aliefka2day

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"I was perfectly content in my world, and then she left it," said the author of a novel to me this morning. Not just any novel, but a novel I am turning into a film. It all started out a few years ago as a collaboration with a well-known Dutch actress. Then, life got in the way of her plans. And life can be painful.
Today, I needed to ask the author a question which was keeping me awake. The book he wrote is about how he lost his girlfriend to cancer. They were in their twenties at the time.
What would her life have looked like if she was still alive today? I thought he would find it a difficult question to answer. But it wasn't. The picture he painted was of a self-centered, spoiled woman, yet who lived life the way nobody dares live it. Fully, wholly, passionately and driven by ambition. Duality, as any writer knows, is exactly what makes for interesting characters. Her main aim was to become succesful and to become rich. To live life the way her father should have lived it.
But would it have happened for her? There was no doubt in his mind that yes, she would have succeeded. She was intelligent, engaging, social, extrovert and persistent. What about him? Oh, he'd of course have stopped working and would be writing novels. It's what she wanted him to do. I didn't ask: is it what he wanted to do? Really wanted to do? He is now director of the biggest publishing company in the Netherlands.
Want opposing need, another powerful tool in screenplay.
How many people do we meet who aren't doing what they say they want to be doing? Who keep postponing for reasons life brings?
Life as we think it could be, is always different than life as it is. And what does every good film do? It mimics life.

A reaction to an editor of Bookslut.com, a website that reviews novels (yes, I get tired too sometimes).

"Thank you mr. Blackstone, I'll try Open Letter. Words Without Borders is considering a review too.
Forgive me for pointing the obvious out, but a book is good or it isn't good (or anything in between) - regardless the format or form. As the saying goes 'never judge a book by its cover'. A great metaphor. eBook is simply a format, like mp3 is for music. The song doesn't change.
Well, at least I'm trying, right? Honestly: I'm exhausted, but I just have to keep going. And truly, I wish I didn't have to be writing this email.
The US/UK market is not as open to international voices as you might think, unless they are bestsellers in their own country. There's quite a few statistics out there, and articles (even on Open Letter :), see beneath).
So I knew it was going to be hard.
It would actually be a good article to write for Bookslut. What use are foreign authors making of digital opportunities?

Kind Regards, the three procent problem

The mussel. Would you ever consider it to be a main character in a film? I definitely wouldn't. And still, yesterday evening I went to the premiere of one of the more intriguing documentaries I've ever seen.L'Amour des Mouleswas about exactly that: the mussel.
The mussel's shell is a blueish-black, the inside of it shines. It lives, breathes, survives, joins arms with peers against forces of nature or mankind. It is coveted, protected and adored. Today, I am still thinking about the mussel film, and about the people portrayed in it who's lives are moulded by the mussel. About the way the film was shot. The music.
A band performed after the film. A tiny, skinny girl with big hair got up on stage. She looked a little silly. You'd think she'd be shy. You'd think she'd never do a thing like get up on stage. And she couldn't sing to save her life. I don't know whether she was aware of this fact or not, but the thing is: it didn't matter. She was vibrant, laughing and confident. She gave it all she had.
I like going to festivals and performances. I am always reminded that it doesn't matter what you do or how, as long as you do it with conviction. It's this conviction that speaks to people. And sometimes this conviction leads to works of timeless beauty. To a film about the mussel.

Yesterday, I was at a dinner. It was themed 'Brazil' for the guest of honor who came from Sao Paolo. I know the guest of honor from the past. He worked in Amsterdam, I worked in Brazil. And so our worlds kept crossing.
When you separate, the web called life falls apart. Threads spread out over the floor, intertangled but no longer connected. Some pieces of thread have no apparent end. They just lay there, on a cold floor, slowly unraveling.
A few years ago, I went to Brazil to do research for my novel The Consul General's Wife. At the time, I was in a relationship. We have a child together. He and our son were in Brazil too. Those were probably the most intimate few months in our relationship. Our son turned two, learned some Portuguese, ran around Copacabana on his chubby toddler legs and with a little white hat on his blonde hair, unaware of what was to come.
One time, I turned to fold up his stroller. I heard a scream and within a split second realized turning to fold his stroller had been a grave mistake. There was a ball, my toddler son had run after it towards a four-lane through road. A Brazilian man swept him up. The man pushed my son into my hands and shouted at me for being such a bad mother. How could I? It took me a few hours to recover from the shock. Meanwhile, I was trying desperately not to show my despair to my son. To just play and be happy, pretend nothing was wrong. Safety, is what a child needs.
We do things in a split second of our lives. People get angry at you, scold you. And you fold your arms around your son while hoping that feeling inside you fades. Yet sometimes, the memory of that moment in time comes back. And for a minute you are right there, back then, in that one singular moment that made you feel the way you feel now.
It will fade again surely it will.

My dad wasn't the only diplomat in our family. An uncle of mine was too, not for the Dutch but for the Americans. Somehow, my uncle always managed to get posted in war-torn countries.
Children do not want to be separated from their families. When my family moved from London to Ghana, my parents gave me the choice whether to go to the boarding school or to come with them to Ghana. We're talking Africa early 1980s. Ghana had just gone through a coup. I was 11 and I chose Ghana.
My same-aged American cousin moved country to country too. He was 19 when his parents were posted in Kuwait. By then, he had started college and so he went on holidays to Kuwait. This is what diplomat's children do when they're older: they spend their holidays visiting their parents. Preferably in France, as was the case for me. But no, he spent Summer in Kuwait.
Should my uncle have seen it coming? Had the CIA failed to warn them?
While my cousin was there, Iraq suddenly invaded Kuwait. America decided to meddle and became enemy number one. In other words: my cousin, aunt and uncle had overnight turned from protected individuals to hunted prey. My cousin was held hostage, first with his parents and later - when the women and children were freed - he was separated from them. 19 meant he was no longer a kid. Iraqi soldiers took him to Baghdad, alone.
Diplomacy isn't always the protective bubble people envision it to be. For children, oftentimes quite the opposite.

Yesterday, the American ambassador in Libya was killed. My cousin, John Charlton, is now an anchor for Fox. He briefly speaks of his Kuwait experiences on a news item here.

"You have to understand how tired I am," I tell him, "really, very tired. I wish it to be otherwise. Some people can handle only a few hours of sleep, I -unfortunately- can't."
He looks at me, teary-eyed. His eyes droop when he looks at me that way. Not only when he's about to cry, also when he's thinking. Big, blue, droopy eyes. To be clear I add, "it's not your fault that I'm bad with too little sleep, it's mine. But when you sleep in my bed, you twist and turn and I can't sleep. And then I get grumpy, and angry and I'm a no-fun mommy. You understand? You want a fun mommy as much as I do, don't you? So let's both help make sure I'm a fun mommy, okay?"
He blinks and there it is, the sob. Now his eyes are tightly closed, his lips pursed together. He has ruby-red lips. Big, fat tears roll down his cheeks. He is almost purple.
"But mummy I always get to sleep in dad's bed. Always! Every night. I want to go to daaaa-aaad. I'm never allowed anything with you." Big, deep, heartbreaking sobs.
"Come here for a second," I say and he comes to sit on my lap. He still fits there, all curled up.
"You've never told me why it is you don't want to sleep in your own bed?"
"Because I came from inside you and you and I should be connected, that's the way things should be."
Sometimes, my 6-yr-old scares me.
I sniff his hair and want to be strict and firm. That's what everyone says I should be. And I'm about to be, truly I am. But then I remember. I remember dark hallways and quiet nights. I remember that empty feeling. I remember tiptoeing on bare feet towards the door, their door, my parents' closed door. I remember hesitating to open it, but the fear of being alone was greater and so I would, I would open it, with my heart thumping in my chest. I remember sometimes there were cockroaches in the hallway, lots of them. And that even the cockroaches wouldn't stop me. I hated cockroaches.
Sleep in my bed then, my little boy. I will be tired, I will be grumpy. And so I won't be the mommy I want to be by day. But at least I will be at night.

I look straight into the future that no longer exists. My little boy stands in it, with dad. They are messing around. Back then, what I saw was an older version of dad sitting at the round kitchen table eating a sandwich with his teenager son. I was around too. Probably giving the roses some water. It was the kind of thing I'd do in that future we once shared. Or maybe leaning against the kitchen sink, reading a page of a book on some gadget. Only briefly looking up to smile at the image of them eating and chatting. And all of that was fine.
That future seemed transfixed. Like a painting. Yet it has shifted and moved, in both colour and tone. It's not as warm, the light from the ceiling does not spill over the round kitchen table in a comforting glow. Instead, the bright spotlights in the hallway give deep contrasts to the scene which is now tainted in blues and greys. Do they ever sit at that kitchen table together, I wonder, that table at the end of the hallway? But of course they do. One day, other people might be sitting there with them. A woman, who they play cards with, and her children maybe. She'd probabl be better at being me in my past future.
My little boy's hand doesn't comfort me tonight. Not even the way he hold on to mine as he falls asleep and slowly releases his grip. Before he does though, I say I missed him. He says he missed me too.

Every city reminds you of another city. Climb the old city wall that separates the past from the present. Look as far as your eye can see, past the ruins, towards the horizon that connects the world to the skies. He is there, somewhere. As much a part of you as he is of the world. The rainbow is a bridge to the explosion of colours. When he sees you, he smiles. Tomorrow will soon be yesterday. And today we will hold hands again.

Expendable. I had never heard of that word until Rambo used it. "I am expendable," he said. I looked at his droopy eyes and felt he and I were connected. When I looked up what expendable meant, I was certain of it. He had been talking to me.
So I sent him a letter. I addressed it to 'Rambo, c/o Hollywood Studios, Los Angeles, California, USA. And I added 'please deliver. It's a matter of life and death.'
In the letter I wrote that I knew exactly how he felt. Better than he could ever imagine. I too was expendable. Yes, exactly that.
I lived in Africa at the time, Ghana. My dad had laughed about the Rambo poster I had stuck to my wall. I didn't get that. But it didn't matter, at least Rambo and I understood each other. Still, my dad had helped me. He had provided a Dutch embassy envelop, and off the letter went, in a diplomatic pouch. All the way to the USA.
I forgot all about the letter, and even stopped thinking about Rambo. Then one hot and dusty day, a letter returned from the USA. In it, there was an autographed photo of Rambo. That was it? I felt disappointed and even embarrassed to show anyone. I stuck the Rambo photo in a drawer.
Almost 30 years later, Rambo enters my living room. He is still droopy-eyed and expendable and saving the world. And here I sit, with my beer, marveling at the thought that once upon a time, a 13-year-old girl copuld send a letter from Africa, without a specific address. That the letter would actually arrive. And that someone - perhaps endeared - decided to make that girl's day.
I should have been the happiest girl on earth.