I have decided to put Phoenix Rising on hiatus while I work to get my life back together. I will be having surgery later this week and there are many other personal improvement projects I plan on embarking on.
We will be on hiatus until January 1st with a new layout and perhaps even a new domain (I'm working on purchasing my own). Until then, enjoy the holidays!
I'm in love with my newest purchase! It is almost impossible to find a hat that looks good on me and this cheap little purchase from Target ($10) was just what I needed. It even has feathers! They had many more in different color variations...
It is so warm here in upstate New York! Drew and I took a walk yesterday and had to take off our jackets. We were still sweating in our t-shirts. This is the last warm weather of the year so I plan on enjoying it as much as I can!
Things I Did This Weekend:
From Wood Nymph Meets Centaur !!!
francesca lia block from mccabe russell on Vimeo.
Check out Francesca Lia Block's website
A good story needs structure--beginning, middle, and end. To me, the ending doesn’t make sense. It’s not possible for me to write an ending to a story that‘s about my own life, because my life is still being lived and I am experiencing constant new beginnings as well as constant regressions back in time. How does a twenty one-year-old conclude anything? I know nothing about life!
In the story I am writing for my portfolio to send to graduate schools, the ending goes like this: “You could write a story about this,” my mother said. “But I don’t think anyone will believe you.”
The portfolio is full of short stories inspired by my experiences growing up, but they are also fictionalized for entertainment value. The one I am writing now, which takes place in a trailer-park vacation spot, highlights my mother slapping my aunt, my aunt repeatedly calling my mother a cunt, and my uncle slamming my mother against the side of the trailer, only to have his ass kicked by my stepfather, is unbelievable enough without me stepping in to make it even more dramatic.
The thing I have been struggling with the most in these stories is finishing them. So far I have many unsatisfying or confusing psychological endings that no one understands but me. A particular story about a series of strange animal killings that took place on our farm concludes with the revelation that either I killed all the animals or I made the entire story up. My boyfriend Drew did not like this ending, but I cannot bring myself to change it. How do you end a piece of fiction based on something that happened but was never resolved?
Despite being a writer, I have a hard time making conclusions about anything. My financial situation, my status as an artist, the health of my parents, my relationship with mother, my relationship with Drew, how I feel about my past, how I feel about my future--and it’s reflected in the stories tell. I hate the idea of endings. What the hell happens to these characters after you neatly conclude their lives and write “The End”? Do they skip off into a void of our imagination? How completely un-gratifying! The only ending I find satisfying is this: “Then they all died. The End.”
Oh Halloween! A day when a girl would deliberately ruin her hair, wear black lipstick, and pretend to be someone else for a day. Except in my case, this Halloween I seemed to regressed to my old self.
This year, my costume was a classic one--an evil witch. I prided myself in only spending four dollars on the entire costume. Everything else was plucked from my wardrobe.
Dress-H&M
Waist Cincher-Heavy Red
Oxfords-Macy's
Hat-Spirit
Happy Halloween from The Christensen Family!
Today, Toast's house and home catalogue arrived in the mail. Inside I found a variety of beautiful, dreamy images. After flipping through its pages, I now want to wrap myself up in a large cotton bathrobe and find solitude in a cabin all winter, reading books.
Even as a small child I was obsessed with Halloween. I was even more obsessed with halloween movies! I'm one of those people who cannot wait for ABC Family's "13 Nights of Halloween" and I usually find myself watching ghost hunter shows or "Unsolved Mysteries" on a weekday afternoon. Here are some classic Halloween movies that I love:
The Canterviille Ghost--Both 1986 and 1996 versions are amazing. Then again, how can a ghost story written by Oscar Wilde not be amazing? In one of these versions, I cannot remember which, they even sing a musical version of Requiscat, which is my favorite Oscar Wilde poem.
The Watcher in the Woods (1980)--I watched this movie too much when I was a kid (it was on the Disney channel a lot). As a child, I was always afraid to look at my own reflection in the mirror, and it was because of this movie.
Stephen King's Rose Red (2002)--A long and freakish mini-series, I cannot help but love Rose Red. I have always been fascinated by the idea of houses taking on a life of their own. It even has Emily Deschanel in it from her early days!
Sleepy Hallow (1999)--Though the TIm Burton/Johnny Depp/Christiana Ricci/Miranda Richardson team is awesome, we cannot forget the classic Disney short:
Speaking of Disney, it wouldn't be Halloween without the Disney Halloween Treat (1982)
I am happy to announce the return of Tuesday Prompts! Every Tuesday I will post five prompts that I encourage you to try out. Post your writing in the comments and on Wednesday, I will post what I've come up.
1. Write about your typical day. What do you do from the time you wake up until the time you go to sleep? Then, write about how you wish your typical day looked like. In this fantasy, there are no monetary or realistic restrictions--let your imagination loose!
2. A group of Shakespeare's characters find themselves locked together in a large room. What kind of madness takes place?
3. Pretend you are the size of Thumbelina and are wandering through the forest. What kind of creatures do you encounter?
4. If you have time within the next few days, take a long afternoon nap. When you wake up grab a notebook and just being to write any thought that comes to mind. See what you come up with in your groggy state.
5. This one is an old favorite from Natalie Goldberg's "Writing Down the Bones": Take a poetry book. Open to any page, grab a line, write it down, and continue from there. Every time you get stuck, just rewrite your first line and keep going. Rewriting the first line gives you a whole new start and a chance for another direction.
I was browsing through Letters of Note this morning, and I was touched by this letter from John Keats to his lover, Fanny Brawne. This is the last letter he ever sent her. It was written right before he left for Italy in hopes that a warmer climate would cure his tuberculosis. Keats died in 1821, at the age of 25. He was a tragically beautiful poet.
Reading this letter made me long for the days of letter writing. Communication now is so effortless and insincere. We text each other messages that aren't even in English and our words to each other lack emotion and meaning.
Transcript
I do not write this till the last that no eye may catch it.
My dearest Girl,
I wish you could invent some means to make me at all happy without you. Every hour I am more concentrated in you; every thing else tastes like chaff in my Mouth. I feel it almost impossible to go to Italy - the fact is I cannot leave you, and shall never taste one minute’s content until it pleases chance to let me live with you for good. But I will not go on at this rate. A person in health as you are can have no conception of the horrors that nerves and a temper like mine go through. What Island do your friends propose retiring to? I should be happy to go with you there alone, but in company I should object to it; the backbitings and jealousies of new colonists who have nothing else to amuse themselves, is unbearable. Mr. Dilke came to see me yesterday, and gave me a very great deal more pain than pleasure. I shall never be able any more to endure to for the society of any of those who used to meet at Elm Cottage and Wentorth Place. The last two years taste like brass upon my Palate. If I cannot live with you I will live alone. I do not think my health will improve much while I am separated from you. For all this I am averse to seeing you - I cannot bear flashes of light and return into my glooms again. I am not so unhappy with you seems such an impossibility! It requires a luckier star than mine! It will never be. I enclose a passage from one of your letters which I want you to alter a little - I want (if you will have it so) the matter expressed less coldly to me. If my health would bear it, I could write a Poem which I have in my head, which would be a consolation for people in such a situation as mine. I would show some one in Love as I am, with a person living in such Liberty as you do. Shakespeare always sums up matters in the most sovereign manner. Hamlet’s heart was full of such Misery as mine is when he said to Ophelia “go to a Nunnery, go, go” Indeed I should like to give up the matter at once - I should like to die. I am sickened at the brute world which you are smiling with. I hate men and women more. I see nothing but thorns for the future - wherever I may be next winter in Italy or nowhere Brown will be living near you with his indecencies - I see no prospect of any rest. Suppose me in Rome - well, I should there see you as in a magic glass going to and from town at all hours, - I wish you could infuse a little confidence in human nature into my heart. I cannot muster any - the world is too brutal for me - I am glad there is such a thing as the grave - I am sure I shall never have any rest till I get there At any rate I will indulge myself by never seeing any more Dilke or Brown or any of their Friends. I wish I was either in your arms full of faith or that a Thunder bolt would strike me.
God bless you
J.K
Here is Keat's poem, Ode on Melancholy--in case you cannot get enough of sad romance:
No, no, go not to Lethe, neither twist
Wolf's-bane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine;
Nor suffer thy pale forehead to be kiss'd
By nightshade, ruby grape of Proserpine;
Make not your rosary of yew-berries,
Nor let the beetle, nor the death-moth be
Your mournful Psyche, nor the downy owl
A partner in your sorrow's mysteries;
For shade to shade will come too drowsily,
And drown the wakeful anguish of the soul.
But when the melancholy fit shall fall
Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud,
That fosters the droop-headed flowers all,
And hides the green hill in an April shroud;
Then glut thy sorrow on a morning rose,
Or on the rainbow of the salt sand-wave,
Or on the wealth of globed peonies;
Or if thy mistress some rich anger shows,
Emprison her soft hand, and let her rave,
And feed deep, deep upon her peerless eyes.
She dwells with Beauty - Beauty that must die;
And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips
Bidding adieu; and aching Pleasure nigh,
Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips:
Ay, in the very temple of Delight
Veil'd Melancholy has her sovran shrine,
Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue
Can burst Joy's grape against his palate fine;
His soul shall taste the sadness of her might,
And be among her cloudy trophies hung.
