People watching is a common pastime; As a social species, it is instinctive. If you’re a writer, however, it can be the difference between flat featureless prose, and descriptions people can fall in love with. Being a keen observer of people gives you insights into human behaviour which are invaluable, whether you are a writer of fiction fleshing out a believable character, or a non-fiction writer trying to explain in a relatable manner. The best places to observe people have probably always been the bazaars and marketplaces, the ports and public squares, anywhere where people gather to carry out the essential realities of life: commerce, travel, relaxation; Anywhere they are unaware and not self-conscious. This is why airports are a fertile ground to observe a variety of people, and so are malls.
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As Source Code begins, a train is pulling into Chicago. Captain Colter Stevens (Jake Gyllenhaal) wakes up leaning against the train window with the landscape rushing by. Disoriented, he tries to recognise the woman sitting across from him and talking to him as if they are friends. The last he remembers, he was flying a helicopter in Afghanistan. All around, people are going about their routine commute and the woman talking to him (Michelle Monaghan) insists on calling him Sean. He excuses himself and heads for the toilet. He checks his wallet, which does indeed belong to Sean Fentress, a history teacher who looks nothing like him. Yet when he gathers the courage to peep into the mirror over the sink, the face of Sean Fentress stares back at him.

Stevens is soon violently removed from his railway surroundings and finds himself strapped into a seat in a dark claustrophobic capsule with mechanisms, dials, and a lone display screen glowing with the image of a woman in a military uniform (Vera Farmiga). She knows his name, his real name, and she is his only connection to the world he remembers. She must help him make sense of it all, remind him of his mission and get him to go back into that simulation of 8 minutes on a train, the source code, and find what they are desperately looking for.
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His last film, Watchmen, had me cringing at some of its gory indulgences, so when the posters and trailers of Zack Snyder’s Sucker Punch were released, I feared it would descend into the same. However, Watchmen was in sections very faithful to the original, near-impossible to adapt comic, which showed great talent. I gave Sucker Punch a try precisely for what was on display in the previews: women in strange combat costumes, guns & swords, and fantasy mayhem. I hoped for an entertaining action-fest, but to my surprise it was all that and a complex fantasy film with human core.
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My last bout of drawing with a pen resulted in a chance encounter with an old fountain pen from my school days. That led to a whole new fluidity of sketching as I tried my hand at a more hatching-heavy technique of drawing. After January was done and the new year began to sink in, I once again felt that urge to draw, that urge to think while not thinking, and so I took up the fountain pen again.

I did a quick fountain pen sketch to loosen up, the one of the man seen above, and mentioned my upcoming sketch exercises on Twitter. While receiving very enthusiastic responses to the idea, I also got some suggestions and favourites as to what I should draw. The common theme of all the suggestions was the human figure, so I decided to concentrate on that. Having done this one sketch in a style similar to previous attempts, I also set out to make the subsequent drawings more elaborate and detailed.

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Writing is an important activity in the human pantheon of activities. We often ascribe this importance to the fact that human society works on the sharing and passing on of ideas to those who will come after us, or in the case of today’s magnificently connected world, those who are our peers in distant and close-by places. Where writing doesn’t get its due is as a record of thoughts explored and solutions found, for yourself.

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The burden of best laid plans is that we must fulfil them,
Decisions were made and now action must follow,
Meanwhile, we imagine these plans and build them,
Until they’re a mountain impossible to swallow.

We decorate and gild, and wrap them in fine leather,
We worry and fret, and wonder if they’ll ever be,
We protect them with armour against every possible weather,
We even provide flippers, for when they’re stranded at sea.
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Though her reputation preceded her, I had never read a book by Ursula K. Leguin before this one. I’ve always been a fan of the old-guard of science fiction and fantasy writers, of whom she is a much revered member, so when I spotted this book for a bargain and the synopsis seemed thoughtful and intriguing, I jumped at it.

It was only when I got home with my new acquisition that I actually opened the book and decided to dip in, as I often do. The book started thus:

There was a wall. It did not look important. It was built of uncut rocks roughly mortared. An adult could look right over it and even a child could climb it. Where it crossed the roadway, instead of having a gate it degenerated into mere geometry, a line, an idea of boundary. But the idea was real. It was important. For seven generations there had been nothing in the world as important as that wall.

Ten pages later, I managed to stop reading. It was clear I had to read this book as soon as I could, so I dropped the other novel I had been suffering through in slow agony and took up this one instead.

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