphrey Chetham. He even requested that librarians overseeing the collection “require nothing of any man that cometh into the library.”

Isn’t that a lovely thought? Welcome to the library. Nothing’s required of you here.

Libraries I’ve Known

Libraries are so much more than book lenders. They often serve as community centres. Our little library in Lyme, New Hampshire was across from the school, and would welcome us for an autumn celebration every year, serving us donuts and cider as we listened to stories like The Enormous Crocodile, or Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, or The Funny Little Woman who followed her lost dumpling into the underworld to get it back.

*Another phenomenal library I ticked off my bucket list previously: Trinity Library in Dublin*

By the time we moved away when I was 8 years old, I had a boyfriend and we’d kiss hidden by bookshelves from the rest of our class. I also had my favourite little chapter books from the library. One was about a puritan settlement in early America, including a dispute over a pewter spoon resulting in public punishment. Another had a young heroine, Elizabeth, uncover and foil a plot to blow up President Lincoln’s inaugural train. I don’t know the books’ titles, their authors, how old they were, or how I chose them. Perhaps I just bumbled into meeting them, as I did with my then-boyfriend.

The great thing about libraries is they allow you to be reckless. You can choose whatever you want—for free. If you don’t like it, just put it back, no charge. When I was first settling in the UK, I was so lonely I went to the fiction shelves in our orange-carpeted library and worked my way alphabetically, grabbing almost anything. One book had, as its climax, a heroine confronted by two marriage proposals from great guys and the stress of this caused her to fall into a deep sleep for days and wake up with clarity. Why couldn’t that happen to me? I thought.

The library in my parents’ town, where my mom worked when I was a teen, has a theatre hall/ voting place upstairs and a mysterious cabinet of porcelain dolls at the back. While waiting for Mom to finish shifts, I entertained myself reading through weekly news magazines in the 1990s and learned quite a lot about world events. I also spent many of my high school lunch periods in the school library. Compared to the lunchroom with my peers, I truly felt less was required of me there.

What libraries have comprised your history, and what do they mean to you?

Learning Abroad

This Week’s Bit of String: On the way to somewhere else

I’d never have got into this whole immigrant fix, splitting myself between two countries, if I hadn’t done a term abroad while in college. My major was English/ Education in New Hampshire, where contributing to class discussion was key.

In the UK, on the other hand, professors seemed flummoxed when people turned up. They didn’t even expect us to read the assigned literature: “If you didn’t do the reading for this week, I hope you do at some point in your life. It’s a great book…”

*Twin American spires: church steeple and rocket*

I had read each book, as it happened, and was unimpressed having it summarised in a murmur for 3 hours. Screw it, I decided. I’ll do the reading while on the train to somewhere more interesting.

And off I went, to friends in Glasgow, Bangor, Wolverhampton, and especially London. I read, and listened to new-to-me British music (Texas, Robbie Williams, Steps), survived on Kingsmill rolls and Edam cheese and Smirnoff Ice, and fell for three different guys in quick succession, the final one being my now-husband.

I also wrote a wacky but fantastic story about a girl whose heart, in the form of a cookie, is eaten for breakfast. I got an A for that class, after only attending 1.3 lessons. I did the reading!

What I Wrote This Summer

*New England idyll: Billings Farm Museum, Vermont*

It’s always interesting to see other writers post about their vacations in the summer. Some catch up on reading, and many are busy with their children during the holidays anyway. For me, I spend 4 weeks out of the 6-week break going to see my family in New England. There are definite vacation aspects to this—the lakes and rivers, the mountains, the ice cream.

It’s also very busy as I condense a year’s worth of interactions into 1/12 of the time. Half my family are too busy to keep in touch when I’m not there, so I run around trying to help people out and make memories. They are all I have, and they are precarious without me recording them. When not Doing Things, I’m scribbling about them.

This leaves little reading time. I have writing commitments—promised critiques, etc, and also students I check in with even in the summer, so I squeeze those in. What I do find, though, is that the travel, the hiking and driving and swimming and reflecting, open me up to learning a lot of random things. Without the more rigid structure of work and long-term writing projects, my brain relaxes just enough to sponge up new information.

What I Learned This Summer

There were my discoveries while hiking, which I researched later:
The rather formidable Argiope aurantia (ok, yellow garden spider) keeping watch from her web in the lake bridge. It’s also known as a zigzag spider because of that uniquely thick central line. The purpose of this unique pattern is still unknown to us.

The Warren Rocket: My family got together in Warren, NH, near the White Mountains. While other towns have Civil War cannons on their greens or in front of their schools, Warren (population peaked in 1860 at 1100-something) has a great big Redstone missile rocket. (Pictured at the top.) It was funded and transported by a local veteran hoping to encourage interest in space travel.

Signs around the rocket tell visitors about SS Officer Wernher von Braun, who supervised concentration camp workers to manufacture missiles that killed 1400 Londoners. After the war, Americans smuggled von Braun out of Germany to design even deadlier rockets over here, but also realise his childhood dream of sending rockets to space. I wonder what the childhood dreams of his captive labourers were, or those civilians killed in airstrikes.

*You can see why the Morse Museum caught my eye…*

The Morse Museum: Another early morning Warren hike discovery, a building with granite plaques advertising Curios of India and China, and African Game Trophies. Now-vacant, it was dedicated in 1928 to house the collections of Ira H Morse, a local shoe store mogul and game hunter. There’s a colourful bio online of IH and others, written by affectionate family members. They include his adventures but also quirks like how he would “ream out” uncooperative salt shakers, at home or in public.

Speaking of museums, there are a couple in the area which I like to visit.
Billings Farm, a late 19th century agricultural reenactment site. It’s great for learning about cows and dairy, edible plants and farm life (see above). When we visited this year, they were making pasta in the farmhouse kitchen. I hadn’t realised how long pasta has been a staple in the US (it’s much more recent in the UK), but in fact Thomas Jefferson sampled and loved it in Europe, and by the time of the Civil War macaroni was very popular.

The Hood Museum at Dartmouth College: I always stand in awe before the incredible, ancient Assyrian tablets before moving on to the current exhibits. This summer, a diverse selection of art including Musasama’s elaborate arrangement of textiles and natural objects across the floor, part of the Maple Tree Series, made me aware of the maple tree abolitionist movement. Did you know that in the 1790s, free people of colour, white settlers, and native Americans advocated substituting maple syrup for cane sugar, to starve the economy propping up enslavers?

My family creates a good learning environment, with our eclectic interests. Dinner discussions might be about what’s the oldest continuously-used language in the world (Hebrew, Tamil, Sanskrit… Lithuanian and Icelandic appear in the top 10, too). My dad found an 1884 encyclopaedia in our AirBnB and read passages out loud to us. There was no entry for childbirth, but lots of details on “Brawling in Church” and the various statutes against it.

Even though I didn’t do much writing work over the summer, the feeling of my mind loosening to hold more is not an unwriterly sensation. New stories could develop from here!

Do travel and family time inspire your writing?

Pick and Mix

This Week’s Bit of String: Hyperspace snowstorm

One of my students, finishing up her penultimate year of school and diligently researching university options, is becoming almost paralysed with anxiety. She explains, “I don’t like thinking about the future, because then I think too far ahead. Like hundreds of years, or hundreds of thousands of years.”

“And it all depends on which uni you go to?” I ask, imagining the alternative timelines which might be thus affected.

“No. So it makes me feel insignificant.”

I see the bind she’s in. Berating herself for her insignificance won’t help her feel any less anxious and confused. I suddenly have an image of her exceptionally intelligent thoughts as a vehicle driving into a snowstorm, the blizzard flying almost horizontally at you as if you’re zooming past stars in hyperdrive.

*Sometimes, of course, it’s easier to just keep things frozen.*

I’ve been in an end-of-term rush myself. When I stop to reflect for a moment, as modelled by writer and life coach Liz Champion, I realise it’s been a hell of a term. In the last few weeks, students I’ve worked with for years have taken their exams and left. My kiddo just moved into their first apartment, while I try to support from across the ocean. At the same time, I sent queries and novel extracts to agents, after another careful edit. A friend died the day before the second anniversary of another friend’s death. I’m still dieting and not sleeping a tonne, packing and organising for my summer trip home while also cleaning the house and weeding the entire garden so it’s set for the catsitters.

I’m not even really reflecting here. I’m merely cataloguing. If I stopped and felt the loss, some part of me would counterbalance it by acknowledging the many greater crises in the world, and I too might get stuck between my own sharp pain and my global insignificance. In case you’re overwhelmed this time of year, let’s do a quick round-up of things that keep us going.

Goals of Fun

Before parting with my hyperspace-minded student for the summer, I made her a “Summer Pick and Mix” list. I used to do this with my kiddo when a problem loomed: we’d sit down and make two lists: Goals of Need, Goals of Fun. Not my catchiest or most articulate idea, but for the things we need to accomplish, it really helps to break them down into small steps.

And so we don’t get overwhelmed by what we have to do, there’s the fun. I’ve been known to write things on my to-do list like: Re-watch WALL-E (my favourite Pixar film–the detail! The storytelling!) or: Eat a bowl of cereal while reading a book.

*Hopefully I’ll have a few moments like this.*

For my student, apart from putting links on her list to research the courses she’s interested in, and breaking her homework assignments into weekly chunks, I added links to relaxing activities like chair yoga and mandala colouring, interior decorating, and Bob Ross’s happy little trees. I recommended writing a shape poem about her cat, and reading “Wild Geese” by Mary Oliver—especially when she’s feeling inadequate. I haven’t worked out yet what I’m going to do to relax this summer, or if I’ll have time. But I might look at a few of those links.

Do you have any methods that really tick that de-stressing box?

Words of Power

I’ve gone entire school terms or more ensuring a certain anthem plays in my earbuds while I bustle through the school gates. Years ago it was “I Believe” from Book of Mormon, “One Foot” by Fun., and this year’s exam season was survived thanks to “Odds Are” by Barenaked Ladies. The video is hilarious. Maybe things aren’t going remotely ok. But you can put on a brave face and laugh about it.

Searching for memorial quotes to honour our late, great writing friend Sarah Tinsley, I was reminded of how she personally and tirelessly encouraged and inspired so many (she was the first person to read my novel that’s now, terrifyingly, out on submission), and also that we all have that potential.

Here’s an excerpt from “Let Me Tell You About the Moon” by multilingual poet Elizabeth M Costello in her gorgeous little volume Cajoncito: “Let me tell you that you and I are gardeners. I cultivate words, sowing them here and there, watering them, and teaching them how to worship the sun as they should… and to venerate the trees, not only for their height, but also for the honour and honesty that courses through their sweet sap, and that the bravest among them is not always the tallest.”

*Just look how many branches can work together from one trunk.*

Likewise, I’ve always been inspired by this wonderful quote from Erin Morgenstern’s The Night Circus: “You may tell a tale that takes up residence in someone’s soul, becomes their blood and self and purpose. That tale will move them and drive them and who knows that they might do because of it, because of your words. That is your role, your gift. Your sister may be able to see the future, but you yourself can shape it, boy. Do not forget that… there are many kinds of magic, after all.”

And what about these words from Sarah herself? Our fellow writer Rita Gould reminded us Sarah said on her Substack The Disorganised Creative: “There’s that strange connection between me sitting at this laptop and you being wherever you are reading this. Maybe you and I have just made the world a tiny bit better, across the space of words between us.”

When we are far from those we love, when the future we face seems to render us insignificant, it helps to remember that even a single connection, even online and not in person, can really give someone a boost. And then maybe that encouragement renews them enough to encourage others, and on it goes… Keep boosting the world in your little ways, friends.

Trouble of Our Own Making

This Week’s Bit of String: Saturday morning movies

One of our family traditions was letting Mom stay in bed on Saturday mornings, and we’d watch a movie. This sounds simple, but we had to choose from our videotapes, mostly random stuff recorded from basic cable, plus Disney feature cartoons. I’m the oldest of four kids, with five years between myself and my youngest sister. Certain parties objected to anything in black and white, and it couldn’t be too “mushy,” and one gets creeped out by films with talking animals.

Whenever I vetoed a movie, my siblings would roll their eyes and admit annoyed defeat. “Oh sure, because they get in trouble.”

*This movie’s still a nope from me. But the local vet’s window display was very cute!*

It’s true, I was super sensitive about misunderstood characters in kids’ films, from Anne of Green Gables to Pete’s Dragon. Lady and the Tramp—I couldn’t bear that one (plus, it had talking animals so it was out anyway). It was the same with books: Curious George, for example.

I was petrified of getting in trouble for something I didn’t do, or even worse for something I did. I was the oldest child in a religious family, sensitive by nature, also traumatised by abuse. My dread of getting in trouble was so severe I couldn’t read or watch things where that occurred.

Causation vs Correlation

Lucky for me, in quite a few children’s films, things just happen. We ended up watching Peter Pan a lot (not the cartoon, but a slightly fuzzy tape of Mary Martin performing the lead in the Broadway musical). Plenty happens in that without the characters necessarily causing it.

It’s different as you get older. Characters must be autonomous, reflecting our quest for independence. This means everything that happens stems from protagonists’ decisions, overreaches, and failures.

Every crime-busting film from Miss Congeniality to Hannibal starts with the heroic detective disgracing themselves, and they must salvage their reputation. Every superhero film first establishes them as fallible; their powers are their only shot at redemption.

*We love wonky, flawed characters. But do we have to make them responsible for everything?*

Recently while I finished retyping my entire novel with new edits, I streamed Paddington and Paddington 2 to get through the copying. When I mentioned it to my youngest sister, she was like, “Wait, how do you watch those? Paddington gets in trouble all the time!”

Yeah, I kind of got over that. I had to, or else I’d never read or watch anything. Nor would I be working on my current novel, about possibly the most famous Character Who Gets in Trouble of all time: Eve, the original sinner.

As I edit the book, I’ve been reading about story structure. John Yorke in Into the Woods presents the prototypical story structure as a process of awakening. Initially, the protagonist does not deal well with revelations and things continue going wrong. I just finished Nikesh Shukla’s Your Story Matters, in which he emphasises the importance of causality: the plot springs from a main character’s action or deliberate inaction when faced with new knowledge.

In other words, the main character is SUPPOSED to make it all happen. It’s all their fault. They have to fall a long way in order to teach us how to get back up. Every protagonist, in a sense, is the author’s sacrifice.

Agency vs… Real Life?

Now that I recognise how it works, it’s stressing me out and reviving my aversion to characters getting in trouble. I put a film on and wait for the character to completely blow it. I’m anxious while reading because I know the protagonist is destined to screw things up.

*There are a lot of things bigger than our characters and us.*

I do like a domino plot, though, where each detail causes another; the way John Irving or Margaret Atwood spin massive tales of intricate characters and everything’s interconnected by the end.

As I go through my Eve book yet again, I’m wondering how to cohere the trajectory, Eve’s actions (or inactions) and their consequences. This is a myth retelling, so not everything is strictly in Eve’s control. She has God, Lucifer, and most chaotically, other humans to deal with. Plus, part of my reason for writing this is to repudiate millennia of condemnation. Maybe bucking the traditional structure is acceptable, or am I a bad writer if Eve doesn’t trigger every consequence herself?

I noticed that in Dune 2, the protagonist never fails at any new trick he tries. The developments in the plot are not of his own making—different from a Marvel film. Indeed, Nikesh Shukla notes that the character-triggered consequence story structure is a Western tradition. It makes sense, I guess, that main characters from other, more faith-based cultures have less agency to affect the plot.

We Westerners are obsessed with individuality—the downside being we can be persuaded that any trouble is our fault. In real life, it’s not. Not every time. How tightly do you like your plots linked to your character’s actions? Does it ever cause you anxiety, knowing a character is destined to get in trouble?