Thursday, February 09, 2006
Ask! Me! Anything!
If you could snap a finger and have any life you could imagine, what would that life be?
(Thanks Lyle!)
I suppose the only life I've always wanted and don't have now is the life of a writer, or what I imagine that life to be. In my imagination, it is quiet and solitary for much of the day, writing and researching and thinking 'bout thangs. It includes a New York apartment and sometimes a waterfront cabin somewhere. It's not fame and celebrity, but appreciation for one's thoughts and ideas and the artful expression of them, as well as the opportunity to meet truly intelligent, wise and curious people. All of that appeals to me immensely.
I also yearn for travel. There are so many places I want to experience, to fill my senses with their newness and strangeness. When I fantasize about disappearing from my life it is to China, a place where I feel you could reinvent yourself if you were so inclined. It's a new frontier, a place in flux, changing and moving quickly, and I'd like to be there to see that and feel that.
The funny thing is that I don't see these as lives I can't have. I feel like I could choose to try to become a writer. But what if I didn't succeed? What if I fell flat on my face? And I feel like I will travel. Maybe not everywhere, maybe not even to China, but I will, unless I die first, which is always a possibility of which I am aware.
The older I get the more I realize that I'm happy with the life I have. It's not glamourous but it's fun and interesting and rich and full of love and all the good things that life has to offer: children, food, beauty, sex, laughter, etc... I don't even think that I would prefer to call any other country home, though I might like to live in Italy or New York or somewhere for a time.
There is one thing I'd like to snap my fingers for -- not an alternate life, but an alternate place: If I could, I would live by the ocean. My soul is called to the ocean.
What is/are your guilty pleasure(s) when it comes to reading?
(Thank you Maggie!)
Strangely enough I don't have any right now. For the past year or so I've been doing fairly "serious" reading, to the exclusion of anything else except the Ikea catalogue in my bathroom (and I don't feel guilty about that. I love Ikea!) However, in the past I have had some guilty reading pleasures. One that I don't feel so very guilty about is the Ayla series (Clan of The Cave Bear, etc.) by Jean Auel. I love them, and although they're pretty lame in terms of character and preposterous in terms of romance they're still so cool because they're full of cave people and neanderthals! What's not to love?
An embarrassing admission: I used to love trashy sex novels, like those by Sidney Sheldon and Jackie Collins. I was sexually curious and frustrated, I guess, and I read and re-read them like crazy when I was in my late teens, early twenties. Something I'm curious about is erotica. I wouldn't mind reading some good erotic stuff. Funnily enough, I think I'm going to have to for the job I'm doing, so Woohoo!
And I still love Archie comic books. But that's nothing to feel guilty about, is it?
If you could snap a finger and have any life you could imagine, what would that life be?
(Thanks Lyle!)
I suppose the only life I've always wanted and don't have now is the life of a writer, or what I imagine that life to be. In my imagination, it is quiet and solitary for much of the day, writing and researching and thinking 'bout thangs. It includes a New York apartment and sometimes a waterfront cabin somewhere. It's not fame and celebrity, but appreciation for one's thoughts and ideas and the artful expression of them, as well as the opportunity to meet truly intelligent, wise and curious people. All of that appeals to me immensely.
I also yearn for travel. There are so many places I want to experience, to fill my senses with their newness and strangeness. When I fantasize about disappearing from my life it is to China, a place where I feel you could reinvent yourself if you were so inclined. It's a new frontier, a place in flux, changing and moving quickly, and I'd like to be there to see that and feel that.
The funny thing is that I don't see these as lives I can't have. I feel like I could choose to try to become a writer. But what if I didn't succeed? What if I fell flat on my face? And I feel like I will travel. Maybe not everywhere, maybe not even to China, but I will, unless I die first, which is always a possibility of which I am aware.
The older I get the more I realize that I'm happy with the life I have. It's not glamourous but it's fun and interesting and rich and full of love and all the good things that life has to offer: children, food, beauty, sex, laughter, etc... I don't even think that I would prefer to call any other country home, though I might like to live in Italy or New York or somewhere for a time.
There is one thing I'd like to snap my fingers for -- not an alternate life, but an alternate place: If I could, I would live by the ocean. My soul is called to the ocean.
What is/are your guilty pleasure(s) when it comes to reading?
(Thank you Maggie!)
Strangely enough I don't have any right now. For the past year or so I've been doing fairly "serious" reading, to the exclusion of anything else except the Ikea catalogue in my bathroom (and I don't feel guilty about that. I love Ikea!) However, in the past I have had some guilty reading pleasures. One that I don't feel so very guilty about is the Ayla series (Clan of The Cave Bear, etc.) by Jean Auel. I love them, and although they're pretty lame in terms of character and preposterous in terms of romance they're still so cool because they're full of cave people and neanderthals! What's not to love?
An embarrassing admission: I used to love trashy sex novels, like those by Sidney Sheldon and Jackie Collins. I was sexually curious and frustrated, I guess, and I read and re-read them like crazy when I was in my late teens, early twenties. Something I'm curious about is erotica. I wouldn't mind reading some good erotic stuff. Funnily enough, I think I'm going to have to for the job I'm doing, so Woohoo!
And I still love Archie comic books. But that's nothing to feel guilty about, is it?
# posted by becca : 7:57 AM
