LITERARY LOVE LETTERS

 

Reality is a complex affair, involving many different elements interacting across multiple scales in time and space. 

It is a constantly revolving, evolving jewel whose dim facets tease us with flashes of clarity.

On this day in 1845 Robert Browning wrote his first letter to Elizabeth Barrett, 

so inciting one of the most legendary of literary love stories. 

The letter belongs to the 'fan mail' category — the praise of a thirty-two-year-old up-and-comer for one just six years older and already internationally famous —

 but it was more than just poet-to-poet: 

"...I do, as I say, love these books with all my heart — and I love you too."

Dashiell Hammett died on this day in 1961, aged fifty-seven. 

Though never a Barrett-Browning sort of love, Hammett’s thirty-year relationship with Lillian Hellman became especially strained in his last years,

 as his health, finances and patience failed. 

Exasperated by Hammett’s taciturn, unromantic ways, and knowing that time was running out, Hellman marked their last shared Thanksgiving, also the thirtieth anniversary of their first meeting,

 by typing up a mock love letter in Hammett’s name and leaving it for him to sign:

On this thirtieth anniversary of the beginning of everything, I wish to state: 

The love that started on that day was greater than all love anywhere, anytime, and all poetry cannot include it. 

I did not then know what treasure I had, could not, and thus occasionally violated the grandeur of this bond. 

For which I regret. 

But I give deep thanks for the glorious day, and thus the name “Thanks-giving.” What but an unknown force could have given me, a sinner, this woman? Praise God.

Hammett enjoyed the joke — 

one which played to his refusal to make any kind of testimony, whether in love or politics.

 He signed his name, adding his own postscript in an uncertain hand: 

“If this seems incomplete it is probably because I couldn't think of anything else at the time.”

Hobbes and I wonder how Lillian put up with him for 30 Years! How about you?

NO ONE READS BLOGS ANYMORE? IWSG Post

 

https://www.insecurewriterssupportgroup.com/p/iwsg-sign-up.html

Of course you balk at my post title,

since you are reading my blog, right?

But reading is on the decline.  

One in four (27%) of us have not read a book in the last year.

If we as authors write posts primarily to other authors, 

we are in essence singing to the choir.

It is like kissing your sister, convenient but leads nowhere ... 

unless your sister was Angelina Jolie ...

but that is another disturbing story.  Brrr.

John Locke, snake oil salesman 

and book review buyer that he was

actually had a good idea:

We must write to intrigue and entice potential READERS of what we write.

HOOK 

Google Searchers with an intriguing title

 But you must follow the title with a post 

that amuses, entertains, and persuades the reader that your prose is worth gambling 99 cents on.

 On the internet, you can walk away with a click if someone fails to interest you. 

This happens all the time.

TAKE A STAND

Say your piece and stand by it.  

Wafflers are like warm tap water.  

Be hot.  Be cold.  

But write words of steel not water vapor.

You think most Indie Authors are Brand Whores?  

Say it.  Stand by it. 

Endure the storm and stand tall.  

That is what great spirits do.

ACT "AS IF"

In the documentary, "Conan Can't Stop," 

Conan explains how he gets through situations that are hard. 

He says he acts "as if."  

As if he belongs there. 

As if he knows what he's doing.  

As if everything is going to be a success -- 

no matter what he does, no matter what anyone says, no matter how hard it gets.

Write your blog, live the author life that way ...

Write As If people are reading 

and by golly you are going to entertain the socks off them.

Hey, it might even work! 

HOW TO BEAT THE JANUARY BLUES

 

A week ago exactly, Midnight, my cat of 10 years, ran around my apartment, ecstatic at my return, only to stiffen, mew, and hit the floor hard: dead of a heart attack.  

Yesterday evening, I received an email telling me tersely in one short sentence 

that my tutoring services were no longer required ... with no explanation why.

No going back to the two schools next Tuesday.

So twice in as many months, I have been terminated.

I am tempted to take the road most traveled ... but the words of my character, Victor Standish, come to me:

https://www.amazon.com/Legend-Victor-Standish-1/dp/1508804540/

"It is what it is ... until you make of it something better."

Empty bank accounts, tight waistlines, vomiting bugs, failed detoxes: 

(Guys, it's not a hangover.  It's called alcohol poisoning.)

The post-holiday comedown is a well-dreaded condition. 

January, even at its best, has few redeeming features.

 {At least we in S.W. Louisiana have the Mardi Gras to look forward to.}

 

Ah, last week:

 

This time last week, it was a bright, crisp New Year’s Day. 

Feeling optimistic about the months ahead, two-thirds of us made at least one resolution: 

to eat less, to drink less, to get fit. 

Yet, according to a survey by researchers at the University of Bristol, 88 per cent of us will soon break them. 

Half of us already have.  

Ouch!

 

 REASON ONE:

Let's face it: 

most of us had a hard time of it last year.  

We managed to pull it together somehow, put on the brave Christmas face --

Now, we are smack at the beginning once more, looking at running the gauntlet all over again.

 

REASON TWO:

New Year's Eve can be a time of reflection, looking back over the last year ... 

on our whole lives -- and seeing all the plans and dreams cast aside on the shoulder of our life paths.

 

So what can we do to get through the blues?

1.) Most important: make plans for the coming months.

    Organize something you can look forward to. 

    Be creative: watch a movie; listen to music; go for a run. 

    The sun might not be shining – and the lack of sunlight is one factor that’s making us feel sad –

     but get outside and swing yourself about a bit. 

     It’ll make you feel so much better.

 

2.) Positive Perspective is key.

     Dress brightly – even for work. 

     Everything’s so gloomy and dull outside that it’ll make people happy to see someone wearing bright colors. 

     Find yourself frowning?  Force a smile.  Studies show that putting on a grin will unconsciously make you feel more up.

3.) Use the prevailing winds.

     Last year was tough for you, right?  But you made it through!

 

     

It's seems impossible that sailors can move forward with the wind blowing against them, doesn't it?

     How do they do that?

     On a sailboat, wind blowing against the boat at an angle inflates the sail, 

     and it forms a similar foil shape to an airplane's wing, 

creating a difference in pressure that pushes the sail perpendicular to the wind direction.

 

4.) Your mind is your sail.

     It determines the course you sail through life.  

     You must learn how to mentally "tack," 

a term sailors use to describe how they shift the sail 

so the wind blows into a different side of the sail.

      There are people in this world that would give their left hand to be right where you are -- 

     with the blessings you are too familiar with to be thankful for.

     Your struggles have made you smarter, stronger, and more aware of what you can do.

 

5.) Take a moment to realize that you are still here.

     And that is an extraordinary achievement given the pain that you’ve been through.

 

6.) Focus on what you're facing and what you're running from.

      What is just one simple step you can take 

      to maybe move towards the problem rather than away from it? 

     When you step towards problems they shrink, 

     and they become more manageable.

 

7.) Be kind to yourself.

     If you had a best friend in a similar situation, what would your advice be?

     I bet it would be: 

     "Ease up on yourself, friend.  You've done a great job with a lousy situation."

I hope this has helped in some small way, your friend - Roland

LIES LOCUST TELL _ Another New Year's Fable

 

I must go down to the sea again, to the
lonely sea and sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to
steer by.
- John Masefield.

What star do you steer by? When you live? When you interact with others? 

When you write?

Everybody knows something, but is what they know true? Can you hear Pilate ask his infamous question? I can.

I mean, flames look like objects but in truth are processes. In like manner, so are we humans. 

We judge others by appearance, by action. But how valid is that?

The human mind is a mysterious realm. 

A man can't always be judged by what he does. He may keep the law to the letter, and yet inwardly be worthless.

The lights go out over the city, and his actions do a 180 degree turnaround. 

Another man may commit a sin against society and yet accomplish through that "sin" a true act of compassion and heroism.

Nor are words to be trusted -- if politicians haven't already taught you that. 

Universal peace is much talked about. 

I can't help but think that foxes have a sincere interest in prolonging the lives of the poultry.

That last thought got me thinking along strange lines after my termination after 23 years, and I wrote a story for my amusement alone. 

What if the Earth were invaded, and Good was too busy hunting terrorist plots and pointing nuclear missiles at each other to notice?

What if it were up to Evil to defend the planet? 

As in "Not in my sandbox you don't!" And so taking that premise, I had a fallen angel awaken in a British asylum with no memory of having gotten there -- an asylum run by alien invaders. 

I called it "THE LIES LOCUST TELL."

And to make it doubly interesting, I told it in first person through the eyes of the fallen angel.

Ever try to express yourself realistically as an angel, whose perspective spans eternity? I found out how hard amusing myself could really be.

Here are the first two pages of my story that became a chapter in PERCHANCE TO NIGHTMARE. 

See if I did a credible job at looking at life through the eyes of a fallen angel:

LIES LOCUST TELL

The spark of an anguished soul flew past me in the night. I shivered as her light drew back the curtains of my mind. I would have cursed her had she lingered. But Death was impatient. Words breathed through the mists of my awareness.

"Darkness yet in light. To live half dead, a living death. And buried but yet more miserable. My self. My sepulcher."

My mind roughly brushed aside the dry leaves of Milton's broodings. No time for self-pity. Yet too much time for all eternity. Enough! I was here for a reason. And as always that reason was death. Always death. The why was unimportant. There was always a logical why for Abbadon.

The where, however, was another matter. And when might illuminate the present darkness of my mind as well. Keeping my eyes closed, though tempting, would but delay the inevitable. I opened them.

Only a peek through slit eyes. After all, my ears told me that I was not alone. I frowned. A hospital room?

I reached out with more than my ears. My spirit shuddered as the ragged claws of madness raked it from down the hall. An asylum. A Sidhe inprisoned within a madhouse. How utterly fitting.

I ran my long fingers along the rough sheet beneath me. A state asylum obviously. Even better. But what state? My awakening consciousness was stubborn in its ignorance.

I bunched up the sheet in my fist in hot frustration. A sharp intake of breath from the next bed. Her scent came to me. I smiled. Only a human.

And I?

What was I?

And with the question came a fragment of the answer. I was not the happier for it. More words whispered out of the darkness that was my soul.

"Come away, human child,
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand."

I frowned. I had no patience for whimsy. Not even that of Yeats.

From the corner of my eye I saw the human in the next bed begin to shiver. No matter. The human was not important. Time and place. They were.

I flicked my eyes to the barred window. The glass. Thick, dense. Like the humans who made it.

Under my fingertips a pebble. I nodded. A mere speck of stone. But it would do.

The pebble shot from between my thumb and forefinger like a bullet. An electric circuit died, wailing its death song in tones higher than humans could hear. 

I smiled like a wolf. We would have visitors soon.

More the pity for them.

I drew in a breath from the cold breeze bleeding from the wounded window. The sharp tang of Autumn.

Oak. Ash. Thorn. Decay. 

Rotting leaves, mottled in bright hues of strangled life. The dark and bloody soil beneath them breathed out its lineage. An aching sadness hollowed out my chest. 

The Misty Isles. Albion. England.

I whispered, the words on my lips feeling like dewdrops of blood on a wounded doe, 

"The lonely season in lonely lands."

***
Louis L'Amour once wrote:

 the man or book who can give me a new idea or a new slant on an old one is my friend. 

Hopefully, this post has been a friend. I know that I think of all of you out there who have written me as friends.

And it is the midnight hour when that dread gate gapes open, and silent shades slip into the darkness to visit our dreams ...

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07HM8ZS5Q

DON'T BE AFRAID OF THE SUNSET _ A New Year's Musing

The movies have taught many in the entertainment field (like we writers)

that either you soar and reach the rarefied air of Super-Stardom or you are a failure.

Was Emily Dickinson a failure just because she was never recognized in her lifetime?


She tenderly crafted the words singing to her soul 

and wrote what she felt was beautiful and true even if no one else felt the same.


Do you think she felt herself a failure?  I hope not.


What will we do to our souls 

if we follow the Yellow Brick Road left by the footprints of some best-selling author?


Sean Rowe's song, TO LEAVE SOMETHING BEHIND, 

heard at the end of the excellent movie, THE ACCOUNTANT, speaks to me on this.

Did it speak to you?

You may never reach Mt. Everest's top, 

but if you reach the peak of your own abilities and help others along the way ...

your pockets may be empty, but your soul will be full.

Perhaps the sun has set on your dream of whatever it had been, 

but sunsets have their own beauty and their own quiet peace.


 And sunsets are but the promise of new dawns.  I wish you new fulfilling dawns, my friends.

Missing Midnight, I just re-watched

 KEDI:

This Turkish documentary, the debut feature for director Ceyda Torun, 

turns the cameras on a group of stray cats 

as they amble around 
their customary haunts in Istanbul. 

While the film indeed exposes the day-to-day goings-on of felines,

 each with a distinct character, 
what ultimately ends up on screen 
appears to be 

a rich portrait of a very ancient city 

full of equally interesting and distinct individuals.

 Why not explore Istanbul in a different way — with some stray cats as your guides.

A NEW YEAR'S FABLE: REUNION OF ENEMIES

 

I have missed the world of the Caretaker whom we last saw in the HERO LOST anthology.

 

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1939844363/

So without further ado, 

let us re-enter the House Eternal

{1100 words}

The House Eternal

The truth of its birth whispers from the dark unknown.  I am its Caretaker. My beginnings burn under the starlight of dim memories.  My end is unknown yet certain in its ugliness.  I hasten it by meddling where saner souls would wisely pass.

Above the oak front door, the spider web, spun from the sobs of children, trembled in anticipation.  Arachne studied me from its glistening center.  Human/not human, she smiled with green lips still wet from adorning her silken snare with venom.

“Athena wronged you, but taking it out on innocents is misplaced vengeance.”

Arachne’s words were flutters of papyrus, “Dry and dead is the wind that last tasted innocence.”

Mouse, riding in my chest pocket, wrinkled his whiskers like angry broom straws. “All things truly wicked started out innocent.”

Mouse.  He owed his freedom to Napoleon’s soldiers.  The gust of bacterial air which breathed from the First Dynasty tomb they ransacked gave them the freedom of death.

Was Mouse a ghost rodent or had the bacteria-infested air of the tomb changed him somehow?  

Arachne’s laughter was more sleet than sound.  “The world must have been born innocent indeed.”

I said. “It takes a very long time to become young.”

The front door, Artemis’s gift to me, throbbed with tears of dawn.  I snorted.  Athena was much too Olympian to merely knock. 

I smiled.  Artemis’ tongue might be as sharp as her arrows, but her word was as sure as her aim.  Artemis usually beat me at chess.  But last night, I could not allow her to win, for I fought for another. And so, she had brought Athena to me.

A man-shaped shadow appeared.  Once he had been a solid man … before he doubted.  He flowed to my side.

“I thought I had a death wish, Einherjar.”

“Thomas,” I said.  “all in the House Eternal are my charges.  I will see to them or die.”

Mouse chirped, “I vote for a greater margin of error.”

I patted his head.  “I give you leave to flee to the shadows, little friend.”

Mouse’s eyes deepened.  “You may not remember the time you first fed me. Or the time you first scooped me up into the safety of your shirt pocket. Or the time you waited at the crossroads for me to catch up. But I do, and the end of your skein of days shall be mine.”

Thomas rumbled, “So say I.”

I frowned, and Thomas shrugged, “I said I had a death wish, did I not?”

Arachne murmured, “I am not worth the fate Athena will grant thee.”

I could almost see the beautiful woman she once had been in her many-eyed face. “I am your friend.”

“And if I do not wish thy friendship?”

“I will try to be discreet.”

This time her laughter was more summer rain than sleet but still it was chill. The door was hot sunset now.  I must time this just right.  As Caretaker, I was pledged to greet visitors for Grande Dame. 

 Grande Dame.

Was She Avatar of the House Eternal or merely its first resident?  Most of the House was complete, She tells me, when the first stars began to coalesce into the Light that caressed the awakening planet. 

It could be.  I was not there.  I am old,  just not that old.

She was not alive as one thinks of life.  Nor was She eternally dead.  Life, Death – they were but trifles to Her as She insisted on having Her way with each new-born day.

Grande Dame also insisted upon respect from those who came calling. Athena refusing to knock would not be appreciated. I had a moment more that I could safely wait to respond.

Tragic Athena. She could have easily forgiven Arachne’s pride, if it had not also mortified her own.  Olympians find it easier to forgive mortals when they are wrong than when they are right.

Another heartbeat more, and I would have to answer.  And my gambit would die still-born. 

After centuries of dealing with those who wander eternity, I should have remembered that they are long on hate but short on patience.  The oak door simply vanished.  No flash of lightning, no thunder.  True power is like that.

The dying twilight revealed eyes filled with razors.  Athena.  Imagining her museum statues and carvings?  They are not even in the same dimension with the terrible majesty looming in the doorway.  Artemis stood bored beside her. No hunt that did not smear her arrows with the blood of prey interested her.

I wondered if she would mourn me.

“I have to ….” I started.

“Die,” Athena murmured, suddenly right before me.

I shook my head.  “You entered unbidden and thus must abide by the House Rules.  I was going to warn you.”

Athena spun to Artemis.  “You tricked me!”

Moonlight caressed the Huntress’s long hair in glints of cold fire.  “Nay.  I but mentioned Arachne’s fine weaving of old.  It was you who wondered where she might be these long centuries later.”

Shoulders the white of mountain peaks shrugged.  “You asked.  I answered.  It was your idea to come, laughing about a fine reunion of enemies.”

Athena turned to me.  “These House Rules?”

“Are many … one is that those who enter unbidden must leave behind them whatever the Caretaker chooses.”

I smiled like an Einherjar.  “I chose your hate.  See it yonder on the marble porch?”

Incanting dark spells, Athena turned to see the floating green cloak of thorns, most of which turned inwards.  Wet Olympian blood still gleamed on their points.

“Hate always hurts the one who wears it.”

Arachne gasped as once more she stood in human form, though her gown now was clinging spider-silk.  Her beauty breathed of sunshine and honey.  I suspect that long ago, Athena envied more than her weaving skills.

Athena’s inhuman face lengthened.  “And should I step back onto the porch?”

Mouse chirped, “You cannot, Great One. Those who enter unbidden must stay the night.”

Athena breathed icily.  “But come morn, should I embrace it?”

“You would find it gone,” I said.  “Hate left untended dissipates.”

Teeth like flint daggers flashed.  “You think yourself clever, Caretaker?  You are nothing.  Nothing!”

“I am loyal.  I have done my duty to one guest.  Now, I must put Grande Dame to bed.”

Thomas rumbled, “One night, you will not return.”

From the attic whose walls were not walls, Grande Dame’s yawn stirred the ancient air.

“I am beckoned.  Honor would have me go.”.

Athena’s laughter swirled behind me like graveyard blossoms.

I turned, climbing the steps with Mouse shivering in my shirt pocket.  I gently tapped his head.  In the end, it is our hearts that prove our undoing.

For other tales like this fable, pick up:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07GVFH1PF/

Only $1.99 in Kindle