What is your line?

The wonderful Becca has a new site for Write on Wednesday. This is a great place to share ideas about writing, the creative process, and the motivations behind our words. I am very excited about this forum, and I think I will participate often.

Today, there was no Cucina di Nicola, as this week is the last week of school, and I have been playing chauffeur to all the social events leading to the last day of Nicolas' school: TOMORROW! He is graduating from elementary school, and moving into scuola media, a big change for all of us.

In lieu of my usual recipe, I am going to try an answer Becca's questions:

Have you found your line yet? Do you think you have one? How do you go about expressing it?

The answers to these questions lay hidden in a corner of my mind. I have always been creative, and when I was young I would dream of becoming a writer. Back then, I wanted to write children's books, stories full of surprising characters, colors, and made-up universes. I wrote my first short story for a national contest when I was 10. I was very surprised when I did not win!!! -Can you say self-confident?

I kept on writing, sometimes in a diary, sometimes in random pieces of paper, sometimes I did not. I do not claim to be a writer, as I have not the focus, nor the talent; but since I became a blogger, I have become motivated by the creative process again.

So, what is my line? I have started a short story that focuses on a woman my age, facing a mid-life crisis of sorts, looking at her past for answers to her future. The short answer is that I write about me, what I know, what I am, what I would like to be. It might not be worth publishing but it sure is therapeutic! I love to sit at the computer, open my secret file, and just write away. I do not stop to think about my so-called public, as I do not expect these words to see the light of day anytime soon. This is liberating.

I have also written about my country, my hometown, my family. These are all extensions of me. I guess I am still getting to know me, and in doing so, I just write and rewrite my history.

I have found my line, and I am happy about this. I write what I know, I write to know.

Holiday Memories

Not too bad for a beginer... My word today for Sunday Scribblings is Holiday Memories. I should have some of those stored someplace in my brain... let's start digging them out!
Kidding aside, I do have great memories of Decembers past. My birthday is in December -the 11th- and my mom would always make my birthday party around a holiday theme: Christmas tree cake, little stockings filled with party favors, red and green tableware, and so on an so forth. When I was little, I used to hate the fact that I had to wait a WHOLE year to get my presents, but as I got older I changed my mind. My birthday was my own personal beginning of the holiday season, then on the 16th the "Novena" would begin.
Here I have to stop and explain what a Novena is for those of you who are not Colombian. The "Novena de Aguinaldos" is a catholic tradition exclusive to Colombia. The 9 days before Christmas are celebrated by reading from a book of prayers. This book is written in old fashioned spanish, and it is the same all over the country. There have been attempts to modernize the language of the book, but they have been unsuccessful (thankfully, as I do appreciate the original text). The book includes some prayers for everyday, as well as a narration of Joseph and Mary's journey to Bethlehem. Additionally there are traditional songs or "villancicos" that are a fundamental part of the novena - this is what kids really enjoy, playing the maracas, panderetas, drums, etc with gusto! You can hear a Novena from a block away. You DO NOT celebrate the Novena on your own, ever! (unless you just moved to Italy, and you do not know of any Colombians in the vicinity) So, you always invite your friends and family to your Novena, and they will host their Novena another night. Only 9 nights and so many friends... Sometimes one must "sacrifice" and go to more than one house, and eat until stuffed. As in any part of the world, all main celebrations revolve around food, and what great food!
OK, everyone still with me? So far we have birthday cake, followed by nine days of music, friends and good food! What else is there? Well, in my hometown Popayan, people make a beautiful dish called "Nochebuena" or goodnight. This dish includes some fried dough with sugar- hojaldra, a kind of plain donut -rosquilla, a fried cheese bread -buñuelo, an assortment of fruits cooked with sugar -desamargados, and dulce de leche -manjarblanco , Every family used to create a beautiful display with all these elements and send it on their best china to their neighbors! Can you imagine? When I was little only really good friends would exchange "Nochebuenas". It was a pleasure to know that there was going to be plenty of delicious sweets on the 24th.
Traditionally Colombians celebrate Christmas eve, with the last novena usually taking place at grandma's house. There would be a nice dinner, followed by the opening of presents. At midnight some people go to mass, and that night is when "baby Jesus" comes and brings the presents for the children. It was so exciting! We would dress up, sit down at a beautiful table, try a sip of wine, open some presents, and then try and stay awake to see baby Jesus... I was never able to stay up for long!
From Christmas on, one would focus on the creation of the "taitapuro", or "año viejo" which is a giant stuffed doll. It represents the old year, and it is filled with firecrackers and fireworks. In order to buy all this "special effects" one needed to collect money, and the most common way to do so was to create a toll gate of sorts on the neighborhood street. We would have a long rope, a tin can. and two children keeping guard. The rope was stretched across the road as a means to stop traffic, once we have accomplished this task, one child would approach the driver with the tin can and ask for money... easy piecy...
I realize that this was not the safest of traditions, but to see a "taitapuro" burn was something-else. Some people would get a little creative with the dummy, and they would make it look like their boss, or a disliked politician, or any other public figure that looked better when lit on fire!
As a counterbalance to all this fire, we would play with water (lots of it) on January 5th and 6th, or the Epiphany. My whole town would come out to the streets, water balloons in hand, and get everyone in sight wet! It was not really the whole town, but all the young people from the town, for sure! I am not sure where this tradition comes from, but it is sure a lot of fun.
It is midnight now, so it is officially Sunday, and I am taking a bow and retiring to my quarters. I have not edited, and I hope I won't regret it. The exercise was successful as far as getting me to write, I will have to read this post tomorrow and see if it is worth it. Good night!

While reading other blogs, I have found that the majority of the people writing them seem to know what they are doing. I, on the other hand, write when I feel like it, and sometimes there is a lot of time in between posts. I want to be a better blogger, so I have decided to follow in the footsteps of Sognatrice from Bleeding Espresso; She used to do Sunday Scribblings for a while. I enjoyed her posts and liked the idea for my own blog. This is a writing exercise, but a creative one. The writers behind this idea define it like this: "Sunday Scribblings was set up to provide inspiration and motivation for anyone who enjoys writing and would like a weekly challenge".
The premise of this challenge is that they will provide a new word on Saturday, and I will write about, around, after, inspired by this particular word on Sunday.
I hope I am up to the challenge!
See you on Sunday then...

Good news, bad news

Well, here I am, writing offline... I am not complaining. Really. I am just telling it as it is. Ok, to summarize how I got to this point, I should take you back in time, like a week or so... remember that Fernando was in the States, and that he was bringing home a lot of goodies? Well, he arrived safely and he had no problems with his luggage. He enjoys some benefits as a "platinum" member of a certain airline that should remain nameless; he had two suitcases with him, one barely between the limits of the specified weight and another one BEYOND the limit. He was not charged extra for it, nor was he bothered by anyone because of it. We got everything we wanted, and now we are very happy AND very warm! But I am not getting to the point, am I? Well, Fernando decided to surprise me, and since my birthday is in December (tomorrow if you must know!) he bought me a new computer! Yes, I am the proud owner of a Mac-Book!!! YES!!!
I always got Fernando's second hand computers, as he is an engineer and he needs to update his hardware often. As an artist, I always wanted a Mac, but I was happy just to have a computer. That is until my 9 year old laptop decided to hibernate. ctrl+alt+del was my most common use for the machine. Talking on Skype was like playing voice charades. Needless to say I was very happy to get my dream computer! I had to wait a little to use it as all my information and all my files were on another hard disk that is not compatible with my new computer. OK, you must be wondering what all of this has to do with the fact that I am writing offline? Well, there are always ways in which we learn to appreciate what we have, and this usually happens when we no longer have them! In my case, I get my very first brand new computer, and Telecom is the instrument the universe chooses to show me how lucky I am. Telecom Italia had been calling Fernando for over a week, and since he was out of the country or at work, they never were able to talk to him. Finally, last week, I was able to talk the operator into telling me (the wife, not the account holder) whatever information they had for Fernando. Well, they were calling us because our bill was too high! What? A company calling a customer because they are paying too much? Yes, the operator tells me the bill is in the THOUSANDS of euros! WHAT? Yes, even though we requested a flat fee Internet service (about 20 euros a month), we are being charged by the hour, at the extravagant fee of 2 euros an hour! I keep my computer on most of the time, and the Internet is connected as soon as I turn the computer on... hence the super-bill of sorts. When talking to the operator I was able to tell him that this was a mistake, and that we would have never ordered the hourly fee and use it as often as we had. He was very polite, and he gave me a phone number to call to get everything straighten out. Up until this point I was very proud of myself and my Italian speaking abilities, but when it came time to call the service center, a machine answered my call, and I learned that I understand "human" Italian but not "machine" Italian. I called my relocation agent and she took care of the problem, or so we think. We have to wait until we get the bill in the mail, and then we can ask for a recalculation of the bill.
Some side effects of our little misunderstanding: they blocked my account for a while, and once service was reestablished, it shows that we are still paying the hourly fee... it can take only one second for someone to make a mistake and change my service from a flat fee to an hourly fee, but it would take 10 days to change it back!
This is the story of how it came to be that I am writing this entry offline.

Writer's block.

I don't fancy myself a writer, but I am suffering the worst symptom a writer can experience: a blank page (computer screen in my case.) The words refuse to come out and play. This week I tried unsuccessfully to write a post about coffee in Italy; I had so much to say, yet I wrote only nonsense. I still have a draft of that post, and maybe I will be able to organize my thoughts around it and finish it; perhaps all I need is a cup of coffee!!!
I love writing this blog, it gets my creative juices going, my mind goes back and forth looking for the right word, the best description, the punch line!!! I have so much fun, that I never thought it could be difficult to do it... Yet, I sat down a couple times to finish my entry and it just did not happen! So please forgive me if I am not up to par this time around.