Digressions, Leaps and Tangents; How My Mind Works (if One Would Call it “Working”); and More Footnotes. Forth Eorlingas!

So, reading Crazy Aunt Purl's post about books, and children's books, and thinking about how many of us who commented had strong emotional bonds to our books (whether in our childhood or now), sorta/kinda led me to this very long and strange digression.

My childhood book was Johnny Go Round. Gramma Fran would read it to my twin brother and me several times a day. I think we liked it because (1) it had a cat in it, and (2) there was a brother/sister pair that looked like they were twins, too. I never know what happened to our original copy. Mom mentioned several years ago that she couldn't locate it, even though she thought she had saved it somewhere. So, Johnny Go Round vanished.

A few years back, I was talking to one of my co-workers about childhood books, and mentioned Johnny. She had asked if I had ever searched for it online. I had, but my searches weren't fruitful. A few minutes after I returned to my desk, she had sent me an email with a link to a used book seller in Pennsylvania, saying “Is this it?” It was. I called the bookseller immediately and had it sent to me at the office. When I opened up the package and saw that oh-so-familiar cover, I just wept.

And now on to the digressions. Going back to read further comments on her blog post, I discovered a few Lovecraft related ones, and sent an email to one of the commenters about the H.P. Lovecraft Fan Club and the walking tour of Providence they do on his birthday, which ends in a reading at his grave site (click here, too). I have wanted to do this for years (and I didn't even know there was such a club or an event). I must go. I see myself in the Providence graveyard, reading The Cats of Ulthar and getting choked up.(1)

Thinking of Lovecraft led to thinking of Lord Dunsany, and thinking that I needed to find that quote about throwing things of value out of a burning house. Reading the last paragraph of the quote led to thinking I should type up the entire thing; so here it is:

Preface to the Last Book of Wonder

Ebrington Barracks
August 16, 1916

I do not know where I may be when this preface is read. As I write it in August 1916, I am at Ebrington Barracks, Londonderry, recovering from a slight wound. But it does not greatly matter where I am; my dreams are here amongst the following pages; and writing in a day when life is cheap, dreams seem to me all the dearer, the only things that survive.

Just now the civilization of Europe seems almost to have ceased, and nothing seems to grow in her torn fields but death, yet this is only for a while and dreams will come back again and bloom as of old, all the more radiantly for this terrible ploughing, as the flowers will bloom again where the trenches are and the primroses shelter in shell-holes for many seasons, when weeping Liberty has come home to Flanders.(3)

To some of you in America this may seem an unnecessary and wasteful quarrel, as other people's quarrels often are; but it comes to this that though we are all killed there will be songs again, but if we were to submit and so survive there could be neither songs nor dreams, nor any joyous free things any more.

And do not regret the lives that are wasted among us, or the work that the dead would have done, for war is no accident that man's care could have averted, but it is as natural, though not as regular, as the tides; as well regret the things that the tide has washed away, which destroys and cleanses and crumbles, and sparest the minutest shells.

And now I will write nothing further about our war, but offer you these books of dreams from Europe as one throws things of value, if only to oneself, at the last moment out of a burning house.

Which leads to a digression on the “necessity” of war which Dunsany seems to imply.

This current war in the Middle East is far from necessary. American soldiers are dying for no good reason whatsoever. George Bush is a lying sack of excrement and a murderer. But I can't follow this digression, since it makes me far too angry. Far too angry.

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(1) Why this emotional outpouring? It happens to me all too often; I cry at the drop of a hat it seems. A recent case in point – watching the Lord of the Rings movies. I cry when the beacons of Gondor are lit. I cry when the Rohirrim arrive at Minas Tirith (2)(4). There is something that resonates with me – a courage I can not even hope to achieve myself, though I wish it.

(2) Spear shall be shaken, shield be splintered,
a sword-day, a red day, ere the sun rises!
Ride now, ride now, ride to Gondor!

Yeah, I've got The Return of the King at my desk as I type this. Forth Eorlingas!

(3) When I looked up the entire text of the poem, “In Flanders Fields,” I was sorely disappointed by the last stanza. When I first heard the first stanza recited, in some movie, as an anti-war sentiment, it was moving; but if you read the entire poem, it's a rationalization for further bloodshed.

(4) Even my footnotes have footnotes. Woot!

Lovecraft's Adventurous Expectancy

For some reason or another, this has been on my mind, and I had to dig out my copy of The Annotated H. P. Lovecraft just for this footnote:

Adventurous Expectancy: A central element in Lovecraft's aesthetic of the imagination, and a concept to which he attached particular significance.

"What has haunted my dreams for nearly forty years is a strange sense of adventurous expectancy connected with landscape and architecture and sky-effects.... I wish I could get the idea on paper -- the sense of marvel and liberation hiding in obscure dimensions and problematically reachable at rare instants through vistas of ancient streets, across leagues of strange hill country, or up endless flights of marble steps culminating in tiers of balustraded terraces. Odd stuff -- and needing a greater poet than I for effective aesthetic utilisation" (Selected Letters, III, 100).

I know this feeling, the sensation that "there is something more" behind the veil of reality I work with on a daily basis. Mine isn't so much from "vistas of ancient streets," but through the way light will slant through the trees, or the way the night air in the summertime smells so cleaner right before dawn. This needs a greater poet than I.

Some Women Buy Shoes

I was surfing the innernets, as I am prone to do, looking for memes to jazz up my blog. I say that I have the World's Most Boring Blog; it is in definite need of "jazzin' up." Since I don't have a tremendous amount of material in my own life, I look elsewhere for inspiration and motivation -- whatever it takes to get me typing about something.

I found a few book-related memes. Being an avid reader, I thought that might be one way to go, but I didn't find any topics that quite "fit."

One of the memes I looked at said to list the books in your TBR (To Be Read) Pile. I don't HAVE a TBR Pile. I have a TBR Bookcase. Now, admittedly, it's a small two-shelf'er and one of the shelves has my fitness/nutrition non-fiction on it, but most of it is Stuff I Haven't Gotten to Yet. There's also a small TBR Pile making it's home on the sectional sofa in the living room, and a smaller one on my nightstand [The nightstand books are ones I'm currently reading; they tend to fall by the wayside every now and then and sit there for a while, so they're more of a To Be Finished Pile.] There are also assorted piles on the bedroom floor that are in some liminal states of Being Read, Should Be Read, Reference, and Why Haven't You Shelved This Yet?

My name is Laiane Wolfsong, and I am a Biblioholic. (All together now, "Hello, Laiane!")

There is no such thing as too many books -- just not enough bookcases.

I decided - for the heck of it - to post some pictures of The Laiane Wolfsong Not-Yet-Memorial Library, and a few selected items.

To your left, Ladies and Gentlemen, are the eight stacking bookcases comprising The Fiction Collection. It appears that Ms. Wolfsong has a penchant for the classics. Austen, Tolstoy, Proust, Marquez, Trollope, and Shakespeare are well represented, with a smattering of Melville, Borges, Dostoyevsky, Dumas, Dante, and Hugo thrown in for good measure. There's also a great deal of space given to one of her favorite writers, Howard Phillips Lovecraft (The Dream Cycle collection and the first volume of The Annotated Lovecraft are absent in that photo; she attests they are "somewhere" in the residence).

Here are two small gems for your consideration.

The first, "Most Expensive Used Book" -- H.P. Lovecraft's Something About Cats (First edition, 1949, Arkham House, August Derleth, editor). $130, not counting shipping and handling, brought this beauty into The Collection. Worth. Every. Penny.

The second, "Best Beloved Book, Judging By Its Cover" -- Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl (79th printing, 1976).

Here I have to lapse back into the first person narrative. I got Anne's diary when I was perhaps 11 or 12 years old. I have read it dozens upon dozens of times. The pages are yellow with age, and many of them are falling out. Of course, I bought The Definitive Edition (new translation, originally edited out bits added back in) when that came out in 1995, but I would never toss out the first book. Sacrilege! No other book in The Collection comes near the well-worn-ness of this book. Okay, maybe my paperback version Richard Adams' Watership Down, but it's not THAT close.

This is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. I have, in my study, two shelves of children's books and fantasy, and well as The Non-Fiction Collection: Human Sexuality, Eastern Religion, Western Religion, Women's Studies, Art/Photography, History of World War II, Marilyn Monroe, Women's Health, Adventure, Death and Dying, Travel, Cats, Humor, u.s.w. There is also an entire closet of my comic books and graphic novels.

I really need to catalogue all of these. The task is just too daunting. I can't even begin to estimate the sheer number of books in this house.

I have a deep connection with my books. They have sustained me during all the circles of hell through which I have had to travel. Homesickness. Divorce. Pain (physical and emotional). When I look at my shelves, I see more than paper and bindings and words. My books give me a sense of solidity that nothing else can. The written word is my lifeline.

Comforts on a Monday

A long day. A long week. It's time to get back in the habit of five-day work weeks. So, after a long, cold, wintery day of clients, I get a hot bath with eucalyptus oil (I feel a cold coming on) and The Annotated H.P. Lovecraft. I know I have another copy lurking around the house somewhere; I just couldn't find it when I needed to reread "At the Mountain of Madness," so I bought another copy. Sue me.

Anyhow, hot baths, Lovecraft, and a lovely quiet evening ahead of me, and I stumble across this:

There is a party game at which we are asked, "If David Letterman had a vanity license plate, what would it say?" "If Betty Boop were real, what would she eat?" "If H.P. Lovecraft were a comic book, which would it be?" The last is the only one I can answer, but I do know that. H.P. Lovecraft would be The Sandman. "Comic book" is, of course, a poor description of The Sandman, and "graphic novel" isn't much closer; which fits perfectly, because none of the labels pinned on Lovecraft -- I mean the labels meant to pigeonhole his magnificent stories -- describe him very well. He was certainly not a pulp writer, merely one whose works appeared in a pulp magazine. Nor was he a horror writer, though there are horrors to be found in his stories now and then, especially if one does not look for them. Rather he was a tall and lonely man with many friends, whose soul dwelt in a haunted place beyond the world, a man who walked by night and always walked alone: a lord of dreams. A song of Lovecraft's time says that dreams come true in Blue Hawaii, but those are daydreams and too often they don't. C.S. Lewis has a bit in which people visit a region where dreams (real dreams like Lovecraft's and ours) actually do come true; and those people return white and shaken. They were lucky, I think -- very lucky to return at all through the gates of horn and ivory, the gates that are opened, sometimes, by the silver key.

What do you think, Mr. Carter?

-- Gene Wolfe

Anyone who knows me and my "comic book" reading habits will understand why I smile at this.

I (heart) Archie McPhee

I've shown you the 17-inch rubber vulture (Edgar), but I now have over 2 feet of disturbingly realistic foam rubber rodent! His name (currently -- it might change in the future) is Charles Dexter Rat (from HPL's The Case of Charles Dexter Ward). He's atop the computer case at the moment.

We got a whole bunch of Archie McPhee toys today, and the rat was just one of the goodies. Another was the Oscar Wilde Action Figure (chipmunk sold separately -- at Target):

Lots of excellent Wilde quotes on the back of the package:

I'm not young enough to know everything.

Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination.

I do believe that Oscar needs to come out of the package and be photographed in various action shots with my Sigmund Freud action figure, and perhaps the glow-in-the-dark, squeaky octopus.

And some people fritter their lives away watching television.

Pictures! We Got Pictures!

Here we are, ladies and gents, the Official 2006 Christmahanukwanzakah Tree and the semi-official Call of Cthulhu tree topper! Wootness. Considering that The Husband and I didn't have a tree last year, and didn't even get around to exchanging gifts last year (2005 was a big year for Seasonal Affective Disorder in our house), this is pretty exciting for me. We have a tree. We have presents. We have...CTHULHU! He's just darlin', isn't he?

Speaking of big, green, and Lovecraftian, I'm spending gobs of time working on my Morrowind WIP - The Cats of Ulthar. I think tonight's agenda, besides wolfing down candy bars and 0-calorie club soda, is creating Joshi's unique book for his quest (Edit: I used the text of the Lovecraft poem from an earlier post here), and trying to come up with an NPC for Carter's Silver Key quest. Yes, I'm rambling on without explaining that Joshi and Carter are cats in my mod. I need to flesh out H.P's dialogue, too. Lots to do, lots to do.

And, for what it's worth, here's a gratuitous cat picture!

Sunday, Sunday, Sunday!

I have a very non-drama-filled life. In fact, it could accurately be described as "boring." Now, while I do suffer from insomnia, chronic pain, and depression, I really don't have any crises going on and I'm able to handle what life throws at me with considerable aplomb (What an awesome word -- "aplomb." I'm going to type it a few more times because it's such a cool word. Aplomb, aplomb, aplomb). Big worries in my life right now include Christmas cards, visible skin tags, cats that have started peeing on the basement floor, and more projects involving yarn than I can possibly complete in a reasonable period of time (and yet, I still buy more yarn; what's up with that?).

I simply don't have the energy to live my life as if it was a made-for-TV movie (and if I did, I would ask that I be played by Susan Sarandon or Nicole Kidman, thank you, even though Nicole is much taller -- and Susan a tad bit older -- than I am in Real Life).

Today involves the following: Buying a Christmas tree; cleaning the living room in the preparation of the arrival of said Christmas tree; finding my Christmas decorations in the basement; and eating The Husband's meatloaf. Yesterday was knitting, the Moscow Cats Theater, and coney dogs (with mustard).



I love my life. No crises.

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Typing stuff for the sake of typing stuff (I tend to do this a lot):

On Reading Lord Dunsany's Book of Wonder
by H.P. Lovecraft

The hours of night unheeded fly,
And in the grate the embers fade;
Vast shadows one by one pass by
In silent daemon calvacade.

But still the magic volume holds
The raptur'd eye in realms apart,
And fulgent sorcery enfolds
The willing mind and eager heart.

The lonely room no more is there --
For to the sight in pomp appear
Temples and cities pois'd in air
And blazing glories -- sphere on sphere.