. here . As time allows, I will make photo stories, but I want to take my time, since I am in the middle of many things right now.
Tonight is the night of the vampire.
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Right now we are on Route 66 at a restored motor inn called the Blue Swallow. The moon is almost completely full and glowing more brightly by the moment. Next door the Economy Inn is completely abandoned. A high wall surrounds the pool, which must be drained. The sky looks like a painting, pink and blue clouds surreal, and in the distance dark clouds hover over Tucumcari Mountain. It doesn't seem quite real that I am here, experiencing the real thing after dreaming for so long. The other guests like to just sit on the lawn furniture outside their rooms and enjoy the evening, and we are at the picnic tables, next to a barbeque grille and a set of yellow plastic picnic chairs and stumps where the table top used to be. I have been on and off Route 66 for the better part of a week, and I am leaving it behind. Spoiled girl, all I feel is disappointed it is almost over. But there will be pictures.
We have visited several bookstores on our journey and just came home on threat of rain from the Crave coffee shop. We spent the longest time poring over our finds to the sound of thunder and sight of darkening sky. However I brought several books with me, also. The Route 66 Cookbook , Marian Clark, which I have been using as a guidebook to find unique places. Indian Arts of the Southwest , Susanne and Jake Page, information on local reservations and the crafts particular tribes create. Story Structure Architect , Victoria Schmidt, as I revise my stories. Falcon's Haunt , Carol Warburton, a gothic novel set in historical Mexico. I always like to read a novel related to my vacation locale, and this was my closest find. I did however finish The Turquoise Mask, by Phyllis Whitney, last summer, which described Albuquerque and the surrounding countryside vividly. From Collected Works , Santa Fe: A Taste of Enchantment: Treasured Recipes from the Junior League of Albuquerque . It...
I am revising my goals slightly and adding a new one. I have been thinking about this one for a few days and decided I am ready to try it. I also have some others in mind, but I don't think I am ready for them yet. This is something I'm taking seriously, and if I break my resolution it's quite deflating. My new goal is to go to bed on time. That's different for different days. Some nights we may stay out late. But if we're home, I want to go to bed on time every night. It will have such a great effect on my health. I know that from experience.
Last night I dreamed I found a great deal of postcards that were written by my aunt in an antique shop. I thought that they must be there because there had been an estate sale after my grandparents had sold their home years ago. I guessed that they had been written to them from my aunt. I purchased the post cards, feeling I must have them, and felt anxious to go back to the antique shop, because there must be some more of my grandmother's things there.
We are resting after our day's drive to Amarillo. Today we stopped at an antique store in Quanah and later a coffee shop in Childress. I found five sewing patterns: a Gunne Sax wedding gown and bridesmaids' gowns, a Gunne Sax blouse and skirt, a secretary dress with variations, a sweater set variety and a Western blazer with puffed sleeves - which I would not normally have considered but the cut of it is quite innocent and sweet. I also got a porcelain powder ball with a yellow rose which looked just right for my dresser top. I think when I get home I am going to change its look to the perfume bottles on a mirror top, especially as I start collecting perfumes from the 1970's and 1980's (I think the dilapidation of the scent is romantic, but it is never a good idea to wear old fragrances due to the chemical decomposition). I am a little stressed that the Internet in our hotel is not working. Thus this post may be delayed. I have not reserved our hotel room in Santa...
Right now I feel so so mad about little things. I'm mad because I have to go to the salon and get my hair fixed even though I told her I wanted my bangs shorter, and I have so much else I need to do anyway. I should have been assertive about both the length and the bangs. I was trying to be agreeable and that is really so stupid. I'm mad because the iPhone crashes out of things randomly, doesn't post some of my blog pics and formats some of my posts wrong, so I cannot really express myself creatively through my blogs without fear of it being garbled or lost. I hate it, and I hate that it auto-completes so badly, and I hate the tiny keyboard and the apps and iTunes and everything, all of it. It's for common people. I want my Treo back. I want my fringe back. I hate the modern world. I hate layers and bangs swept to the side. I do not want to be like everyone else. I am not a hen that needs to hang with the group and do what they do. I am so tired of people assuming that...
Honestly I question if I should be in Fort Worth or even Texas. I don't think I will ever find kindred spirits here. And I am so tired of other people's conformist attitudes. I know I am mostly mad now about the second man to trespass on my land and act like it was more his than mine. But I have been thinking about it for a couple of weeks now. Who would I be if I lived elsewhere and could branch out? I admit I hate reactions to my differentness so much that I hide myself, but the logical side of it is I have already tried, it is not worth it to try to get others to accept me for myself. The only situations are when they have to live with me on a regular basis, like at work, and they just have no reaction to me after a while. What if I cast a circle in the middle of the field in broad daylight? Do I really think someone else will start shouting at me or worse? Yes, I really do. It is not paranoia but a logical conclusion from the characters I have picked up on. So should I do i...
Yesterday I had an encounter with another ignorant local. As usual these yodels come right up on the land and mention how they really wanted to buy it, as though that alone gives them some right to it, though curiously the house lay untouched on the market for at least a year and while overpriced, it was not that difficult to get the sellers to lower the price, even dealing with richies like ourselves. This man seemed indignant about the fact that we had bought this property and had no animals on it. He wanted to lease our land, a no, and then to sell us horses. I detest horses, really. Everyone around us is a freak for them and I don't understand them, I don't understand this culture. Really it has me asking some quite upheaving questions lately. Sigh, more later.
My goal is to finish my Indian Arts book by next Friday. To be honest as has been with many books lately I get so spun off and tangential about it I don't know if I will ever get through what is only about 80 pages with lots of pictures. The small bits I pick up about religion and history of the Southwest tribes keeping expanding and circling around my mind. I am at the bottom of a ladder again, and I am feeling like I know nothing, which I think is the dark side of Beginner's Mind. I start looking on Flickr, I see something else, I become transfixed by kinds of beauty I never before saw or imagined. To be honest that summarizes most of what I have been feeling here. I wish, well, I wish I could have known what it is like to be an Indian in the Southwest, to experience that crossover of tradition and the modern world. It sounds like life there is very, very low tech. When I consider the simplicity at the heart of these traditions it blows my mind and makes me feel like I am doi...
There is always the possibility that if I'm too shy to do what I want to in this life, that I can do it in the next one. So I could put my dreams and visions of personal confession and self-expression on hold and do the things I'm supposed to do, like the laundry. But even though I will live again, I will never be this person again, and I feel like I should make the effort to do everything that occurs to me. Maybe I was meant to do some of the things Sonya Tolstoy did in her self-photography in the nineteenth century. Now Goddess knows taking pictures of myself gets mighty old mighty fast. See, it already did. But I needed to see myself in summer. This is my favorite time of year. I almost hate it while it's happening because I know it's going to end. The cicadas buzz and the trees sway and all the living things are begging for mercy from the relentless heat. I hate it for not lasting forever. And I got my hair cut, so I wanted to commemorate that too.
I have spent the evening perusing my favorite novel of old, searching out its secrets, looking for the ways. As I revise Winter Light I feel the urgency to shape it now. I don't know if I should shape it in subtle shades with multiple drafts, or give it a large overhaul. I guess I should change whatever it occurs to me to change at least. Looking at the novel gave me confidence though. That favorite story is not the story I want to tell at all, but I think I can tell mine as well. The romance is what was popular in the mid-1990's, with lots of lavish costume, lingerie, candlelit baths, also a subplot of smuggling and intrigue which I find so dull I can't even read the book start to finish. Romance and adventure go together like peanut butter and bananas, yum to one, yuck to the other, but I know some people like both. Hey, it's fine. If peanut butter is romance, then gothic castles are honey. That's my preferred snack. And the more I work Winter Light, ...
I am so tired, so tired, of eating, sleeping. I think of Hemingway's Old Man, who was so tired of living that he no longer ate. My body is hungry, but my soul is not, it is a not wanting that is not contentment. To want is to live. I am writing every day. I am filling in passages of Winter Light I did not feel like writing years ago. I left empty spaces. Well, creativity and discipline do not always go hand in hand, and I can forgive her for leaving me the hard stuff to write when I remember how glorious it felt to stay late in my room with a little light burning, with as little understanding of the science studies that fill my days as now, writing the dramatic scenes that delineated Winter Light. I am writing a little every day as I revise. Perhaps half a page. I have found little interesting reading lately. I have tried many things, but nothing occupies me for long. I feel some small passion for The Mysteries of Udolpho, but nothing else worth mentioning. I tried earlier this wee...
Why am I always asleep? I can't seem to penetrate this fog. Everything is so quiet and uneventful all the time. The calm after the storm. I am just trying to do the right things, but I can't break into a creative mind, and I feel half-satisfied. At work everything is quiet and I just feel like I am waiting. It has all become a waiting room. So cold and brightly lit and quiet.