The End of 2022.

When Spring arrives, leaves you never saw will shadow the ground, and flowers you never beheld will star it; the grass will be of another growth, and the birds sing a new song—the aged earth dates with a new number. — Mary Shelley, December 31 1822

My first acting gig.

 

I did a lot of plays over the years in school. The Christmas play put on by the High School Drama Club. I still own these books. The top row collections are favorites. I read those very early in life. I had 3 lines, which I recited to my mother right before she took this photo. Of course, Mother made the costume. I had wings too.

Merry Christmas and God Bless Us, Everyone.

 It looks like a hallucination. But I was always a hippie girl and I love colored lights and tinsel. I am laughing. But I love it. I love Christmas and this has been a great Christmas so far, mainly because I am not living alone, I am baking, and I decorated everything. Like over decorated. It's been fun. I just had fun. I even colored this text. Oh, well.....2022. I have three trees this year, next year I am adding another one!!! If you look close, you will see that this is my Santa Claus tree. 

CHANGE.

“You cannot change what you are, only what you do.”
             — Philip Pullman

The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins

 

I love this novel, so much so that I am going to do my own annotation of it after the New Year and write a long review on Amazon and Goodreads. It is part detective story, part love story, with a tragic backstory that really comes forward at the end. I love these kinds of structures. Also Walter Hartright is not the typical everyman at all and based partly on Collins' own father. He has become one of my favorite characters in English literature. The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins is really a beautiful novel with so many fine moments of great writing. These Victorian novels that were serialized have highly influenced my work. The author's peers were critical of it though it was highly successful with the public. Think Game of Thrones. I believe they were critical because Collins attempted to give these women, creatures of their times, agency and purpose, and he also damned the idea of families putting women in mental institutions to be controlled. Women were property in Collins' time. He hated that. If you have never read this book, give it a try. Highly recommended.

Bocca Baciata by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

"The mouth that has been kissed does not lose its good fortune:

rather, it renews itself just as the moon does."

Model: Fanny Cornforth

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1859

Movement: Pre-Raphaelite, Romanticism, Narrative Art

Girls and Goblins and Gardens

 

The Rosebud Garden of Girls, Julia Margaret Cameron, 1868, albumen print. 

"People often believe the creative life is grounded in fantasy. The more difficult truth is that creativity is grounded in reality, in particular, the focused, the well observed or specifically imagined." 

For years now, I have been working toward a goal, to paint some pictures, compose a few bad sonnets, and write The Ambitious Fairy Project. Ten long years of reading, waiting, studying, and some suffering. Ten years of anxiety that I would never arrive at this moment, that I would never be able to do what Julia Margaret Cameron described in this simple quote. 

Many of my posts, previously to this one, have been an assemblage of things that went through my mind as I faced this reality. It has been daunting at times to push forward toward a life I wanted, a life that might have escaped me. I had thought to delete all the posts here, and I will be deleting old posts as time passes, keeping only those relevant, because I have finally arrived at a good place and I want to remain here and focus only on my current work, to specifically imagine what is in my head and heart. Some of my goals are very simple, a return to a kind of Romanticism, to the hallmarks of sincerity, to the folk and fairy tale, to the crowded, rambling work of Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins, where plot and character mingle, to the love of the narrative form and structure represented by the Pre-Raphaelites, to find all that in the post-postmodern world and recreate it as something valid today.

Postmodernism is over. It's been over for years, and yet many cling to it. It brought us many wonderful things, but it also did some harm, and we are struggling through a complicated time. I first saw that struggle clearly (though it had been happening my entire life) around 2000, a change, or maybe just a realization of a reality in flux. Time is a long arc in history. It's hard to see what is happening when you are standing in the middle of the happening. One just catches glimpses. 

All art really reacts against what came before it. It evolves. It struggles. It shifts. Some of us are living under the weight of futures that have been imagined for us, some of us are living under the weight of futures that may never exist. What is clear to me is that we all live under the weight of history, whether we like it or not. The modernists did not know what to do with Time. The postmodernists hated Time and did not believe it existed. 

But Time is real. (Though complex.)

Learning to Sleep

 

The Sleeping Beauty by Burne-Jones.

One of the things I have achieved over the last few years is how learning to sleep, which would change my life for the better. People who suffer from depression, or who do not adhere to any kind of schedule usually end up with insomnia and yes, bad sleeping habits. For years, due to medication mostly and habit, I was a night owl who liked to sleep until noon most days. And it became harder to maintain as I had children. I cheated even then, going back to sleep after my children went off to school. And then a doctor made me realize that insomnia was part of depression and if I embraced that, I might could change how I slept. I did not believe him but a few years ago I attempted to do what he said. It was really rough the first year, but the second year was better and the third, and now sixth year in, I am sleeping at night, sometimes falling asleep so naturally I cannot even believe it's happening. Of course, this meant controlling my caffeine consumption, knowing when I got over stimulated, and practicing, with some failure I might add. But now I am a sleeping beauty, so to speak.  It took me six years to change how I slept. It's a milestone for me.

One of the things to note here is how long it took me. Six years to really reach a natural new sleep pattern. 

The Past

“As much as I try to make the past keep still and mind its manners, it moves and murmurs with me through every day.”

— Deborah Levy, Swimming Home

One of my favorite passages from Lestat is prior to his change when he has a panic attack, literally, and experiences an Existential crisis. It's hilarious and I always laugh out loud. I have previously posted this. I love it.

“I realized aloud in the midst of saying it that even when we die we probably don't find the answer as to why we were ever alive. [...] Do you realize that! We'll never know why the hell any of it happened, not even when it's over! We're going to die and not even know. We'll never know, and all this meaningless will just go on and on and on. And we won't any longer be witnesses to it. We won't have even that little bit of power to give meaning to it in our minds. We'll just be gone, dead, dead, dead, without ever knowing.”

                                          — The Vampire Lestat

                                                (Anne Rice)

Wonder is my drug.

“We live in an age when you say casually to somebody 'What's the story on that?' and they can run to the computer and tell you within five seconds. That's fine, but sometimes I’d just as soon continue wondering. We have a deficit of wonder right now.” — Tom Waits

People make and create decisions and ideas, often with a personal fear. Do. Not. Do. It.

“Fear is the mother of foresight.”

                         — Thomas Hardy

Artefact belonging to the Mads LaMotte Collection

THE MUNGO PATERNOSTER. Charred remains of alabasterite sculpture depicting the joined head of explorer Mungo Park and Death. Eleven ½ inch beads constructed of paper. Historians identified the original paper as loose scraps from Park’s journal, sold as religious charms in 1796 on Park’s return from Nigeria. See also Mungo Park 1799 Travels in the Interior of Africa. According to Mads LaMotte, the religious charms were no more than badly written phrases translated from undetermined passages of the Koran. In spite of this, the charms were soon discovered to be Indestructible and collected over a period of fifty years. How the charms became beads for the paternoster is debated. Mads LaMotte purchased the paternoster as part of a collection of personal property owned by adventurer George Hogg who died in 1945 at Shandan district in China. 

copyright © 2022 by Jane Harrington

A love like this is always possible.

“Don't fall in love with perfect things, without damage. Perfect things belong to everyone. Fall in love with shadows, cracks, distortions...that you feel belong to you. Fall in love with those who have learned to survive.” 

                                   — Valentina D'Urbano

The Yellow Tree 2022

 

This is my favorite tree and it's a much brighter, purer yellow and I suppose if I took a photo standing far off with the sunlight hitting it just perfectly, I would take the perfect photo. Nope. I like to stand under it and just feel amazed. It makes me feel all gooey inside and silly, like I am a girl again and I just discovered something for the first time and that something is transcendence and all that kind of nonsense. A yellow tree does that for me. A yellow tree.

The Orange Tree 2022

 I really don't do these trees justice. And since I stand under them, full of awe, I just click the phone camera and sigh. November 3, 2022. On my morning walk.

Eugène Grasset, Three Women and Three Wolves, 1892

Eugène Grasset, Three Women and Three Wolves, 1892.

The Yellow Leaf

 

Beautiful morning walk. Lots of color everywhere and the bluest of skies. Clean and cool air. Friendly faces. It was almost euphoric in feeling and would have been completely that if I were not so present and looking outward, not within myself. The leaves were a riot of colors.

To say that you can't be wrong is probably wrong.

"I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong."
                   —   Bertrand Russell

I did it. I cut my long hair.

 Here's proof.

I told a friend it must have been six or seven inches. They cried. One friend begged me not to do it. Women and hair. I said, "It will grow back." I got bangs, too. I am making that second big pivot (change) that I've been talking about since Covid appeared. Change is good. Experiencing new things is good. Leaving behind certain things is even better. Sometimes, a girl has got to cut her hair while she is doing all that. It's a statement of intent. It's a new beginning. I know I said no more selfies, but this is not one. It's not even a good photo. It just shows the hair. I am only posting this because I did swear never to cut my hair again. And I want it documented as a failure to keep my word. Laughing.

Despite everything, including myself.

 

My son reminded me that we have to change with the times. When I think back to family Halloweens, well, oh dear, looking at this makes me sort of sad. And yet, I am still able to do something to maintain one of our biggest family traditions. Celebrating Halloween. I've been under the weather so to speak, and this week, I had to be medicated for it, after three weeks of enduring some unknown illness. It turned out to be an allergic reaction to peanut butter. Allergic reactions are difficult to pinpoint if one does not have hives, wheezing, or anaphylaxis. I should know since I have had all three, more than once. But there was nothing like that at first.

It was not the normal. Only three weeks in did I start to have breathing problems, which appeared like sinusitis with intense pressure, but no congestion. Bizarre. That's when I began to suspect something allergy related. I also thought I might have Covid. But no. Once I began a regiment of drugs for allergic reactions, I began to recover. All the other symptoms, which were gastrointestinal, abated, too. It was too easy to be Covid. Besides you rarely have Covid for three and half weeks before treated.

No more peanut butter sandwiches, which I was eating almost every day while working. But I still feel lousy. I won't fully feel normal until I am off medication. Next week sometime maybe.

I hope I feel like making my Halloween cookies.  Everyone loves them.

And yes, eating peanut butter every day, that was new, the last time being college.

Haylee at the Orpheum Theater in Memphis this past weekend.

 

We all have people who come into our lives and change them in some ways. Haylee came into my life when she was just 17 years old. We were not always good friends. Now we are "BFF" as people call it.  Due to Covid and her hectic schedule I don't see her as much as I used to but we text and talk for hours on the phone. Now over 30 years of age, she has really developed into this beautiful human being, mother to Colin, Oliver, and Miles, wife to Joe, friend to many. Haylee understands me, which is a beautiful and yes, slightly a selfish thing on my part. But not many people get me for reasons I am never going to explain. Laughing. The reasons don't really matter. But when someone finally gets me, it's so welcoming. I can talk to her. She listens and I really listen to her. We don't always meet people we end up loving in some way, too. Love is hard these days. But Haylee is easy to love. She's smart, too. Bonus. Smiling, This photo perfectly captures her outward beauty, too. She's at the Orpheum Theater, one of my favorite places in Memphis. Joe must have took this photo.

Once again, TIME.

“We live in a world in which it is impossible to anticipate most of the contingencies that will arise. Neither the political context, nor the inventions, nor the fashions, nor the weather, nor the climate are precisely specifiable in advance. There is, in the real world, no possibility of working with an abstract space of all the contingencies that may evolve. To do real economics, without mythological elements, we need a theoretical framework in which time is real and the future is not specifiable in advance, even in principle. It is only in such a theoretical context that the full scope of our power to construct our future can make sense.”

                  —   Lee Smolin

The lie is a door.

 

Byzantium is a world of contradictions. Some years ago, a very smart man told me that the world spins on opposites. Some we embrace. Some we let go, but at other times, when stuck, we lie. The latter can become a psychological issue, because the lie is "secreted" away in the edges of our minds. The result is neurosis. And the long search for labels. Most people will go through their lives running from one label to another, one doctor to another, one psychiatrist to another. Others it is one drink or drug to another. But the lie persists. Labels are comforting, they name the hidden for us, they bring certainty where none really exists. The lie is a door.

"My life, my life, my very old one"

I know the trembling of being,
The hesitation to disappear,
Sunlight upon the forest’s edge

              — Michel Houellebecq

Journey - Don't Stop Believin' (Live 1981: Escape Tour - 2022 HD Remaster)

As I write this, I am smiling.

Pivoting.

I've made so many changes this past month, which was a brutal month. But I am feeling some joy at last. I have so many wonderful projects to work on. All research is done.

Pivoting

“I have been younger in October than in all the months of spring” — W. S. Merwin

Working through many issues since middle of September.

Without tenderness, we are all in hell. — Adrienne Rich

Reflecting.

 

“In yourself right now is all the place you've got.” ― Flannery O'Connor

Fall.

“Time changes everything except something within us which is always surprised by change.”

— Thomas Hardy

It's your choice, I've made mine.

Maybe you went out of your mind
You can lose it all if you wanna
Maybe you went out of mine
It's been so long

You can live your own dear life
And you can lose it all if you wanna
But I can't let you out of mine, oh no

                  the Kills

Happy Birthday, Tanith Lee.

Tanith Lee cast such a wide influence on my art in the early days. Her work is really indescribable, and I kind of love that, though I would not call it weird fiction, ever.  At first, it was her language and use of color that attracted me. I'd never read an author (past or even present now) that used color like Tanith Lee did. It was amazing. And I love color used in a book in uncanny and delightful ways to enhance imagery, and imagery was Tanith Lee's special gift.  Oh, her imagery!

Next it was her themes, which often moved around girls, women, and sexuality. Around power dynamics. Around feminism. She wrote of despair, too. Despair so palpable one could almost reach out and touch it as a substance laying separately on the written page. It was all rather dark and beautiful at the same time. You know, like that statement you often hear or read: "beautiful is not always pretty."

In that way, it was pure literary Romanticism. It was never really postmodernism. It was never really fashionable. It never evoked current politics or gave clear lessons. 

Even after writing some 90 novels and who knows how many shorter pieces, she fell out of fashion several (if not more) years before she died in 2015 at the age of sixty-eight. I think many people found her idiosyncratic in ways that are exasperating, almost annoying. She was her own person, she possessed great agency, and she was a little eccentric. All these qualities went into her work, which was just wonderous. 

WONDEROUS.

I don't think she ever really wrote for the crowd first, it was always for herself, though that could be debatable. Laughing. She was an original and I really do lament that there will be no new words from her.

I always think of Tanith Lee on her birthday. And yes, on the day she died.  

She said in an interview: "I must admit, I never thought, after all the years of working as a professional writer in and out of the genres, I would end up at sixty-one, back where I was at twenty: unknown, unpaid, unincluded, uncertain."

I'll never forget that interview either, those singular last words, and I live by them.

Rufus Wainwright - Sonnet 29 - Shakespeare

Just feeling it. I've posted it previously on this blog. But Sunday is for Shakespeare and I just wanted to play this one. Since I discovered it, I have learned it by heart. I choose Beauty over Destruction. I choose Life over Death. I choose Desire and will not go Missing.

My Little Introductions to Witches

It's that TIME OF YEAR AGAIN.

From about 900-1400 CE (AD) the general idea was that witches didn't really exist and if they did, no one really wanted to talk much about witches, maybe out of fear and superstition, maybe out of doubt, and maybe because it was just not a popular descriptive in their culture and language, and the local authorities in power just didn't see much advantage to it. There were lots of cunning folk, which is often confused in this conversation and I am going to be posting about them lots for Halloween Time here. Data confirms, witches were just not very important politically until later.

[Yes, witches were mentioned here and there and mumbled in dark corners, etc. and so forth. But these were not the 'Burning Times' which is sort of a misrepresentation, too. Witches were also beheaded, hanged, and drowned. Some were strangled in other ways, some crushed under stones, or simply tortured to death. And let's face it, were any of them really witches at all! Like witches on broomsticks?]

Then came the Reformation and the Catholic Church was under assault. Popish superstitions were banished in many countries. And the word witch became common vocabulary. I mean, it was out there, everywhere. I've read so many books and papers on this topic that I now see The Burning Times, which is an iconic symbol of female oppression, as a financial competition between Protestants and Catholics fighting for the religious market. And along the way, that market aka people became political capital. People have been collecting data for years now, going through historical papers, trying to document just how many witches were tried and how many died. Most of them were tried and died between 1530 and 1630 CE (AD) (though witch trials went on for another 150 years.) That period of high witch trials is often referred to as The Great Hunt. "Sorcerers will suffer eternal fire." Many of those died within a 300 mile radius in France. Yes, it's true. Most of the others died in Germany and Switzerland. This Great Hunt was really religious and political wars where people became a capitalistic product to win that war. In predominately Catholic countries, where Catholicism was not in any danger, there were few witch trials at all. Witches persecuted in those countries were usually political targets and their trials and executions were like political rallies and ads between Republican and Democratic USA parties today. The parallels are striking. But where Popish ideas were banned, and people resisted, witches burned and burned. The data is striking. England's Reformation was mild compared to that in Germany.

Were there any real witches as we think of them?

Well, yes and no. Cunning folk were out there, everywhere. These are folk people, and they were making herbs to heal and offering advice on failing crops and even livestock. So yeah, if you want to call them witches, have at it. Superstitions were plentiful in the Medieval times. People were paying for curses and blessings and potions and that sort of thing. (Rome did it too) A lot of so called witchcraft was a preventative effort against personal disaster. In Italy some witches were were working and controlling the crops with a hidden magic. Oh, my! Some people were diviners. There were all kinds of seers and fortune-tellers. There were all kinds of rural people who looked odd and were odd. There was unexplained mental and physical illness. (Vampires anyone).

People wanted explanations. But books were rare and most people could not read and so an eclipse, a falling star, a comet invited confusion and fear, only explained by superstitions. There were no TVs, nothing to tell people that a storm was even brewing. They lived in mostly candle light and the dark, waiting for the sun to rise. Superstitions were everything. Even royalty employed seers. I am stressing this because superstitions, folk medicine, love potions, and ordinary fears are why we have any witches at all. A lack of any science, a lack of understanding nature, although these people were really closer to nature than modern urban dwellers. But they did not have the knowledge we do.

Modern witches are their descendants in ways. In some modern cases, religion and witchcraft coexist, such as in Hoodoo and other folk traditions from specific cultures. Some modern witchcraft is purely aesthetics and a form of personal representation and psychology, even a trade. But witchcraft still has history shadowing it, weighing on it. Because that is what history does. And one can hardly separate, even in these modern times, the forces of religion and witchcraft. (I am going to talk about Belief and Faith in the Medieval Ages and how it developed in my posts.)

Today, some of the religious in many countries, in many faiths, use talk of witchcraft and sorcery as a way to control heretics and modernity and politics. And yes, a way to control women. It is true, that women have been the center of witchcraft hunts and burnings. Mostly because many of them were expendable in cultures controlled by men. Most women had little power. The tone and the context of the image I have posted, which I love and keep, a modern mailbox in a rural area in the USA, is that we who use sorcery will be burned in hell, so says the believer who put this on his/her mailbox. I think that we women are the real blasphemers, shouting out our resistance against oppression of any kind. It is no small thing that Alito used a witchcraft source in his defense of nullifying a law that served specifically women's issues. It was perfectly medieval.

As one of my Facebook friends often writes, Hex the Patriarchy.

EDITED OCTOBER 23. I never did return to discussing witchcraft at all here. I decided not to, as I was ill and I posted about vampires on Facebook for some fans. I wanted to reread Anne Rice's The Vampire Lestat, her finest book, and then a couple of other vampire books. I haven't felt myself. I've also had to make new plans on how I move forward on social media and even this blog. I have too much writing to do in the next several months to play online. SO much for good intentions.

Barrow Family Cemetery, Afton Villa, St. Francisville, LA

 

Elmwood Cemetery, Memphis TN

 

I learned this the hard way and have tried to pass it on.

"The cure for melancholia involves a continual discovery and rediscovery of the possibilities of life."

— Harold Bloom

I love all men who dive with bloodshot eyes.

“I love all men who dive. Any fish can swim near the surface, but it takes a great whale to go down stairs five miles or more; and if he don't attain the bottom, why all the lead in Galena can't fashion the plummet that will. ... -but of the whole corps of thought-divers, that have been diving and coming up again with bloodshot eyes since the world began.”

                           —  Herman Melville

Reading Project with my sister.

 

This is a reading project put together by my sister for us to do this month. Reading aloud. Although I am reading Faulkner aloud, too. Laughing.

Reading now but not sure when I shall finished.

 Started. Not sure when I shall finish.

Reading and Posting Story by Story The Collected Stories of William Faulkner

 

I will posting a few comments along, as I read each story.

Beauty and the Beast illustrated by Angela Barrett

 Angela Barrett's illustrations for Max Eilenberg's Beauty and the Beast are absolutely stunning work. I'll post more of them in October when time is available to me. The fairy tale, Beauty and the Beast was first written by Gabrielle-Suzanne de Villeneuve in 1740 and was influenced by ancient Greek stories. 

(Note: This is my last post until the end of September.)

This is part of our identity problem. No history.

“For without some sense of the past the future can be only loneliness: amnesia is a solitary affliction.”
                     ― John Lewis Gaddis

I have been thinking about this quote off and on for a week. Postmodernists do not believe this. They do not believe we can ever really do history. And for years I felt some kinship with them. It is not age that has changed me, it is history itself, the history that I have lived through, seen, heard, read about, witnessed, and then some, and how it is now written or interpreted. Yes, I, me, the Leftist person in the room. It is a bold thought to write this, not only this quote from Gaddis, but from me, to come to a quaint understanding. How do historians map the past? And why? Can we ever really know anything about the past? Gaddis is not a man I would have looked to, for answers years previously. He is not one of them at all. The fact that I have read him now and that he totally challenges me is also frightening. I have much to think about and I only know one thing. We should teach more history. We should look to history. Faulkner was right. The past is always present. omg....

Gardening in August

 

Gardening in August means two things: Weeding and Keeping Plants healthy and alive. I lost some plants, which is typical. But I did manage to save at least half the coneflowers I planted. This is from a flat of them, which means it was a tiny 3 inch plant. There are actually three plants in this photo but one can't see them well. I focused on the lone bloom among them and one that is not faded by August air and heat. I was so impressed with the coneflowers' outcomes that next year, I'll be planting double what I did this year. These reseed easily, are hardy, and multiply over time. A great perennial.

I always try to highlight a flower that failed miserably and that was the daisy. Not the original Shasta but a sister plant. All of them died before July was over. I will only be buying  the original Shasta next year, probably online because they are difficult to find locally. Even the Shastas I already had were affected by the July heat this year. 

Of course, it was unseasonably hot. I spent $70 in water one month trying to keep all these flowers alive. My water bill is usually $10-17 a month even in the summer, so one can only imagined how many plants I invested in this year and how hot it was.

There are two things in life that can change your mood that are nonpharmaceutical in nature. Gardening and Music. I live by both.

All and all, Gardening 2022 has been a success, mostly due to hard work, my willingness to do daily labor in the dirt, and lots of tender love for these plants. My mental health has definitely benefited.

The End of August

Hey, I am always punch drunk at the end of August, like frigging out of my mind. There are several reasons for this, the first being I just went through summer in Mississippi, with the A/C no lower than 79 Degrees, and I've been working day and night to keep my perennials alive, along with all the soon to die annuals that I planted for color. But that's not the only reason, I start working on August 1 each year, because school starts August 4 in these parts. It's insane. A ritual. I don't even have to. When I was a young girl, we didn't start to school until after Labor Day. And even if the schools started early, my mother was still vacationing somewhere, with all her children in tow, including me, so I ended up starting school late. Speaking of Mother, she died on a hot August day, which was sure as hell inconvenient for me, in fact this date, the 27th, in 2009, just several weeks shy of her 90th birthday. The week prior, she had been in the emergency room, counting on her fingers, trying to explain to the doctor that she really wanted to make 90 and could he help her do that. He said he would try and we were all just standing there, me, my sister, my son, my daughter-in-law, smiling, because that was so mother. She was sure as hell going out fighting and believe me she did. I never like to think of that day, really, but it was August and well, I never forget any August, and I am just about out of my head thinking of what I need to do before the month ends, because August always means I have stuff to do, like when I was young and a bit more sane, I had to go with Mother and the kids to buy school clothes, and shoes, you don't want to hear that story since they all wore some crazy width that meant driving to the most expensive shoe store in town, then we usually hit J.C. Penneys or similar to buy jeans and shirts. It was another ritual. Hours and hours of  the kids trying on shoes and jeans until I wanted to pull my hair out. When I was writing romance full time one summer, a guy called me up and said I had missed a speaking engagement for some writer's group in Memphis and wanted to know what happened. I thought he must be crazier than me. I said "no I had not" because I never commit to anything in August and I knew that like I knew I was breathing. I don't. Because I was probably baking or cleaning house or saving plants or buying shoes and jeans for the boys, all with my mother in tow. Mother was the Master Gardener, that woman that everyone called to come pinch their petunias and look at their roses. I haven't pinched a petunia right since she left this place. I miss my mother. She was the better reader, the better cook, the better gardener, the better traveller, the better storyteller. She was fierce. I cried the day she died, but I didn't cry a single drop the day we buried her. She had experienced an incredible but very hard life and she was just worn out. Instead, I read a poem written by Emily Dickinson and smiled. I always smile when I think of my mother, even in August.

Kindness by Naomi Shihab Nye

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

The Dance in Only Lover Left Alive

If you have followed me anywhere on social media, I often mention Eve from Only Lovers Left Alive and I have a quote from her on the blog header. Eve and I are very similar in personality. And no I am not a vampire. We are both bookworms and dancers. We both enjoy botany and science. We both love life. I rewatched Only Lovers Left Alive last night because I wanted to look at the film closer. I really have not had the time to do that.  And since I was binging some TV for the aesthetics and the novel, I thought I really need to get a closer look at the film. What makes these two vampires stick together besides vampirism? They are really opposites in many ways. I had a brief discussion with my sister about it this afternoon, and we were mulling over what the film was really about besides addiction, because addiction is there. I need to think about it. I had already asked the question why do vampires read? And I got the usual answers. I do know this. There is a sense of wonder about Eve and her love for life.  I relate to how attentive she is to the world outside herself. I think she reads because of that characteristic. It's just not curiosity. It's a kind of experience for her. It's a way of knowing the other, but also the world she can no longer really belong to. I'll be back with occasional comments on the film in September and October when I celebrate all things Gothic and Halloweenish. I'm doing a Sleepy Hollow themed front yard. For right now, I recommend turning on some music and dancing.

Edited: "I did have a quote. It may come back. Laughing."

The Walkabouts - The Light Will Stay On

Smiling this morning. Writing...

David Jauss on Present Tense in Contemporary Fiction.

 

The second question I have to now ask myself is a nagging one at best. It is the subject of present tense in contemporary fiction, which also goes along with the question of first person or third person, too. It's as if writers no longer have a choice on how to construct and shape their fiction, that we are now limited to first person and present tense, along with overly stylistic prose. I have probably read and analyzed this subject to death in the last five years. And yes, I wrote drafts in different tenses, then revised them, some half way through just to see how the story read and felt to me. Now I have to choose. How strange and small the world feels when I realized that David Jauss, someone I respect, had written this book and devoted a full chapter to the present tense. It's also funny to add that on Twitter the other day, author Phillip Pullman tweeted:

I don't care how many people enjoy it, fiction in the present tense is an ABDICATION OF NARRATIVE RESPONSIBILITY. I resent having to re-calibrate my entire attitude to time whenever I open a novel in the present tense. Away with them!

And so I have to choose. Oh, well. I will be glad to have this behind me. I choose past tense.

2024 Uodate done on Dec 17th. I am writing present tense. Smile. Irony.

Aesthetics

 

Today, I have to answer two questions before I can move on with work. I hope the questions do not linger, and if so, no longer than a week at most. One is aesthetics, which sometimes is so great, it changes the "place" and "spaces" of the story. So I am watching Carnival Row. And then some other shows. I've already read several novels, which present aesthetics I like. I've written two drafts in different places. But now I can write no longer. A lot of this is about marketing. A lot of this is how I feel I want to move forward afterwards. A lot of this is my personality and doubt. I own it. All.

A question answered.

 Yes, one could consider my current work Gothic. Let's see, something haunted, witches of a kind, mysterious strangers or people, the grotesque, ghosts of a kind, a curse, romance, Death, decay, madness, drug addiction, the weight of families and history, atmosphere, power dynamics, violence, the supernatural. Subversion though. What?- no fairies! Well, I didn't really say that. A story in progress needs some privacy.

What I am reading this weekend.

 

Richard Holmes is one of my favorite writers, all since I first read his Footsteps, about his journey with the Romantics. Later I read his Shelley, The Pursuit, and I was in love. Holmes became an auto buy. When I read The Age of Wonder, a hundred times, I wept. And now I am reading this book, which is late coming. I bought it for my sister in 2013 as a Christmas present. And well, that was the year my life turned into the whirlwind of circumstances I could not master. Now I am catching up all the books I really wanted to read at that time and never purchased. I have bought them all, though this one was a gift from a sister. I am loved.

There is a feeling about life that I choose now.

It knows no shame.

Trelawny was such a Romantic.

“The fire was so fierce as to produce a white heat on the iron, and to reduce Shelley to grey ashes. The only portions not consumed were some fragments of bones, the jaw, and the skull, but what surprised us all, was that the heart remained.”

                           Edward Trelawny, August 16, 1822

August 16, Every Year.

"My fingers sting Where I feel your fingers have been Ghostly fingers Moving my limbs Oh God, I miss you..."

P. J. Harvey

Grinderman/U.N.K.L.E - Hyper Worm Tamer

"A mischievous dedication of love for a female other, who has totally hypnotised the male counterpart who feels inferior to her." Some guy on the Internet (lol)

This has been Molko's goal for many years now.

So I haven't given up But all my choices, my good luck Appear to go and get me stuck In an open prison Now I am tryin' to break free Be in a state of empathy Find the true and inner me Eradicate the schism  

                         —  Brian Molko

                   

Stay Real, Stay Free

Now you're telling me
You're not nostalgic
Then give me another word for it
You who are so good with words
And at keeping things vague
Because I need some of that vagueness now
It's all come back too clearly
Yes I loved you dearly

...[but] if you're offering me diamonds and rust
I've already paid

Writing is how I decide, how I choose, how I debate.

“Writing is a concentrated form of thinking. I don’t know what I think about certain subjects, even today, until I sit down and try to write about them. Maybe I wanted to find more rigorous ways of thinking. We’re talking now about the earliest writing I did and about the power of language to counteract the wallow of late adolescence, to define things, define muddled experience in economical ways. Let’s not forget that writing is convenient. It requires the simplest tools. A young writer sees that with words and sentences on a piece of paper that costs less than a penny he can place himself more clearly in the world. Words on a page, that’s all it takes to help him separate himself from the forces around him, streets and people and pressures and feelings. He learns to think about these things, to ride his own sentences into new perceptions.”

                                                               —  Don DeLillo

Books have been my constant companion since age four.

“It had been startling and disappointing to me to find out that story books had been written by people, that books were not natural wonders, coming up of themselves like grass. Yet regardless of where they come from, I cannot remember a time when I was not in love with them -- with the books themselves, cover and binding and the paper they were printed on, with their smell and their weight and with their possession in my arms, captured and carried off to myself. Still illiterate, I was ready for them, committed to all the reading I could give them.”

— Eudora Welty

THIS.

“Beauty will be convulsive or will not be at all”
                              ― André Breton

Dave Gahan is one of the most powerful frontmen in music.

 This is also a clear representation of Romanticism.

Joan Baez - Diamonds and Rust (With Lyrics)

Originaly posted in March, 2021, but that video is now private and not available and since this is one of my favorite songs of all time, I had to replace it.

Joey playing a gig.

 July 30, 2022

photo credit: Bryan Huff

July 2022 Summary of a sorts

 

Wow, July is over. Despite the record high temperatures, the month just flew by in a sunny haze of work and more work. I could hardly keep up with the days. Some days I literally lost in work. I'd think it was Monday, and it would Tuesday and so forth. And not just once or twice, but oddly every week, I'd realize I was not keeping up with time, that it would even be 7:30 at night before I knew it, too. Strange hazy days of heat and sweat and working outside all morning, doing household things while cooking meals, and then writing to get the novel settled in its proper setting. I still have flowers everywhere and I feel very accomplished that I could do such a thing when most days in July were triple digits. We lost power three times in July, something that has never happened previously in all the decades I have lived here. And because I am Mississippi delta born and raised, I managed to keep my electric bill at $150, a sum my son said he had not had that low in over two years at his home. Normally my bill is around $85 dollars so that does tell you that my energy intake was almost doubled. Of course, Joey moved in the end of last month, too. One person can glide through a house almost unnoticed by anyone or anything, but not two. And not when it is 115 heat index on more than one day of the month.

The setback was using one car between us and I have not made any postal runs. Also it was so hot and dry (rain once until yesterday) that I could not dig up some plants to mail to my cousin. I made promises and failed. I am going to get both done this coming week though and make amends. Best I can do.

Other things neglected. Artwork as in visual arts. I was working too hard to keep the flowers alive. Laughing. And I moved my art room, too. It was just too hectic making all the adjustments for Joey moving into the house. Otherwise, it's been a really beautiful month, as beautiful as June. I can't complain. Not even as solitary as I was some days, consumed in my work. I made a discovery, something I was not sure of, something I doubted. But I do love my solitary life and I enjoy silence.

I even posted that quote on beauty and pleasure by Laura Mulvey. Someone replied to me with this:

"Maybe it is so due to the verbalization of the results which always turns out to be a lie, as Theodore Tyutchev put it in ‘Silentium!’,

'How can a heart expression find?

How should another know your mind?

Will he discern what quickens you?

A thought once uttered is untrue.'"

Lots to think about with this little paradox of sorts.

A thought.

“It is said that analyzing pleasure, or beauty, destroys it.”

                                             — Laura Mulvey

Strawberry Vinca

 I need to feed all the flowers this morning and yet, I procrastinate here on social media. A lot of that resistance is just getting started and facing a big task. Afterwards I need to write on the new chapter. But as soon as I finish posting this I'll get busy. Lots of things I need to do today. This strawberry vinca is very beautiful and no small thing to me. I looked for it for most of the early spring days and could not find it. It was July before I did and I bought it already growing in a hanging pot and repotted it in a nicer clay pot. It's huge and cost me my saved 'pocket money.' Laughing. And it will die this winter and not return. One of the few annuals that I invested in this year. Sometimes you have to treat yourself, buy something you don't really need, a little folly, an act of being frivolous. I'm known for that, those Fs as my mother called them, Fickle, Folly, Flighty, and yes frivolous. Flawed. We are all flawed. It's called being human.

Are not all loves secretly the same?

"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, Delirium’s Mistress

Illustration for The Goblin Market

 

At some point in the creation of your work in progress, the author/artist starts to see how focusing helps, how narrowing works, how staying true to the ideal when the mind and heart wandered really matters. This is about how the artist/author navigates the process, whatever that may be. A novel is a long journey.

At some point in the work, you start to see yourself and what you really care about and how the work begins to take shape and form, and you know that even if you had more time, it would not matter, you would still be doing this work, because you love it, because it has value.

That's how I feel. 

That's what I know.

From the very beginning of my creative process I wrote myself a letter on intent and purpose. It's a messy, small letter, but it's a big deal and that's because purpose has always mattered to me, more than achievement, and as we know, there is a difference in those two things. The letter reflects some of what I have written on The Goblin Market that a reader can find in my pages. In that small essay, I write about why The Goblin Market matters to me and what I feel are its borders, the creative parameters that I set for my own work. When I felt I was writing outside those boundaries, I allowed myself to write on, to satisfy the creative urges, but in the end, I cut what did not support my intent and purpose. 

That's called 'killing your darlings' by others, an act that is difficult and not about what doesn't work or is aesthetically pleasing to add, or even what could make your work better. It's about trusting your vision and letting go of words you love.  It's about finishing with a sense of purpose.

Sometimes letting go is the hardest thing a creative can do. To stick to a creative purpose is risky at times, because it does give you boundaries and many artists/authors do not like boundaries. That's understandable. But for me, narrowing my work has made it possible when in the past, the work was always impossible.

The Impossible, which is also a theme of my work, is about perfection and vision and also being incomplete. We are all in pursuit of something and sometimes our professional desires are not in align with our personal ones. This causes conflicts.

Writing that letter of intent and purpose, waiting it out to see what I had done and could do, is all about my Impossible pursuit and how to emotionally and physically negotiate my own process and finish my work.

This artwork is from the fabulous Florence Susan Harrison. (Not Emma Florence Harrison as she is sometimes misattributed.