Which Victorian child are you today?

Marjorie is overwhelmed by the prospects of her future. 

Evelyn is apprehensive but determined to do what must be done. 

Alice has recently discovered Catholicism and is fervently ashamed. 

Bernard has made an enemy of the capitalist system and has no regrets, punishments be damned.

Madeleine is in control of her destiny and in need of no guidance. 

Clifford is celebrating the good things in life. 

Olga is fed up and has no fucks left to give. 

Hattie finds motherhood stressful but rewarding. 

Steven knows what you did. 

Camille Donxieux

Camille ou La Femme à la robe verte, 1866, Camille au métier, 1875. 

Snefnug hvirvler omkring lige uden for mit vindue

og jeg er irriteret over din medlidenhed.

Sincerely, yours

Roland Barthes writes that every love letter is written to someone, and it's true that you have been a frequent guest in my texts. At the time of dedication, it's an intimate act, an embodied part of the on-going dialogue between my inner-most self and you-in-me. And in returning to the site of text, I am resubmerged in its ritualized wishing-into-being, I am affectively returned to my relating to you, even if you are no longer the same you, even if I no longer long for you. 

Talking to someone in your mind only works insofar as there is still hope. Why would I write to a you who is not intimately known, being discovered with baited breath or wondered about? Except in memory, where you remain in the realm of the potential and I do not have to deal with what you became to me later. Disgusted. 

You are a golden, sunlight-on-cornfields force who makes my world bright. 

You are a darkness that swallows everything and leaves a trail of sweet sighing emptiness inside my mind palace. I don't go there often anymore. The walls are closing in on me and I'm not so drunk on what I might become as when I'd just discovered all of it. 

Sometimes you are me. Little young me with twinkles in your eyes and a thousand crowns to spend exactly how you want. I carry her safely tucked away in a pocket of wool behind my ribcage.

Really, obviously, you are always me. I am made of yous, as well. And I feel you, when I read the spaces where your name could never have been written, even when I don't always remember what it would have been. I feel you. 

And I cover you in wool and carry you, safely, sleepily, inside me. 

Your Yearly Reminder

Have you checked recently that you're not stuck in a coma-induced alternate nightmare dimension ruled by cyber-fey thirsty for entertainment?  

Make sure to look at the sky: Does it have a realistic hue?  

Check the function of the natural laws: Does milk age in your fridge? Do things fall right when you let go of them? Are you capable of breathing with your head submerged in a steady stream of water? (You're not supposed to be.)

If you're still suspicious, it's time to look for the perpetrator! Has an ethereally beautiful, possibly genderqueer, person or animal who does not seem affected by cold been seen in your neighbourhood? Is someone singing hauntingly among the sound of shower drops in your building at odd hours or to a child that never seems to make a sound? Did a bot who seems just-a-bit too real recently slip into your DMs? And has that homeless youth always been in front of the supermarket - are they even there at night? Remember, gifting something to the fey will often release their grip on you, as long as you accept no other means of recompense.

And promises of light to come

Midwinter tidings of much merriment

 "Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again

"I dreamt that where our drive once lay, a dark and tortured jungle grew. Nature had come into her own, and yet, the house still stood."

Island winter's whispers

I play my flute at night in the cisterns, I hope no one hears 

but the entities 

that live in the echoes and under the waves. It sings back to me, washes over me, envelops me, 

with much more warmth than the island really has to offer. All is still. 

And I thank the swans for sharing their bathing spot with me this summer, 

the smooth rocks for their comfort; they look like flesh; 

the tall grass for not biting me any more than it did, 

the wasps for slowly kissing me as they searched for sweetness and went to their rest. 

So shall I.

Pic by Aron Mattson.

Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises,

Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.

Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments

Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices

That, if I then had waked after long sleep,

Will make me sleep again: and then, in dreaming,

The clouds methought would open and show riches

Ready to drop upon me that, when I waked,

I cried to dream again.

 

- Caliban, The Tempest

And I laugh a little to find that some things were, after all, just what they seemed.