bells and mist

My friend gave me the challenge to write a bit with the notion "the sound of bells & the fog". Here we go! Yay! :)



bells and mist

He was pulling me along those cobblestone streets that I loved so, past the sleepy houses with their windows all shut and curtains drawn. The world seemed so drawn in on itself, all covered by the sea-smelling early morning mist, and I could not help but shatter the silence as best as I could.

“Stop!” I said. “No, no!” I pleaded in the middle of a giggling fit. “I don’t know where you’re taking me and I surely do not want to find out!” As we marauded down the streets I called him a fiend and a devil and a grimy snake and he only shushed me every so often as my voice rang out over the empty land. Once, I even got so caught up in the moment that I yelled, “Unhand me!,” which was very funny.

It was all I could do not to jump and leap for joy. I had bells on my slippers and they tinkled merrily; the morning was grand; it was an adventure – he was pulling me along but I felt like I was really leading him into some sort of game. It was all a grand game, to be sure – the houses all shut tight like they were boarded up; I got chills as though we were in a harbor-town of ghosts and nothing more. Were we ghosts? I felt substantial enough, as I reveled in my power to dissipate the silence with coquettish accusations, and at the same time, cherished my inability to make anything out of the fog.

Oh, my, it was grand. He even started chuckling after a while. And when I ran out of insults and fell back pathetically on, “You are a – you are horrible!,” we had already arrived at the pier. I just knew he, in love, would whirl me around and around and I would be like a banshee, walking down that misty wooden pier in my white, white dressing-gown, like I was walking on a widow’s walk! Surely he put his arms around my waist and spun me around, but when I spun around he was gone.

I saw his feet walking away as the mist took the rest of him and finally there was nothing left of the boy. Oh, he was a fiend, a snake. Filthy and unworthy. I walked down the pier in my white dressing-gown. I felt like a widow, a spidery widow, spinning things that were not quite fantasies. A chill got me again. The morning was so insubstantial; the whole world belonged to the mist. As did I.

Oh, I had always loved the fog. It was always hiding a fantasy world, something completely unreachable made even more alluring because of its intangibility. Oh, my, oh my, how I loved the vaporous veil; it was my bridal veil as I walked down the pier, holding my long dressing-gown up so that I would not trip and be gone to the icy waves lapping at the hard-sand shore. My voice had created bells by now, long, drawn-out rings made by massive and thick bells; they called cabin boys to the deck who never came, they rang out long and slow over the empty, empty water, until no one realized that they were the same as the mist. I was gone before I knew it.

It was all a lot of rubbish, my game. But oh, how I loved it.

So I was thinking about writing. And then I was thinking that what matters most is genuine-ness. That a lot of writing has a lot of affectation in it - when one might try to be grand it comes out overblown (i do that). If one is going to use big great-sounding words use them genuinely. Or something like that. It feels most genuine when I'm writing something and it has the little stammers and stutters and expressions that I would usually use spontaneously when talking. Dashes, pauses, breaks, starting sentences with 'and', fragments. Trying to refine everything to lingual perfection makes it seem too glossed-over, marbled, ironed to the point of removing all character! Complete refinement is boring. There's just no fun in it.

So I'm going to stop being affected. (affectation i mean: consciously keeping up a pose or something of refinement.) The "I desire to be..."s and "Where one could instead..."s are three-quarters affectation. I've done a lot of affectation in the last six months with writing, there are a lot more important things.

books yet

I'm designing something new&exciting for entrancy.org. In addition to the new photoportfolio. I feel slightly guilty about spending so much time these last few days sitting at the computer BUT sometimes it has been too hot to go much out and about and there has not been much out and about to do because - around fourth of July CROWDS and stuff and friends being unavailable (work and things).

Oh! Right now I am going to put down all the books I've read yet this summer. Because I haven't had enough money to go and buy lots of books at the bookstore like I used to (when I delivered newspapers for moneys). And I don't want to forget what books I read when I turn them back into the library like I have a tendency to do.

ahem

The Town in Bloom by Dodie Smith:
I was so, so, SO excited when browsing through the library to stumble upon numerous books by Dodie Smith (who wrote the best book ever, I Capture the Castle). I had never seen other books of hers' in bookstores so I figured that she had only written I Capture. But there were two other books by her, The Town in Bloom and A Tale of Two Families (which I also got from the library but didn't read much of before I had to turn it back in.)
The Town in Bloom is about an eighteen-year-old spunky girl named Mouse in the '30s or '20s or so who is living in the city wanting to be an actress and the book is about her growing up escapades along with her interesting & colorful characters of friends. It is a good book but I was a little disappointed that it didn't quite have that thing which makes I Capture the Castle so enchanting.

Emily's Quest by LM Montgomery:
I love LM Montgomery and all of her books that I have read so far so it is not a surprise that I liked this one. However I should've read the first two books in the series first instead of starting with the third. It was the only one at the library. It was still good though. Just confusing sometimes or it felt like there were things left out. Because I didn't read the prequels.

Chocolat by Joanne Harris:
I adore the movie Chocolat and also adore the book, which I read after having watched the movie 100000 times already over years. The book is a lot different from the movie but has a lot of the same basic spirit. It would definitely be rereadable.

The Years by Virginia Woolf:
I like Virginia Woolf because she captures lives in series of moments. All this book is a series of moments over a span of many many years. It is vaguely depressing but after having finished it not really depressing. The language is very lovely (as always with V.W. books) and... and... it's good.

The Hours by Michael Cunningham:
I got this book from the library because one of the main characters is Virginia Woolf. It's well-written and deep but depressing. Really depressing! Kind of like you miss the meaning because of saying: "aw no!" when something depressing goes on.

Onward!

past

Today, I felt quite a profound sense of longing and it only took a moment to realize what it was: longing for the past. I've felt this countless times, when something reminds me of the past - a feeling or a sensation or a notion of how it was once before. I feel like I can only catch glimpses of how grand things really are, the past included. Like only catching glimpses of a part of the incomprehensible whole. Does that make any sense? But it's like that with most things - to me - that conjure up that longing-sense. One can only catch a delicious glimpse but it leaves one longing for the whole infinite instead of just a part. Oh wow I make no sense.

But anyway. I always feel slightly uncomfortable writing about these things because it seems quite personal - feelings. I don't talk about feelings, usually, unless in a private time with someone I trust utterly.

I've always felt that the past is not as far away as one would expect. I never felt the past to be gone. And it isn't. Because the past is the road that led to the present and one can look back down the road once but - it's veiled in mist now. And then one thinks about how the present, this moment, now, will it be some day veiled in mist? It's not pleasant to imagine oneself veiled in mist. But that was a tangent. What I really meant to say was that I don't think the past is gone. I think it is still - somewhere. Whenever I think of the past that poignant longing comes up - it's sharp. I always love to feel close to the past - looking at old things: centuries-ago ladies' dresses, writing-desks of great authors from the past, castles that are austere now but once were loud and blazing with drama. But still, it never feels like enough. One can touch fabric woven by a dressmaker who lived three hundred years ago but cannot shake hands with the lady herself now. That is it. And cannot feel the whole thing - that thing which people always seem to be striving for but not quite reach...

But I don't think the past is altogether unreachable. I don't think it is definitely past. In a way it is present as part of a spirit under all that anyone sees today. I feel like it's always just out of reach - like so many grand things. But if one stands still in an enchanted moment he can doubtless feel it.

nm

So, I'm back. New Mexico was awesome!!!!!! I didn't end up stepping into Mexico so I can still only say I've been to 2 countries. But I saw Mexico across the street when we were in El Paso. Anyway.

Some things I tried for the first time were Mexican food, and driving a stick-shift. One of our friends has a number of vehicles, one of them being an old manual truck, and he taught me to drive it in the middle of the desert. It was fun. And the Mexican food was better than I expected. My only prior experience was how icky New England "Mexican" food looks and smells (ewww) so I was glad when authentic Mexican food turned out to be better. Luckily I didn't have to try some of the ickier looking stuff because of being a vegetarian. Things that were very good: sour cream enchilada, fajita, sopopillas, vegetarian biscotchitos. Our friends were nice and got vegetarian taco "meat" to put in tacos that they made and they were good. The salsa was hot. My friend would always be like, "No, no, this one is mild," because she's used to it and I would try it and go O_O.

The desert was awesome. When we were flying over Texas I was astounded at how much uninhabited space there was and how flat it was. It's FLAT. It looked like a deserty gameboard from up high. And then we got there and it was so cool. There were always mountains in the distance. And everything was, yeah, flat. And the houses were so unfamiliar because they were made of adobe and stuff. We went over the mountains several times and it was really great and interesting because up high in the mountains it looks like upstate New York because it's all heavily forested with pine and not deserty at all and cold. We saw White Sands national park(?) which was awesome. All you can see is endless white sand dunes, pure and dazzlingly white. We went at night once and slid down the huge dunes on a sled.

New Mexico is a really random place for some of the things I got, too. We went to this one café lunch place and they had shelves and shelves of Korean imports with cute little characters all over them. So I bought a bunch of journals and stationery and things from there. Also I got Turkish Delight!!!!!!!!!! Ever since I read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe I wanted to try it. I saw it in the International Delight Café. It's good. It's interesting. I think it might be better flavored. There were some flavored boxes but I wanted to get the original. Very weird but yum.

But it's not so random for some of the other things I got like a lot of turquoise (preeettttyyyyy) and some Mexicanlike things and southwest pattern things.

Then North Carolina was good too. It was laid back because we only stayed for two nights and one day. With my cousin and her husband. They're twenty-seven or twenty-eight and a lot a lot of fun. They introduced my mom and I to the most addictive game in the world, called World of Warcraft. I also played Dance Dance Revolution. Fun. :)

It was a great trip. I literally took *checks* 792 pictures.