MsTiara’s Thoughts

When you hear that I have died, think of this.

Think of cool nights breezes while you walk to meet your friends for a beer on a Thurs­day. Think of wak­ing up in flan­nel sheets on a snowy morn­ing and kiss­ing some­one you love. Think of hung-over diner break­fasts and the best cup of cof­fee in the world. Think of the sound of tires on seamed high­ways while you travel, think of French kiss­ing and leather jack­ets and push-up bras and bour­bon, think of the joy of hard work with friends. Then think of me.

Not sad, not the melan­choly soli­tude of empty skies, but the full days and crowded bars and signed con­tracts, a smile too big for my face, remem­ber I said I stay busy enough to fit three lives into one. When you hear that I have died, know that I want laugh­ter, and danc­ing, real danc­ing, to music that makes you move with­out think­ing, you’re wear­ing boots and jeans and a great t-shirt and won­der­ing if the girl at the edge thinks you’re cute. And you moth­er­fuck­ers had best DANCE, none of this bull­shit rock-nod hands-in-the-pockets shoegazer non­sense, no, make an ass out of your­self, feel your hips, kick off the high heels and sway on the shoul­der of a stranger, when I die, you’d bet­ter be laugh­ing your ass off on side­walks, eat­ing deli­ciously unhealthy food, drink­ing shots and tip­ping your bar­tender well no mat­ter how much money you make.

And Adam has to read the poem he wrote, and Laura, and June, and Scott Car­pen­ter has to play “Don’t Go Away, Chloe”, no fuck that, every musi­cian I’ve ever made out with or video­taped or road-tripped with has to play, so drink some cof­fee, baby, it’s gonna be a long night. When you hear that I have died, the best thing you can do is to get laid that night with a com­fort­able stranger, use my story to get their sym­pa­thy, and when you kiss them for the first time, think of me then.

When you hear that I have died, and you will, remem­ber your best revenge is to live well, take risks, save up money and chase your per­fect hap­pi­ness. Beat the sys­tem and learn to make your art really sup­port you, craft into some­thing your audi­ence can’t live with­out. Then make the world an even slightly bet­ter place — stop throw­ing your cig­a­rettes on the ground, vote in the next elec­tion, graf­fiti your life on the eyes of the hungry.

Then just do me one last favor. Please. Love some­thing. Any­thing. Start with your­self, but find pas­sion in every­thing, from an apple pie to a novel, make a fam­ily, get a degree, walk what­ever path is yours with your chin up and feet planted firmly. Have the best sto­ries to tell in the old folk’s home, about life­long friend­ships and epic love affairs, about the time you lost every­thing and yet found your­self hap­pier than when you began.. and remem­ber that time we got in SO much trouble…

Poets.. remem­ber. This is the story that never ends. When one of us leaves, another walks through the door. The pages turn, the sun keeps ris­ing. All you can do in the mean­while.. is to speak for your­self. Raise your voice high, tell your story, join hands against the dark and sing our souls to the sky. Know the best in me comes from the best in you, that as you tell your story, you will be telling mine, and our lives will be linked together for­ever, and every­one who hears you will become a part of the change we make.

So when you hear that I have died..
just ….live.

–Gabrielle Bou­liane

So after spending the last 2 weeks hounding my local Sony Retail Store, the DSC-TX7 arrived.  I spent over an hour playing with the TX1 and the TX7 comparing the two and trying to decide if the new updated features was worth the extra 90 bucks I was going to shell out for the new camera, I must admit it was a hard choice as Sony had just discounted the TX1 all the way down to $319 which made it a very sweet deal when looking at the $399 price tag of the TX7.

The picture quality was amazing on both and the entire reason why I was looking to buy a new camera was that the Frames Per Second (FPS) was driving me crazy on my old one.  Let’s all admit that we live in a instantaneous society and that shutter delay is too long in today’s world (even though it was quite fast in the old days).  The interesting thing about the FPS is it is really using the video aspect of the camera rather than the still picture.  You can turn on how many FPS you want (High, Med, Low or off) and it will start ‘recording’ to take the picture.  Then you have a whole series of shots in a row.  I must admit it is taking me awhile to get used to this concept, but at the same point I am getting some pretty amazing quality shots which would take awhile to get other wise.  However, when I turn the camera Burst interval to off, the cameras software starts to kick in to take a picture.  The special flash to help with red eye, the ability to select the focus of your picture by using the touch screen and yes in this situation if I move the camera to soon I still get blurry photos.  But, the quality of the photos and the focus is once again surprising considering the fact I am using a point and shoot camera which fits in my pocket.

The touch screen - boy am I spoiled these days.  After using the iPhone and now the touch screen on the camera I am starting to consider a touch screen monitor system for my home computer.  It just makes sense.  Have two items in my view screen and I want it to focus on the flower instead of the person?  Just select the flower and that becomes the focal point, click the button and it looks like i have spent a lot of time catching a shot using special lenses.  The person starts to move the camera actually follows the face of the person so that the shot is perfect.  Quick, efficient and crisp and clean pictures.

The ability to record movies in 1080…  This is the new latest and greatest element of the TX7.  I still am not sure if I will ever use this functionality.  But after playing with it and seeing the recordings (with voice) and how quick and easy it is to now capture movies, I may change my mind.

The reason why I went with the TX7 instead of the TX1 is that the minor modifications made to the camera just made it a better usability experience (The focus knob, the mic on the front, the updated software).  I also knew that this was going to be a camera that I was buying for the next 3 years so I wanted to make sure that it would be able to take me through the change that the electronics industry was going through.

So how much was the total cost in the end?

• $399 for the camera
• A case
• An extended warranty
• A 4 GB memory card

and I walked out of the door for $630 dollars.  How does that end up happening?

http://blog.laurellkhamilton.org/index.php/site/comments/tempted_api1/

Tempted

One of the things I like best about fiction is being able to rewrite. It allows you to fix all your mistakes with a clear-eyed 20/20 vision that real life rarely gives you. But just because you can fix the “mistakes” does that mean you should? We had deaths of characters early in “Bullet”. I cried, I got depressed, I put it out on the Internet, and let all that emotion spread. Not sure if I’ll do that again, by the by, but once I did it there was no taking it back. So since I have already shared, I’ll share this moment, too.

I am in the very end game of this book. I feel that we need some extra scenes earlier to set up the end. That’s fine, it happens. I’m rereading the book here and there searching for where to tease the cloth of the book apart enough to insert that new thread. I come to the scene I knew I’d need from the moment things went pear-shaped for the characters. I know I need one short chapter here. But it occurred to me that if I change things just a little, then we can save the deaths, the injuries, and so much, but even as I write this I know I can’t. I know the fight must stand as it is. Maybe I can save the last bit, the very last part, and make it not so depressingly final, but I’m left wondering why I’m so tempted to bring the dead back to life, and make the foolish smarter so that everyone can live?

Am I doing it for my characters and this book? Or am I doing it because I went to a funeral this week,a nd watched people I love grieve? If I had not seen another family member in a coffin this week would I be so tempted to save the lives of my fictional friends?

I don’t know. In a way a writer can never know what part of their real life impacts the writing the most. You can make guesses, and sometimes it becomes painfully clear. I’ve had that moment of clarity so bright and sharp that it is squirmingly painful. That therapy moment when you realize what issue you’re working on paper and why your character did that, and what dark bit of your own psyche needed it done. I’m more at peace with those moments than I was years ago, but still I usually know my motives after a book is written. I don’t remember questioning my motives before a book is finished before, not like this. So, I ask myself, if the funeral hadn’t happened this week, just Thursday, would I be this tempted to rewrite the book and bring the dead back to life?

I still don’t know. I do know that one of the reasons so few people that are emotionally important to my main characters is a direct result of my own early losses. I have had enough real death and loss in my life that I love the fact that in fiction I can save people. It still isn’t done consciously though, it’s just the way my muse and I roll. It works for her and me. If I change this scene and save people it will be a conscious decision to save the day. If I do it you, the readers, may never know where the scene was and what I changed, or who didn’t die. But I’m not sure that my own emotional wounds are enough reason to save my imaginary friends after I have already gone through the grief. We saved one of them early in the book and that was the very one that caused the extra carnage later, so in trying to prevent death I made it worse, made it a higher body count. Is that my lesson? That sometimes in trying to save one life, you risk more later? Or is the lesson, that I’m human and I’m allowed to have all these emotions. I’m allowed to be bothered by real life grief and I’m allowed to find ways to comfort myself. That would be true.

I’m just not certain where my own emotion leaves off and my responsibility to my imaginary friends comes into play. I’m not even certain which master saving the lives would serve; me, or my world? I will read the scene after lunch and that will decide me. If it reads well, I will let it stand, if it reads badly, then I may rewrite it. I have never been so conflicted about my own writing before. There is a part of me that wants it to read badly so I can have the excuse to rewrite it. Maybe that’s why God chooses to limit himself/their-selves in our world, because if They did not they would be rewriting around our own free will so often that time would stop and history be only theory. Free will is a wonderful gift, but in real life as in the imaginary one it can also screw a whole lot of things up.

I was so excited that we were finally going to see the fabled iTablet in all its glory, the device that would change my world and allow me to have my computer with me wherever I go.  I could watch movies, surf the web, read a colored magazine and even make coffee.  Sigh…  if only…

1.5 lbs my friends -  That is an awfully heavy device to hold in my two hands for long periods of time, carpal tunnel is my friend and the surgeons are all excited about the new clients they will be getting.

10 inch monitor - hmmm…  sounds wonderful, 10 inches of LED touch screen beauty!  The movies, the newspapers, the magazines…  But, it won’t fit in my purse, it doesn’t fit into my pocket, and now I will have to have a computer carrying case for it.  There goes my dreams of carrying it everywhere for instantaneous use.

1ghz processor - Oh the things I can do with a 1ghz processor, like multi task (nope, can’t do that.  I mean really Apple WHAT is your problem with Multi-tasking?), like run full applications (nope, can only run iPhone App Store apps).  Hmm…

64gb SSD Hard Drive - Sweet!  Where is the card slot so I can carry around different items and share things?  Oh, still no memory card slot?  (are you sure this isn’t an iPhone?)

Virtual Keyboard AND a smart one too - Alright, this is AWESOME, the keyboard switches to a 10key when I am in a spreadsheet.  Switches back to a QWERTY when I am typing something.  But, the iPad is too heavy and too big to type using my thumbs so I have to hold it in one hand or have a keyboard dock (oh, look they have one of those too) that I now have to lug around with my iPad, which is kind of like a full size computer…  hmmm…  which would have multi tasking on it if I bought one of those.

There are many wonderful things about it.  Honestly, the Newspapers and the magazine subscriptions, the beautiful multi-touch screen, a new way to buy books.  But, I am very underwhelmed with the device.  Looking forward to visiting and Apple store and playing with it and seeing if I am just being biased.  But, this looks like an item that I may be passing on (and I really really hate not getting the latest toys).

Dear Glad,

I know this is a silly thing to actually have to write down since it would seem to me to be a ‘bit’ self evident.  But, when I read Odor Shield, it makes me think of something that neutralizes odor, it does not read to me that you will create a scent that is so disgusting, prevalent and obnoxious that you would PREFER to have the smell of trash in comparison to the smell of your trash bags.

What an amazing waste of money.

The great translator Stephen Mitchell (the poetry of Rilke, The Book of Job, Tao te Ching…) met an old girlfriend many years after they had been together. After spending some days together catching up she said to him, “”If I could have wished anything for you, it would have been that you might become the person you’ve become.”

from this fascinating article about Mitchell in the Los Angeles Times:

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/la-ca-stephen-mitchell12-2009apr12,0,631455,full.story

1) Copy this list into your blog or journal, including these instructions.
2) Bold all the items you’ve eaten.
3) Cross out any items that you would never consider eating.

HAVE EATEN
1. Venison

2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros
4. Steak tartare

5. Crocodile
6. Black pudding
7. Cheese fondue
8. Carp
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Calamari

12. Pho
13. PB&J sandwich
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
19. Steamed pork buns
20. Pistachio ice cream
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries
23. Foie gras
24. Rice and beans
27. Dulce de leche
28. Oysters
29. Baklava

30. Bagna cauda
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl
33. Salted lassi
34. Sauerkraut
35. Root beer float

37. Clotted cream tea
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail
41. Curried goat

44. Goat’s milk
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut
50. Sea urchin

51. Prickly pear

53. Abalone
54. Paneer
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal
56. Spaetzle
57. Dirty gin martini

58. Beer above 8% ABV

59. Poutine
60. Carob chips
61. S’mores

62. Sweetbreads
66. Frogs’ legs
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake
69. Fried plantain
70. Chitterlings, or andouillette
71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini
77. Hostess Fruit Pie
78. Snail
79. Lapsang souchong
80. Bellini

81. Tom yum
82. Eggs Benedict
83. Pocky

84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant.
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare
87. Goulash
88. Flowers
91. Spam
92. Soft shell crab

94. Catfish
95. Mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta

99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee

100. Snake

FOODS I HAVEN’T YET TRIED

25. Brawn, or head cheese
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper
38. Vodka jelly
46. Fugu
64. Currywurst
65. Durian
68. Haggis
89. Horse

90. Criollo chocolate

FOODS THAT I DIDN’T EVEN KNOW WHAT THEY WERE
16. Epoisses
43. Phaal
52. Umeboshi
63. Kaolin
73. Louche absinthe
74. Gjetost, or brunost
76. Baijiu
93. Rose harissa

FOODS I WOULD NEVER CONSIDER EATING
36. Cognac with a fat cigar
42. Whole insects
75. Roadkill

Certain things must be here. Most importantly the pile of sticks in the fireplace. Every one of those pieces of wood is important. Written on each is a date and a reason. I have never counted, but would guess there are twenty now. Hugh’s collection was much larger, but he started his years before I did.