Sarah Samudre

Here is the third post in the series, written by Julia Fishwick, a friend from Twitter, Tumblr and as of last fall, real life. She is an amazing friend, a lover of good books, good television and good people. Do yourself a big favor and check out her blog over at Tumblr. 

Also: make sure you get in on the commenting. What books have inspired you and the person you want to be?

Thanks!

- Sarah

A Look at My Favorite Literature

Guest poster: Julia Fishwick (check her out on Tumblr!)

When Sarah asked me if I would like to contribute to her series, I was simultaneously intimidated and delighted. I had no idea where to begin! But …I also cannot resist talking about literature any chance I get. 

The books I have read throughout my life have helped define who I am by clarifying who I want to be, as well as who I do not want to be. I grew up reading all the books I could get my hands on, and yet, I still feel tremendously inadequate as a reader, and every day my to-read list grows!

Part of the reason I have not read all of the books I would like to have read by now is my love of re-reading. When I fall in love with a story, I want it near me all the time. I want to be able to pick it up at a moment’s notice and fall back into the familiar tale. My favorite stories are at once a well-worn security blanket, comfort food, a favorite sweater I curl up with when I’m feeling unwell, a hug from a friend, and a reminder of who I am.

I have a list of comfort stories, which consists books as well as television and movies, filed somewhere in my mind. These are the stories that I turn to when I need cheering up, or when I need an emotional outlet.

I read a lot in my youth, as I said. When recommended a book to read, I always asked if it had a happy ending before I would commit to reading it, until I was able to understand what I wanted well enough to phrase my request a little more accurately and ask if it had a satisfying ending. What really mattered to me was that, if I fell in love with the characters, I wouldn’t be left wondering and worrying about what might or might not have happened to them. (This is still important to me. That unfinished feeling will nag at me for weeks, or longer… and while I don’t seek out books that will break my heart, a happy ending is not a requirement, but a conclusion that wraps things up effectively is definitely necessary in my reading material.)

I fell deeply in love with the L.M. Montgomery books (not just the Anne series, though I love it with all of my heart and have always lamented the shyness and predictability that made me feel I was more of a Diana Barry than an Anne Shirley), Girl of the Limberlost, and Jane Eyre. In early middle school, I became acquainted with science fiction, reading first the Tripod series by John Christopher, then the Hobbit, and Ray Bradbury’s Illustrated Man… followed by everything I could find by Bradbury. But more than anything, I loved Jane Austen’s stories.

I’d read most of the Austen books before I was 14, and I loved that there was a female character I could relate to in every story. It wasn’t always the main character, of course… as shy, insecure, and passive as I was, I wasn’t the type of personality that people would write stories about… and, much like with the Anne of Green Gables series, I often identified my more familiar traits in the character of a friend or sister rather than in the heroine. But that never matters in the Jane Austen books, because she pairs her characters with the people who suit them best, and they could not be happy any other way. Of course, not all of them were happy in the end, but I felt they couldn’t have been happier in any case. Through these stories, I found hope that I would be able to spend my life with the people who suit me best, as her characters did.

 I found myself at a loss for what to write when contemplating this post, because I did not think I could put into words what stories have meant to me. There is still so much to say, and I am not convinced I have done justice to what I have tried to say here, but that’s okay.

I have long had a suspicion that reading so much has led me to feel insecure about my own writing, I have never been very competitive, and so instead of saying, “I could do that!” I often think I could never express myself as well as the authors I love have done.  Even so, I wouldn’t trade for the world the experiences I have had through stories, or the comfort they have given me.

Stories are so subjective, their meanings and impact will change depending on what is going on for me when I’m reading them. I have never liked trying to summarize things for people when I tell them about a story I love. I know that the things I noticed about it, or the significance those things (or the story itself) held for me will not be the same for everyone, and I worry that telling my version will influence how they watch or read the story themselves and what they get out of it. This aversion to summarizing (or even filling in gaps) when someone misses part of a TV show, drives people crazy, unfortunately… so I have resigned myself to doing recaps when we can’t just rewind and let them see the story for themselves, but I tell them to read the book themselves so I don’t have to fill them in. 

I still worry that they are missing out on things that would be meaningful for them if they watched it without my influence. 

In any case, I hope I continue to re-read my favorite stories all of my life. They feel like coming home, but I instead of getting sick of them, I always notice something new, or experience things differently nearly every time I read a story. 

Here is the second post in the series, written by my husband and filmmaking partner, Vasant Samudre. I hope, once you’re done reading the article, you’ll respond in the comment section about specific characters you’ve really gotten to over the years. 

-Sarah

From Arthur to Aragorn: The Evolution of My Favorite Character

Guest poster: Vasant Samudre

When Sarah came up with the idea for this series, I knew that, when I wrote my post for it, I wouldn’t be able to write about just one story. I have always been extremely fascinated with stories, telling them, listening to them, watching them and playing them out.  But for me, no one story caught my imagination, more than one particular character has: King Arthur. I discovered him as a child and I’ve found every story having to deal with him equally fascinating. Every Arthurian legend instantly hooks me and it’s not so much the type of story, but the hero at its heart that draws me in. As I grew older, Aragorn in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings fed became part of the fascination for this particular character.

My interest in Arthur actually started with an incredibly cheesy cartoon called King Arthur and the Knights of Justice that aired in the early ‘90’s. It was a short lived show, but at eight years old, I fell in love with the character of Arthur- everything he stood for, what he fought for, how he fought for what he believed in and above all, fought and ruled with selfless-justice for the people. The notion of fighting for a greater purpose is something that resounds within me on a deep level.  I bought books that were meant for kids which synthesized Arthur myths into an easy to read format. I waged pretend battles with Arthur at the head of them. In my mid-twenties, I read T.H. White’s The Once and Future King and soon after Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Artur and found myself just as captivated with the king as I had been so many years ago. Within the last couple years, I’ve read Tennyson’s Idylls of King and read through the wilder myths surrounding the British King in The Welsh Triads. No matter how different the story, the image of the king battling for his people fanned into flame the sparks of my imagination.

It’s never mattered to me whether Arthur was a plastic figurine, a customized Lego character, watched on TV or read in a book. I’ve been drawn to all aspects of his character, to every story and every plot (which is unfortunate at times because a lot of Arthurian movies are awful).

I rediscovered Arthur long before I delved into the books surrounding him in my mid-twenties. I was introduced to Aragorn (a.k.a. Elessar, a.k.a. Strider) in The Lord of the Rings in 2001 (yes, I watched the movies before reading the books- I’m not ashamed to admit it).  The added characteristic of a king who refuses to be a king because he is afraid of his own weaknesses hits me to the core still today. 

Aragorn, to me, embodies all the complexities of character that are found in multiple Arthurian tales. He is as reluctant as T.H. White’s Arthur, as headstrong as the Welsh Arthur, as mighty as the Malory version, and as noble and chivalrous as Tennyson’s. Both receive swords that are destined to be wielded by them and only them, and with these swords they command great power. Both have encounters with goddess figures (The Lady of the Lake for Arthur and Arwen/Galadriel for Aragorn). Both return from exile to accept the roles that they were destined for.

Both heroes descend from an evil king. Arthur, in most tales, is the son of the ruthless Uther Pendragon and it was the fault of Aragorn’s forefather, Isildur, that the evil ring of Sauron had survived .  His forefather’s corruption brought war upon to an entire world. The interesting thing is that Arthur’s lineage is almost always just a stated fact in most myths. It rarely comes into play in any plots or presents a problem for Arthur. Aragorn is haunted by his family failure.

Aragorn fears that he could be corrupted and fail his people, just as Isildur did. It’s this fear I admire in Aragorn the most.  It keeps him humble, keeps him in line and focused on the greater good.  But this fear isn’t something that Aragorn could hold onto. For the sake of Middle Earth, he had to “put aside the Ranger and become the man” he was meant to be. He had confront his fears, answers for his failings and rise up to the task of being the warrior king who would mend the world.

Arthur captured my imagination as a child because he embodied the strength and purity of heart that I wanted in my life.  But as I grew older and dealt with my own darkness and father issues, I began to fear that I’d never be the man I wanted to be. Enter Aragorn, an Arthurian character who answered my fears by simply acknowledging them. He was broken down with guilt and self-doubt. He was honest with the weakness and fear within himself. The strange thing was that none of that compromised the purity of heart I’d grown up admiring in King Arthur. So, with this tale, a childhood character evolved in my head into one I could identify with as an adult.

Joseph Campbell writes in A Hero with a Thousand Faces of the universal hero’s journey (the hero found in every culture) has a three step phase: separation-initiation-return.  It’s here, as Campbell explains, that the hero must journey on his own, find his accomplishment and return a changed man (or woman).  As I’ve grown into my manhood, I’ve seen this cycle of separation-initiation-return something that is used in films.  The main character must leave his current situation in order to grow, that is to learn and become something more by initiating the “there’s no going back now” moment.  Once the point of victory is reached, the main character of the story must return, changed, to bring to the people a forgotten aspect of their humanity (freedom, love, peace, etc). 

I think a good story is an adventure in itself. It gives you the same opportunity as the hero has. You get to retreat into it, exiled from the real world for a moment. The narrative initiates you: you experience things within the realm of the story that real life doesn’t give you the time or the right way to think about. Then you return. You turn off the TV. You close the book. You walk out of the theater. You grow too old for Lego battles (not there yet, I’ll let you know when that happens), but the story sticks with you, on some level. For me, Arthur and Aragorn have stuck with me on the deepest level, I love being able to return to their stories as an adventure of my own, hoping that I will, again, be changed for having gone through the stories with them.

This is the first post in the Stories Save My Life series. I’m really excited about the guestposts we’re going to get and the comments they’ll hopefully generate on the impact stories have on our lives. Personally, I will probably write about many stories, from many mediums, while this series is running. I would be remiss, however, if I began it with anything else other than the stories which Anne Shirley inhabits, chief among them: Anne of Green Gables.

Backstory: I was an odd child. From an early age, I had an incredible vocabulary, a vast (and at times, overpowering) imagination and not many people knew how to take me. I was interested in things that other kids found boring. When I tried to talk with adults, they were put off by a child of ten who wanted to discuss philosophy, theology and politics with them. I made up stories and talked incessantly, cracking jokes, composing poems, talking about movies, stories and books. I was constantly getting into trouble, letting my mouth run off. I had such big ideas, and such a fire in my belly, that whenever I felt anything, I said everything.

I believe the word to politely describe me was precocious . I believe the words more commonly used were “weird”, “brat”, “know-it-all”, and “strange”. Everywhere I went I felt like an outcast.

All of this, combined with being a late-bloomer, meant that for me, childhood was painful. Sometimes still, I feel sick thinking back to showdowns on the blacktop, being pushed into walls, down school stairwells, hit with dodgeballs (outside of any game) and laughed at by peers. I remember adults scolding, teasing and laughing derisively. I remember wanting a way out of my life by the age of twelve, tempted by thoughts of suicide. My saving grace was my imagination and the stories I both fed it and created within it. It was necessary to retreat into my imagination to get away from being bullied by my peers and elders.

My dreamworld became a refuge and I built it with good music, good books and good movies. One character in particular, Anne Shirley, the heroine of many books by L.M. Montgomery, showed me how to build that retreat and promised that one day, eventually, I wouldn’t need to hide there.

I first read the Anne books when I was very young. I can’t even remember how early the books came, but I know that quotes from L.M. Montgomery’s works were working themselves into my conversations by 4th grade. I read through the series several times, but especially through the first three books: Anne of Green Gables, Anne of Avonlea and Anne of the Island. I rewatched the PBS mini-series over and over. Anne Shirley was a friend to me. She made me feel valid.

We were both bullied. She was rarely described as “precocious” by anyone except her readers. By the adults in her world, she was described cruelly. She was misunderstood by 98% of her peers. We were both teased for our freckles. Her hair was her most hated feature, as was mine (although her’s was for its color, and mine was for its sheer size- no matter what length I chopped it to, it was big enough to warrant its own zip code). That picture above… is not of Hermione Granger.

Anne relied on stories like she relied on air and used everything in her path to fuel her imagination. After a life that, when the reader meets her, consisted of being an orphan, being beat and used as a servant, she arrives on Prince Edward Island and experiences joy that the average adult can’t fathom. She and her new guardian, Matthew, drive down a blossom-filled avenue she dubs “The White Way of Delight”, past a pond she calls 
“The Lake of Shining Waters” and she feels like she’s arrived in heaven itself. All of a sudden, to me, the brown hills that served as dreary walls for my hometown of Fremont, California, had changed. They were covered in velveteen gold, rolling away towards other valleys and opening up towards the north and south. The smog on the horizon disappeared, eaten up by the blue sky. The cracked sidewalks became canyons in my mind. Little green blades of grass became like cedars of Lebanon to me. I made the best of what I had. I reveled in what little “scope for the imagination”, as Anne called it, that my hometown afforded.

So try to conceive of the bliss that bowled me over when I moved up to the Pacific Northwest. My gigantic hair, vocabulary and imagination made things almost as difficult for me in my new state as it’d been in California. But here in the Northwest, I finally had the beauty that Anne had when she arrived in Prince Edward Island. Behind our house was a forest that descended into a valley, away from the housing developments. The forest there was dark and mossy. There were pines, cedars and maples. Down the winding trail, once you reached the valley floor, the tall trees retreated to a circle around a tiny meadow. It was as if they were guarding this secret place. A spring bubbled up in a cluster of birch trees on the southern end of the valley. Best of all, every August, the meadow filled up with Queen Anne’s lace, a flower I’d only, until that point, read about in the Anne books. It looked like a cloud had settled down on the valley floor for a quick nap before rejoining its brothers in the sky. I named it Anne’s Valley and escaped there whenever I could.

As silly as that may sound, it was the first dream of mine that had ever come true. After years of reading Anne books and wishing that I had more than cracked and dry surroundings, I finally had my version of P. E. Island. It reinforced my desire to hold onto the books as a beacon. Maybe, if both Anne and I had found a wilderness to escape into, and a town set amongst the blossoms and lakes of shining waters, then maybe other things would happen too. Maybe I’d grow into my features. Maybe one day, I’d write a book of my own and my wordiness would make my way in the world, rather than making me an object of ridicule.

And wouldn’t you know… all those things, after many awkward, character-building adventures, did come to pass. My hair became manageable around eighteen, darkening and reddening at the same time so that my hair was auburn, like Anne’s became. Instead of frizzy, it was silky. That may sound vain, to have worried about something like that, but trust me: my wild hair gave me more than one nickname over the course of my childhood and teen years. In 2001, I started writing on a blogging platform called LiveJournal and people started liking me, for the first time in my life, for the way I had with words. I started to seriously work on my fiction and poetry in my early twenties and just finished my first novel in 2010, at the age of 28.

When I was heading into the final chapters of my book, I had a morning when, as I sat down at my desk, I looked out of the window and into the forest. I saw the mist curling in through the woods, cutting amongst the trunks of trees and curtains of moss. I looked down into the flower beds and saw the purple, fuschia and yellows wildflowers rioting up from dark soil. I looked back down at my desk and saw my book, almost finished, open on a Word file. Tears filled my eyes. I had become who I wanted to be when I was little. Whatever else becomes of me, in that moment and since then, I am the adult that my childhood-self desperately wanted to be. I am loved by a man with dark hair and dark eyes. My hair is now one of my favorite features. I’ve learned to control my temper and wicked tongue. Many people actually appreciate the way I have with words and the way that my mind works. I’ve written a book and I have dozens more books, poems and screenplays burning a hole in my heart to get out onto the page. 

I am so lucky that Montgomery’s Anne Shirley was there to promise this all for me. I knew that if someone had written this book, then that person knew what it was like to be me. That meant that I was not alone. As young as I was, I knew that if this book was popular almost a century after publication, that there were many who read it and loved it like I did: not as a distraction, but as a life preserver.

I would return to the series many times, in childhood, my teenage years and in my twenties. I suspect I will always return to it. When my idealism is threatened, when I feel alone, or when I need to be reminded that a few kindred spirits are better than a hundred fake friends, I’ll take up the series again. It may not be the best written series. I understand why some marginalize it. For me, it’s literary defects are outweighed by the world that it creates and the character at its center. Without her, I wouldn’t have had the strength to stick out two awkward decades in hopes that someday, I’d hit my stride. And I have. And that is why the story of Anne Shirley is the first story that saved my life.

***

As I said in the introduction to this series, if you have a story (from film, books, comics, short fiction or television) that impacted your life, let me know. Several people have already contacted me about posts and they’ll be posted here over the next couple weeks and months, but I still want more. Maybe you’ve never thought that a story defined you, or maybe you think the story that meant the most to you is too silly to write about. Trust me, there is no snobby cut-off for this series. If it’s a story and it’s influenced you, let’s get into it. This series will only be as good as the interaction we get on it.

On that note, I hope that all of you who are reading this will take the time to comment:

What are some stories that defined your childhood?

From our first day out in the city, I found that I have more of a fascination for the little hidden details down alleys than I have for any monument in a large piazza. The walls, faded frescoes, and graffiti that I’ve found speak to me about the city, its continuity with art and the way even a crumbling wall can still be important to the structure of a baroque building. It’s easy to ponder a large iconic statue. But the walls are rushed past. Only the studious traveler will stop to consider what they are saying as you make your way to those many famous piazzas. The pictures that follow are a few that I’ve chosen from my favorite walls from the our stay in the city. Hopefully, they give an idea of the kind of Rome that is easily missed but worth hunting for.

The first photo in this set was the first photo to really attract me in Rome. We had set out from our hotel (days before we got keys to our flat) to get lost in the city. With a GPS-enabled phone, this is a favorite pastime of mine, so I dart down as many alleys as I can to really get to know a new city the way a local might. This wall came out of nowhere, southwest of the Giardino di Quirnale, and is (I believe) the backside to the Palazzo della Consulta, which is right across from the Palazzo Quirnale (from the front, this a beautiful baroque government building).  

It is a bit overexposed towards the end of the alley, but it’s a cell phone taking a picture at midday. I was drawn towards the plant is growing out of the red Roman brick. The wall, to the touch, is porous and soft. Dirt comes off easily on your fingertips. I absolutely love that this large wall is the backside to a baroque government building. It speaks to the way Rome coexists between the architectural ages unlike any city I’ve ever been to. 

The second photo in the set was taken in Il Cacere di Mamertino, the Prison Cell of St. Peter. The site, while very historically important and holy, is now a tourist trap. You’re required to go through it at a pace set by a ridiculously cheesy audio-guide.  You’d have to be an arrogant American to hold up the group so you can steal a moment in quiet corners to yourself to reflect and take a photo of something not lit up by a grandiose light show. In this case, I decided to be that arrogant American.  

The above is a fresco, faded in the corner of the chapel. According to legend or history, whichever you prefer, St. Peter baptized his prison guards here before being crucified. On his way out of the cell, he bashed his head against the stone wall and a spring gushed forth. The prison became a chapel and has been a pilgrim site ever since. (This is according to the audio guide. I doubt that at ten euros with a thirty minute audio guide that it is still a pilgrimage site). 

This shot is taken with my iPhone, like the first photo. I like it because it feels like a secret. You aren’t directed to look at it or dwell on it and, like photos later in the set, it is a type of graffiti meant to express the sentiment of the people that lived in Rome at the time. Even though it now sits in a tourist trap, it still speaks to the joy and hope those pilgrims felt and communicates to me in the midst of a commercialized audio tour. 

The third photo is very much like the first. It is a shot of the back of the Palazzo Farnese, which is the palatial home of the French Embassy. Like over by the Quirnale area, this is down a small alley and it is a night and day difference from the Palazzo’s baroque façade. Because of this, I’m in heaven. This is one of thirty pictures snapped with my iPhone as we headed towards Trastevere for dinner. To think that this kind of wall functions structurally today is amazing enough, but to think that it also vanishes into what most tourists see as the Palazzo Farnese blows my mind.  

The fourth photo reminded me very much of the fresco I’d seen in St. Peter’s Prison cell. It’s a stones-throw away from the alley in the prior photo. I love the color composition for both this wall and the fresco in St. Peter’s cell, the way they are both peeling from the walls and are both remnants of Rome’s ideas, expressions and events. I took a wide angle shot of this graffiti as it sat in the alley, but then I remembered the fresco, got close to the wall, and took it in as detailed a way as I could. 

The fifth photo was taken with my Nikon (yes, I do have a real camera). It was one our way down the Via Marguta on Thursday, towards Fellini’s home. Again, I have a penchant for Rome’s graffiti and the way it speaks to what is really going on in the city better than any tourbook can. This photo, like the other two graffiti shots, is peeling. Also, like the two wall shots, there is something growing over it, doing damage to the poster, but enhancing it aesthetically. 

This photo is not a wall, but the Ponte Sisto. It’s the oldest bridge connecting Rome to Trastevere, an eclectic neighborhood across the River Tiber from the main historic area of Rome, is magical. It was ignored by popes for centuries and so retains it’s medieval architecture. Alleys are narrow and wind up a tall hill from the banks for the Tiber. Food is as good here (or better) than it is on the other side of the river, but it is also a third of the cost. There are pine trees and vines climbing buildings and you can smell the difference the profusion of plants make in the air. Here you see graffiti everywhere and it adds to the beauty of the city.

I love the above picture. It’s such a subversion of the typical “picturesque” Italian door. It has the hanging flora festooning the walls, the virescent paint against coral-colored walls, but it’s also covered with graffiti. Not exactly what you would expect. And yet, as common as ivy-covered walls are in Trastevere, graffiti is even more common. These next four are graffiti found on the walls in Trastevere. 

These photos not only demonstrate the way art is used on walls in Rome, but also how they speak to a certain attitude of this particular Roman neighborhood. The graffiti in Trastevere is different from the rest of Rome. It is thoughtful. It lets you know that you’re now in the Bohemian part of town. It also re-impresses how important street art is to Rome. The silver she-wolves on the bridge, in particular, are a remnant of a museum-sponsored graffiti project that covered the entire city months before we arrived. 

This ninth shot is in Vatican City, five minutes up the way from Trastevere. The poem says (roughly translated) “A white page is a hidden poem”. I loved finding poems in unexpected places. Similarly, this next shot, though it isn’t on a wall, is another graffitied poem.

It says, (again, very roughly translated), “After another year we will be here to speak of love.” I bent over the marble rails at Pincio Hill and there it was. Another unexpected encounter with street poetry.

*

These are just a few of the walls that captured my imagination. I loved that way that frescoes are still preserved but also still current. I love that art is thrown up on streets to speak to the character of the city, its thoughts, its conflicts and its values. I love how you pass a polished baroque facade on one street, then pass a corner and enter and alley and see that the same building does not date back four centuries, but almost twenty centuries. It feels like the owners of the building are trying to hide that fact, facing the antiquated side into a dark alley. But when you find these things, and notice the details, you feel like you’ve uncovered that secret and gotten to know this well-known city much better than any guidebook could tell you about.

So after five weeks in Rome, I’m back and blogging again.

I feel ridiculous, honestly. I wanted to blog WEEKLY while there. But, as it turns out, completing a novel, traveling around the world and filming a documentary had burnt me out. I have been back in Washington for three weeks and I am just *now* beginning to get back into the swing of things. 

I did write while in Rome, but it was nothing that I wanted to show anyone. Selfish as that may seem, I felt like I’d get a better glimpse of the city if I ignored any potential “reader” and wrote Rome down as it hit me and only me. The things I wrote while there were sketches of the city, random prose and bits of poetry that hit me in key locations. I knew that I needed to give myself the grace to be burnt out after the last year, especially after the last few, hectic months of finishing the book. While my best intentions were to blog about Rome while IN the city itself, my vivid memory and my notebook will have to be fuel enough for the following posts. This first one is just about the wonderful problem of being in Rome to begin with.

Being in Rome was tough. The city is gilded and graffittied, filled with travertine and tour buses.  It takes a great deal of determination to move past the circus of Rome and find something unique. Souvenir stands and street grifters stand in front of all the famous monuments, screaming for your attention. And if they aren’t enough to put you out, the advertisements that sometimes drape over a monument will. Don’t get me wrong, Rome is beautiful. But it can’t be really known if you’re a tourbus tourist: there for a weekend whirl through the five most famous sites. Believe me though, it is worth fighting to get to know.

As difficult a city as Rome usually is, for Vasant and I, this difficulty was increased tenfold. Our flat was not the most comfortable place in Rome. I was still editing my novel (which is finally completed after seven years of effort), we were getting our documentary script ready and scouting filming locations with not a single day to waste. Hardships cropped up amongst the busy schedule: my dog (of 15 years) died back in Seattle, we got sick (twice) and my ankle, which I’d sprained earlier that year, along with my Achille’s tendon, gave out on me again. Our shower in our apartment was broken, giving us only mist instead of an actual jet of water. Our bed was nothing more than metal rods with a blanket over it. By the end of our second week, we were exhausted, feverish, burnt out and grieving for our dog. We felt like we didn’t know anything more about Rome than what a postcard could tell us. We were upset that creating art within the city seemed so out of reach. 

One Saturday, around midnight, we left our apartment in frustration and walked to the Colosseum, 4 km away, ranting about these very things. When we arrived, we sat on the grass in the moonlight and looked at the archways, talking about our trip. Eventually we stopped talking and just stared. The Colosseum at night has a way of quieting you. It shuts you up. Its endurance in the face of commercialism, traffic, pollution and obviously, the harsh march of time, made us feel small. Our problems felt invisible. 

Then, out of the silence, we both were reminded of Goethe’s trip to the Colosseum centuries ago. Vasant pulled his copy of Italian Journeys from his bag (he carried it with him everywhere while in Rome) and turned to that page. 

I loved the way the Colosseum was lit the first time I saw it. The amber glow in the archways reminded me of Goethe’s discovery of it at night, lit up with fires from the vagrants who lived within its arches. He watched it, musing on its endurance within the city, after having been exhausted by a Roman festival.  

That night a challenge was thrown down before us as we read Goethe on the grass beneath the towering structure. Goethe wrote, (though he was actually quoting someone else’s Roman travelogue which were inspiring him) “I believe that Rome is the school for the whole world and I, too, have been purged and tested here”. We realized that we could either sit and complain about the city, the schedule and various hardships, or be artists and use those things to find art. Art, not in spite of the distractions and disturbances, but in the distractions and disturbances themselves. So that’s what we did. And I really feel like, following Goethe’s words, the city and what we personally faced while living there, did test and purge us as artists.

We created a ten minute documentary while there- a teaser, if you will. We filmed enough for a full-length documentary to be edited over the next year, as work allows. I continued to edit my book while Vasant wrote extensively about the process of creating art when it demands to be hunted for. We were sweaty and sore, covered in dust and determination, as we trudged up hills and ran down twisting medieval alleys. 

A few posts will probably follow this about my favorite sights in Rome and the process of creating the documentary (which for perfectionist purposes, won’t be posted online until we have more time to work on it after we graduate this December).  For now, I think it’s best that my first post back be about the most important aspect of my trip:

Art is hard to find and harder to create. Rome is a city full of art and yet, it will fight you off as much as it will beckon you. Being in it and trying to create art there was one of the most rewarding experiences I’ve had in years and I can see now why, for centuries, artists go and sit among the ruins and come home with great things growing in their hearts.

Every time I say “my first novel” it sounds more like a children’s craft kit that I could buy for my three year old goddaughter rather than the achievement that it actually is. I keep picturing a printed copy of my book, with a title page etched in bright crayon, hanging on my mother’s fridge.

But even with the desire to downplay what I’ve done, I am sensible enough to realize this is a big moment. It’s a moment I may never get back, because it “My Very First Novel” and as silly as it makes me feel to prize that distinction, I’m going to. Tuesday morning, at 3:09 am, I finished my seventh draft of The Ashes.

The Ashes is the story of 23 year old Chloe Wright who follows her mother to the small town of Monarch to fix their broken relationship. Her mother grew up in Monarch and has come back after decades of absence to take care of her aging and death-obsessed mother, Anne. Anne was, at one time, the most influential woman in town, and her house where she lived with her husband Peter, was the most important house in town. Once there, Chloe forges deep relationships with the outcasts of the town and discovers deep hurts and rumors from her grandparents’ past that continue to affect the town and her family. Her struggle between figuring herself out and living up to a newly-discovered legacy pushes her family and the town to confront its own divisions. But the pull of tradition and past legacies may prove to be too much.

It’s a novel about community, building it not just for the sake of the desire to be social, but because alone, we as people whither away. It’s about fighting the poison of bitterness and bigotry. The Ashes explores relationships between the generations, authority, individuality and the consequences of expressing hallowed traditions in new ways. And all throughout the town and the story, The Ashes is about love that never leaves a person, for better or worse, as the years go on, no matter the gender, the age or circumstance of departure. Love is both the pulse and the scar tissue in the heart of this community.

I first came up with the idea in May 2003. I am still shocked that it’s done, that a final grammar and spell check are all that’s left on the horizon. This story has been worked on while submerged under the glassy surface of lakes, on trains in Northern England, in the countryside around my house in Washington, in the Cascade mountains, driving at dawn with my husband, and of course, at my desk. It almost never happened for a hundred reasons, most of them health, school, stress and work related. But my husband Vasant was amazing throughout it the entire journey. The book would’ve never materialized without him. I am, somehow, less ADD and tempestuous with him around. He’s a stabilizing force in my mind. His attention, his care, his encouragement and creative input give me a focus and a confidence I’ve never had in my life.

My parents and sisters have also been incredible. Their constant encouragement, whether it was reading the latest draft or coming by our place with flowers, food or back rubs, got me through the last tough year as I pushed to finally finish this. My parents were the ones who started my love of reading and story telling, who first encouraged me to write books when I was a kid. My sisters were willing participants in all the plays and imaginary games I staged, even the ones with over-the-top dramatic twists at the end. Throughout the years, my family has supported me as a storyteller and that’s no less true this last year. I have only had a handful of weekends off for the last year and a half. My nights, my mornings, every free second has gone into a push to get this novel finally into concrete existence. It is now out of my head and into the hands of my family, and soon, hopefully, will be in the hands of many more. I’ve appreciated my husband, my parents, my sisters and the friends who have stuck by me through thick and thin in this last year. I’ve loved the interaction with other writers and readers on Twitter and Tumblr, and I cannot wait to share this book with the larger world. Thank you to all the wonderfuls who have believe in me and more importantly, who told me emphatically that I could not give up on this book. That it needed TO BE. Thank you to all who never let me entertain the thoughts of giving up. This book exists because of all of us. I appreciate and love you all.

“The World is a book, and those who do not travel read only one page.” - St. Augustine

I’m heading to Rome this fall and I don’t just want to visit or sightsee. I want to wander and let the experience change me. I’m looking for things to read, thinking about what lies ahead, what Rome is, how it works and who built it. And if you’re here, I either begged you to read this or you googled a “Rome reading list”.

Traveling, whether it’s thirty minutes away from your house or thirty hours away, can be a transformative experience if that’s what you’re looking to have. I think the secret is giving yourself time to wander and reflect. For me, writing, reading, wandering around getting lost and seeing things you haven’t read about yet is the key to transformative travel.

For example, my first time in London was a whirlwind four day trip. I saw the city, but I didn’t get to know it. How could I? By the time I’d adjusted from jetlag, I was back at the airport, boarding my return flight.

My second and third trips to London, however, were nice and long. My husband and I took time to get ourselves lost in the city and towns we visited. We wandered foggy streets, read the works of artists who’d created there, visited spots that are hallowed to writers and book geeks like me, contemplating the history and culture of the place. Sometimes, this was done all from leaning against a bridge rail, staring at the Thames, thinking about Joseph Conrad’s reflection in Heart of Darkness: “We looked at that venerable stream not in the vivid flush of a short day that comes and departs forever but in the august light of abiding memories.” Other times it was done by wandering into a pub not listed in any guidebook, or wandering through an ancient graveyard. Giving ourselves time to reflect, wander and get lost, London became as much a part of us as our backyard.

So this fall, my husband and I head to Rome for 5 weeks to film a documentary for our cinema studies major, as well as several scenes of our first film. I want to have as much of an experience, and really, much more so, as I had in London. I was struck by the title of an early travelogue by 14th century Moroccan Muslim scholar, Ibn Battuta, whose book is literally entitled, “A Gift to Those Who Contemplate the Wonders of Cities and the Marvels of Traveling”. I thought, This is exactly what I want my trip in Rome to be. A gift to me for contemplating the wonder of cities and the marvels of traveling. I don’t just want to see Rome. I want to contemplate it and the act of traveling through it. I want to become a part of it and leave with a bit of it stuck in my soul. So, to that affect, I’ve been compiling a reading list before I head over, a Literary Journey before my actual one.

So it has become a focus as I prepare for this trip and will most likely affect the subject of the documentary: How traveling affects the city traveled in and the traveler within it. Specifically in Rome, tourism saved the city. The European Grand Tour became a revitalizing breath for a city that had been largely buried under debris and forgotten. While cities like London and Paris made it through hard times and retained their importance, Rome’s grandeur faded as the political and religious powers moved away from the city. But when the Romantic artists went a’wandering, poets and playwrights resurrected Rome’s ancient ghosts and captivated the imaginations of the Continent. Soon many of the great writers that we know and love today had visited or lived in Rome and created art there. The list of expat artists in Rome is exciting (or exhausting, if you’re not into this and just reading this post because I begged you to): Percy & Mary Shelley, Lord Byron, John Keats, Charles Dickens, Sir Walter Scott, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Louisa May Alcott, Mark Twain, Goethe, Eliot, the Brownings, Coleridge, Joyce, Wilde, Wharton and so many others.

The Keats-Shelley House, located in the Piazza di Spagna, has a lovely map showing where several of these writers lived while in Rome. The act of looking and contemplating how civilization at the time was indebted to Rome, recalling its greatness and taking moral cues from its decline, influenced some of the most important art of the time. Even Thomas Jefferson visited Rome on the Grand Tour, and mused on its laws and philosophy when creating our own government. The Grand Tour and the attention drawn to Rome by the artists who illuminated it in their works gave a new life to the city. It was cleaned up, excavated (its still being excavated) and it’s old glory was polished up for the world to view once again. Traveling doesn’t seem to be as important today as it once was, but when one looks at Rome, one can’t help but see that traveling and “contemplating the wonder of cities” influenced the Romantic age and brought Rome back to a place of prominence. I’m not advocating Puerto Vallarta-type American tourism here.

The artists I’m pondering immersed themselves into the area, let it soak into them and their art, considered themselves and their sense of themselves in that place, and gave the world a piece of that experience. So, to write my essays and make the documentary about pondering Rome and travel as a necessity for the soul, I’m reading up on all the poets and playwrights who have traveled to the city before me, and trying to listen to what they have to say so I can a) figure out how Rome has been literarily framed before and b) NOT SAY THE SAME THING. Here is a list (SO FAR) of works crafted in Rome, after having traveled in Italy or travel literature written by those I consider literary geniuses, as well as links to these books, should you want to purchase them, via this Literary Rome list on Indiebound (love their list feature!):

Since list’s like the above are a little rare on the internet, I’d like help flushing it out. If you know of a book that should be added to this list (again, no Dan Brown or historical romance novels, please) then leave the title and description in the comments. I, and the rest of the literary nerds who travel the world, would be incredibly grateful. * And again, if you’re in the mood to buy any of these books, here’s a link to the list at IndieBound:

“So much of what I see reminds me of something I read in a book, when shouldn’t it be the other way around?” ~ Norah Ephron (via Kathleen Kelly), You’ve Got Mail

One of the most annoying things I’ve ever been told is that I’m not a writer if I’m not writing every day. This gem of wisdom was handed to me, around six years ago, by a guy who used to come in and work on his writing when I worked as a barista at my local Starbucks. Years later, as I finish up my first novel, I began pondering his pronouncement and realized how ridiculously wrong that kind of statement is.

I was in community college at the time, part-time, working at the coffee shop, and traveling. He asked me what I wanted to do one day, and I said I was a writer, and that I was working on my first novel. I confessed that, if all went well, I’d like that to be my vocation.

He immediately, and sharply, asked how many hours a day I spent writing. I replied that it was zero at the moment, but that the book was being worked on in different ways. Mentally turned over, again and again, hit from different angles when I was out hiking, driving, working or exercising. He shook his head, as most people several decades older than you, who spend their days in a Starbucks, are want to do, and said, “Sarah, Sarah, Sarah. You’re not a writer. Writers write. If you’re not filling up notebooks everyday with stories and essays, then you’re not a writer. You won’t be one until you do that.”

I told him I had a blog that I wrote on everyday. I carried a quotebook around with me everywhere I went and wrote down observations and poetry and prose… whatever crept into my head and pounced on my synapses as I was out and about. He shook his head again. Told me that I needed to be doing writer’s exercises and writing stories and working for at least five hours a day and then, and only then, would I be able to one day write my book. I countered, inbetween making beverages for customers, that I’d been writing since I was 12. I’d written two books (neither of them anything to brag about) by fifteen and thousands of poems and short stories. But at that moment, in 2004, it was the time to casually write. I was focusing on living.

The older gentleman shook his head again and looked at me sadly, and pronounced his judgment, “You’re not a writer then. A writer never stops writing. A writer can’t. We’re addicted. And if we don’t write, we’re reading. If you can live your life without doing either, then writing is just not in you.”

To that, six years later, as I finish the novel that I’ve been working on for seven years, I have a hearty, well-thought out reply:

Bullshit.

Yes. Some writers do live by the creed the man in the coffee shop tried to foist on me (him, as well as countless others I’ve met). But that’s not for me. A storyteller has to go out and live life. Reading and writing (a lot) are necessary to write well. But a great writer isn’t just a wordsmith. A great writer is also a storyteller, and the only way to find stories to tell is to live. Now, coffee shop writer was right about what a good writer does. A good writer writes all the time. Every day, every week, every month and every year. When they aren’t writing, they’re reading. And they have a great grasp of prose, an excellent handle on grammar and man, do they ever know what narrative forms are “in” at the moment. But what do they have to say?

If one stays in doors, writing and reading every single day, then what do they know of life? Good literature is full of universals that connect humanity. Literary fiction is composed of truths that dig at the soul of the reader. I don’t know how someone who isn’t out there in the real world LIVING claims to get these things on an instinctive-enough level to be able to make their readers feel it. My only guess is that they’re copying what other authors have had to say on love, life, loss, death, greed, failure, etc. Because if you’re not out there, risking your heart, getting it broken, traveling the world, getting in fights, getting knocked down and bouncing back, then what is there to say?

I’ve been hard at work on my book The Ashes for the last year. It’s been in development for a full 7 years, but come on. Don’t tell me I haven’t been working on it for the better part of a decade because it’s only been 13 months that I’ve spent chained to my laptop. The characters, the setting, the plot and many other details were all things I wrestled with fiercely on treadmills, forest paths, trains in England, classrooms and yes, behind the counter at the local Starbucks. And they changed as I did. Things happened to me in my life that affected the plot, the characters and the overall meaning of this book. Being out in the world NOT WRITING has made this book as emotionally-charged and powerful as I, and the several who have read it thus far, think that it is.

Ernest Hemingway, by the by, agrees with this particular line of thought:

“In going where you have to go, and doing what you have to do, and seeing what you have to see, you dull and blunt the instrument you write with. But I would rather have it bent and dull and know i had to put it to the grindstone again and hammer it into shape and put a whetstone to it, and know that I had something to write about, than to have it bright and shining and nothing to say, or smooth and well-oiled in the closet, but unused.” (Preface to The Short Stories, Scribner Classics)

I am the FIRST to admit that I don’t have the greatest grasp on grammar. I can work hard at it, sharpen my prose and edit like crazy though. I know that there are thousands of better writers out there in the world. But here’s the thing that Hemingway and I are getting at: it’s better to be a good storyteller, to have stories to tell from actual experience, than to be a first-rate writer. A storyteller can finesse his experience and his story into something. I was a great storyteller before I could write (ie child who makes stuff up). I learned, over the years, to be a good writer. But being a gifted storyteller and writer doesn’t matter at all if my ideas, my convictions, and my world-view are untested. Being talented has nothing to do with writing something that will matter to someone else. If you’re not living, you have nothing original to say and that is not who I want to be. If that works for coffee shop writer guy, than glory be to him. But there are a lot of people propagating this myth that if you want to be a writer, than you should write, every minute of every day and if you’re not doing that, then read.

And of course, I am ardent lover of both writing and reading. I read like crazy and have always defined myself by being a bookworm. But that’s not all I do. Not every year. Sure I’m a bibliophile. And many books not only shaped me as I grew up, but often as a child, were my only trustworthy friends. I’d even go so far as to say that the stories I read in the classics saved my life and gave me the courage to be a writer. I wouldn’t be a writer without having first been a reader. But reading and writing wouldn’t matter a damn to me at all unless I was out living life, willing to occasionally put down the pen and the paper and see what is out there.

This last year has been a heavy writing and reading season for me. If you’d like, you can read through a sampling of the books I’ve read over the last couple years while finishing my novel, here on indiebound.com’s list feature. But this period of writing and reading was preceded by more than a decade of weird, crazy, heartbreaking and amazing experiences that inform who I am, and what and why I write. I’ve lived out of a van. I faced down a grizzly bear on a cliff face in Tahoe. I’ve run beneath emerald green funnel clouds. I’ve made idiotic decisions, heroic stands and gotten the shit kicked out of me for good intentions. I think every experience like that has shaped me as a writer and a reader, even though, in order to have those experiences, I wasn’t writing or reading all the time.

So to the coffee shop writer guy, and anyone else out there who feels they need to tell people who they are and how to approach what they are passionate about: Suck it. The only truth worth passing around is that we all only have ONE LIFE to live. Whether you’re an artist or a plumber or a politician, making sure that life is well-spent and lived in full, outside your claimed profession, will always make you better at what you do during the day.

Go on road trips. Have adventures. Get to know people even if it scares you to do so. Love people even when the person you love doesn’t deserve it. Learn things, not the hard way, but the honest, in-your-face way. And if you happen to be an artist, like me, you’ll create better art that’s closer to the raw real life and understand great works like you never had before.

*

I am so excited to break this news finally: Vasant and I are going to Rome to study Italian cinema, film a documentary and our first *serious* film.

We were accepted into a program our major was offering for Cinema Studies students to live in Rome, study Italian cinema and produce a documentary while there. We’ve been attempting to get this worked out for the last four months with not only the acceptance part of the program, but also funding, grants, scholarships, etc. We haven’t wanted to jinx this by talking about it, because even now, having been accepted and all, going to Rome to film still seems surreal.

Surreal or not, however, yesterday we received the funds, finalized our travel plans and therefore can officially announce that we’re headed to Rome. We’re being put up in apartments overlooking Rome’s famous open-air market, the Campo de’ Fiori and studying films in the nearby Palazzo Pio. We’ll be there for five weeks from the end of August through the end of September, right before (a day before) starting our final quarter at the University back here in Seattle. The program will be part study of Italian cinema, part production course, and a whole lot of walking every day through the city, examining Rome and how filmmakers frame it within Italian cinema and how we as filmmakers think about framing space within narrative.

On our downtime, Vasant and I will be filming part of our first serious film. I say serious, because Vasant and I try to knock out one or two short films between the two of us a month, to practice all the elements of our craft that we can. But those films aren’t anything but practice and experimentation. This film that we’ll be shooting in Rome is our first serious film. It’s in pre-production right now, and it won’t actually be wrapped until next March or April when we shoot the final scenes, which, for script reasons, can’t be shot until next Spring. I am so excited to announce details for that, but for right now, I can’t. I can just say that it’s coming down the pipe, and to be thinking good thoughts for us. We’ll have part of the script in place for the Rome sequence by the end of August, which we plan to shoot at the end of September once we’ve found the right locations in the city.

Words cannot describe how excited and TERRIFIED I am. We take our Italian final for summer quarter on the 21st of August and get on a plane two days later, land in Rome, start schooling, filming a documentary and our film, and that action pretty much doesn’t stop until the course is over on the 24th of September. Then we fly home on the 27th, after we’ve checked out of our apartments, and start our final quarter at the UW on the 29th. It’s going to be intense.

The jet-lag, the culture shock and the immense work we have to do while soaking in the grandeur of the Eternal City is daunting. Of course, it is also thrilling. When Vasant and I got married, we did not have a college education, just a few paltry credits from the local community college taken out of a state of academic ennui. But after we began dating, we realized we wanted to make movies together. Once we got married, we realized the only way that we, personally, could do this and not feel like we were risking our futures to pursue this dream was to get an education. First an undergrad, then move onto a grad school that would position us to get into the industry. If it doesn’t work out, our educations will allow us to fall back on teaching, which both of us would love to do anyway, whether we find success in our fields or not. However, if I didn’t think we were going to be successful, we wouldn’t be pursuing this. I am always pragmatic though, and becoming filmmakers via great educations is, for us together and as individuals, the smartest thing we can do.

What’s incredible is that five years ago this summer we were getting married, with only a foggy sense of what we wanted to accomplish together. We knew we wanted to tell stories together but we had no idea what that would look like or how it would happen. In the last five years, we’ve gotten through four years of college, we’re two and a half quarters away from both of us receiving our double majors, Vasant’s built a place for us with my father, I’ve almost finished my first novel and we’re in pre-production on our first film. And trust me, I don’t say any of this to brag. It’s emotionally healthy for me to take the time, as I write a post about Rome, to write this out for myself.

There have been plenty of people who, throughout the last four years, have been kind enough to point out how stupid they think two married people in their mid to late twenties going back for an undergrad is. Apparently (wonder why we weren’t told this in marital counseling) once you get married, you are stuck in whatever career you’re in when you get married, with room for the occasional climb to the next ladder rung. You have to buy a house and get pregnant within your first five years and if you don’t, you’re obviously not doing “marriage” right. I find this hilarious. Right now. You know, at this particular moment while I write this post out to Michael Giacchino’s excellent Star Trek soundtrack.

I haven’t always found it hilarious when people think they’re being subtle but they really aren’t, telling us that they don’t respect what we’re doing, how we’re doing it, where we’re headed, where we’re living and so on. In fact, it’s been really difficult to discover just how unsupportive people have been because we’re not living the traditional suburban married life. At times, even though we have a good plan, and it’s right for us, it’s been really hard to believe in ourselves when so many people have laughed at two married people going back to get a four year education, living with my parents while Vasant finished our apartment, and well, pursuing storytelling.

Trust me, as a pragmatic, I’m all too aware of the supposedly dying publishing industry and the myriad of people who want to make movies and the terrifyingly high percentage of people who never realize that dream. So when I say going to Rome is surreal, it’s not just because I’ve never been there before. When I list all the things Vasant and I have been doing for the last five years in a positive light, I’m not showing off. It’s surreal to both of us to articulate just how much we’ve accomplished together in five years because, sadly, we get to hear from so many people, way more often than we would like, that we’re not doing anything worthwhile.

But it’s just not true.

Again, maybe the Star Trek soundtrack is giving me the courage to write this. Maybe it’s because I finally bought the tickets to Rome last night. Maybe it’s because writing all these accomplishments out in this post reinforces the positive truth that’s so hard to swallow: Despite the many aspects of our non-traditional life (according to married suburban norms), Vasant and I have accomplished so much together in the first five years of our marriage. We’re not just “excellent roommates” as Steve Carrell put it in his most recent movie, Date Night. We are adventurers together. We’re writing partners. Study buddies. Collaborators in a grand dream. And forgive me if this post seems emotionally indulgent, but I realized halfway down as the nice things became harder to write, that I needed to articulate just how much I love what we’re doing.

I believe in what we’re doing and dammit, we’re going to be successful. Going to Rome the year I finish my novel, we start our film AND graduate from University just seems to be a fitting and an amazing way to commemorate what we’ve done so far together and with the support of our family and friends (the ones who have chosen to stick by us on our non-conformist journey). It is surreal and it’s an amazing opportunity. But I guess at the heart of this new development, it’s simply and most importantly, affirmation.

* An aside for people like us:

For anyone out there who’s dreaming, who’s doing something non-conformist, or merely entertaining the idea- don’t let other people’s censure get you down. Affirmation moments may come everyday for some people, or for us, it’s coming five years into our journey. But it doesn’t negate how right something is. And “rightness” doesn’t negate how hard something may be.

The thing you may be meant for may be the hardest thing you’ve ever committed to in your life, and there will be plenty of months, if not years, when it doesn’t seem possible, when it seems like nothing is working out. The harder it feels, the more momentous it will be when you get to those moments of affirmation.

This moment of affirmation may only be a pit stop for us, but I’m going to savor it. It’s going to be years more before we even get a toehold, let alone a firm footing in what we want to do. But we love telling stories. Our hearts, our minds, our bodies ache to tell stories. It consumes every hour of every day.

If anyone out there who is reading this loves something like that, find the wisest way of securing a means of doing it. Be pragmatic, and yet boundless in your imagination, and let pragmatism and idealism duke it out until there’s a middle ground. But once you find that path, which may take a while to find, commit to it. No matter how hard it may be. Surround yourself with people who get you and if there is no one around you like that… watch a Pixar documentary on any of their movies, but most especially, The Pixar Story on the Wall*E bonus features. Even if you don’t want to make movies, like we do. I kid you not. Watching the story about how many rejections were dealt to the gang at Pixar early on- specifically following their story from its roots in the seventies until it coalesces as the animation studio we know today in the mid-nineties, you’ll feel uplifted.

I know this addendum to my post may seem silly, but if there is anything we’re looking forward to as we get more successful, it’s encouraging other people to dream. We need that encouragement, and when we get it, it feels like a responsibility to turn around and do the same for others. I am aware, or rather the cynic in me is aware, of how painfully mushy this part of the post is, but really - it’s hard to take hold of an intangible. It takes planning, commitment, encouragement and endurance. And all of those things can be hard to find.

Just know, if anyone who is reading this feeling akin to what I’m describing: hold on through the rough seasons. Moments of affirmation may feel like they’re far off, but if you hold on, and stay positive, focus on what you love no matter how hard it is to pursue, you’ll get there. Until one day, hopefully, those moments of affirmation give way to realizations of the dream. And that… that is what we working hard to take hold of.