And then he was gone. She saw him a half mile deep into the field where he halted, his body visibly shaking, his head bowed. As she watched, he paced, then suddenly turned and punched the tree once, then again, and a third time; she saw it shift, tilting from the impact, a shower of dead leaves raining down on the ground as the blows shook its branches to their very tips.
She bowed her head, feeling ashamed, willing that the ground would open beneath her. With trembling hands she tried to tease free a clot of dried blood from her hair, then felt even more foolish, that she should be picking at her hair at such a moment. She pressed her hands together at her waist instead, her gaze on the dead earth beneath her feet.
And then he was standing before her again. Without speaking he opened the door and helped her inside, his knuckles still sticky with blood. He swung himself in after her, rapping on the roof; the carriage rolled forward slowly.
They rode in silence. He looked down at his hands, then wiped his hands on a tail of his waistcoat, pushing and digging to scrape off the dried blood.
“Tell me again,” he finally said.
Blog
masks
there is a little bit of identity play in the first book? part? not even sure what the divisions are at this point . . . someone somewhere was writing about the pleasure of titling chapters, but right now each of my “chapters” are little novellas anyway, and i’ve always had a love/hate relationship with titles.
a lot of temptation, too, to be a little more overt about all this. i have some masks in the first book as well, but they’re not really working as hard as they could. but i don’t think you can say too much about how a mask can erase identity, much less replace it; rather like the transformation itself, you see? what is left after turning, what remains, what is indelible to the self, what is affected by new sensations, new appetites, new ways of perceiving?
i was searching around for different masks through the ages and stumbled upon a huge number of porn sites dedicated to those full body-and-head suits like the gimp wore in pulp fiction. that kind of erasure—to use a word i probably shouldn’t, but i can’t remember more than a smattering of critical theory so what the heck—that erasure is blunt and horrifying and very much in keeping with certain characters in this.
where they came from in my head? that’s another question entirely, probably best dealt with on a couch at a large hourly rate.
there are masks and there are masks. there are the ones suited for this time, frothy and half-faced and elaborate, anything from wisps of silk to those theater masks like salieri wore in amadeus. but later, i think, we might have to bring in something from an earlier time, a little more blunt and overt:
the second one is a nice example of tragedy. it has possibilities.
slackening
had invigorating dinner last night with old friend talking about writing and publishing and all such things. it has been a strange two months of real life difficulties and starting to get feedback and at the same time realizing just how much the narrative direction changed over the summer; book two, which i had hoped to just plow right into, now needs reconsidering.
add to that the real life stuff and i am out of the headspace for the moment. devastating, in a sense, to be so disconnected. i have cleaning supplies piled in the hall and a kitten on this desk and a mess of paying work long-neglected on the floor. no never-never land for me for a bit.
however, was reading old interview with china mieville when he was talking about early influences and he mentioned prince of darkness—which i have not thought of in ages but i saw many times in high school and college. what’s it about? people used to ask, and i would say satan in a jar. ’nuff said. but it is more layered than that . . . and it made me think of those years, what i was into, what i still am into.
i have not thought about joel-peter witkin in ages. somewhere in my parents’ house there is a monograph of his, one of the first art books i ever bought, back when i was in college. but my fascination with d’agoty is in the same vein.
i just read that witkin has to go to mexico for his corpse-work, because of restrictions here; thankfully words don’t require quite so much travel.
