D.A. Cairns's Blog, page 28

Confession #atozchallenge

"Cassy remained motionless, her lips barely moving. Angus thought it best to leave her to sleep, but he answered her question. She replied that she was cold. Angus grabbed another blanket for her and gently draped it over the pre-existing mountain. He leant close to kiss her and was suddenly choked by emotion. Lingering with his lips on her forehead, he surrendered to the surge of tears. Leaving immediately might have saved him, but he stayed, and Cassy was roused from her half slumber by his obvious distress.
‘What’s wrong?’
A simple question became a watershed moment in his life. Angus could deny and escape or he could tell her. Tell her what though? Confess? Was he going to confess? How?
More alert now and sensing the seriousness of the moment, Cassy opened her eyes and again asked him why he was crying. Pressure mounted in his head. Words drowned in tears.
‘Angus?’
‘I have something to tell you.’"
chapter 29, Lovesick
 
It is often said that honesty is the best policy, yet everyone knows there are times when this is not true. Times when the truth may do more harm than good. We all lie. Sometimes we choose to lie, sometimes because we feel we have to lie, other times because we want to. The lie may be to protect someone. It may be easier. It may be an automatic reaction if we are worried about the consequences of telling the truth.
Keeping secrets is a form of lying. It is deception, and yet we all have secrets. Not every person we know, knows everything about us, nor do we know all there is to know about them. Such knowledge may be undesirable anyway. Lies may be necessary to guard secrets. Lies may need to be told to support other lies.
Dishonesty is a heavy load to bear, and sometimes people chose to confess rather than be found out. They say confession is good for the soul. Would it have been worse for Cassy to learn Angus' secret from someone else? Could Angus have continued indefinitely with his deception? The confession may have been a shock, but it was necessary...or was it?
When have you confessed a lie or a secret? How long did you hold on to it? How was it received? How did you feel after confessing?

Betrayal #atozchallenge

“I have been wronged. I am distraught, destroyed by Angus’ act of betrayal. I know that I am not without fault. I know that, but the punishment does not seem to fit the crime…I feel alone despite the proximity of women who have suffered and are suffering as I am. My pain is my own. I cannot alleviate the torture by disseminating its effects to others, by sharing. The words I utter are greeted by sympathetic nods, coos and shakes of lowered heads housing eyes which widen and contract as required…
When I explain that I swing wildly between contrasting moods, now numb and depressed, then angry and wrathful, the women moan their sympathetic understanding. I hear their words too, but they sound like a blur of soft sound waves which roll upon the shore of my mind without impact. My once pristine beach is now littered with seaweed, blue bottles and cigarette butts. I see it needs to be cleaned, washed by the benevolent ocean but the tide is out and not coming in.”
- Lovesick chapter 30

There have been a number of famous betrayals in history; Judas betrayed Jesus for thirty pieces of silver. Brutus literally stabbed his best friend, Julius Caesar, in the back. Benedict Arnold has become a byword for treason. http://www.viralnova.com/famous-betrayals/ How many more personal betrayals, breaches of trust in friendship, in families, in marriage? Who could count them? Who has not been wounded by disloyalty? How could the pain of these treacheries and infidelities be measured?
What do you do when the person who has betrayed you is not sorry? What do you do when a person you trusted, stabs you in the back? Trust can be rebuilt, if both parties are willing, but it is extremely difficult to overcome the nagging feeling that one unfaithful act may be accompanied by or followed by others. Many relationships have ended because of betrayal, and many more will. Sad, but true.
When have you been betrayed, and by whom? Were you able to rebuild trust?

Amore #atozchallenge

“I am in love and there is nothing in all the world which produces as much suffering as love. Hate or even indifference do not inflict as much damage to the heart as love. For to love is to expose one’s soul to penetration by the fiery arrows of betrayal, of deceit, of disappointment. To love is to make oneself vulnerable. Love can weaken and diminish a man as readily as it can strengthen him. The stampeding herd of my emotions which has left me crumpled and useless on the ground is of infinite number, and cannot end its rampage until I close my heart. I refuse to concede.”  
- from the prologue to Lovesick


One of my fondest memories of the wonderful Dean Martin/Jerry Lewis partnership is them singing That’s Amore. When the world seems to shine like you’ve had too much wine…that’s amore. Amore is the Italian word for love, but what is love? Surely it is more than the feeling you have when the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie. Love has been the subject of more songs, poems and stories than any other, and is impossible to define simply. There are different kinds of love, and they usually operate together to varying degrees; sometimes seemingly inextricable from one another. Love is powerful.

What Martin was singing about was the rush of warm fuzziness which characterises being in love. This intensely nice feeling overwhelms those who are in love, and colours their world in happy, hopeful shades. In Lovesick, Angus is afflicted with lovesickness, an obsession which drives him to extreme misbehaviour.

Have you ever been in love? What was the major symptom of your lovesickness?

2016 A-Z Blogging Challenge: Theme reveal.

"It must be a kind of madness, an insidious disease, a merciless affliction: lovesickness. With the power to distort and manipulate one'e emotions, to exaggerate, to fantasize, to blind one completely to reality, to render perspective inoperable. Lovesickness: the eternal bane of humanity."  excerpt from the prologue to Lovesick.

In support of my forthcoming novel, Lovesick, I'll be blogging on themes from it all the way through the month of April. Lovesick explores the destruction of a marriage from both the man's perspective and the woman's. Honest, hard hitting and disturbing, Lovesick speaks of matters to which everyone can relate; the pain of a broken heart, and the slow desperate crawl along the road to healing.

Topics to include betrayal, flirting and lustance (a new word). I hope you will join me on this twenty six post journey through the dark and light sides of love.

Accidental Queue Jumping

Good social skills are important. The understatement meter in my pocket just exploded, but seriously, good interpersonal communication skills are essentially the oil which lubricates relationships. 

When the giant standing next to me at the counter of the local takeaway place delivered his order over the top of mine and then said he was next, I realized two things immediately. One: the man had poor interpersonal skills and two; I had inadvertently jumped the queue. I apologized, and made a quip about how I had never seen a queue at this particular fast food venue. (In fact people normally stand parallel to the counter and take note of who was already there when they arrived.)

The man's response to my apology was delivered in a gruff and aggrieved tone. "Just don't jump the queue mate. I don't want to argue about it."

"I don't want to argue about it" is in the same category as statements beginning with "to tell the truth" and "I don't want to say I told you so...". Like the positive onset with an obvious inflection broadcasting a big "but' will follow.

Whether the big man with serious indignation at the take way joint was naturally rude and ungracious, or whether he had merely exhausted his reserves of bonhomie at the end of a bad day, I do not know. I've been unjustifiably short with people too on occasion, but I reckon a sincere apology ought to extinguish the flames of ire. Most people have varying degrees of serious drama and affliction in their lives. Why bother straining at gnats?

It's pretty easy to be nice, even to people who aren't nice to you. It is not difficult to back down and walk away. The offended behemoth and I left the car park of the take away shop at the same time: I was on foot and he was safe in his world on wheels. He might have looked at me, or he might have simply been checking for oncoming traffic, but in any case I threw him another smile. His stony face was the epitome of recalcitrance. As he drove away I wondered if he was a blogger like me.

Photo sources:
https://www.cartoonstock.com/director...
http://ocoy.org/about-the-indignant-i...

A Master of Cans

There are certain skills you need in order to effectively execute the business of living. We learn these skills over time as we grow and are instructed, either directly or by example, first by our parents, then by teachers, and peers and later our colleagues. The potential skill set is enormous, but no one learns them all because there is no need.

However, there are certain essential universal skills which we require for routine living; using utensils to feed ourselves for example. In relation to these vital every day skills, I have a confession to make: for many years I have struggled with one particularly crucial one. I can do it, but not well and even after so much practice and concerted effort to improve, I have not, until recently been able to do it without making a mess.
My breakthrough came recently as I was sitting in my car, holding a can of Coke in my left hand. With the middle finger of my right hand poised for action, I took a breath and steadied myself. Never had I previously been able to pop the can open without ejecting some of its contents either on my person or a nearby hapless target. My hand shook a little as I sensed something momentous, and historic about to unfurl. Or perhaps another appalling and embarrassing failure.
I levered my finger under the ring pull and lifted it: simultaneously delighted by the cracking sound and the clean perforation of the can. No Coke escaped. The celebrations went on for several minutes as I toasted myself and reveled in the joyful satisfaction of mastering a new skill.

What new skill have you mastered recently?

Apology

To you who not only read, but take the time to comment on Square Pegs, I want to say thank you, and also apologize for not replying to your comments. I can't do it, and I don't know why. I type replies, but they disappear. I do read your comments and appreciate them. I just wish I could figure out why I can't reply to them.

Caricatures V Characters

"Mr Chadband is a large yellow man with a fat smile, and a general appearance of having a good deal of train oil in his system." (Bleak House by Charles Dickens)

In literature, caricature is a description of a person using exaggeration of some characteristics or over simplification of others. Men do not have gargantuan noses or elephant ears. Neither do women possess bird faces and hourglass figures, but these descriptions paint potent pictures in the mind.


Used skillfully by authors such as Dickens, caricature can be very effective, but generally caricatures, particularly of main characters, are irritating to readers like myself who want more depth in the characters. I don't like superficial characters because they are not believable. If they are not believable, I cannot relate to them or connect with them. If I do not connect with the character, then I don't care what happens to them which in my opinion makes reading as worthwhile as staring at a blank wall.

Matthew Reilly's Jack West Jnr, who I met in The Six Sacred Stones, is a caricature. An implausibly gifted and powerful man who experiences credulity stretching good fortune. He is surrounded by people I have read about and seen in hundreds of other books and films. They are like cartoon characters who, as they get knocked off during the course of the never ending and unlikely scenes, arouse no more sympathy from me than if I accidentally crushed an ant under my size tens.

Another book I read recently was Memoirs of Pontius Pilate. Granted, the author Mills is dealing with an historical figure, but he nonetheless does a fantastic job of fleshing out a real person. There is almost no physical description of Pilate, but I felt that I knew him, and understood his actions. The man who sentenced Christ to death by crucifixion came across as a very sympathetic character.

I want to feel something when I read a work of fiction. I want to care. I want to love the hero or heroine, and hate the villain, but I also want to have good reason for doing so. Regardless of the setting, or the genre, if the author can make me care about at least one of the main characters, then they have won me. Whether they use caricature or characterization, or a deft combination of the two seems of little consequence.

On numerous occasions I have stopped reading a novel because I didn't care about, or even like any of the characters. 

What do you think? What is more important to you in a novel? Character? Setting? Action? Or something else?

* No criticism of Matthew Reilly is intended. He writes terrific action novels which just happen to not really be my cup of tea.

Oh! Excrement!

In some ways, I quite like birds of the feathered, small brained variety. Many of them are really pretty, and one cannot deny the grace with which they move through the air. Like many others, I admire the freedom birds have, apart from those locked in cages, that is. Birdsong can be very peaceful and pleasant, except if the bird happens to be a crow, or a vulture, or one of those raucous members of the parrot family. 


However, for all the praise which may be heaped on our winged friends, they possess a certain habit that completely dismantles affection for them.

My car was badly in need of a wash, and I cannot abide a dirty car. On a bright Saturday morning, I lavished its metallic curves with a sudsy massage and tenderly rinsed, then buffed it to a beautiful shine. To take advantage of the inviting weather, I then drove to the beach. On my return from the pleasurable interlude among the waves at Port Kembla Beach, I discovered an horrific insult had been inflicted on me and my car. Excrement. An unknown assailant had dropped a juicy bomb on the back window. (Thankfully the bombardment was not on the scale suffered by the car in the photo below.)

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Birds are indiscriminate poopers and it really gives me the...feeling of strong annoyance.

There is, however, some admirable efficiency in the bodily waste disposal method of birds because they don't pee and poo separately. Mostly water, the excrement contains roughly 9% uric acid. Now I ask you: is that something we want landing on our possessions and our persons?

It is said that to be thus defecated upon by a bird, is to be lucky. This is surely the epitome of irony. What luck ensued from the senseless aerial assault on my car? What good fortune befell me following another occasion when I went out for my morning run, and had only traveled a hundred metres when something distasteful fell onto my nose and lips? What prize of good fate did I receive after a bird made a deposit on the front of my shirt while I was walking to work?

If birds could learn to not go to the toilet on me or my car, I might love them. But they do, and therefore I don't. 

So as to not be thought of as a grumbler, I have a solution. Modern luxury cars have sensors which activate the windscreen wipers when rain hits the glass. This technology could be extended to the whole body of the car which would flush off the offending goop immediately, while simultaneously shooting a jet of water at the damn bird. Get to work on that one tech boffins, and make sure you give me some credit for the idea.

Alexander the "not very good at all really"

With the exception of James Bond films, I generally don't rush to the cinema to see the latest movies. In fact, even if they interest me, I don't usually fly to the video store to rent them once released on DVD either. With so many other enticing forms of entertainment and the various and never ending duties of which life is comprised, I miss a lot of movies.

And so it was, that some 12 years after the release of the director's cut of Alexander on DVD, I finally watched it. My interest was prompted by the fact I had just read Fire From Heaven by Mary Renault which is a fictionalized account of Alexander III childhood up until the death of his father Philip II.
I had high hopes for the film. Oliver Stone is no mug director and I have enjoyed many of his movies.However, at the conclusion of the 158 minutes, I was very disappointed, and this is why:
1. The backwards and forwards through time narration had me lost at times and wondering why a straight lineal telling of the tale would not have sufficed.
2. The sound production, perhaps best suited for the cinema was such that I could barely hear or understand what the actors were mumbling.
3. The preponderance of scenes which featured nothing of obvious import to the story, like the numerous 'feast' or party scenes in which the characters exchanged mysterious looks.
4. Angelina Jolie sounded like a drunk Russian, and all the Macedonians had English or Irish accents.
5. The omission of Alexander's first kill, and the inclusion of a suggested love scene with some bloke, but only a suggestion of the deep love between Alexander and Hephastion.
All in all, deeply unsatisfying. On a positive note the battle scene between the Macedonians on horseback and the Indians on elephants was breathtaking. My advice? Give Alexander a miss, and let's hope another director does justice to the tale of this most remarkable man.
Have you seen it? What did you think?