Caitlín R. Kiernan

I've been making myself go to bed at 2 ayem the last two nights (or mornings), and slowly I am catching up on all the sleep I've lost. Still, here it is 1:12 pm, and I'm still groggy. It's cold in Atlanta this afternoon, but we got marvelous thunderstorms yesterday, and the warm will be back tomorrow, so that's not so bad.

Yesterday. Let's see. It was all about getting Sirenia Digest #28 put together. I did the corrections to "Pickman's Other Model" that I marked when we last read through the story on the 18th, but had not yet made. I have a feeling I'm going to have to read over this one one more time before I send it out into the world. Anyway, that took about an hour and a half. Then I snurched HPL's "Pickman's Model" from Wikisource and spent a bit of time making sure the formatting matched HPL's original (there were some discrepencies), because I want Sirenia readers who haven't read "Pickman's Model" to have it on hand. I gathered up some images I want to use in the issue. I wrote the prolegomena, which is mostly about inspiration. So, it's looking like #28 will go out tomorrow. I still have to do the layout today, and I'm waiting on Vince's illustration. Oh, and this issue will also include, for all those new subscribers, one of the older stories, one of my favourites, "The Sphinx's Kiss" (from #14, January 2007). I think I will be very happy with this issue.

Also, yesterday, the contracts for the German-language editions of Threshold and Low Red Moon arrived. Of course, the IRS still hasn't sent me the forms I need to send to my German publisher to prove that, yes, I really am an American citizen (in order to avoid the hefty German taxes). The post also brought a package from Black Phoenix Alchemy Labs, because Spooky had ordered a bottle of their Baghdad for me (amber, saffron, and bergamot, with mandarin, nutmeg, bulgar rose, musk, and sandalwood), plus a bunch of "imps" (and I'm not gonna list them all, but her faves are Zombi and Séance). Baghdad is the new smell of me.

Last night, there was Manhattan-style clam chowder for dinner, followed by a pretty good episode of Torchwood and a very good episode of Angel ("Damage"). I started reading another JVP paper yesterday — "Cranial anatomy of Ennatosaurus tecton (Synapsida: Caseidae) from the Middle Permian of Russia and the evolutionary relationship of the Caseidae" — but didn't finish it.

Another casualty of the March 14th-15th tornadoes, one I have not yet mentioned, was the second of the two trees in Freedom Park that played an important role in a dream I wrote of way back on March 8th, 2006. Somewhere, there's an entry with a photograph of the two trees standing, but the journal's gotten so long, I'll be damned if I can find it. Anyway, one of the two trees was already dead and fell in storms last year. These two oaks were a bit special to me, because of the dream, and because we'd done some magick there, and they were just very fine trees in their own right (which is the most important thing). There's a photo, taken late on Thursday, behind the cut:

( Fallen )

My thanks to furrylittleprob for pointing me to more LJ icons by artist Liz Amini-Holmes.

Yeah. I hear ya, platypus. Where's my damn coffee?

Postscript (2:34 p.m.) — Thanks to cliff52 for pointing out that the photo of the two trees can be found in my March 10th, 2006 journal entry (third photo down).

One of the very good things about keeping journals — both the pen-and-paper sort and this other, virtual sort — is the ability to look back at a given past date in my life, whether it's one year ago or ten years ago, and measure how much I have changed from that time. Or not changed, as the case may be. It's like my personal fossil record, a reckoning of my own psychological evolution, whether gradualistic or of a more punctuated tempo. Yesterday, I came across this paragraph, from my 3/9/06 entry. It was heartening, as I can read these words now, a year later, and not be embarrassed by them, by the sentiment they express, which, if anything, I feel more strongly now than I did a year ago:

I wanted to say thanks to the people who've commented on yesterday's dream entry. Especially mockingbirdgrrl, who wrote, "Your statement, 'Magic is communication. Magic is the one-way communication between any living organism and the cosmos. We speak and the cosmos doesn't listen, but we speak because there's nothing else we can do.' resonates soundly. I kept rereading it, thinking I'd heard that somewhere before. Here it is, from Simon Black's The Book of Frank: 'Because in reality, there is no response to our howling, not here. But that fact is intolerable. The mind invents a response.'" I've never read Simon Black, but yes, exactly. Consciousness cannot help but howl. I know I've been howling my head off for my whole goddamn life. And, so far, the only response beyond wishful thinking has been the beauty and profundity of Nature and Art* that's right here for anyone who'll but open their eyes and see the small fraction that's visible. I know my howling consciousness will always long for something more, some two-way communication, but I'm beginning to accept (in the words of Elizabeth Bear) the apparent truth that "Nobody is coming for you." My dream was fascinating and helpful, but it was only me talking to me, my unconscious and perhaps a Jungian collective attempting to aid my clumsy, fretting conscious mind. Of course, it was also the voice of the "goddess," the Dark Mother and Father and Divine Androgyne, but only because I am a part of the cosmos, as are you and that lightning-struck tree and the crows and everything living and non-living, every molecule and atom and sub-atomic speck and particle and wave...and, well, I think you see where I'm headed with this. Sagan said it best. "Star stuff."

I would add, now, that "Magick is the willful invocation of awe," but I sort of suspect that more recent statement is only a refinement of "Magic is communication. Magic is the one-way communication between any living organism and the cosmos." Also, while I'm on the subject, this bit from the LJ of morganxpage yesterday:

I strongly believe that the subjugation of sexuality is the root of all evil in the world. It causes every complex, it starts every war, it is the only perversion. Sex is the all-pervading force that animates the Universe, to try to bridle it is disgusting. My Gods are Orgasms, we all are orgasms. Really, think about that: you are the fruition of someone's orgasm. Your whole body, your entire personality, everything about you is someone's orgasm. The whole Universe is one big orgasm.

While I would not go so far as to state that the repression of sex is the only perversion or "evil" (personally, I continue to identify wasteful acts as the greatest crimes against Nature), I wholeheartedly agree with the general sentiment being expressed here. As a child, I was raised in some odd twilight, halfway between the Roman Catholic Chrurch and the United Methodist Church. But, either way, there was that constant message, explicit or implicit, that sex was the reason for "the fall" from some imagined grace, the route by which "sin" entered the world, that, indeed, sex was such a vile act that the Xtian saviour had to be born asexually, sort of like a bacterium or a sponge. Only by spontaneous generation could a "pure" man be born. And I say now, all these years later, that one of the lights Neopaganism could, in theory, retsore to humanity is the knowledge that sex — straight, gay, bi, poly, auto, pretty much whatever floats your boat without sinking someone else's — is part of that thing which we would call sacred, magickal, divine. Anyway, just thoughts going round in my head.

Today, I expect to finish "In View of Nothing" for Sirenia Digest #16. Today, I write the last two sections — "08. The Book (II)" and "09. Exit Music (The Gun)" and find THE END. The dream in back of this story has not recurred over the last couple of weeks, and I hope that when I am done with this story, I will be done with the dream and it will be done with me.

Not much to yesterday. A day off. Last night, we watched Paul Rachman's documentary American Hardcore (2006), which was quite fine.

The platypus says it's time the make the doughnuts, and who am I to argue?

*Truthfully, though, Art is merely a subset or expression of Nature.

Dreams this morning that put everything I've ever written to shame, though now only shreds and shards remain. I've been sitting here since...I don't know for sure...10:30 a.m., I suppose. Trying to push it all away. Trying not to remember. Dreamsick. Dazed. Testing this reality, looking for flaws. Though there are never flaws in the dreams, so why should I look for them here?

Yesterday, I wrote 1,598 words on a new sf story for Sirenia Digest #16. The working title is "In View of Nothing," but I think I can do better than that. This is the story I mentioned in the prefacing remarks to Sirenia Digest #15, another go at the white room, the "Laugh Motel," the legless albino. "A Season of Broken Dolls" was a nice try, but it's like looking over my shoulder at the dreams and then only through some distorting filter. Somehow, in "A Season of Broken Dolls," I wrote about the dream without ever actually writing about the dream. Because I do not generally "write out" my dreams. They often have a great influence upon what I write, but I rarely literally write them out (see "Metamorphosis A" for a rare example). That's what I'm trying to do now. So, yesterday I sat and stared at the screen and the keyboard, sipping absinthe and looking for the first few words, which turned out to be:

My breasts ache.

Then it seemed to come with relative ease. But, hours later, when I'd finished the first eight pages and after Spooky read them back to me, none of it felt quite exactly right. Like a word lost on the tip of my tongue. And there is a nagging feeling that I should not be doing this, that this is a sort of exhibitionism that even I would do well to avoid. But I am doing it.

Not much else to be said for yesterday. I thought last night's episode of Battlestar Galactica was brilliant, the best in ages, maybe since the first season. We read more of Mitch Cullin's "A Slight Trick of the Mind" (chapters 13 and 14), and I read Chapter Four of Bones of Contention: Controversies in the Search for Human Origins ("The Taung Child: Acceptance"). Also, I read "Posture and stance of Triceratops: Evidence of digitgrade manus and cantilever vertebral column" (Garstka and Burnham, 1997). I didn't leave the house; I'd rather wait for the warmer weather to return than go back to bundling up for walks. I had a late, rambling conversation with Spooky about the general absence of — and need for — critical thought in Neopaganism and magick. I suspect I have begun making notes for two books that I will never write: The Skeptical Witch and The Rational Witch. And that was yesterday.

These comments yesterday by setsuled:

"I finished reading the new Sirenia Digest last night—I very much enjoyed it. The influence of Bowie's Outside on "A Season of Broken Dolls" is very visible. The voice, and the journal style, reminded me quite a bit of Nathan Adler's diary excerpts included with the album. Though I think your stitch freaks came off more credibly than Bowie's art-crimes—which is not to disparage the Bowie album, which is also my favourite these days.

"As stsisyphus mentioned in his commentary*, you do a good job of rendering the day to day reality of a world after some of the greater ravages of global warming. I was sort of reminded of the new Children of Men movie as both it and 'A Season of Broken Dolls' manage to unobtrusively convey a society wherein everyone's fully aware of the world's end approaching, but everyone still must go on about their business. These layers of credibility serve to heighten the eeriness of the number 17 idea, which is a sort of tugging, peripheral dream intruding frighteningly on reality, as though reality weren't frightening enough.

"I also enjoyed 'Skin Game.' I loved the backstory of the mother—it felt much like a fairy tale gone psycho. Like a morality tale with alien morals."

I have always felt that when writing a first-person narrative from some imagined future date, an author should speak of things as they would perhaps be spoken of by someone native to that time. For example, if I write a story set in 2007, I do not waste a lot of time explaining laptops and the world wide web and the Hubble telescope. While these things might seem extraordinary, unbelievable, or even incomprehensible to a reader from 1923 or 1940, it would be artificial and destroy the realism of the narrative to explain them for 2007 readers. So, if I am writing as a journalist writing in her private journal in 2027, then many things which might now seem fantastic may be mentioned only in passing or in the normal, matter-of-fact way she would speak of them. It does not matter if the reader does not fully understand the details of that 2027. For me, the integrity of the narrative as a fictional artefact is more important, and I also avoid those annoying infodumps so common to sf. More important still, I do not fetishize the future or technology, a mistake I think many sf writers make. Good sf is not about science and tech or future politics, it's about the characters.

* You may read that commentary here.

Yesterday, I wrote 1,934 words, which makes yesterday my second-most productive writing day during this forced march to THE END. Not bad, nixar. Now, see if you can't do better today.

I've decided to extend the offer of a FREE signed copy of the trade paperback of Silk to new Sirenia Digest subscribers. The offer is now good until midnight on January 31st, as it seems to be attracting new subscribers, and new subscribers are always welcome. Also, new subscribers need to e-mail Spooky (crk_books(at) yahoo(dot) com) their snail mail addresses. Otherwise, we cannot send the FREE book.

A decent enough Kid Night last night. We rented Terry Jones' mostly marvelous Erik the Viking (1989) from Movies Worth Seeing (where it seemed I'd not been in ages). I'd seen the film two or three times, but Spooky hadn't, and I have a soft space for it in my heart. Sadly, Sony canceled the DVD release last year, so we had to go with VHS (pan and scan, urgh) and chase the spiders out of the VCR. Very quaint. Anyway, I'd not realised until last night that Jim Broadbent has a cameo/bit part at the very beginning, when Erik is "raping" Helga. It's a very funny movie, except when it isn't, and that's about the best I can ask of anything these days. Then I played a couple hours worth of Final Fantasy XII, at last managing to escape the Draklor Laboratory in Archades and defeat Cid and his four little robot thingies. Afterwards, we went to bed, and I read Sonya's new story for Sirenia Digest #14 — "A Voice in Caves" — which has turned out to be a very nice counterpoint to my own "The Sphinx's Kiss." For those of you who've been wanting to see more gay male fiction in the digest, this issue's for you. Later still, Spooky made me cocoa. It was after three a.m. (CaST) before I found sleep.

Oh, and yes, as implied above, I did leave the house yesterday, for a full hour or so. I have become quite intrepid.

I see there will be a new VNV Nation disc — Judgment — out on March 7th. Good news I needed.

—————

Honestly, I'm seeing very little in the way of negative criticism regarding Daughter of Hounds. Though I have noticed a few complaints about there being too much dialog (???) and too many "dream sequences." The latter complaint, which I should add my agent has also voiced, follows in part, I think, from a misunderstanding of the nature of "reality" in much of what I write. There are a few genuine dream sequences in Daughter of Hounds, but a lot of what I think some people are reading as dreams were intended as something else. They may appear dreamlike, but only because certain consensus assumptions are held so dear about "waking reality." At any rate, I find both these criticisms rather specious and am paying them little heed.

—————

I have spent almost my whole life living inbetween. It's what I do, mostly, existing in transitional zones and connecting hallways. But lately (meaning since sometime in 2002), I have been struggling with a new sort of inbetween, which has placed me in an especially deep conflict with myself. A tug-of-war between the old rational me and an unexpected me bent upon seeking out and understanding magick (here defined as "the willful invocation of awe," though other definitions may be pending), even when it threatens my comfortably mechanistic worldview. It feels at times as though I am being torn in two, and I know how that feels, having been divided more than once already. Mostly, though, the division does not occur. And neither side gains any ground. So I live uneasily inbetween, like some Matthew Arnold cosmology. Too mystical for the scientists, too skeptical for the witches and magickians. At this point, I would prefer to either move forward or go back. In or out. Shit or get off the pot, as Byron would say. Sometimes, I seem to be waiting on something, something which often seems very near, and other times I seem merely indecisive. Except...decision and resolve are both useless here, or nearly so. I cannot will myself into belief or faith. As Anne Sexton said, "Need is not quite belief." Oh, I have need aplenty, but, for me, belief comes only from experience. And, thus far, my experiences leave me neither here nor there. They leave me undecided and still asking questions.

It's like a season that breeds neither snow nor green grass, neither rain nor drought, but only despair. I know that simple despair is no longer fashionable, but then neither am I.

I did have this thought two nights ago, and it seemed important: One must not be skeptical merely for the sake of skepticism. It is not an end unto itself. Critical thought should have the intent of bringing one nearer truth (even if Truth is ultimately unobtainable). It is not the goal of critical thought to tear down, but to build up, to let in the light, to sweep aside ignorance and superstition and fear.

These thoughts are ill-formed and poorly expressed, and I apologise for my inability to articulate.

—————

The platypus says enough's enough. Them words ain't gonna write themselves.

Some days just bring a veritable cornucopia of wonders. Today, for example.

My thanks to everyone who sent me links to the Japanese video clips of the frilled shark(Chlamydoselachus anguineus) that strayed into shallow water before dying. Often cited as an example of a "living fossil," I have been fascinated with these beautiful creatures, and this video clip is amazing. Chlamydoselachid sharks extend back to the Late Cretaceous, at least, and the new film certainly conjures images of primordial sea "monsters." One of the coolest things I've seen in years. Click here for the story and video at CNN.com. By the way, until this sighting, this subspecies of Chlamydoselachus anguineus was feared extinct.

Thanks to sovay for pointing me towards an announcement of what may be the earliest known ancestor of living primates yet discovered, Dryomomys szalayi, dating back to the Late Paleocene Epoch (56 mya). The fossils were recovered near Yellowstone Park in Wyoming. Just don't tell the creationists.

Thanks to Spooky (humglum) for telling me about a new mid-Pleistocene (800-200 thousand ybp) cave fauna from southern Australia's Nullarbor plain. The fauna includes "23 species of kangaroo, eight of which had never been identified before. Two of the species were tree kangaroos which had adapted to living in branches. Other animals were several species of wallaby, a range of lizards including a large species called the King's skink (Egernia kingii), a carnivorous marsupial called the mulgara, which was related to the endangered Tasmanian devil, and two parrots."

Okay. Bedtime for nixars...

This morning I'm not exactly on what I believe is commonly referred to as an even keel. I hope that this changes in the next hour or so.

I just saw the Oscar nominations. I'm an Oscar geek from way back, and a forgiving sort of "soul," but I think maybe this is the year I've finally had it with the awards. I shall not get into particulars. Maybe later. I suspect this is merely one aspect of my growing disdain for popularity contests of all sorts. I shall, instead, reflect upon the percentage of Oscars that wind up in thrift stores, antique shops, at yard sales, hidden away in attics, sold on eBay, & etc. & etc., and let it go at that.

Yesterday was an unexpected sort of mess. Nothing I was supposed to get done actually got done. Not a bit of eBay. A lot of time was wasted on Photoshop, but that also came to little or nothing. Then my agent called about three p.m. or so, and we talked for almost an hour. That was the best part of the workday. Making concrete plans for What Happens Next, what the Next Thing will be, and the Thing After That. It was an encouraging sort of conversation. Ultimately, it means more work, but what else would I do with this life? At four fifteen or so, I called it a day and fucked off to the cinema to catch a matinee.

And it is a testament to the genius of Guillermo del Toro that I managed to love Pan's Labyrinth despite the fact that the air temperature in the theatre must have been hovering somewhere just above freezing. Fortunately, I had my gloves, though it was very annoying the way my glasses kept fogging up. Oh, and we also had to endure the atrocious yodeling agony of the Dreamgirls soundtrack for the half hour we sat in the icebox before the film began, and still it was worth it.

Pan's Labyrinth is an amazing film, and if you have not already seen it, I urge you to do so. I kept thinking about Algernon Blackwood. Only Blackwood would likely have pulled a lot of those punches. I should have more to say, but I think my head's still too full of the wonders. Something that comes this close to perfection, it speaks for itself.

Back home, I tuned in for the new episode of Heroes. I'm still fence-sitting on whether or not this series is actually Very Good or merely Sort of Interesting. But last night there was Christopher Eccleston, so what the hell. And then, a few minutes past midnight I went back to work, and an hour later, Photoshop still had the last laugh, and all I had was a bloody nose and clenched fists. I would do better to get back to the 1,500 words a day, back to the writing. Still, at least yesterday earned a W. It might have earned an L, which would have been a shame after the first twenty days of January.

I'm considering setting up a magick/neopaganism filter. If you want in, speak up. However, it's not a done deal. I might change my mind. So rarely do I ever write an entry that's devoted to less than a half dozen things, I can't really see how a filter's gonna help. If only there were LJ tags that allowed you to filter parts of any given entry, that would be far more amenable to my present needs. We shall see. Time to make the goddamn doughnuts.

Proceeding as it did from the dreams, yesterday was a Very Bad Day during which nothing was written or edited or even planned. Virtually nothing of note was accomplished. Yesterday got an L in my day planner, whether it earned one or not. The dreams this morning were almost as bad, or as good, depending upon one's frame of reference and desires. Safer to say, the dreams this morning were as segregated from this waking life and as possessed of their own integrity. I need to have the Ambien refilled. At least the Ambien makes it hard for me to remember the dreams.

I cannot afford to lose even one more day over the next two and a half months.

Push it away. Push it all away.

I did get this comment, from shadowmeursault, in response to yesterday's entry, which I thought contained some good questions, so I'm quoting it here:

do you know the "answers" to your own mysteries? do you ever feel the need to justify a suspension of disbelief, even to yourself? or are you content to leave your mysteries as mysteries, even to your own mind? an example being the hemispherical world in Murder of Angels. do you, as its creator, know all of its nuances, or are you content with the little mysteries it gives you?

I cannot think of a single example of me knowing anything much more than what has been revealed in the stories themselves. Which is to say, I'm not holding out. Sometimes, I've sort of felt like reviewers and readers suspected that I was...holding out. But I'm not. If it's not there on the page, I likely am as much in the dark as you. I only find the answers I find as I write. There are very few exceptions. For example, I only learned about the connection between Dancy Flammarion and Spyder Baxter, and the connection between the Weaver and Dancy's "angel," as I was writing "Bainbridge" last December and January. Of course, I still don't know if Spyder's father was "only" schizophrenic, or if Dancy's mother was only "schizophrenic." When these questions are left unanswered, I'm not being dishonest with the reader. I simply never found the answers myself. Usually, that's because I preferred to leave the questions unanswered in my own mind. Maybe someday I'll draw a map of the hemispherical world, but I have not yet. Mostly, it's a big blank for me. The mysteries mean more to me than the possible solutions. I'll take a really good question, filled with endless possibility, over a sterile concrete answer any day of the week.

On that note, while the mini-series was mediocre overall, I was impressed and pleased that so much ambiguity was allowed to persist at the conclusion of The Lost Room. I kept expecting some hackneyed explanation: the Occupant must have had dealings with the Roswell aliens; or Room 10 was the result of a Cold war experiment; or the Objects were the components of a time machine which had crashed in Gallup, New Mexico on May 4th, 1961. But no. We were allowed to keep the mystery. For that alone, The Lost Room is to be commended. I kept wishing that it could have been just a little smarter, just a little less TV, but at least it was halfway decent TV. Which is fortunate, as I gave it six hours and suffered through the same insufferable commercials for three nights running.

Merrilee, my NYC agent, sent me a box of cookies and brownies from Solomon's Gourmet Cookies in Chicago (since 1943). The jelly cookies were especially good.

I'll be adding more items to the eBay auctions today or tonight. Please have a look. Lately, I really haven't felt like dealing with the tedium and frustration that is eBay, but a check is long overdue. A rather large check from a publisher, which was due two months ago. And the guilty party is neither Subterranean Press nor is it Penguin. It's someone else. At this point, I do not expect to be paid until at least January. My need to be paid cannot be allowed to interfere with the vacations and religious holidays of others. So, it's back to eBay. I may even list a second Daughter of Hounds ARC, though I said I wouldn't. Of course, when I said that, I thought surely I'd be paid by Thanksgiving, at the latest. Silly nixar.

In response to one my comments yetserday about NeoPaganism, morganxpage wrote:

I think that this is caused by the same thing a lot of other problems within the NeoPagan (and particularly, the Wiccan) communities: non-conversion. Most NeoPagans never truly convert to their NeoPagan religions, instead holding on to their previously Western Judeo-Christian beliefs, often without realizing that that is what they're doing. NeoPaganism becomes a new surface mask for the previous belief system. So instead of truly appreciating and serving Nature, they hold on to the belief that Nature is meant to serve them, which stems from Biblical teachings.

I think you're right, only I'd not confine the source of the failed conversion problem to "Biblical teachings." This is a problem with humanity as a whole, not soley with those humans with a JudeoXtian background. Humans have always had a tendency to imagine the world as this thing which revolves around humans. I see it in all the world's religions, to one degree or another. The inability to grasp that the nonconscious universe is wholly indifferent to the needs and desires of humanity or of any other species, for that matter. The refusal to view Nature as Nature instead of anthropomorphizing it as Mother Nature or the Goddess or Gaia or what have you. There are no gods and there are no goddesses, excepting our concepts of them. There is only the universe, and humanity is only a component of that system. No one and nothing "out there" is watching out for us. And, looking at Pleistocene and Holocene extinction patterns on Earth, it's clear that most PaleoPagans were ultimately no less anthropocentric and short-sighted, in terms of viewing Nature as something to be exploited. It is a myth that all indigenous peoples the world over held Nature in higher regard than their own immediate well-being. The present extinction event began long before the arrival of Xtianity and the fires of industry, even before the development of agriculture. Ultimately, I am asking that humans stop behaving like humans, not that NeoPagans stop behaving like Xtains (though that would be nice, too). I'm asking people to hack millions of years of genetic hardwiring and reboot (I mean these things figuratively, not in the transhumanist, singularitarian sense). I'm expecting people to let go of the comforting lies. While I'm at it, I'll take the goddamn moon, as well.

Okay. I need to be working on something for the December Sirenia Digest. I need to get moving.

Postscript (2:15 p.m. CaST; 1:15 p.m. EST): Upon reflection, it seems as though, increasingly, this journal has become less about my writing and more about things I'm probably better off not discussing at all publicly. If nothing else, it's hard to imagine that I'm not boring the crap out of some people, while leading others to conclude I am a complete lunatic and alienating still others. So, from here on, I believe I will be confining myself primarily to that subject for which this journal was created — my writing and the promotion of my writing. The rest is likely only white noise, anyway.

Just something short before the day begins.

My mind gnaws at these things endlessly, working problems unconsciously even when I am unawares and may think I've neglected or moved along to something else or forgotten or tabled a thing for a future time. And last night, just before bed, I thought —

Magick may be no more than the willful invocation of awe.

Such an obvious and simple thought that it made me dizzy. It appeals to me for at least two reasons: a) it describes my own personal experiences and b) I am ever drawn to ideas which seem too elegant to be true, yet too elegant to possibly be false. And the "no more" part is deceptive, as I've come to suspect very many people today are incapable of awe. And certainly of awe at will. Awe at will. With no self-delusion. Genuine awe at will. Magick would be an awful thing, in the original sense of the word. Which gives me a third reason to favour this tentative epiphany. A fourth would be that it does not seem to be a counterintuitive concept (though, admittedly, one may often be led astray by intuition).

So, now I will gnaw at this consciously. But, for me, I believe it's a breakthrough.

And a bit of Rilke wants to chime in here:

Denn das Schöne is nichts
als des Schrecklichen Anfang, den wir noch grade ertragen (Thank you, Peter)

Also, I think I know who and what Algeria Touchshriek is. More later...

I am at this moment exceedingly groggy, though I've been awake now for more than an hour. I did get about seven and a half hours sleep last night, which is much better than my average.

If all my days were like yesterday I surely would give up this writing thing and become a bartender. I wrote 2,264 words (3,324 if you count the blog entry), which is about the best I can ever expect from any single day. I also had to deal with last minute corrections to the galleys of Tales from the Woeful Platypus and the cover copy for Low Red Moon. I'm sure there were other things as well, but I'm too groggy to recall them all. I was still working at 12:12 a.m. (CaST), when I finally decided enough's enough and called it a day.

Sissy (scarletboi) and Spooky (humglum) have been working on the new website design. There's a temp front page up right now. You should have a look. I like what they're doing with the place. By the way, the Whitman's Salmagundi tin in the photograph was a gift from Poppy (docbrite) in 1996 (?autumn). To quote from an old interview I did sometime in 2000:

Poppy Z. Brite sent me one of the original [1920s] tins, which she'd come across in a Magazine Street antique store [in New Orleans]. She bought it for me, even though she had no idea whatsoever that I'd used Salmagundi as a character or that the box had any significance to me. It sort of freaked us both out just a little, I think. Anyway, I guess that's not so much who Salmagundi Desvernine is, as the inspiration behind her, isn't it? Doug Winter has called her my 'avatar,' which is partly true. Like Jimmy DeSade (another recurring character and Salmagundi's consort), she's a focal point for certain ideas. But she's also a character I care about a great deal, that I think of first as a person. To me, Salmagundi is something beautiful and strong that the world has lost or given up, like faith and hope, something that we're not likely to see again.

By the way, anyone who subscribes to Sirenia Digest today, any time before midnight (PST), will receive a free signed copy of the trade paperback edition of Silk. All you gotta do is click here, read the somewhat out of date FAQ (the stories are longer; it comes on or about the 21st of each month, not the 14th), then subscribe.

I continue to try to take Wicca apart and rebuild it, reconstruct it, making of it something more suited to my needs (at least until something better comes along). Part of this is the systematic expurgation of those many elements in Wicca which Gerald Gardner borrowed from Judeo-Xtian mysticism, specifically from the Ordo Templi Orientis, Rosicrucianism, and Freemasonry. All this stuff would be fine, if I wanted to study ceremonial magick or the Golden Dawn. But I do not believe it has any place in paganism. For example, for the time being I'm still using the "black-handled knife" of Gardner's Wicca, but I'm choosing never to refer to it as an athame, a term which can be traced back to The Key of Solomon, where the black-handled knife is referred to variously as arthanus, artamus, and (most tellingly) arthame, depending on the ms. copy in question. Instead, I'm using the Sindarin word sigil (= dagger or knife; pronounced "see-geel"), as Tolkien's mythos resonates with me much more strongly than does Judeo-Xtian mythology (despite Tolkien's own Xtianity). Indeed, ultimately, I may use Sindarin as my ritual language. All this may seem like "mere" semantics, but words are magick, after all, in that words carry powerful conscious and unconscious connotations. If magick is truly the "art of changing consciousness at will," then I would argue that the precise words involved, and all their connotations, are of the utmost importance. And as all mythologies are equally fictional (and therefore equally "true"), it hardly matters if I draw upon terms gleaned from Hebrew mysticism, ancient Greece, the Elder Edda, or The Silmarillion, excepting in that these different mythologies have very different subjective meanings to me.

As with most of the country, the weather here has turned bitter cold. I did not even leave the house yesterday. I think the low last night was 26F, and the forecast is calling for even colder temperatures tonight.

Okay. That's it for now. The platypus is looking askance, and that's never good.

I'd like to have summer back now, please. I'll be good, promise.

Well, I'll try to be good.

The writing went well yesterday. and I did 1,201 words on "The Lovesong of Lady Ratteanrufer." This story is taking me strange and unexpected places. For example, yesterday, I spent several hours conversing with the God of all Rats and puzzling over how one goes about politely declining gifts offered by gods. The story is set in no particular American city at some unspecified time in the future when things are even worse than they are now (which is, I think, saying something). I'd hoped to finish the story yesterday, but what I thought would be a vignette decided it wants to be a short story. This has become a significant and ongoing problem with Sirenia Digest. The constant reader will recall that when I began this affair, I specified I would be writing vignettes, usually two or three thousand words in length. But mostly I've been writing short stories, because I have this fear of not letting fictions go where they wish to go (wild magic) and at whatever length they require. But there is so much writing that is not Sirenia Digest that has to be done. Try to tell an ambitious vignette that it can't grow up to be a short story. Just try. I dare you. It'll end in tears.

She's the kind of girl who gets her slings and arrows from the dumpster.
The kind who tells you she's bipolar just to make you trust her.
She's the kind of girl who leaves out condoms on the bedroom dresser,
Just to make you jealous of the men she fucked before you met her.

Sorry. I'm just sort of obsessed with that song right now. And those four lines in particular.

No walking yesterday. Only typing, writing, spewing story. There was a bath afterwards, and leftover chili. We watched Christiane Cegavske's Blood Tea and Red String, which was quite entirely delightful, filled as it was with treacherous white mice, a frog shaman, a spider who eats bluebirds, a coach drawn by a turtle, a stolen ragdoll, bat-eared rat crows, and, of course, blood tea and red string. Afterwards, I played about three more hours of Final Fantasy XII. Presently, I am trapped aboard an airship trying to rescue Ashe B'nargin Dalmasca.

I was in bed by two, but sleep was still an hour away, my head too filled with noise and words and light and nagging questions. The conversation turned to magick, as it so often does in the small hours of the night: my perception of magick as something wild and untameable, entirely unsuited to rigid ceremony and morality; the nuisance of New Age, fluffy-bunny nonsense; how Nazis, Neo-Nazis, and Odinists have tainted Norse mythology; the search for a witchcraft free of the elements of Judeo-Xtian mysticism that Gerald Gardner built into Wicca; my inability to distinguish magick from delusion/insanity; how the Greek pantheon is making more sense to me these days than it once did; how I will always be an atheist, no matter what; my need for a new athame (Look! More Judeo-Xtian freemasonry nonsense!); Joseph Campbell and my inability to follow my bliss; how so many pagans seem terrified of Nature and actually seek to avoid the ecstatic, the erotic, the wild, the amoral, the celebratory, opting instead for dry ritual, happy fairies, dolphins*, visualization, pretty crystals, and watered-down, westernized Buddhism; the fear many pagans have for their own and varied histories. The usual. My pet gripes. I need some time alone with the trees and the wind and the sky.

We're supposed to be moving my office tomorrow. Jim and Hannah and Byron have all promised to help. Hopefully, it will come off without a hitch. Hopefully. But it means I need to finish "The Lovesong of Lady Ratteanrufer" this afternoon. Get to it, nixar!

* I adore dolphins, but really.