Wednesday, Aug 5, 2015 | Word of the Year, Writing |
Photo unrelated, but perfectly summery.
A wall of green hides me, hangs over me, stands before me. I am hidden from the people walking by on the sidewalk, but they are hidden from me too; I have to duck my head, crane my neck, follow their movements deliberately. An old man on a bicycle, pedalling vigorously, upright, with a wicker basket on his handles and a sunhat, and sunglasses. A student carrying grocery bags in each hand, heavy, his backpack loaded and heavy on his shoulders too. Cars are a steady stream, accelerating and slowing, accelerating and slowing, their engines grumbling, whining, squeaking, roaring.
A white butterfly darts through the bright green branches of the lilac, which leans into the porch before me. A car waits to turn the corner, blaring top forty pop: I recognize this song but can’t name it.
A woman walks by with her crying baby strapped to her chest, pushing an empty buggy—a fancy big-wheeled buggy like Princess Charlotte would be pushed in, which looks impractical. An SUV knocks a construction sign set in the street near our house and the vehicle sounds like it’s losing a part from its undercarriage.
“No you’re not. You are being punished. You don’t get what you want.” The woman in a floral print shirt, brown khakis and sandals speaks to a small child whose hand she is holding. The woman is so much larger than the child that I see nothing except for his or her shoes, pink sneakers. They are already gone and out of sight. Her voice was loud, irritated. I’m sure I’ve spoken to my own children with such loudness and irritation at times, although one rather wishes not to do so, especially in public. It depends on the day one is having. It depends on the patience already drawn upon, how deep the well. You don’t know, you haven’t been with us all day, you don’t know how many times I’ve kept my temper—sometimes I would think this as I would hear myself speaking with irritation to a truculent child.
But my memories are rose-tinted now, and I can hardly remember children being truculent or me being irritated, I only remember the luxurious pace of our hours, pushing a stroller with a child on a tricycle before me, pushing her along with the front of the stroller, slowly slowly progressing home from the library. Caroline Street was so hot in the summer. We would look for the pool of shade under the lone mulberry tree. I wasn’t sure the children should eat the berries that fell from the tree: “We can look it up when we get home, so we know for next time.”
A man drives by in a silver sedan, both hands on the steering wheel, a cigarette on his lower lip, his mouth open, big black headphones over his ears, sunglasses over his eyes. Why does his image stick in my head after he’s flashed past?
The leaves of the lilac are enormous, very bright where the sun strikes them. Ivy clings to the roof of the porch. By summer’s end it may trail across the roof and along the bricks by the front door. I love the way it hangs, green leaves cascading from thin brown vines.
A wall of green. The birch tree with leaves hanging heavy. The young maple tree in the front lawn beyond ours. The dark green of a coniferous bush by our front window. Green grass and clover in our yard, and a green and white hosta with tall searching stems atop which white flowers may bloom, soon.
The porch boards are grey, and dirty. They should be swept.
I haven’t cleaned anything in a very long time.
Cars roll by, cars roll by, cars roll by. And there is a bird, cheeping madly in the branches or wires over my head. Another bird, a different call, calmer. A woman in running shoes going for a brisk walk, determined.
A pair walks by on the opposite side of the street, boy and girl, the boy has a full-sleeve tattoo, which seems almost ordinary these days, if I may say so without sounding elderly, and I suppose that I can’t. Kids these days … The pair walks in perfect lock-step, though I doubt they know it. Step, step, step, their legs scissoring together and apart in perfect rhythm with each other.
The hum of insects rises, falls way. I wonder why it rises. I wonder why it falls. A child is shouting and running, a very small child in a yellow t-shirt, running with his arms pumping strongly, shouting words I don’t understand. He stops and walks. His mom and dad walk behind him, and he waits for them to catch up. “Ryan, you want Brother to move out?” “Just till my birthday, and then he’ll come back …” Maybe they aren’t mother and father after all. I can’t make sense of their conversation. They are past me. No one stops on the sidewalk and finishes their thought for my benefit.
Would these strangers mind if they knew I were writing about them?
Why do people accelerate their cars so enormously when they can see a stop sign coming up ahead? Isn’t it a waste of energy? Delusional, almost? Thinking they can get themselves to their destination faster if only they press the pedal to the floor between stop signs and turns? Do I do the same thing?
A truck rumbles noisily.
A man carries a cellophane bag of washed baby spinach in one hand, a cup of take-out coffee in the other, rubber sandals, white t-shirt, brown khaki shorts, and sunglasses on his head. He looks peeved, but I think that is just the expression he carries between his eyes, the crinkle, because of the sun. Why doesn’t he put on his sunglasses?
A woman with dark skin and long curly hair also wears her sunglasses on her head. She is staring at her phone and walking briskly, head inclined downward, dressed all in black, black pants, black tank top, black glasses, black phone. She treats the phone as if it were part of her hand. She is not thinking about walking down this sidewalk, she is somewhere else, thinking abut something else, somebody else. Smiling, the edges of her lips lightly upturned.
This is not a story. It has no end.
xo, Carrie
Monday, Aug 3, 2015 | Adventure, Driving, Kids, Publishing, Summer, Travel, Weather, Writing |
Yesterday, I drove my eldest to camp and dropped him off. The weather was sunny and hot. The car’s thermometer said it was 30 degrees outside. But as we came closer to our destination, a wall of grey cloud rose up on the horizon. Rain could be seen falling in sheets from a distance, lightning flashing occasionally. Albus took it in good humour—it always storms when he’s at camp. He had to go for cover during a severe tornado warning, several years ago.
We carried his gear to the dining hall along with everyone else who was arriving, and it soon started to thunder and lightning, and rain. After a brief introduction, the kids began gathering into their cabin groups, and the parents were sent on their way. I had brought an umbrella, and walked to the car in heavy rain, feeling chuffed with myself for being so prepared. But the air was cool, and I felt almost chilly in my t-shirt and knee-length leggings. When I started the car, I saw the thermometer now read 17 degrees.
I turned on the radio and found CBC as I left the camp grounds and headed east on the small country road, then south on the slightly larger country highway (Grey County 10) that cuts down to Clifford, through Hanover and Neustadt. But I didn’t get very far. Eleanor Wachtel was engaging three writers in a conversation on George Eliot’s Middlemarch, which kept my mind occupied, even as I watched the ominous shelf of heavy cloud to the west, which seemed to be blowing my way. I accelerated to pass several cars, because I had the impression that I could somehow outrace the storm. I was in a strip of clear sky overhead, no rain, no wind, as I drove down the strip of paved road between vast stretches of fields, punctuated by little clumps of thickly treed areas, a few houses, fences, barns, but mostly fields and trees.
I crossed Highway 21, which goes to Southampton, and Lake Huron. I remember glancing to my right, again, to assess the location of the cloud, still thinking I could outrace it, if only I could get past this slow-moving trailer-home in front of me. Only a few hundred feet out the passenger window, I glimpsed a stream in amongst trees, the whole of the scene stirred into a whirl, as if it were being thrashed by an invisible force. I can see it right now in my mind’s eye: a grey force, rattling the leaves and branches, bending the trees, stirring the water, within a rapidly descending fog. It’s that near to me, I thought. I’ve got less than a minute and it will be here. And then it struck the tiny car full-force, a powerful wind, heavy rain. My windshield wipers couldn’t keep up. I kept driving like an automaton, not sure what else to do, following the trailer-home. We crossed a small bridge that took us between a thick patch of trees planted close to the road, and I could see debris flying, and the car was struck with a branch, the treetops were whirling, and I knew, suddenly, that this was very dangerous weather. But what could I do?
I must stop somewhere with less trees, I thought. The trailer-home pulled into the gravel at the side of the road, and other cars coming from the opposite direction were doing the same, so I pulled over too, coming to stop in an area with a few trees far enough from the road that I didn’t think they could fall on me. I didn’t even notice the power lines overhead. On the radio, making it all the much worse, a siren began sounding, interrupting the voices of the women talking about George Eliot, and an automated voice informed me that the area in which I was driving was under a tornado watch or warning, and that I was being advised to take shelter immediately.
Take shelter? Where? I’m sitting with the car still in drive, my foot on the brake pedal, my body shaking uncontrollably, asking the automated voice where exactly would it advise me to take cover? My new car felt approximately as substantial as a tin can. At moments, the blasts of wind seemed to lift it almost off the ground. I imagined it spinning through the air like a blown piece of trash. I realized that there was no point in keeping the car in drive, and that my muscles must relax in order to stop shaking. I geared into park, and remembered that I had a cellphone.
I began texting Kevin. No response. Here is my series of (completely over-the-top hysterical) texts to him:
I’m in tornado.
No shit.
Can’t find hazards
Should I leave car and get down in ditch?
How big is storm?please help if you can
The reason I considered abandoning the car and getting down in the ditch was because only a couple of days ago I heard a news report about a massive tornado in western Canada that ravaged an area for hours, and two teens, brothers, recounted how they abandoned the pickup they’d been driving and lay flat in a ditch waiting for the storm to pass—should I do the same? Is this what one does? It came to me that I possessed zero survival knowledge in this situation, and that my instinct was paralysis, essentially: to freeze and fearfully hope for the best. Hope that I wouldn’t be the unfortunate person who finds herself in exactly the wrong place at the wrong time.
But I could find the hazards! I dropped the phone on the passenger seat and opened the glove compartment to find the manual. The car is new enough that I’d not yet had occasion to use the hazards, and couldn’t have found the symbol if my life depended on it—couldn’t even remember, in my state of mind, what the symbol for hazards looked like. In the index I found the page listing: “Page 176,” I said out loud, which curiously made me feel better, and I turned to the page, and read that the hazards are conveniently located near the radio controls.
Ah. That’s it. I pressed the button and felt more in control. I’d forced myself to behave in a calm and rational manner. The storm was not abating, however, so it occurred to me to phone home. My elder daughter answered, and I freaked her out while trying to sound calm, and then Kevin came on the line. He looked up the storm on the radar. Yes, I was right in the heart of it, but it was one long narrow path running north to south, and should be by me soon. He assured me that it was nowhere near camp, which eased my mind enormously. I kept thinking of how I’d left my kid in a camp dining-hall in what was maybe a tornado.
The trailer-home pulled out. I decided to pull out too.
I stopped once more when the wind got heavy again, parked in the shelter of a driving shed with another woman in her vehicle, both of us glancing at each other but what else could we do? Then I resumed driving again. The sky was alight with flickers of lightning, almost constant. I started to think I was imagining them. The storm didn’t seem to vanish, as promised. A utility pole that had snapped in half dangled over the highway on wires. It occurred to me, as I passed it, that I shouldn’t have parked underneath the electrical lines, earlier. I listened to a call-in show on the newly-called federal election, but I was hardly listening. I was in a dream-state, really. My focus on the road, my emotions pressed down deep. I chased the storm all the way home, kilometre after kilometre of tension and rain and wind—at one point tracking west to try to escape it, only to finish in Waterloo, on the homestretch, under a torrent of hail, and thick rain.
As I drove down Bridgeport, minutes from home, the sun came out and shone in my eyes—but it was raining heavily. The contrast was comical. Then it stopped suddenly, suddenly clear. The street ahead was blocked off by emergency vehicles, so I took a detour, and finally, I was in our driveway, home. On our front steps I leaned down and picked up a piece of hail that was quickly melting, as big as a quarter. I was jelly-limbed. Kevin fed me burritos. I couldn’t stand. I couldn’t sit. When I lay down, I couldn’t rest. I felt both drained and wired all at once.
It wasn’t that I thought I was going to die—not really. But it did occur to me that this was a situation in which death would not be a completely unreasonable outcome. “Don’t let anyone publish anything I’ve been working on,” I instructed Kevin over the phone. “It’s not ready. It shouldn’t ever be published.”
“Um, okay,” he said.
I didn’t feel a need to give him last-minute instructions on child-rearing, because he knows what to do and what could I say in a ridiculously cliched phone conversation in the middle of a storm to make a worst-case scenario outcome better? But my publishing legacy—that seemed important to try to control.
Is it sad that I’m in the middle of projects that are incomplete, insufficient, unready? It isn’t that sad. I’ve published some good things, and it would be fine to leave it at that. It also isn’t sad because the potential of the incomplete and unready is good, when a person is around to fulfill it, and here I am, alive and well, sitting with earplugs in, listening to my daughter play and sing a song she’s composed on the ukulele—she’s even printed out the lyrics and chords—and I’m writing something, even if it’s only this. I’m here and I can keep working away at these ideas and projects and can hope, eventually, maybe, to finish something else I’ll be proud of, worth sharing.
When I walked through the door, safely home, I was drained of emotion. I’d spent the last two and a half hours trying to feel nothing at all—or instinctively feeling as little as possible, emotions useless in the situation, because they’d only overwhelm rational action and thought. I felt removed. The sensation was physical—that was why it felt so peculiar, so particular. It was like my eyes and ears couldn’t transmit deeper information to my brain, like there was a fog of rain between my brain and my body. My body was this blurred heavy weight that I was dragging like stone, but it was also me, I could recognize it as me. But this was a me that was blurred, heavy, indistinct. I couldn’t feel myself. And I didn’t care.
And now, let me be a little less melodramatic: passing through the storm was a minor trauma. Had I not been alone, it might not have seemed so dire, in truth.
After devouring the burritos and drinking several enormous glasses of water, I binge-watched Brooklyn Nine-Nine with AppleApple. Later, I played the ukulele in the dark, somehow recalling lyrics and chords to a vast number of Leonard Cohen songs, which made me feel 18 again—exactly 18 years old, when Leonard Cohen songs were my summer soundtrack and longing and love were fresh and his lyrics made perfect and perfectly romantic sense: “I loved you in the morning, your kisses deep and warm, your hair upon the pillow like a sleepy golden storm. Many loved before us, I know that we are not new, in city and in forest, they smiled like me and you. But let’s not talk of love or chains and things we can’t untie, your eyes are soft with sorrow, hey that’s no way to say goodbye.” (Except, I see now, in looking up the lyrics, that I’ve remembered them wrong, and the love or chains line comes in a later verse… but it is a good line, possibly the best in the song, so I’ll leave it as it is, and sing it like that, when I sing it again, in the dark.)
xo, Carrie
Wednesday, Jul 29, 2015 | Recipes, Summer |
It’s bloody hot this week in Canada. So we’re working with a salad theme for supper, and it’s been both easy and quite pleasant. If you have a favourite recipe, pass it on, please. I still need salad ideas for Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. (Note: I haven’t done a post on recipes for AGES, because a) Kevin does a lot of the supper prep now, and b) we almost never make anything exciting or original. So these recipes must be good to have inspired me to note them down… Either that or the heat is addling my brain and I’ve got nothing else of interest to write about.)
Taco salad
Combine in your biggest mixing bowl: one head of lettuce, torn and washed; several cups of cabbage, chopped; half of an onion, chopped; two cobs’ worth of fresh corn kernels; one can of black beans, rinsed and drained; one green pepper, chopped.
To make the dressing, whirl together in a blender the following ingredients: between 1/2 – 3/4 cups buttermilk; the leaves off a bunch of cilantro, washed; one peeled clove of garlic; one scant teaspoon of sea salt; one tablespoon olive oil; the juice of one very juicy lime, or 1/4 cup’s worth; 1/2 teaspoon chili powder.
Pour the dressing over the salad. Let sit for a few minutes, then stir in one cup of grated cheese (or more). Serve with corn tortilla chips at the table, letting each person crush his or her own and add to the salad on the plate.
::
Peanut & ginger pasta salad
Cook up a 450-gram package of pasta in salted water. I made farfalle, because that’s what we had in the cupboard. Drain, rinse, cool, and toss into into a larger serving bowl. Add nicely matchsticked veggies like: red pepper, cucumber, carrot. Or grated. Fresh peas or corn kernels would be good too.
Cut a block of tofu into cubes, place on baking tray, douse with olive oil and tamari sauce, and a sprinkle of salt, and roast in the oven until delicious. (Bake at 425 for about ten minutes, shaking the tray now and again.) Add tofu to pasta.
For the dressing, mix together the following ingredients: 1/4 to 1/2 cup of peanut butter; two tablespoons of hot water; one clove of garlic, finely chopped; one tablespoon tamari sauce; one tablespoon of ginger root, finely chopped; the juice and zest of one lime; several green onions, chopped; one teaspoon sugar; salt and pepper to taste.
Pour the dressing over the pasta, add extra peanuts if you’d like, and some greens (I didn’t), and serve.
And then forget to take photos of either salad because you’re about to rush out the door to some early evening soccer-related event or another.
xo, Carrie
PS Bonus Recipe: Bean Salad!
I have to add a third recipe, a dressing for bean salad, because my mom had some when she was here on Wednesday (our third day of salads), and she LOVED it. She’s now taken the recipe to Tennessee, where my aunt and uncle loved it too.
You know how to make a bean salad. I used canned beans: black, red, and chickpea. Fresh corn sliced off the cob (about six cobs). Half an onion, chopped. Spinach. Green pepper. Some green onions too.
For the dressing: 1/4 to 1/2 cup buttermilk; 1/4 cup olive oil; 1-2 teaspoons sea salt (to taste); 3 cloves garlic; 1 to 2 tablespoons oregano; 2 tablespoons red wine vinegar; the juice of one lemon; black pepper to taste: whirl all ingredients in blender. Pour over salad. Leftovers taste great too, as you can imagine. If you want to try making this vegan, substitute a ripe avocado for the buttermilk. (I didn’t have a ripe avocado, or I would have tried; therefore, I cannot personally vouch for this method.)
Thursday, Jul 23, 2015 | Book Review, Books, Chores, Family, Fun, Kids, Mothering |
Oh yeah, I’m a month late: this guy graduated from grade eight. Here’s how he looked on the big night. In June.
Last week I had a very Carrie idea, the sort that might make my children wish they had another mother, at least just a little bit. Our eldest doesn’t read much. And I’d noticed that some of my children seemed to have forgotten how to spell since leaving school last month. What to do, what to do? The idea came to me and breathlessly I spat it out! I said I would now be assigning a book report, once a week. Yes, they would have to read at least one book a week and write a report on it, which (I was spitballing here) they would then present to the family, every Sunday evening this summer.
I then dropped the mic and excused myself to go work on my Favourite Mother of All Time acceptance speech. Just in case. Because you never know.
(This comes as such a surprise! I’m in shock, look at me, I didn’t even brush my hair — and am I wearing my nightgown? Yes I am and screw it, who cares!! They love me, they really love me!)
Anyway.
Albus wasn’t so keen on the reading part, especially when I specified that the book must be at or near his actual reading level. As an option, I said he could read a magazine or newspaper article, and he made a lame attempt, flipping through a Chatelaine magazine (he was drawn by the picture of an indescribably scrumptious-looking burger on the front, amusingly, the same picture that had inspired me to buy the magazine in the first place). But nothing spoke to him (really? nothing in a women’s lifestyle magazine speaks to you, young man??), and I wouldn’t let him present on a burger recipe. So he requested a special pardon—could he instead write a story rather than read a book and write a report?
COULD HE WRITE A STORY??!
Ding, ding, ding, the judge says Yes.
Sunday evening. We gather round (most of us in pyjamas, me in my nightgown, as it happens). One by one the kids read out their book reports and stories. CJ reports that he likes a certain picture book called The Candy Conspiracy (his original report read, in total, “I like this book,” but he was pushed to go a bit further) because of the tips, and the Juicy Jelly Worm, and the kids. He did write this all down, so the judges give him a high five.
Fooey doesn’t want her report read out loud. It’s on Harry Potter and the Philospher’s Stone, a book that she couldn’t put down, it was like being swept up in a river, she writes, an inventive metaphor that pleases her mother very much. Printed by hand, three pages long, very tidy writing, and hardly a spelling mistake to be found.
AppleApple reads her report off of her Google Drive account: a thoughtful three-page reflection on Jane Eyre, with particular interest in its religious content and pre-feminist qualities. So yes. She did her homework.
Albus reads an entertaining story he’s composed on the computer about a character who lives in the dishwasher, and who is haunted by a tale told to him by an oldster in the midst—a wooden spoon who has visited the back yard and is certain he’s seen a fox chasing a bear. (The comical part is that from the spoon’s description it’s clear the fox and the bear are nothing more than squirrels.) Well structured, excellent comic stylings, and winning characters; I suspect he put more effort into this than he did into the bulk of his school projects all year, but I am nevertheless beaming with pride.
Kevin reports on The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, which was recommended to him by me—he reads out a passage about education, in which Miss Jean Brodie says that she believes education is meant to draw out from the student what is already in her, while the principal of the school believes education is meant to insert information into the student. Draw out or thrust in?
Discuss. (We discussed.)
I finish with the sad story of Wave, a memoir by a woman who lost her husband, two young sons, and her parents in the tsunami of 2004. The book is about her life after this loss, although it opens with an intensely riveting scene in which they are lost while somehow she survives in this massive sudden wave of destruction. I promise the kids we live nowhere near a tsunami-zone. But I can see that the younger two are quite upset at the thought of a mother losing her children, or her children being lost. Good job, Mom. So perhaps not the best note to end on.
But back to Wave: It is a powerful memoir, if you want to take it on. It isn’t as hard to read as you might imagine. Sonali Derayinagala is a lovely writer. And she carries you right into the void of what it would be like to lose all of the people who make you who you are, most fundamentally. Who is she, without them?
It isn’t a question any of us would want to answer.
Oh dear, I’ve reproduced our evening rather too perfectly. I’ve ended on a downer. I do apologize. Now, keep reading, keep reporting. And get back to me on Sunday.
xo, Carrie
Monday, Jul 13, 2015 | Driving, Kids, Lists, Summer, Swimming, Work |
Where I’m writing from (above).
Poolside, underneath a wonky umbrella, at a picnic table, with birds cheeping from a ventilation system nearby, and the sound of water moving rhythmically in the 50-metre pool. My eldest is taking a lifeguarding course, three hours every morning for the next two weeks. I decided to stay, this morning, and work here.
Where I was on Saturday (above).
I spent the better part of the day driving to and from the overnight camp where our kids have been going for many summers. I picked up the girls, who had been away for the week and were in varying stages of tired and hungry and happy. We stopped at a diner on the way home. Driving almost defines my summer so far, but this week and next will be a different flavour: swimming pools, staying close to home.
Maybe we’ll have more of this, too (above).
Yesterday, the kids spontaneously decided to make supper in two teams: boys v girls. Boys made dessert, girls made the main meal. They plan to switch it up for another evening this week. Kevin took them shopping for ingredients. I offered a few tips (such as you don’t have to tape parchment paper into a cake pan!!!), but mostly tried to stay the heck out of the kitchen, and let them follow their recipes and help each other out. I even went for a run to avoid the hovering. Unfortunately, it was hot and I kept having to stop and walk, which couldn’t have been fun for my running partner, who was totally fine. We made it 10 km, but I was all kinds of pitiful. I kept fantasizing that someone might have dropped a water bottle near the path, or maybe I’d see a puddle, or maybe that guy on the bike is carrying water and I can ask him for a drink … Moral of the story: on hot days, carry some damn water, Carrie.
The meal I returned to: French onion soup, caesar salad, and oreo-shaped cake for dessert with freshly whipped cream. Best of all, the food was excellent. The judges ruled that the teams had tied. Points for everyone. (CJ has been giving himself points lately: a point for feeding the fish, a point for emptying the dishwasher, watering the plants, reading a book, brushing teeth, practicing soccer, etc. etc. I like this very much. The simple self-reward.)
These three are home for the morning together (above).
This is a possible illustration of what’s happening right now. Jenga turned into a housing complex. Bananagrams as furniture. Go-go people. Random cars. And some ukulele playing. On Sunday morning AppleApple and I sat and played our ukuleles for at least an hour, leaning toward folk and spiritual songs. She wants to learn how to sing harmony, inspired by the musically talented counsellors at camp. She also may have a broken collarbone, but that’s another story. I will fill you in later this week when we get x-ray results, but it looks like that injury during the soccer tournament was more serious than we’d realized. A reminder than comfortably held patterns and assumptions may experience unexpected breaks.
How to roll with it? How to comfort anxiety? How to let yourself be carried along peacefully with the new direction of the flow? Always learning. Playing and singing spirituals seemed like a good way to go, yesterday morning.
xo, Carrie
PS Here’s what I’ve been clicking on, reading, and listening to this week: From Those People, a personal piece on race and unrecognized, unacknowledged privilege. I think this is a necessary read, especially if you have white skin; from the NPR, setting goals by writing about them; from The New Yorker, free podcasts of fiction writers reading and then discussing a favourite short story published in the magazine. AppleApple and I listened to two while driving together: Nathan Englander reading John Cheever’s The Enormous Radio, and Paul Theroux reading Elizabeth Taylor’s “The Letter Writers.” (No, not that Elizabeth Taylor.) One final link: from Hazlitt, I enjoyed reading Dreams Are Boring, by Sasha Chapin, about the romanticized and false link between madness and inspiration.
