There's nothing that goes better with beasts, castles, frail maidens and tormented love than good barbecue. I have been running into major problems with The Soul of the Rose since Chapter 5 and I fear I will be losing a couple of lunches this week, so there will be a week's delay on Chapter 6. I am rewriting it because I was much displeased with the effect. It was too flippant all around. This story does not need to maintain a sense of levity. I am not out to please Jane Austen. In fact, I am aping the style of the writers she parodied in Northanger Abbey.

I laid out an alternate Chapter 6 on the way to work today, which so far is working out well.

Editing is so difficult. I become so set on what I've said and I don't want to change it, even if it's bad. It really goes against the grain.

However, this hour has been very instructive.

This weekend I planted lilies of the valley. This is my first time to try to grow them. I hope it works out. It would be dreamy to cut my own lilies of the valley for the table. They have the most intoxicating fragrance.

Labels: box garden

Three years ago today.

A year ago today, referring to this.

Time change

The time change has messed with me so badly. I actually overslept this morning, and that is something I never do. When I woke up, Henry was lying on me and purring deeply-- no wonder I overslept.

Still, the past two mornings I have woken with a headache. Driving to work in the dark is surreal and somewhat miserable. At least there hasn't been any traffic, though. I have been able to leave from work on time.

I have been working, or obsessing, over my wiki each night. I am determined to get it the way I want it. It's the perfect outlet for my thoughts or ideas, any random page I care to make. I have also been looking over Lifetype a little. It's a very sleek journaling system that could be companion to my wiki.

I have heard you can make a wiki into a blog, but I am already far more familiar with my config and backend files than I want to be, so I won't even consider it.

Last afternoon there was the most wonderful rain, better than all the sunshine in the world. I sat by the open window and read Shelley, and wrote in my journal, though there's not the easiness in trying to have a reverie on a week night.

The industrial lights in the distance affect me so deeply. They are like lights of a city that never was and never will be. No one lives there. It is deserted and lonely, yet lit brightly, like a ghost city at night. It makes me want to go there and explore those enormous buildings with thready staircases and high towers.

It’s like a place from my childhood. It reminds me of the vast field that separated our apartments from the prison. It was a barren, lonely place that affected my mind and my soul. I associated beauty and the comforts of home with loneliness and desolation. It made me see that anything can be beautiful, or ugly, depending on what you associate with it.

Lofty thoughts for a child, but it is true. I remember wandering through that field where there were no trees, and rejoicing in the beauty of the vast sky and the hollow wind. Here, I feel again connected with my very early childhood.

The other parts, shadowed with trees and vines, still strike me deeply to the heart. I cannot think on those places without pain.

But this industrial city reminds me of Cristalle, or Drommende, depending on which you want to think of. In the distance—lonely, deserted, beautiful and twinkling.

The lady of shalott

Every time I hear "The Lady of Shalott" by Loreena McKennitt, I am there. I see the sheaves of barley, the people stirring sleepily as the villages come to life, the river running through Camelot. I see the Lady, I note her pierce of wonder when she first glimpses Lancelot parting through the field of barley on his horse. The whole drama runs its course again and again, and it's as though she is locked into this fate. The story can happen no other way.

I don't really know what I mean to say. Only that this poem has a magic I have never found in a poem before, a story that truly comes to life each time I hear it.

I watched Sense and Sensibility the night before last, and it struck me for the first time how poems were read for entertainment. Marianne, or anyone of her tastes, would recite beloved poems fanatically, seeming to fall in love with them as we do with songs today. Yet for poetry to be in vogue, those high emotions accessible to the public and willingly imbibed, seems incredible to me. I truly feel that an informed era has been long past.

Sugar Baby's

It's a beautiful day today. I went out early and had Sugar Baby's for lunch. I spent the time working on my wiki. I am not satisfied with the template. Just as I was leaving I got an idea of what to do with it. I want each wiki page to be stand-alone, but I can't find a way to eliminate the breadcrumbs at the top of the page. I learned today that code is probably called "header." Hopefully I can get somewhere with that.

But maybe not tonight, because when I get home I am going to spend time with my bird. His foot was hurt yesterday and he can barely move around. Last night he improved by the hour, but this morning he seemed inert and uncomfortable. I still can't believe this happened to him. I won't be easy till I can be home with him tonight. He seems most comfortable in the palm of my hand. He can't perch or sit comfortably upright.

Corelli, Concerto Grosso #8 in G

There's something dark and nasty about Google. I don't care much for its interfaces. They're not very elegant. I knew it would come to this. All my little accounts end up getting swallowed up in large corporations.

Anyway, I have finally been able to share my second chapter of The Soul of the Rose on Fiction Press. It occurred to me I have not mentioned it here yet.

At Winter Garden, find The Soul of the Rose Chapter One, The Rose, and Chapter Two, A Journey.

I just ordered these from the Victorian Trading Company. I can't wait to wear them with my ensemble for the 1980's party. I want to tell you that I have been yearning for these since high school. I figured it was about time.

At long last, I have a few new favorite things.

There is a page at the back of my diary that I have kept since middle school, when I began to feel grand passions for random things. I did not know any better way to catalog these things than to list them in the back of my diary with the heading "Things Which Exalt the Soul."

These things may be very vague and random. One such thing from that time was "black hair and blue eyes." I can remember few others from that time since I no longer have that initial diary, which in college I found it too painful and embarrassing to keep.

On my present list are things like, "Elizabethan garments," "army camoflauge print" (you would not have thought that, would you?), "sunflowers," "rose tea," and so on.

It has been months since I have found new favorite things, but I have a few to add this morning.

I'l try to tell more later.