In medias res...

"Nobody has time to read such "Tolstoyan" posts. They might be interesting but only as long as ten lines, I will not read anything longer - we live in the age of Internet, do you get me? Moreover, if you are such a graphomainiac, why don't you finish your bloody essays, first? "
All right, my imaginary friend, I see what you mean. I have written this "shortest ever" (unless I start to write haiku's) post just to please you and silence you. I promise there will be no other post, by the time when at least one of my essays is finished.

Per aspera ad astra or star-crossed faux pas

It has been quite a long time since I have finished reading all accessible books by Tolkien and spent many hours talking to similarly "handicapped" friends, discussing the genius and mistakes of Peter Jackson and his adaptation of LOTR. ("Never mind Tom Bombadil, but how could they afford replacing Glorfindel by Arwen?" –"Wait, does that mean Aragorn was a gay in the book?"). Not that we came to any reasonable enclosures then, but I have been convinced that it is essential for the spectator to read the book first to enjoy the movie properly ever since.

I grew older and became a little bit apathetic concerning the “I too am capable of making a succesful fantasy movie” phenomena which followed the LOTR and Harry Potter madness.
Being a weanling of Anne McCaffrey, Eragon had not much to offer me even in the form of a book, so I was not surprised by the damnatory critiques on its movie adaptation. I have read the Chronicles of Narnia and preferred the old TV-series version to the new movie, despite of my personal connections with it. I saw trailers introducing Seeker: the Dark Is Rising and did not even take the trouble to remember it until the next morning.
But when last year came to its end, everyone around me started to behave and talk in a strange way. My intellectual, artistic, older friends (whom I would usually expect to tear such a thing into pieces as a childish kitsch) were stopping in front of a poster with an anorectic blonde girl and goggle eyed boy entitled something like Star…(Wars?) and discussing it with enthusiasm. I felt as if I had fallen from another planet and started suspecting that something shiny has appeared on the sky of fantasy movies.

A few days later I met Romeo and although he was talking about life with his usual critical cynicism throughout the main part of our conversation, he suddenly asked in quite an innocent, curious way: "Have you seen Stardust?" I gave him a rather inspective look before I answered: "Not yet." So could that be true? Could there really be some new fantasy-based movie worth seeing? It was tempting to go to the cinema and find out immediately. Unfortunately, in the real world it was about time for my next teaching lesson, so I said goodbye to both my dreams and my friend and forgot the matter for several days.

After one of my really exhausting days, when I came home quite late, my roommate was awaiting me with a familiar shine in her eyes. I was pretending not to see it, but I was sure our usual ritual was going to take place.
As soon as I took some not-yet-too-smelly cheese out of our simulation of a fridge and put it on a not-yet-too-stony slice of bread, she asked, innocently: "What are you going to do in the evening?" "It is evening," I sighed. "Moreover, I must study..." (I did my best to ignore her disappointed series of faces and hateful "of-course-you-must-study-Facebook" murmur as ostentatively as possible, and then…) "All right, all right, I am in, what kind of movie? If it is some stupidity not worth my time, I’ll…"
The shine in her eyes materialized in a single word: "Stardust". I almost dropped my dinner, as I jumped on the bed and said "Let’s go".

Well…in spite of my being in a rather skeptical mood and terribly tired, the movie did not let my attention get weary. I think I shed some sad tears once or twice, tears of laughter several times and I was pleasantly surprised times out of number. I only felt uncomfortable about Claire Danes as Yvaine, her “froggish” faces were sort of amusing sometimes. My idea of a fallen star is, let’s say, a little bit more airy. Otherwise, I loved almost everything about the movie. I loved captain Shakespeare (He has almost beaten Jack Sparrow on the list of my favorite pirates of all times), I loved Michelle Pfeifer as the disintegrating witch and I loved the music and landscape. And, last but not least, I was grateful for the happy ending and positive message in it. (It was a nice change after all those postmodern would-be-intellectual depressive books I had to read in December).

Some thirty or forty seconds after the movie’s end there was an unusual silence between us. Then my roommate took a deep breath and said something like…"Amazing guy this Neil Gaiman, isn’t he? I have been connecting his name only with Sandman so far…"
"No, wait,"said I. "Let me think… I must have read something else by him…or…it just…sounds so familiar, even Stardust…wasn’t it the book you…" (two pairs of panic –stricken eyes met) "NOOOOOOOO!"
Our voices united in such a heart-rending howl that all werewolves must have been ashamed that night.

My roommate has a part-time job in a cosy bookshop. And she is a bookworm. And she likes fantasy. But last year, when there was a clearance sale, she called me and said: "We’ve got some very cheap books here, one or two pieces of each kind, mainly some shoddy fantasy, can’t you ask those crazy friends of yours whether they want me to buy some for them?" And she sent me a list of titles and I forwarded it. There was one book on the list, which more than three of my "crazy friends" were interested in.

I remember the complication it caused when I sent the book to the girl who "won" the fight via another friend who lived close to her instead of taking it to a pub. I thought she would kill me for not bringing it personally. I raised my eyebrows then and thought "They treat it as if it was King John’s Bible, one day I must find out why."
Well, the day had come. The moment me and my roommate realized how close to getting a really cheap copy of Stardust and reading it before seeing the movie we were, made us feel like "magical flying morons".

About two weeks after seeing the movie, when I was “studying”, I found a discussion board concerning Neil Gaiman on Facebook. There were many angry reactions from true-blue fans, accusing the authors of the movie of changing the talking tree into the talking Moon, not involving Dunstan’s lover and, above all, not letting Tristan die!
What? Thought I. Such changes as letting the Moon speak to Tristan and thus advert to Yvaine’s being the daughter of the Moon, instead of saying it explicitly as in the book, belong precisely to the kind of the screenwriter’s mastery which leads to an successful adaptation. None of the abbreviations made in Stardust could have been as disturbing and confusing as those in Harry Potter series. But how the hell am I supposed to understand this death of Tristan? Would it be possible that the book and movie differ in such an essential “detail”? Did the witch kill him in the book or did Victoria become so jealous?
Yet suddenly I desired to borrow/buy the book no more. I did not want to find out. For the first time in my life I was grateful for not reading the book before seeing the movie. If there was no hope in the ending, if it all ends in vain even for Yvaine, when even fairy tales are not allowed to have the “happily ever after” part anymore, how can one believe in hope and comfort in the real world?
But I still found it hard to believe, that Neil could have done better with the movie than with the book, so I –again, for the first time in my life- ignored the spoiler warnings and read the plot of the book. And luckily so, because I realized that the hateful screams in the discussion were only crocks of the true difference between the book and the movie. The ending of the book is happy as well – in a way. The eternal solitude of Yvaine after Tristan’s natural death matches that of Arwen’s, when Aragorn passes away. I felt relieved and yet a little bit angry, because if someone pulled down my will to read the book, it was not the movie, but those true-blue book fans, criticizing every detail of the movie. I remembered my past “book-versus-movie” discussions and felt a little bit ashamed. The experience with Stardust has taught me that the deep-rooted book fans can in some cases do more harm to the story reputation than those who enjoyed the movie without reading the book in advance.

I wonder…shall I read Golden Compass before I am going to see it?

Are you in TREBLE?

I have always been a music lover. And I have always been an admirer of nice ornaments, symbols and fonts. Yet of all the complicated Celtic ornaments or breathtaking illuminations in medieval books none became as close to my heart and as typical attribute of mine as this simple musical sign – the Treble Clef.

It somehow happened to grow up with me, got attached to me and stayed with me (which is something I once- in my childish naivety- used to expect from my future husband).

Our relationship was complicated - there was a time when I hated Treble Clef and later there was a time I fell in love with it : My only love sprung from my only hate!

When I was nearing five years of age, my parents got obsessed with the thought that they should give me a chance to develop my... er... obvious musical talent at any cost, so they got me a private music teacher (I was too young to be allowed to attend a classical music school).

The teacher was a man in his late thirties, so he seemed a dying man to me then. His idea of teaching me how to play a musical instrument was unfortunately very different from mine.
The only time when he actually impressed me was our first lesson. He pulled out a really big … flute (What did you expect?) and started to play a famous tune known to all children from a TV series of bedtime stories. But then the poor guy made a fatal mistake. Instead of letting me explore his magical flute, or better, his apartment, his TV set and his children’s toys, he gave me a piece of music paper and a pencil and made me draw Treble Clefs for more than half an hour! God, how I hated it. What did he think to be doing, teaching a pre-school child full of energy via repetitive and diligence demanding activity such as writing? I mean, I was actually able to read and even write in capital letters by then, but I had no idea what the word patience might mean.

And yet, some ten or eleven years later, and mainly thanks to my love for music and flutes, I met a group of people, who not only have taught me that all we need is just a little patience, but who also gave me the name of Juliet. Yes. That Juliet. The first Juliet that pops in your mind.
It is not my Christian name and yet it is the only name that 98% of my friends know me under. But it is of no importance right now, what’s in a name, anyway.

The important thing was that due to my new role I had to sign some love letters and would-be-renaissance documents in a more creative way. And in one of my epiphanic moments in one of my beloved places, I wrote down one of such letters and suddenly draw a Treble Clef instead of a signature. And then I turned part of the Treble Clef into the initial J and started adding an occasional heart later.

Juliet beginning with a Treble Clef then became my official signature (well, not on my Visa card, unfortunately) and something that can distinguish me from any other Juliet in the world.

(illustrative pictures to be added)

With the death of my beloved Romeo and my own character in this heartbreaking play and with the death of the importance of ink and paper letters in this heartbreaking world, I transcended to the virtual world, hidden behind the icon you can see on the top of this page.

This became of immense importance especially in those periods of time in my life, when all seemed dark and gloomy and when I needed to reevaluate and revise who I really was and wanted to be. Last time this happened (a few weeks ago, actually) I have chosen faithfulness to playing the flute, additional teaching myself some French and making myself a T-shirt as some of the possible ways to lead me out of misery to the point of Paradise, pardon, sanity regained.

In terms of fulfilling my “old year resolutions” I got myself a set of colours for fabrics for Christmas and a huge flute (yeah, bigger than that loser of a teacher used to have – no, seriously, I just love low tones) for my birthday and started trying to pick up some French using my favourite way of widening the word stock in any language (wish my students would like it, either).

Except for listening to French songs, watching French movies and trying to understand every 30^th or so word in Le Petit Prince and Edith Piaf’s biography, I started to type the most important phrases and words of my life into Google and look for their French counterparts.
And what could possibly be more important word to me than Treble Clef, the only “certain-certain” part of myself not implanted by anyone else and thus not painful?

Surprisingly, this is not how I found out about Clef de Sol. The trouble with Treble Clef was that it already sounded so French-like that I found it unnecessary to look for further “translations”. But one day later, when I was searching the database of pictures tagged simply as Clef to find myself a suitable stencil for my T-shirt, I found this page by chance.

And I was completely taken aback. Clef the Sol. The first amateurish French-to-French translation that attacked my mind was “clef of the sun; sunny key”. Perhaps it was because the sun, le Soleil in French, Sol in Spanish, was one of the main attributes of the period of life I was actually trying to heal myself from by focusing on Treble Clef.
Suddenly, these symbols of burning pain and healing music faded into one another in a single moment.

Of course, I know. It is no “sunny key”. It is Clef de do-re-mi-fa-SOL-la-si-do. It is called G-clef in my mother tongue, after all. And yet, trapped in the sad darkness once again, I gradually started to enjoy the idea of having the key to the sun, to the heart of light, to the essence of life, and all the other positive connotations that the shiny “grand” sphere of a star can have.

Clef de Sol. That’s why.

In my end is my beginning...

Important events in my life take place on 25th .

I was born on Christmas day; I passed my A levels on the 25th of May;
I survived the final driving license examination on the 25th of July.
On different 25th's I met one of my loves and lost the other.
I will never forget some events I took part in when the number 25 appeared in my calendar and I have started writing this journal (on January 25th, of course) in order not to forget the others.

I also decided to found this journal to deal with the KEY TROUBLE and to find CLEF SOLUTIONS, which mainly means:

*To realize that I am capable of a creative activity which is NOT necessarily connected with pleasing someone

*To resurrect my love for expressing myself in written form, recently killed by my educators and employers

*To teach myself a bit self-discipline which is something school essay deadlines have not been successful at so far

*To forget that I am ill and cut off from my friends, musical instruments and the sun, whose company usually helps me to stay sane

*To stop wasting my precious time playing stupid addictive games and feeling guilty afterwards

*To stop sharing my feelings, worries, joys, epiphanies and insane ideas via cell phone with someone who does not appreciate it

*To replace some amount of post-unhappy love-passivity by a commensurate amount of great-expectations-activity

and dozens of other even more childish and/or self-centered things that are not worth mentioning.

Much more interesting question would be why I haven't start blogging earlier. There are many answers, including "I have". But I will leave the details for some other time. See? Another answer might have been "I was just leaving THIS for some other time."

It’s just my lucky number 25 that serves me as a suitable excuse to change something NOW. And rightly so, otherwise I would keep fooling around with the thought for three more weeks and give it the deep six afterwards.

Wish me luck, Agatha!