Sunday, February 28, 2010

Thaw by Fiona Robyn

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Ruth's diary is the new novel by Fiona Robyn, called Thaw. She has decided to blog the novel in its entirety over the next few months, so you can read it for free.

Ruth's first entry is below, and you can continue reading tomorrow here.

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These hands are ninety-three years old. They belong to Charlotte Marie Bradley Miller. She was so frail that her grand-daughter had to carry her onto the set to take this photo. It’s a close-up. Her emaciated arms emerge from the top corners of the photo and the background is black, maybe velvet, as if we’re being protected from seeing the strings. One wrist rests on the other, and her fingers hang loose, close together, a pair of folded wings. And you can see her insides.

The bones of her knuckles bulge out of the skin, which sags like plastic that has melted in the sun and is dripping off her, wrinkling and folding. Her veins look as though they’re stuck to the outside of her hands. They’re a colour that’s difficult to describe: blue, but also silver, green; her blood runs through them, close to the surface. The book says she died shortly after they took this picture. Did she even get to see it? Maybe it was the last beautiful thing she left in the world.

I’m trying to decide whether or not I want to carry on living. I’m giving myself three months of this journal to decide. You might think that sounds melodramatic, but I don’t think I’m alone in wondering whether it’s all worth it. I’ve seen the look in people’s eyes. Stiff suits travelling to work, morning after morning, on the cramped and humid tube. Tarted-up girls and gangs of boys reeking of aftershave, reeling on the pavements on a Friday night, trying to mop up the dreariness of their week with one desperate, fake-happy night. I’ve heard the weary grief in my dad’s voice.

So where do I start with all this? What do you want to know about me? I’m Ruth White, thirty-two years old, going on a hundred. I live alone with no boyfriend and no cat in a tiny flat in central London. In fact, I had a non-relationship with a man at work, Dan, for seven years. I’m sitting in my bedroom-cum-living room right now, looking up every so often at the thin rain slanting across a flat grey sky. I work in a city hospital lab as a microbiologist. My dad is an accountant and lives with his sensible second wife Julie, in a sensible second home. Mother finished dying when I was fourteen, three years after her first diagnosis. What else? What else is there?

Charlotte Marie Bradley Miller. I looked at her hands for twelve minutes. It was odd describing what I was seeing in words. Usually the picture just sits inside my head and I swish it around like tasting wine. I have huge books all over my flat — books you have to take in both hands to lift. I’ve had the photo habit for years. Mother bought me my first book, black and white landscapes by Ansel Adams. When she got really ill, I used to take it to bed with me and look at it for hours, concentrating on the huge trees, the still water, the never-ending skies. I suppose it helped me think about something other than what was happening. I learned to focus on one photo at a time rather than flicking from scene to scene in search of something to hold me. If I concentrate, then everything stands still. Although I use them to escape the world, I also think they bring me closer to it. I’ve still got that book. When I take it out, I handle the pages as though they might flake into dust.

Mother used to write a journal. When I was small, I sat by her bed in the early mornings on a hard chair and looked at her face as her pen spat out sentences in short bursts. I imagined what she might have been writing about — princesses dressed in star-patterned silk, talking horses, adventures with pirates. More likely she was writing about what she was going to cook for dinner and how irritating Dad’s snoring was.

I’ve always wanted to write my own journal, and this is my chance. Maybe my last chance. The idea is that every night for three months, I’ll take one of these heavy sheets of pure white paper, rough under my fingertips, and fill it up on both sides. If my suicide note is nearly a hundred pages long, then no-one can accuse me of not thinking it through. No-one can say, ‘It makes no sense; she was a polite, cheerful girl, had everything to live for,’ before adding that I did keep myself to myself. It’ll all be here. I’m using a silver fountain pen with purple ink. A bit flamboyant for me, I know. I need these idiosyncratic rituals; they hold things in place. Like the way I make tea, squeezing the tea-bag three times, the exact amount of milk, seven stirs. My writing is small and neat; I’m striping the paper. I’m near the bottom of the page now. Only ninety-one more days to go before I’m allowed to make my decision. That’s it for today. It’s begun.

Monday, February 22, 2010

One Crown Worth it All

Ruth Benedict, one of the first women to attain recognition as a major social scientist, wrote in her journal in 1912:

To me it seems a very terrible thing to be a woman.  There is one crown which perhaps is worth it all-- a great love, a quiet home, and children.   We all know that is all that is worthwhile, and we must peg away, showing off our wares in the market if we have money, or manufacturing careers for ourselves if we haven't.  We have not the motive to prepare ourselves for a 'lifework' of teaching, of social work-- we know that we would lay it down with hallelujah in the height of our success, to make a home for the right man.  And all the time in the background of our consciousness rings the warning that perhaps the right man will never come.  A great love is given to very few.  Perhaps this makeshift time-filler of a job is our lifework after all.

I'm feeling melancholy today.  My "career" feels like such a waste of time-- I am constantly worried about where my money is coming from.  I contemplate quitting and finding something else to do, but the same problem arises-- what is my life's work?  What can I do that seems worthwhile?  Like Benedict, I think the cry of my heart has been to be a helpmeet (Genesis 2:18) and a mom (like my mom and her mom before her-- two women who have utterly inspired me).  I don't think a man should be my end goal-- that is reserved for following Christ, but I can't help but think: isn't this what we (women) were created for?


It's not the lack of a man that distresses me at the moment, just the feeling that what I am doing in my life serves no purpose.  How wonderful it must be to have felt what it means to be called to something!  I have been told that here are people who love what they do, and moreover, get paid to do it.  I'm not complaining about what I do, but it would be nice to get to paid for it as well.


(The above quote comes from the book I am currently re-reading, Let Me Be a Woman by Elisabeth Elliot.  I highly recommend it to you ladies.  I think I discovered it in college, and it remains one of my favorites to this day.)


XOXO,






My apologies to all the men I just freaked out.

Thursday, February 18, 2010

Easy Accessories

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I suppose with many professions there are natural questions that arise in conjunction with that particular job.  Most questions are probably well meaning-- intended for the questioner to get a better picture of what that person does.

To the newspaper columnist, someone would ask, "Is it hard to come up with something new to write everyday?"

I imagine the accountant might hear something like, "Gee, you work with numbers all day.  That must be really boring?"

The graphic designer hears, "So how is it staring at the computer screen all day?"

You get the point.

Having made my career as a model, you might imagine that I get my share of questions as well.  One that I hear pretty often is, "Is it strange seeing yourself in magazines or billboards or other advertisements?"  My answer to this is that no, it isn't strange.  It feels quite normal to me.

I realize that when I say that, that certain people might take such a statement as a lack of humility or a smugness or something else along those lines.  In truth, I imagine humans can get used to just about anything-- however extraordinary or even perverse.  The astronaut would be amazed on his first trip into space.  Do it a few more times, and it would start to become old hat to him.  Or think of the millions of people who fly each year-- sailing over single continents in a day.  A hundred years ago that would have been unthinkable, and today we all board planes without the slightest bit of wonder, and more often than not, with a sense of annoyance that we have to stay cramped in a small space for so many hours.

All that to say that nope, it doesn't surprise me to see my face staring back at me from the cover of a magazine on a newsstand (and while I am not surprised, I would say that I am still pleased, particularly when I happen to like the picture!).

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What does surprise me, though, is when I find my face lurking where I do not expect it.  The other day I popped into a bookstore here in Cape Town.  On a shelf, I spied a book with my friend, Shannon, on the cover.  I picked it up to see if she had any more pictures inside, and who should I find on the table of contents, but me?  I was NOT expecting that, and a quick flip through the book revealed that I am on a handful of pages.

I do recall shooting those pictures-- it was probably in 2004 or 2005 for a US magazine called Easy Knitting.  The magazine came and went and that was that.  Apparently, though, unbeknownst to me, they appeared in a book.


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This makes me wonder-- where else are my pictures being run without my knowledge, and more importantly, have I been paid for their usage?

I'm going to have to get to the bottom of this one!

XOXO,

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Penguins!

Penguins cautiously reside
  on our planet's underside,
where they're careful not to cough,
  lest they trip and tumble off.

~Jack Prelutsky 


The penguins are my favorite thing about South Africa, so far (aside from some awesome people I have met here).

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These pictures were all taken at Boulders Beach, near Simon's Town.  These penguins apparently set up shop there in 1982.  It started with just one pair of breeding penguins, and now there are over 3000 penguins!  They are so cute-- they waddle around, climbing stairs, wandering about, and don't seem to pay much attention to the people.  If you want to brave the cold water, you're welcome to take a dip with them; I don't think they'd mind!

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I asked my friend Kho if I could take one home with me, but he didn't seem to think that a very good idea.  I guess I'll just have to go back for another visit sometime soon!

XOXO,

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Sometimes I Wish...

Sometimes I wish that I had the life of my alter ego... (she seems to have all the fun!)

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She looks so happy and lucky in love. He's kind of cute, too.


Of course, if I couldn't have that, I'd settle for a random superhero power-- hands that heal, anyone? Or maybe they just emit a strange light? Okay, well that would be weird.

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I know… Maybe I could just turn into a vampire? What do we think?

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XOXO,





*These are all pictures of me, by the way, taken during happier times when I was working. Can't say that I've been doing much of that lately!

Saturday, February 6, 2010

Once Upon a Time

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The Flora and Fauna of Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden and Table Mountain

Once upon a time, there was a girl whom fortune smiled upon.  One day she boarded a boat (that sailed through the air), and after many hours (and years and weeks and days), she ended up in a land that was far from home.

This land was unlike any she had ever seen…
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The sun met the sand, and the ocean and mountains kissed.

She set out immediately to explore it.
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She met old friends:

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And new friends:
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And rather unusual friends:

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And these were just the beginning of her adventures...

Stick around for more to come!

XOXO,

Monday, February 1, 2010

City Lights

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I have to apologize about the serious lack of blog posts as of late.  Welcome to South Africa.  Disgruntled residents have informed me that SA has the most expensive internet in the world (due to the fact that all cables and whatnot have to go under the ocean or along the coast of Africa, or something along those lines), and I'm beginning to think it has the world's slowest internet to boot.  Gone are my days of downloading albums from Amazon (that's a big pooh to you, iTunes-- Amazon's downloads are the same price, or cheaper, without that silly rule that you can only put your music on five devices at a time), or reading my daily blogs, or doing anything else remotely interesting on the web.

I have discovered, through trial and error, which file format to save my text files as so that I can plop them on a flash drive and access them at the internet cafe... with that new discovery in hand, I should be able to blog more.  We'll see how that works out.

In today's news, I did my first job in Cape Town.  I did a cover try for the magazine, Woman and Home, which apparently is very popular here.  I was SOOO nervous-- I always am before a shoot-- but I think it went well and everyone seemed to be pleased by how it turned out.  Cover try means that the shoot is for the cover of their magazine.  If all goes well, the editors will like my picture, and I'll end up on the cover of their May issue. 

This past Saturday, The National, a newspaper based in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, released their weekend magazine, M Magazine, with a spread that I featured in.  I shot the story back in December and have been eagerly awaiting its release.  It was shot by Tina Chang.

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I have to say, this was a really fun shoot. It was one of the last jobs I did in Dubai, and they threw me in the (freezing) pool in a Christian Dior dress! Since we were shooting at night, I had to hold extra still as we were using a slower shutter speed on the camera (to allow more light to enter). It was shot in Bonnington in the Jumeriah Lake Towers and shows the lights and skyscrapers of the city that I hold so dear.

XOXO,