This and that

All I’ve written this week is a sort of incoherent stream-of-consciousness, influenced by the new Nick Cave album Skeleton Tree and Amanda Palmer and Jason Webley’s new EP. Also influenced by Maus, although I couldn’t tell you how.

I’ve started reading Pale Fire, which is the sort of work of genius that just makes you a bit annoyed.

I was the shadow of the waxwing slain
By the false azure of the window pane;
I was the smudge of ashen fluff — and I
Lived on, flew on, in the refected sky.

Read with a dictionary ready. Page two of Canto One: “stillicide”, “vermiculated”. Vladimir, why.

So. Stream-of-consciousness; snippets of madness. “Pale on the road wet and white-shining midnight cool.” Moonlight. Something a beat poet might drag out. “What are you doing, old man? Searching naked shelves for copies of Vergil?” I like that image, searching shelves with nothing on them. For something that was here before or something, something that should be there and isn’t, driven by some sub-memory.

I’m using a really nice ink at the moment, too. That’s not really relevant to anything, I just wanted you to know. It’s Diamine Syrah. Really nice colour.

I mentioned in my last post my “mad fixations“. See how quickly things can change: I had a dream last night with some Game of Thrones characters in it and now all I want to do is finish Storm of Swords. I put it aside when the semester started – I have more than enough to read! – and now I am resentful of every other book that I have to read instead of Storm of Swords.

And April seems so very, very far away.

In the meantime I’m flailing away at my notebook because I am not working on anything specific at the moment. Sin Eater is officially put aside until NaNoWriMo, because at this point it may as well be. NYS is in Editing Mode and I feel moderately overwhelmed by the sheer amount of work I need to do. I’m trying to get some poetry and some short prose finished, and that means flailing, at least in the short term. Every so often a bit of bollocks turns into something good. I like the image with the empty shelves, I want to make that something. Some sort of second-hand bookstore, run by a blind man who knows every cover by touch…

 

 

 

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