A Million Little Pieces - Days 13 and 14, A Fiction and Nonfiction Book

I am gonna be combining Days 13 and 14 for this post, which may seem oxymoronic (is that a word) but hang on and you'll understand why...

James Frey's book A Million Little Pieces caused a media sensation. A harrowing account of drug addiction and rehabilitation, the book was billed as completely factual. Under closer inspection however it appears that Frey had perhaps overstated how truthful his account was, and in fact had used a lot of poetic licence and portrayed his perception of his experiences, rather than what actually happened. To add insult to injury, the queen of melodrama Oprah Winfrey had added A Million Little Pieces to her book list and thus took his 'betrayal' personally, and so invited him on her show under false pretences and launched a blatant attack on him and his writing, bleating on about how he could lie to her, how could he do this to her.

Obviously at the time of all these goings on I was living in some sort of media bubble (also known as Grahamstown, where I went to University) and so was unaware of the shit storm brewing around this particular book. In 2006 I picked it up in a book store, and it was prefaced with a sort of apology and explanation by Frey, obviously to account for what had happened in the media, and so I read it quite aware that it was not a totally true account. I was blown away. Frey takes language and pushes it to its limits. He adds an urgency to everything he writes by making the sentences contain more thoughts and feelings then they were meant to. I found that most of all what overawed me was his ability to show how time has different meanings when we are in different states of mind. His desperation shows in the way he attempts to pack the hordes of emotions flying through him into these long running sentences, which seem to collide with one another and roll over each other, until I felt I was reading what he was feeling. I long to have this power over words so that I could magic emotions into being, and the fact that he has honed his craft to this effectiveness meant to me that the truthfullness of his account was not nearly as important as the fact that the way he had described it made me believe he knew what it was to feel that way.

If you have not read A Million Little Pieces, or its follow up My Friend Leonard, I would urge you to do so, as Frey manages to examine this period in his life with such a unflinching eye, and with so little compassion for his own choices, that it urges you to do the same in your own life. It is a work that profoundly effected me and the way I saw mental illness and addiction, and I think that regardless of its factual merits, Frey's style is certainly one to learn from. Read from the excerpt below:

"The clock holds me nowhere. Nowhere. Nowhere. There is nothing else but now and the shifting depth of the night. I sit at a table alone smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee and thinking and surviving. I should not be here or anywhere. I should not be breathing or taking space. I should not have been given this moment or anything else. I should not have this opportunity again to live. I do not deserve or deserve anything else yet it is here and I am here and I have all of it still. I won't have it again. This moment and this chance they are the same and they are mine if I choose them and I do. I want them. Now and as long as I can have them they are both precious and fleeting and gone in the blink of an eye don't waste them. A moment and an opportunity and a life, all in the unseen ticking of a clock holding me nowhere. My heart is beating. The walls are pale and quiet. I am surviving."

Ribbon and Thread - Day 12, Whatever Tickles Your Fancy

My fancy is always tickled by the awesomeness of Etsy. I can get lost in its quirky, creative pages for hours on end. If you want to feel that this global village is a little smaller, then all you need is a little smaller then all you need to do is order something from one of its variety of sellers - you will receive service beyond anything you would expect from any local store. I have yet to receive a piece from a blessed etsy seller that was not originally (and beautifully) packaged, with a personalised note - long live customer service and the human touch.

And so I would love to invite you to meet (and browse the wares of) my new favourite etsy seller: Ribbon and Thread. I am a huge fan of the handy canvas holdall and own a varied collection myself - cute, good for the environment, better than the crappy old plastic packet - Bags for Life are the way forward, and this stylish collection is too good to turn down. Hand made (with much love) by my dear friend Bridget, each one is hand painted with unique designs. The totes are trendy, arty and well made. Being, sadly, artistically mediocre at best myself, I marvel at what Bridget produces. Next payday I will be putting in my order (I am a sucker for the London print) and I urge you to do the same - the fun Bubble design for a friend to haul around her vintage shopping finds, the sneaker design for a college student's book bag, or one of the birds for Nana's knitting.

Another Place - Day 11, A Photo of You Taken Recently

This picture was taken during my recent trip to Liverpool. I was so caught up with all the Beatles action that I never posted about the fact that I went to see Anthony Gormley's work Another Place. While it may look like I am just crouching behind a rather large rusty guy with his somewhat unimpressive junk on show, he is in fact one of 100 permanently erected figures along 2 miles of Crosby Beach outside of Liverpool. It was a windy day, with sand flying all over the place, and in our boots and layers we were ill prepared for the excursion. The beach was not too well sign posted, and we asked dog walkers, joggers, and shell collecting children along the way to make sure we were going in the right direction. And then suddenly as we came between two sand dunes, we saw them. Lone figures, dotted along the beach, randomly spaced. Some up to their calves in sand, others being lapped by the tide.

It's a strange piece, and yet oddly meaningful. To know that they are always there, in any season, immovable, unchanging, all the same and yet weathering differently.

Simple Pleasures - Day 10, A Photo Taken of You Over Ten Years Ago

This photo of me was taken at least twenty years ago. I must have been about 3 or 4, and we were still living in our house in Greenwich before we moved to South Africa. It was summer time, and even at that age I remember the magic time that was. Long evenings, that stretched on to infinity, when my brother and I really couldn't understand the need for a bed time.

This is one of a set of photos taken on the same day. Everyone smiling into the camera - my mum and dad making a bonfire, my brother barely a toddler naked and grinning in a little paddling pool, in the background trimmings from the garden piled high on a cheerful green wheelbarrow.

At the bottom of the garden, along the fence, raspberry bushes grew rapidly, heavy with fruit for a few weeks of the year. That day my mum gave me the bowl and told me to pick until it was full. Her and dad had explained to me how to check that they were ripe and to pluck them carefully from the bushes so that I did not squash them. As I went along I squashed the odd one here and there, until my fingers were stained pink and the nails red rimmed. I remember the tart sweetness of the berries, and looking up to smile into the camera, filled with a days worth of simple pleasures.