Log24.42.1111.0 Stockholm Syndrome

Spent the last couple of days going exercise one. Have a first draft of 400 words that I'm happy with. Focussed on description, included all the senses, cut out 99% of the demon adverbs and any hint of a first person or otherwise explanatory voice. Wrote about a dignified, charismatic old man. Not a vampire.

Speaking of vampires, though........Lets face it, they signify nothing. Facebook has several girls on it singing the praises of Twilight New Moon, one particularly interesting message reads "boys, DONT go and see Twilight unless you want you're pride and ego broken". Another says "best bit is when Edward says "it's only blood, Bella, whats the big deal".

Can you say "stockholm syndrome"?

Does no one realise that vampires are essentially, historically a characterisation of the obese aristocratic landlord who has the legal right to rape as many of the village virgins as he pleases. No doubt he also said, on occassion, "its only blood, Bella, whats the big deal".

No, I aint no purist. I'm happy for the vampire myth to be reborn, so long as it means something. And these days it means.....it means......it means.......what?

Stab in the dark: taming the bad boy? making him see the error of his ways, making him a better man?

Dude, he's dead.

"its only blood, Bella, whats the big deal?". A sentence that has the potential to be utterly chilling, and equally trite. I still like the romantic idea of an undead triste, a meeting of the innocent young girl with the ancient magical creature. I'd stomach the kissing and the abs and even the sweet words. So long as they were describing a rape.

Imagine a young village virgin left undead. Lashing out. Not wanting to be alive. Knowing the ageless abyss that is hopelessness, and turning against even her closest family. Running in to the woods to live in the wild, only coming out at night. Eating live stock raw, hair matted, bed gown torn and blackened.

Are these things not important anymore?

Or is it, to quote Nosferatu's younger cousin, "only a bit of fun"?....

This bring to mind my poem "Rorschach Desk", which I think sucked as a poem. Perhaps I was aiming to high. But this is what I was trying to do: say something without saying. Describe food like a scene of carnage, using words that would describe a body, but subtly. One day I hope I can describe a love scene in this way - the example that springs to mind - outwardly a love affair, inwardly a scene of horror. Thats art.

Twilight New Moon? Thats fucking bullshit. Superficial, shallow. Just like men, huh.

Portraits

LOG2313XF-IP.3 What have I learnt?

First assignments in, reviewed the project again and decided I could have done better to just describe a scene and not make a story out of it. I had stories I wanted to tell, and then I saw them all the more clearly in describing things, in my observational writing, and couldn't let the plot just take a back seat.

I need to spend a good deal of time describing things with my eyes closed. Thats one thing I've learnt. Redo this exercise at least five times over the next couple of weeks.

To summarise the import of this project:

1. Go somewhere cool and describe it as a series of objects, using all five senses. Allow associations to develop of their own accord.

2. Highlight the best bits, rework the worst bits, turn them into skeletons.

3. Make lists; turn words and phrases into bones.

This log is now where I come to ramble, rant and mumble, and I've reserved my A5 OCA book for concise reflection, summarised from these pages.

My notebook is a few weeks away from bursting its bindings, which is always something I enjoy. Almost time to deploy the rubber bands. I started a book for exercises from the course text book, but have cut them out and pasted them into my note book. I have started another book for completed or abandoned but valuable drafts, which I will also put my feedback into. It'll become like a sketchbook portfolio.

Spent an hour and a half after work making a list of "People That Fascinate Me", real people I've known. Then free wrote some notes around each name. Will now collect some photographs of people I don't know and do the same thing. When I have done both, I will engage the highlighter and red pen.

It will be interesting to see how they react to being mixed together. Will composites flow freely to create new characters, or will historical fidelity keep them as separate entities?

LOG231311-11.333 And...I'm...spent....

Done, dusted, over, finished, fin, the end, thats it. Four pieces drafted, edited, redrafted, cut up, mixed, rehashed, rewritten, overlaid, and drafted again. So many times I've lost count. I lost count about 10 days ago.

I've now done every exercise apart from two from project six. In the next part of the course I will modify my approach in two ways:

I will do each exercise one at a time, in sequential order.

I will NOT look at what the assessment is.

During this phase I did a lot of the exercises unintentionally. I read through the whole lot on day one, then got sucked into the first exercise for two weeks. In an effort to improve my writing, I ended up including projects 1-3 without realising it. However, my notebook became full of drafts and rewrites. It wasn't until I read through the course book again that I started doing the remaining exercises one by one, and thus filling my notebook up with as many notes as there are drafts.

My spartan common place book is gaining some flesh in the form of articles. I've discovered that the daily news rarely inspires me, so news papers are a waste of money as I'll only find one article a year I like that way. Instead I've been searching the internet. I have found one intriguing article about a reclusive author murder by an MI6 informant, so full of holes and in-discrepancies i could built several stories out of it. The author was tortured before being violently beaten to death by a "conman" who, by all accounts, had never committed a crime before. The trial was held in secret, for reason of national security. The article appeared just after I had been discussing the orchestration of fame in order to allow for espionage.

I've turned to the Fortean Times for interesting news stories, finding an article on the Dorik mystery the day after I'd finished reading 'Procession of the Dead' which has as its villain a man named Francis Dorik.

I am very pleased with one piece of writing, my "Amicus Usque Adaras", despite its being a little over the suggested word count. It marries certain themes and provides a twist on a traditional story.

The piece on Guido Fink sets a scene and leaves off with the promise of intrigue, so I think its passable according to my own expectations.

My poem "The Tower" concentrates on describing a scene, and is something of a landscape poem. I havn't rewritten nearly as much as everything else.

I will have to now concentrate on my reflective commentary. Sigh.

LOG231311-17.220 Now and Then

Ill. Not as much done.

Thoughts on Guido Fink, which I've re-written for the umpteenth time:

1. I rewrote it to make it 3rd person and more descriptive of the environment. I then wrote it back into 1st person again.

2. Use of "I" in first person: trying to refine my way of writing so it's not completely self referential. Can do this in places, where I'm talking about the tradition, or other characters, or The Fear, but its difficult sometimes to avoid a plethora of I's.

3. Then and Now: also finding it difficult to weave a time line in a few paragraphs, being tempted to talk about one time for half a paragraph, then another for the rest of the paragraph, then retreat back to the first time in the second paragraph etc. Having too much to say about both times, I think - distant past and recent past vying for attention.

That is all.

Addendum: My poetry is still shocking. Its pushing me to hand it in because I don't know what else to do with it. Maybe this is a good thing. I think I may be reworking Guido Fink too much at the same time. A few polishings here and there and I think I'm going to let them go.

INSPIRATION AND NOTEBOOKS: I'm thinking often that I need to go out and look for things to write about, and no doubt its a weakness on my part that I'm not inspired by my locale but my notebook is filling up with reworkings of old things. The notes take up a minority of the pages, the rest are those notes worked into some form or other.

I have a feeling I need to gather more notes. One thing I've found that helps this is photographs - they don't have to be any more interesting than my own environment, but they already seem to have a narrative to them. Whereas here, all I can think is "dead town dead town dead town, ramshackle hippy coffee shops and costa, chavs and the walking dead town dead town dead town". Can I call that a poem?

LOG231310-16.777 The Tower and Guido Fink

I'm not sure if i've done enough collecting of notebookage, in that I havn't spent much time sitting outside making notes on the builders working on the road, or the pigeons that frequent the highstreet, or any of the other things that I writer might choose to practice on. Instead I've been using old IDEAS that appeal to me. I'm not sure if this is important, except that my 800 word 'Tale of Guido Fink' contains no description of a physical environment, only a description of the mental state and motives of the narrator. Perhaps that suits the same purpose, except it wasn't mentioned in any of the exercises. I wrote it because it wanted to be written. It was inspired, and I couldn't ignore that. So I'm submitting it to see what my tutor will say to it.

I finished another poem called "The Tower". It seems to fly as a collection of almost haiku's. Again I'm not sure if its what I've been asked for, but its what I wrote, so....

I still need one more poem, and plan to go through my notes on looking through a window, and my the notes I took today while sitting outside a coffee shop, writing something about the wind. But they are conflicting notes, and I'm not sure it'll work. Poetry isn't my strong point, it seems. I could stick with my puny poem "Solitude", but I don't know if it captures its core theme of loss, and the rhyming structure leaves something to be desired.

So far the only piece I feel matches the criteria is called "Amicus Usque Adarat", and is about a cat I saw in a graveyard. The Tower also matches the criteria, in fact. Its really just this 'Tale of Guido Fink' that came up out of nowhere, that adheres to the factual notes I took in my notebook and commonplace book, but not to the descriptive exercises. Or maybe I'm confused - I get lost in exercises.

For clarities sake:

1. The Tower: Poem taken from notes on deserted town, well structured.

2. Amicus Usque Adaras: Prose taken from notes in graveyard, poetic description well caught.

3. The Tale of Guido Fink: Prose taken from long held intrigue with hidden worlds and false appearances, based on fame. An introduction that stops short of the description of London in 1882. Sets a psychology scene, but not a physical one.

4. Solitude: Poem. I'm not sure if this captures anything, or whether its just self pity.

None of them are about birds or bunny rabbits.

LOG231310-14.23 Counting Syllables

Five hours and three stanza's later, my head hurts from counting syllables. 16.6, 16.5, 16.4.

I have two pieces of prose I'm pleased with: one because of the poetic language, and one because of the promise of a good plot. My poetry, however....I don't seem to be writing anything particularly uplifting or jovial. I'm stuck with a maudlin melancholy - i wait to see whether this makes any sort of reasonable poetry.

LOG231310-11.12 Sentimental Musings

Ah yes, the writing rolls ever on, though today I stood back awhile and didn't touch a pen. First time in over two weeks.

I have some stories to work on. What else is there to say?.................

And if I cannot find the words to record my practice, then I can say this - I can comment on my purpose, on the reason why I write. Because in my heart, in my mind and in my dreams there are faces of all the people I've known, and loved, and lost. The places I've been, and may never return to, and all the experiences I've had, all things I've seen, things that may never find a place in the world without my writing.

And so I light another cigarette as the rain beats heavy on the windows by my desk, and drink another cup of coffee to toast the wonder of those worlds to which I've ventured, and escaped, and returned in almost one piece. Worlds that no one would believe, were it not for the compassion of fiction. That sacred window into possibility, and to the future.

For the beauty of our fumblings, for the lightness of our chilled recourse to seperation and for the passion of obsession. To carve a glimpse of those places made of lightwater, where houses are built of music, and history reverberates in each note. For the memory of earth, from which we came so long ago, and in defiance of those things that travel through the abyss of hopelessness and watch from severed eyes, and in defiance of those people that seek their immortality not through art but through a stolen catalogue of souls.

For the people who cannot be with me as I write tonight, nor join me for coffee tomorrow.

LOG231310-11.11 oni mo jiu-hachi

Work: did stuff. Rewrote "Logos" again.

Came back, re-read the course book, realised I've been redoing exercise 1 for the last two weeks and have filled half a note book. Was even thinking, this morning, of just turning in my two pieces of prose and two poems.

Having re-read the book, realised I haven't done any of the other exercises. Engaged in half an hours freewriting, wrote another poem, started a common place book.

I'm finding it hard to show instead of saying. "Logos" is all saying, and no showing - or so I think. Perhaps, as often happens, if I gave it to someone to read they'd see it differently.

I'm frustrated. Spending a lot of my writing time frustrated. I have these great ideas, and then i pick up a pen and write something inane. It's like being a sculptor with a vision, knowing that you want to carve Zeus, and that his arm should be in this position, his muscle here more solidly defined than the tunic there, but in the end only carving a stick man. Because thats the skill I have. I'm writing stick poems. Ugh.

Now feel like abandoning "Logos" altogether, and don't want to contemplate what the "descriptive prose" project will illuminate. How can I hand in any prose when I haven't even read the project? I just got so sucked into exercise one that I forgot everything else!

Later: Ray Bradbury said that he wrote a short story every week for years, millions of words, and none of them were published ("rightly so" he added). Eventually, he'd write a short story a week for a year and one of them would be published. That one story was enough to keep the fires alight.

Frustration or no, I went to the church yard this evening to write some words, and as I paid attention to it the world became more beautiful. That was enough. I noticed the similarity between catching phrases and sketching. I found glimmerings of a narrative to follow.

Despite my stick man sketchings, I have learnt some important things already. My note-taking is going well, and I've had lots of ideas to return to. The process of moving from notebook to draft and re-draft is becoming habit, previous habits being refined in line with the course. Old stories I'd thought I'd lost are coming back to me.

Another two exercises done this evening - writing an object, and writing a collection of objects (in the grave yard). Several hours of writing.

LOG231310-11.10 Word Hemorrage

Full day of work today, so not as much writing.

Woke up this morning, wrote a poem first thing. It was passable as a piece of writing, it captured some feelings well. Reminded me that I need to keep writing poems - poem after poem - digging through my note book and utilising the themes and associations I have developed. I read a quote somewhere;

"A piece of writing is just a postcard from where the author has been".

I've got a lot of ideas building up, too much too fit into anyone poem. I see at least three nesting in one page of my notebook.

Came back from work and immediately spent a solid two hours pouring over associations. I used an excercise from the course text book to firm up some ideas - basically took the important words from the most recent draft of "Logos" and drew a mind-map. It was very complicated, and fried my brain. Too much to contain in a single vision, a good set of notes. I asked myself what I was really trying to say, linking dreams, history, technology, language and architecture to make a labyrinth of the city.

The Minataur myth has really captured my imagination for the last several weeks.

LOG231310-11.9 Logos/Logo\s

Rewrote my poem "Logos", with the intent of imbuing it with a more coherent rhyming structure. Hard work, but some success. Its an unfamiliar process - in the past I've used poems lazily, when I've had too many thoughts to do anything other than spit words at paper in the order they appear.

Some of my ideas are so complicated that the poem I've written isn't a finished product, but another phase in my gathering of material. A consolidation of previous materials, illuminating certain relationships but not expressing them adequately enough for my liking.

There is the Logos, and there are Logo's, and both work in similar ways. Logo's create a virtual Logos. Its a complicated thing for me to fit into a poem.

Disappointed by "Long Dark Tea Time of the Soul". Its a humorous story, but the language isn't beautiful enough. Its not to my taste, I think.

I have another notebook about to be opened up, for the purpose of "reading as a writer" - noting things that jump out at me from the books I read, writing reviews and pillaging ideas.

All in all, its been a fairly productive day. Wrote out my story from last night ("Itch"), then rewrote the poem. Came back from the library with a couple of novels (my god, its the worst library I've ever been too). However, one of those days flavoured by excessive haunting; feeling out of place. What was it Anne Rice said about writing?....

"Writers write about what obsesses them," says Rice. "You draw those cards. I lost my mother when I was 14. My daughter died at the age of 6. lost my faith as a Catholic. When I'm writing, the darkness is always there. I go where the pain is."

Feeling out of place is my personal demon. And I do not mean in some teenage social angst kind of way. I mean in the sense of losing everything over night, having your history and friends denied you. That I know. I just can't write about it easily.

Much easier to write about the time I was almost shot in the face.

Oh god, its here right now. If only I could get fucked up, but the writer in me won't allow it. Arrrrrghhh.......

[...transmission terminated...]

LOG231310-11.8 1/2 Research Day 2

Research went well today. Gathered some good stuff. Turns out there's quite a lot of material on forgotten histories, usually involving conspiracies and aliens. There are There seems to be quite a lot of stuff on alien origins; on legends of Lemuria, a sunken country, on the Nommos of the Dogon, an amphibian alien race who gave great knowledge to an african tribe. There are lots of water connections, which is interesting because in writing about my dreams there is a continual water theme. Correspondences between subterranean, subaquatic and subconscious abound.

On the one hand, most of the stuff is paranormal, leaving me feeling like a nut. On the other hand, I invented this stuff. It came from my own searching within myself. Only after writing notes and recording using a dictaphone did i then hit the web for other people's ideas, leaving me feeling less like a nut and more like I've tuned into something other people share. An archetype, perhaps.

I didn't get much writing done during the day. It seems that night is my preferred time - when all the phantoms of the day quit their jabbering about cleaning the kitchen and paying the bills, then my imagination is free. I felt a little blocked during the day, and planned for an early night. I then did one of the exercises in the Creative Writing Coursebook, and it got me all fired up and I wrote a 300 word story. Thats all my assignments done already, leaving aside redrafting and editing.

I started a new notebook specifically for the exercises in the book. First one - write down five sounds you hear and all their associations. This was gold dust! Its an excercise to find your creative voice, and it worked so well I shot straight off from the sound of scratching to a full blown story. I never knew scratching could lead to scouring, digging, unearthing, voodoo and skeletons in the closet. I will definately be doing more of this - the associations seem to be where the marrow is, and I love finding them. My thesaurus is my favourite toy.

I'm going to repeat the excercise tomorrow. There's something meditative about listening; listening to the sounds of the world, to my own associations, to the stories that are already in me, in who I am.

The story itself, not so great. But that makes it great. Its honest, an illustration of where my skills lie. I really enjoyed that it was loose and flabby, because it means I can tighten and trim it. More fun!

LOG231310-11.8 Research Day

I'm going to do some research online today. The internet can be useful for catching soundbites, following links endless from page to page. In the past I've come up with some really interesting free associations this way, connections between things that I wouldn't have noticed otherwise. As Dirk Gently, Holistic Private Detective, says in The Long Dark Tea Time of the Soul, "I don't get where I should be, but I often get where I need to be" (on following cars instead of maps).

One of the things I'm trying to get a grip on is how to use this log and my notebook constructively. I'm trying to differentiate between them. Truth be told, I don't have a notebook. I have a 'workbook'. In it I write down a lot of creative thoughts, in the form of poetry and prose and mind maps. Its getting filled up quickly. The difference between that and this log is that this is a place for reflection and understanding. I think when I have delved into a particular theme enough, through this blog and my workbook, I will then go through them both and construct a notebook - a record of my research, taking key quotes, writings and images. It will be phase three in a process of continued refinement.

Today my plan is this: investigate a few recurring themes through this blog. Rather than writing down everything I find in my workbook I'll put it here.

Those themes are these:

1. A Forgotten History; A Forgotten Story; Unnoticed but present. It is not as if it has been burned, or buried or deliberately obscured, it is just that if you were in its presence you wouldn't think to see it.

2. Earth as collective memory; I am interested in the idea that we do not live on The Earth, but An Earth. Origins Unknown.

3. That we inhabit different worlds and different times, but out of a need for coherence and simplicity we reduce them to single concept.

Now, the best way I have found to explore these things and give them an element of possibility - and then probability - is through comparative studies. Finding correlations, associations and similarities between myth. Its sort of like A Grand Unified Theory of Origins and Influence.

My most successful venture into this field was several years ago, when I was attempting to write an article for the Only Maybe student magazine, part of Robert Anton Wilson's online academy. Essentially I discovered that Khazr, the sufi god of light, was a counterpart of Saint George, that Saint George was a an expression of the Archangel Michael, and that Michael was Adam in angelic form.

I then went on to find that in Sufi culture Khazir is synonymous with the Green Man. Just like Michael is the angelic form of Adam, the Green Man is the angelic form of Robin Hood. Rather, Robin Hood is a personification of the Green Man.

It is worth pointing out that the earliest sound reference to Saint George occurs at the time of the crusades, when he became patron of Soldiers. He was an abyssinian, and i used my imagination to suggest that he was encountered during the crusades. The worship of Khazir involves imbibing marijuana, and his name means "The Light of God". To experience this light, one needed only to get high.

The celebration day of Khazir is the 23rd of April. The celebration of St. George is the 23rd of April. Given the context of the article - counter culture magazine - i suggested that one of the bounties carried back during the crusades was marijuana, along with the myth of "The Light of God". Further to this, there are accounts of soldiers using marijuana to make them stronger fighters.

There were a lot of other correspondences, but due to my ramshackle life I've lost the notes and its too long ago to remember it all. This is just an example. Ultimately, my intent was to show that Saint George, like Khazir, was the patron saint not only of England, but also of Cannabis.

TODAY I intend to discover the relationship between myths of the unconscious, and where the spirits of the world reside. One of the things that came through in my writing of dreams was a transformation into sea creatures, and the world taking on water elements (the roads becoming rivers, rivers of consciousness, etc).

I start with the Enki - "the Enki lay asleep in the depths of the primeval ocean". Chthonic. Shit, I'm going to have to abandon this explanation and resort to my notebook.

SUPPLEMENTAL: Extra-Terrestrial Musings

As an aside, I see UFO's from time to time. The most recent one was a couple of weeks ago, when I was standing with my dad at night on his balcony. Overhead a light, very high up, was making its way across the sky. It appeared to be driven by a drunkard, as it wavered from side to side, covering distances of what must have been a couple of miles at the height, and very quickly.

My dad had stepped inside and I asked "do you want to see a UFO?". Sometimes I ask people these things, most often I keep it to myself. Some of the things I've seen....

He wandered out with a concerned expression on his face, and I pointed it out.

"Interesting, huh" I said with practiced, near authentic, nonchalance.

"What makes you think its a UFO?" he asked.

"Primarily" says I, with a touch of incredulity, "because its waving from side to side like a joyrider on acid".

"Yeah, I can see what you mean" he says with a level head, "but it might just look like that because its so high up and on its own, and there's no reference for its movements. Its probably just a plane". "Could be" I mused, "but planes fly straight, and usually have blinking lights". I say this more because I want to explore than explain. I'm not trying to attribute anything special to the miniscule and innocuous light. For all I know, it is a plane.

"What? Like that" he said, as a plane appeared from the the other side of the sky, definately flying in a straight line, point of reference or not, and irrefutably attributing abnormal behaviour to the previous object.

"Yep" I said, savouring the poetic justice.

I never wanted to write about ghosts and vampires and aliens, or gangsters and gunrunners and other sensationalised characters. I wanted to write some serious fiction, something grounded in the everyday. Perhaps I still will, but what recurs is a fascination with the out-of-the-ordinary, an inspired enthusiasm for magic and madness and the impossible.

The art, perhaps, is making these things part of the everyday.

I've just returned from watching 'The Fourth Kind'. Kinda interesting, didn't provoke much of a reaction in many ways, but a few things stood out enough to tickle my fancy.

1. The Sumerian speaking alien, and suggestions of interstellar origin. Various archeological finds depicting flying sauces to me imply that while we may not come from another planet, humanity has at least been captivated and drawn to the stars for a long time.

2. The fact that the abductions occurred at 3.33am. This is never explained in the film, and occums razor leads me to think that it was simply a stylisation. Why not 2.34? Because 3.33 suggests an intent.

3. This is what really clinched it for me, what really got me interested, and it didn't occur until the end of the film. The alien creature, full of wraith and menace, audio and visual distortions etc, says "I am god".

3 1/2. When asked "you say this creature said it was god. What do you believe?"

"What I believe is that this creature....was far beyond anything we can imagine. It was...complete hopelessness, and so it wasn't god. But it could pretend to be".

Taking points 2 - 3/12 gives a damn good account of the demon 333. Point two names it, and point 3 names its reason d'etre. Its fantastic, and completely unintentional, as far as i can work out. Those that encountered it in the film frequently committed suicide or went mad. This too is a common factor in encounters with "the demon 333". Dr. John Dee was attacked by it in the late 1500's, and Alistair Crowley taunted it in the 1920's (if memory serves) which leads to his accomplices suicide. These days there is a trend in Chaos Magick circles that actually all the 'puny humans' that don't practice their enlightened brand of pop-occultism simply misunderstand its nature, and actually its quite fun to play with. They call is Choronzon. Charles Manson adopted the number 333 as his own, which is not suprising considering it belonged to something pretending to be god.

For me, it was worth sitting through the film for that tit-bit synchronicity.

LOG231310-11.7 How I Doth Protest Too Much.

Rolled out of bed this morning, into some clothes and shoes then down the road to the local cafe for coffee and reflection on my personal profile, which I dutifully emailed to my tutor this morning.

After that came back, had breakfast, spent a few hours penning a first draft rehashed and rekindled from previous writings, constructing a dream sequence. Only 1278 words, but its only a first draft with plenty of place for expanding the story. I was pleased that it all ran together quite well.

Then read 50 pages of Douglas Adams' "Long Dark Tea Time of the Soul", finding the best line to be:

"Since Dirk's Jaguar had only lost its front right indicator, and Dirk insisted that he hardly ever turned right anyway, they drove the short distance there".

Hurrying through it so I can move onto "The Island of Doctor Moreau".

Am now considering going to see the film "The Fourth Kind" after a cup of coffee, followed by a couple of whiskies, because I know that no one else will see it with me - quite rightly, no doubt, since I expect it to be.....well......you know.....Aliens and Hollywood - and I'm rekindling my childhood enthusiasm for things that can't be explained, because I love what a lack of explanation does for my imagination.

I have my doubts. I would rather sit here and bash out a second draft, but I can't write and read all day - as my friends and family keep telling me - or I'll turn into an octopus [vis a vis my dream sequence]. I wont be suprised if I come back from the film and sit at my desk until 2.30 writing drafts, though. Whisky permitting.

LOG231310-11.6 Paradise Addendum

Today I finished two poems for my first assignment (a long one called "Logos" and a short one called "Paradise Addendum"). It's possibly the very first time in my life that I've ever written a poem more than once. Tomorrow I will start on the prose. Thankfully I have a good hundred pages to trawl through for something to rewrite, and a quarter of a workbook filled since I bought it five or six days ago. I havn't found a new job yet.

I'm going to introduce a quote of the day to my log. I have noticed that this log started off as something of a notebook, and am now intending to veer it towards an account of the days musings and practice, with pertinent bits of information thrown in. Such as Joseph Cambells thoughts on myth, found in a never before published article on the Parabola Magazine website:

The real reference of mythology is to the spirit, to the psyche-right in here. [Points at chest.] The way a society grips its members, and holds them to the tasks of the society, is by enabling people to project their own inward mythic potentials into the context of the society in which they are living.

But when the context of the society has changed, then we need a new mythology-the same great themes, because there are permanent, universal themes which are the base, the ground of all mythological lore. But these themes then have to be related to an environment in which the individual is living.

I have decided it will be necessary to subscribe to some periodicals that inspire me and keep me informed of developments in the fields that I am interested in. One of these is the Parabola Magazine, which explores myth today in a cross-cultural and comparative sense.

I also joined the library, so I can read more novels for free. I'm still on my journey of rediscovery, finding out what it is that turns me on literary wise.

In little under an hour I will be going to a lecture given by Andy Thomas on "Exploring Unexplained Mysteries". Coincidentally, I picked up a magazine with an article he wrote today, while looking for something inspiring.

I am not enthused about the idea of listening to someone talk about crop circles and psychic phenomena, since these subjects always seem to be approached from the stance of "these things are completely real, and I have an explanation", or "these things are complete fantasy, and I have an explanation".

What I am hoping for is a talk about what it means when things can't be explained. I want to hear of the bafflement, befuddlement, bemusement, not the manicured personal belief systems attached to such phenomena in an effort to make them just like everything else - understandable. Neat. Tidy. Resolved.

Failing that, I wish to steal peoples barmy conceptions of the extra-ultra-and-uber terrestrial, the mytho-poetical, and spawn spurious fictional characters with them.

dream poems

Once in the dream of a night I stood
Lone in the light of a magical wood,
Soul-deep in visions that poppy-like sprang;
And spirits of Truth were the birds that sang,
And spirits of Love were the stars that glowed,
And spirits of Peace were the streams that flowed
In that magical wood in the land of sleep.

Lone in the light of that magical grove,
I felt the stars of the spirits of Love
Gather and gleam round my delicate youth,
And I heard the song of the spirits of Truth;
To quench my longing I bent me low
By the streams of the spirits of Peace that flow
In that magical wood in the land of sleep.



- Sarojini Naidu


A Dream



Once a dream did weave a shade
O'er my Angel-guarded bed,
That an Emmet lost its way
Where on grass methought I lay.

Troubled, 'wilder'd, and forlorn,
Dark, benighted, travel-worn,
Over many a tangled spray,
All heart-broken I heard her say:

``O, my children! do they cry?
Do they hear their father sigh?
Now they look abroad to see:
Now return and weep for me.''

Pitying, I drop'd a tear;
But I saw a glow-worm near,
Who replied: ``What wailing wight
Calls the watchman of the night?

``I am set to light the ground,
While the beetle goes his round:
Follow now the beetle's hum;
Little wanderer, hie thee home.''


- William Blake



A Dream within a dream

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow--
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand--
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep--while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?



- Edgar Allan Poe


Dream Variation



To fling my arms wide
In some place of the sun,
To whirl and to dance
Till the white day is done.
Then rest at cool evening
Beneath a tall tree
While night comes on gently,
Dark like me--
That is my dream!






To fling my arms wide
In the face of the sun,
Dance! Whirl! Whirl!
Till the quick day is done.
Rest at pale evening . . .
A tall, slim tree . . .
Night coming tenderly
Black like me.





- Langston Hughes


A Dream

Hear now a curious dream I dreamed last night

Each word whereof is weighed and sifted truth.



I stood beside Euphrates while it swelled

Like overflowing Jordan in its youth:

It waxed and coloured sensibly to sight;

Till out of myriad pregnant waves there welled

Young crocodiles, a gaunt blunt-featured crew,

Fresh-hatched perhaps and daubed with birthday dew.

The rest if I should tell, I fear my friend

My closest friend would deem the facts untrue;

And therefore it were wisely left untold;

Yet if you will, why, hear it to the end.



Each crocodile was girt with massive gold

And polished stones that with their wearers grew:

But one there was who waxed beyond the rest,

Wore kinglier girdle and a kingly crown,

Whilst crowns and orbs and sceptres starred his breast.

All gleamed compact and green with scale on scale,

But special burnishment adorned his mail

And special terror weighed upon his frown;

His punier brethren quaked before his tail,

Broad as a rafter, potent as a flail.



So he grew lord and master of his kin:

But who shall tell the tale of all their woes?

An execrable appetite arose,

He battened on them, crunched, and sucked them in.

He knew no law, he feared no binding law,

But ground them with inexorable jaw:

The luscious fat distilled upon his chin,

Exuded from his nostrils and his eyes,

While still like hungry death he fed his maw;

Till every minor crocodile being dead

And buried too, himself gorged to the full,

He slept with breath oppressed and unstrung claw.

Oh marvel passing strange which next I saw:

In sleep he dwindled to the common size,

And all the empire faded from his coat.

Then from far off a wingèd vessel came,

Swift as a swallow, subtle as a flame:

I know not what it bore of freight or host,

But white it was as an avenging ghost.

It levelled strong Euphrates in its course;

Supreme yet weightless as an idle mote

It seemed to tame the waters without force

Till not a murmur swelled or billow beat:

Lo, as the purple shadow swept the sands,

The prudent crocodile rose on his feet

And shed appropriate tears and wrung his hands.



What can it mean? you ask. I answer not

For meaning, but myself must echo, What?

And tell it as I saw it on the spot


Question: What are dreams?

Sri Chinmoy: Dreams are realities of other worlds. If they are dreams from the lower worlds, the soul will either try to illumine and elevate them or try to destroy them. Unillumined dreams create tremendous problems for the seeker. If they are undivine dreams, the soul's light fights with them and does not want them to manifest.

If they are elevating dreams, dreams from the higher worlds, then the soul's light expedites their earthward journey.


The Dream by Lord Byron
I

Our life is twofold; Sleep hath its own world,
A boundary between the things misnamed
Death and existence: Sleep hath its own world,
And a wide realm of wild reality,
And dreams in their development have breath,
And tears, and tortures, and the touch of joy;
They leave a weight upon our waking thoughts,
They take a weight from off waking toils,
They do divide our being; they become
A portion of ourselves as of our time,
And look like heralds of eternity;
They pass like spirits of the past—they speak
Like sibyls of the future; they have power—
The tyranny of pleasure and of pain;
They make us what we were not—what they will,
And shake us with the vision that's gone by,
The dread of vanished shadows—Are they so?
Is not the past all shadow?—What are they?
Creations of the mind?—The mind can make
Substances, and people planets of its own
With beings brighter than have been, and give
A breath to forms which can outlive all flesh.
I would recall a vision which I dreamed
Perchance in sleep—for in itself a thought,
A slumbering thought, is capable of years,
And curdles a long life into one hour.

II

I saw two beings in the hues of youth
Standing upon a hill, a gentle hill,
Green and of mild declivity, the last
As 'twere the cape of a long ridge of such,
Save that there was no sea to lave its base,
But a most living landscape, and the wave
Of woods and corn-fields, and the abodes of men
Scattered at intervals, and wreathing smoke
Arising from such rustic roofs: the hill
Was crowned with a peculiar diadem
Of trees, in circular array, so fixed,
Not by the sport of nature, but of man:
These two, a maiden and a youth, were there
Gazing—the one on all that was beneath
Fair as herself—but the boy gazed on her;
And both were young, and one was beautiful:
And both were young—yet not alike in youth.
As the sweet moon on the horizon's verge,
The maid was on the eve of womanhood;
The boy had fewer summers, but his heart
Had far outgrown his years, and to his eye
There was but one beloved face on earth,
And that was shining on him; he had looked
Upon it till it could not pass away;
He had no breath, no being, but in hers:
She was his voice; he did not speak to her,
But trembled on her words; she was his sight,
For his eye followed hers, and saw with hers,
Which coloured all his objects;—he had ceased
To live within himself: she was his life,
The ocean to the river of his thoughts,
Which terminated all; upon a tone,
A touch of hers, his blood would ebb and flow,
And his cheek change tempestuously—his heart
Unknowing of its cause of agony.
But she in these fond feelings had no share:
Her sighs were not for him; to her he was
Even as a brother—but no more; 'twas much,
For brotherless she was, save in the name
Her infant friendship had bestowed on him;
Herself the solitary scion left
Of a time-honoured race.—It was a name
Which pleased him, and yet pleased him not—and why?
Time taught him a deep answer—when she loved
Another; even now she loved another,
And on the summit of that hill she stood
Looking afar if yet her lover's steed
Kept pace with her expectancy, and flew.

III

A change came o'er the spirit of my dream.
There was an ancient mansion, and before
Its walls there was a steed caparisoned:
Within an antique Oratory stood
The Boy of whom I spake;—he was alone,
And pale, and pacing to and fro: anon
He sate him down, and seized a pen, and traced
Words which I could not guess of; then he leaned
His bowed head on his hands and shook, as 'twere
With a convulsion—then rose again,
And with his teeth and quivering hands did tear
What he had written, but he shed no tears.
And he did calm himself, and fix his brow
Into a kind of quiet: as he paused,
The Lady of his love re-entered there;
She was serene and smiling then, and yet
She knew she was by him beloved; she knew—
For quickly comes such knowledge—that his heart
Was darkened with her shadow, and she saw
That he was wretched, but she saw not all.
He rose, and with a cold and gentle grasp
He took her hand; a moment o'er his face
A tablet of unutterable thoughts
Was traced, and then it faded, as it came;
He dropped the hand he held, and with slow steps
Retired, but not as bidding her adieu,
For they did part with mutual smiles; he passed
From out the massy gate of that old Hall,
And mounting on his steed he went his way;
And ne'er repassed that hoary threshold more.

IV

A change came o'er the spirit of my dream.
The Boy was sprung to manhood: in the wilds
Of fiery climes he made himself a home,
And his Soul drank their sunbeams; he was girt
With strange and dusky aspects; he was not
Himself like what he had been; on the sea
And on the shore he was a wanderer;
There was a mass of many images
Crowded like waves upon me, but he was
A part of all; and in the last he lay
Reposing from the noontide sultriness,
Couched among fallen columns, in the shade
Of ruined walls that had survived the names
Of those who reared them; by his sleeping side
Stood camels grazing, and some goodly steeds
Were fastened near a fountain; and a man,
Glad in a flowing garb, did watch the while,
While many of his tribe slumbered around:
And they were canopied by the blue sky,
So cloudless, clear, and purely beautiful,
That God alone was to be seen in heaven.

V

A change came o'er the spirit of my dream.
The Lady of his love was wed with One
Who did not love her better: in her home,
A thousand leagues from his,—her native home,
She dwelt, begirt with growing Infancy,
Daughters and sons of Beauty,—but behold!
Upon her face there was a tint of grief,
The settled shadow of an inward strife,
And an unquiet drooping of the eye,
As if its lid were charged with unshed tears.
What could her grief be?—she had all she loved,
And he who had so loved her was not there
To trouble with bad hopes, or evil wish,
Or ill-repressed affliction, her pure thoughts.
What could her grief be?—she had loved him not,
Nor given him cause to deem himself beloved,
Nor could he be a part of that which preyed
Upon her mind—a spectre of the past.

VI

A change came o'er the spirit of my dream.
The Wanderer was returned.—I saw him stand
Before an altar—with a gentle bride;
Her face was fair, but was not that which made
The Starlight of his Boyhood;—as he stood
Even at the altar, o'er his brow there came
The selfsame aspect and the quivering shock
That in the antique Oratory shook
His bosom in its solitude; and then—
As in that hour—a moment o'er his face
The tablet of unutterable thoughts
Was traced—and then it faded as it came,
And he stood calm and quiet, and he spoke
The fitting vows, but heard not his own words,
And all things reeled around him; he could see
Not that which was, nor that which should have been—
But the old mansion, and the accustomed hall,
And the remembered chambers, and the place,
The day, the hour, the sunshine, and the shade,
All things pertaining to that place and hour,
And her who was his destiny, came back
And thrust themselves between him and the light;
What business had they there at such a time?

VII

A change came o'er the spirit of my dream.
The Lady of his love;—Oh! she was changed,
As by the sickness of the soul; her mind
Had wandered from its dwelling, and her eyes,
They had not their own lustre, but the look
Which is not of the earth; she was become
The queen of a fantastic realm; her thoughts
Were combinations of disjointed things;
And forms impalpable and unperceived
Of others' sight familiar were to hers.
And this the world calls frenzy; but the wise
Have a far deeper madness, and the glance
Of melancholy is a fearful gift;
What is it but the telescope of truth?
Which strips the distance of its fantasies,
And brings life near in utter nakedness,
Making the cold reality too real!

VIII

A change came o'er the spirit of my dream.
The Wanderer was alone as heretofore,
The beings which surrounded him were gone,
Or were at war with him; he was a mark
For blight and desolation, compassed round
With Hatred and Contention; Pain was mixed
In all which was served up to him, until,
Like to the Pontic monarch of old days,
He fed on poisons, and they had no power,
But were a kind of nutriment; he lived
Through that which had been death to many men,
And made him friends of mountains; with the stars
And the quick Spirit of the Universe
He held his dialogues: and they did teach
To him the magic of their mysteries;
To him the book of Night was opened wide,
And voices from the deep abyss revealed
A marvel and a secret.—Be it so.

IX

My dream is past; it had no further change.
It was of a strange order, that the doom
Of these two creatures should be thus traced out
Almost like a reality—the one
To end in madness—both in misery.



We dream -- it is good we are dreaming -- by Emily Dickinson

We dream -- it is good we are dreaming --
It would hurt us -- were we awake --
But since it is playing -- kill us,
And we are playing -- shriek --

What harm? Men die -- externally --
It is a truth -- of Blood --
But we -- are dying in Drama --
And Drama -- is never dead --

Cautious -- We jar each other --
And either -- open the eyes --
Lest the Phantasm -- prove the Mistake --
And the livid Surprise

Cool us to Shafts of Granite --
With just an Age -- and Name --
And perhaps a phrase in Egyptian --
It's prudenter -- to dream --



- Christina Rossetti

Dreams by Robert William Service

I had a dream, a dream of dread:
I thought that horror held the house;
A burglar bent above my bed,
He moved as quiet as a mouse.
With hairy hand and naked knife
He poised to plunge a bloody stroke,
Until despairful of my life
I shrieked with terror - and awoke.

I had a dream of weary woes:
In weather that was fit to freeze,
I thought that I had lost my cloths,
And only wore a short chemise.
The wind was wild; so catch a train
I ran, but no advance did make;
My legs were pistoning in vain -
How I was happy to awake!

I had a dream: Upon the stair
I met a maid who kissed my lips;
A nightie was her only wear,
We almost came to loving grips.
And then she opened wide a door,
And pointed to a bonny bed . . .
Oh blast! I wakened up before
I could discover - were we wed?

Alas! Those dreams of broken bliss,
Of wakenings too sadly soon!
With memories of sticky kiss,
And limbs so languidly a-swoon!
Alas those nightmares devil driven!
Those pantless prowlings in Pall Mall!
Oh why should some dreams be like heaven
And others so resemble hell?


Dreams by David Herbert Lawrence

All people dream, but not equally.
Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their mind,
Wake in the morning to find that it was vanity.

But the dreamers of the day are dangerous people,
For they dream their dreams with open eyes,
And make them come true.

A Dream by Edgar Allan Poe

In visions of the dark night
I have dreamed of joy departed-
But a waking dream of life and light
Hath left me broken-hearted.

Ah! what is not a dream by day
To him whose eyes are cast
On things around him with a ray
Turned back upon the past?

That holy dream- that holy dream,
While all the world were chiding,
Hath cheered me as a lovely beam
A lonely spirit guiding.

What though that light, thro' storm and night,
So trembled from afar-
What could there be more purely bright
In Truth's day-star?

LOG231310-11.5 Death by Sandwich

Notes on making the ordinary extraordinary, and on writing a themed poem.

1. "I must have a clear and firm idea of ones main theme, in this case dream, and about what the components of this theme are".

Trope: Dream.

Organs: A. Imagination, B. Delirium, C. Philosophy, D. An Event.

2. I must then decide upon a side to take, a point(s) of view, if one does not already have me by the throat.

A. Image.iNation: Corporatization of the archetypes, mediation of direct mytho-poetic experience through media consumerism. Flouting the consensus, and the risks inherent.

B. Core experiences: Change in cognition, disturbance of consciousness, "intrusive abnormalities of awareness and affect, such as hallucinations or inappropriate emotional states", [sic.] a loss of control.

C. Skeptical Hypothesis: Reality as a dream; Descartes, Zhuangzi. The autonomy of symbols, memetic theory and the collective unconscious. Symbols as parts externalised parts of the mind.

D. Wassailing: an ancient English ritual. Traditionally, a form of tree worship. In this poem, a form of city worship. Looking for an unchartered spirit to answer a question. Not being allowed to go home until you receive an answer.

3. I must know how these organs work together to sustain the main theme. One must know the correlations, correspondences, conflicts and comparisons. I imagined several scenarios with dream as the catalyst.

For the sake of brevity, I wish to contrast the act of what is medically known as "quiet delirium", where the subject is non-responsive, with the hyperactive delirium of hallucination. The virgin mobile advert in the sidebar is my take on "quiet" delirium, where the experience is one that doesn't affect the world around us.

4. Chart a course - Making a narrative, step by step.

TO BE CONTINUED.

Notes from poetry.com:

You may feel you’re informed about domestic squabbling, perhaps even competent to address it, but if you haven’t any interest in writing on that subject, pass it up. You may be interested in teen gangs, but have no experience and little knowledge about them. You should probably not attempt that subject.

Once you’ve chosen your subjects, start by selecting one and jotting down the first several, relevant things that come into your head, no matter how apparent or superficial. Do this with your entire list of subjects.

When you are ready to compose your poem, make certain that you do not include these off-the-top-of-your-head statements.

Next, extract the salient features of the situation and construct its narrative line. Like a parable, a narrative makes its point. Presented in chronological order, each step in the progression of events could become a paragraph of the poem.

The value of an approach to a theme can only be measured by the resulting poetry.

LOG:231310.11-4. Poetic Emanations

I spent most of this morning experimenting with form. Starting off with a one page piece of observational writing, about the cafe courtyard I was sitting in, I noticed a prevalence of suitcases, boxes and professionals. All of them going to and fro, revealing little. I relied on poetic emanations to give me a sense of character. I then noticed that most people stopped to look at the notice board, so I wrote over my observations with the captions and titles that caught peoples attention. I then drew a series of random boxes, attempting to find a correlation. An essence. The result was something of a failure. Without a sense of agency, the boxes contained little of value. Despite highlighting key phrases to plan a route through the word forest (I mapped a section of the underground over the top also) I was disappointed.



What I was looking for was a sort of essence that flowed through the disjointed words, a sense of place or genus loci, but after all the overlapping and rewriting the whole thing lacked character.

Additional: Writing all day, and when I couldn't bare to scratch another word I lay down and ranted into my digital camera. "Who gives a fuck about dreams??", at last I broke. It seems I am coming up against something more entrenched than my whimsical desire for animate streets. Anyway, I wrote a poem at least - all the gnashing of teeth going somewhere.

LOG:231310.11-3. Why Horror?

"http://ezinearticles.com/?Why-Do-We-Enjoy-Horror-Films?&id=1060951"

The article above states:

Noal Carroll (1987) presents a co-existentialist theory, where it is curiosity which drives us to horror, more specifically it is our curiosity about what we believe to be naturally, as apposed to logically, impossible. We find pleasure in curiosity, however to get this curiosity we need to be presented with an impossible being to be curious about. In order to seem impossible to us a being must cross the boundaries we have used to classify nature, for example, something that posses the qualities of more than one type of animal, something living and dead, bodies which are not complete, or bodies which possess more than we would expect. These creatures will inspire awe and fascination amongst us but due to their nature they will also disgust us.

Mary Douglas suggested that these creatures which defy category incite us to instinctive aversion, that they are above all ANOMALOUS. It is the anomalous that scares us collectively, for it is that which is anomalous that has in the past poisoned, polluted and in other ways endangered us. Socially, we need categories in order to communicate a large amount of information quickly, and the longer it takes to do this, the more chance there is that the anomalous shape before you will eat you.

I have always been drawn to the anomalous because it is within this as yet uncategorised object that the futures are germinated. It is the anomalous that lives in Turners 'liminal' spaces. Those things without clear shapes, without clear boundaries, remniscent of Lovecrafts monsters from unfathomable space. New archetypes, new rituals, new ways of seeing and interacting with the world are arrived at through a passage through the anomalous, through the liminal. Turner was always quick to point out, however, that liminal spaces are dangerous. They threaten the established order of things.

It is naive to think that within such liminal spaces futures abound resplendant in golden opportunities. It is naive to think that dreams are safe, and comfortable, and that they can't hurt us, because they exist in an area of existence that is untamed. Its very nature is the Wild, and only a fool would dare set foot upon that path with expectations of treasure and adventure without great risk. The fool is my recurring first chapter.

It is good to be afraid. As Mark Twain once said, "Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear".



The video below is a sample of an hour long interrogation of one of my muses (a sort of brainstorming). Around midnight, I began to talk to myself in the mirror, asking myself questions, and this soon developed into my questioning of the character that arose during that conversation. I had no intention of exploring the themes that developed, they simply arose. One thing I note now that I look back upon it is that these themes are familiar - a powerful family, a forgotten history - and one might even say cliched. What I enjoyed about this was that it was spontaneous, it was a true to form conversation with a real character, one who will no doubt develop an integrity and deeper substance with further enquiry.

One of the sequences that my digital camera edited out occurred quite late on into the conversation, indeed it was the closing of the conversation. My question "where are they from" became "where are they now", and the image I got back was simply black, the sensation was hunger. Three archetypes spring to mind in retrospect - the Vampire, the Gangster, and the Alien.

I got a sense that the character believed it was an Alien, in outer space somewhere, enveloped in its habitually unfathomable blackness. HOWEVER, beneath that I sensed that the thing had forgotten where it was. It didn't know. It was an anomaly unto itself, and this is what made it all the more...juicy. I was left with the question: what if you forgot who you were, where you were, and how you got there. If you forgot how long you'd been there, would you forget to die? I imagined someone buried somewhere, who's been there so long without stimulation, without feeling, without light or food or any outward sign of its existence that it has become seperate from whatever was once its body. Seperate, and yet bound to it somehow. I got all of this because I saw its eyes in mine - they transformed, aged, and took on a bloated, glassy appearance, and it was as if they were too big for my head. They seemed to be three hundred years old, and had a detached quality to them, as if they suffused and exuded from my own eyes. "The roaming eyes" of the vampire. Quite delicious.