Lousy with flowers

My favourite book in the whole world is Cannery Row by John Steinbeck. It’s a book I could easily talk about for hours without tiring of it and it’s only a hundred or so pages long. I genuinely think I could fade away quite happily if I ever wrote something that discreetly stunning. I like to think that someday I’ll meet somebody else who has read it and I’ll probably end up dashing off into the sunset with them. But what am I talking about? That’s the kind of wonderful thing that can only happen in Cannery Row.

I’ve just finished reading the sequel of the aforementioned book (Sweet Thursday), and although it is simple and beautiful, just like the first, it lacked something. Which I guess proves that you can only capture a moment once, even a literary genius was obviously trying to catch fog when he was attempting to reconstruct everything that shone in the first book.

I love American literature. I used to have a bit of a vendetta against anything American when I was younger, in a way I still can’t quite come to terms with America as a civilisation. However there’s something so soulful about the writing that has emerged from that place and I find it irresistible. Steinbeck just says ‘even the most mundane of things can be extraordinarily beautiful, and I shall prove it’... And he does. But then there’s also that very American talent of being cold and hard-nosed and simply writing to make a point, but in a very classy/stylised way. That’s why I love Bret Easton-Ellis and Charles Bukowski (even though I’ve only ever read Post Office). There’s this wonderful irreverent cynicism that runs through their novels which I think is just as irresistible but in an entirely different way... you could probably call it catharsis.

The only thing is I’m hugely nostalgic for the past. I wish, more than anything I could jump back to a time of three-piece suits and pipe smoking and lemonade on the front porch. In a strange way I long for it. Life in this century is just far too confusing and busy and harsh. It almost makes me sad that I can never experience the 40s or the 70s as they really were. I’ve banned myself from looking through my dad’s old photos from the 70s, they’re gorgeous in all their aged-red-toned nostalgia. They make me envious. I was born in the wrong decade. I’ve even taken to lighting my cigarettes with matches because it makes me think I’m in a film from the 20s. I’ve mentioned a lot of decades there, but I wish I’d lived in all of them.

I think you can tell from my rambling that I’m longing for ‘something else’. Anything else would do. I’m so grateful for having a roof over my head and a lovely family but I’m tired of life. Tired of life and I’m only 23. The thing that’s always stopping me from going on wild adventures is money. At university it really used to bother me that I was surrounded by people who had been travelling and some of them really looked down on me because I hadn’t. I’m sorry, okay, I’m sorry I haven’t been to Africa and built any kind of school, I just can’t afford it. Which I suppose is ironic. And I would say things to them like ‘oh, when I have some money I’m going to go to the Amazon, I’m going to cuddle some monkeys, and you cannot stop me!’. And they’d nod their heads in a patronising way, and well, I suppose they were right to patronise. I’m still here. Still penniless. Still pretty bored.

So for lack of money and in need of newness I’m venturing on a new quest. Hopefully a quest that will bring some excitement and learning back into my silly old life. I want to be a journalist. There... I’ve said it. That felt like admitting a long-kept secret. I suppose the reason I’ve only just come to terms with this is because firstly, I didn’t want my (award-winning journalist) friend Rachel to just think ‘Ella is copying me, the silly bint’, even though I’m sure she doesn’t. Secondly I wasn’t really sure I could do it. But I’ve got some work experience at my local paper this month and I suppose that will decide for me, one way or the other.

I am terrified, but in an excited way. I’m also aware that a journalist can’t afford to be insecure. I guess, like anyone, I like to be good at things... so I’m probably just terrified that I’ll be awful. Also, I have never written a news story in my life. But I like writing, I like rushing around like I’m important, I’m pretty impatient but very inquisitive. So you never know. Maybe it’ll be the thing for me. And with every day that passes I really hope I am good at it. I think some people think I won’t be able to deal with criticism or being heckled, but I’ve put up with worse things. But I’m not kidding myself that it’ll be easy, it’s kind of scary just putting yourself on the line and saying ‘I THINK I CAN WRITE!’ and perhaps I’m horribly wrong. But tomorrow I could be well and truly dead. For once I truly have nothing to lose. Apart from potentially my dignity.

Here’s a quote from Sweet Thursday:

“Of all our murky inventions, guilt is at once the most devious, the most comic, the most painful. Was it planted by the group pressure of the tribe to keep the potentially dangerous individual off-balance? Is it set in the psychotissue, watered and cultivated by ductless glands? Is guilt the unconscious device by which a man cries for attention in an unperceiving world, or can it be that the final human pleasure is pain? Whatever its origin, we scream like cats in copulation, wolf-bay the moon, whip ourselves with the exquisite thorns of contempt, and generally have a hell of a good time at it.”

Wake up

The other week my wonderful friend Jenny bought me a shiny new camera. Her reasons for such a sweet gesture were ‘I know you like going for little walks on your own and taking photos, and now you can do that as much as you like’. It was easily one of the nicest things that has happened to me in the past year, ever since I’ve been taking endless photos at every opportunity. Actually, just before my last blog post I tried to capture the grey-drizzle drenched streets I had been wandering through, but I didn’t post them because they were simply too depressing!

Living life whilst looking at the screen on the back of my camera is odd. A majority of my brain enjoys it. I almost wish I had a camera strapped to my head so that I could remember every little detail of life. Also, how will people know I’m having fun if I don’t upload photos onto Facebook to prove it ‘look at me! I have friends and occasionally go out! Hooray! Please think I’m cool!’ However the very nature of taking photos leaves you slightly removed from what is actually happening with the contrast that you consequently remember happenings more clearly. Also, my photography skills are truly lacking at the moment, but thanks to Jenny’s generosity (JENerosity!) I can practise and practise and take lovely arty photos of sunsets and that. Also it excites me that this camera might be following me on some crazy adventure one day... I can dream!

I’m very sleepy today and as such can’t truly be bothered to write much more... In short the past week (and a bit) has consisted of a kingfisher, a baby toad, an ending-less fairy tale, a change of career direction, the learning of (a bit of) shorthand, drizzle and breezy days, endless cups of tea (both sad and happy), mild disappointments and the legitimate and acceptable drinking of cider in a park. Who knew that some unemployed girl from Derby could have experienced so much more than she outwardly appears to have experienced? I apologise, I lapsed into writing in the third-person then... a symptom of Facebook overuse perhaps? ‘Ella Rhodes is... confused, as usual. lol.’. Anyway, without wanting/being able to go into any more detail, I shall say farewell.