Weihnachtsmarkt

Weihnachtsmarkt Goslar, Lower Saxony, Germany, 2008

It has been brought to my attention lately (again, actually) that not everybody Out There is familiar with the ingenious concept of 'Weihnachtsmarkt' (literal translation: Christmas Market).  I find that shameful.  I find that state of not knowing somewhat precarious for the well-being of all your souls.  Therefore, I shall explain.

Weihnachtsmarkt is something that happens in Germany and some other European countries in the weeks leading up to Christmas.  I'm currently living in Braunschweig (Brunswick), Germany, and here the Weihnachtsmarkt will open on Nov 24, two days from now.

Obviously, the Weihnachtsmarkt is a market, first and foremost.  Depending on the place, you will see people offering regional specialties, crafts, delicacies and clothing, art and jewelery.  The market traditionally consists of more or less small stalls, decorated in a Christmassy sort of way.  It is open every day from the end of November to as early as Dec 23 or as late as Jan 5, again depending on country and region.  And I positively love my Weihnachtsmarkt.

Why, you may ask.  Allow me to explain.

For one reason, the Weihnachtsmarkt looks nice.  Most cities do a lot to have the whole downtown area decorated splendidly with the Weihnachtsmarkt at the center of things.  You'll often see wooden models or even dioramas of European fairy tales and fairy tale characters here, witches, little children lost in the woods, Frau Holle and many others.  The Weihnachtsmarkt simply sets the right stage for Christmas.

Also, there is food and drink, and occasionally, music, so if I were a guy I'd say wine, women and song.  Right.  Moving on.  Food.  Something you can get pretty much anywhere is stuff like stollen or gingerbread, but even with those classics, there are too many regional specialties for me to list them all.  Very notable are those huge gingerbread hearts that some people have come to associate solely with Oktoberfest, which is a misconception.  When it comes to food, many cities simply have a very long tradition, and all you can do is try to savor as much as you possibly can.  Roasted almonds or sweet chestnuts can be found galore at every Weihnachtsmarkt as well.

Then, there would be alcoholic beverages.  Let me just clarify.  I am an athlete and I don't get drunk on a regular basis, but I can hold my liquor.  And I have taste.  So, I was gonna tell you about what we call Glühwein.  If I were to give you a literal translation, I'd have to go for 'glowing wine'.  What Glühwein actually is is red wine spiced with aniseed, cinnamon, allspice and the like.  It's a bit like punch, but then again, not really.  Again, the way the Glühwein is prepared differs greatly from place to place.  Glühwein also comes in bottles for you to enjoy at your own Christmas party.  Oh, and of course, it's always served hot (I kid you not.  Delicious!)

Apart from the ever-present Glühwein, I simply have to mention Feuerzangenbowle.  In literal translation, 'fire tongs punch' might come closest.  I'll elaborate.  Just like Glühwein, Feuerzangenbowle is served hot.  However, the preparation is slightly different.  You take a bowl and fill it with red wine, add spices and perhaps orange zest.  Then, you take a sugar cone, soak it in rum and place it atop that bowl (two parallel spoons will do, although there are contraptions available for this).  Now, you light the rum-soaked sugar cone on fire.  Watch as it melts and drips into the wine.  As soon as all the rum...and sugar cone is gone, you start drinking.  At parties, you stop drinking once the bowl is empty.  Then you fill it up again and repeat until Christmas is over.  Hell, that stuff can get you drunk fast (especially if you take it with an extra shot of rum like...ah...some people usually do) but there is nothing quite like it.  Personally, I could not celebrate Christmas without having had at least one mug of Feuerzangenbowle.  (Note also that this would help you were you to celebrate Christmas with unloved relatives.  Just sayin'.)

As far as food and drink is concerned, I could go on for ages.  It would do nobody any good.  Some things simply need to be experienced and explored first hand, believe you me!

I just had the fabulous idea to post a pic of our local Weihnachtsmarkt here as my own personal Advent calendar.  Hope it starts snowing soon.  Nothing looks quite as nice as fresh snow glazed with golden light.

Writing in November

I aim to do about two blog entries every month; time to post something for November.

May I just quickly note that I am not a big fan of the colder season? I don't really think that the cold is that much of a problem, it's more the bleakness of it all that I can't stand. I mean, you get up and it is already getting dark outside, or so it seems. And it is definitely dark out at 6 p.m.

The upside to the winter months is, however, that they are ideal for writing, and writing dark. At the moment I am doing some edits on older stories mostly (and there is that rewrite request that I need to finish), but as soon as I have more time on my hands--I am aiming for next weekend here--I'll be doing something creative. Something darkly creative.

For now, there have been some publications and some acceptances.

Okay, since my last post, one publication...

Enchanted Conversation's Hänsel & Gretel issue took one of my poems, About Roses. It is repetitive at times, but that's a thing I like about this poem. Leave my a comment and tell me what you think!

Then, another poem got accepted for the anthology 'Jack-o'-Spec: Tales of Halloween and Fantasy' to be published by Raven Electrick Ink. Again, so much great company there! I can't wait to get my copy.

Finally, I'm seeing some more prose pieces getting Out There as well. Forthcoming in March from Red Penny Papers is my somewhat darkish story The Job Interview.

I also got a very encouraging rejection to another story this morning...much better than a form rejection, I can tell you...although I still like acceptances most of course.

Things Published

'The world is waiting!  Hear my roar!'

Lately, there have been a handful of things published that happen to have my name on them.  To my utmost delight, even more are forthcoming:)

Thus, I felt it would be a good time to present some of those published items--all poems--here.

Sometime in September, a quintet of my (more literary) poems set out to travel distant lands.  They ended up in the poetry section of the Istanbul Literary Review.  At around the same time, another poem hitched a ride with Greensilk Journal.  This one, as well, is more of a literary nature.

And now, one to my speculative writing (which is pretty much most of my writing).  I still do much with and about fairy tales; I still work with Greek mythology too, but not as much as I used to.  Another display of my fairy-tale-ish writing can be found at the sparkly Cabinet des Fées, which in my mind is nothing short of a treasure chest of beautiful writing.

If I could add a link to a print publication, I would now be adding a link to my poem 'Curses' in Jabberwocky 5.  Since a computer is not a magic wand though, I will simply link to the ToC.  Mighty good company.

Oh, and then I rediscovered labyrinths for myself.  I have always liked them and I do have great childhood memories about one in the garden of an old castle, but so far, I have not written much about them.  Just a little.  Proof can be found in Labyrinth Inhabitant Magazine of course (where else?).  Note how there are still many fairy tale allusions in this one?

The last thing published so far (I hope I didn't forget anything) is more fairy tale poetry, this one another Red Riding Hood inspired poem.  It found a home in the second issue of Basement Stories, a mag that I'm sure is going places.

Okay, so that's all for now.  There is more coming, and soon.  I so love to see my writing get Out There, and on the way, meeting all those sweet and helpful people (yes, Editors, that does include you!) who offer comments or thoughts or often even better, critique.

Thinking about lions...

To China And Back

A painted rafter in White Cloud Daoist Temple (and look! She's riding a tiger!). I loved it here.

So, I am back from China...

Right. This means I'd have to have gone there first. When I mentioned earlier in this little post here that I would be Broadening My Horizon, that's what I meant.

And do not get me wrong. It was not a vacation. At all.

First and foremost, I went to China (and when I say China I mean Beijing, China) to improve my gongfu. That sound familiar? Yeah, that's where the word kung fu comes from. However, it really means one's degree of skill in some field of expertise. That does not necessarily have to be a martial art.

In my case however, it was. I was eating bitter as the Chinese say to improve my Taiji skills. (Eating bitter means that the training was real hard. My feet are still sore...)

Of course when one goes to China, one has to experience the culture and the people, go look at the sights. Between that and about seven hours of training a day, there was hardly time for such mundane things as sleep, let alone writing. Much catching up to do there.

One amazing thing I realized when I got there was that I kinda missed Twitter and Facebook. Before the trip, I would have sworn that to be impossible but there you go. I actually missed Facebook. I'm feeling quite ashamed.

The Great Wall, shrouded in mist. Gee, what a climb that was!

I also found myself getting rather attached to smog. You see, Beijing is constantly covered in smog or, for those of a more romantic disposition, dew-soft mist. You cannot see blue sky. The sun is always just a big roundish smudge and looks just gorgeous when it sets as a burning red ball. It was so weird but I also loved it.

This is one of these sunsets, but my camera did a poor job of capturing it.

Come to think about it, I loved the entire Chinese Experience. I loved the people and hated that I couldn't really talk with them because I speak only very little Chinese. I loved the food. I loved the grayish dreamy look the city has and how it always seems to be buzzing with life. I guess I'll be posting more about everything here, but not now. I remember haggling for some calligraphies and I think I'd like to look at them now to think back to the noise and the smell and the heat...I already miss Beijing.

Did you really think there was no night life in China? At night, Beijing is almost more alive than during the day.

Latest Publications

Just a quick update here: today, my short short A Common Friend came out at Danse Macabre's DU JOUR. Later, you'll find my piece in the archive.

Also, Sybil's Garage No 7 (which has my poem Indian Delight in it) is a magnificent reading experience. I strongly recommend it.

And then there are some of my poems, to be found in The Legendary's poetry section.

I shall be trying to make my posts more interesting forthwith; just an itty bit busy right now.

Enchanted

My poems just appeared on Enchanted Conversation. It's a great blog magazine, and a place in which you can lose staggering amounts of time, so why not go ahead and see for yourself?

My poetry is here...enjoy the read!

Beastly Poetry

Two of my poems are forthcoming in Enchanted Conversation's 'Beauty and Beast' issue. I think I might have less of the beauty in my poems, though I suppose that depends on your point of view.

Anyway, YAY!!!

Work On decomP

I just realized that I totally forgot to mention decomP Magazine's new site (which looks way better than the old one).

One of my (very short, literary) poems is on there too, look here. Enjoy the read and browse the site a bit. It's worth it!

300

Just a quick note to announce that I just wrote my 300th poem (that is, the 300th I counted).

And it is a Red Riding Hood poem too, I must have about a dozen of those by now. This one is about how Red fills a well...

Patience

I find patience a moste venerable quality. Why? Well, because it's so very, very hard to aquire.

I know and have known for a long time that I don't have as much patience as I'd like to. Especially if you want to teach people something (say, a martial art for instance), patience must be a central issue. So I, you know, tried to be more patient over the last couple of years. It worked quite well, but recently there's a Challenge. I won't use any names and I will not succumb to the sweet temptation of Talking Bad about somebody, even in an anonymous sort of way, just let me say this: I feel tested. And I so like to lash out and shout at people too, although, of course, I very rarely ever do.

But honestly, everybody out there, shut the hell up and LISTEN when somebody (like your sensei) is trying to explain something. Most of us don't do it to bore you. We have something important that we know you need to learn. Just a pointer. I'll try to be a little more like buddha now, i.e. patient. Wish me luck.

Work Published Before Dec 2009

Being a writer's blog, it seems only right and proper that the author's publications should be mentioned herein. Let's see. I'm afraid I won't quite manage to get it all in the right chronological order, and it's also both prose and poetry publications in here. Whatever, Dear Reader, I trust your multitasking/multitracking abilities.

There was, of course, Word Riot in November 2009:
http://www.wordriot.org/archives/414
These are two black humor poems. Well, perhaps there isn't all that much black humor in 'Pigeons'. Anyway. Moving on. Another poem, 'The Phoemix Is Dead' got a last minute acceptance from 34th Parallel and was published in October '09:
http://www.34thparallel.net/back/08mag.html (this one actually costs you money)
I like the poem, but the photo... it was then that I realized there are no decent photographs of yours truly in existance.

I also have two pieces on NightsAndWeekends, both flashes. Here's one:
http://www.nightsandweekends.com/articles/09/NW0900413.php
and here the other:
http://www.nightsandweekends.com/articles/09/NW0900338.php

Then, there's something of mine to be found in the underground e-zine 'Zygote In My Coffee':
http://www.zygoteinmycoffee.com/100s/issue119affairs.html
Again, a flash.

'Bottom of the World' also printed one of my short stories (and one I particularly like, too). You can look at their homepage here: http://www.freewebs.com/bottomoftheworld/
My story 'In Her Room, Silence' appeared in Issue #3.

This should be all. Everything that happened before December 2009 anyway. I will post that stuff separately, just because. I do not like to be questioned or second-guessed.

Welcome

I proudly announce that as of today, I have finally begun my very own blog, so curiously named The Tiger in the Matchstick Box. Things might quickly turn poetic around here, one might hope.