A Reprise

This evening I thought a great deal of the dreaming state, daydreaming or visualizing, and writing, and how closely connected they are. Writing is not nor ever will be for me a mechanical cranking-out of well-executed words, phrases or passages designed to optimally carry a concept. It is a dream-state where I live vividly. It seems like I could write continuously, living within that writing, for a lifetime. Likewise when I pick up a thread again I am returning to that place, and time has frozen since I left. Writing is for me supernatural. It is a way or returning to the past or jumping into the future, a dreamscape of my past or future, and most often my present. I can stop or manipulate time. I can return to a story I began ten years ago, opening a door upon myself closed ten years hence. When I reflect upon my past, my dreamscapes are every bit as much a part of it as what I experienced in fact. Without them and my writing to understand and express myself, I can't live.

I have just found an old journal where I recorded a few of my dreams six and four years ago. Here are some fragments. I lost my shoes in the mud, then they floated out into the water. I kept fearing that they would sink, but the other person reassured me they'd float. There were lots of lost shoes: sandals and flip flops, floating over the pond. I had to climb onto a raft to retrieve mine. His car was pulling a trailer, and it was going out of control. I was really mad at him. Both of us were in the trailer. No one was in the cab. I was running toward a clear plain in a canyon, and I realized the side jutted up really high, so I started running back toward the other side, because I was afraid this huge wall would fall down on me. The other side of the plain was rocky, muddy and difficult to run through. This was like the old land in New Waverly. A glass steepe with all of these pretty shoes, but all I wanted were shoes that would fit my feet. I said I usually got them at Wal-mart.

I completed Villette the day before last. I was intrigued and immersed, but I left off with a dissatisfied feeling. I concluded that mid-century novels are not to my taste right now. They are too much about a suffering creature, her tormentors, and her triumph through perfect virtue.  Spaniels were popular dogs at the time. There was one in Villette , actually, that was positioned like a female rival, and I know women's hairstyles popular during that time mimicked the spaniel's ears.  Caleb Williams , written by William Godwin, father of Mary Shelley, is more interesting to me, written in the voice of the early century, preoccupied with ideas like those of other early Romantic writings. The story is about a fame-seeker and popular curiosity. It relates interestingly to modern media.

Delphinia moved past them, her fingers clutching the handle of her cane with deep consternation. She felt herself adrift as before, the night in transit with Adelia, when she had sought the peace of nature and dreamed fervently, and wakened to find her friend abdicated. She threw herself near the river, on soft green grass amid snowy drifts of edelweiss. "There is no one," she whispered, behind her closed eyes reflecting on the self-serving expression of Oskar, the cold looks of Gauvain, Adelia's crafty smile, and Beatrice's condemnation. She turned in a fever with her face to the grass, inhaling soil, tasting dew. A fragrance rose in her nostrils: a soft crush of sound on the grass reached her. Through bleary eyes Delphinia saw a wavering shape blotting out the sun. She blinked away her fevered tears. The shape knelt. "Be still, my sister, my luckless other self. You are not alone." A fairy-like touch alighted on her shoulder. "I love him,"

As summer approaches I think more about projects. Right now I have none, except buying various things and organizing my photography collection. I have felt at a loss about my creative projects, because it seems like as soon as I call something a project, I don't do any more work on it. I haven't found more inspiration for The Summerhouse, my nonlinear fiction, and I have posted very reluctantly in Dark Virtue , my collection of darkly romantic images and text. I have been reading Artful Blogging nearly every day. Having any specific blog would not suit me. Perhaps this is why I don't post in Dark Virtue . There is another blog I have been writing more successfully, " A Fine and Private Place ." This takes the title of a book by Peter S. Beagle. It combines with my idea that a fine and private place is necessarily sober, even dark, like a cemetery. Emphasis on "private." The access is controlled on my more confiding concepts and photos.

Victoria has learned what became of her mother, that she was revered among her people, and she is unimpressed. Her life has been disrupted, haphazard and devoid of security due to her mother's fighting for Romani rights. The man she loves is also a political activist and is recovering from an attempted assassination. All she has ever wanted is stability. She must let go of her preconceptions, learn to live on the edge and accept the discomforts of life. She must make her own life, not expect to fall into a comfortable shell. The thing that bothers her most is the idea of a nomadic life with the Romani. Something key occurs that requires Raclaw to leave his home indefinitely and go into hiding. Victoria follows him in order to take care of his niece. She lives with him in a cave. In her life in Raclaw's household, Victoria has encountered a number of characters. At the beginning she was frightened of even the grocery boy Arsenije. Despite the language barrier she makes friends,

Villette has become more intense. Lucy Snowe has become without her knowledge an active participant in life and in the human passions she has forbidden herself. Unfortunately she has chosen an object we would not have for her, and realizes for him emotions she has repressed too long in herself. The following scene has been my second-favorite in the book, the first being Lucy's older friend relating the story of her tragic Christmas-eve. "I excuse everything," he interrupted; "my mood is so meek, neither rebuff nor, perhaps, insult could ruffle it. You remind me, then, of a young she wild creature, new caught, untamed, viewing with a mixture of fire and fear the first entrance of the breaker-in." Unwarrantable accost!--rash and rude if addressed to a pupil; to a teacher inadmissible. He thought to provoke a warm reply; I had seen him vex the passionate to explosion before now. In me his malice should find no gratification; I sat silent. "You l

<<...>> Sam Houston Park, Huntsville Texas. The distorted glass reflected the view behind me as distinctly as the view beyond it. Nathan is reflected in the edge. I like the way the pitcher stands out from the shadows, and the bowl of glossy fruit. It reminds me of a Dutch painting.

I just bought Brigitte von Messner's book on porcelain doll creation, hoping it would help me with a repair. I feel like I found out just what I needed to know skimming it in Half Price Books, but there are patterns as well that are likely to fit some of her dolls I have, as well as other large dolls, that I want to re-costume. I have found a replacement for my broken doll on eBay, which also happens to be broken. I was daunted about doing this at first, but I think it will be easy. My doll has a broken leg. Even though all of the pieces are present, they will not hold together with any glue I have tried, not even Super Glue. I was really disappointed, because even though this doll is not valuable, her artist is someone whose work I really admire, and I hated that I had destroyed one of his limited pieces. Finding this other doll on eBay recently was sheer luck, and in a sense, I am glad the other doll is broken and I have the chance to salvage them into one. Reading through the bo

Renaissance goose tray, here .

The stories of Texas: The Vampire Nell falls in love with a mysterious drifter, a vampire as well as Southern aristocrat incognito. Devil's Oaks in which a female accountant takes a position in an old, powerful estate still rocking from a recent upheaval and suicide. The Ballad of Mary Ellen Belle and her twin Ben unravel the mystery of a sheltered, elusive girl under the powerful rule of her cruel mother. The Inheritance Madden is not welcomed to the family estate she has inherited, but she fights with every bit of knowledge she can find to possess it. Her adopted brother Reagan, a veritable stranger to her but an expert on cattle, opposes her on every point. The Swindler Katherine devotes her buttoned-down life to preserving the reputation and welfare of her younger debutante sister. Her dislike for a traveling salesman emerges into an unexpected relationship when he focuses his attention exclusively on herself, and she finds herself possessing a very real love for a well-kn

The ramshackle structure was an impressionistic smear in the wind, partially obliterated by wind-burned twists of trees, mottled in patches of white paint clinging and bare, pale clapboards. The pathway was a tangled mess of vines over cracked concrete, morning glories glowing pale purple with blanched green leaves. The structure gave the impression of lacking, leaving a sense of aching, and yet also of abundance, profusion and self-sufficiency. I was only a boy when I first saw this place. I didn't have the nerve to come closer yet, but I knew I would come back when the impression had settled in my mind, and I had thought of what I must do and how.

There is an annex to the cemetery on a hillside facing the road. I left right after taking this picture.

Something is being built near the cemetery.

A picture book with Spanish text.

Signs encourage visitors to linger and listen to the voices of angels.

A cemetery off Trinity Blvd. for murdered young people.