• About

The Stiff Corner

~ "Write it down before you forget…"

The Stiff Corner

Monthly Archives: May 2013

Image

Where do I begin?

05 Sunday May 2013

I write to you so I won’t forget…

(Sursa: http://eastashley.typepad.com/)

I’ve started this not knowing where it’s going to take me or what I want to say. The process of transforming thoughts into words proved to be challenging and at times disappointing. English is not my mother tongue and my attempts to write in English were difficult.

So, what I tried to do is read as much as I can in English, underline or write down the words I didn’t understand and then look them up in the dictionary. I used to have different apps of various dictionaries. It helped a lot but after a while I realized I was being left behind and that this is taking longer than I wanted it initially. And not just that. Things were happening too fast and I was way to slow to catch up. For someone who wants to get better at this I was not learning fast enough. Mistakes were many and my writings sucked for the most part. I get better when I’m terribly anxious, disappointed, saddened or depressed. Happiness doesn’t trigger many good ideas. Not that this is a problem, but you would think that being happy is what makes writing easier, flawless. Not the case here.

I’ve started taking notes when I was 11 ore 12, usually after a drama, my drama or after different episodes of scandalous fights, or simply when I was thinking I’m falling in love for someone or something. My first papers were very childish love letters that I was going to send to my imaginary lover. I liked to copy all love-related lines from poems, short stories or novels and stack them in my notebooks. I probably have hundreds of those. I remember reading “Queen Margot” by Alexandre Dumas, a must-read for that age. It was fabulous. Then after a while I’ve discovered the love, drama and tragedy from  Henryk Sienkiewicz’s “Quo Vadis” or Boris Pasternak’s “Doctor Zhivago”. When I’ve started “Quo Vadis” I was travelling to Bucharest by train, always by train. For some reason that book put me in a bell jar, no sounds and no whispers from the people around could reach me. 

In high-school we had to read a lot of literature for our Romanian classes. This introduced me to our great Romanian novelists. For those who have no idea who Marin Preda, Mircea Eliade or Camil Petrescu are, all I can say is that they should find some of their works in English and sit down. And read. They are my favorite, but they are so many others, writers and poets who unfortunately didn’t get the appreciation they deserve just because they were born in Romania, they were too poor and not many people of arts had the interest in supporting their talent. Mircea Eliade is probably the most famous. He could write about love, lost, lust, life and feelings like no other writer I’ve read before. He’s probably known worldwide because of his contribution in philosophy and mostly because he’s the first writer that popularize the history of religions. His treaty on religion and religious beliefs are a result of many travelings around the world, especially to India, which completely transformed his existence.

Anyway, after the Romanian phase I went to collage and entered a new era, which was called: “reading anything but the school-related bibliography”. That was the moment I started reading in English and mainly because I didn’t have a choice. 80% of our class curricula involved Anglo-Saxon references. So, during my Anthropology class I had to read (maybe) about the most interesting things: tribes, ancient traditions, customs, cannibalism, unknown civilizations from places I never knew existed, in Polynesia, Greenland or other secluded islands that I couldn’t find on the map…..because oh well, they were not there anymore in present time. That kind of thing.

After a short while I found my South-American “buddies”: Gabriel García Márquez, Mario Vargas Llosa and Pablo Neruda. The closest thing to fiction that I can get is through the first two and Pablo Neruda is Pablo Neruda, and he meets the requirements for “my list”.

To be continued….

Advertisements

Posted by thestiffcorner | Filed under Ingliş

≈ Leave a comment

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 216 other followers

Follow The Stiff Corner on WordPress.com

Categories

  • Ingliş
  • Poem
  • Random writing
  • Rumenien

More random writings

  • Entropic March 19, 2017
  • From Great Expectations to Really Low Ones March 13, 2017
  • People don’t like me mamma November 2, 2016
  • When Life Gives You Friends, You Make Memories :) March 23, 2016
  • Joi(e) de vivre February 11, 2016

Archives

  • March 2017
  • November 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • March 2015
  • December 2014
  • September 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • December 2013
  • July 2013
  • May 2013
  • January 2013
  • September 2012
  • September 2011

Blogs I Follow

  • Ministry for the Interior
  • Lexiophiles
  • Trying To Be Good
  • Penning My Voice
  • ultimatemindsettoday
  • In search of Right Words
  • www.sophielucidojohnson.com
  • montecristo
  • The Riparian Times
  • The Stiff Corner
  • biscuiţi cu dulceaţă
  • dinadolescenta
  • Hello Typewriter
  • Evergreen

Goodreads

May 2013
M T W T F S S
« Jan   Jul »
 12345
6789101112
13141516171819
20212223242526
2728293031  

Recent Comments

Advertisements

The Stiff Playlist

The Stiff Playlist

Blog at WordPress.com.

Ministry for the Interior

Curate Your Best Home

Lexiophiles

Just another WordPress.com site

Trying To Be Good

There's gotta be a lesson in here somewhere...

Penning My Voice

"Write it down before you forget..."

ultimatemindsettoday

A great WordPress.com site

In search of Right Words

Find the right words, put them in the right place at the right moment

"Write it down before you forget..."

montecristo

"Write it down before you forget..."

The Riparian Times

The Riparian Times is a boutique publication with musings about life, travel, fashion and art.

The Stiff Corner

"Write it down before you forget..."

biscuiţi cu dulceaţă

"Visit Tina before Tina visits you!"

dinadolescenta

A topnotch WordPress.com site

Hello Typewriter

"Write it down before you forget..."

Evergreen

Cancel