I'm getting through a lot of books lately. I may finish Soft Focus today, and I'm in the last third of Mrs. Shelley.

I'm also reading Epipsychidion, but my every poetry reading becomes more of a study. I'm afraid I can't read longer poems for pleasure at all. I'm still working, in the remotest sense, on Alastor: or, The Spirit of Solitude.

Through this city I wander. The cold is pitiless, wind blowing right through me. It only makes me feel the more invisible.

There is no beauty that meets my gaze, and I am accustomed to looking down always, or squinting against the dead leaves in the wind.

This is a place where it is always winter. The sky is gray, the chill tolerable, but never pleasant. I have grown so used to it, that it is as though weather has ceased to exist. Snow, rain and sun are weather. This gray chill is a void.

I feel so lonely that I think I am losing my mind. When I am around others, I behave disgracefully. I am so pleasant and winning as to attract their distrust, yet I cannot help this desire to connect to someone else. But every day that I am alone, it becomes clearer to me that I never will have anyone.

Once there was someone for me, someone I believed would be with me forever, but I cannot think on him long.

I must keep moving, or I will freeze through and through, body and soul.

As I gaze at the doorway he's there, a mirage, and I don't believe what I am seeing.

"Dresden." He says my name with meaning, as though it is a prayer.

"Gabriel." For a moment I am unable to say more. I stare stupidly at him. "Please, come inside." I have managed to unlock the door and push it open with a trembling hand.

He takes my grocery bags and motions me inside. It's so familiar, because it has happened before. My throat is dry and aching. I don't understand why it ever had to stop, or why he is here again.

He's looking after me. He helps me put away the groceries. I put a kettle of hot water on the stove, and with trembling hands put two cups on the counter. I dare a glance at him, and when he says nothing, I open a tin and spoon tea into a ceramic pot.

I don't think this is what most women do when they see their ex-lovers again. Briefly the words of Diana Ross's, "I Will Survive," float through my mind:

"Go on now, go walk out the door
Just turn around now
You're not welcome anymore."

I certainly make a mockery of female power with my hospitality, I think to myself with a trace of amusement. But what else can I do? I'm still not sure if I will be able to live without Gabriel. I must survive in my own way.

I gaze at his bowed head across the warmly-lit kitchen. He is looking at his hands. I can't even guess how he feels. Is he guilty? Remorseful? Unhappy? He meets my gaze suddenly, and I see all of that, and more, in his eyes.

Good grief, we hadn't that much time together. Perhaps it meant more to me than it did to him. That is what I have told myself time and again. He had never mentioned marrying me. But marriage isn't something that really exists in this world anymore. It is a social institution, and society is no longer.

While we gaze at each other, the tea kettle starts to hiss. I take it off before it whistles. I always do this: not because I'm impatient, but because I have nothing better to do.

I make tea, we sit and drink, and still he says nothing.

When he finishes his cup, I look alert, because I know now he's going to say whatever he came to say.

"It took some time, but I finally found some transportation. I have everything in place for you to leave Drommende."

It wasn't what I expected to hear, and I don't much care for the authoritative note in his voice, either. "I don't have any travel plans."

"You're getting out of here. It's dangerous. You're the only human left now."

"The only human left." I look at him. "What about you?"

"If you know what's good for you, you'll pack up and leave while you have a chance."

"Why should I want to leave?"

"Your life is in danger."

"No one knows I'm here, except you. I go days without seeing another soul." Sometimes I'm not even sure I exist.

"I can't explain more," he says grimly. "I went to a lot of trouble for you, Dresden. Get your bags. I'll see you in the truck myself." He takes my keys and I jerk them away from him.

"How dare you? You can't tell me what to do. I've waited here for you, for months." There's a sob in my voice, but I don't care. "If I go to... wherever you tell me... are you going, too?"

"No. I don't intend that we should ever see each other again."

"Get out of here." I fling the keys at his head and he ducks, looking surprised. "Just go away. Don't ever come back."

I realize why I'm so angry. I really thought from the moment he showed up that he would reconcile with me. I'm ashamed of myself. I can feel the heat rising in my face.

He looks at me with tenderness, despite my outburst. "Don't you know everything I do is for you?" he asks. "Every thought. Every motive." His voice drops to a whisper. "For Dresden."

What a line. I lift my hands to my face. "Please, just go away," I whisper.

I feel his hands over mine. How did he come so close? I didn't hear his footsteps on the floor. "I'm going," he said. In the wake of his touch I feel a laceration, and gasp.

I open my eyes and look at my wrists and there's marks on them, as though I've been clawed by an animal.

Gabriel is no longer in the room.

Labels: excerpt

Paintbrushes

Labels: Texas

I had a bad time of it last night. Going on two weeks now, I haven't felt right. I think though I don't talk about it that I haven't been right since I found out about Mrs. Mark.

Lately I have been awakened in the middle of the night by Jonah's frights. I have to turn on the lights to check on him, and this normally wakes me up thoroughly. I can't not check on him because the thought that he might have hurt himself keeps me awake. Last night he was on the perch and the other two were on the floor, looking frightened. Why's my bird have to be such a pain in the ass? Why do I love him almost more than any other living thing?

And I don't dream in my sleep so much as think, and it's never of anything calming: either of an error in one of my projects, or something just gruesome.

I was getting seriously annoyed with my day-- hungry, bored, Summer Party not open, too much time on the Internet, just generally nothing to make my day happy at all. However, I am now at Summer Party, the sun is shining, and now I'm not feeling so bad at all.

I spent all last evening working on my kimono. I hope sincerely that cutting out the pattern pieces is the hardest part. These were cumbersome and huge, and bending on the floor is so tiring. Tonight I'm going to sew the main pieces together, do as much as I can. I plan to have this done by Friday, and certainly in time for Anime Matsuri, if I choose to wear it.

Sewing again brought back so many wonderful memories from college: crouching on that concrete floor for hours on end sewing medieval gowns. Some aches and pains are so sweet. In fact, some of the fabric I'm using I bought in college. Keeping it around for years really paid off.

I totally love violets right now, and the thought of a violets kimono was what pushed me to make one, even though it will take every spare minute this week. My kimono will be a silken violets print with green gingham obi and golden cord, all things I had at home, even the interfacing, and it all goes perfectly together.

My birthday was wonderful, and these are only some of the features:
1. Birthday weekend with my family
2. Co-workers took me out for Indian food
3. Bonsai from a friend
4. Japanese tea table and tea set from Nathan
5. Meals, Thai House; Little Katana; Pho 95
6. I drank a whole glass of absinthe, wonderful time with friends
7. Nathan is just the best.

If I can meet my advancing years with this much enthusiasm, I have a lot to look forward to.

I miss some things about the past so much, but the best things were the things I made myself. That's what this summer is about for me, taking back the beauty of past memories and combining it with abilities I didn't have then.

Delphinia leaves Gauvain and Oskar staring resentfully at each other.

Distraught, Delphinia listens anxiously for word of Gauvain till she is lulled into a semi-conscious state. It is in this state she travels to Oriente's room.

Delphinia steps into Oriente's room, drawn by Oriente's "presence." She dares to take her diary from the room and read it in secret.

However, Beatrice interrupts with unsettling news. Adelia is to arrive within days. As soon as she is able, Delphinia requests an interview with the Markgraf, but Gervaise tells her he has left on an unexpected journey.

Delphinia is filled with anxiety as shadows gather and a storm builds. Unanswered questions leave her restless. Feeling afraid at all kinds of sounds without her room, she secures the door and lights a candle, determined to soothe away her terror by reading Oriente's diary

Oriente recalls her earliest childhood days and Oskar, the boy charged with pushing her wheelchair. Circumstances beyond her understanding separate them, and Oriente becomes lost to the world. She isolates herself in a secret world. When Oriente is a teenager Oskar appears again, and her childhood obsession with him separates. He is entranced with her and refuses to be apart from her, thwarting convention to embrace her.

Life seems more and more finite to me. Even the very greatest humans will die, and it has always been so.

I look at all I have done in my life and I see a great volume of unfinished work-- countless half-finished stories and projects, some finished, needing refinement-- nothing great or even close to great.

Shelley was scarcely older than me when he died, but he left his marks, and still people muse over and delight in his work.

I feel that I am nothing. How can I claim that anything I have done is worthwhile? That the work for which I feel such passion is noteworthy? It still needs so much more, and I try and toil, and still it needs so much more.

Personal relationships and acts of kindness be damned. It's my writing I want to leave as legacy. I have always known that I will know when I have done all I ought. I feel now that I have not even started the work, not even left enough behind so that others would marvel at my work should I die and say, She might have been truly great.

I feel there is so much more to do. I feel so impatient to get things underway, but I scarcely know how. I am so excruciatingly aware of all I don't know, of my shortcomings. And there is the inescapable fear probing me that one day I will come to my termination, and not have realized everything I planned.

There are a thousand little things persuading me to give up my dreams, a hundred thousand pulls and distractions that make me forget, weaknesses in my character I will scarcely acknowledge. They frighten me. I sometimes feel life itself is set against me, and that it is impossible in this society to achieve artistic greatness.

The Romantic and scientific are so much both with me. No wonder my mind is a confused muddle. It seems the two can never stand together-- well, then, I am a walking war, and for the most part it does seem this way.

Like Shelley I am inspired by singular and absurd passions and seemingly doomed to a life of antisocial quasi-dissatisfaction, but there is this reasonable side I cannot totally deny, and to which I more and more cling, believing it will be my salvation, my claim to sanity and my vehicle to output the creative works that my very lifestyle seems aimed to discourage.

Do I feel I have no control over my life? It is absurd to say, so I never say it, the lowest, weakest complaint that well-educated, I have been put on the conveyor belt of life and altered at the appropriate stations, to output for a company, for capitalism and for the overall good of our country. What a weak, complaining thing to say when I am a free woman of strong constitution. Yet though I am creative I cannot think of another way to adequately support myself.

Thus comes this scientific side, this love of order, schedule and routine, this unremitting demand for perfection in all of my acts, that I believe will be the very tool to develop my humanities. How else will I ever write a novel, study literature properly, or find time to develop my creative world? The floor must be vacuumed. There's dishes in the sink. These are dangers to my time which can be easily eliminated with order and method and, if conducted at the proper time, may make me feel even more creative when the work is done.

Order and method. Benjamin Franklin and Percy Bysshe Shelley both in me. And for myself, good at many things, perhaps great at nothing. I never know if I should fight or concede to this analysis.

Snow in Fairfield, Texas.

Ethereal, otherworldly-- snow on green grass, on flowers, laden on leafy trees. I've seen snow, but not very much of it, and never in spring.

Somehow, it made me feel that I'm not too late for all the things I've loved and lost along the way, to find my true path.

The snow didn't come at Christmas, or in February. It came in April, even more beautiful on green than it would have been on gray. It is not so bad to come late. It's better late than never, and perhaps better than sooner.

I am not going to worry about other people anymore. I am going to venture farther into this mysterious forest of myself, because I will never find anything there that will harm or betray me.

I will strive continually to be true to myself.

I have finished The History of Emily Montague, and find myself at a loss as to what I should read next. It will be hard to top that work, which despite holding every device and convention intolerable to modern critics, held my interest throughout.

I had The Nocturnal Minstrel in mind but feel I should try a new author. I have some great gothic fiction resources I hope to consult this weekend. For now, I am still reading Mrs. Shelley, P.B.S.'s letters, and of course, his poems.

I love the eighteenth century for its attention to reason, self-awareness and a growing Romanticism which blossoms in the Shelleys. I am not willing to advance to the nineteenth century just yet. I want to study the gothic and epistolary novels as I continue to work on The Soul of the Rose.

There were some things I read in E.M. that I want to quote, but eReader doesn't allow text selection, so I will have to find time to do it later.

Also much with me have been my beloved Helen and Anne, two idealists: one real, one not, whose ideals follow me so consistently throughout my life that it is very hard to believe I do not know them, or even that I am not one of them. I feel I have read their stories so recently it isn't time for a revisit, yet I want to keep close to their stories all my life, reading them many times over.

I found this article today about finding a quiet center in nature.