Charlotte Bronte

in Fog and in Contrast

53rd Trial: “I’m sitting’ on the dock of the bay, wastin’ time…”

Weekly Hours Spent Writing or in the Pursuit of Plot:  Since last post, I have averaged about 6 hours a week

Weekly Choice of Tea: Earl Grey, yet again my friends

Biggest Success: I have finished and typed up Chapter 8, and have begun plotting Chapter 9! I am almost done reading “The Professor”, which has turned out to be another masterpiece to the inner working of the human heart (male this time, which makes it the more intriguing) (and might I also add, has little events happening but the construction, confusion, and complete destruction of characters themselves in the eyes of our severe protagonist).

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While I have been a resident in Frisco Bay for almost 10 months now, my drive home from work today assured me of one inarguable fact:  there is no place like San Francisco. Sure you can say that regarding the character of any place you go, any city you get to know, any country you happen to travel; but places that I have gone, known, and traveled tend to have similarities, things to compare them to. San Francisco is nothing but a contrast to everything.

When I first alighted the streets of Fisherman’s Warf and the popular tourist destinations, I felt as if seeing the Golden Gate Bridge clearly was a chance encounter;   that for a tourist to catch the city in sunny rays was lucky enough to miss the foggy atmosphere that usually engulfs it. And grant it, since living here I have gotten used to the gentle flow of foggy wisps that begin to roll over the tree tops in the early evening — but a ‘foggy city’ has not been my experience of San Francisco, that is, until today.

It was one of the most beautiful moments I have had this past year. As my car curved through the hilly East Bay, I saw the city obscured by a depressed sky, as if someone pulled on the horizon just below the sun as one does a shade in a window. As I approached the Bay Bridge, I could see the fog hovering low above the water. I saw that if Alcatraz could stretch its arm just a little bit higher, its solitary state could touch both Earth and Sky and epitomize Purgatory.  I too felt that if I reached enough outside my car window, I could scoop up a handful of the low clouds and sell it on a stick at a fair. The fog was thick, thicker than I ever have seen. The sun was a perfect circle if you chanced to see it, and if you didn’t, you knew it was still there by the yellow glow that horizontally cut through the grey sky. It became more like the beacon of a distant lighthouse, growing brighter one minute then drawing away as the light rotated its cycle.

I passed over the bridge in this manner, never once thinking the city looked eery in its dark shroud. You felt as though you had no idea where this bridge actually led to, and if it was suddenly magicked to transport you from this foggy snow globe to a fantastical land. And then you would glimpse the flicker of orange peaking out of the top of the cloud, Golden Gate Bridge herself alluding to the same idea, convincing you you were in a land of giants and Jack’s beanstalk was under your wheels.

No city, no town, no place that I have known could elicit so much excitement, so much imagination, so much energy, all while surrounding you with so much darkness.

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A Tete-a-tete With a Storm Cloud

52nd Trial: Being in Chapter 8, I am eager to go back to Chapter 1 and change so much of how it all started, even down to the descriptive language and the dialogue between characters. But back tracking at this point may be detrimental – I may have the same desire at Chapter 10, or Chapter 15! There will be no end to the madness.

Weekly Hours Spent Writing or in the Pursuit of Plot:  Since last post, I have wrote for 12hr! Take that!! **knife hand strike to the throat of my work week**

Weekly Choice of Tea: Earl Grey (I am on a kick!)

Biggest Success: There are two main successes that I am particularly proud of! I have begun writing the Boo books (a children’s book that Jamie will illustrate), as well as my training for the Alcatraz swim!

Last night I swam in a lap pool after work. It was the first time I jumped right into the water, instead of my usual big-toe-followed-by-heel-and-then-retract ritual. I usually look like the cartoon elephant that dips a part of its foot in the water then runs away with a trumpet sounding protest! However, the chill in the air was worse than in the pool, and so went away my reluctance to enter it.

I use my swim for many things, from sweating stresses to idle dreaming of me saving the world in some fashion or another. But mainly, I use it to consider the plot of my novel. Dialogue and relationships. What direction the story will take next. It turns out to be a poor brainstorming session most of the time, as I do not have pen and paper readily submerged in the water with me to jot down ideas. The ideas themselves struggle against drowning, and sometimes I forget them altogether. However, I at least reconnect with the big picture of the novel, and leave the water refreshed and aware of my purpose with writing.

My mind during this particular swim went on a fun journey, and thus the point of this blog. While reading Charlotte Bronte’s “The Professor”, I became fascinated with her unique character descriptions of a few undesirable students at the school. I enjoyed her ability to write in the negative space surrounding a persons shape and attitude but telling me what they are not, or where they differ from normal notions of beauty, intelligence, and humility. My arms pulled me up and down the pool as the images of these characters swam into my mind, as if the ripples around me were them. They were joined shortly by characters of my own, and I noticed quick how ill defined mine were in comparison.

As I continued swimming, the weather changed around the time my stroke changed, and my mind wandered once more. My arms grew bumps as they met the cold and windy air. As I began back stroke, I saw the descending light of dusk change with the approach of a menacing cloud, and soon its light presence was extinguished. The cloud was truly a dark cloud, and its black surface crept closer and closer to the sky above me. Time passed as it usually does in a pool, monotonously, and the cloud continued to approach in the same, slow manner. And as there is not much to do besides count laps and think over and over again, I was thankful I had a storm cloud. I began by describing it by what it was not. Then I chased it, and it chased me, as I lapped the pool as if I were in a pinball machine. Before I swam my last stretch, I wondered how this cloud could represent anyone or anything? Can a character be built based on the description of a storm cloud?

In truth this lead me down a strange path, which is worth mentioning, where I seemed to internalized the storm cloud. I thought of its scary and threatening nature, and imagined it to be my own expectations of the novel. Its color reminded me of my Earl Grey tea. Boo could be considered a storm cloud, as her black fur falls in a steady stream of hair. I am swimming in components of a cloud. I wanted pizza tonight…and while this was a stretch, I quickly realized that both are pleasantly salty!

Heartache Motivates in the Land of Smiles

35th Trial: Wanting to go back and alter a past description or illustration, and realizing the manuscript is back home and I am across the world with only an empty notebook. Taking mental notes does not suffice anymore, and so I am making pages of things to remember to correct. I am finding it easy to change that which is already written, than brainstorming on that which needs to happen.

Weekly Hours Spent Writing or in the Pursuit of Plot: Since last post, I would guess-timate around 2 hours

Weekly Choice of Tea: Chrysanthemum iced tea and Thai Milk Tea

Biggest Success: Visiting Angkor Wat temples and getting a spiritual Sak Yant Tattoo in Bangkok, Thailand! I am currently in Chiang Mai, and this backpacking trip has been the most thrilling, let-loose, connecting with humanity I’ve ever done.

My writing has been more in the forefront of my mind than I thought it would be. Grant it, I have not the time or energy to actually write–even more so than when I worked back home. My days have been filled with temples, site-seeing, and documenting through my notebook and travel blog. Facebook is getting its fill of pictures and videos on a daily basis. I am writing more than I ever have because the documentation portion of this trip has been the most consuming, and I find that it is still an exercise for my writing. I had not planned on writing any chapters while abroad, and yet I find I cannot detain myself! I love that I miss writing my novel, and I love that I miss Chiropractic. My life does not seem without or wanting, and seeing this new world in Southeast Asia strengthens my inner character rather than filling a void.

I have a stirring passion to pick up chapter six where I left off in January, primarily due to finishing the novel “Villette” two days ago. Charlotte Bronte is a mastermind. Her ability to grip the heart and tear apart one’s world is only paralleled by her sister’s ability. Whatever gene they have that makes them professors of unrequited love and debilitating despair sadly ended with their much too early deaths, and the world is at a loss without it. While I admire their ability to crush my soul into bits with loss of love, I have a cautious relationship with the Bronte girls. I can trust them only so far. I can rely on them heightening my spirits by connecting to my deepest desires, but am appalled that they could then treat me so brutally afterwards.

Regardless, I am so inspired by Charlotte. In regards to somethingmorebritish, it is ultimately authors like her that motivate me to write. I put down “Villette”, warming my sobbing heart with the thought of my own novel, and how I can end it however I wish. Love with always triumph–you’ve heard me say it before. However, I must learn from the Bronte’s how to pull at the heart stings a bit. Just a little.

Some Travel Photos for you 🙂 see more at http://www.blankpproject.com, my travel blog!

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Struggles Shared by the Reader, the Writer, and the Open-Water Swimmer

24th Trial: Getting caught in the art of story telling, without infusion of personal opinion, biases, political passions, and ultimately moralities. I have decided to begin a separate journal of my own passionate rants, of my hopes for what this novel will come across as. And then there will come a time during editing that I can infuse the story with my mind, and make a chain of thought so that it is not mistaken what my overall message is within it’s pages. It is too easy for me to write event after event, description after observation– but I am realizing one must deviate from the material to formulate the immaterial, such as leaving a scene to ponder on dreams, aspirations, ethical struggles, guilt, ect!

Weekly hours spent writing or in the pursuit of plot: 3 Hours

Weekly Choice of Tea: Pumpkin Spice tea

Biggest Success: Swam from Buck Island to St. Croix’s shore in a 5-mile swim race! Yes my friends, I did the big one, the one I’ve been training for! Little did I know the emesis that was to follow the rocking of the waves, as if the waters still teamed with pirate enthusiasm to pillage my stomach of all contents.

“Villette” continues to influence me, I am happy to say. Within her plot comes Bronte’s sound judgement and sharpness of character that one can only aspire to in their own writing. Such is my trial as stated above! While laying on the sandy beaches in the Virgin Islands this weekend, I sought refuge from the sun into the shade of a Bronte novel, its dark tone enough to keep one balanced. I ventured to the land of pirates to fulfill a goal of mine–to swim 5 miles in the ocean. The race began as I had hoped and expected it to! Transparent waters that displayed the coral reef that webbed the ocean ground like large sunken nets. Every breathe I turned to take– to the right showed islands sitting in front of the raising sun, and to the left showed nothing but endless waves. My arms pulled in front of me, clearly viewed as if I was flapping them in air. It was pristine and beautiful. I marveled at my experience, and compared it to the pages of the novel that accompanied me there. While my experience was a beautiful one, it came with is own darkness. Nausea! Sea-Sickness! Puking into the waves till they calmed! Alas, like Bronte’s “Villette” it was a wonderful and yet abrasive experience in terms of humanity and reality!!

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Directly after my race!! I accomplished it, 2hr and 59min

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Post race-day lounge at Magen’s Bay in St. Thomas

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This beautiful gentleman helped it all happen! Here we we at the East most point of the US off of St. Croix.

And lastly, here is a paragraph from Bronte’s “Villette” so that you may taste the genius behind the ink.

“A strange, frolicsome, noisy little world was this school:  great pains were taken to hide chains with flowers:  a subtle essence of Romanism pervaded every arrangement: large sensual indulgence (so to speak) was permitted by way of counterpoise to jealous spiritual restraint. Each mind was being reared in slavery; but, to prevent reflection from dwelling on this fact, every pretext for physical recreation was seized and made the most of. There, as elsewhere, the CHURCH strove to bring up her children robust in body, feeble in soul, far, ruddy, hale, joyous, ignorant, unthinking, unquestioning. “Eat, drink, and live!” she says, “Look after your bodies; leave your souls to me. I hold their cure–guide their course:  I guarantee their final fate.” A bargain, in which every true Catholic deems himself a gainer. Lucifer just offers the  same terms:  “All this power will I give thee, and the glory of it; for that is delivered unto me, and to whomsoever I will I give it. If thou, therefore, wilt worship me, all shall be thine!”-Villette by Charlotte Bronte

To Write a Love Story is Certain

23rd Trial: Controlling the absolute jealousy of the literary genius, Charlotte Bronte

Weekly hours spent writing or in the pursuit of plot: 1 Hour

Weekly Choice of Tea: Chamomile

Biggest Success: Began Chapter 5! Enjoying the fall that surrounds me

As I have mentioned in posts prior, what do you say about your novel when asked about it? In one word or sentence can you sum something like that up? It is about Hope. Family. Philosophy. To write an epic love story is certain. I have begun to read “Villette” by Charlotte Bronte, a novel that is sadly shadowed by her more successful “Jane Eyre”. I am enjoying the perception of the main heroine of this story, as it displays the dark behind the events and people. No surprise there. The Bronte sisters are literary ninjas at mixing piety with sin, madness with love, and the shadows cast by a sunny day. In “Villette”, every moment has a balance. I am not overly happy for one circumstance, nor overly without hope at the same time. Young Lucy Snowe has an intelligent observation of people in their interactions, as well as in her own misfortunes. I read and felt a familiarity with this particular sentence:

“This I can now see and say–if few women have suffered as I did in his loss, few have enjoyed what I did in his love. It was a far better kind of love than common; I had no doubts about it or him: it was a love as honored, protected, and elevated, no less than it gladdened her to whom it was  given.”

I find this amusing in a way, as much as it is heartfelt and lovely. How certain am I that my life will encompass a great love? And my novel, the love story should be nothing short of timeless, and set apart from a perceived commonality of unions between two people! However, what does Charlotte mean by this comparison of common love and the elevated type? How can one set them apart, being the observer of other’s and the direct subject of but one? I find it intriguing to not define a romance so that no one could ever experience it, viewing it only as a fairy-tale;  but to illustrate the belief that many have actually found that true companion. It is not hard for me to imagine an elevated love, a love like no other, being a common thing. It happens under so many guises, as so many masterpieces happen with different pens and strokes. I have always dreamed of Mr. Darcy, walking to me with his long billowing tailcoat whipping behind him in his passionate haste to see me. And yet in my age, where tailcoats are not the height of fashion, exposure to many people through internet, transportation, and employment have created a stage very different from my fantasies. Moreover, who knew that my Mr. Darcy could very well be a misses? That begin said, my reality, though different, is as elevated in my estimation as the hearts bound within the novels I read. What I intend to write can be nothing more than the love and life that you, reader, experience on a daily basis. If I can but make you sense and feel the incredible story that surrounds you, I would have a purpose indeed!

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