A Reprise

As usually happens, I can't get through three pages of literature without being taken by the need to discuss it for the remainder of my lunch. I have finally got "The Vampyre" by Polidori, which is only 167 pages on my Treo, and so can't possibly be more than 30 in fact. This story was written on that sojourn in Italy of the Shelleys and their friends, when they had a gothic story-writing competition. Mary Shelley won, without question, but also written was The Vampyre, the earliest fiction of its kind I know, by John Polidori. Cameos thus far have included the "magnificent" Byron and Shelley, which amuses me muchly since they were both of the party-- reminds me of writing stories with my friends and including one another in them. That is so much, and imagining that story-writing party in Italy with this added amusement is so pleasant. It is hard for me to imagine that they existed in the same world I do.

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 zil...

I can't believe I forgot my phone today. I was running late, so I couldn't go back upstairs to get it. Anyway, last night and this morning I did much of what I have been doing on my lunch break on the computer. It was exhausting-- and I think my perverse plots must have affected my dreams, too. But I am very satisfied with what I have been doing lately. I am a little troubled by my server for Winter Light. For some reason, uploading by FTP is sometimes impossible; sometimes it is unavailable to send emails from my desktop-- which makes it almost worthless. I don't understand why I'm having this trouble with GoDaddy, too. Maybe this is a cursed domain name. Anyway, that has made it impossible to re-upload a lot of things since I made the switch-- like Lindsey's site. At lunch today I am doing something a little different. We ran out of lunch meat yesterday, so this is the perfect time to eat out. I will try the wireless at Sugar Baby's BBQ, which will probably be...

I'm taking a moment of reverie at Starbucks in Ennis. I'm on the way to spend the night with Mom. I feel very emotional and optimistic, as though I'm making a new beginning. Though winter is the season of death, I feel somehow in autumn as though I am starting something. I am entering a time when I am more clear on who I am and what I must do. I feel more focused about my writing, especially my reading and research. I have books I want to read, ideas and concepts to explore, and in November, another novel to write. I feel so alive.

Friday Originally uploaded by ladyhildegarde . I'm so glad my little Treo is home (more so that the person using it is home). Chibi maru and I are celebrating this morning. Want some tea?

I try to determine what it means to me, Victorian mourning. I am reading a collection of articles that take my breath away with the extravagance and grace once given to the dead. It is understandable that in a society where there was so much death, that people must invent customs to make it less fearsome. I long in my very soul for such a society to exist now. It's not the funerals I'm wanting. I don't know what it is.