Gothic Vampire

But there are yellow bruises on my body

And violet stains

Though no white vampire came with lips

blood-crimsoned

To suck my veins!

— Théophile Gautier

This is what many on both sides have done.

“Everything faded into mist. The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became the truth.” ― George Orwell

My swamp Rose Mallow this very hot June morning.

 

Rose Mallow (swamp)

This is true for me.

The author & naturalist Andrea Barrett once said: ''I’ve never known a writer who didn’t feel ill at ease in the world. Have you? We all feel unhoused in some sense. That’s part of why we write. We feel we don’t fit in, that this world is not our world, that though we may move in it, we’re not of it. Different experiences in our lives may enforce or ameliorate that, but I think if they ameliorate it totally, we stop writing. You don’t need to write a novel if you feel at home in the world. We write about the world because it doesn’t make sense to us. Through writing, maybe we can penetrate it, elucidate it, somehow make it comprehensible. If I had ever found the place where I was perfectly at home, who knows what I would have done? Maybe I would have been a biologist after all.''

(Terri Windling posted this on her Facebook)

The toddler in June

 

Another June, long ago. 

I haven't changed much and yet, I am someone else other than this child while retaining the child.

My brother was several years older than me so our lives were very different in many ways.

I love summer. I love the heat. It started here, in the delta of Mississippi. 

“One night you will ask me for something I cannot give.” 

          ― Gavriel 

              from Holly Black's The Coldest Girl in Coldtown

Iris Murdoch on how she composes.

IRIS MURDOCH on how she composes.

"Well, I think it is important to make a detailed plan before you write the first sentence. Some people think one should write, George woke up and knew that something terrible had happened yesterday, and then see what happens. I plan the whole thing in detail before I begin. I have a general scheme and lots of notes. Every chapter is planned. Every conversation is planned. This is, of course, a primary stage, and very frightening because you’ve committed yourself at this point. I mean, a novel is a long job, and if you get it wrong at the start you’re going to be very unhappy later on. The second stage is that one should sit quietly and let the thing invent itself. One piece of imagination leads to another. You think about a certain situation and then some quite extraordinary aspect of it suddenly appears. The deep things that the work is about declare themselves and connect. Somehow things fly together and generate other things, and characters invent other characters, as if they were all doing it themselves. One should be patient and extend this period as far as possible. Of course, actually writing it involves a different kind of imagination and work."

(This is how I work. No one ever said it better. Right now I am sitting quietly and letting it invent itself.)

June 1 2024

"And then one fairy night, May became June." — F. Scott Fitzgerald

        P.S. This year is a very important birthday, for lots of reasons, not about numbers, but desires and goals. However, the number is symbolic and my ambitions have been rearranged, and many of my feelings changed. It was indeed a fairy night and all the nights to come will be fairy nights, too.