Moomin Papa

So I've been traveling around lately, and have stopped doing the drugs that made me such a good blogger in the first place (!) - sorry about my inattention, I swear it has nothing to do with you. I try to make time fly by having adventures and obliterating party plans. I mean, do I want time to fly? Yes, in a way. I'm lonely a lot, though I have great friends. As I have said before, I am that longhaired streaming dark-gowned girl on the rooftop of the Victorian house, staring out to the grey sea and watching ship capsizing in the distance. Getting her lace-edged hanky all wet. Pointy laced Victorian boots clattering on the shingles. Saying "Woe!" and drinking cups of opium tea and languishing fabulously, spinning on her wooden spinning wheel..... damn, that's a bygone craft I am definately going to have to take up!
Actually, Lucia cut off what hair I did have, and now I have a choppy pixie hair cut, the shortest it's been SINCE I WAS BORN! Can one be a Romantic without waist-legnth red hair? Well I am here to try, folks. Here is my inspiration: Elodie Bouchez~


Who was a great actress in the film "Dreamlife of Angels"...but I don't know about any of her other films. Zina and I used to be sort of obsessed with that one.
I went up to Sacramento/Davis to see my brother and the old Rigg St. folks last weekend, and go to my brother's second rock dance club that he has wrassled seemingly from mid-air in the sleepy/drunken frat town of Davis. It was very fun, just like the last one. The club is called "Rock It", and Jordan wears a baby blue suit and fingerless gloves that I just knitted him to play records:

Certain Antarctic Goths might be happy to know that Jordan played a Sisters of Mercy song- "Lucretia My Reflection", (Though a version that was a cover done by the shockingly gothic band Alkaline Trio. I thought they were a ska-punk band that wore T-shirts. Oh well, I'm an old lady!) and it went over pretty good...certain song choices Jordan made while going over his playlist during the day might have been influenced by his sister sitting next to him on the couch, watching "The Crow", kitting black on black (will I ever stop this madness?), and cackling like a lunatic. Who knows? He did ask for my opinion an awful lot.
I must say that Sacramento seems awful tempting as a place to live, cheap rent in fantastic apartments, and a lot of people I love right in the vincinity. Never thought i would say such a thing, but granted I spent most of my Sacto experience before now having relative-time as a kid in the suburbs, which are less-than-inspiring places. Downtown is lovely, and empty, and right now it feels like winter, I went to a tree-trimming party when I was there for goodness sake!
I'm back in the city now, and it was a sunny beautiful day today. I stayed up late reading a fantastic Angela Carter novel last night (the whole think in one gulp!), one that I would like to recommend to you all:
(the images on the cover of this version make no sense as pertains to the book's subject By the way. I do like it though!)

It really reminded me of "the Cement Garden" by Ian McEwan, another book that I read in one sitting. The themes of out-of-control family life, London working-class slums, and claustrophobia are present in both, as is the good old taboo of incest (note: I take no moral offense at incest, as long as both parties are consenting, so I'm not grossed out by this theme in these books. Some people may be). The Magic Toyshop is more umm...magical though, and less disgusting. I love the modern fairy-tale genre, and this is one of the very best. The Best Single Modern Fairy-tale Story, however, is the brutal "Snow, Glass, Apples" by Neil Gaiman, from his collection "Smoke and Mirrors". Unlike Carter's tale of a domineering puppet-maker and his houseful of dominated and shivering orphans in modern London (ok, like, the 70's I think), Gaiman's story is simply a modern telling of Snow-white, set in the long ago and far away that Snow White was set in. It translates very well my feeling of the brutality and beauty of fairytales and how if you look at them rationally they become horrible and compelling. Another brilliant one (which is also a retelling of Snow White) is by Tanith Lee:



Read it if you live somewhere that winter exists. During the long dark days. You will thank me.