The Annunciation by Arthur Hughes

 This is beautiful art from Arthur Hughes. The colors are just stunning.

I want to write about this in sections, because these are profound words from Joni Mitchell and I suppose this is about monogamy.

“I don’t know if I’ve learned anything yet! I did learn how to have a happy home, but I consider myself fortunate in that regard because I could’ve rolled right by it. Everybody has a superficial side and a deep side, but this culture doesn’t place much value on depth — we don’t have shamans or soothsayers, and depth isn’t encouraged or understood. Surrounded by this shallow, glossy society we develop a shallow side, too, and we become attracted to fluff. That’s reflected in the fact that this culture sets up an addiction to romance based on insecurity — the uncertainty of whether or not you’re truly united with the object of your obsession is the rush people get hooked on. I’ve seen this pattern so much in myself and my friends and some people never get off that line.

“But along with developing my superficial side, I always nurtured a deeper longing, so even when I was falling into the trap of that other kind of love, I was hip to what I was doing. I recently read an article in Esquire magazine called ‘The End of Sex,’ that said something that struck me as very true. It said: “If you want endless repetition, see a lot of different people. If you want infinite variety, stay with one.” What happens when you date is you run all your best moves and tell all your best stories — and in a way, that routine is a method for falling in love with yourself over and over.

“You can’t do that with a longtime mate because he knows all that old material. With a long relationship, things die then are rekindled, and that shared process of rebirth deepens the love. It’s hard work, though, and a lot of people run at the first sign of trouble. You’re with this person, and suddenly you look like an asshole to them or they look like an asshole to you — it’s unpleasant, but if you can get through it you get closer and you learn a way of loving that’s different from the neurotic love enshrined in movies. It’s warmer and has more padding to it.”

— Joni Mitchell

The Night was once very dark and black and feared.

🌚 “Night knew no bounds. Goethe, on a moonlit evening in Naples, was “overwhelmed by a feeling of infinite space.”

                              — A. Roger Ekirch 

                             from At Day's Close: Night in Times Past

When I was a small child, my grandmother lived in a very old house with little electricity. She was incredibly poor and each room in her house had an electrical outlet that hung down in the center of each room of her four room house. Each wire had a few sockets, the bottom one for a light bulb. She was very careful with extension cords used and so forth for as long as I knew her. No need to burn the house down. Most of the time we were in the dark after a certain time of night. Once I asked my grandmother what it was like for her as a child concerning the dark and she told me. Right then, I became acquainted with Night in a way that none of my childhood friends would ever consider. It made me wonder about past times and how Night was for ordinary people in villages and small towns across my country, and then across places I had studied in school, and later, all around the world. Once people thought Night was an entity, the dark simply rolled out as the sun set like a supernatural force. Cities and people once used torches and then candles, followed by lamplight of some kind. I walked around my house for three days with just candlelight last year just to see how it would be and I could hardly read a book. In fact, I did little reading and writing in that time. And I do not live in true Night or darkness. Not like these past people did. Even in the suburbs of a small city like Memphis, I have light in the sky. I have street lights. I have vehicles passing the street in front of my house. I have good flashlights. Even my Apple phone has a flashlight. So no, I am not in the dark of past times. But my grandmother lived in the countryside the first 20 years or so of her life and it was dark. Perhaps not dark as past times, but still very dark. They had oil lamps. No electricity until the 1930s for her. No indoor plumbing, no washing machine. Certainly no dryer and the refrigerator was some sort of antique that really did not work. But it was the light that my grandmother wanted. She taught herself to read and she loved to write letters and read magazines and the few books she could get from the county library when someone traveled to the next town. Electricity is something we all take for granted. It's just there. And are lives are not interrupted by Night at all, especially in large cities.

IN order to really grasp Night, I went to the planetarium in Memphis. Before the show, they turned out all the lights and it was so dark and black, that I could not see my own nose or my hand when I raised it toward my face. I felt an immediate sense of anxiety and because it was a social experiment, the blackness went on for minutes. During that time, I felt blind and as though I had been swallowed by Night. I couldn't even breathe properly. I lost, briefly, any sense of space and direction. In that moment, I felt as though I was in past times and I was out in the middle of the country, with no moon or stars, no light, nothing but darkness. It felt like an entity.

In Anthropology, we learned very quickly that fire was one of the most important possessions of early hominoids. Before they learned to make fire on their own, they captured it from Nature in various ways. Lightning strikes being one. Can you imagine living in darkness, moonlight or starlight your only source of light at Night and then one day you capture Fire? And then later you learn to make this Fire and it not only lights your Night, it warms you, and it also cooks meat and fish. It also scares some predators. Fire was a gift.

These three books have been valuable research for me, along with my own personal experiments to understand Night in past times and to experience candlelight, lamplight, and even firelight. This has been important research for my work-in-progress and also for my own connections to my grandmother and her mother and the people who came before them. When I read about Goethe or Shelley or other historical figures, I try to imagine how they lived in the Night. And even now, around the world, in less developed countries, people experience darkness in a way that we do not understand at all.

And then there are people who just arrive from afar...

"He said later it was propinquity. For him all relationships fell into patterns. You fell into propinquity or distance." — Michael Ondaatje

from The English Patient

I find that painting is sometimes akin to dream, magic and a landscape not of my own making.

"Work that is just about the technical or conceptual, personal or political, is fine; it meets the world with what’s in fashion. But there’s something else bordering on magic, that brings an artwork home, makes it land and resonate. You can’t really teach that so much as conjure it."

                               — 

Kara Walker

This is my future.

“I will spend the rest of my life assembling my own mind and my own soul. I will take care of my body carefully, not that it may any more please a man, but because it houses me and therefore I am dependent upon it.”

                        — Pearl S. Buck

I nurture the love I have for others now, for it's precious and rarer than painite.

“Love doesn't just sit there, like a stone, it has to be made, like bread; remade all the time, made new.”

— Ursula K. Le Guin

Seven Miles of Steel Thistles: DANSE MACABRE, a ghost story

Seven Miles of Steel Thistles: DANSE MACABRE, a ghost story: “I’m bored,” Philip whined. “Can't we go now?”             “Hush!” said Mum. He hadn’t been that loud. It was just that in this cold...

Exploring and writing truth with fantastical elements is how I work in both my art and writing.

 

Painting by Florence Susan Harrison.

"Fantasy is not antirational, but pararational; not realistic but surrealistic, a heightening of reality. In Freud's terminology, it employs primary not secondary process thinking. It employs archetypes which, as Jung warned us, are dangerous things. Fantasy is nearer to poetry, to mysticism, and to insanity than naturalistic fiction is. It is a wilderness, and those who go there should not feel too safe.” 

                       —   Ursula K Le Guin

This beautiful image and quote are from Terri Windling's gorgeous web page on the Symbol, Allegory, and Dream: The Art of Florence Susan Harrison, a thoughtful essay that also is a defense of writing the fantastical in good fiction.  Is this painting not gorgeous and all about surrender and passion and love. The link: https://www.terriwindling.com/blog/2014/03/symbol-allegory-and-dream.html

Windling, whom I have followed her entire career, wrote this piece back in 2014, and when I saw it, I really latched onto the idea that I could write a story about evolution and science in the form of a fairy tale. I had already written a draft or two of my novel previously. But I was never happy with it, and it wasn't because it was a rough draft or idea. It was its form and structure, it's arrangement of characterizations. I was reading Angela Carter at the same time, and I came across a story called The Erl-king, about the same moment I saw Windling's post and something clicked in my brain. I really could write a story about evolution as a fairy and folk tale. I would be able to do this with symbols and metaphors and even with a touch of allegory as Nathaniel Hawthorne used. It would be pure Romanticism, a sort of coming of age story and the narrator would be this rather ordinary human being who is faced with extraordinary circumstances, and it would be akin to my established patterns in my painting and other work, such as poems, etc. I would be exploring my thoughts on evolution and my absolute love of science and ideas and truth in a surreal fashion. But how? Laughing.

The devil is always in the details.

And as it goes in all art, I made mistakes, some that I could fix and some I could not fix with this project. At times, the work was impossible. I was limited. So limited.

I had to put this project away (many times), though I never lost sight of it. But it was not the first novel I had written and it was not even my "dream project." I have saved that for Second Book Syndrome, because I know exactly how that happens to writers. I now call my current work, The Ambitious Fairy Project. (It's hopeful because I have a #2 planned.) In the beginning, it was too damn ambitious and I did not even have the skill set needed to do it justice. And as the years passed, I began to believe I would never write and finish it. And there would be no second book because the first had never been completed. This is an awful reality for any creative. And I write this very sincerely. And even now, I have fears that I won't finish. I will never write another novel. I hold those feelings today as I write this post. But I am on the path. I am committed.  I even took a Cognitive Behavior Therapy program to help me get to this place where I could type the words,  I. HOLD. A. BELLIGERENT. COMMITMENT. TO. THE. WORK. And I have had to come at this project very differently than I worked previously though I had to keep my keen eye for objectivity, something that has been both a blessing and curse. I had to make order out of chaos, not only in my art but in my life.  Covid and illness plagued me. Yes, plagued me. The question of Prozac loomed large. Understanding the critical mind pressed me to the floor on occasion. And none of these things have changed. 

But I have changed. In bits and pieces. Fragile changes.

As the Le Guin quote alludes to, when we really work hard, we have to be vulnerable at the same time. We enter a dangerous territory where there is no safety and we have to find our way through more chaos and somehow organize it as we go. We cannot create order in the old, negative ways. We kind of have to surrender to it. As someone who works with intention and intellect, this has been very difficult to achieve. I am not someone who likes to be so intuitive in the drafting. I want more control. I want to understand it all. See the big picture. 

Yes, I can see the big picture. Laughing. But it's how I understand and deal with my critical mind THAT is completely different. How I am willing to let process overwhelm me and surrender.

It's funny and odd, but I kind of like surrendering right now. It's very passionate. How I fall.....

Smiling.

Heartsease would be a lovely name for a poem, a song, or a novel and it's also a lovely name for this painting.

John Brett
Heartsease 1862
Watercolor and bodycolor on card
'Heartsease' or pansies and fern-shoots; close-up study of yellow, blue and black pansies, delphinia, moss and fern-shoots. In the language of flowers pansies are associated with thought and the fragile beauty of young women. Brett was a British artist associated with the Pre-Raphaelite movement, mainly notable for his highly detailed landscapes.
— British Museum

Van Gogh is one of my favorite painters. Always.

Oleander by Vincent Van Gogh.

Is this what faith is?

“If the Sun and Moon should ever doubt, they'd immediately go 

 out.”

                   ― William Blake

I am reflecting on my mother, Pauline Church.

This is my mother, Pauline Church, on the right, and her older sister, Virginia, on the left. There is something absolutely breathtaking looking at this photo of them sitting there with the little umbrellas, wearing dresses trimmed at the bodice and sleeves, and wearing socks and shoes. I've had to reflect on my mother this last month, our relationship, and just the general overall dynamics between a mother and her child. We were incredibly close all her life, yet often at odds, I suppose because we were both very independent and not afraid to say exactly what we thought. Today I had to face the reality of how much we were alike but how different our lives were when compared. She dwelt with a lot of indifference in her younger life. She idolized a father who died young and doted on a withdrawn mother who never got over being widowed too young. There were 5 other siblings, all younger. Life was work. Her world was limited and censored and lacked the culture she craved. So she never censored me a day. I was reading by age four. We had books and lived in the library. She read all the time. She was an incredible reader and her memory was unbelievable. She could sew, keep house, and was a great cook. She loved gardening. And traveled all the time. Queen of the Day Trips. But her life was hard. Very hard. And she could not spare me certain traumas. And as a mother she wanted to, though I never quite understood those particulars until now. Both these girls loved their children. Loved their family. All their lives. I think now, I was extremely lucky in the mother I had, and Aunt Virginia was one of the best aunts. All the gifts I possess as a person are due to my mother and father, but they were shaped by my mother and the things she wanted for me, a Catholic education, a childhood uncensored, culture, art, books, conversation, ideas, ideas, ideas. Every day trip was an adventure. I had asthma, she put in the tub and made me breathe like one would be swimming. I learned to swim in my grandmother's bathtub. I had depth perception problems. She told me I could see everything as well as anyone else. I did. She said I was smart, I believed her and I was. Of course, I learned that the world was chaos from her, too. I miss her. If she had lived, she would be a 102 this month. I can't even process that yet. In CBT, I came to the realization that I have no triggers, and try as I might I could not write a single one down in the last month. And believe me, I've had enough trauma to fill a notebook. I think I owe that to my mother, too. Laughing. No matter what happened to her, and a lot happened to her, she just went on until the day her body stopped and even that was in resistance. What a woman! Both of them. (I look like my mother and I have turned out to be as strong as her, too. Who knew?)

Witches and trees fascinate me.

Edward Gurden Dalziel

Description

Forest scene during the night, with two old witches sitting under one of the leafless trees at centre, a young witch standing at left, holding up a torch, and a horseman with flowing cape approaching in background at right; four monkeys in foreground, two pelicans and flying parrot behind; an owl and another bird flying above the witches; proof illustration for the magazine 'Judy', Vol 22 p 187, 13 February 1878.
Wood-engraving on thin paper, touched with white body color

Witches and Trees. There has always been a relationship between witches and trees. And so this was one of the first images that I put in my notebook for my WIP. Because I wanted to think about witches and trees for a long time. I wanted those thoughts to marinate so to speak. And I have collected quite a few images of witches and trees. Of lovers and trees, too. Those from mythology. Trees, normally, are deeply rooted. That alone, made me very interested in the concept of people and trees. How we like trees. I know I do. And I love trees with lots of roots that run along the surface of the ground. I distinctly remember such trees from my early childhood. I would walk the roots round and round and round. I also drew lots of trees when I was very young, the same way children will draw little square houses and then post stick people out front of it as their family or themselves. I drew more trees than houses and sometimes the roots took over the entire page. These drawings bothered my mother at times. But they turned out to be harmless. I drew them like I would later draw heavy vines wrapping themselves around one another. I was very attached to the movement of the lines on the paper. But I am deeply rooted. It's the one thing I have known for a long time, even when I suppressed it. I am rooted to a place.

It's October 1.

Two things.

It's time to decorate for autumn outside.

And I am drafting again until December 1st.

Today is Truman Capote's Birthday.

"Sometimes when I think how good my book can be, I can hardly breathe." — Truman Capote

(I adore Capote. Several reasons. One, his first story about his childhood in the South is one of my favorite books. I often reread it. It's so real. His voice is so authentic. And I know this because I know people like he knew. And I had a childhood in the South. Also he and I both taught ourselves to read long before first grade and we kept dictionaries and marked words and wrote books when we were little. He always knew he wanted to be a writer. I never even thought of that though I was writing all the time. I wanted to be an Anthropologist, a Biologist. I wanted to understand human beings. We both suffered from disadvantages, but had visions of what could be. Today is his birthday. I always remember it. He died way too young. His disadvantages killed him. My disadvantages killed my career. Love never moved him forward. Love sustained me. Oh, the wishes he had. I have burned all my wishes, too.

The Goblin Market by Hilda Heckle

 

Some days I am sad and I appear without feeling.

“Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not; and often times we call a man cold when he is only sad.”
     

                — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The Waking by Theodore Roethke

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.

We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.

Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me, so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.”

                      ― Theodore Roethke

Labels do not matter. Feelings are not always real. But self-awareness is.

 

“I am a complicated person with a simple life and I am the reason for everything that ever happened to me.”

― Charlotte Eriksson

(photo by Karen Elson)

Self-regulation has been the most difficult part for me since Covid. Doing better.

"An artist’s work is almost entirely inquiry based and self-regulated. It is a fragile process of teaching oneself to work alone, and focusing on how to hone your quirky creative obsessions so that they eventually become so oddly specific that they can only be your own."

— Teresita Fernández

There is a moment when you notice that light in your mind has changed. Part 2

 

“She lived her art. She looked like her art. She had the vocabulary of art." —George Lange on Francesca Woodman

I wrote a post much earlier this year (April 17th) with the same title and posted this photo of Francesca Woodman. Of course, I made some plans which went awry. And I am still trying to manage my house, this time as part of the CBT program. I am still unmoored and working to anchor myself. I am still recovering from a physical illness and also from an emotional one. Since I began the program, I have maintained a focus needed to do the things I need to do. The new room is coming along nicely, but I not only worked on that room, I cleaned up. I haven't really thought about my house much since John died, and even part of the house felt uncanny after he was gone, but now I am reclaiming it and I also am getting a bit more organized, something I lost in the years preceding John's death (but after his cancer diagnosis.) One serious problem was the arrangement of the house, how much of my stuff had been, yes, literally stuffed into places it had not been previously. I can't really explain how this happened without disclosure of things I would rather not write here. But I lost my old study, things were moved and just put in places, books too. In the last five years, I did not do anything about that situation and I also added a lot of books to my library. Too many. And I just had a mess. So part of the CBT program has been to clean up this mess, which worked well with my efforts to make a new art room at the other end of the house. In fact I am doing more than that. I am making another place to sit and talk. I want to move my TV out there, too. That is where it was originally.

I can see it all. In my mind.

In the last ten days, I have moved around 1500 books, dusted them, reshelved and organized them. I also started going through my papers. Yes, I have lots of paperwork everywhere. Crazy. We are talking decades of paperwork, and I thought while moving books, I would just throw away anything that I didn't really need or love. And I mean, it had to be useful to me in the next five years or it was out the door. Or it had to be something essential to my history, example, all the book contracts I have signed, all the letters for business, communications that I wanted to keep between teachers, students, friends, etc. I've had to move some furniture around. Jack helped with that Monday morning. I'd like to paint an old desk, too, now. I just want to downsize. But still keep some of the clutter I love. Just not too much.

Out of my therapy, other interesting things have happened. I made some changes on the WIP. And I have obligated myself, as part of habit making, etc. to keep working journals. That's been difficult but I am doing it. I also started working on the Brian Molko project in small doses since Album #8 is going to be released soon. (Probably bit by bit.) But only in very small doses until I have finished my program and made some headway with many of my other goals. I made a little discovery about Molko this week, quite by accident. It is completely coincidental to anything happening to him or me in our separate bubbles. No, I won't be writing about it. It's nothing to do with his music. But maybe his personality. But it is something so obvious that I can't believe I didn't notice it previously because I saw the information and just did not put "two and two together." Those things happen. And it was somewhere around sixty-something weeks ago, which is over a year when I first saw the information. But it's right out in the open for anyone to see if they look, if they take notice of what Molko talks about, when he talks about his life and his love of music, also some little habit he has himself. Habits tell us things about people. I think music does, too.

Moving on, I've had to think a lot about art, how I view art, how I live my art. What I disclose and what I don't. Not much, and my therapist wants me to disclose more. That's going to be the most difficult thing ever. It's not like some people don't know about it, it's just that I never really put anything on the Internet. I don't like the public gaze. Yes. we are talking about that. One of the things I want to do is do an art program again, to refresh my abilities, to work maybe differently, to socialize in a safe zone, to get out of my head, so to speak, to hear and see fresh ideas. Artists need this, it does not matter if they are writing, painting, or writing a song. They need new ideas and fresh ways of looking at art. Then they can go back into their creative caves and make it work with how they feel and work. All this takes time. It takes living and Covid is not letting us live as we did previously. Why do I have a feeling that Covid is going to change the world, that it already has? I collect a lot of images and thoughts on art and art projects that I have in my head, noted out in notebooks. Occasionally they make this page as part of the assemblage. But they are controlled glimpses. Isn't everything on the Internet sort of artifice? I believe the public gaze requires that artifice. I could never be a performance artist. Because artifice exist in the performance of it, in the persona that is really created in front of a camera or on a stage.

There is a psychology to this and I understand it completely. It's part of why Anthony Bourdain was so conflicted. He was a man encased in his own artifice and he hated it. 

I am ending with giving myself another deadline. I am hoping, feeling confident, that by the end of September, house will be organized, and yes, decorated for Halloween.

I am decorating inside with the hopes of seeing Colin, Oliver, and Miles, maybe Lydia, too. That's the plan. 

And yes, I am still on meds.

I think I did that today in more ways than one.

“To make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we 

start from.”  

                   —   T. S. Eliot

 

I just spent over six hours watching crazy films with my son and now I am going to bed.

 So part of my CBT program is to socialize and get out of my head..ah house. So today Jack and I planned a movie day. He cooked too, so I did not have to decide what to eat, which I am not very good at right now. I also did not have to dress up, put on make-up, or wear a mask since Jack and I are both fully vaccinated and neither of us socialize. It was ideal that way. I didn't even have to do my hair. Nobody post these kinds of pics on social media. But I thought why not? I mean I am getting old, my hair is falling out, I've got wrinkles and no amount of makeup is going to change the fact that as a natural blonde, when you go gray, well, you don't have those trendy eyebrows that are so fashionable. But I have never had them. I did wear neat clothes and my black and white chucks. Jack cooked baked chicken, peas, greens, and green beans since we are avoiding carb-carbs. 

I arrived at his house at 11 a.m. and stayed till 8 p.m. We watched three films.  First was The World's End, one of Edgar Wright's crazy films. It was really funny and I suppose we will watch Hot Fuzz next time. I laughed a lot and we ate while watching it. I had to be careful not to choke. Oh, well.

The second film was The Exorcist, which is our "first" traditional Halloween film to watch together since it scares the hell out of me and Jack has a life size Regan in his house, standing right beside the sofa as part of his decorations. Yes, we are early decorating, but who cares with Covid.  Covid has changed the world. It was the director's cut of The Exorcist, which is not very different except for the ending. 

Every time I watch this film, I shut my eyes when Father Karras, a Jesuit priest, starts seeing and talking to his dead mother. I also struggle with seeing Karras get Last Rites, since I have seen that in real life. Jack, like my mother, is a great color commentary personality, so all through the films I get all these juicy details. He has a memory like my mother, too.  One cannot imagine how much those two have put to memory. But they are famous for it. So we don't just watch films. We talk through them, too.  

We also stopped one time to look at a new book he has on the Crusades. What can I say, we both love history and the Crusades are one of our things. This book had lots of maps and I adore maps, so I had to look at all the maps while we paused one of the films. Don't ask. Our third choice was the 1999 The Mummy, because we had just been discussing Egyptian history, too. 

I realized that this is what Jack and I do. We watch TV in the background while we have one conversation after another. I told him I had written my paper in the class on Maat, which he didn't know. How did he not know? Maybe because he was in another college studying Statistics or something similar at the same time. I also told him I would give him all my books on Egyptian history. I don't know why I should keep them when I never look at them anymore. And then we watched The Mummy. It was a fun film and now I want to watch all the old 1960s Mummy films. In fact, I want to watch ALL Mummy films. That's on my Halloween list. This is how my life goes right now.

I had to drive home in the dark. Ugh. Not a good idea, but it's not far and I made it without any stress. I had to find my cat, she was outside somewhere. I had to change clothes, wash my face, and this is it. I took a photo for a joke for Jack, to make a meme on his movie talk. But then I thought, post it on the blog, Jane, let the grandchildren see how much fun you were. lol (And how wild your hair is, too.) That's why I am sitting here. Tomorrow I am back to moving books and cleaning. Speaking of....

The topic of the day on social media was that Placebo "cleaned out" out their IG account. 

I have slept with many monsters.

A thinking woman sleeps with monsters.

The beak that grips her, she becomes.

And Nature, that sprung-lidded, still commodious

steamer-trunk of tempora and mores

gets stuffed with it all:

— Adrienne Rich

Creed

I wake up to find magic,/ I seek dreams/ and I crave imagination./ This is my creed.

Anastasia Bolinder

Tanith Lee on Love, Once Again.

 "Are not all loves secretly the same? A hundred flowers sprung from a single root. The body’s love will teach the spirit how to love. The spasm of the body’s carnal pleasure, forgetting all things but ecstasy itself, teaches the body to remember the ecstasy of the soul, forgetting all but itself, the moments of oneness, and freedom. The love a man feels only for one other in all the world will teach him, at length, love of all others, of all the world. A cry of joy, whatever its cause, is the one true memory of those wonders the flesh has banished. A cry of love is always a cry of love."

Tanith Lee who died on May 26, 2015

(I saw this posted on tumblr and I know I have already posted it, but I am posting it again. I did not remember Tanith Lee's birthday this year due to a personal tragedy in my own family on May 24. But Tanith Lee was a wonderful writer, an outsider, totally idiosyncratic, and much beloved by this reader. Love is so important. And I feel so lucky to be able to feel it to the capacity that I do. A gift. A challenge. I love sometimes with no expectations. I still love John and though he is dead, the feeling is still palpable. Love is good. Love is loud. Smiling.)

Why does the vampire still read?

 

Eve's house is full of books. My house is full of books. Today I watched the film Only Lovers Left Alive. I like it. But one question kept running through my mind. Why does Eve still read? She is not human, and doesn't appear to have retained any empathy for humanity in the way we humans work to feel. And yet she reads. All the time. The question is why? I think it's more than curiosity.

Another discussion is Adam? He chose music really, although we know he influenced many scientists. He is fighting depression. Depression in a vampire. This is not Louis from Anne Rice. These are not Anne Rice vampires at all. And yet, Adam is fighting either depression or boredom, which I might add, in psychology, are totally related.

It is the psychology I am interested in when it comes to these two vampires. I want to know why Eve still reads. Maybe it is why I still read after 1000s of books. I certainly don't read for curiosity anymore. Or maybe even empathy. It's not even conclusive in psychology that empathy is created and maintained by reading. Escape is a good answer, the easiest. But I don't read for escape either. One doesn't read Absalom, Absalom for escape. Smiling slyly.

Simulation. Curiosity. To learn. Hmmm. I have no firm answers right now.

The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry

 I began September 2021 here and in my personal life with a quote from Sarah Perry's beautiful novel, The Essex Serpent. It is quote that I scheduled many weeks ago. I knew September was going to be the month I returned to writing and blogging. And that quote is literal. One cannot make serious changes without sacrifices and losses, without rearranging things. And changes don't come over night. They take months and years and I started changes many months ago, some as far as fall in 2018. The Essex Serpent is one of my favorite novels of all time, and that says a lot. It's brilliant, stuffed with all kinds of ideas and with one really focused plot and structure. In some ways I am posting this because this novel is not without sorrow and loss and pain and I have felt those things so deeply. But it is also about regeneration. And that is the important part, how we all deal with our issues and how we move forward. I have sold my soul, in order to live as I must, my conscience and morals remain, but I did seek therapy and my therapist said I must no longer deny some things about myself, positive things actually, not the weaknesses but the strengths. I often hide them because I do not like the public gaze, nor do I need praise or validation. I am very much loved as a human being, as a mother and grandmother, as a friend. My work over the years validates my efforts at work and also I work with "purpose" and not "achievement."  Another thought from the beautiful novel by Sarah Perry. “in the end it was purpose I wanted, not achievement — you see the difference?” There are paths in life that take courage. One never finds true courage unless one is faced with loss and fear. I cannot recommend The Essex Serpent enough. I shout its beauty out and how it transformed my feelings into words. I am so lucky.

Here is the quote again:

“Sometimes I think I sold my soul, so that I can live as I must. Oh, I don't mean without morals or conscience- I only mean with freedom to think the thoughts that come, to send them where I want them to go, not to let them run along tracks someone else set, leading only this way or that...”

― Sarah Perry, The Essex Serpent.

I have made another serious change. I feel good.

 Yesterday, I saw a good doctor and today I am seeing another. These visits were all planned months ago so, no, they are not emergencies, but they could not have come at a better time in my life.  All my doctors have known me for years and years, so they are quite acquainted with a living history of Jane. Laughing.  Today, this doctor knows me really well. Everything. He's my personal physician, and took me on after his predecessor, my old friendly personal physician retired, a man whom I knew as a teenager. There is something odd in this circumstances. One can never fake anything or hide anything or be anything other than what one is to these people, a predicament which can make one uncomfortable at times, but at the same moment, is very comforting. These two men never cut me any slack, so to speak.

The older man has died, God Bless him, he was brilliant and a great diagnostic physician. He had a gift, and I was lucky to be his patient. He understood me so well, and helped me through many years when I went to school, seriously allergic to cigarette smoke and yes, in those days, people smoked in classes. He called me the "Perpetual Tourist" a name that has stuck with other people, too. This refers to my lifelong personal history of studying anything that caught my interests instead of focusing on one subject. He used the word, tourist, because I do become a tourist in a sense, I leave one place and travel to another in my head until I know it as well as I can. I have been many places over the years. No adequate label can describe my love of learning. No label is necessary because another great doctor taught me years ago that labels are worthless when it comes to defining people and I have never changed my mind about that.

I have decided to do something different online than previously, both here and on social media. I am going to intensify my status as the "Perpetual Tourist" and go back to my early ways, to the things I learned that fascinated me. Most people know I love beauty, that I am often amazed at what humankind can achieve, and how social and biological evolutions have, in a manner of speaking, influenced and even determined how things have progressed. I want to spend more time talking about beautiful things I love so that my grandchildren can read about those things. I also want them to understand why it is so important to read around subjects, to not make quick judgments based on modern norms, and I want them to accept the bad with the good. There is no perfection in life, no way to avoid horror and pain and suffering, to create a perfect and fair justice for all. These things I have written about many times for my children and one of WIPs is about that theme. The Search for the Impossible. No one ever finds it. The Impossible is what many people want and seek and what they compare all things to, which is a shame, because it causes a lot of unnecessary misery. I love "big pictures" and "history" and "ideas." I come to all my art through ideas, not people, not characters, not my own personal biases. It is an idea that strikes me first and that leads my creative spirit. And I have my way of living that art that is not really here or on Facebook or on Twitter. And I am going to discuss why this happens not only to me but many people.

I know a lot of creatives and have worked with them over a lifetime, really. They are people who think "outside the box" and only use group think as a tool to gather information. It's takes more than a few college courses to determine how they will see a subject. It takes a lot of study and yes, experience. Like the older man, some doctors are brilliant diagnostics, while other doctors, who are good doctors, do not have this keen eye. Eventually they will solve a problem, but it takes them longer, and they may need help. Nothing wrong with that. Some doctors rely on tests and even other doctors, but the serious creatives and brilliant diagnostics sees things that others do not. It's in the brain. And no one can quite come up with the proper label.

In the last few weeks, I have had to face some stark realities about myself, about my personal environment, and about the Internet and social environment here. I have been under severe stress and I paid a price because I was just angry. And while anger is necessary, it's not very productive. Basically I am a very pragmatic person, I look for solutions and if I can't find them, I go to someone who can and I adapt. I change. I burn bridges. JUST. LIKE. THAT. Burning a bridge is not the ideal choice, but what it does do is prevent one from going backwards. And sometimes that makes burning a  bridge, regardless of the fallout and consequences, necessary. I have burned a lot of bridges in the last few months. And yes, that process added to my stress. BUT I am at the end of the tunnel now. I am out in the light. And I am okay. I am even smiling as I write this.

So look for changes if you know me. ALL. OVER. THE. PLACE. I feel good.

“Sometimes I think I sold my soul, so that I can live as I must. Oh, I don't mean without morals or conscience- I only mean with freedom to think the thoughts that come, to send them where I want them to go, not to let them run along tracks someone else set, leading only this way or that...”

― Sarah Perry, The Essex Serpent.

Janis Joplin on Haight St in 1967 is a beautiful sight.

 

Janis Joplin on Haight St. in 1967 is a beautiful sight. The end.

Today I am celebrating the birth of Percy B Shelley, English poet and visionary.

It's Percy B. Shelley's Birthday today, a day I ALWAYS celebrate. I've been lying in bed this morning, composing in my head a post and tribute to this polymathic genius that I adore and who is my number #1 influence since I was a sixteen year old girl. Of course, I lay there long enough to where the post turned into a small paper, some of it filled with pithy comments on those in his circle. No film has ever captured him correctly. His critics are often foolish and biased, especially those who see him as cruel, sexist, and misogynistic. How absurd. He was a young man, brilliant, and way ahead of his time. A man of our current time. No other Romantic poet is so fitting for the 21st century. It literally breaks my heart that he died before he was 30 years old. I am not one to believe in so called "destiny" but the moment Percy B set foot in Milan in 1816, a series of events were set in motion that would lead to his drowning in 1822. Lilliputian ties and I can trace them in my mind as I did this morning, lying there in bed. I suppose out of all his circle, I adore Claire Clairmont and Thomas Peacock the most, the rest all deserve my contempt (I even give that grudgingly) and this morning I recounted their sins in my head for hours and that includes Mary Shelley, who out of guilt and desperation, slaved over compiling an edition of his poems until she had a nervous breakdown, one of the many she already had experienced. I pity her. I do. But she was Godwin's true daughter and if you don't know what that means, go read about Godwin. Shelley, himself, made two serious mistakes, and they both concerned his so-called marriages, something he never believed in or held to and it cost him. And he paid the ultimate price. Of the two, Harriet Westbrook is the one that haunted him emotionally. It is easy to see how all that happened, when ones considers Shelley's nasty upbringing with a neglectful mother and sadistic father, where the poet's only emotional respite was the adoration and love of his sisters. This pattern never left his emotional make-up. It ruled him. He was flawed, of course, but he was genuine and warm and generous and good. I feel so blessed to know his work, to understand his life, and to feel his visions. To share those visions. I was one of those women who was a prisoner, too, until his work freed me to see the world very differently, to embrace independent thought and skepticism and live in doubt and uncertainty with the grace that he possessed. What an incredible human being. I am not into mythmaking and I make none of him. I am team Human. He was human. That's enough.

This is true, no matter what, even if you don't like it.

There is no magical and quick solutions to things like mental health or physical fitness or even plagues. It's work. And we can't fix all emotions. People can feel anything but it IS people who have to change their feelings. I think, in many ways, through our current literature, our current state of political engagement, our current views that are just vast unworkable theories, that we ARE NOW living in a dark age. There, I said it and I mean it.

The Eve of St. Agnes by Harry Clarke

 The Eve of St. Agnes, (Based on the poem by John Keats) by Harry Clarke. His art is so beautiful and I adore narrative art.

True Detective Season 1 is my favorite TV.

 

I first saw Season 1 of True Detective around the 20th of June and I have been thinking about it constantly since then. I have to admit I think (quite seriously) it's probably the best TV show I have ever seen in terms of writing, acting, and all around techniques. Since I know the environment of True Detective personally and vividly, I find it even more fascinating how psychogeography is used so well. But also symbols, motifs, philosophy, development of character, design, all the structural principles that one can use in writing anything. It's quite masterful and if I were a younger person, in college, I would write my thesis on it. It is literally a brilliant piece of both fiction and film. And of course, because of my own work, it resonated deeply with me. I am haunted by it. Just haunted by its artistry.

The Last London by Iain Sinclair

 Wow, I haven't posted since the last week of June. I have not felt well and have been so busy just trying to stay functional and working and keeping house. Right now I need to be outside working in the garden but I am waiting till in the morning as it's been raining a bit. I am going to began again on the blog posting a Beloved Book for me. Iain Sinclair's The Last London. It's an incredible book, written so well and it has brought me so much joy during these really depressing times. I am so impressed with it that I am going to read all Sinclair's books. Today I am going to start a reread making notes. And then afterwards, write up a nice review. Pyschogeography is something I am very interested in and it has influenced all my work, writing, perspectives, and art. Place is everything. I don't think we can write adequate history without the context of geography in terms of country to the roads and buildings, to the mindscapes. Judging history and people outside these parameters is both shallow and incomplete.

Reading a book is an experience.

I lived in books more than I lived anywhere else.

— Neil Gaiman

Walking is very important to me, so I am pounding the streets early before the heat.

 

The things we do learn as we love and lose.

“After some time, you learn the subtle difference between holding a hand and imprisoning a soul; You learn that love does not equal sex, and that company does not equal security, and you start to learn…. That kisses are not contracts and gifts are not promise..."

― Jorge Luis Borges

The Woman in White is one of my favorite novels of all time.

 

The Woman in White

Frederick Walker, ARA (1840-1875)

1871

Gouache on paper

2172 x 1289 mm

Courtesy of Tate Britain N02080

Presented by Sir Claude Phillips in memory of his sister Eugenie Phillips 1906

This life-sized poster is one of the first examples of a fine artist undertaking an advertisement. It was made for Wilkie Collins’s ‘sensation’ play The Woman in White, which opened at the Olympic Theatre, London in October 1871. It combines a Pre-Raphaelite-style beauty with black and white graphic design. Sweeping lines pull the viewer’s eye to the woman’s mysterious and inviting expression.— Tate Britain Commentary

(at the moment, I am reading small portions of this novel out loud to myself.)

Today's question is this.

Mais qui voit-on dans le miroir ????

Camille Claudel had such an interesting but sad life.

 

French sculptor Camille Claudel and her friend Ghita Theurietque in 1882.

I love creating anything, but I would like to be good at something. Laughing.

True perseverance lies in fulfilling our most powerful creative impulses despite all setbacks. We only get into trouble when we become obsessed with particular outcomes, when wanting to be recognized for our art is more important to us than the art itself. Arrogance paired with comparatively little talent (or at least seriously underdeveloped talent) is what results in work that embarrasses everyone but the person making it. You can’t be delusional if what you desire — what you truly desire — is simply to be with your camera or notebook or piano, engrossed and alive.

— Camille de Angelis

Contradictions are painful at times.

  Many things have happened to me in the last several years and I've been thinking about convictions and people who are entrenched in their own convictions. One thing I know from my own life and the lives of people I respect or know well, or from scientists that I have met, known, or studied is that if one experiences life and studies any one thing long enough, convictions are meaningless. Other people are the opposite. They feel you can never remain neutral, as many political figures feel. I think Howard Zinn is one. His example is "how can one remain neutral on a moving train." Some people are even admired for their convictions, etc. etc. etc. I am more align with Nietzsche who felt convictions were just as dangerous as lies. In fact, he referred to them as prisons. For me personally, a person who is likely to change her mind about any one subject based on new information, convictions are just "things" that are fashionable and convenient and generational even. But I would definitely say convictions are psychological prisons. This perspective makes it impossible for me to be a people pleaser or fashionable or tribal in any way. In some ways, it has alienated me from people I truly love. 

It is really not what happens on the surface between you and other people that counts, but how these people make you feel on the inside and how you make them feel on the inside. And I know that is often uneasy for me. And sometimes, you actually know what the other people are truly feeling. The painful part is not caring as you know they would, because you don't hold the same philosophical value on convictions and sometimes a "core" value. You possess empathy but it's very objective and not emotional empathy. (Most people don't understand or practice objective empathy and it must be practiced.) And what you feel really bad about is that alienation, that forceful distance between person and person that you can never cross, because you do not hold the same values regarding the word "convictions." And they will never understand that perspective. It's foreign or unreal to them. While you take the entire situation in through reality, the other people will often choose labels that psychologically match their emotional values. And then the distance between grows wider and there is nothing you can do.

Nothing I can do. This is what it means to be living in true contradictions. This, for me, is the coldest alienation. And perhaps the saddest thing is that I know how the other person will write it off and I have to live with that and go on. I see me as they see me. And it's painful. And there is no defense, no last word, no bitterness, no revenge, no projection, no hate, just the wide space that aways exist between and the sorrow of the situation that I will mourn but eventually move on from.

When I was very young, I wanted to be understood and loved. And then I realized that was also a prison. I had to learn to love myself and believe in myself. I knew how different I was and that even in that difference, I was the same, that all people want to love and be loved. But not all people are happy or content or hold a high value on their worth. But somehow, for whatever reason, at a very young age, I did. Even with all my wounds and neurosis. My problem was being a fixer and I was going to fix my broken family and relationships until I decided I could only fix myself and help people in their journey or leave them along. Probably because I wanted to understand myself and the world and that is how I became a person who realized convictions were meaningless at times. And it was okay to say no, and to change my mind. To be wrong. 

Did you know that some people can never say no without feeling guilty or justifying? Some people can never say they are wrong? Some people can never change their minds? Some people are always looking for labels to explain uncertainty?  Some people are always ashamed or in regret or just feel like they are not good enough. These are prisons. 

I call all this the Impossible. And some people are always in search for it. The Impossible. But the Impossible, this psuedo-perfection and reality is just delusion. And yes, impossible.

(Sometimes, The Impossible transforms into a conviction.)

I am rambling here, but I do understand that sometimes there is no right or wrong, only a decision. Only a choice. And because I have been a creative since I was a child, I understood that choices happen every day, all the time. And some do not have good consequences. Sometimes we are wrong. Sometimes I am wrong. I wish I was wrong today. I will wish it all the rest of the day.

Today I feel like I know this enough to write it here. 

Tomorrow, I may change my mind. Laughing.