Things I learned today

In all honesty, I was planning to do the lazy thing and post today something that I’d written earlier in my life, not because I don’t want to write anything new today, but because I really really really have to finish Wideawake today…  However, as I searched in my files and opened old school essays, or short stories from various workshops, or even the Top-whatever lists I have been promising different friends I would post on this blog at some point, I realized something I was being slightly blind to… well, many things, hence the “Things I…” part of the title up there…  As of now, this will be a bit of a taster of what’s to come over the next few weeks, because I do want to expand on each and every one of the subjects, and keep a few promises along the way, but, as I said, I really really really, truly, need to finish my novel today (for personal reasons, not excruciating deadlines or anything, so no worries, my friends, I will come back next week fresh and ready to start with the first subject on the list, which has been a long-standing promise not only to my readers here but even before that, to myself because I did my BA in International Relations for a very specific reason!).

OK, and the list goes…

1.       I have to learn to deliver my political views in a way that they will be taken seriously… I do not have to change my writing style to do this, I just have to be confident.  Well, maybe I have to change my writing style a *little* bit to deliver certain ideas, but there is always a space in creativity that allows for a more serious air in order to introduce a serious subject, without damaging the essence of the style on which the idea is delivered.

2.       If I take some of my essays from school and post them here as they are, and then do a follow-up on each one of those subjects, I might get away with leaving a trace of my evolution as a person, a student, and a writer all at the same time…  It might be scary as hell, because of how uncooked those essays are, even though I normally got good grades for them, but the reason I *didn’t* post one today is precisely because it *is* scary as hell…

3.       The Tudors don’t fit into any of my TV show categories…  No matter how I rearrange that Top 30, it always ends up on its own…  And that’s because I turned out to be wrong about The Musketeers, which brings me to:

4.       OK, this one is killing me…  let me take a breath and

and…

and (whimpers)

and say it already!

Aaaahhh

Athos is not the best male character in literature!  Argh that hurt like hell!!

OK, so, I said that I would do an entry on each topic on this list, so I will get into detail once I’m in the right mindset for this, but for now I will only say this: yes, he is pretty great, and he will always be, just like all musketeers, of course (well, just the four of them that we know as the Musketeer characters from that era, but I’m guessing you already knew what I meant), and he is unequivocally the most noble one of all male characters ever and whatnot, but he is just not healthy…  And I wish I could say that I’m just coming to this conclusion, but it’s been on my mind for a couple of years, and just a few months ago, by realizing how hard it was for me to read the Vicomte de Bragelonne series, I realized that that was one of the things which was impeding me to go through those four books as fast as I’d wish…  My reason for this, and probably a lot of you already know this: the guy’s just not healthy… leave aside the drinking problem (that was probably not even an issue back then), but, deciding not to love ever again just because of what one woman did wrong ages and ages ago?  Yes, even if it was as bad as they showed it on the current TV show, still, no.  I mean, and I’ll try my best to say this without spoilers, but to go *that* long without someone to love? Not even when he had his son?  That’s just wrong, psychologically speaking…  (now add the drinking problem, cos, yeah, I would have probably not even gone after him back then just because of that).  Thing is, I have been going on and on for weeks about a woman’s right to ask for love, and the Doctor’s right to seek love again, and about how it is a perfectly natural and necessary part of the deal of being human (and, or, er Gallifreyan…) , so why put Athos at the top of a list if he is actually choosing not to have that, even though it is one of the main reasons he lives in continuous emotional pain?  Yes, he will definitely remain on the list, but I have to seriously rearrange that thing, cos it’s dated…   I mean, being born in a generation that has given us Faramir in Literature, Rory Williams on TV and Edward Bloom on Cinema, I cannot just go “Oh, Athos was all noble and good for his times’ standards” and whatever, because some of those standards do not apply to the psychological health that my list requires in order for someone to be at the top of the list…  Wait, Faramir was not from our time (and *possibly* not our land, either, or at least Universe… cos I don’t think anybody has found any archeological proof of Elves and Hobbits and Dwarves and all those battles the books talk about, have they?) (Super-quick side note: anybody who dares answer my last question seriously, I will send you a permanent tickling curse that I have on my Harry Potter mobile app, I don’t care if you are only thinking it, or commenting it other-where.  I will locate you and I will send it.).  Now that I think about it, Edward Bloom was a pathological liar.  Hm.  So I should reconsider that list, then…

5.       And while we’re on that subject, there is no way that Ten and Rose made a better couple than Brennan and Booth… just no way.  I know, I’ve been side-blinded, er- blind-icened, no, blindtented, oh blimey! Blind-sided all summer, probably because I had that unrealistic marathon running with myself and I ended up binging on Doctor Who just weeks before we began shooting because (surprise surprise) I did not time myself right, but still, Brennan and Booth, come on!  Those guys rock!  It doesn’t matter that I never liked David Boreanaz’s  face, that’s not the point, I’m talking psychology here, remember?  Oh, but I just hit myself in the face with that one, didn’t I?  Thing is, I have a current Top 20 on TV couples, and only one of those two can make Top 5 within that list.  Hm… serious thinking here…*

And:

6.       I think too much about character psychology…  I mean, I have spent all year trying to understand this guy’s psychology, right?  This summer and autumn of filming I’ve been driving my director/producer and my co-stars crazy with random questions and unnecessary detailing of things that I would eventually not even need anyway, or that I would end up forgetting. (Newsflash: all this time I thought  I was Ten because of the utter loneliness and the I don’t want to go thing, when it turns out that all along I was One because of my absolute OCD when it comes to prop continuity and my incessant mispronunciation of lines and forgetfulness of names…  er, he was ill, what’s my excuse?  Okay, I need to dial it up a notch, got it… ) (Yes, yes, yes, I gotta be my own me, I know, that’s completely unnecessary, you know?  I was just using that for comedic relief…) Well, all of that and for what?  Only to now get myself side-tracked by a paradigm-shifted FBI Agent in a cool Crime series because I just realized, by page 161, that there are numerous ill-fitting plot points in my novel, and that one of them (that I fortunately already fixed) was the backstory for my own FBI Agent Andrew Carter!  So there I go into character psychology again, yaddah yaddah yaddah, and realize the two female characters also have gaps that by now should have been filled…  But the other thing is, a year ago I wrote the exact same scene in Wideawake than I had written in The Shadow Behind like seven years ago!!  Argh, so now I’m stuck at that page, sorting thru that one moment that I know I need but I have no idea how to reset so that I’m not plagiarizing myself!  So, am I going to finish editing tonight? No.  Do I feel okay with it? No.  Am I going to complain and whine and stuff about it for ages on end? Nope!  I just needed to rant, that’s all…  Besides, this is fun!  It’s a healthy way for me to sort through these matters here, cos I can see a bit clearer after I distance myself from them…

Yeah, but Doctor psychology is bloody fantastic, and I’m never letting go of that one…!

(And yeah, you can add my boyfriend to that pile, although I’m reconsidering my discourse methods here as well: If my original intention was to be mysterious about his identity in order to bring in the element of surprise, but the fact that our production had to be stalled for longer than I was able to keep my literary resources going, would it be worth it if I reset the technique so that by the time the videos are uploaded, the new readers who come in here and link into them or vice versa can have a No way moment when I unveil his identity for the second time?  Er, it would be a fun experiment to conduct, if it were not for the fact that everyone who knows us knows we’re together, and that we’re completely open about it and that anybody who does a search of us will find the other right then and there…) (We interrupt this blog to bring you an extremely subliminal author/actor product placement here…) (Did it work?) (Is anybody right now on Facebook or YouTube looking for Sandra Tena or Stephen Cole?) (No?) (Oh well, I’ll try again next week…) (Um, I sense I should end this conveniently long series of parenthesis.  It was fun while it lasted).

 

Yes, I did auto-plagiarize myself just now anyways, with the title of this entry…  But then again, I needed an outlet and I have it at the tip of my fingers, right, and these are things I learned today, and all because of my writing and my searching for something interesting to upload, AND my search for how to fix my own storyline so that it doesn’t have the same elements from my own storyline!  Hehe, those words cannot be helped from now on…  I have many storylines, and they are all my own…

So cheers then, and thanks for coming by… just the fact that you’re all peeking in to see what I’ve come up with this week gives me motive to construct something out of letters and words, which makes me really happy then that I didn’t use one of my old writings just now!  Not that it won’t happen in the future, but just now I feel like I cleared a bit of clutter from my brain, which is always good…!

Cheers then!  Much love and blessings!

Sunsets and Thank Yous tonight

I’ve been trying to get my head around the enormous number of things that I have to do now that I know how to make my way in life.  Oh my (Time)Lord, that sounds a bit portentous…  Oh, darn I just lost my right to a cookie…  Oh well, I’ve just overdosed on chocolate covered biscuits anyway, so I can make as many references as I want to Doctor Who and not worry about that…

However, this is a serious day for me, because the answers I have been looking for all my life have finally arrived (the endorsement for me to do what I love to do most in life, if you will), but since I’ve still got to make my way through the logistical part of it, I will get solemn for a moment.  I was going back and forth between uploading a picture that symbolizes my state of mind or rambling on about the actual boggled state of my head instead, and I came up with a version of both; something that will speak to you about my lands, my personalities, what I’m leaving and receiving, my writings and my passion.  Nonetheless, I also wrote something about it… not so much to make you think what I wish you to think about it, but because I have the words to describe what it is in my head and heart and soul, and I do not wish to keep them apart from the images…

I took these two sunsets in Durango some weeks before coming back to England, the first two photos from the entrance of the building where my parents work, the other one from my room at their house… sunrises and sunsets have always meant a lot to me, and now that I’m looking for inspiration to finish the third draft of my novel, Wideawake, I feel like it’s a sunset for it, because once I hand it over it’s like I am starting a closing chapter on that period of my life.  I like that.  I love it, in fact, and I am getting so much inspiration from the people I love, those close and those far, everyone who has always cheered for me and knows that my children come in due time even if a year “late”, that I can’t find enough words to say thanks…  I realize that I’d said last year that by that December I’d be sending the book to an agent: What the hell was I thinking?  That was putting too much pressure on me, and on my characters as well!  But this time around I’ve had more than enough time to work it out, slowly and steadily, with the support of tutors like Anne Aylor, whose input was invaluable, from my friend Nikolas and my sister Gina, who have not read it yet but have been kind enough to let me speak about Thalía and Andrew Carter and Mara Sanders, and know them as well as I do, and now from my wonderful Stephen, who’ll be receiving the book shortly for further cleaning (and by me writing this here and making it public, I’m making a binding social contract and commitment that I shall be working towards with myself; with the people who I care about and any kind strangers who take a peek inside this entry, as my witnesses!) (Ahhh!!!)  (Love it!!  The pressure of it and the emotion of it…!!).

However, I said “my lands” and so far I am placing only Durango in a visual here… I’m mentioning my parents, though, because it means a lot that I took these pictures from their work place and the house I will always be proud to call home as long as they’re there…  I am a creation of them, and they have given me and taught me so many skills and work ethics and habits, that Wideawake becomes their grandchild as easily as I call it my child, make of that what you will…  It’s only because of them that I have managed to be here in England now, and it’s because of what I’ve learned from them that I can start smelling success really nearby…  So they receive my absolute thanks as well, and one day we will all look back and see my path and consider how scared I was a year ago to not be able to fully finish a novel in less than a year, and how happy I am now that I am being able to put everything I have ever learned (and am still learning) to practice, and the sense of accomplishment that comes with it…  And it makes me wonder: Who knows how many people I will be able to teach these skills later on to?

And to that land that I am giving you as a visual… the land that made me ache so much that I was able to grow to be the person I am now, to the land that holds cherished family and friends and familiars as well, to that land I also give my thanks!  Now it’s my time to step over here (as soon as I figure out the logistics, like I said), but worry not Durango, cos I will vouch for your beauty and your warmth and send you people over to see you and touch you and enjoy…  I can see it, too, you know?  I’ve said it many times before…  Nothing in my way I feel about England changes how much good I actually think of you.  There are many houses and places we call home, in an automatic way, you see, and my parents’ house is in your midst, of course, but what if it was otherwhere?  That is a different kind of home, that’s the memory one, the cherished and nurturing one, the one we can always return to for comfort and warmth (lucky humans that we are); but there is also that other home we have to build ourselves as adults, whether we decide to change cities or not, and I have already chosen mine… We have talked about this, remember?  And even now I hear you ask why I’m not even typing in Spanish, and I can only say, we have already talked about this too!  My time will come to write in that language again, but for now think of me as the one who grew in mind, body, and creativity from your deserts and your mountains, and your insane winds and from your rain, and took it all to create a galaxy in the arms of the home she afterwards chose…  Thank you Durango, thank you forever, and I’ll be seeing you soon!

 

So I may not be writing as lengthy as I usually do on this lovely Friday, but trust in me that I am putting as much passion in it as I usually do…  I am stating, decreeing and wishing really really hard for the enjoyment of the sunset of this book, so that it has a refreshing, rejuvenating sleep and rises beautifully when its time to wake up with the Sun comes!!

Cheers and I will keep you all updated!!  And so many many many thanks for your constant support!!

My England in a Heartbeat

Stephen and I have been traveling up and down the country for the last couple of weeks, and the ride’s not over yet.  God and Goddess, I’ve been wanting to start a blog entry just like that for a while now, la la la!  (Doing happy dance around the room) (Well, no, there are too many suitcases on the floor, so goes out and happy-dances up and down the porch stairs with the view of Glastonbury and the Tor and tower…) (Much better!).

Oh, but before I really start, I have to ask forgiveness from my readers for my absence last week; I have been computerless for a while as well as on the move, so it’s been hard to keep up with myself once again… but my projects remain and soon you will see my other blogs as well as (hopefully) my books coming out too.  Now, where was I…?

So, yes, we have been pretty much zig-zagging (or more like heart-monitoring) England lately, all thanks to my classes in Newcastle, his brother’s birthday, and both of our filming days in London and Windsor… Ah, saying that we travelled between London and Windsor is cheating, you say, since they’re so close together?  Wrong!  Windsor is about three hours away from where I live in Greenwich, or maybe more, because even though it’s right outside London, there is too much land to cross before getting there; it really doesn’t matter whether we go by bus, train or car, distances like those are quite long anyhow…  Then again, there’s something about the Gypsy trek we took that is making me look at things differently now, or rather beautifully again… as we lugged our bags from house to house and coach to train and hotel to train and back again, he wearing his hat and leather jacket (which makes him seem as an Indiana Jones adventurer type, though he claims otherwise) and me in dangly earrings and beady necklaces (more for effect than practicality), I was reminded once again of  my love for looking up.  Granted, it’s not that easy to look up when you’re dragging a case and rushing for the train or trying to find the hotel in the wrong street, but that moment you realize that even in those situations you can still look up and admire your surroundings, you know you’ve found bliss.  I know it sounds simplistic, yet I don’t mean about when this happens just in the cities you visit, but also in places you know well already but still find new things that catch your eye, or when you’re hiking and are able to keep looking up even though the altitude might make you dizzy or you’re afraid to lose your footing, or even in your own town, at instants when you find hidden jewels you hadn’t been aware of during the previous ten or twenty years of your life…  Thing is, that little moment, when you’re able to appreciate your surroundings even when you’re too tired or too focused on something else, that’s the moment when you plant yourself in the present tense, with no other worry than to be in the here and now, and not even that’s a worry!  This is one of the things Eckhart Tolle talks about in The Power of Now, and it’s so simple and easy to do, that when you manage it, you feel surprised at why you don’t do it more often, or why others don’t do it as well…

What I’m talking about is the contrary to what I’d been complaining of during the past few weeks, which, in case anyone’s forgotten, is that I’d been too tired to look up lately, and even worse, had to force myself to turn and enjoy the sights when I intuitively knew they were coming into my eyesight!  Now, there are two visual things I recently enjoyed enormously: one is the sight of the Tower Bridge from the train on my way to London Bridge Station (that I talked about a couple weeks back), and another is a brief moment during my trips between Newcastle and London when I was waiting for my train back to Greenwich and I tipped my head at the platform, so as to look at the full length of the Shard as the train approached and blew my hair back…  The Shard is a pretty cool building, even though I am rather partial to the old architecture instead of the new one, but there was something about that moment, in the midst of my tiredness and the crowd, that I felt that for the first time ever, my good-bye was being organic… OK, to begin with, you’re right, I’ve still got weeks left in London before I have to move up to the North East, and also, with London it is never a good-bye!  It is a “See you later” at most, because of course I will be called back there over and over again.  It’s like the city thinks I’m a yo-yo or something, because it draws me in and then throws me back out with such a force that I end up spinning for weeks before being pulled back in…  Only this time it is me that’s making the choice!

There were many things about this wonderful trip I’m doing that are making me more and more sure that I’ve made the right decision, and also that my love for London is something that will never get stored away as a simple memory…  Remember how I said that there are some places in this country that makes me think I want to live there even though my younger friends make me feel old as the buildings? (lol?) Well, Glastonbury is definitely one of them (and happily no one’s made me feel old here); Morpeth as well, though it’s too far away… there is also Durham and York, and Leeds and Bath or even Manchester, if I were looking into bigger cities…  Bristol I have yet to see, as well as Nottingham, but judging from what I am told about those places, I’m quite sure I will like them enormously.  Given that most of the smaller towns I’ve been to are more retirement villages than tourist attractions, I’ll not be moving to any of them (probably not even Morpeth) yet, but as long as I am in means of visiting places like Alnwick and Corfe Castles (and absolutely everything else in-between!), as well as all the stone circles that for some reason last year I never got to reach for lack of means, I will be a happy traveler…

As for London, oh my London, however did I complain so much about you over the past few weeks?  I have my right, I know, and I don’t take back any word I said, but that’s why I admit that it’s healthier for both of us that I move away, and you know it more than I because you’ve been telling me so for about a year!  But hey, if I had not been so adamant to return to you I would have never met Stephen, and I would have never been able to open the doors that have presented in my path, so we both win, don’t we?  I am happy and I am leaving my positive imprint within you, either with my Sonic or my crystals or my hands; and last time I ran around in costume, I touched the Thames, and I knew just as much as you have always known, that I had to be there –in you- to be able to reach out to everywhere else!  I like that I still have my base in your midst, but my home is somewhere else; I hear your words because I’ve been gifted, and now I look up and see the Tor and tower through Stephen’s window and I wonder how it’d ever been if I hadn’t persisted so much on returning for the Summer, “To try to get my novel published”, “Just for Mani’s Doctor Who”, “To get my books and other treasures back”, “To see what would happen…”.  It was to see what would happen that I contacted Newcastle about my business idea when the program opened, and it was to see what would happen that I applied to carry it forward this year instead of next, and it was to see what would happen that I remained for the Autumn when my Summer stay was done…  But my rule while in London for over four years has been to always follow my instinct, even if it means changing my course on my way home out of a last-minute whim…  Er, no, getting on the wrong train or on the right bus but different direction does *not* count!  I am in no way justifying my direction awkwardness by making it mystical… Although, I should…  I could market it and make millions!  Hm, I sense a second business stirring up… ;)

About the trips that I’ve been making lately, with my perfect partner and his suitcase full of fancy dress, and our Gypsy blood running through our veins (…well, *he* knows it for sure, whereas I can only assume… but come on, have you seen my family? On my mother’s side there are 6 of us who live other-where, a grandmother that has three houses and travels all-year-round between them, and the remaining 5 who travel for a living, plus we all have partners who either follow or lead us, or both at the same time!  And on my dad’s side there’s 5 of us who left home, but all the rest are keen on traveling, if only for enjoyment; so I think that I get the Gypsy blood from my mom’s side, but there is something of it on both sides, because out of all, the most Gypsy-like are my sister and me…)… Oh, yes, about the trips!  Right, to begin with, my boyfriend is starting a career as an actor, so he had his script from the play he’ll be on this weekend to read on trains and coaches, but as it also happened, given that we were going to his brother’s 40^th birthday party as Amy and Rory from Doctor Who, Police Woman Amy and Centurion Rory actually, that was costume one (er, because it was a Fantasy-themed fancy-dress party, not because we’re kooky or anything… well, yes, we’re quite kooky, but that’s a whole other matter); then there was also Halloween, so he had his V for Vendetta costume in the mix as well (I was Wonder Woman, but I had my costume back in my closet in Greenwich, so my case was not as fancy as his…), and then of course there was his Doctor outfit, since we’d be filming in Windsor and some bits of London too… again, my costume was in my closet in my room, so I did not seem as professional an actor as he did, hehe, but do let me promote my man, cos he’s quite good at what he does…!  What prompted him to get into acting you will have to ask him yourselves (link! https://www.facebook.com/theonemantheatrecompany?pnref=lhc), but I'll let you all know that it was because of that that we met in the first place… Have you all guessed who he is yet?  Nah, try to guess first… yeah, go on…! (Hint: he’s the other Doctor in the Imaginarium Fan Productions production!) (How did you like that for a narrative device?  Just trying out stuff, bear with me, wink wink!).  For some of you this is no news at all, for the rest, I will briefly tell the story, cos it’s always worth telling that the first time that he caressed my hand we were posing with our arms around a Dalek right in front of the Tor, and the first time we held hands was just moments afterwards, when we were doing the group hug around the darned thing!  I’m sorry, around the Dalek, I mean…  I’ve been watching the Peter Cushing movies with him for the last couple nights and I’m all Daleked out, as anyone who knows what I’m talking about might imagine… for anyone who doesn’t but might be curious, research it, cos they’re sooo worth it!  And keep an eye out for scenes with elevator shafts!

Seriously, though, being with someone like him has so many perks, all of those that I’d almost lost hope I would see coming my way… I mean, it’s not only the vast amount of sci-fi and fantasy DVDs we have on queue for dinner time and stuff, but also the hours and hours of talking about our twisted theories on the stories we watch or read (and the fact that we understand each other!), and how much he can teach me about history, spirituality and politics, or his perfect English accent (that he of course is completely oblivious to), or the fact that at Comic Con, while we were both dressed as our own Doctor character, I had the chance to say “Let me get the TARDIS and then we can go home”… sadly I didn’t have enough money, and as Comic Con is *not* the best place to steal a TARDIS, however fully out of character it seems to even say such a thing, we had to take the tube…  So there you have it, the reason I have been so happily rambling on about this man for weeks, and the reason I wanted to drip feed him on my readers, cos otherwise it’d lose its magic!  Both the situation and the narration, I mean… or rather, the situation *within* the narration, cos the situation by itself cannot lose its magic by any means…!  Also, I had been waiting for the first episodes to air to make my revelation, but there have been some slightly huge obstacles come our way, and things are moving at a slower pace than we’d like…  Meanwhile, we’re persevering and the production carries on… just be patient, cos it’ll be so worth it, I promise!!

Want to hear one more precious little thing I discovered?  The type of house that I used to wish I could live in, that is, not a house but a flat in a tall building from where I could see the city expanding underneath and perhaps some of the marvelous sights, like St Pancras or the Tower Bridge (I already had the Shard and the Gherkin visible from my last window), has changed dramatically into a ground-floor flat in a community kind of town where I can have my own garden and grow veggies and fruits and from where I can walk down to work or the market to get the rest of whatever I might need while saying hello to the neighbours… (Gasp!!  Sandra wants to take up gardening and talk to people!!  Who is this person typing, then, and what have you done to the *real* her??)  Yes, I heard all your questions, and rest assured, it’s still me, just exercising my right as a wise person and as a woman to change my mind as to how and where I want to live my life from now on… And completely happy with that choice!

So then, I close this entry with a beautiful thought on my happiness and everything I’ve found at long last: I took a turn in a last-minute whim and I found my way home… *smiles blissfully*

May you all find what you’re looking for as well, or may you have new dreams if you’re looking for new things to reach out for, too! Have a happy weekend or week, and always keep smiling!  Cheers!

 

One more thing…  As I edit this I’m seeing how obsessed I’ve become… Pavlov me!  If I don’t mention anything about Doctor Who on the next entry, give me a cookie!

 

 

…if I do mention *it*, just let me be…  It might only mean that I’m a hopeless case and the world will have to live with my obsessions…