Book review: Northern Lights by Philip Pullman

After a traumatic time with Harry Potter, I’ve been resisting further forays into kiddy fantasy. I’ve been the cat who desperately wanted the goldfish, looking at my wet paw in puzzled horror.

But then I got lured into the murky Pullman ocean by the Golden Compass film (it’s not a compass, it’s an alethiometer, dagnammit!) which was partly filmed in my (mainly) beloved Oxford. Though the brute of a film wasn’t all it could have been, some aspects of the story intrigued me. Like Iofur Raknison, I now longed for a daemon of my own. A budgie perhaps.

My fumble into this allegory-laden adventure started well. I wanted to know about Dust and daemons and find out what on earth the mysterious Lord Asriel was up to. I liked Lyra and her youthful exuberance, her cheeky foot-stomping attitude. I was even creeped out by the golden monkey.

But somewhere along the line, Northern Lights lost my interest. Maybe the noble polar bears were a step to far. Maybe it was the thick bog of fancy name detail which always goes in one eye and out the other and leaves every tenth word meaningless. Perhaps I should give up reading fantasy all together and stick to Stephen Fry and Danny Wallace. Perhaps, contrary to previous musings, I ++am++ an imaginative failure.

I’ve been thinking about it.

Something nagged at me all the way through this book, and I’ve finally figured out what it was. This is a grown-up book with a child protagonist. Far more intellectually demanding than Mr Potter and his merry little wizards, this is a book that touches on the real world and the things that we all wonder about: God, sin, hope and desire. The nature of the universe. And what we get is a through-the-eyes-of-a-child nothing-really-makes-sense outlook. Well, maybe it doesn’t. But stop letting the kids steal the limelight and give us grown-ups something to do? Please?

I ++liked++ Northern Lights. I read it all the way to the end and didn’t skip any dull bits (there were a few – mainly the polar bears). It confirmed my suspicions that the film neglected huge chunks of good stuff. But that’s all I can say. It wasn’t the revelation I was hoping for. I still want a daemon though.

Apologies to any polar bears.

Seventeen syllables – the great haiku myth

Sometimes, people teach you stuff. Sometimes, they’re wrong.

I had been eagerly writing haiku for a little while without really concerning myself as to whether they fitted into the traditional seventeen syllable pattern, that strict structure I’d been taught about at school. Rules are there to be broken, right? But, at the back of my mind, it always felt like I was cheating a little, like there was something I hadn’t mastered. Something I needed to discover.

And so, with a desire to learn all I could about haiku and improve my seventeenness skills, I bought a fanastic book, The haiku handbook, by William J. Higginson. This gem of a book covers pretty much everything – haiku history, structure, teaching, and all things in between. I’ve learned so much.

Most of all, I’ve learned this. Traditional Japanese haiku consist of seventeen phonetic units, called onji. Onji do not equate to syllables.

Onji can be compared to short syllables in words like po-ta-to (Higginson’s example). But longer syllables may consist of several onji.

The truth, people. Studies have shown that in order to replicate the rythmn of Japanese haiku, an English language poem needs only 12 or 13 syllables. Trying to write in seventeen syllables will result in a poem which is much longer and less succinct than a traditional haiku. Higginson recommends a basic haiku structure consisting of three units with two, three and two stresses respectively.

In giddy excitement I looked back at what I considered to be the best haiku I had written, and discovered (as if by magic) that they fitted this pattern. Or thereabouts – because it is, after all, the spirit of the haiku that counts. Even the masters played around with the onji when it suited.

new book -
how the dust jacket
catches the light

Moleskines and me

My life is always balanced precariously between the accumulation of what I can only call “stuff”, and the desire to be free of worldy possessions. So it goes in cycles, buying and selling on ebay, buying and giving away, buying and (gah!) throwing away.

Any desire to acheive something, to create something, is accompanied by the purchase of new stuff to do it with. Not just any old stuff, the good stuff, the stuff that I can fondle and go “ahhh” over. Usually the stuff comes first and sparks the creativity, and always I say that this is the last time. From now on, I will accumulate no more. This is it, this is all I need to be.

One of these last times came today.

I have for a long time admired Moleskines, but, thinking they were made of leather, avoided them. Even when my mouth watered over them in stationary shops, I let them be.

Then I heard a whisper, a little internet whisper, that they weren’t leather at all. That no moles or cows or other animals went to make that beautiful black cover. Little cute rounded corners.

I did some surfing, which seemed to confirm it. With joy in my heart and Billy Bragg on my ipod, I skipped into town this morning in order to buy a plain Moleskine notebook.

I discovered there are far more varieties than I thought. In addition to the notebooks I also bought the cutest little watercolour sketchbook and a pack of two teenie teenie pink notebooks for my handbag (when did I become a woman and acquire a handbag? There’s even a roll of scotch tape in there, for god’s sake). Then I came home and reorganised my bag to accomodate them all.

It felt good.

Blank pages, pretty, pretty blank pages just waiting for me. I picture myself on a train, in a waiting room, on a summer bench (just wait) thoughtfully penning haiku and drawing otherwise unnoticed flowers.

It’s not, of course, that I need the Moleskines to do these things. Just yesterday I was writing haiku on my mobile ‘phone of all things. But my ‘phone doesn’t have it. It’s ordinairy, plain, everyday. Even when it’s not, it is. I don’t look at my mobile and think of the possibilities.

The war between “stuff” and the perfection of desirelessness is accompanied in my unstill mind by a tussle between technology and the purity of the immediately understandable. Pen, paper, pencil, paint. I find the immediacy of these things enlivening, their simplicity comforting. They don’t give me headaches if I sit in front of them for too long.

But the beauty of technology is that it allows me to be creative without any STUFF to clutter up my life.

Does it? As I write that I realise it’s not true! My computer is riddled with applications I downloaded because they were shiny and new and they sparked in me some idea of what I could do with them. My desktop is untidy, full of files I thought I needed at some point. One day I will have a purge and everything will be clean and free again.

I am wandering away from the point, which is that Moleskines are not made of leather and the joy is unabandoned. Question is, will I use them before the next desire prods me, pulls me by the hand and leads me away? Before I find them dusty and creased in my ever expanding handbag, the desire to have a clear out overcoming me?

new notebook -
thumb on the blank page
stroking it

Haiku updated

Haiku doesn’t need much introduction.  If you’re reading this you probably already know we’re talking about a form of japanese poetry, most famous for being very very very short.  Three lines only, in Japanese traditionally seventeen syllables – 5/7/5.  English haiku, though, tend to be free and easy with this limited metre, which makes it a bit easier for impatient poets like me.

Traditionally haiku are usually concerned with nature, and they often still are, although emotions and general angst are also a common theme in modern works. 

However, the defining characteristic of a haiku, for me (aside from the obvious structural restraints), is not the subject, but the capturing of a moment, of an essence of something.  I like to think of them as literary photographs, snapshots of a point in time.  But more than that, they somehow capture the meaning of that moment and its eternal implications.

And then there’s twaiku. That’s right, twitter + haiku = twaiku.

The short length of twitter updates means that entries need to be succinct, and there’s very little in life that’s more succinct than a three line poem.

As a very new arrival in twitterland, I wanted to do something interesting with my updates. I’ve been writing haiku for a few months and the two things became glued together in my mind with very little effort or thought. I suppose because in trying to write my first few twitters I encountered the same creative problem as when I’m trying to write haiku – how to condense a thought into such little space.

Unlike haiku, twaiku often focus on the mundane, the ordinary moments in life. My first twaiku was written in a lazy moment whilst watching darts on television:

darts on tv / poisoned arrows / loaded with apathy

And hey presto, a moment of sloth magically transformed into a creative musing on the life-sucking power of television. That is the beauty of twaiku.

Guilty renaissance

The beauty of an online existence is the ability to delete, erase, start again.

And that’s what I’m doing.  All my previous posts are gone; this is a new beginning.

A blank canvas where my creativity will take me where it will, and f*@k knows where that is right now.  I have a hankering to write poetry and interpet dreams and post beautiful photographs, to think out loud about peace and love and happiness.  Just to write.

The inner geek fights the inner hippy all the way.