A Reprise

I am longing for gothic beauty. I desire a more gothic look and wish to grow my hair long. I'm going to stop visiting Regis for a long time till everything is all grown out, then I'm going to have my layers evened out and dye my hair black again. I want it black again. I miss the shine it created. I also want to paint my nails white, but every night I am too tired or lazy. I hope to accomplish it this weekend. I am too sad that I don't presently have a web home for this much-beloved journal which will soon celebrate its third anniversary. But when I get my web host transferred, I will have a home, and I plan to improve the look of the page, which I know is very Spartan. But of course the whole point of this journal is its low maintenance: ideally everything would be controlled through my phone, but that is not entirely possible. Three years does not seem like a long enough time to encompass all the things I have done. I am so matured since I left Bethyl. It's the first

Winter light's address has changed. You can now find this journal at http://winter-light.net/ .

Yves Originally uploaded by ladyhildegarde . I named my ivy this morning. What a tool I have become. Her name is Yves, in honor of the Yves Rocher site I visit every day, which is ambiguously off-task. Yves is a man's name, I know. I am melting a buttercream tart in my pot this morning. It is simply the best scent. Today is Thursday, special day-- chocolate raspberry coffee in the trellis room.

I could make Demeter scents for each of my stories. They each have very specific scents. Maybe not buy these, but I could at least pretend. I am at a loss for things to do, so I am going to play this game. I realized if I wore Dust and Honey together, I would have The Beekeeper. That's how I thought of this. The Shrine Dandelion Strawberries Dust (that is in all my stories) Sun-warmed marble Ivy The Siren Beach Driftwood Salt Mahogany The homey pie scents The Glass House Dust Greenhouse Tarnish Paint Glue Varnish Leather Mahogany (She restores art) Violet Rose Funeral Absinthe Fireplace Pipe smoke Mesquite Holy Water I'm sure I'm missing something, but there's a lot that happens in the story. After ten drafts, there ought to be. This novel will become the center of my existence in November, at the end of which I will send it to a publisher.

Tonight I'm going to be a little more serious. I have been lazing around the past two evenings, forgetting the goals I made, and that I have some things due at the end of this month. I am starting a more intense reading system for myself. I realized I will never read these books if I don't make goals. This month I will complete Hamlet and The Tempest. I have loved both for so long, but have never read them straight through. Next month, my goal is to complete The Siren. That shouldn't be hard considering the story is already wrapping up and I've decided on an ending, bittersweet, in the tradition of Peter S. Beagle. I have some very lofty goals next year. I am going to complete Finnegans Wake and understand it. I am doing this for myself, not to say I did. I have already seen a lot of beauty in the text and the Modernists sometimes transfix me in ways the Romantics never could. I dreamed of that book last night. I dreamed that after the first few pages it was absolutel

To sleep, perchance to dream, ay there's the rub, For in that sleep of death what dreams may come When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause; William Shakespeare, Hamlet

For once, I have very specific things in mind for my new site. I know just what I want and how I want to do it, but it is not coming together like I hoped, and I am disappointed about this. There are a few problems. This site must employ RSS feeds, podcasting and vodcasting, a blog with picture upload, and preferably an associated photo gallery. I want it to be completely portable, so that one can subscribe to any or all elements through an external program. Wordpress can do this. I have Wordpress on Winter-light.net, but I must set it up myself on mont.cc. There are two problems: they are external/presentation issues, but unless they feel right to me I positively cannot proceed. That is because if I make a change, all the work I will have done will have to be redone. The first problem is URL. I have those two domain names. For reasons long to explain it would be far easier to do this on winter-light.net, but The Garden of Virtues doesn't sound anything like Winter Light. I don'