Elizabeth Culmer (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
edenfalling) wrote2009-06-20 07:41 pm
edenfalling) wrote2009-06-20 07:41 pm
Entry tags:
[Meme] 5 words
Reply to this meme by yelling "Words!" and I will give you five words that remind me of you. Then post them in your LJ and explain what they mean to you. These words were given to me by ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
snaegl.
(If you ask for words, be prepared for me to flail and take a day or two and perhaps crib them directly from your journal's interest list, because I suck at this sort of game. If I ever went on a TV show where they ask how well you know your 'fill-in-relationship' person? I would fail so hard you'd have to invoke ESP 'overlook me' fields to explain how I could possibly miss so many details.)
I got a little long-winded for some responses, which I have cut to be polite and to avoid spamming people with boring details about my life.
-----
1. Fanfic
Hello, pastime that has eaten my life since 2002! (Has it really been seven years? Wow. Where does the time go?)
Hmm. I still think, sometimes, that reading and writing fanfiction is a weird hobby in a lot of ways, and it's not something I go around telling people all about, and yet I don't hide it, not really. After all, it's an extension of things I was doing already: writing fiction and thinking about stories I enjoyed reading. Fanfiction is the idea that, once written and disseminated to the public, a story does not fully belong to the author anymore; instead, it belongs to the people who bring it to life in our minds and hearts. And if we want to explore the world and characters, reimagine them, take them in strange directions the original author would never have dreamed of... well, that's one of the oldest human impulses there is, I think: to take what we love and make it our own.
I also like that, because fanfiction is resolutely noncommercial (at this point, almost for ideological reasons, not just in order to stay in a legal gray area), and because you have the understood framework of canon standing behind all your stories, there is a remarkable amount of freedom compared to professional fiction. You can write things from strict drabbles (100 words) to sprawling novels (100,000+ words), and every length in between, and people will read them. You can write stories that are ridiculously experimental and obscure, and people will read them. You can write stories with any damn genre combinations or level of explicitness (in violence or sex) you want, and people will read them. Then they will comment and tell you what they think about your writing, and possibly be interested in getting to know you as a person as well as a provider-of-stories. And during this whole crazy process of reading and writing and interaction, you will not get pigeonholed by publishers or marketing departments -- you may be more known for one kind of story than another, but you can still write any damn thing you want and get some sort of response, if you know where to post.
That flexibility (and the responsiveness of the various overlapping, interwoven fandom communities) is enormously appealing to me.
-----
2. Homework
The former bane of my life. *grin* Seriously, I never saw the point of homework when I was in school, and somewhere between 1/3 to 2/3 of the time, I didn't bother doing it. This is the main reason my grades were so variable. When teachers did not grade homework, I usually got As. When they did grade homework, I often dropped down to Cs. *shrug* I got a little more responsible about assignments in college, but not much. And I confess that I still fail to see the point of homework in general -- if you can't teach a concept during a lesson, why do you think your students will learn it on their own when they're tired, distracted, and resentful at the theft of their free time?
-----
3. Star Island
Home of the only lake-within-a-lake in North America! (Or at least that is the claim.) Also home of my family's summer cabin. It's been in my dad's family since shortly after WWII -- I think Grandpa bought the lease in 1948 or 1949 -- and when my dad and aunt die, it will pass to me, Vicky, and our cousins Eric and Brian. I know Vicky and I will latch onto the cabin with both hands. I suspect Brian will also, but I am less sure about Eric.
Anyway, Star Island is in Cass Lake, on the Mississippi River in north-central Minnesota. The island is mostly contained within Chippewa National Forest, though the south shore and scattered patches here and there are still private land. Our cabin is on forest land, and as such, we don't own it; we lease it, long-term, from the Forest Service. This means we have fairly restrictive codes about cabin appearance, septic fields, etc. Our cabin has a red roof, which is grandfathered in because it was red before the Forest Service decided green and brown are the only acceptable colors for blending into the trees and underbrush. We are on the east shore, which is a huge, curving bay with at least three miles of open water between the island and the mainland. Most of the east shore is a tall, sandy bluff, but it flattens out to the north, allowing a portage in to Lake Windigo.
Star Island is named because it has a number of sharply defined points, rather than being sort of lumpy and round like many other islands. It does not, however, look anything like a star. It looks like a giant mutant chicken. (Seriously. Go to Google maps, search for Cass Lake, MN, move the view a little northeast out into the lake, and see for yourself.) The northwest point is the head, Anderson's Point (northeast) is the tail, and Lake Windigo is the folded wing. (Alternatively, Lake Windigo is a giant mutant egg visible through the miracle of ultrasound. Variety is good!)
You know, I am going to take this opportunity to post some poetry I have written about Star Island over the years, because I really do love the place that much, and I don't know a better way to convey the sensation of a small, semi-tamed sliver of the North Woods, adrift on miles of water.
---------------------------------------------
Instead of a Rainbow (1998)
---------------------------------------------
Passing to the north and spitting a few drops
on our neighbors' cabin,
the rainstorm just missed us.
It stole the afternoon quiet with thunder
but left behind the sun,
draped carelessly over Cedar Island under sullen skies.
---------------------------------------------
Reflections (1998)
---------------------------------------------
Dad told me to go down to the dock and read --
since I had to read for school, why not do it in the sun and fresh air --
it would be good for me.
I went.
But reading was the last thing on my mind just then,
caught up in transient thoughts as I was.
Book unopened, I sat on the boards --
burning in the unclouded sun, shivering in the breezy air --
and watched eternity in the water.
---------------------------------------------
Inland, Walking South (2001)
---------------------------------------------
This is the trees' graveyard,
here along the grassy path, lined by mounds
and hollows and thin, many-trunked birches,
ghostly in the leaf-green light.
Fifty years ago and more,
storms toppled the cathedral pines;
nothing has replaced them but grass
and silence.
Dry limbs and trunks, bones of birches
grown and fallen since the storm,
lie broken beneath the mounds;
their tendons line the path.
In the west, clouds gather; sunlight
slants through the leaves in quick absolution;
ghosts of birches shiver as the wind
shifts north.
---------------------------------------------
Island Dreams (2002)
---------------------------------------------
five hundred monarch butterflies in the slashing,
a living blanket on the leaves,
dancing over raspberries
wind in the trees, a forest breathing, shouting
in the storm, lightning and thunder rush by
and rain thrums on the eaves, mind-numbing
watch the silver curtains, wait for the sun
leeches, seaweed, broken shells
a dead fish trapped in the riprap
pick your footing on dirty weeds
and splash
swim free
wind catches the sail, spray
bites through ropes and cloth
straining to the sky
hummingbirds dive-bomb the feeders
glitter flashes under brown
here and gone and all that's left is a slow bubble
trailing up the glass stem
hammer, saw, wedge, broom, soap
the forest waits, bank shifts, water rises
hold it back another year
lazy day
ninety degrees and the sun beats down
from an endless sky
to the puddle world
and we dream
all year I wait for summer and the island
I need another time, to remember again
but on the island I've never been away
and will never leave
who needs a thousand summers?
all I dream is one
---------------------------------------------
Being Apart (2003)
---------------------------------------------
Silver curtains fall from the eaves,
blanketing the world in a thrumming hush.
The lake is grey fog,
the trees a huddled blur,
murmuring at the rain.
Wait, and the world slips away
leaving a quiet peace, a listening silence.
Dusk creeps down from the east
over the grey fog lake and huddled trees,
and all the earth is dark and still,
hanging on the cusp of forever...
The boat blares in to the dock, and light
returns, with laughter, streaming in the wake
of love.
-----
4. TJS
Torey J. Sabbatini, my elementary school -- the "all round school," as the slogan went. It was a circular building, with a square jammed into one corner to hold the principal's office and related rooms. The library was in the center of the circle, surrounded by a ring hallway, with wedge-shaped classrooms outside that.
This is where I metsnaegl, back in first grade.
-----
5. Reading
I read, therefore I am.
(You think I am kidding. Well, yes, I am... but not nearly as much as you suppose.)
I can, a little, remember times when I did not know how to read -- or rather, I have memories from before I could read, and they obviously do not involve reading. But I don't remember learning to read, any more than I remember learning to speak.
You know how Sachiko teaches Light to read in my story Hindsight? Sitting with him on her lap every night, tracing his finger over the words as she reads them aloud, making the connection between sound and symbol? That's how my parents taught me. The method works. I could read on a second-grade level in kindergarten, to the point where my teacher made me stop participating in the basic 'who can read this sentence?' exercises so the other kids could have a chance to learn. Once a week, they shunted me off to the special ed reading teacher, who usually did remedial reading lessons for older students, but who was thrilled to get someone who just wanted more words as fast as she could provide them.
I have never spent a day without reading something. If not a book, then a magazine, a newspaper, the backs of cereal boxes if I am desperate. Reading is my addiction. Words on a page (or screen) are like air. Take them away and I would go mad.
Like I said: I read, therefore I am. Or perhaps: I am, therefore I read.
It comes to the same thing either way.
snaegl.(If you ask for words, be prepared for me to flail and take a day or two and perhaps crib them directly from your journal's interest list, because I suck at this sort of game. If I ever went on a TV show where they ask how well you know your 'fill-in-relationship' person? I would fail so hard you'd have to invoke ESP 'overlook me' fields to explain how I could possibly miss so many details.)
I got a little long-winded for some responses, which I have cut to be polite and to avoid spamming people with boring details about my life.
-----
1. Fanfic
Hello, pastime that has eaten my life since 2002! (Has it really been seven years? Wow. Where does the time go?)
Hmm. I still think, sometimes, that reading and writing fanfiction is a weird hobby in a lot of ways, and it's not something I go around telling people all about, and yet I don't hide it, not really. After all, it's an extension of things I was doing already: writing fiction and thinking about stories I enjoyed reading. Fanfiction is the idea that, once written and disseminated to the public, a story does not fully belong to the author anymore; instead, it belongs to the people who bring it to life in our minds and hearts. And if we want to explore the world and characters, reimagine them, take them in strange directions the original author would never have dreamed of... well, that's one of the oldest human impulses there is, I think: to take what we love and make it our own.
I also like that, because fanfiction is resolutely noncommercial (at this point, almost for ideological reasons, not just in order to stay in a legal gray area), and because you have the understood framework of canon standing behind all your stories, there is a remarkable amount of freedom compared to professional fiction. You can write things from strict drabbles (100 words) to sprawling novels (100,000+ words), and every length in between, and people will read them. You can write stories that are ridiculously experimental and obscure, and people will read them. You can write stories with any damn genre combinations or level of explicitness (in violence or sex) you want, and people will read them. Then they will comment and tell you what they think about your writing, and possibly be interested in getting to know you as a person as well as a provider-of-stories. And during this whole crazy process of reading and writing and interaction, you will not get pigeonholed by publishers or marketing departments -- you may be more known for one kind of story than another, but you can still write any damn thing you want and get some sort of response, if you know where to post.
That flexibility (and the responsiveness of the various overlapping, interwoven fandom communities) is enormously appealing to me.
-----
2. Homework
The former bane of my life. *grin* Seriously, I never saw the point of homework when I was in school, and somewhere between 1/3 to 2/3 of the time, I didn't bother doing it. This is the main reason my grades were so variable. When teachers did not grade homework, I usually got As. When they did grade homework, I often dropped down to Cs. *shrug* I got a little more responsible about assignments in college, but not much. And I confess that I still fail to see the point of homework in general -- if you can't teach a concept during a lesson, why do you think your students will learn it on their own when they're tired, distracted, and resentful at the theft of their free time?
-----
3. Star Island
Home of the only lake-within-a-lake in North America! (Or at least that is the claim.) Also home of my family's summer cabin. It's been in my dad's family since shortly after WWII -- I think Grandpa bought the lease in 1948 or 1949 -- and when my dad and aunt die, it will pass to me, Vicky, and our cousins Eric and Brian. I know Vicky and I will latch onto the cabin with both hands. I suspect Brian will also, but I am less sure about Eric.
Anyway, Star Island is in Cass Lake, on the Mississippi River in north-central Minnesota. The island is mostly contained within Chippewa National Forest, though the south shore and scattered patches here and there are still private land. Our cabin is on forest land, and as such, we don't own it; we lease it, long-term, from the Forest Service. This means we have fairly restrictive codes about cabin appearance, septic fields, etc. Our cabin has a red roof, which is grandfathered in because it was red before the Forest Service decided green and brown are the only acceptable colors for blending into the trees and underbrush. We are on the east shore, which is a huge, curving bay with at least three miles of open water between the island and the mainland. Most of the east shore is a tall, sandy bluff, but it flattens out to the north, allowing a portage in to Lake Windigo.
Star Island is named because it has a number of sharply defined points, rather than being sort of lumpy and round like many other islands. It does not, however, look anything like a star. It looks like a giant mutant chicken. (Seriously. Go to Google maps, search for Cass Lake, MN, move the view a little northeast out into the lake, and see for yourself.) The northwest point is the head, Anderson's Point (northeast) is the tail, and Lake Windigo is the folded wing. (Alternatively, Lake Windigo is a giant mutant egg visible through the miracle of ultrasound. Variety is good!)
You know, I am going to take this opportunity to post some poetry I have written about Star Island over the years, because I really do love the place that much, and I don't know a better way to convey the sensation of a small, semi-tamed sliver of the North Woods, adrift on miles of water.
---------------------------------------------
Instead of a Rainbow (1998)
---------------------------------------------
Passing to the north and spitting a few drops
on our neighbors' cabin,
the rainstorm just missed us.
It stole the afternoon quiet with thunder
but left behind the sun,
draped carelessly over Cedar Island under sullen skies.
---------------------------------------------
Reflections (1998)
---------------------------------------------
Dad told me to go down to the dock and read --
since I had to read for school, why not do it in the sun and fresh air --
it would be good for me.
I went.
But reading was the last thing on my mind just then,
caught up in transient thoughts as I was.
Book unopened, I sat on the boards --
burning in the unclouded sun, shivering in the breezy air --
and watched eternity in the water.
---------------------------------------------
Inland, Walking South (2001)
---------------------------------------------
This is the trees' graveyard,
here along the grassy path, lined by mounds
and hollows and thin, many-trunked birches,
ghostly in the leaf-green light.
Fifty years ago and more,
storms toppled the cathedral pines;
nothing has replaced them but grass
and silence.
Dry limbs and trunks, bones of birches
grown and fallen since the storm,
lie broken beneath the mounds;
their tendons line the path.
In the west, clouds gather; sunlight
slants through the leaves in quick absolution;
ghosts of birches shiver as the wind
shifts north.
---------------------------------------------
Island Dreams (2002)
---------------------------------------------
five hundred monarch butterflies in the slashing,
a living blanket on the leaves,
dancing over raspberries
wind in the trees, a forest breathing, shouting
in the storm, lightning and thunder rush by
and rain thrums on the eaves, mind-numbing
watch the silver curtains, wait for the sun
leeches, seaweed, broken shells
a dead fish trapped in the riprap
pick your footing on dirty weeds
and splash
swim free
wind catches the sail, spray
bites through ropes and cloth
straining to the sky
hummingbirds dive-bomb the feeders
glitter flashes under brown
here and gone and all that's left is a slow bubble
trailing up the glass stem
hammer, saw, wedge, broom, soap
the forest waits, bank shifts, water rises
hold it back another year
lazy day
ninety degrees and the sun beats down
from an endless sky
to the puddle world
and we dream
all year I wait for summer and the island
I need another time, to remember again
but on the island I've never been away
and will never leave
who needs a thousand summers?
all I dream is one
---------------------------------------------
Being Apart (2003)
---------------------------------------------
Silver curtains fall from the eaves,
blanketing the world in a thrumming hush.
The lake is grey fog,
the trees a huddled blur,
murmuring at the rain.
Wait, and the world slips away
leaving a quiet peace, a listening silence.
Dusk creeps down from the east
over the grey fog lake and huddled trees,
and all the earth is dark and still,
hanging on the cusp of forever...
The boat blares in to the dock, and light
returns, with laughter, streaming in the wake
of love.
-----
4. TJS
Torey J. Sabbatini, my elementary school -- the "all round school," as the slogan went. It was a circular building, with a square jammed into one corner to hold the principal's office and related rooms. The library was in the center of the circle, surrounded by a ring hallway, with wedge-shaped classrooms outside that.
This is where I met
snaegl, back in first grade.-----
5. Reading
I read, therefore I am.
(You think I am kidding. Well, yes, I am... but not nearly as much as you suppose.)
I can, a little, remember times when I did not know how to read -- or rather, I have memories from before I could read, and they obviously do not involve reading. But I don't remember learning to read, any more than I remember learning to speak.
You know how Sachiko teaches Light to read in my story Hindsight? Sitting with him on her lap every night, tracing his finger over the words as she reads them aloud, making the connection between sound and symbol? That's how my parents taught me. The method works. I could read on a second-grade level in kindergarten, to the point where my teacher made me stop participating in the basic 'who can read this sentence?' exercises so the other kids could have a chance to learn. Once a week, they shunted me off to the special ed reading teacher, who usually did remedial reading lessons for older students, but who was thrilled to get someone who just wanted more words as fast as she could provide them.
I have never spent a day without reading something. If not a book, then a magazine, a newspaper, the backs of cereal boxes if I am desperate. Reading is my addiction. Words on a page (or screen) are like air. Take them away and I would go mad.
Like I said: I read, therefore I am. Or perhaps: I am, therefore I read.
It comes to the same thing either way.