Blah, blah, blah is right.

I mean this is what’s getting up for oscars?

Am I disconnected or something?

I don’t think so. But then how can I tell?

If only there was a moment in the movie that I connected with the characters but it starts with a close up of Scarlett Johanson’s butt in bed, wearing a see-through panty, and it went down hill from there.

She spends half the movie (so far–okay I admit it, I couldn’t finish watching it) staring out the window and Bill Murray spends pretty much the other half slurping down a whiskey.

Where’s the story?

Is this what people’s lives have really come to?

And he’s falling in love with her? Why? Is her banality really any respite from his wife’s with the burgundy carpet swatches?

Now by not watching the rest of the snorefest, I admit I run the risk of missing an amazing epiphany. Maybe, just maybe, something incredible will happen and the whole thing suddenly makes sense and it all falls into place. Kind of like a movie I saw a while back, now I can’t remember the title, that seemed equally banal at first glance but yet kept you watching because there was something intriguing about the set up of the story.

It turned out to be a murder mystery, and was set in an English manor. Oh, dear. I can’t remember what it was called but it too, was critically acclaimed and as far as I was concerned, it actually deserved it.

This one reminds me of Driving Miss Daisy. Sorry, just couldn’t get into that one either.

B-O-R-I-N-G.

Maybe North Americans are running out of stories. They’ve explored every depth and nuance, or so it seems, and it’s all been done.

Nah! There are stories all around us.

It just requires a different angle.

But one thing that was kind of intriguing. I kept thinking of Robert Munsch’s admission to being addicted to crack cocaine.

Since Bill Murray was pretty much playing himself–a washed up middle-aged movie star, if that’s what his life has sunk to, going to Japan and posing ‘with more intensity’ with a glass of fake whiskey in his hand just to get some money, then I wonder if it isn’t similar to what anyone who has become so financially successful undergoes.

It all seems rather pointless and empty.

Many many years ago I painted a water colour picture in silhouette of a mountain climber who was perched on the top of a mountain peak, and the body language clearly depicted a resigned air to him. A “now what” kind of pose.

I wonder if that’s not what people mean by saying that the joy is in the process, in the getting there, not necessarily in the destination.

Human beings were designed to strive.

It seems like too many people don’t have anything significant to strive toward.

Fame and glory are not enough.

I think it has to involve an epic struggle of right over wrong, and maybe that’s where so many people get lost.

They’re cynical, and nothing is black and white any more. It’s all a drab grey.

I wonder if that wouldn’t drive anyone to try to fill the void with booze and drugs.

I go to all kinds of social functions and I swear that no one who drinks has a better time than me, and yet I don’t touch the stuff.

I know I can’t tell for sure because I’m not them, but it sure seems that way.

Yesterday it was a business type of picnic. They had two coolers full of soft drinks, they skimped on the food but boy oh boy, was the booze flowing!

Back and forth they wandered to the booze coolers.

And the funny thing was that in the invitation it said straight out that the people were responsible for having a designated driver.

Yeah right.

I spent most of the time with a very nice Eastern European family. I wasn’t counting, but I  couldn’t help noticing that the mother and father had at least three or four alcoholic units (beers, coolers, etc.) between them in a matter of what four hours? I didn’t see any designated drivers.

The grandmother was having some too and yet I don’t think she would be driving.

And the weirdest thing was when the mother actually offered her sixteen and thirteen year old daughters a taste of the vodka cooler she was drinking!

I don’t care if I looked shocked.

I had a good time, I talked to people, I told some stories, and I went home without worrying about whether or not I’d arrive alive.

It’s the same with writerly functions. They always seem to have booze at them!

Go figure!

I know I sound judgmental, but what the hay!

I’m just being honest.

I watched and watched and finally got to that scene and looked for the snot running down, and it just wasn’t there. Not sure where I remembered it from, unless maybe it was a spoof or something.

So, just thought I’d clear that up.

Couldn’t watch the whole movie (Sixth Sense). It creeps me out because it just rings too true on too many levels, only I don’t believe in ghosts, I believe in creatures called jinn.

I’ve been filling the artistic well with a lot of literature and movies lately, some high brow literature like Rohinton  Mistry’s A Fine Balance and Family Matters. Well written but sad, oh so sad!

I guess I have so many favourites that people would consider high brow, but that doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy something more down to earth.

I also watched and really enjoyed Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. Both are set in England, the first is a zombie flick, I wouldn’t call it a spoof, although it has an air of campiness to it. The second is similar in that it feels like a spoof of action movies.

Never ever thought I’d like a zombie movie! My son insisted I watch it. There’s a moment in the movie that’s even a bit touching! It was quite surprising to me.

And the premise of Hot Fuzz is just hilarious in and of itself. It’s about a London copy who’s so good that he makes the other policemen look bad, so they transfer him to a small town that has the least crime in England.

Also saw Edge of Darkness, Mel Gibson’s new flick. He was definitely trying too hard.

I felt sorry for him.

This was one too many older guy avenging daughter’s murder, type of movies. The scene at the beginning where he’s dealing with his daughter’s death is painful to watch for all the wrong reasons. Mel looks like he’s relying on that scene in Lethal Weapon, was it two or three, where the South African love interest is murdered?

I don’t know. Need something fresh and different. Seen it already.

When I first started writing, a teacher once said that you can often learn more from badly written stories than from well written stories, and that’s true to a point. It’s easy to find what’s wrong with the badly written stories, whereas if something works, it just works. And you can’t always pinpoint why.

I try to immerse myself in all kinds of art, both high and low brow. The thing they all have in common is that they should ‘work’ on some level.

Art comes in all forms, and I just don’t believe in intellectual snobbery.

I can bring home the bacon

Fry it up in a pan

And never ever let you forget you’re a ma-a-a-n…

And at first glance it seems very empowering, to see this woman who can do so much, but over the years I’ve gotten to thinking if our mothers, who single tasked, whose clear job it was to stay home and raise the children, didn’t have it better in some ways.

Yes, there was a lot of physical toil. My mom tells me of times when she had to be up till 11 pm washing diapers that she’d soaked all day so she could ring them out and they’d dry by morning or else she’d have nothing to put my little brother or sister in.

But I sometimes wonder if many women don’t work just as hard today.

When my kids were young, not only did I take care of my own four kids (including twins) I babysat up to eight more because my husband’s income didn’t stretch as far as we needed, and all the while I was doing that, I had this crazy dream that I might one day become an author.

And now that my dreams have come true, my kids are grown and I can enjoy my grandchildren, don’t I work just as hard? Only now it’s more mental work and mental fatigue.

And I’ve realized something. There’s no way I’d bother if the stories I feel need to be told, were already out there.

Sometimes I think how much fun it would be to just sit back and read my stories, not having had to do the work to write them! (I know that sounds a tad arrogant but please forgive me.)

I get the pleasure of reading other people’s stories, but what if I could just go along for the ride of my stories without having expended all the sweat and effort involved in producing that ride?

Oh wouldn’t that be grand!

All the women I see, seem to have been seduced by Oprah to go out and find their passion, to ‘fulfill’ themselves. Even while she often assures the audience that motherhood is the hardest job in the world.

Our society gives motherhood lip service.

But in reality, we don’t value motherhood. And mothers know it. Which is why they’re so busy multi-tasking, distracting themselves, when they need to focus more on getting a few things done right.

I’m not saying you can’t have dreams. Not at all.

That would be completely hypocritical of me.

But I did decide a long time ago that there are a few priorities in my life and everything else is optional.

Getting a big fancy house was optional.

Getting a nice fancy car was definitely optional!

Same for fancy designer label stuff! Optional!

Keeping a spotless house was desirable, but sometimes unattainable. Instead I kept it reasonably clean and tidy.

Same with spotless kids.

But taking time to guide and nurture those kids, was NOT optional.

Cooking nutritious meals to maintain health was a priority.

Starving myself so that I’m a size ten was NOT!

Exercising regularly to maintain health is also a priority.

Having vitamins is a priority (even though they’re expensive–I’ve seen both my mother and mother in law lose teeth and bone strength through lack of calcium so I was determined to learn from their lesson.)

Training to meet some kind of unrealistic fitness regimen IS NOT!

All you women who might be reading this, I will give you the same advice I give my daughters, and try my best to live up to myself. Life itself is a marathon, it is not a sprint.

Find a balance.

Find what is most important to you, and focus on that.

Do not distract yourself.

You cannot be all and have it all. It is just not possible.

Because you cannot do justice to all aspects of life, at most you will have a superficial existence. A jack of all trades and master of none, kind of scenario.

There are too many women like that out there right now!

Invest in your children.

They need you.

Invest in your family, you need them.

And don’t forget to invest in yourself.

But have balance.

And never, ever, ever, try to live up to other people’s standards.

Set your own and stay true to them.

Peace.

That usually happens when I’ve got to get up early in the morning.

Not the case now!

I can get up when I want and yet still I find my eyes opening around 7 am. after a rough and tumble night’s tossing.

Lots of ideas! Just got an idea of how to incorporate that trip I went on to South Dakota, where I researched all the spots that Crazy Horse fought in battles, into what could be a really fantastic novel!

It’s got me excited!

But first things first. Got to finish the sequel, speaking of which, I had lots of ideas on that too.

The characters are intriguing me! They keep surprising me–a good sign.

I think authors need to keep an open mind and on top of all kind of psychological information.

I’ve been watching The Lord of the Rings trilogy while I’m walking the 3 miles every day on the treadmill and got to the part where Gollum is arguing with himself about whether to be faithful to Frodo. Classic split personality. One of the things Jackson added to the story that wasn’t there in the original, but so totally belongs.

There’s another show that I used to watch frequently–not so much lately because it’s gotten kind of hokey. But it started out so sharp and intelligent.

It’s called Lie to Me, and stars Tim Roth in a Paul Ekman type role. If you don’t know who Paul Ekman is, read Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink. He’s featured in there! (That’s just one reason to read Blink, there are many many more! Great book!)

Paul Ekman is a pioneer in reading microexpressions and telling if people are lying by them.

I’m sure even as I write this that politicians are educating themselves on these telltale signals.

Unfortunately there’s not much they can do about them. They’re too natural and seem to be built in. A good reason just not to lie, if you ask me.

I was watching that Iranian scientist talking about his experience and from the little I’ve gleaned from the show, he seemed to be telling the truth.

And then I watched Hilary Clinton’s press conference. Did you notice that everytime she talked about the scientist being free to go back home she raised her eyebrows like she was surprised?

Now I’m no expert in Ekman’s methodology, but I do remember an episode of the show where that was a classic sign of lying.

Just a few things that have been mulling around in my crowded cranium and preventing me from sleeping well.

Oh well, time to get some shut eye. Got some great ideas for tomorrow’s morning writing stint!

SURAH 94: AL SHARH or AL INSHIRAH (The Expansion of the Breast).

 In the name of Allah, the Gracious, the Merciful

 ¹ Have we not expanded your breast?

² And removed from you your burden

³ Which galled your back?

⁴ And raised high the esteem in which you are held?

⁵ So, verily, with every hardship, there is ease:

⁶ Verily, with every hardship there is ease.

⁷ Therefore, when you are free, still labour hard,

⁸ And to your Lord turn your attention.

God repeats the line twice, verily after every difficulty/hardship there comes ease.

This line always reminds me of that old song “Those were the Days”, where it goes “those were the days my friend, we thought they’d never end, we’d sing and laugh forever …da da da (can’t remember this part)… We’d live the life we choose, we fought and never lose, those were the days, oh yes, they were the days.”

It’s funny how it’s a lament of good times past.

I think people mostly think like that. If things are going too well, many people feel nervous, wondering when something is going to come along to muck it up.

And yet the verse of the Quran shows it from a different perspective, in the form of a promise from God. After every hardship there is ease, verily after every hardship there is ease!

The last two months have been quite the hardship, between the traveling, the busy-ness and worrying about my mom’s knee replacement surgery and helping her out–I’ve felt stretched to the limit.

Now, with the last presentation for the month completed last week (a day camp) and my calendar for the rest of this week virtually empty, the pressure is off and I can heave a sigh of relief.

Oh, the pressure is not completely off. I mailed off the tweaked version of that novel I’ve been working on now for sixteen months, yesterday.

But I’ve decided I’m not going to think about it! I just won’t. I’ll put it right out of my mind.

And I’m busy writing the sequel for Wanting Mor. And yikes! The sequel is funny.

I’m sure many people who loved the book and are expecting another grim and heart-wrenching story, will be thoroughly disappointed with the tack I’ve taken with the sequel.

Darn it, I wanted to give Jameela a *real* happy ending. She’s still distraught at the end of Wanting Mor. I want to make her whole.

And I’m enjoying writing the sequel.

If it never sees the light of day, that’s actually okay with me, because I want to find out what happens.

Did my bit this morning, and have been pottering around for half the day still in my pyjamas, since. I really should get back to work. Gotta clean the upstairs–it certainly won’t vacuum and dust itself!

And later, I’ll make supper–baked chicken and sweet potato fries! Mmmm.

Ah, no pressures! No place I have to go, just housework to do.

Nice!

It’s absolutely thrilling ot hear them moan, “Oh my butt fell asleep” or “My legs hurt” (from sitting still too long). It means they were so captivated they forgot to move.

It was scorching, hopefully the last day of a heat wave, and the little air conditioning there was in the room wasn’t enough to prevent me from breaking in a sweat while I was telling them stories.

These were the older kids. The ten to twelve year olds and I got a chance to do some storytelling, the folktales which I seldom get to tell.

Man, I was enjoying it as much as the kids. I told them Simpletons, which is a Persian version of the The Three Sillies. And then for some reason I went and told them the Three Sillies, which is British version of Simpletons.

I wasn’t planning on that and as a result I finished up before I could tell them my Go to Baghdad story. It’s a good story to end with. It’s from the Arabian nights and is about twelve hundred years old.

And then, on the same day, I received some letters from kids who had disrupted one of my presentations at a school.

I plan to respond to these letters. The letters are full of sentiments where they think I was hurt by their disrespectful behaviour.

I need to explain to them that they didn’t hurt me at all. They hurted the other students. It’s to them they should be apologizing.

I got paid either way.

In fact, that’s something I tell myself, usually when the teachers are being a pain in the neck. “I’m getting paid whether they co-operate or not.”

And I actually feel sorry for these kinds of kids. What must they be going through where they feel that acting out in such a situation is worth it?

I don’t know.

Still. It was a good day. I had fun telling the stories, and I got paid for it. Win-win!

It was such an amazing experience.

I guess coming from a place where I’m writing as a minority to a place where Asian children’s content is the majority, seeing how seriously everybody takes this business of writing and producing content for children, was so refreshing.

Asians are such hard workers, and so many times I’ve been impressed in particular with Uma. It was a privilege working with her (and Elisa Carbone) on our book Many Windows. Uma really lent her considerable editing skills to the project!

She’s one of the hardest working authors I know!

And she said something (she might have been quoting someone else, but I can’t be sure) about how there can’t be just one story coming out of a culture.

You have to ensure that there are many many stories coming out of a culture.

And she, or whoever said that, is right!

Think of certain cultures like Jewish culture and Chinese culture.

There are multiple ’stories’ coming out of these cultural identities. In the case of Jewish stories, yes, you have the holocaust stories/movies, but you also have comedies by the many talented Jewish comedians.  They’ve been very successful at having a variety of stories ‘representing’ their culture.

And Chinese culture too has many different stories coming out of it, although less so.

India has Bollywood of course, and talented writers like Rohinton Mistry, Shauna Singh Baldwin, Chitra Divakaruni and of course Uma Krishnaswami.

When you think of India,  it used to be that you only thought of starving children begging with their hands out, in the street.

Not any more.

With the variety of narratives out there now, you get a much more rounded picture of the culture.

So then maybe, my idea of turning the sequel of Wanting Mor into a sort of comedy of errors, isn’t such a weird idea.

I wonder if I’ll be letting down readers who loved Wanting Mor.

It’s been very strange writing the sequel.

Jameela is no longer the centre of the story and seeing her from the outside, gives a completely different view of this girl, and yet, I’m doing it deliberately.

I’m showing her the way people from the outside would see her, and of course they’d have no access to the inner dialogue that seems to be the strength of her original narrative.

And really, I’m tired of sad stories emanating from Afghanistan.

You’d think the people there are a somber sad bunch.

Not at all!

Just thinking of my sister in law, who is currently in Kabul visiting relatives and attending weddings (and hopefully visiting and taking pictures at the orphanage where the real-life Sameela (whose story I based Wanting Mor) is located).

And when I think of my son in law’s family, they are some of the most cheerful people I know.

I’m trying to remember if I’ve ever seen any of these people really sad. And of course crying a few tears at the wedding doesn’t count.

I’ve seen them pensive, but never sad.

I think that’s what threw me when I went to visit my foster child in a refugee camp in Peshawar in 1992. It’s why it took me so long to write The Roses in My Carpets.  My foster child turned out to be a happy little kid.

It was incongruous to meet a ‘happy refugee’. And why wouldn’t he have been happy under the circumstances? He’d left Afghanistan when he was just a baby. He’s spent his whole life in the refugee camp. He went to school, he had his friends and family. It was his older brother who was skulking around in the background (with a haunted look on his face) that turned out to be the inspiration for that book.

It’s not like Afghans are an inherently sad people.

And yet think! Do you know of any happy stories emanating from Afghanistan???

I don’t.

When I started the sequel, of course I hadn’t heard Uma say that bit about having more than one story for a culture.

It’s just that when she said that, something echoed deep within me and immediately I recognized the truth in the words.

Now, I didn’t begin the sequel to serve some larger cultural purpose of diversifying the stories that represent a culture.

I started the sequel because I adore Jameela and all the other characters that peopled Wanting Mor, and I wanted to know what else happened to them.

I didn’t trust that stepmother, not one little bit! And it turned out I had good reason.

And I strongly felt that Jameela’s story is not finished. She’s not *whole* at the end of the book. That story is done and resolved, but she is not and one aspect of her is particularly troubling.

Basically I wanted her to have a *real* happy ending.

We’ll see. I’m halfway through it and just enjoying how the story is unfolding.

And after writing that deep dark book set in Pakistan that I just finished, I’m finding this sequel a breath of light-hearted and even downright funny at times, fresh air.

Well apparently I’ve done it. At least that’s what one of my editors said when she rejected that novel I’ve been fretting about and working on since March 2009.

I started it when I got back from the Serendipity conference in Vancouver last year. Geez, that feels like a long time ago!

I wrote the first draft in five months, which is always a good sign.

I remember Tim Wynne Jones once said that fast writing is good writing.

But funnily enough my editor’s rejection didn’t sting too much. When someone says that the writing is strong, the setting is interesting, and it reads authentic and believable, that’s enough to take the sting out of any rejection.

She also said she didn’t think she could get it past the ‘gatekeepers’.

Aye, there’s the rub.

The problem with writing children’s books is that there’s a filter between the literature and the market–the children.

When kids asked me what book I was working on, I’d tell them it’s a story about a kid who’s done something so shameful he thinks he deserves to die.

You should see their eyes light up!

And now a dear friend, having read the manuscript, says that even with the edgiest young adult literature out there, my book pushes the boundaries. And mind you there’s some pretty edgy stuff out there! Stuff that makes me squirm reading it! And yet mine is in no way graphic, everything is implied, but what is implied is, in the words of the editor who rejected it, terribly brutal (and it’s meant to be).

So that definitely sounds like an adult book, and here I am, at square one, starting from scratch, with absolutely no contacts within the adult publishing field.

Or maybe I’m starting even lower than square one. Maybe publishers will look at my credentials and think, “Yikes! She writes for kids! And she thinks she can write for adults now???”

Oh well, there’s nothing for it.

I think I’ll have to get an agent on board or something. We’ll see.

My first instinct when a book gets rejected is to think that maybe I just didn’t write it well enough. I had an idea of going back and tweaking the manuscript, but then I started reading it again.

I hadn’t read it for about two months at least.

Now, I find it very hard to get immersed in a story if it’s in Word format on a computer screen, and yet that’s precisely what was happening.

It flowed. And before I knew it, I had read six or seven chapters.

That’s a very good sign.

So hang it, I’m not touching it. I think it’s darn good.

I’m just going to start the process of querying.

That, and I’ll send it to the two international publishers who’d asked to see it. Maybe it’ll translate better overseas.

Wish me luck!

It was raining hard on Saturday.

When I got to the little island in the middle of Victoria park, I was quite soggy.

We were sharing the island with the Indians celebrating Aboriginal day. I love all the ribbon dresses, jingle dresses, war paint and regalia!

And there were booths selling native crafts from dreamcatchers to hair ribbons and bracelets.

I walked over to the Lattitudes side of the island and beheld the strangest site!

A group of about ten white people were in a ballet plie position and were moving rhythmically side to side in a sort of fake native dance type of style. Then the leader put her hands behind her back like feathers and they looked, for a moment, like birds (chickens), then they spread their arms out and did some other movements.

Oh brother! The whole thing had a sort of mock native air to it.

I just watched, amazed that people could act so silly in public.

Then later I went over to take in some of the Native festival.

There was a large circle gathered and it looked like there’d be a native dance or something.

Some of the natives were discussing something at the head of the circle and a young blonde girl, with her hair french-braided, wearing a calico dress with jingles all over it, stood to the side waiting patiently.

Finally a hefty guy wearing a vest with one of those bolo ties with a feather dangling down from it took the microphone and started by explaining that traditionally it should be the girl’s parents doing this introduction, but they were too shy.

Then he introduced the girl’s family members.  There was a man with the top of his face painted red and the bottom painted black, and he wore lots of eagle feathers and a bustle at the back, and there was another guy who was not as ornately dressed, then a few pudgy middle aged women and men shuffled up to join them, but they were dressed in regular jeans and shirts.

There was an awkward moment, on top of all the awkward moments, when the ‘music’ started, basically some recorded drumming and chanting, and the group of people just stood there, the ones in western clothes looking like they wanted to be anywhere else.

Finally on cue , the girl in the calico dress started to step dance and the rest of her family started dancing as well, but quite subdued, shy. They moved around the circle once, then people came forward to greet them.

If you’re going to dance in public, you can’t be shy. You shouldn’t do it half-heartedly.

It’s like storytelling.

I try to never watch myself storytell. I know it’s embarrassing. My face goes into all kinds of contortions in the natural course of telling a story and I’ve caught glimpses of myself frozen in pictures or flashes of me in a video, and I can’t help cringing.

It’s because when I’m in the midst of telling a story I do so with an abandonment of propriety. I roll my eyes. I make faces, I run the whole gamut of emotions, when necessary–especially if it’s a funny story. I’m so completley immersed in the story that I don’t worry about looking silly.

But then I’m being true to the story.

It would be kind of like watching an actor going from drinking a coffee to getting into character and doing a dramatic scene. Imagine Haley Joel Osment on a set, with the lighting technicians fiddling with their switches, the cameramen zooming in for a closeup and Bruce Willis crouching in close, for him to say his line, “I see dead people.”

All we see is the truth of the emotion in the scene. We don’t see the whole set.

But perhaps Haley would feel the same kind of trepidation in watching himself because he can remember sitting there, drawing the blanket up to his face, a bit of snot running down his nose, and getting into the intense emotional mindset of the moment he’s supposed to say that line so convincingly.

It must be very hard.

But you’d have to go all the way, throw yourself so completely into committing to the emotion of the moment without worrying about whether you look silly with that bit of snot running out of your nose. Even that bit of snot is important. Because it shows that Haley’s character is so emotional, so distraught at this confession, that he doesn’t take the time to wipe it off.

Kind of like the drool that hangs down from Russel Crowe’s mouth when he gets to his Roman villa too late and sees his wife and son hanging in the movie Gladiator.

You can’t be self-conscious at a moment like that. Just like you can’t be self-conscious when you’re storytelling. You have to be willing to bare your soul.

And the biggest mistake those native dancers made was that they were self-conscious. It’s understandable. I’ve felt like that myself. It’s the old natives-dancing-round-a-cauldron-in-a-National-Geographic-special moment.

And the ones who should have felt self-conscious, the white people who were imitating a native dance, didn’t.

Go figure.