Goodbye October, you shall not be missed.

 

(I love this story. It's one of AC's most overlooked masterpieces.)

The King of Owls

 

art: La Belle Dame Sans Merci by Marc Fishman

For I am the King of Owls.

Where I float no shadow falls.

I have hungers, such terrible hungers, you cannot know.

Lords, I sharpen my talons on your bones.

— Louise Edrich

Gavriel's Promise

“I promise I will repay you.”

“Oh yeah?” she asked, looking at him, with his bare feet and plain, dark clothes. “With what?”

The smile stayed on his lips. “Jewels, lies, slips of paper, dried flowers, memories of things long past, useless quotations, idle hands, beads, buttons, and mischief.”

        ― Holly Black

      The Coldest Girl in Coldtown

An observation.

My mother had headaches a lot when my sister and I were growing up. Serious headaches, headaches of all kinds. Migraines. Sinus headaches, weather headaches. Headaches that took her to the hospital, BC powders, pain pills, even injections at the hospital. One day, several years ago now, my sister asked me, "Do you ever have a headache?" Laughing. I mean we are both older women. My reply was "I guess so." But she and I never say we do. We never complain of a headache out loud on any ordinary day. Perhaps this is due to our mother, our incredible mother. Because her headaches were really her war on the world, her coping, and her daughters will never say they have a headache. We don't. And I made this observation today because there is a woman in my feed who complains of a sinus headache almost every other day, and I thought why? Why is it so important to post on social media that you have a headache unless you are suffering from a serious illness, like a brain tumor or something equally important and even then, why do people share these things? Really. Why? I rarely share those things. It's like dissecting your daily life to nothing more than forensic details.

Details are not all that interesting (yes, I love dry details when reading or studying history) unless they mean something to your overall narrative.

The woman who constantly complains of sinus headaches in my feed on Facebook has them for obvious reasons. Her lifestyle, for example, the little things she does each day. I've noted that. Of course, these so-called sinus and pressure headaches, these mini migraines are not too bad, or she would alter her lifestyle. Well, one would assume that as an rational outcome.

Next book, create a character like this.

The Goblin Market cover by Housman

 

“Lie close,” Laura said,

Pricking up her golden head:

“We must not look at goblin men,

We must not buy their fruits:

Who knows upon what soil they fed

Their hungry thirsty roots?”

                — from The Goblin Market

                     Christina Rossetti

Next to Lestat, my favorite vampire is Gavriel from The Coldest Girl in Coldtown

She took a deep breath, "Last chance. Are you in need of rescuing?" His expression turned very strange, almost as if she'd struck him, "Yes, " he said finally.

           Tana, from The Coldest Girl in Coldtown

            Holly Black

The Erl-King

“He knows which of the frilled, blotched, rotted fungi are fit to eat; he understands their eldritch ways, how they spring up overnight in lightless places and thrive on dead things.” —Angela Carter, “The Erl-King”

Beautiful Arthur Rackham painting

 

From English Fairy Tales. 

🎨  Arthur Rackham

The language of the neurotic in distress

2 3 5 7 

11 13 17 19

23 29

31 37 

41 43 47 

53 59 

61 67

71 73 79 

83 89 

97

Bliss and Dance

“Against the blue day, her image lit upon his eye, as splendidly colorful as the butterflies. It pleased Nardi to think of her in this way - her energy as swift as sailing as the swallowtails', and erratic and hypnotic as the flit-and-flutter of skippers. She was both as ordinary as orange tips and as exotically impossible as the monarchs that made their way here every year across the Atlantic. This was her spirit, a thousand butterflies of every category and variety, crossbred into one magnificent specimen. Lepidoptera Hannaeus.”

                                    ― Judy Cuevas, Bliss

(Bliss and Dance, two beautiful classic Historical Romance novels written by Judy Cuevas aka Judith Ivory. These are part of my classic romance collection. Books I read over and over and have kept for many years. And not they are not for sale. Smiling)

Julius Von Klever "Forest King"

 

Julius Von Klever "Forest King"

Sometimes, it's not what is on the page concerning the character you are writing, but what is in the writer's head. A history.

Life.

“We look at the world once, in childhood. The rest is memory.” ― Louise Gluck

Widowhood

Arthur Boyd Houghton, "Widowhood," for Jean Ingelow's "Poems" 1867.

Today is my mother's birthday. October, 13th and a Friday, too. If she were alive, she would be very old, 104 years. That's too old, perhaps. I don't know. We all want to live forever, don't we?

I've been writing very hard on the WIP, The Ambitious Fairy Project, since July 1st, and I don't mean a crappy first draft. I don't write in drafts. I revise, rework, re-plot, rewrite, write new, etc. etc. etc. as I go, inching along toward the new while always looking at the old. I read it aloud a lot from the beginning and so forth. This is the  way I work and I am way over 250 pages at this point. Much more to go. I plot so I know the big stuff, even though surprising little stuff might pop up. That's the beauty of writing, all of this. But I have also been plagued this year by one illness or event after another. October has been cruel and I've made some mistakes, being highly reactive to that cruelty, too. This is part of being a widow, always doubting decisions that are not familiar from previous experience. I always had help before with my loving and trusted companion, my husband. Almost seven years gone now and goodness, I have made some disasters for myself, live and learn. I have also made some very good decisions. I suppose life is like that. But this year, wow, what a year of illness. One thing after another. I've worked on with the book, but the garden suffered. My confidence suffered.  My mental state, too. I have to get up every day, like it's a new world and talk myself into living the best life offered. That's how I roll right now. That's what I do. Talk myself into faith.

Living alone is hard. Choosing to live alone is even harder. There is a difference, because it's what you sacrifice that sometimes haunts you, that laughs at your efforts.

Being a widow sucks.

But I am determined to survive and live the best life possible.

Today I thought a lot about love. How much I loved and how I was loved and what a beautiful thing that is.

I thought about my personality some, that "just being" has always been one of my gifts, that the things I enjoy in life are so simple and easy to find. I know that I was privileged to have had a good relationship with Johnny and that I will always miss him.

I also miss my mother, that incredible force of Nature. Oh, she was. An original. Mother died right at 90 years of age, so she has been gone 14 years now. My father 16, my husband nearly 7. These are numbers I can hardly believe. And I have been alone without them in that singular and special way I remember...

There is an aloneness that I possessed even as a small child. That aloneness is different from being lonely. One can be lonely in a house filled with loved ones. No, I was alone as in separate. These three people could occasionally reach across that aloneness and touch me. I loved them deeply. Only my three sons and Haylee, Jamie, my grandchildren, my siblings touch me now. Perhaps a few friends. But not the way my parents or Johnny did. Not the way Johnny did.

Being a widow sucks.

I know much of this present sentiment is the result of illness and perhaps some depression that goes along with certain struggles. I know these feelings will change. They will pass.

It all passes. Places, People, Purpose.

But my loves are inspiration to me. Those living and those dead. 

Then why do I feel crushed.

CRUSHED.

(Feeling better today)

My motto until I die 2023.

"I believe that we, that this planet, hasn't seen its Golden Age. Everybody says its finished ... art's finished, rock and roll is dead, God is dead. Fuck that! This is my chance in the world. I didn't live back there in Mesopotamia, I wasn't there in the Garden of Eden, I wasn't there with Emperor Han, I'm right here right now and I want now to be the Golden Age ...if only each generation would realise that the time for greatness is right now when they're alive ... the time to flower is now.”

— Patti Smith

Blue (3)

 

The Angel of Power

 by Annael (Anelia) Pavlova

Blue (2)

 

The Lady in Blue

By Chris Polasko

Blue (1)

 

Blue (1)

The Night Fairy by Angela Barrett

The Innocents (1961) Trailer #1 | Movieclips Classic Trailers

My favorite ghost story. The Innocents. Based on the short story by Henry James and adapted by Truman Capote. There is so much I could say about this film, but won't right now due to time. I will come back to it later in the year. I want to post it here, now,  because I watch it every October as part of my 31 Days of Halloween. Not a year goes by that I don't look at it and wonder why modern directors cannot make films such as this. I love film. This is psychological for one, with subtext. Hollywood does not know how to do that well right now. They are trapped by the predicament of technology. How ironic.

 

"...I walked into the bird-haunted solitude of the Erl-King, who keeps his feathered things in little cages he has woven out of osier twigs and there they sit and sing for him." 

                               — The Erl-King,  Angela Carter. 

                                🎨 Igor Karash