November 14, 2018 at 4:19 pm (Artists and Writers, destinations, Filipino Writers, Links, Places, Traveling, Women Writers, Writing)
Tags: Annaghmakerrig, artists residency, Cee Neuner, inspiration, Ireland, Tyrone Guthrie Centre, writing process
Cee Neuner, thank you for coming up with such interesting prompts.
When Self Can’t Sleep: 3 a.m. in her cottage at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre in Annaghmakerrig
Late October: Walking back to the cottage after dinner in the Main House, Tyrone Guthrie Centre
The cottages at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre in Annaghmakerrig make maximum use of natural light.
Self was able to keep working on Blue Water, Distant Shores, her novel-in-progress about 18th century Philippines (As of now, 322 pages)
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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November 13, 2018 at 9:19 pm (Books, destinations, Lists, Places, Recommended, Traveling)
Tags: fantasy, Garden, His Dark Materials, inspiration, novel, Oxford, Philip Pullman
All locations in Oxford (or adjoining):
His Dark Materials locations:
- Exeter College (Jordan College in the books)
- The Bodleian Library
- Oxford Botanical Garden (Lyra and Will’s Bench is here)
- The Pitt-Rivers Museum
- The Covered Market
- Christ Church
- Story Museum (to see Philip Pullman’s head-of-chapter drawings from His Dark Materials)
The Book of Dust locations:
- Walk Paths Along the Isis
- Port Meadow
- Wolvercote (a 1-hour walk from Port Meadow): The Trout and the nearby priory
- Jericho area: Juxon Street and The Butterfly Tattoo
- The Ashmolean
- The White Horse Pub next to Blackwell’s
It was a spectacularly beautiful day. Self started out from Oxford City Centre and made it all the way to the Oxford Botanic Garden:
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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November 1, 2018 at 10:10 am (destinations, Filipino Writers, Flowers, Links, Places)
Tags: California, Cee Neuner, Garden, Redwood City
It’s been several weeks since self has participated in Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge.
This week’s prompt is: PLACES PEOPLE LIVE.
Self has lived in Redwood City, California since 1992. Redwood City is halfway between San Francisco and San Jose.
She has flowers on her front porch, and shelves and shelves of books inside:
Front Porch, September 2018
A back room overlooks her deck:
Back Room: September 2018
Her backyard has a lot of trees, including three figs, an apple tree, and a laurel tree:
Backyard, August 2018
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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October 23, 2018 at 12:33 pm (Books, Explorers, Filipino Writers, Philippine History, Places, Women Writers, Writing)
Tags: Annaghmakerrig, artists residency, historical fiction, Ireland, The Philippines, Tyrone Guthrie Centre, work-in-progress, writing process
Self has cut so much from her novel-in-progress, Blue Water, Distant Shores, it’s now just 314 pages.
The parts that stay, that made it through three drafts, will be part of the end manuscript now. For sure.
Such as this passage:
The new Gubernador-General announced his intention to establish a system of garrisons ringing the southern Philippine kingdoms of Maranao and Sulu, to contain the Moslem threat. Everyone knew this was idle talk. Spain could not send more soldiers. As the situation stood, she could barely hang on to her prize, the Most Holy City of Manila.
Matias’s watchtower preceded the Church. The site he found was a narrow spit of land that followed the Bago River from its mouth to the Guimaras Strait, which united the Visayan and Sulu Sea.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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October 20, 2018 at 9:37 am (Books, Explorers, Personal Bookshelf, Places, Traveling)
Tags: India, Saturday, travel books
Varanasi at the end of the rainy season, 28 September 1973:
Brown eyes observe us as we pass. Confronted by the pain of Asia, one cannot look and cannot turn away. In India, human misery seems so pervasive that one takes in only stray details; a warped leg or a dead eye, a sick pariah dog eating withered grass, an ancient woman lifting her sari to move her shrunken bowels by the road. Yet in Varanasi there is hope of life that has been abandoned in such cities as Calcutta, which seems resigned to the dead and dying in its gutters. Shiva dances in the spicy foods, in the exhilarated bells of the swarming bicycles, the angry bus horns, the chatter of the temple monkeys, the vermilion tikka dot on the women’s foreheads, even in the scent of charred human flesh that pervades the ghats. The people smile — that is the greatest miracle of all.
Waiting for alms just outside the entrance of the Shiva Temple
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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October 17, 2018 at 11:45 am (Artists and Writers, Filipino Writers, Places, Women Writers, Writing)
Tags: Annaghmakerrig, artists residency, Bacolod, historical novel, The Philippines, Tyrone Guthrie Centre, war novel, work-in-progress, World War II
Self’s novel is set on the island of Negros, in the central Philippines, at the start of the Japanese Occupation during World War II. Honorato, an hacendero‘s son, and Moses, the enkargado, are ordered to the mountains by Honorato’s father.
Self is bringing it, people. Just bringing it. Right now, her manuscript stands at 247 pages.
The next day the forest rears up before them, indescribably dense. It takes them a mere hour to reach the first line of trees. Upon entering, they find themselves under a thick canopy of foliage, the light fading to a cathedral dimness. Birds and an occasional monkey frolic overhead.
Moses leads the way, hacking the heavy vines and tree branches that block their path. Soon, his back is soaked with sweat. Honorato watches silently as the enkargado removes his shirt. The older man’s back is ribbed and corded and hard-looking, with small scars pocking the surface, from what past injury Honorato can only guess.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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October 15, 2018 at 8:05 pm (anthologies, Artists and Writers, Books, Personal Bookshelf, Places, Publishers, Recommended, Women Writers)
Tags: causes, environment, Mondays, Northern Ireland, poetry
First Tree: Great Beech, Fagus Sylvatica, Non native, Seeded around 1860
Writer: Olive Broderick
- There is no going back. She is so deeply rooted here it’s hard to tell her from Oak and Ash in this delayed-spring grove.
The Trees of Kilbroney Park is a publication of Light 2000. A copy was mailed to self in the Tyrone Guthrie Centre at Annaghmakerrig by her friend, poet Csilla Toldy, who edited the book.
Stay tuned.
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October 14, 2018 at 12:02 pm (Artists and Writers, destinations, Explorers, Filipino Writers, Places, Sundays, Traveling, Women Writers, Writing)
Tags: England, flash fiction, history, inspiration, Literary Magazines, memories, mysteries, short story, Stonehenge, Wigleaf
In 2014, self went to see Stonehenge.
She signed up for a small-group tour, the only one allowed on the site towards sunset. All the big tour buses had left. The guide, a retired military officer, led the group across a sheep meadow.
This is unquestionably the best approach. It allows the view to unfold gradually. You are reminded that this was how people, in time immemorial, must have approached the monument: in procession. Self could hardly contain her excitement at her first glimpse of the pillars of stone.
The mystery of the site has stayed with her. The fact that no human habitations were ever built around it. What was it used for?
From this vantage point, we could clearly see the jagged outline of the stones, just above the rise.
Well before she saw Stonehenge, she’d written about it in a piece called Stonehenge/Pacifica, published in Wigleaf, 2012.
It was a dream I had, some restless night. One of those weeks or months or years when we were worried about money.
But when were we ever not worried?
First there was the mortgage, and then the two.
And then your mother got sick, and your father died.
And my mother I think developed Alzheimer’s, but we never mentioned it.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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October 11, 2018 at 2:44 pm (Artists and Writers, destinations, Places, Traveling, Women Writers)
Tags: Annaghmakerrig, artists residency, inspiration, Ireland, seasons, Tyrone Guthrie Centre
10 October 2018
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September 26, 2018 at 6:23 pm (Flowers, Links, Places)
Tags: Cee Neuner, Garden, inspiration, inspirations, Redwood City
Still working off Cee Neuner’s current Fun Foto Challenge: PASTEL COLORS.
It’s a really fun way to pass the time: walking around the backyard, snapping pictures!
Backyard, Redwood City, 26 September 2018
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