Creed

I wake up to find magic,/ I seek dreams/ and I crave imagination./ This is my creed.

Anastasia Bolinder

Tanith Lee on Love, Once Again.

 "Are not all loves secretly the same? A hundred flowers sprung from a single root. The body’s love will teach the spirit how to love. The spasm of the body’s carnal pleasure, forgetting all things but ecstasy itself, teaches the body to remember the ecstasy of the soul, forgetting all but itself, the moments of oneness, and freedom. The love a man feels only for one other in all the world will teach him, at length, love of all others, of all the world. A cry of joy, whatever its cause, is the one true memory of those wonders the flesh has banished. A cry of love is always a cry of love."

Tanith Lee who died on May 26, 2015

(I saw this posted on tumblr and I know I have already posted it, but I am posting it again. I did not remember Tanith Lee's birthday this year due to a personal tragedy in my own family on May 24. But Tanith Lee was a wonderful writer, an outsider, totally idiosyncratic, and much beloved by this reader. Love is so important. And I feel so lucky to be able to feel it to the capacity that I do. A gift. A challenge. I love sometimes with no expectations. I still love John and though he is dead, the feeling is still palpable. Love is good. Love is loud. Smiling.)

Why does the vampire still read?

 

Eve's house is full of books. My house is full of books. Today I watched the film Only Lovers Left Alive. I like it. But one question kept running through my mind. Why does Eve still read? She is not human, and doesn't appear to have retained any empathy for humanity in the way we humans work to feel. And yet she reads. All the time. The question is why? I think it's more than curiosity.

Another discussion is Adam? He chose music really, although we know he influenced many scientists. He is fighting depression. Depression in a vampire. This is not Louis from Anne Rice. These are not Anne Rice vampires at all. And yet, Adam is fighting either depression or boredom, which I might add, in psychology, are totally related.

It is the psychology I am interested in when it comes to these two vampires. I want to know why Eve still reads. Maybe it is why I still read after 1000s of books. I certainly don't read for curiosity anymore. Or maybe even empathy. It's not even conclusive in psychology that empathy is created and maintained by reading. Escape is a good answer, the easiest. But I don't read for escape either. One doesn't read Absalom, Absalom for escape. Smiling slyly.

Simulation. Curiosity. To learn. Hmmm. I have no firm answers right now.

The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry

 I began September 2021 here and in my personal life with a quote from Sarah Perry's beautiful novel, The Essex Serpent. It is quote that I scheduled many weeks ago. I knew September was going to be the month I returned to writing and blogging. And that quote is literal. One cannot make serious changes without sacrifices and losses, without rearranging things. And changes don't come over night. They take months and years and I started changes many months ago, some as far as fall in 2018. The Essex Serpent is one of my favorite novels of all time, and that says a lot. It's brilliant, stuffed with all kinds of ideas and with one really focused plot and structure. In some ways I am posting this because this novel is not without sorrow and loss and pain and I have felt those things so deeply. But it is also about regeneration. And that is the important part, how we all deal with our issues and how we move forward. I have sold my soul, in order to live as I must, my conscience and morals remain, but I did seek therapy and my therapist said I must no longer deny some things about myself, positive things actually, not the weaknesses but the strengths. I often hide them because I do not like the public gaze, nor do I need praise or validation. I am very much loved as a human being, as a mother and grandmother, as a friend. My work over the years validates my efforts at work and also I work with "purpose" and not "achievement."  Another thought from the beautiful novel by Sarah Perry. “in the end it was purpose I wanted, not achievement — you see the difference?” There are paths in life that take courage. One never finds true courage unless one is faced with loss and fear. I cannot recommend The Essex Serpent enough. I shout its beauty out and how it transformed my feelings into words. I am so lucky.

Here is the quote again:

“Sometimes I think I sold my soul, so that I can live as I must. Oh, I don't mean without morals or conscience- I only mean with freedom to think the thoughts that come, to send them where I want them to go, not to let them run along tracks someone else set, leading only this way or that...”

― Sarah Perry, The Essex Serpent.

I have made another serious change. I feel good.

 Yesterday, I saw a good doctor and today I am seeing another. These visits were all planned months ago so, no, they are not emergencies, but they could not have come at a better time in my life.  All my doctors have known me for years and years, so they are quite acquainted with a living history of Jane. Laughing.  Today, this doctor knows me really well. Everything. He's my personal physician, and took me on after his predecessor, my old friendly personal physician retired, a man whom I knew as a teenager. There is something odd in this circumstances. One can never fake anything or hide anything or be anything other than what one is to these people, a predicament which can make one uncomfortable at times, but at the same moment, is very comforting. These two men never cut me any slack, so to speak.

The older man has died, God Bless him, he was brilliant and a great diagnostic physician. He had a gift, and I was lucky to be his patient. He understood me so well, and helped me through many years when I went to school, seriously allergic to cigarette smoke and yes, in those days, people smoked in classes. He called me the "Perpetual Tourist" a name that has stuck with other people, too. This refers to my lifelong personal history of studying anything that caught my interests instead of focusing on one subject. He used the word, tourist, because I do become a tourist in a sense, I leave one place and travel to another in my head until I know it as well as I can. I have been many places over the years. No adequate label can describe my love of learning. No label is necessary because another great doctor taught me years ago that labels are worthless when it comes to defining people and I have never changed my mind about that.

I have decided to do something different online than previously, both here and on social media. I am going to intensify my status as the "Perpetual Tourist" and go back to my early ways, to the things I learned that fascinated me. Most people know I love beauty, that I am often amazed at what humankind can achieve, and how social and biological evolutions have, in a manner of speaking, influenced and even determined how things have progressed. I want to spend more time talking about beautiful things I love so that my grandchildren can read about those things. I also want them to understand why it is so important to read around subjects, to not make quick judgments based on modern norms, and I want them to accept the bad with the good. There is no perfection in life, no way to avoid horror and pain and suffering, to create a perfect and fair justice for all. These things I have written about many times for my children and one of WIPs is about that theme. The Search for the Impossible. No one ever finds it. The Impossible is what many people want and seek and what they compare all things to, which is a shame, because it causes a lot of unnecessary misery. I love "big pictures" and "history" and "ideas." I come to all my art through ideas, not people, not characters, not my own personal biases. It is an idea that strikes me first and that leads my creative spirit. And I have my way of living that art that is not really here or on Facebook or on Twitter. And I am going to discuss why this happens not only to me but many people.

I know a lot of creatives and have worked with them over a lifetime, really. They are people who think "outside the box" and only use group think as a tool to gather information. It's takes more than a few college courses to determine how they will see a subject. It takes a lot of study and yes, experience. Like the older man, some doctors are brilliant diagnostics, while other doctors, who are good doctors, do not have this keen eye. Eventually they will solve a problem, but it takes them longer, and they may need help. Nothing wrong with that. Some doctors rely on tests and even other doctors, but the serious creatives and brilliant diagnostics sees things that others do not. It's in the brain. And no one can quite come up with the proper label.

In the last few weeks, I have had to face some stark realities about myself, about my personal environment, and about the Internet and social environment here. I have been under severe stress and I paid a price because I was just angry. And while anger is necessary, it's not very productive. Basically I am a very pragmatic person, I look for solutions and if I can't find them, I go to someone who can and I adapt. I change. I burn bridges. JUST. LIKE. THAT. Burning a bridge is not the ideal choice, but what it does do is prevent one from going backwards. And sometimes that makes burning a  bridge, regardless of the fallout and consequences, necessary. I have burned a lot of bridges in the last few months. And yes, that process added to my stress. BUT I am at the end of the tunnel now. I am out in the light. And I am okay. I am even smiling as I write this.

So look for changes if you know me. ALL. OVER. THE. PLACE. I feel good.

“Sometimes I think I sold my soul, so that I can live as I must. Oh, I don't mean without morals or conscience- I only mean with freedom to think the thoughts that come, to send them where I want them to go, not to let them run along tracks someone else set, leading only this way or that...”

― Sarah Perry, The Essex Serpent.

Janis Joplin on Haight St in 1967 is a beautiful sight.

 

Janis Joplin on Haight St. in 1967 is a beautiful sight. The end.

Today I am celebrating the birth of Percy B Shelley, English poet and visionary.

It's Percy B. Shelley's Birthday today, a day I ALWAYS celebrate. I've been lying in bed this morning, composing in my head a post and tribute to this polymathic genius that I adore and who is my number #1 influence since I was a sixteen year old girl. Of course, I lay there long enough to where the post turned into a small paper, some of it filled with pithy comments on those in his circle. No film has ever captured him correctly. His critics are often foolish and biased, especially those who see him as cruel, sexist, and misogynistic. How absurd. He was a young man, brilliant, and way ahead of his time. A man of our current time. No other Romantic poet is so fitting for the 21st century. It literally breaks my heart that he died before he was 30 years old. I am not one to believe in so called "destiny" but the moment Percy B set foot in Milan in 1816, a series of events were set in motion that would lead to his drowning in 1822. Lilliputian ties and I can trace them in my mind as I did this morning, lying there in bed. I suppose out of all his circle, I adore Claire Clairmont and Thomas Peacock the most, the rest all deserve my contempt (I even give that grudgingly) and this morning I recounted their sins in my head for hours and that includes Mary Shelley, who out of guilt and desperation, slaved over compiling an edition of his poems until she had a nervous breakdown, one of the many she already had experienced. I pity her. I do. But she was Godwin's true daughter and if you don't know what that means, go read about Godwin. Shelley, himself, made two serious mistakes, and they both concerned his so-called marriages, something he never believed in or held to and it cost him. And he paid the ultimate price. Of the two, Harriet Westbrook is the one that haunted him emotionally. It is easy to see how all that happened, when ones considers Shelley's nasty upbringing with a neglectful mother and sadistic father, where the poet's only emotional respite was the adoration and love of his sisters. This pattern never left his emotional make-up. It ruled him. He was flawed, of course, but he was genuine and warm and generous and good. I feel so blessed to know his work, to understand his life, and to feel his visions. To share those visions. I was one of those women who was a prisoner, too, until his work freed me to see the world very differently, to embrace independent thought and skepticism and live in doubt and uncertainty with the grace that he possessed. What an incredible human being. I am not into mythmaking and I make none of him. I am team Human. He was human. That's enough.

This is true, no matter what, even if you don't like it.

There is no magical and quick solutions to things like mental health or physical fitness or even plagues. It's work. And we can't fix all emotions. People can feel anything but it IS people who have to change their feelings. I think, in many ways, through our current literature, our current state of political engagement, our current views that are just vast unworkable theories, that we ARE NOW living in a dark age. There, I said it and I mean it.

The Eve of St. Agnes by Harry Clarke

 The Eve of St. Agnes, (Based on the poem by John Keats) by Harry Clarke. His art is so beautiful and I adore narrative art.

True Detective Season 1 is my favorite TV.

 

I first saw Season 1 of True Detective around the 20th of June and I have been thinking about it constantly since then. I have to admit I think (quite seriously) it's probably the best TV show I have ever seen in terms of writing, acting, and all around techniques. Since I know the environment of True Detective personally and vividly, I find it even more fascinating how psychogeography is used so well. But also symbols, motifs, philosophy, development of character, design, all the structural principles that one can use in writing anything. It's quite masterful and if I were a younger person, in college, I would write my thesis on it. It is literally a brilliant piece of both fiction and film. And of course, because of my own work, it resonated deeply with me. I am haunted by it. Just haunted by its artistry.

The Last London by Iain Sinclair

 Wow, I haven't posted since the last week of June. I have not felt well and have been so busy just trying to stay functional and working and keeping house. Right now I need to be outside working in the garden but I am waiting till in the morning as it's been raining a bit. I am going to began again on the blog posting a Beloved Book for me. Iain Sinclair's The Last London. It's an incredible book, written so well and it has brought me so much joy during these really depressing times. I am so impressed with it that I am going to read all Sinclair's books. Today I am going to start a reread making notes. And then afterwards, write up a nice review. Pyschogeography is something I am very interested in and it has influenced all my work, writing, perspectives, and art. Place is everything. I don't think we can write adequate history without the context of geography in terms of country to the roads and buildings, to the mindscapes. Judging history and people outside these parameters is both shallow and incomplete.

Reading a book is an experience.

I lived in books more than I lived anywhere else.

— Neil Gaiman

Walking is very important to me, so I am pounding the streets early before the heat.

 

The things we do learn as we love and lose.

“After some time, you learn the subtle difference between holding a hand and imprisoning a soul; You learn that love does not equal sex, and that company does not equal security, and you start to learn…. That kisses are not contracts and gifts are not promise..."

― Jorge Luis Borges

The Woman in White is one of my favorite novels of all time.

 

The Woman in White

Frederick Walker, ARA (1840-1875)

1871

Gouache on paper

2172 x 1289 mm

Courtesy of Tate Britain N02080

Presented by Sir Claude Phillips in memory of his sister Eugenie Phillips 1906

This life-sized poster is one of the first examples of a fine artist undertaking an advertisement. It was made for Wilkie Collins’s ‘sensation’ play The Woman in White, which opened at the Olympic Theatre, London in October 1871. It combines a Pre-Raphaelite-style beauty with black and white graphic design. Sweeping lines pull the viewer’s eye to the woman’s mysterious and inviting expression.— Tate Britain Commentary

(at the moment, I am reading small portions of this novel out loud to myself.)

Today's question is this.

Mais qui voit-on dans le miroir ????

Camille Claudel had such an interesting but sad life.

 

French sculptor Camille Claudel and her friend Ghita Theurietque in 1882.

I love creating anything, but I would like to be good at something. Laughing.

True perseverance lies in fulfilling our most powerful creative impulses despite all setbacks. We only get into trouble when we become obsessed with particular outcomes, when wanting to be recognized for our art is more important to us than the art itself. Arrogance paired with comparatively little talent (or at least seriously underdeveloped talent) is what results in work that embarrasses everyone but the person making it. You can’t be delusional if what you desire — what you truly desire — is simply to be with your camera or notebook or piano, engrossed and alive.

— Camille de Angelis

Contradictions are painful at times.

  Many things have happened to me in the last several years and I've been thinking about convictions and people who are entrenched in their own convictions. One thing I know from my own life and the lives of people I respect or know well, or from scientists that I have met, known, or studied is that if one experiences life and studies any one thing long enough, convictions are meaningless. Other people are the opposite. They feel you can never remain neutral, as many political figures feel. I think Howard Zinn is one. His example is "how can one remain neutral on a moving train." Some people are even admired for their convictions, etc. etc. etc. I am more align with Nietzsche who felt convictions were just as dangerous as lies. In fact, he referred to them as prisons. For me personally, a person who is likely to change her mind about any one subject based on new information, convictions are just "things" that are fashionable and convenient and generational even. But I would definitely say convictions are psychological prisons. This perspective makes it impossible for me to be a people pleaser or fashionable or tribal in any way. In some ways, it has alienated me from people I truly love. 

It is really not what happens on the surface between you and other people that counts, but how these people make you feel on the inside and how you make them feel on the inside. And I know that is often uneasy for me. And sometimes, you actually know what the other people are truly feeling. The painful part is not caring as you know they would, because you don't hold the same philosophical value on convictions and sometimes a "core" value. You possess empathy but it's very objective and not emotional empathy. (Most people don't understand or practice objective empathy and it must be practiced.) And what you feel really bad about is that alienation, that forceful distance between person and person that you can never cross, because you do not hold the same values regarding the word "convictions." And they will never understand that perspective. It's foreign or unreal to them. While you take the entire situation in through reality, the other people will often choose labels that psychologically match their emotional values. And then the distance between grows wider and there is nothing you can do.

Nothing I can do. This is what it means to be living in true contradictions. This, for me, is the coldest alienation. And perhaps the saddest thing is that I know how the other person will write it off and I have to live with that and go on. I see me as they see me. And it's painful. And there is no defense, no last word, no bitterness, no revenge, no projection, no hate, just the wide space that aways exist between and the sorrow of the situation that I will mourn but eventually move on from.

When I was very young, I wanted to be understood and loved. And then I realized that was also a prison. I had to learn to love myself and believe in myself. I knew how different I was and that even in that difference, I was the same, that all people want to love and be loved. But not all people are happy or content or hold a high value on their worth. But somehow, for whatever reason, at a very young age, I did. Even with all my wounds and neurosis. My problem was being a fixer and I was going to fix my broken family and relationships until I decided I could only fix myself and help people in their journey or leave them along. Probably because I wanted to understand myself and the world and that is how I became a person who realized convictions were meaningless at times. And it was okay to say no, and to change my mind. To be wrong. 

Did you know that some people can never say no without feeling guilty or justifying? Some people can never say they are wrong? Some people can never change their minds? Some people are always looking for labels to explain uncertainty?  Some people are always ashamed or in regret or just feel like they are not good enough. These are prisons. 

I call all this the Impossible. And some people are always in search for it. The Impossible. But the Impossible, this psuedo-perfection and reality is just delusion. And yes, impossible.

(Sometimes, The Impossible transforms into a conviction.)

I am rambling here, but I do understand that sometimes there is no right or wrong, only a decision. Only a choice. And because I have been a creative since I was a child, I understood that choices happen every day, all the time. And some do not have good consequences. Sometimes we are wrong. Sometimes I am wrong. I wish I was wrong today. I will wish it all the rest of the day.

Today I feel like I know this enough to write it here. 

Tomorrow, I may change my mind. Laughing.