A friend of mine sent me a message yesterday: she had bought my book.
Among all my friends and family, she and her husband are the first people to actually hold the book in their hands. She had been moving fast (which is impressive for someone eight months pregnant), because I myself had got word from my editor only a couple of hours earlier, saying the book is printed and out in stores now. My box of copies has been mailed to me here in Holland. It will probably arrive some time next week, which means everyone else will have seen the book before me.
“You will celebrate it, won’t you?” my friend asked.
I know I’m supposed to, and I really should. Celebrating endings is good for the soul. But the thing is, I have been asked this same question so many times during the entire novel-writing process. One thing I learned all along is that there are no endings in it. No natural moments of closure. No point in time when the whole thing is finally completely finished and you can put it down and party. That moment you see in movies and on television when you type “The End” and yank triumphantly the last page from the typewriter? It never happens.
“You’ll celebrate now, won’t you?” I was asked when I had more or less finished the first draft. But there was never a moment when I was really done with it. I didn’t even finish at The End, because I had written the ending earlier. And when the whole story was written down, I went back and added some. Deleted some. Changed things. Undid the changes. At some point I had a draft decent enough to send to some selected people for comments. They all got slightly different versions, though – depending on when I sent them their copy – because their comments led to more changes. I was too busy to celebrate.
“You’ll celebrate, won’t you?” I was asked when I had a version I was happy enough with to send to some publishing houses. But in stead of celebrating, I went back and improved some bits (horrified by the thought of having sent such a flawed version to anyone!), so that other publishers I sent it to a few months later got yet a different version.
I kept going back to the manuscript until the first positive reply from a publisher finally came, after several months of rather depressing waiting. The novel would get published!
“You’ll celebrate now, right?”
I admit those were giddy days – but I also immediately started to call other, slower publishing houses to get competing offers. After that, I had to compare them. When I finally chose a publisher, I found myself immediately in talks with the editor they assigned to my book, negotiating some unpleasant changes she wanted me to bring in. The moment of celebration had slipped past me again.
Last June I finished the revisions the editor had asked for and the (several) improvements I wanted to make myself that the editor hadn’t objected to. I guess it should have been a moment to celebrate, but rather than that, I sank into a week-long grey despair – the slump people often go through after an intense creative period. And it’s a good thing I didn’t jump the gun anyway, because in August, the manuscript was suddenly flung back onto my desk for some small but significant last minute revisions some people somewhere had suggested (one of them being me). That was a messy process, requiring negotiating back and forth with my editor, and again I could never yank that last page out of my typewriter (or even wait impatiently for the printer to slowly spit it out, hopefully without yet another paper jam).
So it didn’t end with a bang – I think the very last bit was some worried email I sent to my editor saying: “OK, I guess I’m just going to trust your professional judgement on this.” Woohoo. I’m sure someone suggested celebrating then, too, and I did fly off to New York with my husband shortly after that – but I wasn’t thinking about the book or about rewarding myself at that point any more. I just wanted to put the whole thing out of my mind (and to spend a few days away from my exhausting little angels). And whenever a fleeting thought about the book passed my mind, it was in anticipation of the moment it would finally come out.
So, now’s the time to celebrate. Again. But should I celebrate now that I know the book is out there somewhere? Or next week, when I receive my box of copies? I’m opting for the latter, but it might be just me wanting to put off writing “The End” for a little while longer.
Perhaps because it makes me feel like I should get started with something new.
I went swimming last week, and saw what must be the Oldest Swimming Man in Holland in the pool. Or at least he looked like he could enter the contest.
I swam past him several times, until at one point I accidentally kicked him in the hand. I turned to apologize, and he winked. I don’t mean winking like old men sometimes wink at young(er) people: “You kids!” It was most definitely a very, very flirty kind of wink. I swallowed a pint of chlorinated water and finished my laps still grinning. I guess if someone is 90+ and still afloat, it is just to be expected they also have the zest to flirt with people 60 years younger.
Another encounter with old people. The ancient nutty woman living next door rang our doorbell at 5AM this morning. She was shouting half-hysterically about some music she heard from the house next to hers and demanded we came to her apartment to hear it, too. My husband is a sweet guy, so he got dressed and went with her.
There was nothing to hear, of course. Silence. Like you’d expect – and prefer – at 5AM.
- You hear this? It’s been going on all night!
My husband said he couldn’t hear anything. The woman was indignant.
- What, am I crazy then?
Old age. I know it will happen to me too. I’ll start to hear non-existent music. I just hope it will be the kind of music that will make me feel like getting frisky with young people, and not the kind that keeps me awake at night when the rest of the world sleeps.
I need a nap.
The thought came to me as I was watching the throng of tourists on top of the Empire State Building: they really don’t look like they are having fun.
Sure, it was early morning, we had all queued a long time, gone through security checks, waited for several elevators while enduring manic sales pitches from people selling recorded guided tours with Danny DeVito. But still. The Empire State Building. Great visibility, just a tad chilly in the shadow side, New York City at our feet. And we all looked… well, kind of grim.
The crowd I was part of consisted of people from all over the world, and most of us bore the same expression on our faces. As if we were dutifully fulfilling an obligation: Visit the Empire State Building. Look in all four directions. Maybe with Danny DeVito, if you don’t mind spending a few bucks, or just the map of Manhattan, if you like to know where things are precisely located. Or otherwise just wait for a spot at the railing, peer around, see if you recognize anything, take a few snapshots, repeat three more times and get the hell out.
You see the same thing going on at any tourist attraction all over the world. The few people grinning at their companions (and their camera lenses) with genuine excitement are vastly outnumbered by people who are far less enthusiastic. Shuffling their feet, looking around mildly disappointed by how small / dirty / expensive / crowded / commercial / crumbled the thing they came to see is, still a little pissed off about how high the entrance fee was, how the A/C of the tour bus broke down on the way there, or how they got cheated at the currency exchange. Leafing through their guide books to see where they should go next.
Yes, should go. Tourism is full of obligations. We arrive some place new, with a few days of our precious holiday to spend, and with the vague feeling that we have to use them well to maximise the experience – to really see the place. We take our cues from guide books, brochures and touts. The efficient ones among us get organized, have a timetable, manage to do the Louvre, the Eiffel Tower and l’Arc de Triomphe on a single day. Others take the guided tour or hop on a sightseeing double decker. We all feel the urge to gather photographic evidence, with which to bore our friends and family afterwards. Here’s me in front of Taj Mahal. Here are the kids at the Great Pyramids. This one the tour guide took of all of us, it’s a little out of focus but you can see the Colosseum on the background. And, yes, here we are on top of the Empire State building. Squinting grumpily – it must be the bright sunlight, or the fact that queuing up there took forever.
Most people are just unhappy most of the time, a friend of mine once said – quoting the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, I think. I wondered about that in the long queue back to the elevators. Travelling pushes us from our comfort zone, into the sea of the unknown. Maybe we just try to do what we feel is expected from us. Dreading to hear upon returning: ”Whaaaat, you went all the way there and you didn’t see X? That was the best part!” Or we are afraid of being like those people who stay in all-inclusive resorts and never budge from the pool. They could have been anywhere, we sneer. They could have saved their pennies and gone to the spa in the neighbouring county.
The Empire State building was the first and last bit of heavy duty tourism we did during our stay in New York. We had left our copy of the Lonely Planet at home, and never really missed it. My Mom had told me Ellis Island was a must see, but somehow we never made it to the ferry. We didn’t visit the Statue of Liberty, and didn’t even take the Staten Island ferry that passes it. We saw the statue standing in the distance from Battery Park, though, while a gathering of Wiccans were chanting behind us, celebrating their harvest weaving ceremony. We got merrily lost in Chinatown. And we did catch the city from some other unexpected angles (especially when my husband lost his passport). Every now and then I saw a tour bus and the thought crossed my mind: what am I missing?
Not a lot of fun, I assured myself.
With a tinge of appropriate guilt.
My daughters, 4,5 and 2,5 years old, don’t speak any English, but they are curious about the music I listen to. What are those people singing about? I often tell them little stories about the songs, sometimes based on the lyrics or the video, or just images the music calls up in my mind. I love the way the girls sit and listen attentively to the songs afterwards, trying to hear my story in them. And sometimes they make requests. Like today.
”Play rock music!” (Despite the seemingly unlimited choice, I have already learned the only thing they will settle for is Nirvana’s Unplugged album.)
”Play the one where that man climbs up on the roof and sits on the chimney to warm up his butt,” asks the 4-year old, giggling. (Damien Rice: Coconut Skins)
”Play the one with the ghost girl,” whispers the 2-year-old, wide-eyed. ”The song where there’s a ghost outside the window and she wants to come inside… and then the boy lets her!” (Kate Bush: Wuthering Heights)
”Play the one with the fairy who’s throwing away all her forks and knives.” (Björk: Hyperballad)
”Play the one where the man is driving and he sees an airplane come closer and closer from behind and it flies really low over his car and CRASHES,” asks the 4-year-old excitedly. (Clinic: Come Into Our Room – and no, I have no idea how I came up with that story, but it really seems to appeal to my children)
”Play the one with the girl who works at the bank.” (The Velvet Underground: Sweet Jane. Both girls join in on the chorus at the top of their lungs: ”CJ!”)
”Play the one where Chris Martin has baby Moses in his arms and they’re dancing really fast and the baby laughs and laughs.” (Coldplay: Speed Of Sound – hey, don’t look at me like that, my oldest went through an intense Coldplay period when she was 2 and there was nothing we could do about it. Her favourite song was Politik! And she came up with this particular mental picture by herself, after numerous queries about the singer and his family. No tabula rasa proponents in our household, they really have a mind of their own.)
But sometimes there just isn’t enough information.
”Play the one with the angel,” the girls demand. What angel?
”Mom!!! The angel!!!”
I recall vaguely that some time ago, I told the girls some little musical story about an angel, but I have no idea who or which song it was. We try Tori Amos. No, it’s not her; she’s the one with Rice Crispies and a bunny. Cesaria Evora? No! Suzanne Vega? No, no, no!! Björk?
”No, she’s a fairy! Mom!!”
I can’t find the right one. Big disappointment. I plop the outraged kids in front of the telly to calm them down with the same soothing Polish animations I grew up with, and go make flatbread and veggies for dinner. The musical requests are over, for today.
PS. If anyone has suggestions for angel music, I’m all ears. (Although I might not dare to bring up the topic with my kids any time soon. They have poor tolerance for bad DJs.)
The walk from Penn Station to our hotel in itself would have been worth the trip. At first glance, New York City was chaotic. It was vibrant, it was flashy, it was disorienting, and at times, it made me think of a Third World country. The city felt both familiar and completely strange – a bit like someone you have known for a long time, yet only recently met in person. There were all the places I grew up seeing on television and in movies, suddenly real.
Every time I saw a police car race through the streets, it made the opening tune of NYPD Blue play in my mind. Beauty salons, fancy restaurants and stores with ridiculously posh handbags made me think of Sex and the City. The bright lights of Times Square reminded me of, well, just about every European documentary I have ever seen about America. And watching the fire brigade at work, while smoke was billowing out from the underground floor of a bank, immediately evoked other pictures – of the rescue operation right after the attack on the World Trade Center six years ago.
I found myself thinking about 9/11 many times during my stay in New York, and not only when we visited Ground Zero. I remember how right after the attack, some of my fellow Europeans would mock the collective wave of horror and grief most of us felt, chastising us for being hypocrites. Countless people die of natural disasters, acts of violence or just plain starvation around the globe all the time, was their argument. Why get so emotional now? We were suckered into the American media hysteria, they derided. Sentimentalists, lacking real empathy, as we were only able to feel compassion when we could see the catastrophe with our own eyes, captured on camera. Racist, even, for not waking up every morning with an equal feeling of dismay at the thought of all the suffering masses in Africa – we were numb to their plight, yet wept for the people in business suits jumping from WTC windows, and rescue patrols caught in the rubble of the collapsing towers. I heard the same arguments – quite possibly from the same people – in the wake of the Asian tsunami on Boxing Day 2004, claiming the international relief donations only started to pour in because of the video tapes, because of the tourists caught in the violent gush of the ocean, because of hotels we ourselves could have stayed in, had we been there. ”You only cry because you can imagine it happening to you, and not just to the faceless Others in the Third World.”
It was ludicrous and infuriating, of course, this demand to justify the sorrow people felt on both occasions. And yes, I do sometimes also feel paralysed by the thought of all the other horrible things happening in the world right now – the ones unwitnessed by camera crews and never caught on tape by accidental bystanders. But it is different, of course, when you don’t have to see it. When it doesn’t connect to anything or anyone you know. It remains abstract. Requires an effort to really grasp. Is easier to tune out.
For some reason, this was never very far from my thoughts in NYC.
This was my first time in USA, yet in many ways, New York City was familiar from before. I had heard all the street names. I recognized shops, brands and products. In all the countries I have lived in, everybody grows up with a little, flickering window into America in our living room. Studies show Finnish school kids know the American justice system better than their own (our special thanks to Law and Order, LA Law, the Practice, Judging Amy…). Americans are loved, hated, admired, criticised, imitated and measured up against as only intimate acquaintances can be. We learn the language, eat the food, watch the commercials, lust for the celebrities, dread the politics and their consequences to the rest of the world. And when they die in a horrifically spectacular way, we are deeply shocked.
NYC wasn’t all familiar, though. In reality, it came with sounds and smells and sights and impressions I hadn’t expected or imagined, and sometimes didn’t like at all. Like the way Americans seem to enjoy being refrigerated. We would walk around in the balmy, just-above-(European)-room-temperature September weather, and then pull on our sweaters and jackets to step inside somewhere for dinner. (But the dinner itself was always great.)
As always, what I liked most about my trip was just watching people, the streams and torrents of them, pouring through the streets, walking through the red lights, grabbing their lunch in the delis, staring at empty air in the subways. I never saw the same face twice. All this made the city seem both bigger and smaller. New Yorkers were just like people everywhere, only most of them in a bigger hurry, or so it seemed. And somehow, in the deep canyons between the huge buildings – passing me by at touching distance, not seen on TV, played by actors – all of them looked quite fragile.
Like people everywhere.
