Skip to main content

My old stories

I can't describe how it makes me feel when I look at my old stories. Everything is different-- everything is the same. As I read them, I can remember how I felt when I wrote them-- almost every sitting. I can see their potential-- how I have grown since then. More than anything, I feel my insular world draw around me again. I feel like my characters have gone on living as I have gone on living.

I have plans to put them online within the next year-- slowly. An abandoned garden. It seems appropriate, since they have gone on living unchecked while I abandoned them. I feel if I put them online, that will be a place for them. They will go on living there; they will be real. I believe in their reality more than one might think.

When I wrote "go on" I thought of "My heart will go on" and I remembered I am bidding on a lot of three dresses for Rose. Less than two hours, no competition, but surely someone has a snipe set on this auction. The minimum bid is already a zillion dollars, but her dresses are the most valuable of any. If I lose, I am definitely buying the Grace Kelly set for Dresden. She looks really, really cute in 1960's clothes.

But I don't want to lose. Those are exactly the dresses I want! The pin-striped boarding suit, the green lace tea gown, the yellow deck dress.

Popular posts from this blog

The secret to a happy home

I finished Marion Harland's guide tonight and I wonder ceaselessly at two things. 1. She is so down on America! Even more than I am. She complains of things in which I am so well-steeped I could not see them for what they were. In particular, American style and cookery. It is true that our food, which we count as so much more generous in portion than the overseas counterpart, is as coarse and indecorous as it is plentiful, but as an American woman I cast up my hands and declare I would rather spend my time on something else. She makes an interesting point about American women's fashions. In France women wear what looks good on them, and in America women wears what comes off the manufacturing line in the latest style. It is very conformist, and I have to admit I feel it in myself, for I would be embarrassed to wear something that is "out" even if it flattered me better. 2. Harland's other point I feel clearly from last night's experiences. I looked in my journ...
more &

Sprouts

Sprouts Originally uploaded by ladyhildegarde . I am getting sprouts. Hopefully they are carnations. It is such a beautiful spring day. It's good I'm taking the chance to come outside: I have craved a moment to reflect on something beautiful.
more &

Blanche, a re-telling of Snow White

I began this story after reading a collection of short stories by Angela Carter. “Snow White” has always been a favorite tale of mine and I have placed this re-telling in nineteenth-century rural Louisiana. Near Vacherie, Louisiana, there are not only swamps but also old beautiful plantations. Some of them are restored but others are abandoned and ruined. The places I have seen captured my imagination and I combined them with my impression of Snow White as an object of envy and lust. My heroine Blanche is a hard-working girl who longs to be rich and to live in New Orleans, where her father was born. She is threatened constantly by the attention of the rustics who live around her. Her stepmother beats her when she finds Blanche in Jean-Jacques’ arms. When Blanche runs away from home she is beguiled by Philipe de la Roche, who persuades her to live in New Orleans in a fancy house with seven women. Blanche does not realize that the women are prostitutes. The farmer Jean-Jacques, who love...
more &