“The writer has little control over personal temperament, none over historical moment, and is only partly in charge of his or her own aesthetic.” 


                                       ― Julian Barnes

My favorite Angela Carter quote

“If women allow themselves to be consoled for their culturally determined lack of access to the modes of intellectual debate by the invocation of hypothetical great goddesses, they are simply flattering themselves into submission (a technique often used on them by men). All the mythic versions of women, from the myth of the redeeming purity of the virgin to that of the healing, reconciliatory mother, are consolatory nonsenses; and consolatory nonsense seems to me a fair definition of myth, anyway. Mother goddesses are just as silly a notion as father gods. If a revival of the myths gives women emotional satisfaction, it does so at the price of obscuring the real conditions of life. This is why they were invented in the first place.” 

                                                                       ― Angela Carter

Love never dies. People do.

"Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the daytime, and falling in at night." 

                             — Edna St. Vincent Millay

I feel this very deeply.

“Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.” 


                                              ― Rob Siltanen

Summer Flowers

Rose Mallow, 2019

Choosing

“Left alone, no matter at what age or under what circumstance, you have to remake your life.” 
― Katharine Graham
(Choosing to live. Choosing to work. Choosing to be happy. I want my grandchildren to know I fought.)

Spaces

Human nature seems to abhor a blank space on a map. Where there are no human habitations, no towns, where villages dwindle into farms and farms into woods, mapping stops. Then the imagination rushes to fill the woods with something other than black darkness: nymphs, satyrs, elves, gnomes, pixies, fairies. 

Diane Purkiss, At The Bottom of The Garden

It is what it is

Why do I desire the space?
I was mourning after you
I was lost and lost my shape
There was nothing I could do

I don't want to waste away
It was all I gave to you
Take me back and take my place
I will rise right up for you




from Silence by Manchester Orchestra

Vignette

The term vignette can be defined as a short literary sketch. The word originates from the French word 'vigne', which means 'little vine', as in a short description of an object or scene. An ideal vignette is supposed to be short, to the point, and should bring out the emotions of the writer. It normally appears as a stand-alone piece of literature, or as a part of long stories or stage plays.

            from Penlighten

Poetry by Louise Erdrich

“Leave the dishes.
Let the celery rot in the bottom drawer of the refrigerator
and an earthen scum harden on the kitchen floor.
Leave the black crumbs in the bottom of the toaster.
Throw the cracked bowl out and don't patch the cup.
Don't patch anything. Don't mend. Buy safety pins.
Don't even sew on a button.
Let the wind have its way, then the earth
that invades as dust and then the dead
foaming up in gray rolls underneath the couch.
Talk to them. Tell them they are welcome.
Don't keep all the pieces of the puzzles
or the doll's tiny shoes in pairs, don't worry
who uses whose toothbrush or if anything
matches, at all.
Except one word to another. Or a thought.
Pursue the authentic - decide first
what is authentic,
then go after it with all your heart.
Your heart, that place
you don't even think of cleaning out.
That closet stuffed with savage mementos.
Don't sort the paper clips from screws from saved baby teeth
or worry if we're all eating cereal for dinner
again. Don't answer the telephone, ever,
or weep over anything at all that breaks.
Pink molds will grow within those sealed cartons
in the refrigerator. Accept new forms of life
and talk to the dead
who drift in though the screened windows, who collect
patiently on the tops of food jars and books.
Recycle the mail, don't read it, don't read anything
except what destroys
the insulation between yourself and your experience
or what pulls down or what strikes at or what shatters
this ruse you call necessity.”

              

                                      Louise Erdrich, Original Fire

Stepping into the real life mix again....

“Wildflower; pick up your pretty little head, 
It will get easier, your dreams are not dead.” 
― Nikki Rowe

Truth and little lies everywhere....

Amongst the monsters, I am well hidden; who looks for a leaf in a forest?” 

― Angela Carter

On Widowhood

The most unsettling moment of that first year without John was when I went to Physical Therapy at Campbell's Clinic for two torn disks in my back and I had to fill out all these forms, and one had these little squares that you checked, it could be one or all. Like housewife, works outside the home, wife, married, divorced, and it kind of went on in a very modern way. There was none for widow. Laughing. And there were several for jobs. JOBS. 

I didn't mark any of them and I wrote really big on the paper. NOTHING. 

I am laughing now, but when the nurse came in she told me I could not put NOTHING on there. This was nearly half a year after John died. And I was still pretty bummed and depressed, and I told her, "You mark it, because I am not going to do it." It was a total act of rebellion that is so typical of me when I am stressed and find life absurd and just refuse to go along. You know that feeling. I said, "Right now, I am NOTHING and it stays."  

Much later into my therapy my PT guy told me he laughed and laughed and said he would never forget me because no one had ever refused to check a square. I know it sounds petty and maybe even childish, but rebellion and anger were all I possessed at that time.

And it was true. I was nothing. I could not clean house, I could not cook. I could not paint. I could not write. I could not read. I could not watch TV. I could barely sit in a chair for 15 minutes. That was my limit at one time. I did nothing. I hardly had a thought in my head until the following October. 

I look back on this as one of the darkest moments in my life. The fact that I survived is a little miracle. But I did. I never knew I was that strong, because I was not only grieving, I also had an ulcer, gastritis, and lower back problems.

And I was alone. Really alone.

Now, everything I do is just pure joy. The fact that I can do anything is a testament to my own willpower. Widowhood sucks. And as Joyce Carol Oates said, "It is our duty to survive."

Just survive.

My Motto for the last two years

“Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant.” 

– Robert Louis Stevenson

Keep Your Own Company

“Our species is the only creative species, and it has only one creative instrument, the individual mind and spirit of man. Nothing was ever created by two men. There are no good collaborations, whether in music, in art, in poetry, in mathematics, in philosophy. Once the miracle of creation has taken place, the group can build and extend it, but the group never invents anything. The preciousness lies in the lonely mind of a man.” 
― John Steinbeck

A memory today

C-Section 1978

ME: Chattering away to myself

Doctor: What's she saying

Johnny: She's reciting Shelley

laughing.....

6 Years Ago Today with Colin Harrison

So, I am in Paw's recliner, my eyes closed, rocking, listening to Colin playing with Little People. Me, just a smiling. He is telling a story about Mommy, Daddy, PawPaw, MawMaw, and it's Christmas and it's snowing and everyone is happy and all these little details.-----Half an hour later I open my eyes and there is white doughnuts pulverized all over the room!!!!!!! It really did snow. Out comes the vacuum at 11:30 at night!

The Maze by Stars

KONSTANTIN FYODOROVICH BOGAEVSKY 

In the center of the maze
On a summer afternoon
I sat alone and waited
Until I saw the moon

And then the stars errupted
From the blackest sky I've seen
And I fell into a dream
I fell into a dream
I fell into a dream

I fell into a dream
I fell into a dream
I fell into a dream
I fell into a dream
I fell into a dream
I fell into a dream
I fell into a dream
I fell into it

In the center of the maze
You're a distant memory
And in every cul-de-sac
There burns an effigy

And then the stars collapsed
And they hit the distant hills
And the fires are burning still
The fires are burning still

They always will
They always will
They always will
They always will
They always will
They always will
They always will
They always will

I don't wanna find my way
I split the secret room in two
I don't wanna find my way out
I wanna watch the moon with you
I don't wanna find my way
I split the secret room in two
I don't wanna find my way out
I wanna watch the moon with you
I don't wanna find my way
I split the secret room in two
I don't wanna find my way out
I wanna watch the moon with you

Monday Morning Fun

I miss my Daddy.

This is my Daddy and me, in St. Francisville, Louisiana. I loved these trips. Years later I realized that one of the reasons I truly loved St. Francisville was because I always associated it with Daddy. It took me a lifetime to understand that. Smiling here. He was incredibly generous, but somewhat of a mystery to me. To some, he was a stranger. But not to me. I understood him better than anyone in our family. I love him, still. He was the World War II generation, a generation of men who went off to fight a brutal war as boys really. Most of them came back home with a sense of shock and gratitude. They knew hard work. They often drank too much. They did not know how to share their feelings openly.

My Daddy was like that. Smiling. He often said, "We'll see." That was the only way he knew how to say 'no' and even today I can remember him saying these words to me. But he loved me and showed me in little ways. He always bought me pumpkins for Halloween and gave me 'cookie money' at Christmas time so that I could bake all my goodies. He did this because he knew it was the two things I treasured. At times, he bought odd little things for me, such as yard art and even my favorite candy. He came by my house often and never stayed long, thirty minutes at the most and talked about nothing much.  After he died I learned he did this to his favorite sister, Polly. I felt lucky to understand what these little visits really meant, that these were big moments of love, the only way he knew how to express it.

But did he love. He adored my mother and his children.

The last years of his life were difficult and very frustrating for him. He told me how unhappy he was, but I didn't know what to do about it. He was grateful for the help he had, but we all  paid a heavy price for that final comfort. That decline and his death essentially destroyed the illusion of family for me. I cried for a long time, mourning him and a life that would never exist again. Everything died with him in early 2007, every illusion I knew. Every hope. It was the beginning of a decade of a real and deep unhappiness for me. I was shattered.  Reality set in.

But somehow, I don't know how, because I lost so much, when everything else faded away in my life, (including Johnny) I was left standing. My heart intact. Hope once again alive. I was not broken.

I started breathing again in 2018....  This year, I am even working again, on real things, real words, real thoughts.

Daddy, thank you for that time you gave me the words I needed to hear. "I love you."

I. AM.

Sir Frederic Leighton "Flaming June" 1895 |

REAL CHANGE, DAY ONE

Love Among the Ruins by Edward Burns-Jones

(I posted this on the day after you died. Our love was in ruins. The next day I gave instructions on your cremation and not long after that, someone brought you home in a box. Ashes. The first year I was as much a ruin as our love, as you. The second might have been harder emotionally. The third is just sad. But I have to go back to my way of work. I can't sit here and cry anymore. I am cold, too damn cold. If I choose to stay with you, I'll freeze to death, turn to ice, go blue.  Oh, how I miss your kisses. Your breath was just a whisper against the back of my neck, but it always stirred such a storm.)

“So for now,
I will miss you like I’ll never see you again,
And the next time I see you,
I will kiss you like I’ll never kiss you again,
And when I fall asleep beside you 
I will fall asleep as if I’ll never wake up again,
because I don’t know if I will.
I don’t know if I will.

- I Will Love You Like The World Is Ending” 
― Charlotte Eriksson

Learning to Say Goodbye

“We the mortals touch the metals,
the wind, the ocean shores, the stones,
knowing they will go on, inert or burning,
and I was discovering, naming all the these things:
it was my destiny to love and say goodbye.” 
― Pablo Neruda 

I. AM. WRITING.

Disappearing.....

“Am I in the picture? Am I getting in or out of it? I could be a ghost, an animal or a dead body, not just this girl standing on the corner…?” ― Francesca Woodman

Writing is like this....

“Writing a novel is a terrible experience, during which the hair often falls out and the teeth decay. I'm always irritated by people who imply that writing fiction is an escape from reality. It is a plunge into reality and it's very shocking to the system.”

― Flannery O'Connor

Cinderella by Edward Burns-Jones

I wonder if those are Rossetti's blue dishes?

Bluebeard by Edna St. Vincent Millay

THIS door you might not open, and you did;      

    So enter now, and see for what slight thing     

You are betrayed…. Here is no treasure hid,       

    No cauldron, no clear crystal mirroring            

The sought-for truth, no heads of women slain   

    For greed like yours, no writhings of distress,

But only what you see…. Look yet again—            

    An empty room, cobwebbed and comfortless.

Yet this alone out of my life I kept

    Unto myself, lest any know me quite;   

And you did so profane me when you crept        

    Unto the threshold of this room to-night          

That I must never more behold your face.           

    This now is yours. I seek another place.           

Nothing last forever but....

 I love that word. Forever. I love that forever doesn’t exist, but we have a word for it anyway, and use it all the time. It’s beautiful and doomed. 

Viv Albertine

Facing reality quotes

"Life in itself is neither good nor evil; it is the scene of good or evil as you make it.’ And, if you have lived a day, you have seen all: one day is equal and like to all other days. There is no other light, no other shade; this very sun, this moon, these very stars, this very order and disposition of things, is the same your ancestors enjoyed, and that shall also entertain your posterity."
                                                    - Michel de Montaigne

Ballerina rose, hybrid musk. My garden. Today.

Angela Carter Quotes

“She herself is a haunted house. She does not possess herself; her ancestors sometimes come and peer out of the windows of her eyes and that is very frightening. She has the mysterious solitude of ambiguous states; she hovers in a no-man’s land between life and death, sleeping and waking.” 
― Angela Carter, The Lady of the House of Love

Burning here....

“To burn with desire and keep quiet about it is the greatest punishment we can bring on ourselves.” 
― Federico García Lorca

Love and Life and Death

“Blot out the moon, 
Pull down the stars. 
Love in the dark, for we're for the dark
So soon, so soon.” 
― Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea

Van Gogh on Art

“Do you know that it is very, very necessary for honest people to remain in art? Hardly anyone knows that the secret of beautiful work lies to a great extent in truth and sincere sentiment.”

— Vincent Van Gogh

Thoughts

When social justice is ephemeral, rage will burn. This is the lesson of human history, in every culture, in all people. It cannot be denied, for thousands of books and stories tell the same tale. People say they don't understand. Some don't understand. I can only say, how not.--Writing Notebook, 2013

Meaning is always subjective

“Meaning is primarily a subjective psychological experience. A smart person is more likely than the next person to be aware of its absence and to be affected by its absence. He is more likely to get bored, to experience meaninglessness, to begin to see the extent to which neither his society nor the universe are built to satisfy his meaning needs, and to then hunt for soothing or exciting meaning substitutes that ultimately reduce his freedom. Meaning is a smart person's most difficult challenge.” 
― Eric Maisel

Widowhood

“That I was sleeping at a time when my husband was dying is so horrible a thought, I can’t confront it.” 
― Joyce Carol Oates, A Widow's Story

(But I was just so frigging tired...)

My goal is THIS.

“I know there are days when even one single positive thought feels like too much effort, but you must develop an unconditional love for life. You must never lose your childish curiosity for the possibilities in every single day. Who you can be, what you can see, what you can feel and where it can lead you. Be in love with your life, everything about it. The sadness and the joys, the struggles and the lessons, your flaws and strengths, what you lose and what you gain.” 


― Charlotte Eriksson, Empty Roads & Broken Bottles; in search for The Great Perhaps

Very busy writing...

The sensation of writing a book is the sensation of spinning, blinded by love and daring. Annie Dillard (photo Francesca Woodman)

Quote

  Sincerity is not a test of truth. We must not make this mistake: He must be right; he’s so sincere. Because, it is possible to be sincerely wrong. We can only judge truth by truth and sincerity by sincerity.

—	Jim Rohn  (Best quote he ever made.)

Favorite Quote

“There comes a time in everyone's life where if you have intellectual curiosity and an inquisitive mind, you assess the prejudices learned from family and the environment in which you've grown up in — and make a decision to either reject it, or take comfort in remaining ignorant.” 


― Bill Madden

Quote by Graham Joyce

When people die they leave behind tiny deposits, like dust or ash, littering the lives of those who have to carry on. Impossible to wipe a house clean. Memories dwelled in cobweb places behind wardrobes and between cupboards; they hide behind radiators; they urged on shelves; like slivers of shattered glass, they waited for their moment to lodge deep in any vulnerable expanse of passing skin. 

 from Requiem
 by Graham Joyce (1954-2014)

Choose Something Like a Star

O Star (the fairest one in sight),
We grant your loftiness the right
To some obscurity of cloud
It will not do to say of night,
Since dark is what brings out your light.
Some mystery becomes the proud.
But to be wholly taciturn
In your reserve is not allowed.
Say something to us we can learn
By heart and when alone repeat.
Say something! And it says "I burn."
But say with what degree of heat.
Talk Fahrenheit, talk Centigrade.
Use language we can comprehend.
Tell us what elements you blend.
It gives us strangely little aid,
But does tell something in the end.
And steadfast as Keats' Eremite,
Not even stooping from its sphere,
It asks a little of us here.
It asks of us a certain height,
So when at times the mob is swayed
To carry praise or blame too far,
We may choose something like a star
To stay our minds on and be staid.

 Robert Frost 

Illustration for John Milton's Comus

Illustration by Arthur Rackham for John Milton's comus, Edition: Paris, 1921-1924. (Source: GALLICA BNF)

The Milky Way

Feminist Mantra

“A woman may crave to be near water, or be belly down, her face in the earth, smelling the wild smell. She might have to drive into the wind. She may have to plant something, pull things out of the ground or put them into the ground. She may have to knead and bake, rapt in dough up to her elbows. She may have to trek into the hills, leaping from rock to rock trying out her voice against the mountain. She may need hours of starry nights where the stars are like face powder spilt on a black marble floor. She may feel she will die if she doesn’t dance naked in a thunderstorm, sit in perfect silence, return home ink-stained, paint-stained, tear-stained, moon-stained.”
Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Most Definitely Me

“I am not a Sunday morning inside four walls
with clean blood
and organized drawers.
I am the hurricane setting fire to the forests
at night when no one else is alive
or awake
however you choose to see it
and I live in my own flames
sometimes burning too bright and too wild
to make things last
or handle
myself or anyone else
and so I run.
run run run
far and wide
until my bones ache and lungs split
and it feels good.
Hear that people? It feels good
because I am the slave and ruler of my own body
and I wish to do with it exactly as I please” 
― Charlotte Eriksson, You're Doing Just Fine

Berthe Morisot

Roses, 1894

We are our words....

“ We are our words, and black and bruised and blue. Under our skins, we’re laughing. In triste veritas? Take hold, sweet hands, come on… Broken! When you falter, all eludes. This is a seasick way, this almost/never touching, this drawing-off, this to-and-fro. Subtlety stalks in your eyes, your tongue knows what it knows. I want your secrets—I will have them out. Seasick, I drop into the sea. ” — Adrienne Rich, “The Demon Lover”

Art by Gabriel Pacheco

Quote from The Etched City by K.J. Bishop

“Somewhere there are gardens where peacocks sing like nightingales, somewhere there are caravans of separated lovers traveling to meet each other; there are ruby fires on distant mountains, and blue comets that come in spring like sapphires in the black sky. If this is not so, meet me in the shameful yard, and we will plant a gallows tree, and swing like sad pendulums, never once touching.” 
― K.J. Bishop, The Etched City

Quote for the New Year

“I do often intend a comic sense, I love a joke, I love the humorous. The name Isak means ‘laughter.’” —Isak Dinesen

Star-gazer by Louis Macneice

Forty-two years ago (to me if to no one else
The number is of some interest) it was a brilliant starry night
And the westward train was empty and had no corridors
So darting from side to side I could catch the unwonted sight
Of those almost intolerably bright
Holes, punched in the sky, which excited me partly because
Of their Latin names and partly because I had read in the textbooks
How very far off they were, it seemed their light
Had left them (some at least) long years before I was.

And this remembering now I mark that what
Light was leaving some of them at least then,
Forty-two years ago, will never arrive
In time for me to catch it, which light when
It does get here may find that there is not
Anyone left alive
To run from side to side in a late night train
Admiring it and adding noughts in vain. 

Quote by Faulkner

“An artist is a creature driven by demons. He don’t (sic) know why they choose him and he’s usually too busy to wonder why. He is completely amoral in that he will rob, borrow, beg, or steal from anybody and everybody to get the work done….The writer’s only responsibility is to his art. He will be completely ruthless if he is a good one. He has a dream. It anguishes him so much he must get rid of it. He has no peace until then. Everything goes by the board: honor, pride, decency, security, happiness, all, to get the book written. If a writer has to rob his mother, he will not hesitate; the ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ is worth any number of old ladies.”

—William Faulkner

Paul Bergon  Autochrome, circa 1910

Quote by Alice Bolin

“When a cop kills an unarmed man, it is because he senses his power being threatened by fear that he believes he should never have to feel. When a man kills his ex-girlfriend because she leaves him, he is saying the same thing: shame and sadness are feelings I should not have. Honor killings, as it turns out, are as American as apple pie.” 
― Alice Bolin, Dead Girls: Essays on Surviving American Culture

The Naming of Cats by T.S. Eliot

The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter,
It isn’t just one of your holiday games;
You may think at first I’m as mad as a hatter
When I tell you, a cat must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES.
First of all, there’s the name that the family use daily,
Such as Peter, Augustus, Alonzo, or James,
Such as Victor or Jonathan, George or Bill Bailey —
All of them sensible everyday names.
There are fancier names if you think they sound sweeter,
Some for the gentlemen, some for the dames:
Such as Plato, Admetus, Electra, Demeter —
But all of them sensible everyday names.
But I tell you, a cat needs a name that’s particular,
A name that’s peculiar, and more dignified,
Else how can he keep up his tail perpendicular,
Or spread out his whiskers, or cherish his pride?
Of names of this kind, I can give you a quorum,
Such as Munkstrap, Quaxo, or Coricopat,
Such as Bombalurina, or else Jellylorum —
Names that never belong to more than one cat.
But above and beyond there’s still one name left over,
And that is the name that you never will guess;
The name that no human research can discover —
But THE CAT HIMSELF KNOWS, and will never confess.
When you notice a cat in profound meditation,
The reason, I tell you, is always the same:
His mind is engaged in a rapt contemplation
Of the thought, of the thought, of the thought of his name:
His ineffable effable
Effanineffable
Deep and inscrutable singular Name.

Turning to love

“Writing is really just a matter of writing a lot, writing consistently and having faith that you'll continue to get better and better. Sometimes, people think that if they don't display great talent and have some success right away, they won't succeed. But writing is about struggling through and learning and finding out what it is about writing itself that you really love.” 

― Laura Kasischke