Solstice '11

[greygirlbeast]

Outside, it's 80F and feels like 81F. Inside, 80F. Balance, kiddos.

The last thing I recall saying before I fell asleep this morning is, "Only a dyke would have a crush on Charlie Brown." This is, in fact, a reference to Peppermint Patty. Let's just say I was very tired. Though, that's often when I speak the truth.

This morning, I dreamed I was in some weird sequel to Lovecraft's "The Colour Out of Space." Pretty much all detail is lost to me, but I can assure you it was not the least bit pleasant. The sense of uncleanliness, that it was unsafe to touch, drink, or eat anything, or even to breathe. It reminds me how "The Colour Out of Space" is a perfect parable for environmental degradation.

Yesterday was spent editing Confessions of a Five-Chambered Heart and the first four chapters Blood Oranges, finding as many errors in the latter as possible and correcting them. This afternoon, it goes to my agent. Booya. I now know that I'll write an introduction for Confessions of a Five-Chambered Heart called "Sexing the Weird." I'm going to ask another author to write an afterword, and I hope to include a lot of illustrations by Vince Locke

Couldn't sleep last night. When I can't sleep, neither can Spooky. So our insomnias align. She read me the first three sections of William Burroughs' Junky (which I've not read since the summer of 1994). Then she turned off the light, about 4:30 ayem. The sky had grown very bright, there on that shortest darkness of the year. I sat at the kitchen table eating leftover pasta salad and watching the dawn. Finally, the pills kicked in, and I crawled away to bed and sleep.

Happy birthday, faustfatale!

Our thanks to Stephen Lubold for the latest care package: Brown Bird's EP "The Sound of Ghosts," and three books: Ransom Riggs' Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children and the first two volumes of Mike Raicht and Brian Smith's amazing The Stuff of Legend. As it happens, he also won yesterday's ARC auction.

Good Rifting and rping last night. Thanks to everyone! The guild grows.

And yes, it's Soltice, Midsummer, Lithia, Litha. It is a day that Kathryn and I observe. If you do likewise, I wish you a happy Litha. I won't say blessed. Not sure I believe much in blessings, and even if I did, I would be unable to bestow them. The wheel turns. The shortest night, tonight.

We'll go to this evening to observe the day. We've talked about staying at the shore all night, maybe watching the sunrise over Narragansett Bay. But first I have a lot of work to do.

Comments, kittens!

Traveling the Circumference,
Aunt Beast

Comments

[awdrey-gore.livejournal.com]

In the throes of addiction and self-destruction, I had no interest in anyone who understood me. When you hate yourself and look into a book and realize it is a mirror of sorts, it's all too easy, for me at least, to just say, "Burroughs sucks."

[greygirlbeast.livejournal.com]

In the throes of addiction and self-destruction, I had no interest in anyone who understood me. When you hate yourself and look into a book and realize it is a mirror of sorts, it's all too easy, for me at least, to just say, "Burroughs sucks."

Again, as someone living with addiction, self-hatred, and self-destructive habits, I see such things and at least know I'm not alone (for the little comfort that offers). Denial is a profitless game.

Also, doesn't my own work fall into these categories?

[awdrey-gore.livejournal.com]

Denial is a profitless game.

Indeed. Denying truth as it applied to me was a game I played for about 15 years. Demonization of that which could have shown my own nature to me was just second nature. I remember watching Requiem for a Dream and just ranting about how much I hated it, how terrible it was, what a piece of shit the whole movie was. It was really was just being one who protested too much.

Edited to answer your question: Your work does and doesn't, and of course that is just my personal reaction. My favorites of your works are Alabaster and Daughter of Hounds. There are characters like Soldier who pinged my "Look away!" meter before I became more or less sober, but the whole of the books were not necessarily a look at self-destruction and addiction. I focused on Emmy's and Dancy's youth and bravery in the face of evil, which may be a distillation of my approach to the world when I was an addict. Those books satisfied my desperate search for signs that the good in the world could prevail, as I looked at my life in very black and white terms. I could lose myself in the plots without too much self-consciousness of the destruction and waste I was inflicting on myself. Murder of Angels and Silk were different for me. In those works I could feel the hot shame of who I was, and shame is powerful in how it distorts my thinking.

I was sober when I read The Red Tree and I didn't feel the need to look away. But when I was in the hole, there was a sickening draw to your works that I cannot wholly explain, and there really is no accounting for the ways people whose brains are chemically fucked justify themselves. It's different now, but when I first read Candles for Elizabeth and Silk I was drawn to your writing despite my discomfort, but in other books there was also enough of a speculative, other-worldly nature that I could take the self-destruction and see it through a filter. I will say that I have not re-read those books, but like Burroughs and Lydia Lunch and Jim Carroll and Algren, I may give them another look now that I can see myself better. Give me another two years in therapy and all of this may make sense.

Oh man, I recall reading reading Hubert Selby right about the time I was truly becoming a secret addict and not-so-secret drunk, when I was in my teens, and to this day I am very shaky about ever trying to read him again. Again, analyzing the chemically confused brain and the walls addicts build or don't build may be an example of denial being a profitless game, but there you go. Seeing myself and my motivations for many years was something I avoided.

[greygirlbeast.livejournal.com]

Interesting. Thank you for such a thoughtful response.