scotland

4am. First snowfall of 2016.

tanith lee

A gift from the Dadmonster

Truly the way to my puny, blackened heart.

ragnarok

'Maybe most of all she loved the wild poppies, which made the green bank scarlet as blood. She liked to pick a bud that was fat and ready to open, green-lipped and hairy. Then with her fingers she would prise the petal-case apart, and extract the red, crumpled silk ­­­­­­­­–­­­ slightly damp, she thought ­­­­– and spread it out in the sunlight. She knew in her heart she should not do this. She was cutting a life short, interrupting a natural unfolding, for the pleasure of satisfied curiosity and the glimpse of the secret, scarlet, creased and frilly flower-flesh. Which wilted almost immediately between finger and thumb. But there were always more, so many more.'

- A.S. Byatt

Ragnarok: The End of the Gods

(Page 36)

I don't know how this happens.

How a perfect stranger can describe something from my childhood with such clarity.

How a secret i kept from my green-thumbed mother until only recently can be known without an utterance from myself.

How not only the action but the intention and subsequent feelings can be felt by someone else and printed in a book i may never have read.

I don't know how this happens.

But when it does i can't help but be collapsed by it.

A series of unexpected words can gather you up or shake you apart.

The above did both and now i can't stop thinking about those childhood summers that seemed so much warmer, so much brighter.

It makes me want to sob.

I love literature.

And that too makes me want to sob.

the ocean at the end of the lane

'The room was warm, but the sheets were cold. The bed shook as something landed on it, and then small feet padded up the blankets, and a warm, furry presence pushed itself into my face and the kitten began, softly, to purr.

There was still a monster in my house, and, in a fragment of time that had, perhaps, been snipped out of reality, my father had pushed me down into the water of the bath and tried, perhaps, to drown me. I had run for miles through the dark. I had seen my father kissing and touching the thing that called itself Ursula Monkton. The dread had not left my soul.

But there was a kitten on my pillow, and it was purring in my face and vibrating gently with every purr, and very soon, I slept.'

- Neil Gaiman

The Ocean at the End of the Lane

Audrey Benjamin's incredibly accurate interpretation of the Hunger Birds from Ocean

'Our hero’s kitten means more to him than anyone realises. Did you have any pets as a child? Do you think that they have more significance for children than adults?

I think so. I think there’s a bonding experience between children and pets whereas adults would be hard pushed to make that amount of emotional investment in pets. My pets were pretty much always cats and many of the things that I talk about in Ocean are things that absolutely happened to me and cats.

There’s a Terry Pratchett poem that he wrote in an anthology that I co-edited a long time ago which begins "They don’t teach you the facts of death, your Mum and Dad. They give you pets." And, actually, it’s true. For many of us, pets are the way we initially discover it. We encounter it, learn how to live with it, learn how to survive it. And that, in some horrible way, is what pets are for.'

- Neil Gaiman

(Taken from the endnotes of The Ocean at the End of the Lane)

Joe Wright to direct the upcoming movie adaptation.

low - violent past

I'll never forget my first copy:

viy

‘Suddenly in the midst of the sepulchral silence the iron lid of the coffin sprang open with a jarring noise, and the dead witch stood up. She was this time still more terrible in aspect than at first. Her teeth chattered loudly and her lips, through which poured a stream of dreadful curses, moved convulsively. A whirlwind arose in the church; the icons of the saints fell on the ground, together with the broken window-panes. The door was wrenched from its hinges, and a huge mass of monstrous creatures rushed into the church, which became filled with the noise of beating wings and scratching claws.’

- Nikolai Gogol

Viy

(Page 38)