Porridge stories
I was trying to tell the Parisian literary story because I’m reading ‘The Paris Wife’ at the moment, about Ernest Hemingway and his first wife Hadley. It’s really enjoyable, particularly since all the characters are so familiar, but it also slightly depresses me. It is filled with the myth of the writer – someone tortured, arrogant, convinced of his own talent, creating something entirely new. Ernest and Hadley move between USA, France, Spain and Austria. I feel so far removed from this myth. Sure, I’m a little tortured, but I am not convinced of my talent or that I can add anything new. Nor am I in Paris or Spain – I am in New Zealand, looking after children, snatching a day’s worth of writing a week if I am lucky. Jonathan and I went to see St Vincent on Sunday, and she was fantastic, but she commented how we lived at the end of the world. Yeah, I know. I wish she didn’t rub it in.
LET ME BE FRANK 
I’m sure he was bloody earnest about it all, too! St Vincent and her ‘end of the world’ – pah. It’s all a state of mind, isn’t it? I remember I was once talking to David Long of the Muttonbirds at a party and he said how he believed that the most interesting things happen at the peripheries. (I may have told you that story before Sarah, sorry! Bad memory!) And I bet child-rearing is still a highly domestic, sometimes-claustrophobic, frustrating/rewarding business in Paris and Barcelona and New York City as well as in Auckland…
Oh how I love your parenting stories.
quality time Sarah quality time!!
Isn’t it great when their eyes glaze over and they get lost in the story? Maybe you should have the equivalent of ad breaks when they have to eat.
I miss Europe, having it all on the doorstep like it was, but I’m grateful I live on the edge of the world, with paradise to look at and a different way of seeing.
What happened to the blue frog boy?
I will let you know once I’ve written the book.
This post left me thinking of REM – it’s the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine. We have a lot here in NZ that isn’t found anywhere else in the world. I like it that way! 🙂