the final chapter in this blog

dear friends, this is the final chapter of The Literary Addict. from now on, all entries, including lit ones, will be part of Little Miss Chatterbox at www.thegirlcanwrite.wordpress.com. with so many projects, i’ve had to prioritize and decide what’s most important to focus on, so my general blog will be used for all miscellany- but my main focus will be at fascinatingpeople.wordpress.com, where I write about Fascinating People. I have four spin off columns from this blog at various internet sites- yes, I’m busy!

so don’t worry, i’m not going away – you can find me everywhere. you can find both of my books on Amazon as well: the latest just launched, and here’s an URL- please order your copy today!

http://www.amazon.com/s?ie=UTF8&search-type=ss&index=books&field-author=Lorette%20C.%20Luzajic&page=1

Lorette

wwwhegirlcanwrite.net

miss my blogs?

Dear Friends, you must forgive me for my recent absence. I apologize that these blogs may be sporadic and for that I’m sorry. This year so far I have been so very, very busy with other writing pursuits and I apologize for the neglect here, especially after posting some heavy duty faith crises and then leaving you hanging. Fear not, I will continue to share the minutiae of my spiritual journey, literary landscape, mental health, joyous inspirations, and so on. I’m very busy right now preparing an art show, and the launch of my second book for April, as well as the final touches on the third book (‘b-sides’ and outtakes for the second!) and third!- a fiction. That means, yes, three books this year and you’ll be so tired of reading me that you won’t care if these blogs are spaced apart!

I’m very excited to be doing more research on our heritage diet and will be bringing you another series of ‘controversial’ writings on nutrition, gluten, meat, fat, and the like, including an expose of how ‘The China Study” almost had me fooled. I’m currently peeling back layer after layer of propaganda and I’ll be sharing that with you very soon on an exciting new Paleo eating website!

On a less volatile note, I’m busy with two new spin offs from Fascinating People (fascinatingpeople.wordpress.com). Fascinating Queers launched at Out Impact Magazine, and starting next week, I’ll be covering Fascinating Canadian Women at Cahoots Magazine! I am also developing another column that you’ll be able to read regularly online later this spring- centred on major themes in history and their interpretation in mythology. Myth buffs will get their fill- not just of classical mythology, but of stories all around the world, how religions interpret them, how various cultures express the big questions, now and back through our history. All of this is very exciting and I’m very busy- but you will of course see entries again about my wild mood swings, and my compulsive reading habits.

Joy to all,
Lorette

long, long book titles- mine included

The title for my pending book, due April 09, is really rather long:

Weird Monologues for a Rainy Life (irreverent ramblings from the end of the world)
(by Lorette C. Luzajic)

but it wasn’t the longest title I found!

How to Teach Children About Money: A Step-By-Step Adult Guide to Help Children Learn About Earning, Saving, Spending and Investing Their Money
(by Hassell Bradley)

or:

Victorian Domestic Architectural Plans and Details: 734 Scale Drawings of Doorways, Windows, Staircases, Moldings, Cornices, and Other Elements (v. 1)
(by William T. Comstock)

Just try memorizing this one:

Amazons of the Avant Garde: Alexandra Exter, Natalia Goncharova, Liubov Popova, Olga Rozanova, Varvara Stepanova, Nadezhda Udaltsova
(by Deutsche Guggenheim Berlin)

and of special contemporary relevance:

Fleeced: How Barack Obama, Media Mockery of Terrorist Threats, Liberals Who Want to Kill Talk Radio, the Do-Nothing Congress, Companies That Help Iran, and Washington Lobbyists for Foreign Governments Are Scamming Us … and What to Do About It
(by Dick Morris)

This one sounds more interesting, though:

Hollow Earth: The Long And Curious History Of Imagining Strange Lands, Fantastical Creatures, Advanced Civilizations And Marvelous Machines Below The Earth’s Surface
(by David Standish)

For quite some time, this was the longest book title:

The history of the wars of New-England with the Eastern Indians; or, a narrative of their continued perfidy and cruelty, from the 10th of August, 1703, to the peace renewed 13th of July, 1713. And from the 25th of July, 1722, to their submission 15th December, 1725, which was ratified August 5th, 1726
(by Samuel Penhallow)

But 150 years later, it was outdone:

Our new West; records of travel between the Mississippi River and the Pacific Ocean…with details of the wonderful natural scenery, agriculture, mines, business, social life, progress and prospects of Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, California, Oregon, Washington and British Columbia, including a full description of the Pacific railroad and of the life of the Mormons, Indians and Chinese
(by Samuel Bowles, 1869)

And again, it took another century and a half to write a longer title:

Daniel Radcliffe the story of the not so ordinary boy chosen from …….’ and ends with ‘to his ever royal crown of fame’

(1022 word title (That’s four pages long and I’m not going to write the whole thing out!)
for a book about actor Daniel Radcliffe of Harry Potter fame, by Dr Subramonian)

Dr. Subramonian may need this one by the time he’s done promoting the above:

A Handbook on Hanging, Being a short introduction to the fine art of Execution, and containing much useful information on Neck-breaking, Throttling, Strangling, Asphyxiation, Decapitation and electrocution; as well as Data and Wrinkles for Hangmen, an account of the late Mr. Berry’s method of Killing and his working list of Drops; to which is added a Hangman’s Ready Reckoner and certain other items of interest, New edition enlarged diligently compared and revised in accordance with the most recent Developments. All Very Proper to be read and Kept in Every Family.
(by Charles Duff)

Atheism 101

Atheism 101

Occasionally I hear myself talking in my memory, and I find it embarrassing. I don’t usually mind the fact that I’m brimming with ideas and opinions and discoveries and revelations and stories. Psychologists and clinicians refer to this human trait as hypomanic, or ‘pressured talking,’ aptly describing the intensity I might be feeling, and the wide variety of tangents I may go off on. I just accept that my mind spins quickly and that I’m enthusiastic. But there are occasions, certainly, when something I’ve written or talked about generates a bit too much controversy for someone who is sometimes quite shy. Worse, there are times when I have a very strong opinion, only to change my mind radically shortly thereafter.

It’s a good cardinal rule- to know something of what you’re talking about, and I’ve said it often enough myself- refrain from commenting unless I have read the text being commented on.

But there I am, in my mind’s recap, fuming and railing against ‘God haters’ with my friend Enzo, who has asked if I’ve read The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. Enzo is Muslim and definitely the most learned person of religious history I’ve ever met. He has read every book ever written about every religion, give or take. Most of the books he recommends I couldn’t possibly understand. This was one of them- because in this case, I hadn’t read the book. But there I am, yammering about the poisonous anti-mystical bent of this new rash of atheism books, including God is Not Great by Christopher Hitchens.

To be fair, I’ve been raised by the literalist interpretation faction of Christianity- yep, right wing fundamentalism. So the knee jerk reaction is ingrained from the start- the Bible is, after all, divinely inspired and you sure as hell don’t question God or call Him a delusion.  But I’ve come a long way, baby, and have studied enough Scripture and history and psychology and science to know women are equal and genocide is not moral even if the Old Testament says so. I’ve added my own flaky comforts from the matriarchal nature faiths and de-condemned gays and black people from hellfire. I’ve had my doubts and my traumas and my grief and my disappointments with God, but I sure as hell have never called him a delusion.

But you never know where the spirit will lead you and this past week I’ve read both books cover to cover, by chance because of the sick, foul, vile garbage spewing from the mouths of “Christians” following the Obama election- the election of Satan in the form of nigger, pussy, Jew, raghead or faggot, I heard them all, pick your own conspiracy theory. Perhaps I was naïve in the first place to be shocked at the racism, homophobia, sexism, and bigotry of Christians today, given that faith is historically the primary motivator of ‘ethnic’ cleansing and hate crimes through all of history. But as with everyone else, it’s always been convenient of my church to blame the ‘other’ religions or the “other kinds of Christians who aren’t really Christians.”

I confess that the sick spewage of these ignoramuses has led to a complete collapse of my mystical leanings, and in defiance I signed these books out of the library to see what the atheists had to say for themselves.

And much to my surprise, both books are loving, compassionate, carefully thought out, witty, and as far as I can verify, quite factual. I admit that much of the science stuff in Dawkins went over my head- I’m still somewhat convinced by ‘irreducible complexity’ which he debunks, but I can’t argue for either never having had a strong science background. I come from a church that believes in the God snapped his fingers version of creation, but I’ve always felt okay not knowing the exact nature or our origin, a position I share with nearly seven billion others, and billions more before me. I couldn’t really believe we are this diverse and interesting without a little help from above, so I suppose I’d fall into the ‘intelligent design’ category of origin beliefs. And I likely still do, as I’m just too blonde to fully grasp the minutiae of scientific processes as complex as these.

On the other hand, both books were unbelievably fascinating accounts of religion through history and Biblical interpretation from thinkers who were not trained in Biblical apologetics. Additionally, my knowledge of other religious groups is limited to my spiritual dabblings here and there, nothing intensive. Both authors give an overview of historical atrocities led by Judaism- it’s all right there in the Old Testament, raping virgins, leaving no man woman or child alive, plundering lands, stoning anyone who works on Sunday or who failed to bleed on her wedding night- Christianity, and Islam, as well as other ‘cults’ or less populated, or obsolete faiths. I’ve always believed that humans love to kill and that we would find a way to war regardless of calling it holy or not, but the record shows something that might convince me otherwise- almost all ‘racism’ is actually ‘your God is wrong and mine is right.’

The fact remains, of course, that we don’t need to be atheist to reject the human interpretations of faith. But that leaves the question- from whom shall we then learn our experience of the divine? I’ve always felt that God is a sort of ‘sum of all parts,’ the whole, if you will, of universal experience. I’ve long left the fold that claims starving Hindu children in India are roasting in the pits of hell because they are godless. I believe that creativity is the reflection of God, that our unique talents and gifts reflect the spiritual. Is this just my personal mumbo jumbo, a cop out because I don’t want to believe I’ll never see my dead loved ones again?

After reading both books with an open mind, I have to give some credence to what I know deep inside anyhow: that religion may be universal, in whole or in part, because it is simply human nature to make sense out of what they don’t fully understand- that’s a no-brainer; we even call it the mystery or the mystical or the sacred, which mean exactly that, and of course, the other no brainer: religion as social control by men in power. Hence, the hatred of other cultures, of women, by the leaders of faith through the ages.

Despite our popular contention that humanity would go haywire with sin without God, both authors argue effectively that religion is the CAUSE of human immorality, including racism, murder, and sexual obsession. Those of you of any kind of faith, even you witchy new agers- have just recoiled from this statement, as did I before examining the evidence. You can’t argue with evidence, and the facts are truly disheartening when put into perspective. The perspective was unique, for a change, not because the authors were godbashing, but because they were making their arguments without emotion for one particular ‘side’ or faith. Each and every faith makes this argument- that OTHER religions cause immorality. That I had never made that connection when reading apologetics and philosophy is an embarrassment to my intellect that I’ve thankfully rectified.

But is that ALL God is? I’m still not convinced. Do I now take at face value the idea that we are not remotely spiritual beings? Of course not. I doubt I’ll ever claim to know exactly how we arrived here and what our presence means. And it isn’t these books that have opened my heart to seek knowledge of the origins of hatred and bigotry- it was those awful Christian bigmouths talking about how the new President should die along with all those abominable homos. The direct result of their actions was for me to search history for Christians who showed love- and while I found a few individuals and some group efforts, for the most part, I found nothing in the message bringers but genocide, punishment, torture, burning, raping, looting, vandalism, oppression, and repression.

I can no longer shy away from truth just because I don’t like it, and the truth is this: despite popular claims to the contrary, belief in God does not prevent people from moral atrocity. Indeed, it’s the other way around.

www.thegirlcanwrite.net

Lorette C. Luzajic

Death of a Salesman’s Wife- Revolutionary Road a Bleak and Bitter Bore

I’m at a loss for why there are so many rave reviews for the Revolutionary Road debacle. Sam Mendes’ attempt at a different kind of American Beauty pales miserably after the deadpan humour and sly cinematics of his Oscar sweeping masterpiece. But Variety’s Anne Thompson called Revolutionary Road  “powerful and beautifully written and filmed” and “a modern classic.” Was she watching the same movie? She puts this adaptation of Richard Yates’ book on Oscar watch. Ummm, why?

Well, because all the parts are here- actors Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, with cinematographer Roger Deakins and composer Thomas Newman, nominated for Oscars 3,5,7, and 8 times respectively, plus Oscar winner Kathy Bates. The story is universal fodder for uncertain times- man’s search for meaning, in suburban hell. The real story is an important one that is not told often enough, – woman’s search for meaning in her role as wife, mother, and person. Though Leonardo questions his stifling, ludicrous job and the identity he forms there, his wife is told to see a shrink for feeling lifeless among the walking dead. It’s the post-war 1950s, and though hubby is tinkering around with the girls in the office and wifey is at home bored suicidal, to ask for an interesting life or to refuse to bear more children makes you a nutcase. When during an argument, Leo becomes violent and enraged and tells her how sick she makes him carrying his unborn child, the desperate wife looks into the abortion option. Polite society is no longer so polite.

Leo plays this guy again!

With a few million dollars and a bunch of Oscar-able actors, you’d think this could be made into a movie that isn’t so …boring. There were about eight amazing lines, and the rest of the writing was unbelievably forced. While I appreciate subtle unfolding in a film more than I do flashing lights and car chases, this had neither. It was an hour of sitting there wondering why Leo always plays the same guy. I respect Leo’s cool work buying limbs for landmine victims in Africa, and also his acting talent. Sometimes. Here, it looked like they were filming a theatre rehearsal. Leo was absolutely wooden. Where was the chemistry between Rose and Jack, albeit marred and used up, as marriage is wont to do?

Kate’s performance was subtle and strong, but not dazzling enough to make up for the monotony and some of the ridiculous lines she had to deliver. And for all the talk about the awesome cinematography, there wasn’t much to look at, and nothing arty in its absence.

Here and there some blood was pumped into the film, not enough to rescue it by any stretch, but enough to keep me from leaving my seat, just barely. When the toodle-looing neighbour, Kathy Bates, comes over and suggests Kate and Leo entertain her son, recently released from the funny farm, Kate welcomes the diversion. The couple finds their nut bar neighbour easy to talk to, and open their souls to him about suffering suburbia. Kate doesn’t feel he is crazy at all- he is tormented, truthful, and genuine, and he encourages them to get away from the hopeless emptiness Leo observes. Later, he comes for dinner and one of two scenes with an event occurs. Turns out Mr. Wacky Job is a bigger and better man than poser salesman Leo. Which leads to the big fight between husband and wife, the unsatisfying climax, and the still less satisfying denouement.

curl up with the book instead.

What went wrong? It would be easy to conclude that the subtext of feminist examination needed a feminine touch, but we had Kate’s very satisfactory one and it didn’t go far enough. Yes, the film is supposed to be bleak. Bleak, not boring. A bit of humour or colour beyond the nattering neighbours could have gone a long way. The script would need a total overhaul by another writer. Someone not so horribly heavy-handed. Remember what they told us in writing class: show, don’t tell.

Once Ann Landers did a secret study, asking people to anonymously report whether, if given the choice, they would go back and have children all over again. Fully seventy percent wrote back and said no way, no way, no way. It was earth shattering to the kind of social circles and societal pretensions portrayed in this film. It’s still earth shattering today. Because it’s still considered unnatural, crazy, and selfish for a woman to not want more children, or not want them at all. But really, we have  a population and environmental emergency where it’s actually most selfish and crazy to keep having kids- come on, what if all six billion of us have children? We’re already living that nightmare end.  For these reasons, any art reflecting on this topic is urgent viewing.

Otherwise, this would have been a one-word review: tedious.

Visit Lorette C. Luzajic at www.thegirlcanwrite.net.

On Synchronicity

Much has been written on the topic of synchronicity. Here’s my two cents’ worth.

A coincidence might be important in and of the simple fact that it draws our attention to an occurrence, rather than letting it slide by without registering or without contemplation.

Random examination of potential meaning in life leads to more meaning in life.

Yes, there is quite possibly a logical explanation for most synchronicities. And that very explanation is probably the answer you are looking for. It is not debunking but discovering.

Glass Abstract 4 by Ralph Martin

www.thegirlcanwrite.net

The Last Three Poetry Books of my Year

I’ve felt blissfully on top of new poetry for a change, though of course even the 40 or so volumes I’ve read this year are a tiny fraction of what’s happening out there. I’d hoped that total immersion in the craft would get my own juices rolling, but this year I have not been able to write poetry or to paint. I’ve managed several short stories, though, a genre I’d like to work more in, and I’ve been writing about food, mood, and books like mad, so I won’t complain. That said, next year I am switching up my focus a bit to try to cajole the poetic and the painterly muse back into mind. I can’t really live for long without the image-oriented muse.

Still, it can be intimidating to try to harness that muse when you’re holding something like Sue Sinclair’s Breaker in your hand. I wonder often whether the world really needs any more poetry, but then I read something like this, and know we can’t live without. We sleep side by side with eternity, and never touch, she writes. Birds that fly into that eternity- they are “chips of bone in the sky.”

Here’s a few lines from Portugal Cove, Night, that express something perfect that I’ve never been able to.

Shivering, you realize he’s the one
you’ve called on to keep chaos at bay-
how foolish you were.

Using nature to describe the nature of the heart is the oldest trick in the book, yet Sue manages somehow to make it all fresh, waves, stars, trees and all, as if the world itself was new and just unfolding. Breaker is her fourth book and I’ll be looking for the first three. Even their titles are poems of their own: The Drunken Lovely Bird, Secrets of Weather and Hope.

Like Sue, David O’Meara has also been shortlisted for a variety of prestigious awards, and he won the Archibald Lampman award in 2004. His third collection, Noble Gas, Penny Black is the kind of book you should read in a bar with a notebook open, scrawled thoughts littering page after page You read, you muse, you swig, you jot things down. You wish you smoked again, so that you could occasionally fumble for matches, or lean to the guy at the table next to you and say, “Got a light? Hey listen to this:”

Arriving here, across the blue sheet
at the inside of your thigh:
that supple groove

or

The sandwich was crap, the tea
magnificent

then,

the air all Bogart
with smoke and goodbyes.

John Donlan’s Spirit Engine is the last book of poetry I will read this year, so I leap right into the last lines as if to read my fortune for the next year.

yet once there wasn’t a single living thing
on earth: chemicals, complex mixes, lightning, and
something began remaking itself, stubborn,
creeping like happiness across the landscape.

Perhaps it’s cheating to sneak a peek at endings, to skim poems, or chew them, or reread them over and over, or perhaps that’s how you are supposed to experience a book, sprinting through the pages that aren’t relevant today but might be tomorrow. If the end is most important today, then a beginning may be more important tomorrow.

Regardless of the correct literary protocol, of the poet’s chronology here (John dates each poem, and they go in order), you’ll need to, want to, go through and ruminate and ponder. Donlan lives surrounded by Ontario wilderness, and you’ll want to pack this volume when you go canoeing, read it by a campfire, reflect on nature’s serenity and calamity with the poet while in its midst.

You can sing about the rain, he writes, but it won’t do a damn bit of good.

Oh, but it will. Another song about the rain, another poem about the sea. There is nothing new under the sun, oh, no, and so what flows out of my pen won’t exactly won’t shatter the earth with originality. We write of rain, of love, of eternity, same as all the poets before us, and those yet to follow. What is the meaning of this? Perhaps nothing. Or perhaps, as John writes, Birds repeat their parents’ songs as if their lives depend on it.

The Toronto Quarterly

The Toronto Quarterly is a brand new literary journal for Toronto’s vibrant and varied lit scene.

The first issue is out, and features poets like John Dorsey, A.D. Winans, Penn Kemp, Geraldine Green, Desi Dinardo, R.D. Armstrong, Melanie Pierluigi, Jim Johnstone, and, of course, me- Lorette C. Luzajic.

Edited by Darryl Salach, who will cheerfully consider your best original work for the second issue.

Send your work to thetorontoquarterly@hotmail.com. You can order the handsome journal for about fifteen bucks.

The Strange Glamour of Stevie Nicks

The slate and charcoal sky over Hamilton’s pre-dawn is the first breathtaking sight on the drive north to Manitoulin Island. The dazzling display of electrical excess re-stars the night skyline. The sludgy lake is a dark streak, hollow and endless, a gaping maw beneath the strange architecture of the steel sky.

Here, under the grey dawn, on the car radio, I hear the faraway strains of Gypsy.

Lightning strikes, maybe once, maybe twice….and it lights up the night…

Ahh, Stevie Nicks.

I’m an old fan. Through out the years, Stevie’s offerings have wavered in the strength of their material, but her fantastical dreamworld has always been an undercurrent of my psyche.

Stevie Nicks- her horsey ordinariness is eclipsed by the mythical glimmer of madness and ritual. Eighties style, of course, all castle moats and hairspray.

But who can refuse the spell of her dusky voice, and the far-reaching, dizzy-sad spiral of her poems?

The characters she knows are all Tarot and cocaine. They exist in a hazy mirage, a mythic alternative to the daily routine of offices and Burger King. You think of deep night highways and deserted gas stations, and the summer radio. Baby, I’m just thinking that the rooms are all on fire…every time that you walk in the room…

Hard-hearted cynics may find plenty of watered-down country to sneer at on Stevie’s newer material, but it’s hard to find fault with Rock a Little’s seamless gravity, and I’m sorry to say, but it’s hard to have Fleetwood Mac without Ma Nicks.

I recall with clarity the first time I heard the lyric, poet, priest of nothing, and how I shivered under the exquisite truth of those words. Stevie was like an older sister, who had been through it already. She faced the challenges of emotion with dignity and toughness, but still she honoured the human heart and its mad tangles, acknowledging with sadness and grace the depth of human feelings.

Motal Goddess by Dead Dollie Candy

You say I have everything, well, I’m living on dreams and chains…but I sing for the things money can’t buy…I Sing for the Things is one of my all time favourite Stevie smashes. When a ballad takes your heart and wrings tears out of in the middle of the supermarket, that’s something else. Have you ever been in love, Stevie asks with that choked-up voice of hers. Have you touched the soul of someone? Did the fear inside you make you turn and run? She looks right into your deepest fears and says, me, too. You want to start writing poetry about someone you could never forget. Your fingers ache for the relief of a pen, your feelings fly forth like water, you are falling, falling, spilling, tumbling, it’s all just coming out of you now.

It all goes back to Gypsy, of course, when I was much younger than the Rock A Little velvet torch glam era. The first strains of Gypsy were somehow among my first memories of being found. A strange and lost little girl who didn’t fit in at church or school, fascinated by magic and poetry, I spent countless hours in the town library browsing dusty, thin poem volumes, watching the words dance on the page. Trying to share the discoveries I found there wasn’t easy. Everyone else wanted to play T-Ball or watch television.

Gypsy was my first conscious realization that perhaps mine was a mythic, not a misfit, life. So I’m back to the velvet underground, back to the floor, that I love, to a room with some lace and paper flowers, back to the gypsy, that I was… Here was where I came upon a profound sense of belonging, where my melancholy and sense of doom at age ten fit. In the world of bratty kids picking on the freaky little Lorette girl, Stevie Nick’s autobiographical song seemed to be my own biography. Why, I, too was an old soul! I was slippery and inexplicable, tied with scarves and beads and earrings, a traveler from the sky. I was a gypsy! I was destined for a life of sadness, not because I was some kind of freak, but because it was my fate.

In adult perspective, of course one looks back and knows they weren’t so alone in feeling alone. But Stevie let me share a world of music and ghosts, of long, flowing skirts and hoop earrings, of crushed leather boots and a mystical beauty. For this song to come out of the radio and tell me that difficult but great experiences lay ahead for the gypsy made the first markings on my psyche of madness’s glittery allure. Well, lightning strikes, maybe once, maybe twice, and it lights up the night…

Most of the stories in Stevie’s songs are about herself, about the different facets of a nomadic, intuitive soul. Giving a parallel complexity to the women drawn to her music means a sisterhood of sorts, a coven if you will. The church blasted Nick’s for her references to witches and goddesses. But before the old age became new, before everyone and their Shi Tzus had incense and crystals in their décor, before academics brought up some of the hidden truths surrounding the wise women’s history of erasure, before it was in vogue to know your goddesses, Stevie was talking about it and living it. Her songs showed her knowledge that life is tough, unfair, and heart-breaking, but full of magic. Her lyrics understood the beautiful appeal of the lost, the mad, the strange. They showed the soul’s breakings aren’t cut and dried, that people are complicated, good and bad at the same time.

And love, of course, is the backbone of Stevie’s songs. With all the passion in the world, she sings of its multiple layers, of the signs and portents that enchant the soul. With so much loss, she survived, yet retained her feelings. Not jaded, but smart. Tough, but tender. Leather and lace. Love is a dark and dangerous road, she admits in her works, but to deny the highs and lows of it is to deny the very layers of your own identity. Love isn’t a safe and happy slice of cheese, but a risk, a surrender, a purging. Love will lift you up and love will let you down. Love will bind you and free you. In Silver Springs, she writes, Time cast a spell on you…you won’t forget me…I know I could’ve loved you, but you would not let me… How eloquent, this acknowledgement of that peculiar strain of grief when you just have to accept that something can’t be, not for any reason to do with you.

With that understanding comes the paradoxical knowledge that one day, that person will understand what they lost, and the real grief lies there and then, still to come. …the sound of my voice will haunt you; you’ll never get away from the sound of the woman that loves you… A friend of mine, much older, once told me during a love-loss of my own, that “they always come back.” She warned me that by that time, I would be even sadder, because the hole I felt right now wouldn’t have their shape anymore. But for that person, the sense of me would still be a huge empty hole, and they would seek to fill it, and never be able to. I wouldn’t be the person who wanted them anymore.

I forgot about her words until much later, when I noticed that the people who had wounded me with Cupid’s darkest arrows had begun to surface, full of regrets and needs. Yet for me, the days I had lost in tears over them seemed like someone else’s TV sitcom.

This was the same lady who told me that sometimes it will be us to play the cruel one, and that it isn’t intentional, it’s just the mythic web of dark and light that constructs the universe. That we would lose people we love very much to the underworld of our own emotions.

These are the things I am thinking about as the car rambles further and further north. It begins to rain, sheets of water crashing against the windshield, and the pines at either side of the road are swinging ominously. Mother Nature, the Giver and the Taker.

I’m reminded of another, perhaps rarer, Stevie Nicks song that appeared on Tusk, called Storms. Here she sees that her wild heart, the wilderness of her own self, has contributed to the losses love brings. Every night that goes between us, I feel a little less, she confesses. But how to part, how to explain the poignant truth that you just couldn’t keep something? So I try to say goodbye, my friend, I’d like to leave you something warm…but never have I been a blue, calm sea…I have always been a storm.

Lorette C. Luzajic www.thegirlcanwrite.net

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Reading the Ruins

It had been awhile since I read a good horror novel, and a girl can’t let too much heavy reading go to her head so I picked up a scary-looking paperback and fluffed up the pillows.

Scott Smith’s The Ruins is hailed by King King as the ‘best horror novel of the new century.’ Even without having read the other several thousand creepfests that hopeful novelists must have penned since that century started, I’ll go out on a limb to say I doubt that’s true. I don’t expect a page turner about flesh eating Mexican vines to be deep or anything, but 500 pages alone in the jungle with a small group of tequila swilling tourists gives ample time to really get to know the characters, and I still don’t. You’ve got to feel something for the cast if you want to remember the story later, and only the day after, I can’t recall all of their names.

Still, that said, not every writer manages the mix of gods and monsters with Stephen King’s formidable depth. Not every writer makes real people out of inkblots. And that’s fine when you’ve got too many people coming and going in your head and can’t keep track of them. What you want then is something totally engrossing and totally gross. The amateur amputation scene, for example, is just what the doctor ordered. The kids, stranded in the middle of Mayan nowhere, try to keep poor Pablo alive by sawing off his infected legs. Dude broke his back falling into the centre of the earth, where the killer vines whisper and laugh and gobble up your vomit, shit, and blood. They made a good drumstick dinner of the dude before his pals rigged up the above plan to save him.

It was also totally atmospheric to feel the isolation of this jaw of hell that the poor students were lured to during their Mexican vacation. They follow a German tourist to an archeological dig, searching for his missing brother. Turns out the haunted hill is a graveyard: a sort of Mayan Hotel California. They find the German’s brother, all right, in the same condition they are all fated for. A skeleton, with vines growing through his eye sockets.

Sure, all of this made for some tremendous tension and a few interesting dreams where National Geographic met Ten Little Indians. But a little bit more local colour would have been fitting. You’re already in the jungle, at a site of the ruins of a Mayan temple. Here’s where you could insert a bunch of interesting research on curses or human sacrifices or ancient cult customs. Throughout the whole book, I kept thinking that the answer was obvious: if the group would sacrifice one to the vines, the rest could go free. That would be a solution that could be creepy, save a few of the characters, and get some interesting folklore in. But I doubt the writer did much more to research his story than look at a map and plunk down a random destination. The killer vines could truly have been in Brazil, Germany, or Yemen.

The verdict? I bet Scott Smith develops into a real thriller- he’s got a soothing and eerie flow to his writing, and I’m certain with experience he’s going to freak the daylights right out of us while actually digging in the dirt for some background. But for now, it’s a shallow grave- take it or leave it.

Visit Lorette C. Luzajic at www.thegirlcanwrite.net.

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