november

No sun, no moon!


No morn, no noon

No dawn, no dusk, no proper time of day.


No warmth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease,


No comfortable feel in any member

No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees,


 No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds

November!


this is what it's like to have this many moons behind me. i'm thirty years old, for four days now, and if i hadn't been spit into the world as a violet half-baked babybirdthing, i'd have a couple of months left in which to be twenty-nine. for someone who doesn't assign much importance to birthdays, i'm plagued by thoughts of milestone numbers with zeros like yawning chasms. i don't want what 'traditionally' i'm told i should have at this age, so why do i compare myself to others? every once in a while, it happens.
do i ever want to be married? i don't know. i'm reminded by the racing calculations in the sky that i don't have forever. my grandmother (probably both of them now, actually) will never get to attend my wedding. but do i want to be worth it to someone? do i want to mean enough to someone that they would want me forever? yes. maybe? hmm. things to think on. or, in my case, things to ignore. rumination never solves anything. the same mouthful of grass which loses its taste.

trust in the universe, i'm working on it. working on many things.
trusting in my body and respecting it instead of acting as if i'll be given another. accepting it for what it is as much of the time as possible, not only when i feel unchallenged by snide glances on the street or waif-blog celebrities.
internalizing that my value as a person is inherent, and reflected in how i treat myself and others, not contingent on accomplishments.
incubating creative endeavors. always a sticking spot for me. too many ideas, not enough commitment to one.
learning to spend money on myself; i treated myself to some birthday gifts, something i can't remember doing. ever.

these little birthday treasures are: a worn vinyl copy of 'the christmas revels', found at the littlest dusty record store; a sweet pomander candle to complement the cold nights; black openwork tights which make me wish my legs were always ingrained with the pattern. celebrations of december...not november!

to be comfortable in this harsh and elegantly bare-branched month takes emotional strength, a kind of security that i'm learning to cultivate in the dark recesses of my head and heart. in the loam there like precious mushrooms. ha.

i am trying to become more open here. there seems surprisingly little to write about that isn't too close for comfort. tiny two-pound november-baby steps.

Laura and the End of Days

well, winter-in-the-city was upon us, like a clammy overeager prom date. turning everything he touches into ice. frosty disinterest. time-space rushed from halloween into twenty-three degree spittle and it's now warm again, in time for my birthday tomorrow, the one that makes me thirty. THIRTY.
i've always said my feelings towards winter would be different if i lived in the rural-aways. in the country, winter is cosiness, and deer tracks and wood smoke and inventive hibernation. in the city it is rushing out at uncivilized hours to move your car away from the plow and friends withdrawing like snails and horrible radio disembodied voices chattering about how once again we are colder than siberia. the natives here are scandinavian stock and fare better than i do. the winter i love is winter in theory. not the one that renders me formless and salt encrusted and red about the nose and cheeks.

some weeks ago now i watched the film 'the haunting of julia'. how this film eluded me until now, i don't know. moments of despair when i think i've seen everything to see in a certain favorite genre and period, they happen. and then when i'm proven wrong! oh, it's rapture.
there's a lot of beauty happening in 'julia'. there's conniving babyface keir dullea and mia farrow doing what she does best with the vacantly sweet vulnerability. in giant furs and black wide brimmed hats and  irish sweaters, unpacking china in her new holland park row house. there are ghosts, ghosts of little girls. and one little knife.
i tend to be scared by movies which don't scare other people. if many stupid people proclaim that a film didn't scare them, there's a good chance that i will like it. what is not-shown, old fashioned ghost stores, hmm hmm. and this film did give me a good little chill. my love for understated seventies horror, oh, it's real.

Dispatches from the Miskatonic Bakery

mondays are my days off. and still my mind inhabits a bakery, another bakery, perplexing because i don't want to work in another bakery. ever, probably. stir stir stir the stygian nougat made toothstain black with coloring paste. those mental exercises though, of attempting to mold a vocation out of a simple occupation, can't last. instead i wonder about fantastical antiquarian book shops, heirloom apple orchards, alchemical perfumeries, time with animals and on trains. only a dam' fool wears black to a job slinging flour anyhow.
so, what do i do?
i've accepted the unsavory fact that i am what is called nowadays a 'scanner'. i do admit to loving the cronenbergian taste of the term. we scanners are interested in many things, deeply, and as such have no lifelong calling. so why the intense interest in disparate topics and still no way to make filthy money that doesn't cause the soles of my feet to itch? gross, gross, unfair, whimper.

would that i'd been born with a sweet voice. no, a strong voice. and i could earn my keep belting out dirges for the children who went up into the mountains. spare accompaniment, dark basement renditions while i channel borrowed mystery chords from those stoic greeks.
i am a homebody who loves travel above all else. the great conjunction seems to be made up of touring. living mobile.

that's not to say that i'm not grateful to be making any money at all. i've been in Those Times where there is none to speak of, money that is, and it's misery-making. one's own money in the glitterycity is just a necessity. for happiness.
i can see how this might turn into a consumerism blog. beware, biweekly posts of pastilles and broken down farmhouses and circus girl vintage finds and vinyl records and ceramic cups and roasted chestnut tea.
beware.
Beware.
BEWARE!

she has a teabox, that is to say, a box of tea. rough and hewn of cedar but full of attentions, tiny sliding slats compartments to be reworked to entrap the various bags of tea. she washes with salt water and slips the silk of her skirts over her shins then thighs. i made her up in my head when i saw a teabox today, and coveted it.

the cat and i have a language of face-cuddles and he chirps and grumbles rapturously while i rub my forehead all about his fur-upholstered nose and cheeks and chin. he has round golden owl eyes and together this autumn we lie under the duvet late into the night. reading by the light of beeswax pillars and votives about curare, encaustic and adolescents with guns.

this cat is dangerous to love. he will swipe at your face quick-as-you-please. i need my humans to be less like him. he can remain; he has that cat excuse. my four year old friend warns me, ghosts is everywhere.

in less than one month now i will be officially old, it rhymes with dirty. last year i'd venture to say was the very worst birthday ever, but i don't want to say it out loud and tempt the forces of nature, instead i'll just type it here and hope for better. or go back to not really caring about birthdays much. i haven't decided yet.

once again i'm searching for a new occupation. that's really the best word for it, isn't it. vocation is out of the question.

the journal of nothing at all

small things have been happening as autumn creeps on

                               distant friends send little life preservers through the post

i loiter around abandoned pumpkins and dream about wattle fences and a little home of my own; a stranger tells me i look like a john singer sargent painting, egyptian woman.

we eye the corn warily, strange things are always afoot in old maize

there are windfalls galore, jade-painted fingernails from an irresponsibly indulgent manicure that turn me into some strange idol, ghost stories, cider, rampant attempts at supping on all the autumn i can handle to stave off the impending horror of winter with its smothering early darkness and muddy floors

and errant vegetable matter

and small spots of death being in fact quite proud and up-Himself. 

here is a good description of a playlist i found in the guts of tumblr:

This 120 minute painting mix is perfect for the bleak midwinter…cold, a little sad, a little angry and very danceable. Perfect to listen to while defrosting yr windshield, applying lotion to yr dried out skin, or while walking the streets looking for discarded cardboard to use as shipping material.

i want a jacket made of hundreds of tiny sandbags, and if it smelled of you, i'd be all set.

equinox

autumn is unleashed and i can't make any promises as to what may happen. so far, tiny pumpkins, apple pie tea, gourds, candles, pumpkin ale, harry potter and horror film ringtones, vintage buntings, beetlejuice and neil young have happened.
i'm attempting to not let my enthusiasm for samhain/halloween/etc overshadow early fall. there's enough jolly fatalistic electricity in the air to last for a while. just remember that.

and i apologize to images whose proper home i've lost track of.