Hugo

Yesterday, I read The Invention of Hugo Cabret, and today, I went and watched Hugo in the cinema. Both experiences were wonderfully captivating and magical, and I wanted to share this magic with you.

The story is of an orphan boy who tends the clocks in a railway station in Paris in the 1930s. He loves mechanical things, and by the end of either the book or the film, you probably will too.

Clocks!

The book, The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick, is a story told in both pictures and text. It really captures the imagination, and doesn't take a long time to read, despite being over 500 pages long. The pictures, or illustrations, or drawings - whatever you call them - are wonderfully made, sometimes with exquisite detail, and sometimes with lots of tension. But no matter what emotion or feeling they convey, they do so beautifully, full of life. The combination of pictures and text is magical. The two ways the story is told complement each other, and work together to create a wonderful atmosphere of childlike wonder. The emotions are so well conveyed in the pictures, I felt as if I was Hugo Cabret, experiencing all this for the first time.

The film, Hugo, captures the mood and feeling of the book very well. Of course, things are added and things are taken away, but aren't they always in the process of making a good film from a book? In my opinion, the core of the book was captured very well. The atmosphere is just right, the magic comes to life, and I am left with the same childlike wonder. The score is beautiful, and it all just comes together.

I would highly recommend both the book and the film, for children of any age, be it nine or ninety (maybe not under nine, though). It is a wonderful journey into a magical land of clocks, robots, and early film. I think you should embark on this journey, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Snail mail

I recently started exchanging letters with some of my friends - real, pen and paper letters. With a stamp on an envelope. It is actually quite a different experience from communicating over the internet, via chat or e-mail. And definitely different from skype or telephone. When you don't send it just by clicking a button (or enter), you think more about what you write. And you can add other cool things, like illustrations and drawings, not only emoticons. When I sit down to write a letter, I find I am so used to using emoticons to express myself using the written word that they sometimes sneak in. I think this is a testament to how much more (and more often) I write on computers than on paper when communicating with someone else through writing.

Writing a letter is a bit more challenging than just writing a note or a short e-mail. It is a relatively slow process, and you have to think about what you are writing and form it into a coherent structure with sentences, paragraphs, beginnings, and ends. At the same time, I like to write informal letters - letters where you just write down whatever you think about at that time and answer the questions from the letter you receive. That way, you become closer friends, by getting a piece of that person's mind at many different points in time.

It is lovely receiving letters, and you get more letters if you send more letters - that's my understanding of things, anyway. Actually, exchanging letters is kind of magical. Suddenly, collecting the post becomes exciting - has he or she written today? So, if you want some more excitement, awesome and lovely things in your life - start exchanging letters with a friend! Don't just hope you'll happen to be online at the same time on facebook, do something about it! Or get a pen pal, maybe from an exotic country or another culture. That way, you will learn about a new culture at the same time as making new friends! The postage does cost some money, but personally, I think it's worth it.

Doodles

It's that time of the year again. The time when everyone around you are sick, and you go around hoping that you won't be. But of course, you're not let off that easily. Of course you feel that slightly unpleasant feeling that something is coming. Then you begin coughing, and there is no way around it. You're sick.

This time around, I actually took my own advice and took a day off from school to get better early on in the process. I hope it has helped enough, so that I don't get really sick.

My doodle, made this evening.

When I am home and I can't be bothered or I don't have the energy to do the things I should do, I can get bored. Then I sometimes want to draw, but I have no idea what to draw. Solution: Doodle! So tonight, when I got bored, I just opened my notebook and doodled a whole page full.

I think our doodles say something about us. Or rather, our favourite doodles say something about us. I sometimes try to do vines, but it's just not my thing. I really like tedious, perfectionist work, so my favourite doodle is forms filled with lines at approximately the same spacing, as you can see.

I'm not quite sure what a love for vines or snakes or knots (like Vihart) say about us, but I think my doodle describes me quite well as a person who likes order, precision, and perfectionism.

My new notebook. It's puuuurty :)

Also, my new notebook is really pretty, don't you think? It shuts with a clasp and has a lovely cover, and the pages have colour on their edges (like the gold on Bibles). I expect it to be filled with my ramblings (and doodles) at some point in the future, but it is quite thick, so I think it will take at least a year. Unless I write more and more and more, like I have done since I started keeping a notebook with me at all times (which is also since I started this blog).

It was a bit strange for me actually filling up my old notebook, because earlier in my life I have just loved my notebooks as books and never really written a lot in them. Maybe it is a mark of growing up that I now finally fill up my notebooks and finish my pens.

Books read: 46
Pages read: 13473

PS: Can you spot the elephant in the doodle?

Brio and creativity

Word of the week: Brio - enthusiastic vigour, or great energy and confidence. (Merrian-Webster online dictionary)

I think I need a little more brio in my life. Some zest in the things I do. I am really feeling the autumn coming with shorter, colder days, and after a busy weekend catching up with old friends and getting new ones, I feel I need something that will energize me. Enthusiasm in what I do is often essential to give me that extra push through the boring everyday tasks.

Lately I have had this feeling that I want to create something - be creative. But I have so much to do, and I know that ideas don't come unless I invite them in. So I just go around trying out different mediums to express myself creatively, and try to feed my addiction to creating. It is a bit weird to have these periods where I just want to create something all the time, although I have few ideas, just a nagging feeling.

Random bad drawing of a giraffe
with broken legs (I'm bad at drawing legs)
in front of a Kilmanjaro I wish had that much snow on it's peak.
The original random line became the giraffe's back and neck.

I feel like when I suppress my need to express myself creatively long enough, it just bubbles to the surface like this, giving me this distracting need to do something - anything - creative. As I said, I don't have many concrete ideas, but often, if I just start creating something random (like drawing a picture of a giraffe  eating from a tree in front of Mount Kilmanjaro - from one random line), it's like I unclog the pipes, and the creativity starts flowing again. Not very well at first - frequent blockages are usual - but creativity, like so many other things, improves with frequent usage and practice.

I would really like to keep my creative side honed and ready on demand, but so often I don't have the capacity and energy needed. It's yet another facet of my life that I have to fit in and balance correctly with all the other important things. But my comfort is that I doubt I can destroy my creative side. It will always be there, just sometimes buried deeper than other times. The tubing will there, it just needs some periodic maintenance or a thorough cleaning to work again.

Books read: 45
Pages read: 12971

PS: Since I write this blog partly (or maybe mainly) to keep my creative side awake, I will be posting some of the written things I create here. Mostly, poems go on this blog, while photos go on tumblr. My output for the latter isn't very big, so don't expect much original content over there on tumblr (but you can still find funny, pretty, nerdy, book-related, nerdfightastic, and wonderful things here.)