Last night I almost broke my neck while doing dolphin pose in the shower. I realise how ridiculous this sounds, now. But at the time aqua-yoga seemed quite reasonable.

And I nearly died.

There was no voice. No shining light. No reflection of any kind. But there was a considerable imagining on my part of what life would be like without me. How my husband would grieve. How Flynn would curse. How the medical examiner would write up the sight of my comically twisted body, covered in Phytopeel and smelling of Moroccan roses.

I imagined my funeral. Those who would attend. And those who would not. I saw my grandfather, at home, shoveling coal in his basement, because that’s where I reckon he’d be. And My Stephanie. Laughing hysterically in the center of the funeral parlour because she gets embarrassed when she cries and humour is how she deals with it.

Then I imagined this huge yellow urn. How I’d be in it. And how any wife The Euro might eventually choose to claim after my demise would have to stare at it – as stipulated by my will – forever.

I spent 20 minutes on this. I could have been sleeping.

If I were born calm I would have wanted to be a physicist. It would have made for nice balance. But I wasn’t. I came into the world hyper and full of stress. So I write. It’s where I find my peace.

When I was a kid I loved Einstein, because he was funny and had cool hair; and the merry-go-round, because it made me feel like I was on Quantum Leap and I totally dug Scott Bakula. Like a mini collider, it’d spin you so fast the world would warp and then you’d be spat out against the ground like some odd little particle…with everything else still moving because time and space are relative to the position and velocity of different observers and you, having been slung ahead of yourself by a playground accelerator, are observing both from two places at once and neither your brain nor your body know quite how to cope. It’s a fabulous rush, but being pushed off your axis also makes for nauseous. That’s how I feel about physics. Like a kid just flung from a merry-go-round. Much as I’d love to, I can’t play with it too much or there’s a good probability my head will explode.

I’ve spent pockets of my life consumed with the collapsing and curvature of time and space – it’s my Walter Mitty life. Things like string theory and super symmetry excite me beyond belief, but they take a lot out of me as well. I’m not speaking metaphorically. I get breathless and all short-circuity just thinking about it. Not least because dark matter and fourth dimensions always seem to give rise to certain philosophical questions and as much as I’m a monotheist I’m a pantheist as well, two things which aren’t at all mutually exclusive, but which make for complicated brain work all the same. Not zen, my friend. Especially when you’re trying to live below the neck.

I’m not an elegant mathematician. I can get there, eventually, but not before I’m foaming at the mouth. And since it’s probably helpful to stay sane when you’re dealing with the theory of everything, I don’t think I could ever be a physicist. Not made the way I am. A ninja, maybe. But never a physicist.

“My new found spirituality made it essential to me that we not battle. So this was my position – I would neither defend myself from him, nor would I fight him. For the longest time, against he counsel of all who cared about me, I resisted even consulting a lawyer, because I considered even that to be an act of war. I wanted to be all Ghandi about this. I wanted to be all Nelson Mandela about this. Not realizing at the time that both Ghandi and Mandela were lawyers.” – Elizabeth Gilbert

The sum of Eat Pray Love is greater than its parts, but the parts are pretty good. Especially the one about the lawyers.

Two days ago I bought Elizabeth Gilbert’s memoir. It was newish, ninety-nine cents and in a thrift store.

I read it tonight.

I’m giving it to my mother tomorrow.

I hope she, like me, reads it in the spirit of a certain ninth generation Balinese medicine man – below the neck.

Now, off to yoga. Not because of the book, but because cortisol is killing me.

Namaste.

“The best thing in winter was driving home, after her day teaching music in the Rough River schools. It would already be dark, and on the upper streets of the town snow might be falling, while rain lashed the car on the coastal highway. Joyce drove beyond the limits of the town into the forest, and …”

- Alice Munro

DailyLit’s Big Read: Excerpted by permission of Knopf Doubleday.

Last fall I took a writing workshop with Daniel Wallace, a man who knows a thing or two about bringing books to the big screen. The film rights to Wallace’s novel, “Big Fish”, was purchased by Columbia Pictures. Steven Spielberg sat on the project for a while but it was Tim Burton who eventually directed Ewan McGregor in the starring role.

When Wallace started applauding the talents of the screenwriter who adapted the novel, John August (Corpse Bride, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory), I felt a little smug and did a knowing nod. I’ve followed August and his blog for a few years now and lately I find myself hanging onto his every word.

Last week August blogged “in defense of fake tears”. It’s about writing as acting and about feeling your way through it all. “One basic goal of creative writing,” said August, “is to evoke a desired response.”

He said this too:

“Screenwriters are basically actors who do their work on the page rather than the stage. Both professions earn their keep by pretending things are much different than they are. Actors ignore the lights and cameras and missing walls. Writers ignore the missing everything, summoning locations and characters to enact scenes which they can later transcribe….Actors and writers are trying to create moments that feel true, despite being completely invented….Experiencing the moment is what writers do, too.” – John August

John August’s Blog
John August’s Twitter

When Effie saw Cosby Puckett out of the corner of her sight she saw a woman with a want. Not some innocent school girl who sat studying a bunch of books on her momma’s porch. Letting on, like she always did, that she was too shy to smile at a man and too innocent to notice one smiling at her. And Lord didn’t they! All of them. Even Effie’s husband. Especially, Effie’s husband. But Calvin was only flesh and that was the way of the world. Effie nor nobody else could help that none. Ever since Eve came along with all her nakedness some woman had been trying to temp some other woman’s man into doing something he would never have done without her. Effie’s mother had taught her this when she was no more than a girl herself, and she had been able to see such things with half an eye ever since.

Last month I put on a pair of roller skates for the first time in twenty years. It’s this whole Yes Man thing I’m trying. I loved it. I mean, I still think skating backward is nothing short of sorcery. But I’m really geared up for my next trip to the rink. And I desperately want to drag my sister along with me. Because that would just be the best date ever.

Last month Rachel Cusk had a brilliant article in the Guardian on women’s writing. She made several good points that illustrate the conundrum many of us find ourselves in. Importantly, she asked whether women’s writing should seek equivalence or distinction from its male counterpart. She’s inclined to agree with Simone de Beauvoir and Virginia Woolf and think the latter. Just as we need a room of our own, we should rightly have a literature of our own. Not simply writing by women, but writing that ‘arises out of, and is shaped by, a set of specifically female conditions’.

She also acknowledged people were sure to question: Why does it have to be politicised? Why can’t we just get on with it?

I’ve managed to misplace the article, so I can’t give proper attribution, but I clipped a quote which might just sum it up. In any case, it gives pause for thought – which is something I plan on doing a lot when my teeth stop hurting.

‘This is an important book,’ the critic assumes, ‘because it deals with war.’

‘This is an insignificant book because it deals with the feelings of women in a drawing-room.’

Eighty years after A Room of One’s Own was first published – and 50 years after The Second Sex – the same value system prevails.

Plan was: US Airways from Charlotte, brief layover in Philly, 8am arrival in Manchester. It’s now 2:20pm and I’m sitting in the BA Lounge at Gatwick. But that’s not the best part.

The best part was getting delayed out of Charlotte and missing our Philly connection, having to fly straight to London instead, but not getting to land because of snow, having to reroute to Manchester to refuel, which should have been our final destination, but not being allowed to get off because customs and immigration deemed we enter by way of London, sitting on the plane…IN MANCHESTER…for four hours before being flown back to London arriving six hours late, missing our connection back to Manchester, and getting bumped to another flight which we’ve just been told is delayed 2 hours (and counting).

The whole ordeal was made worse by the TSA tossing a ‘too sharpy’ Christmas Present I forgot to check with my luggage, and The Euro’s shaving foam which he special orders from France.

But the BA lounge has good cheese. And a shower. So that’s something.