Category: gratitude

A Symphony of Fail

I am the ape man. I am the walrus.

Ku-ku-kachu.

I am neither of those things. I am the fail whale.





Yes. That is me, sad tighty whiteys and all.

Fail a’ Fail-a-rino.

Today is November 30th. The last day of the festivities that are National Novel Writing Month.

This is the annual event where writers challenge themselves to write 50,000 words in 30 days.

2011 marks the sixth time I have had a go at NaNoWriMo.

My first shot was in 2004. I struggled, but made it the first time out of the gate. There have been years since then when I have skipped participation. But every one of the five years I have tried my hand at NaNoWriMo, I have succeeded in passing the finish line by the 30th of the month.

One year, I finished in 21 days. Yeah, that rocked.

This year, however. Well.

50,000 words are the goal. As of this moment, I have 14,239.

See. I didn’t just fail a little. I failed a lot.

A big round blobby smelly unctuous fail.

That’s me. Mz Failsalot.

I was going to simply try to hide this away. Pretend it didn’t happen. Not say a word. Not mention it to anybody unless they asked.

Then I decided that confession is good for the soul.

Own it! Sing it! Love it!

Yes, yes…I’m one of those perfectionist kinda gals. It makes me happy to complete what I start. Completing a project matters.

Also, I’m excessively proud of my ability to produce words. Not just any words, but halfway decent words written at a rapid clip. Paragraphs with a good foundation that some powerful editing can improve and shape into literary magic.

But this year, way too many hours at work (a project is failing and I’m paddling as fast as I can to keep it a’float), a prolonged bout of writers block (see Monday’s post), and an extraordinary amount of hubris (I had the audacity to TALK ABOUT my story idea…..that is certain death to creativity) came together in the perfect storm that smashed my tiny seafaring vessel to the rocks.

Oh, the drama! The anxiety! The shaaaaaaame.

Yep. I blew it. I firmly believe that owning it, giving my failure both light and air, and speaking of it publicly……Well, all of that takes the sting out of it. Draws out the venom.

Helps me be ok with it. And learn from it.

So today, I sing a song of failure. It starts off sad, like an Irish lament, but ends up peppy like a Rodgers and Hammerstein musical.

Fffffffffffffffffffffffailure where the agony comes sweeping down The Muse!

Whew. Now I just need to do an act of contrition, and the Universe will grant me absolution.

Right?




Fail whale image is by Ed Wheeler and found on deviantart.com. Follow him on Twitter @EduardoWheeler


Cheap Metaphors and Good Ice Cream

Despite the yoga, the muscle pain, the ooooohming and the visualizing, I’m still massively creatively blocked when it comes to writing, especially of the fiction variety. This is the most painful and prolonged period of writer’s blockage I’ve ever experienced, and I can see why some of the greats like Hemingway would drink themselves into a stupor over a situation just such as this.

It’s brutal.

Amazingly, I’m still able to crank out blog posts. That’s probably because my blog posts are mostly whatever random weirdness happens to be on my mind on any given day. To me, writing a blog post is like I’m having a conversation with you, the reader.

I always was a good talker.

I imagine if you knew me in real life, you’d find I talk much like the way I write here on the ol’ blogarino. I’m quite grateful that I am able to keep these blog posts going. They are a lifeline. Proof that I’m not completely over, left with a life of envying somebody else’s art and not making any of my own.

As I often do when the ol’ noggin is backed up, I’m going to the random word generator to help boost me along today.

I clicked and it presented me with the word: Phoenix.

Should I get all literary and talk about the bird that bursts into flames then rises from the ashes?

Nah. Too metaphorical. And a cheap one at that.

Let’s talk about that wacky town, shall we? A place I tend to refer to as “The Surface of the Sun” when discussing it amongst friends.

Phoenix and I have a weird relationship. There are things about the town that I absolutely adore. Attending a Spring Training game at Scottsdale Stadium is chief among them.

Watching baseball on an 80 degree day while wearing shorts and knowing it is rainy and bone chilling cold back home in the Bay Area is something I truly, madly, and deeply love.

But then there are times like, oh say…August, when there is really very little to love about Phoenix. Now, I am a desert girl, but I come from high desert where when the sun goes down, the heat becomes tolerable. 100 degrees at midnight isn’t cute and it isn’t funny.

Sometimes when I visit Phoenix, I feel like I am in my groove.

Sometimes I visit Phoenix and I feel like I couldn’t be more out of place.

Phoenix confuses me. It’s an incredibly large conglomeration of mini-neighborhoods trying to be just like Los Angeles when it grows up. This makes me mad at Phoenix, because parts of that town have their own personality, and it’s a good personality.

But then I turn a corner and there is another adobe colored stucco’d strip mall gone up and I think “Really, Phoenix? You’re better than that.”

Or as my dad would say, be yourself fer chrissakes!

I’d bet that there are Phoenix denizens who would take umbrage to what I’ve just said. I’m not here to offend, just trying to understand why a town with so much going for it is so confusing sometimes too.

Well, I’ll love it for the good stuff like baseball, visiting my Mom, and the occasional visit to the Sugar Bowl. And I’ll leave the overly stucco’d strip malls for someone else to love.

That seems fair.



If you haven’t been to the Sugar Bowl, you are missing out.



Photo by Patricia Drury and found on Flickr.


*Ow* Yoga *Ow*

“Show me on the doll where Yoga touched you in a bad way…”

Here…and here….and over there….oh yeah, and that place too.

In the early afternoon hours of this past Saturday, I traveled up to the city of San Francisco to take what promised to be a really wonderful yoga class. Entitled “Yoga for Writers” it was taught by a gentleman who is both a well known local columnist and avid Yoga practitioner.

I like his writing style and the price was right, so I signed up. I arrived in time for class with my brand new yoga mat firmly in hand and a lot of hope.

This class promised that through Yoga, through getting out of your head and into your body and tapping into your inner self, you might be able to write more smoothly, easily, and with lots of verve. (ok, I made up the verve part, but it sounds good).

While I’ve been doing a good job keep up with my blog, mostly, the fiction side of my writing life is suffering in a big way.

I have a confession to make. I have a scant 3,500 words on my goal of 50,000 for the month of November.

Um. There are only nine days left? Right? I’m utterly failing. I stare at the screen and I got nuthin’ to write. It’s very bad.

My writer’s block has become immense. Intense. It depresses me. So I really did rather hope that the yoga class would help free up the ol’ Muse and get her dancing.

I was in a TERRIBLE mood after having a god awful week at work, and so I was actually scared and nervous going into this thing. Would the class be chock full of hipsters? Would it be chock full of tiny yoga girls in tiny yoga pants?

Answer was yes on both counts.

I entered the yoga room and immediately wanted to pass out. Why is it so *hot* in there? Ok, yeah, I know, they keep yoga rooms warm, even if you aren’t doing the kind of yoga (Bikram) where you sweat your holymarymotherofgod off while you stretch.

Sitting there on my little mat waiting for class to start, I was already pitted out.

*sigh*

The class description said “not for absolute yoga beginners. Assumes moderate level of physical ability and yoga experience.”

Ok. That’s me. I’ve done quite a bit of yoga in my life, though not recently. I know my Tree of Life from my Warrior pose. I walk three to four miles a day.

I’m not an athlete but I certainly have a moderate level of physical ability.

My lard ass was actually NOT prepared for what lay ahead.

I thought this would be a writing class interspersed with yoga. This was instead a hardcore not-for-sissies yoga class with an occasional writing exercise.

In the three hour class there were three 15 minute writing exercises and one 15 minute stint of sharing some of what we wrote.

The other two hours were intense, almost brutal yoga.

Yoga never hurt me before. Why, overly large statue of Shiva in the front of the room, WHY?!?!?!

My god. This isn’t peace, love and butterflies. It’s agony served up on a rubber mat!

I hurt. I can hardly use the restroom because while sitting down goes ok, I can’t get back up off the toilet. I can’t be still for more than a few minutes at a time or I yelp in pain when I move again.

Look. I’m a writer! We’re notoriously pasty and out of shape!

When did yoga start hurting people?

I found this article titled When Yoga Hurts from several years ago (2007) with concerns that Yoga was being taken a wee bit too seriously (i.e. competitively) in the local health clubs.

I’ll say!

Ow.

(To be fair, the instructor was actually really good, just incredibly hard core. He’s that kind of guy who can balance a handstand on one pinky at the rocky tip of a mountain and hold it for an hour while thinking pure and spiritual thoughts. Whatevs. I’ll meditate on a bag of chips and feel just fine.)






Image from Icanhascheeseburger


Camera Obscura

According to Wikipedia: “A camera obscura (Latin; “camera” is a “vaulted chamber/room”, “obscura” means “dark”, camera obscura = “darkened chamber/room”) is an optical device that projects an image of its surroundings on a screen. The device consists of a box or room with a hole in one side. Light from an external scene passes through the hole and strikes a surface inside where it is reproduced, upside-down, but with color and perspective preserved.”

According to me, a camera obscura is one of the fun, wacky, quirky things I discovered in my first tentative days living in the Bay Area.

Down at Ocean Beach, over by the Cliff House, there is a really wonderful camera obscura that was installed in 1946.

Just for whimsy, it’s actually shaped like a camera (the camera obscura was a precursor to pinhole cameras and the beginnings of photography).



Photo by Karen Fayeth, Copyright 2011

The camera obscura at the Cliff House used to be right next to the Musee Mechanique, a mesmerizing collection of vintage penny arcade games. The Musee Mechanique moved to Fisherman’s Wharf in 2002, but the camera obscura lives on at Ocean Beach.

The little triangle mirror apparatus at the top spins slowly, so you get this really enchanting 360-degree view of the beach, Seal Rocks, and the surroundings. It’s all reflected onto this white dish shaped table in the center of the small, dark room.

Between the camera obscura and the Musee Mechanique, I could get lost for hours. Fresh off the highway from New Mexico, it was some of the coolest stuff I’d ever seen in my life.

When The Good Man and I paid a visit to the Cliff House this weekend, I was so excited to see the camera obscura is still there. It wasn’t open that day, but it’s there. And that makes me happy.

It was added to the National Register of Historic places in 2001, and is now under the conservancy of the National Park Service, so hopefully it will project on for many years.

The camera obscura makes me so nostalgic. I adore it!

That’s me. My purse was under my jacket, so that’s why my jacket tails are sticking out at such an angle. That and the fact that I’m simply a dork of epic proportions.



Photo taken by The Good Man, Copyright Karen Fayeth 2011



Photos Copyright Karen Fayeth 2011, and taken with an iPhone4 using the Hipstamatic and the Camera+ apps.