"I am an other, and I always was."

"There is no inside except as a folding of the outside" said Mark Fisher in The Weird and The Eerie, but recently I've come to wonder if that's entirely true. 

It was a February afternoon, when a bird flitting low across the road in the pale light brought, in a sudden flash of wings, an incursion of silence, as if the world (and my consciousness, too, being part of the world) had stopped for a moment to acknowledge this ordinary, extraordinary happening. 

Since then, I've begun to wonder if it's not so much a folding, but more of an alignment, a reminder in that flash of wings that the inside and the outside were always the same - we just forget to notice sometimes.

"Sunbursts can appear in photographs when taking a picture of the sun through the diaphragm of a lens set to a narrow aperture due to diffraction; the effect is often called a sunstar."

Sunburst - Wikipedia

February morning, just after sunrise. Steam rising from the night-time drizzle, sun glint between cedar pickets. Astra, the kitten, is chasing a beetle as black and shiny as she is. Existential dread gathers in the sodden wood, but I tell myself to let it rise and disappear like the steam from the rain. It will be alright, I said.

And it was. 

Last Night I Dreamed...

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Last night I dreamed you covered me in sackcloth and ashes. You didn't understand why I wasn't grateful for the privilege.

 

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Last night I dreamed I was burning words off a page. I wondered how much I would have to destroy before I was left with the truth of myself. 

Night Of The Katydids

It's come later than usual this year, but come at last it has, the night that the katydids first begin to sing.

Usually it's in the first few days of February it happens, on a warm, dry night that feels curiously free. That's when you know for sure Winter has finally given up its grasp. Even if the cold comes again, it will only be half-hearted. It is the true turning of the year.  

By this time last February, the mountain laurels were in full bloom. I went down to the creek today and saw not a hint of blossom at all. As it's been so often lately, the timetable of the year is a bit off, as if nature is adjusting to a new calendar, turning on an axis that's just a little different than it was before. I think about cycles of creation and decay; I see the signs all around, of a sort of falling-apart-of-things. I wonder if a clock is winding down somewhere. 

Even so, we still have this lovely warm night, just on the verge of Spring, when the Earth begins to come back to life. 

Ghoulies, Ghosties And Long-Leggedy Beasties

What, you say, it's the wrong time of year for ghosts? Nonsense. It's always time. And it's always time for a few spooky gifs.

It might be February, but the wind is murmuring eerily in the eaves, and I don't feel as if I'm quite alone here...

The Hidden Cameras

Follow These Eyes

The weather is warming and this music sounds about right.

Februrary Musings

February is the time of year I'm most drawn to seek sustenance from familiar comforts. Maybe it's the feeling (left over from schooldays, perhaps) of being the dead zone of the year, a grey month punctuated with embossed foil artificiality.  Maybe it's because it was always around this time that my mother would go on a tear (a special, rage-at-the-whole-world sort of tear) making my already busted home life that much more wretched. It doesn't really matter, I suppose; just that when times are hard, people seek solace where they can. 

At the time I'm thinking of, I was an unfortunately tall and ungraceful girl stuck in that phase of puberty that seemed to go on forever, lonely and with few friends. It was also at this time, thanks to an offhand remark by a teacher, that my mother decided I should be a fashion model. Ho Ho. It seems like a cruel joke, but in retrospect, I suppose I should be grateful. Thanks to this, I was left alone to wander the malls of the city after our junior board fashion shows and Sunday supplement photos, which was probably the best part of being 11. 

Of course, being 11, the Hallmark shop drew me like a fly. It was even better than Spencer's (where you could get electric blue mascara and fiber-optic lamps). At that time, it was the only place that stocked Sanrio products,  which evoked a level of cute that made even me feel small and girlish.

It was usually only the more advantaged girls at school who had access to the such adorableness (you knew a popular girl had a made a mistake on her social studies test when you smelled the heady scent of strawberry or bubblegum eraser). I was never one of those girls, but patience and careful use of my pocket money bought a small and secret entrance into the world of cute. 

Even if I never felt I truly belonged, it was some solace to imagine this sweet and tiny girl-world, some Hello Kitty land where nothing bad could ever really happen. I decorated my copy of A Little Princess with stickers and carried it around everywhere, even if I related more to Becky the scullery maid than to Sarah Crewe. They were like talismans, really. Some charm signifying an existence I wished to understand. 

My other main solace (and one maybe more true to my personality) was comic books. Not superhero comics - that was my brother's thing. None of that muscle-y guy in tights business for me. Unless it was Captain Hero. Riverdale, USA was another safe haven. Wacky, but safe. And Jughead, dear Jughead, was my guide. Betty was cool, too, but  Jughead's almost Zen weirdness was an inspiration. 

I knew Jughead. I was Jughead. Just a girl and not so lazy (or gluttonous).

Witness this classic, drawn by my favorite, Samm Schwartz::

See? Not even being kidnapped by a religious cult phases him very much. His main complaint is that their god's name is Harold. Who couldn't get behind a guy like that? 

My treasured collection of double-digests helped me embrace my inner weirdness, which is a good thing, 'cos there's just no escaping your true nature. 

Which, by the way, will be the subject of the next post.

The Last Of February