July 22, 2019 at 2:26 am (Artists and Writers, destinations, Family, Filipino Writers, Flowers, Links, Places, Women Writers, Writing)
Tags: fairy tales, flash fiction, Hotel Amerika, inspiration, Literary Magazines, Manila, Mendocino, The Philippines
Thanks once again to viveka for inspiring self to try posting to the current Lens-Artists Photo Challenge: DREAMY.
Self is a short story writer (though some of her stories are over 50 pages!).
- This Red Riding Hood Lamp followed her from one childhood home to another; self’s parents gave it to her when she was about five.
She brought it to the States with her, when she left for grad school. And here it is now, in self’s home in Redwood City, California.
It was the perfect gift — one that nurtured her imagination and encouraged her to dream.
- Here’s an image from the cover of Hotel Amerika, a literary magazine (based in Chicago) which published self’s flash, Ghosts. She loves the surreal, and so she loves the image.
Hotel Amerika, Vol. 8 No. 2 (Spring 2010)
- Finally, a landscape absolutely made for dreaming: Mendocino.
Mendocino Headlands: April 21, 2018
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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June 29, 2019 at 4:41 pm (Artists and Writers, Books, Memoirs, Personal Bookshelf, Recommended, Relatives, short story collections, Women Writers, Writing)
Tags: essay, inspiration, Latin American writers, Rosario Ferré, Saturdays, short story, writing process
The day of my debut as a writer, I sat at my typewriter for a long time, mulling over these thoughts. Inevitably, writing my first story meant taking my first step toward Heaven or Hell, and that made me vacillate between a state of euphoria and depression. It was as if I were about to be born, peering timidly through the doors of Limbo. If my voice rings false or my will fails me, I said to myself, all my sacrifices will have been in vain. I will foolishly have given up the protection which, despite its disadvantages, at least allowed me to be a good wife and mother, and I will justly have fallen from the frying pan into the fire.
Recommended Reading: Rosario Ferré’s short story, The Youngest Doll, from the collection of the same name
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May 31, 2019 at 5:06 pm (Artists and Writers, Books, Explorers, Recommended, Surprises, Traveling)
Tags: discoveries, English writers, exhibits, Fridays, history, inspiration, London, museums, novel
Self spent the morning at the Charles Dickens Museum on 48 Doughty Street, checking out the house where Dickens and his wife spent probably the two happiest years of their marriage. The house offers fascinating glimpses of the man’s domestic life, and the audio tour is highly recommended. She came away with a small fridge magnet showing her favorite painting of Dickens: he sits in his study, surrounded by a cloud of his inventions.
She saw a very distressed copy of David Copperfield and read that this copy “travelled with Robert Falcon Scott and his men to Antarctica in 1910. When half of Scott’s men were stranded in an ice cave for 7 months, they read to each other every night for comfort and entertainment. After 60 nights they finished David Copperfield and, as one of the men wrote, they were very sorry to part with him.”
Dickens also exists in manga form!
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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May 24, 2019 at 3:12 pm (Books, Conversations, Food and Drink, Personal Bookshelf, Recommended, Traveling, Women Writers)
Tags: favorites, Fridays, Henry Tilney, inspiration, Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey, novel, Prague, reading lists, wisdom
It’s been a long day walking around Prague. Finally back in the hotel, self finds herself thirsting for Henry Tilney. A wine bar across the street says:
Henry Tilney, p. 246:
- If the effect of his behaviour does not justify him with you, we had better not seek after the cause.
The wisdom of a 23-year-old man! He is so kind to our heroine.
Stay tuned.
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April 14, 2019 at 4:16 pm (Artists and Writers, destinations, Filipino Writers, Sayings, Sundays, Traveling, Women Writers)
Tags: happiness, inspiration, seasons, travel
Self travels the world.
And does her best to be happy.
That is all.
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April 11, 2019 at 7:20 pm (Artists and Writers, The Economist)
Tags: art, inspiration, museum
An article on Artemisia Gentileschi is in the Books section.
Illustration: Gentileschi’s Judith Beheading Holofernes
“Gentileschi’s Self-Portrait as St. Catherine of Alexandria was acquired last year by the National Gallery in London, becoming only the 21st work by a woman in a 2,300-piece collection.”
Artemisia Gentileschi was the “first female artist to be admitted to the Accademia delle Arti del Disegno in Florence.” She was raped by Agostino Tassi, who her father had hired “to teach her perspective.” Her father “petitioned the pope for compensation. His daughter was considered damaged goods.” The case went to trial. Tassi, found guilty, “was exiled from Rome,” but continued to receive commissions from successive popes.
Gentileschi was “married off to a mediocre artist” but “nevertheless set up her own studio . . . She worked in Naples and London. She became the great artist she always wanted to be.”
“A play about Gentileschi’s travails that won awards at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival last year, transferred to London and will soon be staged elsewhere.”
“Roughly 60 paintings by Gentileschi survive . . . ”
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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March 25, 2019 at 2:01 pm (Books, Memoirs, Recommended, Women Writers)
Tags: biographies, causes, history, inspiration, Mondays, reading lists, wisdom
Lyndon B. Johnson speaking at a Civil Rights Symposium in the LBJ Library on Dec. 11, 1972:
“Of all the records that are housed in this library, 31 million papers over a 40-year period of public life” . . . the records relating to civil rights “holds the most of myself within it, and holds for me the most intimate meanings . . . ” Until “blacks stand on level and equal ground,” we cannot rest.
— Leadership in Troubled Times, p. 351
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March 13, 2019 at 11:39 pm (Books, Recommended, Women Writers)
Tags: biographies, history, inspiration, reading lists
Leadership During Turbulent Times, Chapter 1 (Abraham), p. 6:
- “When he first learned how to print the letters of the alphabet, he was so excited that he formed letters, words and sentences wherever he found suitable material. He scrawled them in charcoal, he scored them in the dust, in the sand, in the snow — anywhere and everywhere that lines could be drawn.”
— Nathaniel Grigsby, a childhood friend of Abraham Lincoln
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March 13, 2019 at 7:28 pm (Books, Recommended, Women Writers)
Tags: biographies, history, inspiration
My mind is like a piece of steel — very hard to scratch anything on it, and almost impossible after you get it there to rub it out.
- — from Chapter 1 (Abraham) of Leadership in Turbulent Times by Doris Kearns Goodwin
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February 26, 2019 at 7:46 pm (Artists and Writers, Conversations, Movies, Surprises)
Tags: fashion, illness, inspiration, Oscars, Vanity Fair
Went to the Vanity Fair Oscar Party! YES! Look at that gown — beautiful and ethereal. Who was the designer?
This actress is so beautiful and so fierce.
She told Vanity Fair that she realized, finally, that what she really wanted to do was to act. “But I don’t know if it’s too late.”
SELMA, YOU CAN ACT.
Stay tuned.
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