A Reprise

This is what I really want to do this summer, photograph historical cemeteries wherever I go. The feeling I get in cemeteries is like nothing else, and I really feel like myself there. I feel like I need to be there, and I always feel welcomed, and like I am visiting a place that other people seldom go, and I do feel a loneliness and a welcoming presence there. I have felt that way since I started doing it in middle school. I feel like in historical cemeteries that I do connect with people from the past in a personal way. For some reason a few weeks ago I just really wanted to start visiting and photographing cemeteries again, and I have taken hundreds of photographs since then. I don't edit and put things up very quickly, but the personal experiences of solace and history I have there are important to me.

Today I was overwhelmed with the need to work on my story (stories?), my fantasy world. There are so many options. There are two complete novels in existence. One half-finished, which is the prequel, and then the Cassandra story I've written sporadically on this blog as a postlude story. So that was going to be a five book series. Now that I'm reading Story Structure Architect I don't know if I need to combine these stories into parallels. Now that I'm really thinking about where the core energy and interest lies, it means I'm going to have to let go of some of the things about the stories, which is really painful. I really like the extensive flashbacks and the extra characters, but these stories are so unfocused and just whatever I like is thrown in there. I have to focus myself on the energies and not get caught up in the surface appeals. I made myself sit here for an hour and work on this pretty cold after probably a year of no editing or structure study....

The rain slammed hard against the thick, old window panes of my aunt's house. It was the kind of torrential storm that made the indoors seem safe, sheltering and warm. Then a crack of lightning illuminated a thin, white figure standing against the side of my neighbor's home. A tall, spindly figure soaked through. A thin, bare white arm plastered against the window pane. I rose to my feet and stared, my face to the glass as I observed the flailing arm. I ran to the kitchen. "Aunt Mary," I said. "There's a girl outside in the rain. I want to take her something." Aunt Mary turned from her preparations at the stove. "Don't fool with that girl," she said. "That's Shirley. She doesn't want anything from you. Everyone feels sorry for Shirley. But you have to leave Shirley alone." "She's trying to get into that house. They won't let her in." My voice had risen in disbelief. "Do you know why sh...

I dreamed last night that I really ought to write in my journal. I don't know if I should relate the actual dream, or if I should relate anything at all. Everything around me is so unformed and undecided. I struggle every moment for grounding. It is impossible to say just what I mean (T.S. Eliot says ;) ) !! Not that my life is in crisis, but this is an interior struggle. I feel like my mind is ascending again, that some old things are falling away, that I'm realizing things. I realize as I write this that I'm in the last two weeks of Death. What I'm describing is actually my best understanding of the Death card (arcanum? sephirab?). Things are dying, things are falling away to be replaced with newness. Renewal is occurring, but I'm in the darkest part. I feel everything I touch is crumbling. Every idea I knock on is hollow. And the ones that aren't require the same thing. It's the same story. Giving up more of myself, admitting my personality is an illusi...