Day 20: Expression

How do you usually express yourself?

Let’s see, there’s this, lurking creepily at the cemetery, lurking creepily downtown, lurking…well, I do a lot of creepy lurking. Actually, no, I don’t, not anymore. Ah, the old days. I could also make a bad joke regarding my kid under the heading of breeding monsters, but he’s being a little too sweet today for that. I try to get him in on the self-expression, but so far he’s got his own thing.

Most of my expression now comes with me writing in one form or another, be it here or in my journal (very sporadically) or writing stories that I wish were Gothic. I do create monsters in my stories and actually, in my one finished manuscript I think I came up with some good ones. Oddly enough, most of the things I end up writing are sci-fi or fantasy and God knows I love a good battle scene. I have no idea where any of those things came from. All I want to do is wander the English countryside in a corset writing stories of unquiet souls tormented and longing with some frightening things running through the center of it all. Somewhere some wires got crossed but isn’t that why I’m writing this blog? A lot of my wires have shorts in them, or at least lost their insulation.

Over the years my expression has changed. I began with drawing and painting and then moved on to writing when I  hit the double digits. Later I moved on to music, photography, and graphic art and then came back around to writing. I do a little of all of these depending on where my head is and how much patience I have. I haven’t really painted in years since with my son, it’s a hard thing to get time to do. The same with the self-portrait photography though there’s nothing quite like getting a character out in that cathartic sort of way, by becoming them.

Writing is similar in that way. I can pace and say what they’re saying aloud, figure out how they’re feeling and why they do what they do and in the meantime I get to both become someone else and explore a side of myself and give it voice.  It’s an interesting process.

Today, I was making a piece of art for a friend as a gift. That’s also a nice thing to do. Crafting is a new form of expression for me. I was going to take up knitting to make something hilarious and wonderful for DG, but I really didn’t have the patience for it. I may, if I calm down, give that another try.

For now, I get a wild hair and go with it in whatever form that takes. Maybe I want to do Queen of Hearts makeup and take pictures in that character, maybe I write a story about my dad. It’s all very random but that’s what expression is about to me. You have something that you need to get out and you do, whatever it takes. Sometimes you make something beautiful and sometimes it’s something frightening.

It’s probably the one thing I’d go mad without, creating. Whether it’s lasting or transitory. whatever you make is a reminder to the world that you were here and tells a small bit of your story, your point of view. Everyone deserves to have a piece of themselves seen and understood. There are a million ways to do it, to make your mark. Every one of them is worth your time and energy and who knows, maybe it might even be appreciated by someone who never knew they could do the same thing or how to say something you were able to. It’s all beautiful…the most beautiful thing in the world.

Britannia Rules

So, yes I’ve hit another fangirl moment. Funny how I can write all sorts of  personal stuff, but when it comes to something I really love, I get all verkelmpt and weepy. (I told you guys I was sentimental!) The story is, I finally got my passport! Despite my bad luck of late and my current inability to travel, I couldn’t be more excited. It’s the prospect of being able to finally get to the one place I’ve always wanted to be, Great Britain.

I happen to be an Angophile of epic proportions, which isn’t to say I’m all geeky about it. I tend to keep it to myself most of the time, but I can tell you all of the time I spend in my head is somewhere in, related to, or in some way based on the United Kingdom.  Ever since I first watched films from the moody Wuthering Heights, Oliver Twist, The Hammer films, and Sweeney Todd with Angela Lansbury to Mary Poppins and Shirley Temple meeting Queen Victoria in The Little Princess as a little girl, I’ve been in love with the place, the culture, and the people. To me, that’s the way people were supposed to be. I identified with all of it, much to the confusion of my parents. As a child I thought they were terribly clever having a woman president (little did I know) and found the culture to be everything I wanted to experience. Everywhere I looked I was in awe of the cleverness, the elegance,  the innovation, the discovery, the humor. I spent most of my growing years trying to be like them, though I can say that I’ve failed miserably in the end. (I heard myself speak on tape and I sound like a more punk rock version of the little mermaid, oh, the horror!) I don’t sound anywhere near as posh as I’d hoped. It doesn’t matter though. To love something, you don’t necessarily have to be of it.

My dream for years has been to finally make it there to the countryside of the Brontes to smell the air and feel the essence of the place, to see the Kent of Dickens and Whitby where Bram Stoker penned Dracula’s arrival in England and the place where Captain Cook hails from. To visit the places where my favorite books were written, to walk in the footsteps of the people I admired from the past and get a small sense of what it may have been like is what I look to. I want to see the haunted places, the infamous places, and the great buildings of history. Ancient buildings are something that we sadly don’t have much of on this side of the US where I live. 

Being a writer who’s stories tend to be based there, I don’t feel like I can do it justice from afar, no matter how much British television I watch or books I read. So, I’ve begun to look for contests for trips to finally make it there. I’ve entered one so far. It may be a long shot, but it offers me hope and, in the long run  the more I try the more the numbers will be on my side; or, I may just get extremely lucky. Now that I have my passport, it’s an open field of possibility that I’m supremely excited about.

The more I talk to people, the more I find that everyone has a passion, for different places of course, but everyone has that lifetime dream destination. One has a passion to visit Latin America, another, Italy, another finally made it to the Holy Land. As for me, I hope to be writing a post from mine soon. I apologize in advance for my gushing…