Log 22-12-09

The plates build up and dirt lines the edges of the room, take-away cartons and cold cups, open books and disbound pages like fallen leaves; hours are spent alone at my desk, writing things no one will read. I take a scalpal to all my children, still living. I lay them aside, bleeding, and try to ignore their cries. This log fails to capture the process. My notebook festers, my commonplace book starves, my mind ferments. I shower, and an hour later I have dirt under my finger nails. My hands are stained brown from old books. I must keep going....

I have finished my second assignment. I have won another battle, even as the war is waged within and without, a war that cannot be won. I must keep going....

I find myself in a strange land, a land where the walls are animated by stranger dreams, walls that bubble and whisper, casting shadows that slither and crawl. A white lady inspects my work while I sleep.

Like a man who cheated death, I feel the shortness of time, a trepidation exacerbated by the fire that burns within me, by that Burning Question. This, they say, is called Joy.

I am half-mad with magick and drunken musings. My fingers curl in the fire. My seat is a chasm, the walls glitter with minerals that roll from disembodied tongues. My head sparkles; my head is a cave. It echoes with wormsounds.

Tonight I am possessed by a detective and a devil. Both vie for the page. I must keep going....

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.