Theodora Goss's Blog, page 46

Extraordinary Lives

Today, I read an article titled "The Unleashed Mind: Why Creative People are Eccentric." I've linked to a preview of it on Scientific American. Here is the abstract:

"People who are highly creative often have odd thoughts and behaviors – and vice versa.

"Both creativity and eccentricity may be the result of genetic variations that increase cognitive disinhibition – the brain's failure to filter out extraneous information.

"When unfiltered information reaches conscious awareness in the brains of people who are highly intelligent and can process this information without being overwhelmed, it may lead to exceptional insights and sensations."

That seems intuitively right to me. I think it's fair to assume that I would test highly for creativity on the sorts of tests the article mentions (I mean, I am a professional writer). And I know that I test highly for intelligence (since I was tested for the school gifted program, and let me just say that I think there are a lot more important things in this world than scores on an IQ test). And I do think I'm eccentric, although I've learned a series of social conventions, as we all have. And I generally follow them, although I think I'm more aware, than most people, of their constructedness.

But cognitive disinhibition: I know exactly what the article is talking about. It's that sense of having one layer of skin fewer than most people. Of being extraordinarily sensitive to incoming stimuli, whether it's ideas, music, even the weather. It makes life just that little bit more challenging.

On the other hand, it can also lead to exceptional insights and sensations.

What I wanted to talk about today were people with extraordinary lives, but I think you could classify them as exceptionally creative people as well.

Two days ago, I watched a PBS documentary called My Life as a Turkey. (You can watch the full documentary by following the link.) Here is a description:

"After a local farmer left a bowl of eggs on Joe Hutto's front porch, his life was forever changed. Hutto, possessing a broad background in the natural sciences and an interest in imprinting young animals, incubated the eggs and waited for them to hatch. As the chicks emerged from their shells, they locked eyes with an unusual but dedicated mother. One man's remarkable experience of raising a group of wild turkey hatchlings to adulthood."

Hutto is a wildlife artist who routinely lives with wild animals. The footage in the documentary is amazing, and the access he got to wildlife, to a wild life, is amazing as well. It's as though he was given the key to a kingdom that most of us will never enter. He saw things most of us will never see.

I'm not sure why, but he reminded me of one of my favorite artists, Patrick Dougherty, who creates art that looks like this:

Hutto and Dougherty are both creative, eccentric people. (Who spends a year in the company of wild turkeys? Who builds houses out of sticks?) They both live extraordinary, although very different, lives. (Hutto lives with wild animals. Dougherty travels to museums and public spaces all over the world to create his art.)

I think you only do the sorts of things they do because you feel compelled – you feel as though you have to do it, that doing it fulfills some deep and fundamental desire within you. It's the feeling that you're doing the thing for which you were made – and that feeling creates a sense of happiness, of joy.

The article says that people who are highly creative are more prone to magical thinking, and I think that's true as well. What I just wrote is an example of magical thinking, because I actually believe in it: I actually believe that the universe calls us (maybe not all of us, I don't know, but at least some of us) to do something, and if we do that thing, that's when we are happy. And that's when we can bear with all the negative things – pain and loneliness and all the things creative people are prone to.  (That we are all prone to, but that creative people often feel most acutely.) When they are in the service of a higher goal.

I don't know if I've had an extraordinary life so far. It's been unusual, certainly. But I am at least aiming to do some extraordinary things. Like, you know, write stories that people will want to read, that they will relate to.

Pater vs. Wilde

I know that I haven't been updating regularly. I can't absolutely promise that I will do so, but I'm going to try, because this is important to me. I want to try to write at least 500 words a day on this blog. It's for myself, really, because if I don't write out my thoughts, it's as though they get all blocked up, and that's not good for me. I need to keep them flowing.

You might be pleased to hear that I'm working on a new story. It's called "Estella Saves the Village," and so far I have about 3500 words written. I think it's going to be about another 1500.

I'm getting to a place with my writing – it's an interesting place, and I'm not entirely sure how to describe it. It's a place where when I write, I feel as though I'm doing so with clarity and precision. The way I want to do dance steps. No vague steps, no steps that signal indecision, as though I'm not sure where to go. When I write, I want nothing extra. Nothing pretty simply for the sake of prettiness. In a review, the reviewer will often take a sentence, or a couple of sentences, out of context. Simply to show how pretty the writing is. That's not what I want.

My favorite writers have that clarity and precision: E.M. Forster, for example. Willa Cather. That's what I'm looking for.

But I wasn't going to write about my own work today. Instead, I was going to focus on the two writers I've been teaching this week: Walter Pater and Oscar Wilde.

We've been looking at Pater's Conclusion to Studies in the History of the Renaissance, which I think everyone should read and reread. This is the conclusion to the conclusion:

"One of the most beautiful passages of Rousseau is that in the sixth book of the Confessions, where he describes the awakening in him of the literary sense. An undefinable taint of death had clung always about him, and now in early manhood he believed himself smitten by mortal disease. He asked himself how he might make as much as possible of the interval that remained; and he was not biassed by anything in his previous life when he decided that it must be by intellectual excitement, which he found just then in the clear, fresh writings of Voltaire. Well! we are all condamnés, as Victor Hugo says: we are all under sentence of death but with a sort of indefinite reprieve – les hommes sont tous condamnés mort avec des sursis indéfinis: we have an interval, and then our place knows us no more. Some spend this interval in listlessness, some in high passions, the wisest, at least among 'the children of this world,' in art and song. For our one chance lies in expanding that interval, in getting as many pulsations as possible into the given time. Great passions may give us this quickened sense of life, ecstasy and sorrow of love, the various forms of enthusiastic activity, disinterested or otherwise, which come naturally to many of us. Only be sure it is passion – that it does yield you this fruit of a quickened, multiplied consciousness. Of such wisdom, the poetic passion, the desire of beauty, the love of art for its own sake, has most. For art comes to you proposing frankly to give nothing but the highest quality to your moments as they pass, and simply for those moments' sake."

What Pater says, in brief, is that our lives are brief, and to make of them the most we can, we should experience all we can. How to do that? How to compress the most and best experiences into the given time, into a finite number of pulses? Art, Pater tells us. Because art gives us the most, the highest, experiences.

Wilde was deeply influenced by Pater, and The Picture of Dorian Gray is, in a sense, an experiment in Paterianism, with Wilde's usual tongue in cheek.

On Friday, I asked my students, would you rather be Wilde or Pater? I was startled when they said Wilde. Because after all, Wilde went to prison for two years. He suffered terribly. He also created art so much greater than Pater's that even comparing them is a silly exercise. But to my students, Wilde had experienced more. He had truly lived, while Pater had spent a life being comfortably intellectual. Never giving in to his desires as openly as Wilde did, although we do have evidence now of at least one romance with an Oxford undergraduate.

I was startled because having a life like Wilde's is so, so hard. To live fully, to mock society openly, to allow yourself to become an object of ridicule in your pursuit of what you believe to be the beautiful and true. Wilde suffered. Why would anyone want to suffer like that? (Honestly, I'm not sure my students realize, yet, what living that sort of life entails.)

There's really only one reason to do so – when you can't help it, when everything you are draws you to a life that is extraordinary, rather than containing ordinary peace and pleasures. When you can't make any other choice. Wilde could not have chosen to not be Wilde.

I think choosing the life of a serious artist always entails some degree of suffering. (Serious is a key word here.) It's not a comfortable life, and the only reason to choose it is that you really have no choice in the matter.

Author Photos

It's been a long day, and I have absolutely no energy to write a blog post tonight. So I'm just going to write quickly about author photos. I need to get some – every author needs photos. But I haven't had time to get professional photos taken. So instead, to a recent request, I've sent the following.

The first three are informal.

The next three are more formal.

These are the raw, untouched photos. No cropping, no photoshop.

Once, I heard a woman – a not particularly nice woman – call writers narcissists because they did things like blog, post pictures of themselves. It made me want to laugh hysterically. She had no idea how difficult it is, for people as introverted as most writers are, to do those sorts of things. I wanted to tell her, you follow this profession and see whether you can handle it! (There are things I avoid, although I shouldn't. Signings, unless I have a book just out, are one of them. That's probably not a smart thing for a writer to do.) Being so public makes you hyperaware of all your flaws.

I also wanted to tell her, where do you think the books you read come from? Writers who do these sorts of things to make sure their books are read. Because if you're a writer and you don't have an online presence, and you're not J.D. Salinger, you're going to pass under the radar. I've seen it happen to several of my friends, wonderful writers who don't get the attention or readership they deserve.

So there you go, that's my blog post for today: pictures, and a minor rant. I'll probably post them on my Press page, temporarily. But it's time to call a photographer and get real ones taken. I think I'm at that place, as a writer. (I probably was some time ago.)

Yes, this publicity thing is hard, when you're an introvert . . .

Going to London

I think I need to go to London. As you know, I've been very tired recently. I'm still catching up on all the work I got behind on because of the defense. So I've been reading, just a little, as I have time: The Ruby in the Smoke by Phillip Pullman.

(Except mine has a better cover.) I like it a lot – I just finished it today on the T, headed to Brookline for an appointment. It's not as rich as the Dark Materials series, not as complex or intellectual, but it's more fun. And although I've never been to nineteenth-century London, it gives me an excellent idea of what it would be like.

That's what I need to do with The Mad Scientist's Daughter: I need not only to research nineteenth-century London, but to go to London, imagine what nineteenth-century London would have looked like. Get a sense for the geography. How long it would take to travel from place to place, walking or by horse-drawn cab. I want my book to have that sense of deep reality, which many historical books don't seem to have. But Pullman's certainly do.

So the question is, how to get to London? Earlier today, I tweeted about it, and a friend has already offered me a place to stay that I believe is within walking distance of the British Library. And now I need to think about the travel expenses. I may already be in Budapest this summer, so it would be a matter of getting from Budapest to London. The cheapest way would probably be to fly.

It's exciting to think about this, because I've never been to London, and I haven't been to Europe in – two years, I think. Which I suppose is not that long for most people, but I was born there, and it feels long to me. This is the sort of thing I could do, now that the dissertation is done. The sort of thing I could never do before, because I had to spend the summers writing. And once I'm in England, there are plenty of friends to visit.

Oh, I don't know if it will actually work out, but I do know that I want to go, and that all it will take, now that I'm done with the dissertation, is some planning.

(There's one place in The Ruby and the Smoke where I thought, you know, even if I'm writing for young adults, I can write about anything. It was at the beginning of Chapter 11, the second paragraph: "She woke just after dawn. The sky was clear and blue; all the horrors of opium and murder seemed to have vanished with the night, and she felt lighthearted and confident." If Pullman can write about opium and murder, well then, I can write about anything, can't I?)

Christopher Raven

Today's post is going to be about a few things I have coming out, so I hope you don't mind some self-promotion.

First, my story "Christopher Raven" came out in Fantasy Magazine today. There's also an interview with me about how I wrote the story.

If you like the story, consider buying the anthology it's in, Ghosts by Gaslight.

Second, one of my favorite people, Charles Tan, has put together a list of "Short Story Collections for the Aspiring Speculative Fiction Writer." And he's included In the Forest of Forgetting! The other books on the list are as follows:

Magic for Beginners by Kelly Link

The Girl in the Flammable Skirt by Aimee Bender

The Elephant Vanishes by Haruki Murakami

The Fantasy Writer's Assistant and Other Stories by Jeffrey Ford

In the Mean Time by Paul Tremblay

Objects of Worship by Claude Lalumière

Twelve Collections and The Teashop by Zoran Živković

After the Apocalypse by Maureen F. McHugh

Yellowcake by Margo Lanagan

Honestly, it's amazing to be included in a list with such wonderful writers.

And finally, I have a story being reprinted in what looks like it's going to be a great anthology, Witches: Wicked, Wild & Wonderful. Here's the cover:

And here's a description and the table of contents, including my story, "Lessons with Miss Gray."

Surrounded by the aura of magic, witches have captured our imaginations for millenia and fascinate us now more than ever. No longer confined to the image of a hexing old crone, witches can be kindly healers and protectors, tough modern urban heroines, holders of forbidden knowledge, sweetly domestic spellcasters, darkly domineering, sexy enchantresses, ancient sorceresses, modern Wiccans, empowered or persecuted, possessors of supernatural abilities that can be used for good or evil – or perhaps only perceived as such. Welcome to the world of witchery in many guises: wicked, wild, and wonderful. Includes two original, never-published stories.

"The Cold Blacksmith" by Elizabeth Bear

"The Ground Whereon She Stands" by Lean Bobet

"The Witch's Headstone" by Neil Gaiman

"Lessons with Miss Gray" by Theodora Goss

"The Only Way to Fly" byNancy Holder

"Basement Magic" by Ellen Klages

"Nightside" by Mercedes Lackey

"April in Paris" by Ursula K. Le Guin

"The Goosle" by Margo Lanagan

"Mirage and Magia" by Tanith Lee

"Poor Little Saturday" by Madeleine L'Engle

"Catskin" by Kelly Link

"Bloodlines" by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

"The Way Wind" by Andre Norton

"Skin Deep" by Richard Parks

"Ill Met in Ulthar" by T.A. Pratt (original)

"Marlboros & Magic" by Linda Robertson (original)

"Walpurgis Afternoon" by Delia Sherman

"The World Is Cruel, My Daughter" by Cory Skerry

"The Robbery" by Cynthia Ward

"Afterward" by Don Webb

"Magic Carpets" by Leslie What

"Boris Chernevsky's Hands" by Jane Yolen

This is a book I'd buy anyway, because I love stories about witches. So, in case you want to read any stories by me, "Christopher Raven" is online now, and "Lessons with Miss Gray" is coming out again, and of course you can always just order yourself a copy of In the Forest of Forgetting. Because, you know, Charles said so!

Readability

I meant to write a blog post earlier, but I became fascinated by a documentary on the dancer and choreographer Bill T. Jones. It was about his creation of a dance based on the life and impact of Abraham Lincoln. If you want to see what a magnificent dancer he is, here is a YouTube segment that will give you at least a sense for how he moves.

But what fascinated me about the documentary is what always fascinates me about those sorts of things: seeing an artist work. And Jones is an artist with a capital A, brought up on modernism and its sense of the centrality of art and the artist. (The segment will demonstrate, also, something I've always believed: that dancers are the most beautiful people. Jones is sixteen years older than I am, and I could never hope to have a body as strong, as limber, as beautiful as his.)

The dance he was choreographing was particularly important because he wanted it to be accessible for a general audience, while not insulting the sort of intellectual audience that usually goes to see modern dance.

And that's really my subject for today, because I've been reading Stories, edited by Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio.

And I've noticed something: certain writers are remarkably readable. They just keep you reading. You know what I mean, right? The Harry Potter series are remarkably readable. The Steig Larsson novels are as well. Readability does not mean a novel is great literature. But it's an important quality to think about.

So I've been looking at these stories in terms of their readability. Gaiman himself is always remarkably readable, and I read "The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains" in one sitting. I liked how it was structured, the twists and turns. Michael Swanwick's "Goblin Lake" was readable and humorous. Elizabeth Hand's "The Maiden Flight of McCauley's Bellerophon" was readable and classic Hand, meaning simple on one level and intensely complicated on another. And beautiful, and a joy to read. But I expect that from her. I haven't read many of the other stories, but I'll confess that I could not get through Joyce Carol Oates' "Fossil-Figures" (it just kept going on and on, so I skipped to the end), and I'm in the middle of Walter Mosley's "Juvenal Nyx" and may end up doing the same thing because it's a vampire story and it too keeps going on and on, as though the technical aspects of life as a vampire were interesting. But Mosley is also a readable writer, as anyone who has read his detective stories knows.

I also recently read "Covehithe" by China Miéville, which is lovely in the way Miéville often is at his best, which is that he turns the grotesque into the lovely. (Who else could give me a vision of oil rigs mating under the sea?) And he, too, is a readable writer. At least in Un Lun Dun and The City and the City, although I confess that I became bogged down in Perdido Street Station.

I know, readability is a strange word to use, because technically all writers should be readable – I mean, we read them. But what I mean is having a sort of narrative pull. This is important to me because I want my writing to have that, to pull the reader along. I want it to be remarkably readable, for the reading experience itself to be a pleasure. (Remember, it doesn't have to be. There are important writers whose writing is not particularly readable in that sense. Whose writing you have to work at.) I honestly don't know if my writing has that – I think it does in my best stories, and it's something I want to work on.

Maybe accessibility is another way to look at it – like the dance on Lincoln, I want my writing to be accessible to everyone, but not to insult an intellectual reader. If that's possible.

I've been thinking a lot about issues like this, reading consciously. Because now that my dissertation is done, I want to be the writer I can become. And I'm not sure what that is yet, exactly.

On Gratitude

Recently, several friends have told me about medical problems they're having, or their family members are having. Hearing about those problems has made me grateful for a number of things.

First, for my own health. I've had one medical problem in my life: appendicitis. I still remember the resident telling me that the surgeon was going to make the smallest scar possible, so I could still wear a bikini. (I never wear bikinis.) Otherwise, I've been ridiculously healthy. Oh, I'm tired, and over the last few weeks I seem to have gained five pounds, but those are things I can take care of. Blood pressure and cholesterol and those sorts of things are well within normal range.

Second, for my daughter's health, and for my daughter in general. I wonder, sometimes, how I ended up with such a brilliant, beautiful child. Sometimes, I admit, I worry about that beauty. She's used to strangers stopping in the street and remarking on how beautiful she is. (Hair the color of copper, and eyes like rain.) But she makes robots and writes stories and wants to be a paleontologist, and she's most of the way through the Harry Potter series. Those are more important than beauty, I think. (Her rock collection is getting ridiculous.)

Third, for the education that allows me to pursue the profession I love – writing, and teaching about writing. It's taken me a long time to get my degree, but I'm grateful to have it, and to be able to do work that I find intellectually fulfilling. Even though sometimes I get tired of grading papers. But when you teach, every day is different, and you spend your time talking about ideas, and you interact with students – and I like students very much.

Fourth, to have a life that is opening up in front of me, like a set of double doors opening to a landscape in which you can see woods and fields, and a road running through them, and in the distance mountains. And you don't know where the road will lead, but you know that at least there will be adventures.

I don't feel grateful all the time – there are days when I don't feel grateful at all. When I just feel tired and angry at the world, and I could go around knocking people's hats off. (If they still wore hats.) So I'm writing this to remind myself, because I know there are friends of mine who have been in much more difficult situations, and I do know, despite any grumbling, how very fortunate I am – to be in a position to make the life I want to live happen. Many people never get that opportunity.

Once, after telling a friend of mine the problems I was having, I said that despite them, I felt very fortunate – that my problems were so much smaller than most people's. He became angry with me, I suppose because he thought I was somehow avoiding them. But that wasn't it at all. I was simply being grateful. I think gratitude is a very useful emotion to have. It puts things into perspective.

Another friend of mine and I decided recently that we were going to try to changes our lives, and support each other through that effort. Part of that effort, for me, will be getting back to dance. I haven't been to a dance class for two weeks now, because I've been so incredibly busy. But it's time to go back.

So I will spend part of the weekend looking like this:

And I will spend another part of it sleeping. And I will spend another part of it trying to catch up, because I'm still terribly behind. Blame it on the defense. But you know, it was worth it – to be Dr. Goss, and to see that road stretching in front of me, even though I have no idea where it will go.

Cool Projects

I've been thinking about what I really want out of my creative life, my life as a writer. There are all sorts of things I want: to write the stories that come to me, to say the things I want to say. To have people read and enjoy what I write. To participate in a writing life, go to conventions, spend time with writers and editors and publishers. I'd even like (if you're listening, universe) to make money.

But what I really want is to do cool projects. Yesterday, I saw a link on a facebook post by Ann VanderMeer to this wonderful video:

Below the video on YouTube is this explanatory note:

"Myster Odd: a short film in celebration of the release of the ODD? anthology series from Cheeky Frawg Books, edited by Ann & Jeff VanderMeer. Volume One is available now as an e-book through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Wizard's Tower Press, and Weightless Books."

The film is by Gregory Bossert, whom I met at the World Fantasy Convention.

Talk about a cool project, the video and the anthology series and the conjunction of the two. What cool project am I going to be able to work on next? I don't know. At the moment I'm working on a story that I've been asked to write for an anthology, and I need to work on publicity for The Thorn and the Blossom. (Now that was a cool project.) And then I have a poetry anthology to put together, probably over winter break. And then what? I suppose the next step is the novel. So I do have cool projects, don't I? I mean, more than most people, and I've been very lucky to have those opportunities.

I'd like to do more. I'd like to be able to be creative more often, but I do have a job, and a commute, and a child to take care of. The ordinary parts of my life take a lot of time. (If I still owe you something, I'm so sorry. I owe so many people so many things at this point. And I'm getting sick.  I mean really actually sick: I've been sneezing all day.)

Oh yes, and I need to turn In the Forest of Forgetting into an ebook. (Would anyone be interested in an ebook version? Would you?) Just in case you don't remember, that's my short story collection, published back in 2006:

But what keeps me going, especially when I'm this tired, when the Advil doesn't seem to get rid of the headaches, when I feel overwhelmed by my ordinary life and have barely any time to devote to the extraordinary one I'm trying to create for myself, is the thought that there are so many cool projects out there. So many things to do. Because in the end, the cool projects are what count. Not the conventions, or how many people asked you to sign books, but what you actually accomplished.

I'm going to go rest, because I need it, desperately. But I have a story waiting to be written, and poetry waiting to be collected, and all sorts of things that I want to do. Those are the things that keep me going.

Small Adventures

Yesterday, I had a series of small adventures. I think small adventures are important, when you can't have large ones. (And I'm far too busy for large ones right now.)

While walking back to my office from my final class of the day, I ran across a book and bake sale, everything $1. So I bought three books and three cookies: a book called Women Artists in History: From Antiquity to the Present, since I know very little about women artists in history and I feel as though I should know more; Huysmans' Against Nature, since I don't have a copy; and Ann Patchett's What Now?, based on a graduation speech she gave at Sarah Lawrence, since that's exactly the question I'm asking myself nowadays. That was the first adventure. (I told you these are small adventures, right? But even small adventures count for something.)

About a month ago, I had bought a ticket to Boston Ballet's Romeo and Juliet. After buying those books and cookies, I went back to my office and finished some work, then went to the bookstore and bought myself a book on writing memoir and a collection of A.S. Byatt short stories. (Little Black Book of Stories, which I'm looking forward to reading.) So by that point I had five more books than I'd had at the beginning of the day. But I was really waiting for time to go to the ballet.

At about 6:30, I took the T to the Common, then walked up Washington Street and stopped in a restaurant called Bina, where I had a brie and apple sandwich, and a cappuccino. I also bought myself a tiramisu truffle for later.

Then, I went to the Boston Opera House, which is one of my favorite theaters. And there it was: Romeo and Juliet, choreographed by John Cranko (who is always amusing), with the gorgeous Prokofiev score. I had a wonderful seat, and the ballet was perfect. And I got to watch people during the intermissions. And I bought myself Pinot Grigio in a plastic cup.

Afterward, I walked back to the T and took it out to the suburbs. But where I changed from the green to the red line, I saw a band playing in the subway station. It was called Me vs. Gravity, and the members were four teenage boys. They looked like this:

And you know what? They were good. Here is their one and only video (so far) from YouTube:

Yes, I want to live in the country. But there are adventures that happen only in cities, and I do appreciate those. I actually missed a train because I wanted to listen to them. Then, I hurtled through the darkness, over the Charles River (which is about where I ate my truffle), past Harvard, out to the last station, and then down the dark highways.

I want the large adventures, and in between them I want rest. And a home to rest in. But in the meantime, I have the small adventures.

(There is nothing quite so clarifying, I find, as spending time with genuinely high art: ballet, opera, the sort of art you see in a museum. I don't know why that is, or why popular art, which I love, doesn't give me that sensation of mental clarity.  But high art does it for me: like being in the Alps.)

A Magical Life

The first thing I should mention is that at Goodreads, you can enter to win a free copy of The Thorn and the Blossom.   You can enter until November 30th, so go sign up!  Because you never know, and if you don't sign up, you can't win.

The second thing I should mention is that I just don't feel like writing today. This past week I've been through one of the worst experiences in the world: being terribly hurt by someone you thought was a good friend. Someone you'd been there for and supported, even when it was incredibly difficult to do so. Someone you'd respected and cared for, until suddenly you couldn't respect him anymore. And you started wondering if you'd known him at all.

So I've been thinking about what you do in a situation like that, how you handle it. Because I think we reveal ourselves most in times of hurt and anger, in times of stress. And I think the only thing we can do, in times like those, is forgive and let go. To forget the hurtful things that were said, to remember the wonderful things. The friendship, the affection, the laughter. The private references that no one else is going to understand. The talking about stories, the trading of music.  What the two of you had together that neither of you will ever have with anyone else.

And you move on and remind yourself how fortunate you are: to have an incredible community of friends all over the world, to be able to pursue the creative work you love, to have a book coming out in January.

I've been thinking a lot about the future, and where I want it to take me. And it seems to me that, for the first time in a long time, the future is wide open. I've finished the PhD, so I have the credentials I'll need to teach at the university level, and I'm publishing regularly. It's scary too because I don't know where the future will take me yet. I don't know where to go from here. But I have a feeling, just the beginning of a feeling, that I'm headed somewhere – I don't know where yet. It's as though I'm waiting for an indication, some sort of sign. Is that silly? And yet it's worked for me before.

I do know one thing: I want a magical life. I was thinking about that when I saw an article on this house under a hill in Wales:

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Isn't it beautiful? I don't necessarily want a house under a hill, but I want to live differently. I don't know where I'll find that life yet. I'm not even sure what it's going to look like – I just know how it feels when the magic happens. But I'm sure I'll get there.

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