Little boxes made of ticky-tacky,
Little boxes, little, boxes,
Little boxes all the same.

Labels: quote

I wish it could be this way always. I wish I could stay in the woods.




So much has changed. Things have to change, they can't stay the same. The older I grow, the more past I have to haunt me. And when I refuse to grow up in some way or other, the world contrives to make it very unpleasant for me. I wish I could be young on the weekends. I wish I could slip off that shroud of adulthood and be happy.

I thought I would escape, but I didn't after all.

It's growing colder and colder as I sit. I will walk more.

Labels: river legacy

I am so happy now. I have a friend, a kindred spirit. Nothing else seems to matter now. Why question the obstacles? Why damn the others?

I am happy now, because my friend smiled and spoke to me.

Last night I configured my Notes wiki, and hopefully soon it will be ready to use.

I feel so much calmer than in the previous weeks. I wonder sometimes if it a factor of fatiguing emotions rather than a change in mind. Perhaps the emotions are always rising and falling like a perpetual motion machine and I am just prey to the tides. But now I don't worry so much about escape. I do feel bouts of unreasonable anger sometimes, but I try to say a mantra to myself and let it go. I'm sure I would feel it anywhere I went.

I have been reading more of Shelley's letters and a story on Fiction Press I liked very much, "Who Could Ever Learn to Love a Beast." I read it for hours this morning. I love reading things that reminds me of why I want to write. I don't ever really forget, but sometimes I go off-course.

As I seek improvement in my web writing, I am gathering all information possible. I have found a great site that speaks to every aspect of electronic writing that interests me. I have been perusing it this morning and intend to absorb it completely.

Ironically I find the design of the site extremely flawed-- information overload. I think it's a bad idea to put so many links and other sources on each page. I much prefer a clean, uncluttered style conducive to the absorption of information-- like Winter Light, hee hee.

Lately I have been cataloguing the web for myself. There are many mega-sites that try to catalog the web, but there are so many broken links.

The most fascinating one I have found so far is Voice of the Shuttle. I have already discovered dozens of valuable resources there. I'm making my own library of links, specifically interactive fiction links for The Summerhouse as I continue its development.

I have felt a lull in creativity for The Summerhouse lately. It's hard to hold all those rooms in my head when I have so many other things crowded up there, too. I just haven't had the right concentration/energy/time ratio to accomplish any of my "true" work lately. I am hitting a sudden and steep incline. I have recently found how much I truly have to do to improve myself, and the climb is daunting.

It was snowing this morning on the way to work. It was forbiddingly cold. I was grateful for the swirly atmosphere, which went well with Amarantine.

We have a few activities planned for this weekend-- I am very much looking forward to them. I need some enrichment, and I need something to take pictures of!

They have been my trophies lately, my souvenirs. Because I have taken so many pictures in the past four years, I remember those years better-- weekends, short events that would have faded to obscurity without the media. I can only imagine how much it will mean to me when I am much older.

When I got my 486 with a sound card, I played extensively with the voice recorder. What wouldn't I give to have those files now? My fourteen-year-old self would seem so much more alive to me.

I am fascinated with the idea of cyborgs as well-- being one with one's computer. For one thing, I do not want to be physically attached to my computer, and new technology is making that feasible. I read books on my Treo, I take pictures, record voice posts. All these will be sent to my computer however, and then some of it to the Internet. Even my needlework is connected. Sometimes I feel inspired to complete another row just for the picture I can take of it, perhaps to share with online groups. This does not seem wrong. I feel that I am connected to my computer all the time by an invisible thread. It's just important that the thread remain invisible. For me, actually being on the computer is not life. That's why I find research so difficult, and that's why I'm doing this link cataloguing. I hope to make the best material into documents for my Treo.

I'm so excited. I just bought a vintage dress... A great deal, too, and I think I'll be able to wear it to work. I have been trying to wear less black. This is white with black lace overlay. Just like something Lady Hildegarde wore in the first scene of Love's Shadow.

On the way to our destination we stopped in Athens, Texas for lunch. The BBQ was even more excellent as we were starving at the time, and the sauces were capped with fishing bobbers.

After this we stopped at the local coffee shop, and I had "Toasted Marshmallow" flavored coffee, which is some of the finest I've ever had. I hope we get a chance to visit a coffee shop today...

Labels: Texas

" Kiss the blue-eyed darlings for me, and do not let William forget me. "

This is the second letter in which Percy has asked Mary to remind his son of his existence. I know only these mentions, and his poem "To William Shelley," but I gather that his ex-wife relinquished only this one to his care, and he tended to devote himself to William. I think every one of Shelley's children died before he did, however, which is to say their life spans were incredibly short considering how short was his.

It is very intimate to read these letters and think of the reactions of writer and recipient, to think of this famed writers as attending normal things like travel accomodations and the time of the post, which figures into much of these letters. I have wondered many times if reading this is wrong or immoral. I suppose posthumously-- posthumously, mind you-- I would want every bit of my writing, journal and correspondence out for the world to see. If I didn't I would destroy it.

"I have been reading the "Noble Kinsmen," in which, with the exception of that lovely scene, to which you added so much grace in reading to me, I have been disappointed. The Jailor's Daughter is a poor imitation, and deformed. The whole story wants moral discrimination and modesty. I do not believe Shakspeare wrote a word of it."

From Percy in Florence to Mary.

I don't know of The Jailor's Daughter. Was it retitled? Disproved as Shakespeare's work?

Was Shelley insistent on moral discrimination and modesty? Sorry, I've heard to the contrary.

"We shall travel hence within a few hours, with the speed of the post, since the distance is 190 miles, and we are to do it in three days, besides the half day, which is somewhat more than sixty miles a day."

Travel speeds, 1818.

"If Ministers do not find some means, totally inconceivable to me, of plunging the nation in war, do you imagine that they can subsist?" -- Shelley

Just when the days were starting to take on a golden edge, and my soul was transported by the barest suggestion of sunshine, its halcyon light was withdrawn, and the day is pale again.

I finished Orphan of the Rhine last night. I wonder how long it really was. It was nearly 2000 e-pages, but I don't know how many "real" pages it was. I am guessing three hundred, though books written in that time tended to be extremely long. I may retry The Mysteries of Udolpho now that I mastered Orphan. I am better used to this extremely descriptive, verbose style.

In total, I liked it very much. The sections I liked best were somewhat marred by a repetition of the text. When I realized that whole sections were repeated it made me wonder if others had been deleted, so I may never know if I have the whole story.

I liked the Marchese best. He was a perfect hero villain prototype. He conducted dastardly deeds, then literally sickened to death with guilt over them. There are many passages of his regretful, mad wanderings on cliffsides and throwing himself against rocks with angst. Then, near death, those he has wrong minister to him, and give him an elaborate funeral procession when he dies.

The funeral was described in excessive, satisfying detail, as were numerous strange rituals supposedly performed by Catholic priests and nuns. Catholic clergy figured very strongly into the story. Nearly everyone ended up being one, or masquerading as one, at some point, and the holy mysteries were described in excessive Romantic detail.

I appreciate how very much this was a gothic novel, including all of the prototypical elements.

It also did something I and I think many other modern readers will be at a loss to explain. This was common in Udolpho as well. The protagonist will be taken with the melancholy beauty of a scene, sit down and write a poem, sometimes a very long one. The action grinds to a halt. It reminds me of a musical.

Orphan of the Rhine was written by Eleanor Sleath and published by the Miranda Press in 1798. I may have that wrong. I am going by memory. I obtained the text from gothiclit.com or something like that. It should not be hard to find if you search.

For now I'm going to go into the future by a couple decades and study more on the Shelleys. I'm reading PBS' letters right now and a biography of Mary Shelley, written by Lucy Madox Rossetti. I believe she is a niece or in-law to Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and the wife of another Pre-Raphaelite.

Again, I wish to gently remind the swiftly turning spheres that I was, in fact, born to the wrong century. I appreciate that you have a lot to keep track of, but this is a wrong I must correct as well as possible by reading a lot-- I mean a lot-- of old literature. Because when I read it, I am as much there as ever I can be.