She Who Lurks By Day
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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in
teenybuffalo's LiveJournal:
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| Tuesday, May 15th, 2012 | | 12:03 am |
| | Tuesday, May 8th, 2012 | | 7:58 pm |
In the early days/ sacrifice is required
I was lucky enough to get an advance copy of C.S.E. Cooney's How To Flirt In Faerieland, which is newly released and making waves all over my friendslist right now. Let me help to boost the signal a little: it's brilliant. If Cooney writes like anybody, it's Christina Rossetti in goblin mode, though she's more like herself. Seventeen funny, sexy, freaky, frightening and lovable poems and lyrics, with a strong feel for rhythm, alliteration and cumulative repetition that appeals to me as a folkie. A lot of the verses force you to chant them or speak them aloud. "The Robber Bride" never saw a top she couldn't go over: “I’ll buy your husband for a song
Or steal him, if you say I must
I’ll woo him well and love him long
If to my care this man you’ll trust.”
“Buy him? Nay – I’ll give him you!”
Replied my wife, her eyes agleam
“So take him – only take me too!
I’m twice as handsome, thrice as clean." Cooney's better-known "The Sea-King's Second Bride" goes back and fixes the tragedy of Agneta and the Sea King, and is particularly heartwarming for those of us who have cried over the English-language equivalent of that legend, as told in Matthew Arnold's "The Forsaken Merman." This is also your best chance to read "Wild Over Tombs Does Grow," a narrative poem (too rare these days) set after the end of the world. "Wild Over..." is a precursor to Cooney's novel The Big Bah-Ha, and they have the same feel: crazy humor, ghastly inhumanity, and echoes of my favorite children's horror/fantasy creators. Here's a shade of Ray Bradbury, there's a glance of John Bellairs, Tim Burton's filming the proceedings and Doctor Seuss did the dialogue. It all feels American in a way that few other dark fantasies do. I love it, I can't get enough of it. To give you some idea how grisly the humor is, one of the nicer and more reasonable characters in both the book and the poem is the Flabberghast, a demon clown who eats little kids. And the kids tend to win, which I also like (if a child appears in a horror novel, it's usually a safe bet he or she is just there to be tormented, murdered, or used as a plot coupon, and it makes me cranky). In both book and poem, masses of inexplicable-yet-right images parade past and make sense even without an explanation for anything in sight. Is this what people mean when they say "dream-logic"? I think it is. At last
One chill gloaming
Thin from a thousand-year fast
In ragged saffron parade
They came
From thorny hills and barren land
White lights on their shoulders
Burning roses in their hands
They sent an emissary
Their diplomat and clown
A Tall One of renown
Known to everyone who asks
As the FlabberghastThis poem is worth the price of admission in itself, but there are sixteen other wild and varied delights. Highly recommended. | | Sunday, May 6th, 2012 | | 11:36 pm |
| | Friday, April 27th, 2012 | | 11:02 am |
| | Wednesday, April 18th, 2012 | | 10:17 pm |
The leap of the cats through space was very swift
Jason Thompson has been posting benign and even friendly Lovecraftian creatures lately. All these come highly recommended. Those who dislike horror may enjoy them without worry. The Great Race of Yith: an adult tidies up after a kid.Stealthy, friendly cats. " Now much of the speech of cats was known to Randolph Carter, and in this far, terrible place he uttered the cry that was suitable. But that he need not have done, for even as his lips opened he heard the chorus wax and draw nearer, and saw swift shadows against the stars as small graceful shapes leaped from hill to hill in gathering legions."--HPL, The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath.The Tree. Sinister, but not overtly horrible. | | Friday, April 6th, 2012 | | 10:50 pm |
| | Thursday, April 5th, 2012 | | 2:50 pm |
Kent, Gloucester, Edgar, Lear, and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day
Worthy of notice: the King Lear party on Sunday was delightful. ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=92.1) lignota arrived early, and kindly helped me photocopy a mountain of scripts and break out the refreshments. I am astonished and gratified by everybody's devotion to Shakespeare--not only did everybody come out here to the boonies for the occasion (we boon something fierce out here), but skogkatt and M. rented a van to have enough room for the Gang of Four Five Six. We were thirteen in company (eep!), and we sat together in the sun porch and read the play through. ![[info]](http://l-files.livejournal.net/userhead/334?v=1321200503) csecooney's photos of us all in character are here, well worth a look. That is me acting. Unfortunately, that is also my default facial expression, but what would you? | | Thursday, March 29th, 2012 | | 12:21 am |
Within the hour my brain is the consistency of hot Farina
I sat down to glance over Philip Roth's Portnoy's Complaint, which I checked out of the library today with a sense of obligation: I've been hearing about this book off and on all my life, and never actually read the thing. Instead of a quick glance, I read two-thirds of the book. It's hilarious! All this time, I've been missing out. I wish I'd discovered it as a teenager, but it's still fun now. Gross, embarrassing, squirm-inducing, and freaking funny. My only other exposure to Roth's work has been The Breast. I think skogkatt summed this one up once with the words, "And then he turned into a breast, and nothing happened." For seventy pages. This makes Portnoy's Complaint all the more welcome. | | Wednesday, March 28th, 2012 | | 9:47 pm |
Indeed, sir, it's time. We have all unmasked but you.
Jason Thompson has been posting some exquisite, breathtakingly detailed drawings of Lovecraft characters and related figures recently. It's only fair I share them with you. G-rated or not terribly disturbing pictures: Fish people from Innsmouth, helping one of their own out of a human disguise Cthulhu emerging from a caveThe Great G'tsubya, a monsterized form of someone's pet rabbit named Gatsby More overtly disturbing: The Dunwich Horror: what they saw through the telescope. "Oh, oh my Gawd, that half face on top..." The Dunwich Horror: the last moments of Wilbur Whateley. (I'm particularly fond of this scene because ( spoilers. )The King in Yellow: cast of characters. ( The King in Yellow isn't Lovecraft's invention. Lovecraft was fond of the work of Robert W. Chambers, who wrote a cycle of horror/eldritch fantasy stories centered around people who read the [nonexistent in RL] play The King in Yellow and had their lives ruined or abruptly ended as a result. You can read "The Yellow Sign" here, though my more sensitive readers should be warned that it's nothing like the work of HPL and even contains a female character who has dialogue. Shocking, I know. Anyway, ardent fans of both Chambers and Lovecraft have been writing their own versions of the play The King inYellow ever since, based on the few hints and quotes Chambers throws around, and this sketch seems to be based on one such fanwork. I like the adorable girl with a caterpillar train to her dress, and the beetle combs on the women, and the casual horror and torture. | | Tuesday, March 27th, 2012 | | 10:26 pm |
No one gets much sleep at the sleepover in Ithilien
"Take some rest. These borders are well-protected." "I will find no rest here. I heard her voice, inside my head. She spoke of my father and the fall of Gondor. She said to me, 'Even now there is hope left.' But I cannot see it. It is long since we had any hope. My father is a noble man, but... his rule is failing, and... our people lose faith. He looks to me to make things right, and I would do it. I would see the glory of Gondor restored. Have you ever seen it, Aragorn? The White Tower of Ecthelion, glimmering like a spike of pearl and silver, its banners caught high in the morning breeze? Have you ever been called home by the clear ringing of silver trumpets?" "I have seen the White City, long ago." "One day, our paths will lead us there. And the tower guard shall take up the call: 'The Lords of Gondor have returned!'" | | Wednesday, March 21st, 2012 | | 12:59 am |
We aten't dead
We're in Orlando, safe and sound, and about to all turn in for the night. More later as the hotel internet is rubbish. | | Thursday, March 15th, 2012 | | 12:28 am |
| | Wednesday, March 14th, 2012 | | 12:04 pm |
Jonathan Harker, intercede for us
I went back for a re-take this morning at an ungodly hour and finally passed my real estate salesperson's exam. YES. The license is in my wallet, and finally--finally--I have free brainspace that isn't taken up with long lists of mostly-useless facts. I owe a bunch of friends a bunch of e-mails about things we were working on before the exam ate my brain. I have to revise my paper for ICFA, get the car ready, and pack for the trip. Yikes! Today's Wednesday and I head out on Saturday afternoon (spending the night at negothick's house, after which we leave with L. early on Sunday morning). oh man this is going to be awesome it's coming RIGHT UP NOW oh man I need to get the car washed and make a food run and move about fifty pounds of stuff out of the trunk and verify all my quotations and write the bibliography and a book rec list and print and staple a ton of documents and change my oil. God's holy trousers, Peachey! | | Monday, March 12th, 2012 | | 10:49 pm |
A maiden knight--to me is given such hope, I know not fear
Today I went to Boston for a job interview. Afterward, I walked to the Boston Public Library to look at the "Achievement of the Holy Grail" murals by Edwin Austin Abbey. [ edited to correct name--I originally typed "Edwin Abbey Church"--WTF, my brain?] I've posted before about how much I love them, but this was actually the first time in years that I'd revisited the mural room. I first saw the paintings when I was thirteen, when going to the city was still this huge, exciting effort that required lots of maps and a hotel for the night, instead of something I did every couple of weeks. After that, they were restoring the room for months, and then I could never get there during open hours, and then I just wrote it off for a long time. Well, even as a jaded thirty-year-old woman I still love these pictures as I did when I was a wide-eyed kid. The outer halls and stairwell hold other murals by John Singer Sargent, which do nothing much for me despite my great and dorky love for Sargent. And then you turn right at the top of the stairs and enter a huge dark room with nothing but a big empty floor, seats around the walls, and a little bit of directional lighting on the paintings. I love everything about these paintings. The walls are about twenty feet high. The bottom half of each wall is paneled in dark oak, and the top half is taken up with murals, starting and ending with Galahad's life. The style is hyper-detailed in some places, loose enough to be impressionistic in others, and it works remarkably well; it's the effect of re-examining one's own memories, noticing that you cared enough about this guy to note every ring in his mail-shirt, but the guys next to him were just a bunch of lance-poles. And color--there are masses of bright, deep primary colors, harmonious and exciting, and red and white are everywhere. Galahad wears a loose red robe at all times. Sometimes he puts chain-mail over it or vambraces and leggings under it, but he's a young man with a feminine face and golden hair, dressed in a big red garment, kicking ass, being noble, smooching hands, and making the world a better place. This is the only art I've ever seen that equates bright red with purity. I remember wanting to be him, when I was a child. (Well, I do own a giant red fleece bathrobe. Close enough.) There's a lovely set of photos of the murals here, by the way. When Galahad goes to the Grail Castle, the procession passes by him--the Grail, the woman with the severed head, the men with bloody knives and branched candlesticks, and Amfortas wounded and unable to die or be healed. Galahad looks out at the audience with a WTF? face, like Little Red Riding Hood going "Wait, this isn't my granny..." The most dramatic images, though, are those where a face or two is deliberately hidden. Early on, Galahad is invited to sit in the Siege Perilous by a tall figure wrapped in a white silk robe with the cowl thrown over its face. (It's Joseph of Arimathea traveling incognito.) Much later on, the Loathly Lady (no relation to the one who hooks up with Gawaine in the ballad) has her hood pulled well down over her face, because she is not proud of her job, and Galahad himself hangs his head to see her; he screwed up his task, and so she's off to wander the world some more, spreading evil wherever she goes. The angels have swan wings; the Grail is always covered by a cloth through which it glows like an electric light fitting. Appropriately enough, in the last painting the revealed Grail is a faceted glass globe set into the painting with a light behind it to make it shine deep pink. There is also, in this panel, a golden tree sculpted in bas-relief and covered in gold leaf, which gives the painting a Byzantine-icon effect. I saw these murals long before watching Monty Python and the Holy Grail for the first time, so I can still gaze upon them with unironic eyes. And Holy Grail can't help achieving the otherworldly and the sublime, once or twice, no matter how much it plays for laughs. It's the subject material. Arthurian legends will occasionally make the hairs stand up on the back of your neck if you spend enough time with them. There's a moment late in the film when Arthur and Bedivere wind up on a misty shore in the Lake District and get on board a dragon barge, and it sails off with them. Even the Python guys can't go for a laugh, at that point. Arthur grasps Bedivere's shoulder and they both look overwhelmed and say nothing. That scene is the point where Holy Grail overlaps with the Abbey murals. It's also due to these paintings that I love "Sir Galahad" by Tennyson. OK, at some points ("My strength is as the strength of ten/ Because my heart is pure") he's Galahad the prig, by way of T.H. White. On the other hand, he's Galahad the visionary, Lawful Good warrior, ascetic, and wanderer of the world, the hero of these paintings. When on my goodly charger borne
Thro' dreaming towns I go,
The cock crows ere the Christmas morn,
The streets are dumb with snow.
The tempest crackles on the leads,
And, ringing, springs from brand and mail;
But o'er the dark a glory spreads,
And gilds the driving hail.
I leave the plain, I climb the height;
No branchy thicket shelter yields;
But blessed forms in whistling storms
Fly o'er waste fens and windy fields. | | Monday, March 5th, 2012 | | 10:12 pm |
| | Sunday, March 4th, 2012 | | 11:47 pm |
March forth!
I finally found these pictures again after having seen them once somewhere. "That's Dave! That's my honeybunchkins! KILL HIM, DAVE!" "Two down, eight to go. You realize none of them are going to make it past the elimination rounds." "And to make the peacock dorsals, you need six dozen feathers this long..." "Look at that, Ben rode Nugget right into a gopher hole." ( One more huge image under the cut. ) | | Saturday, March 3rd, 2012 | | 6:08 pm |
Writin', writin', writin'.
Sending some poems some places. I procrastinate so badly about sending my stuff to editors that I've bribed myself into it. If I can make my quota of poetry submissions today, I get to buy a Heather Dale album off of iTunes. Of course, then I'll have to decide which one. But hey! If I have submission sessions often enough, I'll be able to collect them all! After that, I have to work on my paper for ICFA. I love this independent scholar gig. Currently I'm rereading "A Plague On Both Your Houses" by Scott Edelman, "The Outsider" by H.P. Lovecraft, and Toothless by J.P. Moore. Also reading the poetry of Heinrich Heine (in translation) and watching scenes from the ballet Giselle on YouTube. IT'S RESEARCH, I TELL YOU, RESEARCH. When I get this paper done, I get to stand up in front of an audience in Orlando, Florida, and hold forth about zombies. I swear I missed my calling as a necromancer. Perhaps I can repeat the talk at some future con, if it goes over well. Right now, I have to say, I have the jitters. I love the works I'm talking about--love them so much that I'm worried what I have to say about them will seem silly, gilding the lily by making obvious comments about things that the texts already said more succinctly. Also, I've been wanting to write this paper for so long that it's been built up and built up for me, and now every sentence must be spun of gold or it won't live up to my own standards. Doubt, doubt, fret, fret. We leave for ICFA on Sunday, March 18, and suddenly that doesn't seem like a lot of time at all. To it again! | | Tuesday, February 28th, 2012 | | 9:29 pm |
"Mind you, Sir, it weren't my watch, but I'd told Hardwicke I'd keep him company..."
Remember the lost PotC fic I was seeking a few weeks ago? I finally asked on ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif?v=92.1) pirate_hunters, and the helpful aletheiafelinea assisted me in finding it. Here you go: " Sounding," by daft. NC-17, though be warned: all the smut takes place only in a character's fevered imagination. A brief excerpt: "...An' he told me to check the bilges, but there weren't nothing wrong. So then I comes back on deck but he were gone by then, I s'pose."
Gillette retrieved a knife-pleated handkerchief and dabbed at his forehead, laying the quill down for a moment. "Right. Well, that's quite enlightening. My thanks, Mister..." he glanced down at the list that lay alongside his prurient pages, "Wigglesworth. You may go."You're very welcome. And now I have something to read at the ICFA smut-off! | | Tuesday, February 21st, 2012 | | 7:06 pm |
A slim, dark-haired youth in a fisherman's jersey came up and thumped her on the back
Goofing off. In a few minutes I have to go and take care of job-hunting-and-Life-Stuff, but I worked hard this morning, I've been to the dentist's, and I think I'm due a quarter of an hour slack time. So I finally read The Friendly Young Ladies by Mary Renault. At this point I've read all her historical fiction except for The Praise Singer, but this is a modern novel. I liked The Charioteer and Return to Night, so I was excited about this one. I am informed, both by everybody who said I should read this and by Mary Renault herself in her very funny afterword, that TFYL was written as a deliberate up-yours to Radclyffe Hall's The Well of Loneliness. I am a fan of that idea. Alison Bechdel said in one of her anthologies, in response to lots of reader identification with her characters, "Well, it beats the hell out of The Well of Loneliness." I like Bechdel's Dykes To Watch Out For because it's so damn friendly, comedic, and down-to-earth: we're all just folks, we'd like to fix the world but we're more worried about fixing the kitchen drain, and anybody who declares life to be a tragedy packed with suffering is a drama queen and will be gently kidded till they lighten up. If I expected anything from The Friendly Young Ladies, it was character comedy and warm fuzziness in the vein of Dykes To Watch Out For. And that was what I got, for about half the book. ( The long and the short of it. Eventually there is swearing. ) | | Saturday, February 18th, 2012 | | 6:03 pm |
I DUN IT
Another deadline met and mastered. I sent three poems to Stone Telling just now. They are reading for an upcoming queer-themed issue (hint, hint--send 'em stuff if you got it--there's a day and a half left). Unfortunately I couldn't tweak the mad-scientists-in-love sonnets to a workable state in time, but I did finish a completely different poem and send it in, along with two recent poems that have nothing overt to do with the theme. Apparently deadlines inspire me, when there's a possibility of good things if I succeed and no repercussions if I fail. I finished "Wallpaper" at a sprint for a deadline, and now look what's happening with that one. Who'd have thought it? Next deadline: create a workable twenty-minute version of the paper for ICFA. The words shall fall as grass before my scythe. |
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