My partner and I watched The Lighthouse yesterday – a psychological horror starring Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe from last year that had caught my eye for its cinematography. The movie’s story boils down to two lighthouse keepers meant to take on a four week shift but end up being marooned there by a storm. I’d say, though, that the movie’s about power. Not about those who wield power so much as the younger man, Robert Pattinson’s character, struggling against various forms of power held over him: the power of status that the older man holds over him, the power of guilt over past actions, various forms of sexual power, the power of the nature surrounding him. It was, we agreed, a movie both parts unsubtle and unsettling. As the film reached its climax, my partner turned to me and made her verdict: “I don’t like this movie. This is awful.” “Why’s that?” I asked, though a few reasons came to mind. “It’s super stressful. And disturbing. I mean, what is going on?” We had our usual breakdown once the credits ran, discussing what we thought the movie was “about” and came to a conclusion along the lines of what I opened with. We agreed that the cinematography that caught my eye in the first place was fantastic (it answers my long-standing question of what might a black-and-white silent movie look like if done today and with sound… and followed a different tradition of movie than The Artist drew from), and Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson gave terrific performances. It was the script that warranted discussion. Although highly unsubtle, it’s not a movie to watch passively. It demands contemplation, even if mostly in hindsight. My partner decided there was something too weird about it for her tastes. She speculated if it actually had to do with how specifically masculine were the stories themes – a feminine version of the same story of power struggles might be The Favorite, a movie my partner greatly enjoyed. Either way, she assured me there was nothing I could do to change her opinion on the matter. But I didn’t want to change her opinion. I myself didn’t feel particularly rooted in any particular stance on the film, and her strong position made me wonder if I was supposed to be. There’s quite a few odd forms of media that have found a special place in my heart over the years for one reason or another, and on an individual level, I can stand to defend them. But I could feel an interesting dilemma in being called to defend this one, as if it were being asked to represent odd, uncomfortable movies as a whole. The question I found myself asking is this: should we watch movies that are an unpleasant experience? Not necessarily unpleasant because they’re gory or explicit. Unpleasant because they’re not easy to watch. Because what they’re showing you isn’t necessarily what’s happening, and you’re being made aware of it. There’s the one argument that says you shouldn’t have to sit through media that you don’t like. After all, there’s so many movies these days that we can afford to be picky and only choose the one we think we’ll like. On the other hand, is it really the most wonderful thing for someone to exclusively watch big-budget Marvel-esque type movies? It probably makes them happy, but might they be missing out? The answer, like usual, is probably somewhere down the middle: you should watch a diverse form of movies when the opportunity arises to reaffirm your tastes if not expand them. But in the end, we all have our Favorites.
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I’ve been baking bread for the past three weeks, along with everyone else in the world, it seems. Who would’ve thought a pandemic would lead to a yeast shortage – not because the yeast industry has collapsed but because of everyone getting the baking bug. No intention of catching it myself had crossed my mind until my household ventured into the supermarket last month, and I happened to see a packet of three cast aside on a shelf near the dairy aisle. I grabbed it without thinking – my only true instance of panic buying apart from some cans of soup. But quickly, I realized I had just thrown upon myself the responsibility of using it. Nothing beats homemade bread of course. That’s just a universal truth. But I hadn’t exactly had the best luck in past years when trying it out myself. My first few attempts in my life have turned out very chewy. However, the comforting thing about baking (or at least to me – my partner finds this the worst thing about baking) is that the process requires an exact science. If something goes wrong, most likely it’s either that something wasn’t followed in the recipe carefully enough, or the recipe wasn’t that good to begin with. In other words, there’s little room to improvise, which I’ve never been good at, meaning that it’s a simple and satisfying experience when things go right. So my first attempt in week 1 was predictable: chewy bread. Not bad bread. Just chewy. Difficult to cut in one piece, even with a bread knife. Still nicer to eat than store bread though. The second week, I tried something different (why not?). This time, I tried making an egg wash to add a top crunchy layer. I don’t know if that’s what did it, but for whatever reason, everyone in my apartment agreed that this was the best batch of bread that ever breathed – baking is so weird. Made some garlic butter to slap on it, and it was heaven on earth. I’m now sitting next to my last batch, rising ever so steadily in its bowl. What shall I do after this? I don’t know if I want return to store bought bread after last week’s batch (turns out, being competent in bread-making is a curse), but no one seems to really know when instant yeast will be reliably living on the shelves again. Times like these beg to ask: “what did people used to do?” Yeast, after all, wasn’t ‘discovered’ until the late 17th century, but people have been making bread (and alcohol for that matter) for thousands of years regardless of economic circumstance. As it turns out (because I certainly didn’t know about the science of yeast), the process just used to take a longer time and required that you use the same equipment time after time. When you left dough out for a couple days, the bacteria existing all around us would act as a natural yeast and cause the dough to rise. And then when you kneaded it and mixed it on a board (or the ladle), part of the natural yeast would embed itself into the wood, thereby adding that batch’s yeast to the next one and growing more potent over time. Nowadays, it seems like something similar is accomplished through the use of a “starter,” where you isolate this process in a jar, which you constantly feed – that might be the way to go, more to report on later. There’s something very fun about making bread from scratch. Something soothing about kneading the dough into the bowl, shaping it, waiting for the dough to rise, and slicing it up throughout the week. A nice afternoon to make something for oneself with consistency…
One of my partner’s friends once made the comment, upon hearing what various projects I was working on at that time before all this pandemic stuff began, that I was too productive to be real, and that I was making the rest of them look bad in comparison. It’s not the first time I’ve heard something similar to this, but in the few times it’s happened, it’s always surprising. It’s one of those things you start hearing from people often enough that you start getting a complex about it. I suppose it’s meant to be a compliment – my partner’s assured me as much. In this day and age, however, as I hear people both try to see this time as an era of productivity as well as warn against that kind of thinking, I thought I’d say a word or two on the subject, specifically as it comes to writing (need to come back to that at some point). I’ve been writing books for fun for over ten years. Stuff like that sounds impressive. It’s the thing you put in application essays. But what does that mean? For me, it’s a slurry of highs and lows. It’s the elation of getting a sentence just right, of reading back the scenes that you used to formulate as you waited to drift off to sleep at night, of feeling it all coming together as I type out important dialogue. It’s the frustration of when it doesn’t go right, when you realize you may have to delete a whole chapter, when writer’s block (in some form or another) hits, of wondering why it’s taking so damn long to get done. And it’s the intense anxiety of wondering whether anyone’s going to like it, or if anyone’s going to read it, of if you even want anyone to read it at all… In the end, you wonder if it was even worth it, only to realize that you’d do it all again and won’t be stopped moving forward. Who cares if it’s worth it? There are too many stories playing games in my head for me to deny them a chance to be typed up. But then there never seems to be enough time. When I was younger, I could comfort myself with knowing that summer breaks could be dedicated to writing. That’s gone away now, with work being a constant on top of school, and with so many other thoughts and responsibilities taking priority in my mind, it sometimes feels like there’s no room for stories, and whenever they pop up as daydreams, that it’s irresponsible to humor them. And yet, it feels even more irresponsible to not type up a few sentences every night before bed. And therein in lies the real curse of “being productive,” and the reason I’ve heard so many people warn against being pressured to be so right now. It’s only too easy for that mentality to trap you with expectations of yourself you cannot meet. Because you can’t always have time to spend the time you need, even in a week, to write enough to satisfy that voice inside your head, to make the thing you offered to that person, to make that thing you promised to yourself, on top of work and school. It gets to the point where you don’t know when you’re supposed to relax or what that even looks like. Everything is about balance and a healthy perspective. When people find out I’ve written books, they don’t seem to care whether they’re any good or not – what they say they’re impressed by, when it boils down to it, is that I was able to stick with something for so long. That’s probably what counts, isn’t it? That no matter how long something takes, we never truly let go of the idea that it’s a work-in-process. I’m reminded that the worst feeling in the world has been to finish writing a book. I’ve rarely felt anything quite as devastating, quite as hurtful, as realizing it’s all over. It’s like a close friend has moved away to somewhere where you’ll never speak to them again – with a series, they may have come back, but they’re a different person by the time they leave. I’m reminded that it’s writing the book that’s the fun part. The ending comes, eventually. Why do we pressure ourselves to finish it?
“If Amazon can deliver my stuff in 24 hours or less -- I don’t need to go to a store anymore, I can buy something online and Amazon bring[s] it to me. It’s crazy, we don’t have to have any patience anymore. So patience is becoming a more and more rare skill. It’s a rarer experience to have to develop patience. So it’s getting harder than it was to be patient with things. There’s all the more reason to do things that require patience.” Those are the line spoken by one of the more well-known youtubers from the world of historical sewers, Cathy Hay, in one of her videos on how hand sewing develops patience. I started going down the rabbit hole into the historical sewing community sometime last fall. I don’t even know what exactly it was I tripped on, but I’m fairly sure it was after I came across videos by Bernadette Banner, quite possibly her video on corset misconceptions (this is a big sticking point with the historical costuming community, who, being people who research, make, and wear corsets, provide a strong case that wearing corsets was no more dangerous or uncomfortable than bras are today). At first it just piqued my curiosity by falling in-between the venn diagram of some of my amateur interests: history and sewing. Because when you stop to think about it, there’s a lot of questions you might have about how people dressed in past centuries: did they wear underwear? How many layers? How did they stay cool in the summer if there were so many layers? How did they stay warm in winter while still maintaining their fashion? How can you tell the difference between the styles of different decades? How did women deal with their menstrual cycle in the days before modern period products? (Karolina Zebrowska is a good resource for those questions.) But most of all, if the sewing machine was invented in 1846, how exactly were all these things made by hand? Lace? Buttonholes? Shoes? Eyelets? Everything we take for granted when we shop for clothes? Some interesting facts came to light from this. One is that most people, logically, didn’t own too many outfits, because it took quite a long while to make them. How did washing work, if they didn’t have many outfits? Well, before the 20th century, people generally wore something like a long nightgown as their underwear, which protected their clothes from their skin – so you only had to wash and rotate the undergarment. Washing clothes wears out clothes anyway, and you needed your clothes to last a good long while. But it goes deeper than that. Because your clothes were more of an investment, and were so necessary, most people could afford to have their clothes tailored to their shape, if they weren’t making it themselves. And wearing the same outfits day in and day out actually allows clothes to shape better into the form of your body. So people in past centuries were most likely wearing clothes better fitted to them and more comfortable than what most of us can afford to wear today (I’m sure many can attest that a tailored suit makes quite the difference). But how was it that these clothes lasted so long to begin with? The pockets of my jackets are constantly getting holes in them, and I’m not throwing them regularly in the wash. Get this: when done correctly, a stitch made by hand is stronger and more secure than ones made by a sewing machine. The reason why sewing machines were adopted was almost mainly for speed, not because they produce a better product. Thoreau dedicates some pages about this transition to machine-made clothes in Walden, writing in the 1850s that “I cannot believe that our factory system is the best mode by which men may get clothing… As far as I have heard or observed, the principal object is, not that mankind may be well and honestly clad, but, unquestionably, that the corporations may be enriched.” And this brings us back to patience. Sewing really is a lesson in patience. Hand sewing, immensely so. Because why spend months, when so much is going on, to make one’s own clothes when you can buy it online? When you don’t even need to think about how it should look, only that you like it. This isn’t an admonishment against modern life (maybe against fast fashion), but more of evidence that “technological improvement” hasn’t always meant that things improved for our benefit. The wonder of modern life, though, is that we have the luxury to take time to learn and to try to do things ourselves by hand, because it is no longer a necessity. And I’ve found that making things myself, even if they’re inferior versions of the manufactured product, give me a sense of autonomy and deep appreciation for what I was able to make and what I’m able to otherwise obtain so easily. “Putting the patience in and putting the time in allows you to put love into all you’re making,” Cathy Hay says in the video as she adds stitches to five yards of a hemmed skirt, a project she’s worked on for three or four weeks. “Take the focus off finishing the garment as a whole and keep bringing your attention back to this particular stitch. By doing one stitch, and then another stitch, and then another stitch, you start to slow down, and enjoy, and notice…” UpdateHey everyone, I'm realizing that I wasn't entirely following my schedule for Solisian Trial chapter releases as I put on my site. Whoops! But I'm going to hold off on putting up Chapter 12 anyway, since I was having a little bit of trouble figuring these past few chapters out. I'll be sure to announce it once that changes!
The first time I read Henry David Thoreau’s Walden was a few months ago for class. The only time I’d ever considered reading it before was in high school when we learned about the Transcendentalists. Ah, the transcendentalists. Whether it was American history or American literature, they were one of my favorite parts of the course. My teenage impression of them was that they were the original hippies of America, with their messages of spirituality through nature and a self-sustaining lifestyle. Oh gosh, was I fascinated with the hippies as a child. We read Emerson’s “Self-Reliance,” and Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience,” and just enough of Walden to spark my interest. Another girl in my classes later in the year, who I believe was one of my year’s valedictorians, chose to read it later in the school year and I overheard a teacher asking her about it. She made a sneer with her smile and in the back and forth, revealed that she found the book less than enjoyable, mostly due to long monologues on boring nature observations. Oh dear, I thought, Thoreau must read like Hawthorne. I still prefer a stubbed toe to reading Hawthorne. Just the way he writes so much while saying so little. So I never tried to pick Walden up, for which I felt justified since I always thought myself more of a Emerson person anyway – Thoreau seemed a tad too uninhibited for teenage-me. And it turns out, that was a real shame. Or maybe it wasn’t. “Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in.” I read that line about a month and a half ago, and that line still lingers, along with many of the other quotables that fill the pages – that’s pretty much what Walden is, a book of quotable lines. There was something acutely familiar about them all too, in his criticisms on how people are overstressed from the rules of the clock, how people are too quick to replace their clothes in the name of style, how there’s such mindless consumerism, how people can be made miserable by living too fast and by choosing to do things they don’t realize they don’t have to do – even in 1854. It all echoes things I’ve been thinking of late and have talked with people about. Your mid to late 20s seem destined for these kind of thoughts as you transition from a kept life to an independent one. But what does independence mean? Furthermore, what does it mean to be satisfied with it? Dissatisfaction. It doesn’t seem to matter how much someone is making at my age, what certifications or degrees they’ve received, how good their job is – everyone in that 20s bracket seems dissatisfied in one way or another, and are re-calibrating, trying to figure out what will make the feeling go away. One thing seems to hold true: money alone doesn’t help for very long. Thoreau was 28 when he went to live at Walden Pond. Walden, I realized, was a book for young people in their 20s and early 30s, and it felt so profound because I was reading it at the most perfect point in my life. Perhaps it was a good thing I didn't read it in high school. Before I continue further, here are some things Thoreau was not:
So this, as far as I can judge, is what Walden is about: a self-help book on finding spiritual (for lack of a better word) self-reliance and mindfulness in spite of living in a system of dissatisfaction. And connecting with nature in the process. I highly recommend it to people who can stand to read pages of nature observations and some humorously snide remarks. But I actually didn’t write this post to just encourage people to read Walden (it’s being read less and less in public schools here in America these days, probably due to a fear that it’ll discourage kids from reading, so it does need some promotion). I’m writing this post to announce that some of the posts on this blog might be different in the future. As I said, Walden vocalized many of the thoughts I’ve been having lately in the past few years, and in my own attempts to find some extra tidbits of self-reliance and satisfaction, I’ve picked up a fair amount of hobbies, more than I really have time for. I’m still writing (that’s probably never going away), and that will truthfully remain the priority of this site. But Garfield keeps telling me I should write about all these other little hobbies that I’ve managed to collect for myself, and she’s managed to convince my partner of the same. I’ve also been told that the reasons why I’ve never ventured to do this before is because I’m narrow-minded. So if this somehow turns into a crafting/DIY blog, you can blame them. I’ll remain vague on that, since I honestly don’t know what I’ll be writing on next. But I’ll probably come up with a poor title to differentiate it. UpdatesDon't really have any updates to give. You probably know exactly what I'm talking about when I say that things this past week have been hectic. I didn't really want to mention COVID-19 in this post, since I think most people are hearing about it non-stop everywhere else, so I'll just say that I've been trying to figure out my own new normal but am otherwise very much fine. I also happened to be writing my midterm paper for class, so... it's been a weird week in general. So all I have to say other than that is to remind you that if you buy one of the Nightmares of a Dreamer books on Nook before the end of the month, you can the other one for free -- you can do that here and here.
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R. E. DrewAmateur Author
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