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

John Lennon - Come Together (Live At Madison Square Garden 1972)

Still loved. Still missed. December 8, 1980-December 8, 2022

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.)

NaNoWriMo Day 28

 

Looking backward, I always knew I could write 50,000 good words in a month. When I worked full time for NY houses, I averaged 40 pages a week which is 40,000 words a month. That was the average. But I had not done that for a long, long time. We are talking 2009 before I ever had one single social media account. Social media is an anathema to writing or to any art. I am going to be honest about that. I have not written a decent thing really since I got on social media until now. And that's the truth.

As I have said many times previously, I am not a crappy draft writer. I don't use them if I write them. I completely rewrite them or throw them away. So I had to also write a fairly decent draft of 50,000 words, a draft that I intended to keep and revise. I did a lot of revising as I wrote this time in NaNo. I reread my writing each time I sat down, from the beginning. That's how I work anyway. It made the days long writing days. All this was to prove to myself that I could go back to writing novels full time. 

What does that exactly mean? Writing a novel full time. It means wanting to be published traditionally, too. It means, writing a second novel, a third novel, and hopefully more. That means working full time as a novelist like a job. A habit. An art form you practice every single day that you can. Others may not find that daunting, but I have a very good memory and a clear vision of what kind of labor that is, not only to the mind, but to the body, to one's social life, to one's health. And so when I worked through NaNoWriMo, I attempted (because there were failures) to do the things that helped me stay active and content, even healthy. I made notes on when I failed and why, so that I could hopefully learn from them. But even doing all this, there were days that were just chaotic and I wondered if I would really complete the task and sustain it. Sustaining a writing career is very different from writing a single novel. Believe me. Trust me on that. Sustaining your writing might mean no social media or limited. It may mean saying no to parties or TV shows. I haven't watched TV all month. I've watch a couple of movies. Committing to writing long novels is work. And it hurts. Remember that. I do. I know this. 

My original goal had been 37,500 words because I felt comfortable writing that goal. But by the end of the first week, I said to myself, "Jane, go for it. You know what it takes to write a novel. Do it." In NY, writing means writing a novel a year or every other year for most people. That said, there is no novel completed. I don't write 50,000 word novels. I can't remember the Regencies even being that small. No novel goal was ever 50,000 words which is 200 or so pages. Even a Harlequin paranormal romance novel for a line was longer than that. Novels are 75,000 words up in the publishing world. And so I have to write on. My novel is not even halfway finished. My pace will be 40,000 words a month. And then there will be time for revising and rewriting and polishing and editing and then tidying it all up. And then, only then, will I have a completed novel. I don't use beta readers or outside editors. That's not my practice. I don't know anyone in the early days of my publishing life that even knew what a beta reader was. But a few people will read my manuscript.

NaNoWriMo Day 28: Words 50,660.

Updated Nov 29: 53,185.

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

Day 21 of NaNoWriMo

 

Once Upon a Time, I relied on readers and the thoughts and suggestions of other people, mostly friends who were writers, when I was working a first draft or even on the second one. That is a situation that is now time long past. Because in truth, I don't rely or focus on what other people have to say about me or my work or my life in any way. I can't really pinpoint the moment of this change but I know it was over fifteen years ago, and to be honest, I pretty much had this opinion all along because even as a little girl, I valued myself, my interests, and even when hurt or bullied, I worked to survive and let go. Some people can never let go.

This is not to say, I won't seek advice or help before this novel is finished. I will. It's just not the typical help I once needed. 

We all go through life, trying to live and love and maybe even be happy, and I notice that many people really care too much what other people think of them. I see it now on social media. I see it  in my own life when I talk to others, this need to be liked and valued. I think it's perfectly natural up until a point. I love this quote by Nietzsche. It used to hang on my wall in my study long ago as a young girl. "When did a dragon ever die from the poison of a snake?" The answer is never. It's not really popular now because it's not popular to be uncomfortable or to experience, self-conceived or not, microaggressions, discomforting opinions from others, and so forth. I think there are reasons for this. We are living in a time when people are wanting to be coddled or not even exposed to difficulties. 

Past pains, Childhood traumas, Surviving racism, or poverty, or violence, The pressures of modernity, The fear of fascism, wars, and Climate Adaptation — all these things are weighing us down.  

But being uncomfortable is how you learn to deal and survive. 

REPEAT THAT.

Being coddled will not spare you the realities of life. Money will not even save you. The world does not work like that, this need to make everyone equal is a utopian dream. I like it. We all dream of this. To make everyone equal under the same law would be a better way of thinking and I believe we are trying to do that. But there are many laws and many cultures and many differences. And it takes time. And we are not all born equal. One person can be a ballet dancer and one can play basketball. One can paint. One can play the piano. One can make cars. One can build houses. To be able to pursue any of these goals is lucky. Predicament. But it is not a guarantee that can be made by governments or even science. It's really not even human nature. And psychologically, it's harmful to believe that you can protect yourself from the pains and traumas of world or that you can somehow make them disappear by just renaming them or how you treat them. You can't. To believe that is believe in a lie. We are only equal in that we are all human beings and we deserve fairness and the right to liberty and the possibility of happiness. We deserve opportunity.

Do I promote kindness? I do. Always err on the side of kindness, but nature is not kind and people are part of nature. I learned long ago, under extreme trauma that Dragons don't die from snake bites. And I learned that we are all dragons in this savage Eden.

At some point in writing a long novel, (or any long creative action) one will begin to face all sorts of demons and doubts. There will be failures and wrong choices and even self loathing. Some days we are blocked. Instead of writing, we do other things or we plot again or whatever.  Some days we can't write because there are other demands that can't be set aside. A creative work, a work in progress, is always going to make strange demands on the creative and that is going to produce anxiety, and maybe even absolute fear that the work is just crap. And that leads to chaos and believe me, chaos is the enemy of sanity.

So when we work, we must remind ourselves that we will be uncomfortable at many points in the act of creating a big project. We will be very uncomfortable at times. Not working is so much safer, but it is not the right choice for a creative. To not live your life in pursuit of something you are able to attain, with reason and goodness, ultimately leads to depression. There are so many things that we will do to try and save ourselves from doubts, fears, and eventually chaos.

But the only true way out of chaos is to take action by making order, making meaning, and doing the work. Moving forward. Letting go. Some days you are going to hate your work. Or maybe yourself. But it will pass if you stay with the project.

I believe that life is somewhat of a mystery and not all of it is nice. And there is a lot of misery in this world because nature is imperfect and we are all imperfect creatures. The most any of us can do is to teach love and tolerance. To practice it. To be kind.

And if we are creatives, to do our art, regardless.

NaNoWriMo Day 21: 33,029 words. About 135 pages. Over 1/4 of my draft has been written and over half of the 50,000 words, which I might not get. 

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

NaNoWriMo Day 14

 

Writing a novel is not for the faint of heart is an old saying that I first heard, well I can't remember when, one that I did not pay much attention to because I was naive and eager. After writing a dozen genre novels, from Historical romance to Regencies to Horror to Mainstream, I realized that writing and publishing with traditional NY houses and staying published was indeed hard work and not for the faint of heart. I am amused. When I quit writing for various reasons, I never expected to pursue traditional publishing again. After all, I could do anything I wanted, such as plant and later paint flowers, write bad poetry, or be a perpetual student and in many ways, I am that perpetual student, but the year before my husband discovered he had cancer, I told him and myself that I wanted to write this ambitious fairy project. He laughed at me. I remember his words, he asked me why I wanted to sit for hours at a desk, by myself in a room, and work my little heart out for years, maybe he added, on something I could probably sell, but would make little money from. Time is everything, he told me.  Time matters. I had spent Time writing. I had spent Time teaching children. I had spent Time with children and with him. I was free. Why write when Money in publishing is always a gamble, for the author and for the publisher, too.  If you have read this blog, you know that my husband ran out of time. He died and it took me a long time to recover from his dying and death. Now, I might run out of time, too. But when I gathered my senses after Covid. I began to plan, seriously. I was indeed going to write The Ambitious Fairy Project.

The thing is I had worked hard in publishing for many years. I knew exactly what kind of work it would take to write a novel like this, because for me, person of mediocre skills but wild imagination, writing such a novel was and is ambitious. Just the other day, I thought, I cannot do this. I even had to stop for a day and rework the plot a bit, because I decided to change a couple of things. I went back and revised everything to support those changes and then I fell into a kind of depression looking at my plot board, because despite making great progress, I had many more pages to write.

But quitting is not an option.

Now is the time. Hard work on a novel is something few writers really want to talk about. You aren't going to write a novel in NaNoWriMo, you are going to write maybe 50,000 words and if you do not plan and have pretty good skills, you are going to write a really crappy draft. I do not like crappy drafts. I never use them. My plot board is a what other people call a crappy draft. Been there. Done that. And my plot boards are pretty damn good. And so my drafting (yes I do revise all the time) is pretty damn good, too. But it is very hard work. It takes me at least half an hour to write a single page according to my drafting standards. A revised page is an hour. And that's fine if I keep it like that. Laughing. So lots of hours go into writing a 500 page novel. OMG. 125,000+ words is very ambitious for me. You might see a lot of them out there, but as someone who worked inside publishing, too. 125,000 words up is risky business. New authors should write 350 page novels that might creep toward 400 pages. No kidding. I just gave some good advice that I somehow can't keep for myself. Of course, I do know what upmarket fantasy novel is. And maybe that will help me. Maybe not. I write with a reader in mind and this time, I have lots of readers.  There are so many wonderful things I could be doing besides writing. I could watch Netflix, I could play on social media and write threads on fashion like other wannabe writers. I could plan a trip to Italy or spend my money going to see Placebo next year. Nope. Not happening. I am going to write a novel. 

Most, if not all days, I am going to get up, make my tea, and walk into this room and type words for several hours, living in the land of make believe. That's a sort of insanity. It's not even rational. Why? So I can call myself a writer or author. So I can pretend that I am doing something worthwhile. Hell, I don't know. My therapist says I need to make meaning, beautiful meaning that is worthwhile to me and that my writing is a form of self expression. That I have something valuable to say. And maybe I do.

We will all find out one day.

It took me 14 days, working extremely hard (I have backaches, headaches, I sleep badly and my eyes are dry) to write 25,374 words, which is set up at 250 words most pages. That's a 100 pages. I won't be able to sustain this pacing. I am not going to lie about it. I feel myself slowing down. I had to stop one day for plot and some minor revision. I had to stop one day to go do my baby boy's birthday party. I used that day to pull out all my Christmas decorations and set up the trees. These are things I want to do, things I will not do without. If I do continue at this pace, I will do my 50,000 words for NaNoWriMo. It will be quite an accomplishment.

I hope to do that.

But my new draft of this novel will be less than half done. I will have to continue writing through the holidays and I do have some plans already in place. I see myself writing through January and finishing this draft somewhere around then.

Then guess what. I let it rest, and I start again.

Day 14, NaNoWriMo, 25,374 words.

P.S. This is not an except from my journal, I have had no time to do a journal this week.

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

NaNoWriMo Day 7

 

Journal

I've never written a story like this. Despite the fantastical elements, it is the most autobiographical piece of fiction I have ever written. It is a story about a lot of things, mostly ideas and yes, how people respond to their predicament in life. It's a fairy tale about tellers of fairy stories, about desire being the opposite of death, about nature, and well, love. Love is a desperate kingdom at best, but it is always worth the trouble. Love mitigates our trials and sorrows and pains. When we are children, we love and when we are broken children, we are always trying to fix the child. It's pure psychology. 

I have made a belligerent commitment to my writing and my book. Because it is more than writing. It is a thing. A book. A story. An idea expressed. It is a form of self expression to explore all the moments that were beautiful but very imperfect. The thing is imperfect, too. But it is the best I have ever done. And I know it. Ten years ago I could not have written this story.

It is Day 7 NaNoWriMo and I have written 13,760 very beautiful words. This is not a crappy draft.

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

Reverie on Melancholy

 I am a metaphysical being, mystical and emotional, skeptical and cynical, happy and boisterous, loud and bawdy, quiet and melancholy, tender and cruel, full of mirth and despair. Inherent inconsistencies mark me as part of nature, which is neither cruel nor fair, or reliable or predictable.”

                       ― Kilroy J. Oldster

It is no surprise to anyone who knows me personally that I write about Melancholy. That Melancholy is more than just sadness, though many of us are sad people. I am mostly happy, but I have this side to me that is very serious, aware, and full of melancholy. I started studying Melancholy when very young, because I was sentimental and attracted to Romantic literature, mostly Poe, Coleridge and Shelley. Then I moved on to the Rossettis and later to modern poets, and all of them were pretty melancholic. Also because my mother and I both suffered from it at times. And I wanted to know how and why. When I discovered Placebo in late 2018 and began listening to their songs, by summer the next year, I could see Melancholy all over Brian Molko's work, his interviews, his very public story.

Perhaps that was always my attraction to Brian Molko and Placebo, his sadness, his suicide ideation, his sense of isolation, his loneliness, his despair. The flip side of all those was his anger. He could be very angry. I have often said that no one does "bitter better than Molko." People see comments like this analysis as judgment, but one does not have to be psychologically introspective or even attempting to read interiority to hear a song and know what it is about in general, especially if one has read thousands of songs, thousands of novels, thousands of poems. And spent hundreds of hours in therapy or in Psychology classes.

Brian Molko is that obvious, even in his attempts at ambiguity. He doesn't use ambiguity to hide it. There are other reasons for his vagueness. There is never any ambiguity about his melancholy. And it is not a judgment of his character. Much of his music is pure Melancholic aesthetics. That said, he is not a Goth. It's more a snapshot of his experiences. Today, in Psychology, we have various forms of sadness labeled, but Melancholy is really a mood disorder and that leads us to Major Depressive Disorder. There is no cure for this mood disorder. One simply learns how to control it or to mitigate some of its issues. Pharmaceuticals help sometimes and well, at times, they complicate everything. There is no perfect medicine. Many people with mood disorders turn to drugs and self-medicate, which is the description that Brian Molko has described personally about his own life. The fact that he writes about it, talks about it openly, is really a blessing. Addiction is a disease. It complicates the lives of people who suffer from mood disorders. It can even make MDD and related issues worse. Related issues of MDD are insomnia, chronic boredom, eating problems, and yes, some conduct issues. People may become paranoid and even hallucinate under the right circumstances. Just how many times has Brian Molko used the word "bored" or talked openly about it and insomnia?

I have both cognitive and emotional empathy for anyone who suffers from Melancholy. I, myself, suffer from Depression and often rely on Prozac. And I have spent years and years of my life trying to understand it, to expose it, and to normalize it to a certain degree. As a person who also studies Romanticism and Folklore, I see Melancholy all the time. In a painting. In a paragraph in a book, in the melody of a song. In the words of a song. I recognize it. In a fairy tale or a myth. In symbols. In metaphors. Even iconography. Just look at Victorian Tombstone Art. 

Melancholy is all around us.

In closing this post, I suppose, in the end, this does make me see Brian Molko and Placebo a bit differently than the typical cultish fan. That's all right.

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.

NaNoWriMo Day 1

 Day 1 NaNoWriMo

Journal

Excellent day. Over 5 hours writing. Over 2517 words.  Good words. I revised some as I wrote. I hate rough, crappy drafts and never use them once I write them, so I devised a better system to do NaNo. I have a very good detailed plot. Meaning every single scene in the book. With notes. I revise those notes every day before writing. This is going to be a very good draft of a very difficult book. Something very challenging for me. I am sure to revise and rewrite some of it. But it will not be a total washout or one of those drafts where you are rewriting all the time and just miserable. This is really me taking chances and keeping a promise to myself. This is me making meaning in a meaningful way to me. This is accountability in a way I don't usually address or make public. This is me doing things new ways in hope of new outcomes.

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.

November, at last.

 

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”

― Will Durant

Since it is November, it's pretty obvious what habit I am working on this year. Last year, I took a 20 week Cognitive Behavior Program and Habit was part of that program. I made one new habit. Smiling shyly here and not a very good one. Habits are harder to make than break. Of course, breaking a habit is a nightmare. I went into that part of the program thinking I would create three new habits and break one very bad one. Laughing hysterically here. But I am still a work in progress and yes, I keep a damn journal for these Cognitive exercises which really remind me of what habits truly are and how difficult it is to break a bad one and form a new one. But writing every day on my work is one of my challenges. And I remain committed. 

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

Bruised and Wounded, I turn to Nature.

 

Painting: The Bird Table, Charles Walter Simpson

It may take me hours, off and on, to write this post. I am in a mood. But it's not temporary. I've been floating here for years now, in this strange space that I now call my home and my mind. By nature, I am optimistic, but I am also a realist. I live in contradictions. The latter is both a blessing and a curse.

I love birds. A crow nested in one of my trees earlier this year and we became acquainted. It talked to me all summer long until the end of August when it vacated the tree and departed from my life. I have felt odd since. I would go out at first light and water, before the heat settled in, right before my walk. Sometimes I would weed or spray plants and the crow would sit and watch me, occasionally making conversation. I fed it. Sometimes it followed me from the front lawn to the back and sat on a limb and watched me work and water the back garden. I lament its absence now and somehow when the crow left,  I felt a darkness come over me. Part of that darkness was exhaustion, both mental and physical. I had worked extremely hard in the gardens all spring and summer in extreme weather. I stayed dehydrated despite drinking water and gatorade. I suffered foot and leg cramps at night. My body ached from bending and then pulling things. All I looked forward to was Placebo coming to the USA and then Brian Molko didn't come, and September turned into a nightmare of people I love getting sick. Very sick. And then I was sick, too, at heart. And I had spent too much money wanting one thing or another.

My brother-in-law died Monday. I can't really remember not knowing him. He was a lot older than me, a Vietnam vet, a pilot and officer, even more than that. He was incredibly gifted and did things in the war that are not talked of. During part of the war, he lived in some Embassy in Cambodia, but we didn't know that then. After he retired, he and some friends created the airport at Destin, Florida. His death signals a strange ending to me. I don't like feeling like this. I don't like it at all. 

I always turn to Nature when I am bruised and wounded by life. If I can't touch it, I paint it. I write about it. I think about it. I look at Flower Magazines, I dream and plan. One habit is studying old gardens in history.

I wish my adult, shiny black crow was back. I wish for so many things. I wish. I wish.

Wishes are like curses.

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.

Placebo - Shout

Placebo have chosen to cover Shout by Tears for Fears for their 2022 tour.

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.