The Cold Grue

I'd first read the term cold grue in the story Thrawn Janet by Robert Louis Stevenson. It was an arcane term to me, but I knew what it meant the moment I read it. I'd known that feeling since I was a child. It usually arrived in November, when it arrived at all, and lay mostly under the surface of winter, waiting to loom up at certain vulnerable moments - something that seemed almost sentient, a grey existential chill that was not merely cold, but deathly.

The appearance of the cold grue was something I'd come to dread. A rising uneasiness, the sense of something minatory, searching along the ground with the wind. I'd felt it a few notable times in my childhood - the visit to Liberty Hill, a playful seance gone awry that my cousins and I held on Thanksgiving, 1980, and the time surrounding the violent death of my aunt not too long afterward. Every holiday season since has been an exercise in keeping it at bay. 

Having spent my much of my life in Texas, it was something I'd associated with my home state, something that lived in the winter landscape there, so I did not expect to find it the first time I visited northwest Ohio in 2022. But on the second-to-last day of my trip, there it was, drifting toward me in waves as I stood on the steps at the art museum, as ominous and melancholy and as pure in form as I'd ever felt it. 

 

I'd never expected my path in life to lead me to the Midwest, and certainly not to such an unadulterated version of the feeling I'd been hiding from. Perhaps it was just my mood that day, I'd thought. Maybe it was just that I was standing in a sculpture garden. As I'd written in one of those links above, the surreal nature of modern art always did leave me a bit uneasy. Or perhaps it was just a temporary, momentary effect of the weather. 

When I did move here in 2023, it was summer, and there were only the aquarium blue sky and cornfields and the sound of daylight crickets in evidence. The cold grue was far from my mind. I would walk through the swamp preserve in the afternoon, or the marshy edgelands next to the mall, studying wildflowers and cottonwood trees. We visited Lake Erie. Then autumn arrived. 

The grue did not come right away. Gradually, though quicker than I would have imagined, the landscape changed its character. There is no real autumn where I'm from, so to watch it take on color and atmosphere was fascinating. Did you know that leaves will simply fall off of trees, without being blown down by wind after drying up from drought? I didn't, so just to watch them was like standing in fairyland. I was very lonely at the time, but it was beautiful even so. I spent so many evenings out there, learning about my newly adopted home, trying to take my mind off the rest of my life, which had quickly commenced unravelling. I learned about being cold, putting on more and more sweaters every time I went out. The skies became greyer and heavier, the chill wind fluttering the remaining cottonwood leaves. 

Near the center of the swamp preserve is a forest of skinny black ash trees. In summer, they were green, humming with insects, but no sooner had November come the skinny forest had transformed into a leafless, slightly hallucinatory labyrinth. The effect being a bit like a hall of mirrors, if only to reflect the inner self. I always felt uneasy when passing by, but as the fall closed in and the temperature fell, I found myself drawn to the place. There was something familiar down among the ashes, something ominous and melancholy and cold. I was so lonely, so heavy-hearted. The reason I'd moved here had fallen apart. I was unwelcome and unwanted, my future in serious doubt. The cold grue beckoned with frigid fingers down this forlorn path. It came over me with such intensity that day that I realized I was in the center of it, as if it had all come down to this singular point in time. I sat down and spoke to it. 

"What are you?' I said.

"The process of dying" it replied.

"Why are you here?"

"It's the earth's dying season"

"Why have I felt you in so many circumstances, then?"

"Because all deaths are the same to the dead." 

My phone rang. I gathered my things and stood up to walk home, wondering if was still existing in my world at all. 

I've moved on since that day, slowly piecing my life back together, trying to find any remnants of my lost inner light. The cold grue remains, in the autumn wind, in the snow, in the garden that has gone to seed. I'm not so troubled by it anymore, even if I am still haunted. I live in a place with all four seasons now, and have a lot still to learn about spring. 

Watch Them Glow

This is going to be one of those posts that probably means nothing to anyone but me, but that's all right. Maybe one day someone will stumble across it and recognize what I'm going to describe, and will be relieved that someone else knows what it's like. Even if they don't...well, it doesn't really matter, I suppose, because it's also about trying to convert a feeling into imagery. 

So, please. . . bear with me. 

It was the end of April, and my collaborator and companion (in the Doctor Who sense, as I've come to think of us) had come down to go to Psych Fest. He wore a 13th Floor Elevators shirt and a blue metallic plaid jacket, I wore a psychedelic dress and enormous shoes. It was sunny but not hot, the crowd was amiable, the bands were good, and aside from the lock jamming on the bathroom door and having to be rescued by a bunch of hippies (high fives, y'all!) everything went off without a hitch. 

I don't recall feeling haunted. It wasn't a very haunted sort of day. Everything felt very warm and present in the sunshine, I didn't even have that feeling like I've had in the past, as if part of me had been left behind somewhere. No, there wasn't a trace of any haunting, as far as I could tell. 

It was only a couple of days later that things turned strange. 

At the very beginning of May, each having gone our separate ways home, we set about sorting through the photos and videos we'd taken with an eye toward future projects. We'd got some really good stuff, although the audio capabilities of my little point 'n' shoot camera couldn't really handle the sound at a rock show. Monsieur Pseud (as I like to call him) sent me one he'd taken with his phone, panning the crowd while the Raveonettes played in the background. Nothing unusual about it, really, not technically. It was a perfectly serviceable video and an accurate representation of the scene. I remembered him filming it even, while I lounged on a tree stump drinking Dr Pepper. No, what was unusual was my reaction to it. 

It hit me like a ton of bricks, that feeling of being haunted. It was like deja vu, but not deja vu of the actual event. It felt like the memory of something that had happened many years ago, a record of something of grave importance that had been missed and had only just now returned. What the hey? It didn't make sense, but that was the only way to describe it. The closest term to the feeling, besides haunted, might be hiraeth.

I needed a second, third, fourth opinion. Naturally, I dragged each of my family members in to watch it, asking if they noticed anything odd. Anything about the picture, atmosphere, the music, the mood? Did it make them feel some sort of way? Nope - aside from saying they might feel a bit anxious in such a packed setting, to their eyes it was exactly what it appeared to be, a typical rock fest crowd. It was just me who was being weird. 

Well, okay. There was no obvious explanation. And there still isn't, for the way it gives me a shiver every time. Just an ordinary video. As proof, I present it here, courtesy of Mr. Pseud. A crowd watching the Raveonettes tear it up as the sun is going down. 

But, surely you know by now that these things don't let me go so easily. I couldn't explain it; I could barely describe it. However, if I'm going to call myself an artist, I should at least be able to make something that looks like it made me feel. Perhaps it would help me understand. I got down to work.

My video editing skills are rudimentary at best, and I learned as much from what didn't work as what did. Not that it's perfect, mind you, but my husband, bless him, said it's about as good a visualization of deja vu as he's ever seen. Here is the finished product:

There you have it. Not how the clip looks to me, but how it feels. As if everything is doubled, every person accompanied by their own shade. Like some other, parallel world is close by, just over our shoulders and out of sight. And maybe it is. Who knows?  

Maybe part of collaboration is learning to see through someone else's eyes. Collective eyes of a sort. Again, who knows? Maybe I really am just weird. 

Whatever the case, it's yet another mystery to explore. 

Exercise Your Inner Eye

 Always good advice. 

I suppose the word must have spread on the astral...

Somehow I'd forgotten to post this earlier, but this is the art notebook I kept during 2021-2022. I don't know if it's good at all, but I do know I finished it, and that must count for something.

Every Leaf Speaks Bliss To Me

A few more mothwingy pieces from a backlog of mothwingy pieces in my files. I'm delighted to be able to say that 2022 has been my most productive year so far, and that collaboration has been a lovely experience. (I mean, since when have I ever really had a backlog of artwork to post before?) I've always been a loner who worked in solitude, so breaking out of that into something new has made me see things in a different light. For all of this, I am very grateful. Here's hoping to turn over more new leaves in 2023. 

Echo's Answer

On the first day of May, my long-distance friend Mere Pseud and I collaborated for the first time; by the second week we were awash in ideas, by the third week we were plotting and planning beneath the white-hot sky.  

By the fourth week, we'd named ourselves The Mothwing Collective, an artistic exploration of the eerie, and just today, we were pondering the best ways to make music and film. It's been an eventful month, to say the least.

The point of this being that sometimes your lonely, haunted soul calls out into the void for a kindred spirit, and sometimes, despite the odds, one answers. 

Lux Nova Incandescere

In the spirit of our shared strangeness, a collaboration with my dear friend Mere Pseud. You can find his retrospectral dispatches here.

Soularoids

Sending bits of this world to live in other worlds.

Before Sunrise

One thing that's been a little different this summer is my morning ritual. In the quiet time just before daybreak  - most days, anyway - I make a small fire in a certain place, out of juniper and whatever other herbs that might seem to fit the needs of the day. It clarifies things. It brings focus. 

This summer has been one of successful witchery - so successful that I find myself confronted with that nervousness that comes so often in artwork, when your project goes from being nothing into  becoming something...a moment where you either press on or crumble in the face of fear.

I suppose it's good, to have that feeling - it means that whatever I make of this is up to me.

Fata Obscura

Sorry for the recent lack of posts, but I've been busy since the Fates have decided it's time to complete the project mentioned here. I suppose they thought 7 years was more than long enough to procrastinate.

Moon Mirrors and The Rites Of Spring

Tomorrow is the first day of spring, and while this one comes with a full moon, I found these lovely crescent mirrors at the dime store and couldn't resist.

The land is turning green again (or greener, at least) and while I haven't posted much lately. I am  happy to report that I am still alive and have made it through another season.

It's been a time of changes and leaving things behind. On occasion it's been a little tough, as it's my habit to look back at the past. A family friend died recently, and there's the compulsion to think of all the places he once was and will never be again. Spasms of grief that can fetch you away. But there are dangers to making maps of absence. Especially now, when the future is a blank page.

Tomorrow I will carry out my rites and rituals, making the most of this new phase. I have my south-facing window, the newly verdant trees, and most of all the blank page. The road rises up to meet me; there was never a day that my wish was not true.

Finally, the time comes for the opening of the ways.

The Phantom Arrives Upon A Storm

Autumn, 1990. Not long before Halloween. I dreamed that I was walking to the mailbox at the end of our road. It was after 6 and the air was violet. Night was about to fall.

A fierce wind kicked up and blew my hair all around. I paused at the corner where our street met the main road and looked out toward the horizon. A storm was approaching from the west. I shivered. The wind was cold.

The sky was darkening by the second, but I didn't move. There was an ominous feeling, and as I looked at the clouds I knew that there were things in them, strange and otherworldly things moving in with the weather.

"The phantom arrives upon the storm"  I said, to no one in particular. The wind began to howl.

When I woke up, a cold wind was battering my windows. I wondered (still wonder, really) if the phantom hadn't arrived after all.

Caduceus

At the medical center in Victoria was this imposing caduceus sculpture.  It always struck me as a little strange. Victoria being such a conservative place in general, it seemed even less likely that the medical center would be possessed of such a flight of modernity. Especially one verging on a sort of Pagan spookiness.

It was one of those places where the dullness of Victoria had cracked and weirdness leaked through.

Not Afraid Of You

I always did love those hidden picture puzzles a child.

The Enchanted World

If three mystical references to 1987 weren't enough already, tonight I give you The Enchanted World.

I don't know for sure when these books first began to be published (even wikipedia dates them to a vague "the 80's") but for me they figure importantly in my memories of that year.

The Enchanted World series was only available through mail-order, and - having always been one to burn the midnight oil - I recall seeing the rather intriguing commercials in the wee hours of the night. There were several, but this was my favorite:

They were beautiful books which (alas) did not fit into our budget, but my cousin Anna's parents were more indulgent. The books were sent one per month, and by the the time I arrived at Anna's house that Summer, she had several. Wizards and Witches, Fairies and Elves, Ghosts, Night Creatures, Dragons, and Water Spirits, I think she had by then. They were Anna's prized possession, and of course I dove right into them.

They were utterly fascinating, not the least because they were chock full of art.

So much of this, to me, blended with the atmosphere of Anna's house, and of course the mysterious aura of Anna herself. We'd burn incense - Gonesh #6 Perfumes From Ancient Times (mine, bought from the hippie record shop*) or violet Spiritual Sky (hers, bought at the renaissance faire). In fact, the combined scents from all the incense we had stored in Anna's room made the entire hallway smell like a temple. Add in Anna's lace tablecloth cloak, her glowing-eyed anthropomorphic tree and Stevie Nicks' Blue Lamp  and you may start to get a clear picture of what things were like that Summer, down near the ocean where ghosts drift close at hand.

I don't know how many volumes of The Enchanted World Anna eventually collected. It was maybe 14 or so before she stopped. I was never able to order a set of my own, but happily, years later, my mother-in-law gave me her old set. All the favorites are there, with the exception of Night Creatures. It pays to marry into a family of bookworms.

Lacking Night Creatures, It's one of my hopes this year to procure a copy. Then one day I'll pass the books on to my own children.

Not quite yet, though.

*Sundance Records In San Marcos, when they were in the little shop downtown. Where I'd once bumped awkwardly into Stevie Ray Vaughan (I didn't recognize him at first because he wasn't dressed like a pimp.)

Erinyes

I don't talk about it much here, as I'd like this blog to be nice or pretty, or interesting at the very least. PTSD is none of these things. Talking about it doesn't help anyway. It only feeds the slavering maw.

But I've had a hell of a week. Oh, nothing happened, not as such, but then nothing really needs to happen. It was just a matter of taking an unexpected detour through a certain neighborhood at a certain time on a humid, drizzling morning. Suddenly I was back there, or rather back then, 23 years disappearing in less than a blink, a nerve twitch in a bloodshot eye.

I think it was the bird song that did it this time. There must be different birds in that neighborhood, some kind that prefer the sprawling dark of the magnolia trees. It had been a long time since I'd heard those birds calling out, in that way, in that weather.

I shuddered three times, full body shudders. That was my warning. I laughed it off, except not really. I told myself to laugh it off, because my flashbacks are stupid and dumb and meaningless. They aren't, of course, but I see it through other people's eyes. Stupid girl, dumb girl. Can't get over it, always grieving. As if it were real grief. What a fool.

This is before time disappeared, like the ocean pulling back before a wave. I never catch it in time, but then, I never think I should. It's something that doesn't come up in support groups - who's to say I don't deserve this? Perhaps these Furies live in my head because the punishment is just?

Given the oft-quoted principle of what you would say to a friend suffering this condition, if this was said to anyone else - and understand, I am a pacifist who abhors violence of any kind - I might feel inclined to punch the one who said it. Such a suggestion is beneath human dignity. It is plain wrong. But the Furies in my head are not so forgiving. The Furies want to kick my ass.

So there I am, woefully young again, on the precipice of losing. I'm about to lose so big that the  damage will spread to those around me, like a prairie fire or a row of dominoes. The man shakes me, calls me names. His cruelty makes me want to disappear. I want this to stop, yet I will have to relive it again and again, years into the future. The Furies aren't only vengeful, they're ironic. Their memory for nasty details is impeccable.

After the flashback, there's nothing to do but continue to exist, through the fatigue, through the brain-fog.  Put on my smiling face, even though it's a miserable fake. Draw a big X on my mental map, and write "here there be monsters." Or Erinyes, to be exact.

Call me a coward, but I have no wish to venture into their territory again. Some things are not worth the price.

The Secret Box

We all have one, I bet, those of us who are attached to material things. A container filled with objects that are meaningful, if not valuable.

Mine is an old cigar box that I blagged off a tobacconist. It's decorated with mosaic tile, which most everyone agrees is not a success. Well, no matter. It's all right if no one likes it but me. It's my secret box, after all.

The kids sometimes look at it in fascinated bewilderment. What is this, they ask, unable to perceive meaning in the contents. What are these pebbles and scraps of paper? All these scribbled notes? Why do you have a receipt dated August of 2002? Just for some incense and a china cup? Fortune cookie fortunes? Broken jewelry and Mercury dimes? Why would you keep these things?

To which I reply, well, that's the point of a secret box, innit? It's none of your beeswax, You don't have to explain. That's the rule.

The secrets of the box remain, more or less, secret. Anyway, explanations would only disappoint. It would hardly mean anything to them that (for example) the day of the incense and china cup, the sun glinting on the summer air made me so transcendently happy that I wanted to remember. Of course it would lack meaning to anyone else. These things are only the property of the experiencer, however sacred or mundane.

One day, they'll understand. By that time, I'm sure, they will have their own secret boxes.

Little Pink House

One night, I dreamt of a little pink house. I lived there in blissful solitude, under a starry sky.

Moments later, my friend Theo busted through the door carrying a watermelon, but that part of the dream didn't make it into the painting. ;)

A Place Only Fit To Leave

Reality rears its ugly head.

So this week I finally acquired a new printer and scanner. I knew another one was needed in order to start putting this art project together in some cohesive form, but I hadn't exactly been aggressive about finding one.

Just how passive I'd been became clear when I'd got the thing plugged in and realized I hadn't the foggiest idea what to do. All these drawings, photos, half finished texts attempting to say something about the place I live, all with the vaguest of themes - what to do with them? Especially when vagueness is the theme, pretty much.

It's an art project, not history. Well, it's supposed to be art. :p But it's definitely not history. That would be easy. This town is in love with its history, at least the parts (as per usual) written by the winners. Art is different, and making art about a place that's only fit to leave is not easy.

Working in an atmosphere of pervasive hopelessness is not easy, either.

In that light, my passive avoidance makes a little more sense.

The truth, according to Ms. Phantasmagoria

Had I wanted to document the ugliness and decay of a dying town, that would have been easy, too. But It's something else I'm after, and it's the thing so many others seem to overlook. It's also in the way they overlook it.

This town is weird, and not in a nice, cool, quirky way. Under its utterly boring surface of nowhere to go and nothing to do, its disorienting and discomforting nature permeates. Insanity breeds like the stray cats in my neighborhood. There is a darkness that underlies everything. Maybe it's the isolation. Maybe it's the barren flatness, the humidity, or maybe it's even toxic marsh gas, for all I know. These explanations are as good as any. It's a place where people have either crash-landed or never had the will to leave in the first place. The rest bide their time until they can get out, hopefully before they're drained of their life force and any self-confidence they ever had.

Underneath the crime, poverty, despair and the seamless insistence from city officials that everything is fine, just fine in our lovely town, thank-you-very-much, something else leaks out. Whatever it is, it's creepy as hell. And you aren't supposed to talk about it.

Which leads me where I am today, with a messy attempt to capture something unseen and hard to define, the "truth" of the place as I see it, which you aren't supposed to discuss and a good portion of the population is too miserable or insane to care. I could collect all this work into a book, write and design it to the best of my ability, make it as good and clever as I possibly can, and what I have at the end of the day is a book that even the local library wouldn't carry. :/

But then I must reconsider. This project is not a labor of love. It's a distraction from the hate. It's an attempt to make something of value where art has no value. It's mine alone, good or bad as it is. And if there is one thing this place trucks in, it is hopelessness. If I give in, I become like the others who've lost their will to care. There is already too much of that here. I don't want to go any further down that road.

There's nothing left to do but work.

* I know the photo at the top is unrelated to the post (except inasmuch as i made both of them) I thought of using a photo of a slug or palmetto bug to express my feelings, but that's just gross.