Nov 3, 2014

Historical Elmwood Cemetery Memphis TN



Two Saturdays ago, we went to Elmwood for the Twilight Walking Tour. Had a wonderful time. Later, we drove across town and went through a scary Haunted House thingie. It was called The Tormented, a kind of haunted asylum put on each year at Halloween.  I almost had a panic attack getting through that dark maze of zombies and crazy people.

However, Elmwood was absolutely beautiful  BUT full of insects. They were very bad this year and I had an allergic reaction to some bites and ended up at the doctor four days later. I am still recovering.  The reason I am writing this is the book I am writing was inspired by both Elmwood and insects, and today's chapter was full of talk about bugs. I kept thinking about how thick the air was with flying insects that Saturday. It's no wonder that Memphis was constantly plagued by the Yellow Fever during the 19th century, and though this is an old project getting a make-over, my experiences with the bug bites did help me describe how bad the insects were in my fictional piece.  

I would not have believed what I wrote today if I had not experienced it in reality.  

(More on insects later)

Oct 29, 2014

A Ghost Story


This is part of Locust Grove Cemetery near St. Francisville, Louisiana. In college I wrote a small ghost story based on an experience I had there as a young girl of fifteen. I looked for it this week, but have not found it, but one of these days, the story is bound to turn up. I never throw anything away. I wanted to end October talking about how we should all write to truth. That is not easy to define, and in November as I write my words for NaNoWriMo, I will attempt to explain why writing to truth is so important.

When I was a young girl, we often visited St. Francisville, Louisiana, which was like my second home. It is a place I have the fondest memories of and also some of the most sentimental. I am lucky to have seen St. Francisville during the 1960s and 1970s, when it was still a small town and had not really been touched by tourism and capitalism. For example, my mother was a friend of the owner of The Myrtles at that time, long before it was a tourist attraction and one of the most haunted houses in the USA. Then, it was just an old house with a tragic history, no electricity on the second floor, and used mostly for storage. I used to play in it when Mother went for her visits. I used a flashlight. I never saw a ghost, but my sister said she did and she was only a toddler at that time. Who knows?

I grew up on ghost stories. Mother told the most wonderful ghost stories and I believed every single word she said (at the time). I suppose places can be haunted, by history, by sad events, by the longing of people to escape into the past or to just ignore time. Maybe ghosts are like fingerprints? They linger on and on, a lasting image of some event no one can forget.

If I had to choose a place haunted in St. Francisville though, I would choose Locust Grove Cemetery, which is north of town on a what used to be a narrow winding road. It was the family cemetery of the Smith family who once had a plantation there. The house is long gone, gone before I was even born. In this cemetery is buried Sarah Knox Taylor, the daughter of President Zachary Taylor and the first bride of Jefferson Davis, who went on to be the one and only President of the Confederacy of America. Davis and Taylor eloped without the approval of the bride's family and on their honeymoon, she contacted malaria and died and that is how she came to be buried in this lonely little cemetery.  Mother loved this story and we went there many times over the years, walking around, talking, recounting the tragic tale of how poor Sarah sang a song while dying and how poor Jeff Davis became a recluse for ten years following her death. All that is true. And very sad and makes for great drama.

But the facts are not always known, and I have come to suspect that this story is much more tragic than history recounts.  

One afternoon, it was already late, (when I was that girl of fifteen) Mother, my younger sister, who was about ten years of age, and I went out to Locust Grove. (It wasn't as  neat and polished as it is now, no white picket fence, no signs, etc). Against the back of the cemetery is a sharp slope where other graves can be found, what everyone calls outsiders! The picture above is one such grave. (But there were many others at that time. Most of them have sunk into the ground today.) Mother was determined to walk as far down the slope as possible and we two girls tagged alone. I kept thinking that it was getting dark and I worried over snakes, but I don't think Mother ever thought of such things. She was always eager to do what she wanted to do and if she wanted to see a certain grave, well she did.

I think I became very anxious. I had already noted the consequences of being stuck out at Locust Grove in the dark, in the middle of what was really a nasty sort of woods. I won't recount now, the details of the grave we found and how it looked. Not now, because I want to confess that I abandoned my mother and sister and headed back up the hill toward the car. It was almost dark and I began hollering for them to follow me.

At the top of the hill, when I arrived, exhausted, bug-eaten, scratched up, and fearful, I saw a young woman standing near a tree. I never thought about her being a ghost. I just ran to the car, and turned the keys and began honking the horn. It was twilight and I was scared out of my wits! I didn't want to be stuck out there in the dark, especially with other people coming into the cemetery which is exactly what I thought in the car. I was always scared of strangers in isolated places. Finally Mother and my sister showed up, got in the car and I drove us out of that place.

Later that summer, while visiting a historic home in Woodville, MS. I saw a collection of small paintings, most the size of cameos. I love art and I looked at them a long time with the kind of earnest devotion I still give to such things. One of the paintings reminded me of the young woman I saw in Locust Grove. When I asked if anyone knew who the woman in the painting was, they said, Sarah Knox Taylor Davis, and from that moment on, I was haunted by the thought of her and her history. I even thought, at the time, that I had seen a ghost. Maybe this is how ghost stories begin? Maybe this is how we create them? In wonder and fear and that earnest devotion to story and art and love.

And even now, decades later, old and wise as I have become, when I  think of Locust Grove, I still see that young woman standing by the tree, and I remember with detail, the lonely sad cemetery and all the souls that rest there. 

So I guess you could say, I am haunted and I've seen a ghost. Happy Halloween!

Edited to add link.
Check out this link for Sarah's story.
http://www.la-cemeteries.com/Notables/Others/Davis,SarahKnox/Davis,SarahKnox.shtml

Oct 19, 2014

My first collection of Poe's work



As you can see, I checked this out of the school library, and I don't believe I ever returned it. Of course, I had to buy it before I received my final report card. This volume has been read countless times over the years and because it was printed during the 1950s, it's still a beautiful, highly readable book. The paper is as clear as the day I first read it. 

I love this quote in the Introduction by T. O. Mabbot.

Properly read, Poe achieves magic in a way rarely attained even by Coleridge, to whom indeed Poe owes something, though perhaps less than to Thomas Chatterton. Within his own range, it is hard to imagine a more individual mastery than Poe's.



Oct 17, 2014

Poe would have approved of Haint Blue


Haint blue painted on a house keeps the evil spirits away. Next year, I am personally painting the ceiling of my porch Haint Blue to keep away all the ghosts that haunt me! I am so haunted....

Oct 14, 2014

Edgar Allan Poe by Vincent Buranelli



Edgar Allan Poe by Vincent Buranelli, a book I used in high school when working on a paper on Poe. Naturally I kept it all these years. It's not a biography but a collections of essays that make up a fair literary criticism. Very good, too. 

Oct 13, 2014

Poe Riverside edition 1897



My oldest edition of Poe's work, which includes 8 poems and 4 tales, including The Fall of the House of Usher. At some time, I'll type in the introduction to compare how Poe was viewed in 1897 to present day.

Oct 10, 2014

The Fall of the House of Usher (Film)


As a child, this was one of my favorite movies. I suppose the movies were my first real introductions to Poe. I began to read his work at age 11, with Annabel Lee which was his last completed poem. I recited the poem, by heart, to my sixth grade class. More on the poem later.

Oct 8, 2014

Hawthorne's grave (Just because I had to!)



Although I love Poe, I wrote my college paper on Hawthorne, author of The Scarlet Letter, The House of Seven Gables, and of course, the gorgeous Rappaccini's Daughter (not to mention dozens and dozens of other wonderful tales). I might be southern, but I am totally "Hawthorne" at heart. No other American writer has influenced me as much as Hawthorne. My novels and short stories are filled with literary allusions to his life and work.

Oct 6, 2014

Fordham Cottage of Edgar Allan Poe, 1884

Information listed on photo on Flickr: The village of Fordham is now part of the Bronx, New York City. The photographer was Charles Stoughton, that's his brother Arthur in the picture. The Stoughton brothers were among those who were instrumental in preserving Poe Cottage, and established the architectural firm Stoughton & Stoughton. They designed the Soldiers and Sailors Monument in Riverside Park. -- JE Piper

Sep 23, 2014

Quote

When people die they leave behind tiny deposits, like dust or ash, littering the lives of those who have to carry on. Impossible to wipe a house clean. Memories dwelled in cobweb places behind wardrobes and between cupboards; they hide behind radiators; they urged on shelves; like slivers of shattered glass, they waited for their moment to lodge deep in any vulnerable expanse of passing skin.

                                                  from Requiem
                                                    by Graham Joyce
                                                    (1954-2014)

Aug 24, 2014

Nature inspires me, my place, my people, the trees


People are always talking about originality; but what do they mean? As soon as we are born the world begins to work upon us; and this goes on to the end. And, after all, what can we call our own, except energy, strength, and will? If I could give an account of all that I owe to great predecessors and contemporaries, there would be but a small balance in my favour.
                                              Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

Aug 22, 2014

Influences

Augoustos SordinasBronze AgecavesgeoarchaeologyIonian islandsKephaloniaMesolithic period, Neolithic periodNorthwest Greece,Palaeolithic periodprehistoric researchSidariStone Agestone tools,Thesprotia

He drove a yellow Volkswagen Beetle. He was old by the time I met him, but still driven to teach. He was distinguished and kind and invited me to go on one of his personal field trips. He told me that I wrote the most interesting essays. (Laughing and maybe one day I'll post the one he liked the most.) Today I was reading all my papers from his classes and I knew I would find him online somewhere. He died many years ago, but his work is still used through-out the Anthropology community. He knew everyone and traveled everywhere.  He was not only my teacher but my advisor. And a huge influence. I was always interested in caves, mainly because I feared them.  As a young girl I had been in several, some very primitive and wet and dark and haunting and I told him about them. In turn, he showed our class a great many personal slides of caves that he had visited all over the world. Caves fascinated me in a way that they fascinated him, the idea of people living in them or using them for magical purposes. I was very interested in how prehistoric people thought about magic, primitive religions, personal possessions, the idea of sympathetic magic and if primitive cultures thought about that in the same way that modern people did. We used to talk about that a lot and I still think about those conversations, I still know that if I had gone that way in life, I would have focused on sympathetic magic, that would have been my thing, because I had seen it in so many of his slides and I felt a deep connection to it.

Aug 1, 2014

Beautiful Monsters


Penny Dreadful is a beautiful, Gothic masterpiece. Until it appeared, I forgot how much I loved good vampire fiction, so I am reading as much of it as I can this year, or books with faeries rooted in the original folklore. After all, fairies, vampires, angels, they are all pretty much the same thing. Monsters. The Uncanny. And yes, The Dead. It's no secret that I prefer Monsters to the serial killer folks out there. Serial killers and related murderers are not really evil in the sense of Monster evil, they are part of human psychopathology, which is grounded in mental disease. Monsters, on the other hand, are not human. They reflect the shadow world of our fears. It's a whole new ball game.

On Penny Dreadful, there was a character named Fenton, a Renfield-like character, serving his Master, the powerful Vampire/Dark God. I found Fenton absolutely gorgeous, and the casting of Olly Alexander worked perfectly. Isn't he a beautiful Monster? Of course, he is.  I was so disappointed when he died. I believe he could have had a much longer character arc.

There is something appealing to me about the Fentons of dark fiction, the young, vulnerable, partly human Monsters who are caught between worlds. You ache for them, understand them, in a way you cannot let yourself care for the others. You know they are doomed, too, which makes it worse. I am sure there is a whole Jungian element to loving these beautiful, young, carefree Monsters whose fates are sealed the moment they are chosen. Maybe it's the fact that most of these Monsters are chosen and do not really choose. Maybe it is their youth and vulnerability. I don't know. Must think about it.

Jul 19, 2014

Quote

Fear stifles our thinking and actions. It creates indecisiveness that results in stagnation. I have known talented people who procrastinate indefinitely rather than risk failure. Lost opportunities cause erosion of confidence, and the downward spiral begins.

Charles Stanley

Jun 6, 2014

Blue Lovers

Somehow this painting reminds me of The Coldest Girl in Coldtown by Holly Black. It's Marc Chagall's Blue Lovers.



Your Kiss, your Kiss
it bruised my bones.
Your arms, your arms,
they turned me Cold.
And now I'm Blue 
as a starry night.
But my eyes glow
Red with a fierce delight.
Kiss me, Kiss me,
I bite my tongue.
Hold me, Hold me,
forever young.
                   Madly Jane 

Jun 4, 2014

The Coldest Girl in Coldtown by Holly Black: Some thoughts and a book recommendation

I just finished this book and I am going to have a hard time escaping its world for the “work and wonder” of my own work-in-progress. I have read a lot of good books this year, but this is one of those rare books that will stay with me for a long time, and I am likely to reread it dozens and dozens of times.  I bought this book last year when it came out for several reasons (1) I loved the cover art (2) it was a vampire story where the vampires are not the good guys (3) it was written in third person viewpoint, which is my favorite point of view in a novel  (4) I had read that the heroine had no super powers and was not a chosen one, in other words, she was just a normal girl going to school and parties  (5) I had read that there was a love story but not the usual one (6) It had modern Goth sensibilities (7) People die and each of the chapters had a quote about Death (8) It was set in a present time where vampirism had spread all over the world, but not so much that society could not function. (9) It had a new twist on the vampire mythology. I wish I could say that I bought it because I was a Holly Black fan, but honestly, I had never read any of her works, though I owned two titles by her, Tithe and Ironside.  I may be late to Holly Black's work, but I am now a die-hard fan and yes, I had to write that! (Note: I had read, long ago, a short story about a Coldtown on the Internet. This was years and years ago so I had an idea of what the vampirism might be like.)



First I want to talk about craft and then I will tell you what I loved about this book, because considering the fact that I am not able to sit long due to a back injury (am sitting now) I must truly love this book and want to talk about it. Meaning people, I recommend it to everyone. Yes, everyone.  I want to say there are too many YA books written in first person point of view lately. What happens is the story becomes very claustrophobic and involves a narrative that adds more than it should in certain elements of the story. I think a lot of YA has always been first person, however, I've read some wonderful third person narratives, especially this book.  The way viewpoint is handled in this book is an art form.  How flashbacks are handled is another wonderful aspect of this novel. I am not a fan of flashbacks of any kind, but in this book, I loved them and they were also placed and used in the narrative to increase tension. Very clever. The plot was genius. This was basically a road trip, but it's unlike any road trip I have read recently and is very nuanced.

The beauty of this story is about character and how is developed. I loved Tana, and from the very beginning, her character is developed by showing, not by telling and she is bound to that character. In fact, it is Tana's core personality that moves the entire action of the story. It is so clever, so subtle, and yet, right there for everyone to see. What happens in the beginning of the book is why readers get that perfect ending.

Gavriel was a bit of a surprise for me.  He an anti-hero with a big heart. I never expected to like him or love him, and I love him. He's a wonderful, complex, and interesting character who is so wise, and from the moment he meets Tana and she offers to help him, his life and future are changed, though we as readers can't completely understand the depth of that change without experiencing the story.

There are many other characters in this book and all of them are tightly defined. The worldbuilding, the Coldtowns, the mythology of the vampire, the technology in Coldtown, the family relationships, all these elements make this book a masterpiece in my mind.

It's the best book of 2013 for me, and so far, it's my favorite read of 2014. I honestly don't think I will read another book that makes me feel like this one.

It's a PERFECT BOOK.
 





May 30, 2014

Some days are yellow



Elena Shlegel
Some days I am yellow and warm-hearted, living in tune to place and people, eyes opened, soul stirring, skin pricked, attached to nothing and everything. Madly Jane

May 27, 2014

Quote

All cities are mad, but the madness is gallant. All cities are beautiful, but the beauty is grim.

Where the Blue Begins, Christopher Morley

May 23, 2014

The Glass Casket by McCormick Templeman



Well, Dear Readers, I am so impressed with The Glass Casket by McCormick Templeman that I am going to write a series of blog posts about the book and related fairy tales. This is my favorite YA read of 2014. But we will see. 

May 20, 2014

Mother Church's garden



One of the first flowers I came to love was the petunia. My grandmother, whom everyone called Mother Church, grew them along with Old Maids, Morning glories, and hollyhocks. As soon as I finish my "heart of the rose" painting, I am doing one of my grandmother's house with the flowers she loved to grow. That painting will be more of my style and what work I am doing since it's a southern landscape and has folk art motifs.

May 8, 2014

Cinderella (1876)

Cinderella 1876, colour wood-engraving after W Gunstan



Originally done by Kronheim and Company for Aunt Louisa's London Toy Book, 1876, design by W. Gunstan. Source: The Classic Fairy Tales by Iona and Peter Opie.

May 3, 2014

Old Blush, a china rose

Old Blush, May 2014, from my garden


Old Blush, read here, is a very old rose. The one I love is the very old china that only blooms once or twice a year, the first time is very beautiful and in May. It's a briar rose that reminds me of Edward Burne-Jones and the many roses in his paintings. This is one plant and it spans over twenty feet in every direction. I asked John today if we could order a couple more. He looked puzzled, probably thinking I was insane, since the garden is getting crowded. But I love the wildness of this plant, it's unruly nature, and the fact that it really doesn't need me. That's my kind of garden. One of the plants that will go in my new garden journal.

Apr 16, 2014

Gardening and philosophy of life




And the rose like a nymph to the bath addressed,
Which unveiled the depth of her glowing breast,
Till, fold after fold, to the fainting air
The soul of her beauty and love lay bare:
And the wand-like lily, which lifted up,
As a Maenad, its moonlight-coloured cup,
Till the fiery star, which is its eye,
Gazed through clear dew on the tender sky;
And the jessamine faint, and the sweet tuberose,
The sweetest flower for scent that blows;
And all rare blossoms from every clime
Grew in that garden in perfect prime. 

from The Sensitive Plant by Percy B Shelley




Some of the most important things I have learned about life have been discovered in my garden. The first lesson you learn is how nature is full of contradictions, both literally
and metaphorically. At first you are surrounded by all this beauty and mystery, and then those senses are followed by the hard work and dangers, the losses you experience, some so quick you are shocked senseless. You begin to understand that while the world is very big, it is also very small, that one moment it is beautiful and the next moment it's the ugly monster. You try to comprehend that while you are a part of nature, it is totally apart from you. No one has written about this so well as Percy Shelley in his poem, The Sensitive Plant. The poem spells out all the beauty and love of a garden, then all the horrors of what a garden is, and then our feeble hopes as human beings in that garden. It is a poem about contradictions. I've come to understand one thing only, that sometimes I have no answers, no solutions, no theory.

Mar 21, 2014

Quote

A man is the sum of his misfortunes. One day you’d think misfortune would get tired but then time is your misfortune
— William Faulkner The Sound and the Fury

Mar 18, 2014

Coming In From Outside

Coming In From Outside

I cannot find my way through the house, 
clothes, dishes, perfect words,
all hidden behind some cobweb. 
The rooms are uncanny, 
and I feel like an illegal immigrant, 
lost in an language I have never heard. 
Some door shuts, noise from a TV 
floats through the halls. 
I fall into bed and stare at nothing, 
my heart beating, my feet cool and bare,
with a single blade of grass between two toes. 

Who knows what I have left outside?

Mar 11, 2014

Mar 5, 2014

A fork in the road?




I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference. 


                                         from The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost

Feb 5, 2014

Writing: A Poem

She tiptoes into the wood, around bats, the dormice, the moles, and holes and holes and holes. Wild weeds cover her toes, bare and cool in the castle yard. She is looking for faeries with their honey wine. She dines on dew and bowls of red, red berries, she looks by moonlight. Her lips are sticky wet, her feet turn blue and cold, but she cannot forget–in some hole, faeries await, gibbering in their sleep some delight.

She knows that she cannot go home with a heart desolate and two hands empty. Overhead, the white moon is waning and warning, soon, sunlight will appear, first with a languid mist, but then with a yellowed hiss. She fears she will perish with the bursting day, but her thirst for faeries and their honey wine drive her on and on and on into the wood. She is desperate for some memory. She cannot see ahead and back, back, back, the wood is black, but she is not afraid of the dark .

The dormice move, her feet sink into the mole-holes of discontent. Bats wing in her ears, there are tears on her cheeks, formed from the passion and work of ten tired fingers. She looks down at her hands, palms up and wonders for a moment about what they have touched in half a century’s time. For a moment, she trips on a vine, then catches herself before the fall. Someone calls her name...

...and she is off again. Leaves rain down, words soon tangled in her hair, her feet and fingers work in the dark She can almost see her faeries.


copyright (c) 2014 by Madly Jane, All Rights Reserved.

Feb 3, 2014

Quote from Middlemarch

Her finely touched spirit had still its fine issues, though they were not widely visible.  Her full nature, like that river of which Cyrus broke the strength, spent itself in channels which had no great name on the earth.  But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive, for the growing  good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts, and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life and rest in unvisited tombs.

                                                                   from Middlemarch by George Eliot