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.

Global Graffitti - Day 9, A Photo(s) That You Took

Whenever I go away somewhere I always look for the local street art. I love the spontaneity and unexpectedness of it. I love how in some cities it feels natural and blends in with the great architecture and dilapidated buildings, having every right to be there. I love the fact that great street art gets imitated by artists and marketers alike, and that it owns the spaces it fills and reflects the people that live there. And so here are a collection of street art pictures that I have taken here in London and on my travels. Hope you like them:

Rad Stencils off Tottenham Court Road

Poodle found astray in Shoreditch

Space Invader in Covent Garden

Roller Pig in Barcelona

Green Lady Paste Up in Berlin

Graffittied Section of the Berlin Wall

Donkey - a symbol of Barcelona

Femme Fatale stencil in Berlin

A Selection of Secrets - Day 8, A Picture That Makes You Sad

I am not sure that there are that many pictures that make me sad, generally. But every week when I click on to the PostSecret blog, and read the posts I seem to live the whole spectrum of human emotions. I posted about this wonderful site here once before, and here I have a collection of a few sad ones. Sorry to do this to you kids on a Friday...

Picture Perfect - Day 7, A Photo That Makes You Happy

This photo is of my best friend and I. It was a self portrait taken just before I left for London. I was throwing a hens party and Evie and I had her car rammed full of a billion pink balloons. We were running late, but one look at ourselves in the rearview mirror and I quickly took this shot. The drive to the party was hysterical, balloons bumping about our heads, the AC trying to keep the Durban summer at bay, me fighting them off Evie's face so that she could see the road, stereo blaring Zeppelin. It was a bitter sweet time. No work, all play - knowing that I would soon be leaving. My family were all over here already, and I spent my last month with good friends having good times and doing exactly what I wanted when I wanted. Wonderful and sad together. This picture reminds me of that time.

This is the newest picture of Evie and I. I made it the other day, as a pick me for the office. Everytime I feel a little miserable at work, I look at it and remember that in 5 months I will be somewhere in South East Asia with my best friend. On a beach, far from all the madness of the city and work and everything else. And so this picture also makes me happy.

Forever - Day 6, Whatever Tickles Your Fancy

Okay so I have already managed to lose a couple of days here, so this thirty day post may take a little longer than planned - oh well! Anyway today I am to blog about whatever tickles my fancy. And today what tickled my fancy was someone else's blog :)

The Slow Track to Everywhere is in fact my auntie's blog, and will be most interesting reading as it develops as her plan is to document her and her husband's seven year circumnavigation of the earth on their 35ft boat, Forever (unbelievably awesome, I know!). I have heard some of her stories, in her emails sent from the high seas, and others around dinner tables at various family functions, but I am looking forward to reading the complete works as she writes them, and hear her tales of her bohemian trip complete with exotic destinations, wonderful people and the odd bit of drama I am sure. The first instalment has me gagging for a trip to Palma already, so this is not a good sign for my travel budget - just hearing the prelude to their Great Trek is enough to make me want to jump up off the couch and run down to my nearest marina.

So if you are an avid blog reader, or just a travel enthusiast, allow my dear Auntie Peggy and Uncle Mike and their intrepid exploits on Forever to inspire you.

The Importance of Being Wilde - Day 5, My Favourite Quote

If you ever go to Paris, make sure you visit the Pere Lechaise Cemetery. It was a sharp, frigid day in November when my friend Tarryn and I visited it. We were 18 and had been spending our gap year before university abroad. We were hungry for new experiences, and had learnt so much in our few months away from home. Yet we were still so impressionable, sensitive and naive. Experiences that would no pass over me then profoundly changed my outlook.

The graveyard was icy - the grass crunching beneath our feet, our breath swirling in the air before us. It was strange to me to come to a cemetery, pick up a map and then hunt down the resting places of great men and women. I felt disrespectful as we clambered over the gravestones of unknown residents to marvel at the remains of Ingres and to hold a moment of silent vigil at the Marlboro and condom strewn grave of Jim Morrison. Pere Lechaise Cemetery is on a hill, and we made our slow progression up to the site of Oscar Wilde's memorial. As we came to the apex of the hill we saw a white, stone memorial. A large modernist angel dominates the tomb, and it reminded me of something in a Pharaoh's tomb. As Tarryn and I moved closer we realised that the surface of the angel was mottled in shades of raspberry, scarlet, fuschia, cherry and plum. Upon closer inspection these smudges were a collection of hundreds of kisses left by admirers. The grave is marked with a sign asking visitors to respect, and not deface it. And so, in deference to, or perhaps in spite of this sign, faithful followers have left this mark only. We were touched by the dedication to Wilde so long after his death, by the love he seemed to inspire. We had come seeking Morrison and in the process had found Wilde. And so we rouged our lips and silently pressed our pursed mouths to the cold stone.

We walked back down to the entrance quietly, mindful of the things we had encountered and suddenly well aware of our own mortality. Aware of the greatness that had gone before.

Over the next year I read every bit of Wilde I could get my hands on and fell deeper and deeper under the spell that had been cast when I first saw that strange angel. Wilde's wit was as sharp as a razor, his insight profound, and so below I present you with a select collection of Wilde's quotes:

"Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination."

"Arguments are to be avoided; they are always vulgar and often convincing."

"Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months."

"I am not young enough to know everything."

"If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you."

"Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask and he will tell you the truth."

"A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world."

"I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train."

"I put all my genius into my life; I put only my talent into my works."

"I regard the theatre as the greatest of all art forms, the most immediate way in which a human being can share with another the sense of what it is to be a human being."

"I see when men love women. They give them but a little of their lives. But women when they love give everything."

101 Books to Read Before You Die - Day 4, My Favourite Book

Another impossible decision imposed upon me, and yet again I shall avoid it with aplomb. As you may know I am a passionate reader, and I pride myself on reading books that teach me something. I have read a lot of good books in my time - some of which I have thoroughly enjoyed, others of which have been rather bitter disappointments. Despite my dedication to literature generally there are certain gaping, and rather embarrassing holes in my reading, and so in order to remedy this I set myself a task. Exclusive Books, a book store in South Africa released a list of 101 Books to Read Before You Die. I have been reading in and around this list for about a year now.

Unfortunately, occasionally I get distracted by some lesser popular culture (lost a couple of weeks of valuable reading time to those bloody Twilight books) but I am moving through it, and reading some goodies that might be related to the list along the way. I have also invested in some of the ones left to read which I consider a step in the right direction too. So here it is:

The Lord of the Rings - J.R.R. Tolkien
The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
The Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
The Poisonwood Bible - Barbara Kingsolver
The Alchemist - Paulo Coelho
Life of Pi - Yann Martel
The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
The God of Small Things - Arundhati Roy
Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
Spud - John van de Ruit
The Power of One - Bryce Courtenay
The Hobbit - J.R.R. Tolkien
Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis de Bernieres
Shantaram - Gregory David Roberts
Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger
Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Disgrace - J. M. Coetzee
My Sister's Keeper - Jodi Picoult
The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
Catch-22 - Joseph Heller
Pillars of the Earth - Ken Follett
Gone with the Wind - Margaret Mitchell
Cry, the Beloved Country - Alan Paton
The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time - Mark Haddon
Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
Atonement - Ian McEwan
Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand
The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
The English Patient - Michael Ondaatje
Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
Love in the Time of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
I Know This Much is True - Wally Lamb
A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
Nineteen Eighty-Four - George Orwell
War And Peace - Leo Tolstoy
Clan of the Cave Bear - Jean M. Auel
The Unbearable Lightness of Being - Milan Kundera
The Little Prince - Antoine de Saint-Exupery
The Secret History - Donna Tartt
Possession - A. S. Byatt
Perfume - Patrick Suskind
The House of the Spirits - Isabel Allende
Chocolat - Joanne Harris
The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency - Alexander McCall Smith
Q & A - Vikas Swarup
Dune - Frank Herbert
Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
Fugitive Pieces - Anne Michaels
River God - Wilbur Smith
Little Women - Louisa May Alcott
Lord of the Flies - William Golding
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe - C.S. Lewis
Mort - Terry Pratchett
Crime and Punishment - Feodor Dostoyevsky
The Blind Assassin - Margaret Atwood
East of Eden - John Steinbeck
The Name of the Rose - Umberto Eco
The Other Boleyn Girl - Philippa Gregory
The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas - John Boyne
The Prince of Tides - Pat Conroy
Rebecca - Daphne du Maurier
Bridget Jones' Diary - Helen Fielding
The Shipping News - E. Annie Proulx
Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
Animal Farm - George Orwell
The Red Tent - Anita Diamant
Watership Down - Richard Adams
Magician - Raymond E Feist
Middlemarch - George Eliot
The Day of the Jackal - Frederick Forsyth
We Need to Talk About Kevin - Lionel Shriver
The Magus - John Fowles
The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
Agaat - Marlene van Niekerk
The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
The Shell Seekers - Rosamunde Pilcher
The Colour Purple - Alice Walker
The Beach House - James Patterson
Doctor Zhivago - Boris Pasternak
Kringe in 'n Bos - Dalene Matthee
The World according to Garp - John Irving
Northen Lights - Phillip Pullman
Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides
Shades - Marguerite Poland
Kane and Abel - Jeffrey Archer
Fiela se kind - Dalene Matthee
Story of an African Farm - Olive Schreiner
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
The Magic Faraway Tree - Enid Blyton
Things Fall Apart - Chinua Achebe
Winnie-the-Pooh - A.A. Milne

Weapon of Mass Distraction - Day3, My Favourite TV Programme

Choosing my favourite TV programme? It's unnatural, like choosing your favourite child. I know people who scathingly deem television a 'Weapon of Mass Distraction' and point all their furniture at a fireplace instead of at the 'idiot box'. They have never heard of McDreamy, or The Stig. They have no idea that America's greatest president by far was Martin Sheen, and that the reason men are choosing to wear suits again is thanks to the smooth masculinity of Don Draper. They didn't gasp when Mr Darcy dove into the lake and came out wet shirted, or cry when the Friends left that purple apartment for the last time.

As you can see I am a real television aficionado, a follower of great (and sometimes mediocre) television. I enjoy the weekly morsels of drama and comedy that get doled out to you in hourly increments, and I love to gorge on a box set, and not move from the screen for a weekend at least. I have indulged in total and utter brain trash (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Heroes) and lauded myself for my intelligent viewing decisions (Six Feet Under, Dexter). I have learnt lessons from TV, and quoted wisdom (Yes I am one of those people). I feel passionate about this most simple, and most corrupted, of cultural products, and so I cannot choose one, but I can give you a list of shows, in no particular order, I think you should not flick past...

The Sopranos

Mad Men

True Blood

Six Feet Under

Greys Anatomy

30 Rock

Glee

That 70s Show

Two and Half Men

The West Wing

Only Fools and Horses

Gavin and Stacey

My Name is Earl

The Mighty Boosh

South Park

The IT Crowd

Dexter

Fawlty Towers

Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice - Day 2, My Favourite Film

It's so hard having favourites. Very restrictive - I like different things, at different times, for different reasons. However I think everyone has a film that they can always watch. When there is nothing else on you pop the DVD in, when you are browsing through channels and you chance upon it you stop surfing.

Beetlejuice is that film for me. I was four when it was made, and not much older the first time I saw it, and yet it never scared me, just fascinated me. Macabre though it is, it actually took all the fear out of death for me. Burton's stripes and swirls fascinated me from the onset, the homemade horror of it appealed to me - it was like a trip inside an imagination your parents didn't want you to see. And I see so much of his future films that I enjoy in these earlier baby steps. Michael Keaton's Beetlejuice is still one of my favourite villians - his diabolical plans are in no way personal, and he makes no apologies for his revolting behaviour, or wanting to marry a minor (Hmm - dodge). The hysterical concept of the after life being a civil servant run nightmare, staffed by suicide victims, dawned on me as I grew older, and appealed to my flippant sense of humour, and despite the strangeness of the host of characters, I find the wholesome, sweetness of the Maitlands and their floral house quite endearing (although it has always upset me that poor Geena Davis had to spend eternity in that god awful dress).

So yes, that is my favourite film. If you feel like a dose of young Burton, with some Winona, gothic humor, stop motion and Harry Belafonte thrown in, then pop down to your video store or onto Amazon now and organise that shit!

Almost Famous - Day One, My Favourite Song

Okay, the truth is I have gotten a little lazy over here lately. I get distracted by the (lame) machinations of so called 'real' life and forget the pure joy of chronicling my random little thoughts and experiences. Sometimes thinking of something to write seems like a chore, and so to get me back into the swing of things I am taking a little tip from the lovely Steph and decide to do the 30 Days Tag challenge. Basically I have a prescribed list of topics, of a personal nature, that I am going to blog on - one post per day. So wish me luck kids...Here goes Day One:

Tiny Dancer - Elton John

My favourite song is Tiny Dancer by Elton John. My mum, a lovely lady with dubious taste in music, has long been a fan of the self proclaimed 'pink poof' and I grew up with many of his legendary lyrics floating around my home and indoctrinating me to love the ballad. However, not until I watched Almost Famous did I realise that one of his songs was in fact my favourite. I think Tiny Dancer's association with the movie is what sealed it for me. This is a film about a bunch of girls in the seventies who have let go of everything that society expected of them and followed their passion (frequently that passion led them to the beds of rockstars, but have you seen Billy Crudup and Jason lee? I'm not complaining). They wear great clothes, listen to great music, take pictures on polaroids, and call themselves BandAids. The scene on the bus, when they begin singing Tiny Dancer is one of my favourite in movie history. It's about solidarity and friendship and acceptance and its one of those moments that if you are part of it you will remember forever. When William Miller tells Penny Lane 'I have to go home' and she replies 'You are home'. I have this feeling that if I was there I would be home too. It has inspired my best friend and I to call each other Ruby Tuesday and Tangerine Tree respectively, and makes one of my greatest dreams to follow a band around for a summer...All that from a song...

As if it wasn't great enough already, Dave Grohl then bestowed his blessing on the tiny song by playing a ridiculous version on a US Talk Show. Greatness.