.. a page from the notebook. Laima Kota. Publicēts: 19.01.2022
.. a page from the notebook. Laima Kota.
Perhaps many of us still have notebooks and questions in our homes, closets, drawers, toilets, and attics. If we have said goodbye to them at some point during the implementation of the order, there are at least vivid memories of this tradition so popular during school times.
While waiting for the birthday of our local writer Laima Kota, we asked you to fill in a page for her as well.
My name is Laima .. Dad Donāts Vucins. I was born in Rēzekne, where my father's relatives began to be actively involved in naming the newborn relative. The options were the usual custom of a Catholic native - Maria, Bronislava, Genoveva… . Radi marveled that the word na pa myusu, but accepted it as a law. Mom later suspected that only Dad's first big love was apparently Laima's, but Dad said he liked the opera artist Laima Anderson-Silare.
A food that is still associated with my childhood .. barley porridge with finely chopped potatoes and dumplings, cloudberry jam and a real country cake.
I started writing behind .. loneliness, because there seemed to be nothing to talk about.
The biggest birthday surprise for me was the 50th anniversary. My husband and I were in Malaysia, where the real rain of the jungle was raining, the birds of paradise were singing, and sitting in a big, old colonial wooden house, scenes from my "Free Landers" in Tirza were playing, where I also played a CD of birds' songs at home.
Ideas come to me .. in an instant! The idea appears. After that, I plan it in a disciplined way, overwhelm it with events, give the characters character and make them talk in intense dialogues.
The smell that reminds me .. Latvia, home - is the smell of freshly cut grass and fresh hay.
In the summer evenings in Tirza .. I do not rest! Raujos in the garden until dark. I will not learn to relax / do anything and I will not learn to spend time. I don't like to travel, because at that time I could do something in the garden! But it's the early hours of the morning - I walk around the gardens with a cup of coffee and look at what has grown up where I have to put my hand, sometimes I find myself hard to pull out only one weed, but I find myself digging up the whole hollow.
I feel cozy when .. smells of coffee with a fireplace, children fed and a cat's next door.
When I'm writing a novel, I ... get up every hour, get down to the kitchen and drink tea.
Walking through the birthplace of Julius Madernieks, I .. wanted to buy them!
It inspires me the most and raises my wings .. the beauty + practicality of things made by human hands.
I won a prize - a shotgun in the hunting and fishing story competition. There is even a picture in Tirza where the Minister of Forests is giving it to me. But I took the prize in cash, everyone persuaded me to put it in the bank to "grow" bigger. How did it end? Great! A couple of days before the crash, I took everything out, although I was scared at the bank that it was "done" and I paid the carpenter for the kitchen shelves for Tirza's house. Bi-ingo!
While painting, I listen to audio recordings read in YouTube lectures by anthropologists, biologists, geologists, archaeologists - lectures on the origin + formation of the Earth, the world and civilization fascinate me. I listen to lectures by historians on different periods in human history and wonder - Damn it! Why isn't anyone learning history !?
In the days when rain rains on the roof, I ... If I'm in Istanbul, I sew, draw, write. If in Tirza - then it doesn't matter what I do, because the rain does not interfere with good works.
I take prototypes of my characters from life, they are often real people, I create the characters of the background as I want, I give them characteristic features, but they are here for you! - sometimes they make themselves want to be independent of me. Madness then is. However, I have not shot any of my heroes, I would not involve children in novels.
I would bring a lot of real cashmere yarn from Turkey to Latvia!
I wish Gulbene (and, after all, myself) health. And the realization that we live here, now and only this one life here, on Earth. That is why we live now, even if we drink coffee from beautiful mugs, say good words to others.
Laima, thanks for the answers and heartfelt congratulations! May everything be enough - sun, love, health and joy to live!
In the photo: Laima Kota during the filming of the program "Literature" in the autumn of 2021.
Photographer: Uģis Olte
Inese Kalēja,
Gulbene County Library