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About

"I think that I would rather recollect a life mis-spent on fragile things than spent avoiding moral debt."

Current

Interlocking Squares

Completed

My Sweet Edelweiss | I Never | Portrait in Four Shades of Red

Retired

Coraline

Portrait in Four Shades of Red Friday, March 16, 2007 |

New-leaf Sunday
Rosy Monday
Crimson-gold Tuesday
Bloody Wednesday
Dried-rust Thursday
Ash-grey Friday
Clean-slate Saturday

Note: Partially inspired by the Nazgul's The Black Week. They must be the most exciting band never to have existed.

I Never Friday, January 19, 2007 |

You call this
the face that launched a thousand ships
and burned the topless towers of Ilium.

But remember, my lords:
I never weighed an anchor
I never lit a torch
never sacrificed my child for a fair wind
never raped a seeress before a holy altar.

xxx

Somewhere Lady Discord is laughing.


Note: It's weird the way things you do foreshadow things you will come to do. I wrote this in the holidays, long before I ever thought of taking Women's Literature and long before I even knew such a course existed. But it's feminist, it is a re-vision of Helen's tale, it is a rejection of all the images male writers and storytellers have projected onto her (most obviously the Kit Marlowe reference, of course). It's an indictment of male violence (exemplified by what happened to Iphigeneia and Cassandra, appropriately enough at the beginning and end of the war respectively) for which she, through history and literature, has subsequently been blamed.

Anyway, this came about mainly because I'd read some poetry about Helen, which reminded me of Chen Yuan-yuan: two women separated by space and time, both accused, through story and song, of having started devastating invasions.

Interlocking Squares: Foreword Thursday, January 18, 2007 |

'Why 'Interlocking Squares'? I don't know. The title just came into my head. Maybe because, one way or the other, our lives are interlinked: society is an ecology, not a contract. Or maybe because, while you can squeeze a square peg into a round hole, and most of the time it does what it's supposed to, the fact remains that it's still a square peg.

Or maybe because my brain just hit upon two random words it liked the sound of and threw them together.

Whichever it is, the story is told through the POVs of two protagonists, Vincent and Ching Juan. Vincent in third person, and Ching Juan in first person, through her journal entries (electronic, with rudimentary encryption. Not that she seriously believes anyone will go poking through them... she just wanted to mess around with encryption).

Edit: There's a saying about the best-laid plans of mice and men which is spot-on here. David wasn't originally supposed to play such a big role, but he somehow imposed himself onto the story and now he's got a voice. He insisted on it, going on strike until I gave in. He also seems to be turning into... something I never expected him to. Why am I always the last to know these things?

The story so far:

Vincent (1)
Ching Juan (2)
Vincent (3)
Vincent (4)
Vincent (5)
Ching Juan (6)
Ching Juan (7)
Vincent (8)
David (9)
Ching Juan (10)
Vincent (11)
David (12)
Ching Juan (13)



Delirium

Delirium is the youngest of the Endless. She smells of sweat, sour wines, late nights, old leather. Her realm is close and can be visited; however human minds were not made to comprehend her domain, and those few who have made the journey have been incapable of reporting back more than the tiniest fragments. The poet Coleridge claimed to have known her intimately, but the man was an inveterate liar and in this, as in so much, we must doubt his word. Her appearance is the most variable of all the Endless, who, at best, are ideas cloaked in the semblace of flesh. Her shadow's shape and outline has no relationship to that of any body she wears, and it is tangible like old velvet. Some say the tragedy of Delirium is her knowledge that, despite being older than suns, older than gods, she is forever the youngest of the Endless, who do not measure time as we measure time, or see the worlds through mortal eyes. Others deny this, and say that Delirium has no tragedy, but here they speak without reflection. For Delirium was once Delight. And although that was long ago now, even today her eyes are badly matched: one eye is a vivid emerald green, spattered with silver flecks that move. The other eye is vein blue. Who knows what Delirium sees, through her mismatched eyes?