If Prometheus Wept in Winter

in the beginning was the word and the word was with god and the word was god.

2009-10-04T06:35:49Z

:... A Note On Locale ...:

Not Berlin, it goes without saying. Eleanore Tovoinen... Toivonen, the name's Finnish, she's Finnish, she married a Fin for a reason. So when she goes home, she goes back to Helsinki, not to Berlin. ... And in my notebook, it seems to have struck me as utterly vital that Eleanore and Serafeim meet in passing once before his fall. Perhaps at the monastery in Kirkas, perhaps years ago. For some reason, it was utterly vital that she know the prior from the early days. And at the moment, I don't precisely recall why. Scribbled paragraphs in the midst of calculus classes tend to make very little sense, but I do get the drift that I wanted to highlight the separation of S.' and E.'s spheres, a separation which grows less and less defined as time wears on. More to the point: I want to emphasize the point that she is the only woman he has ever felt something for, the perfect representation of "woman" in his mind. Not only is she its epitome, she is the only one he sees - on a practical level as much as on a symbolic one.

:... A Note on the Tags ...:

We have a new one, notably; one revolving around sin. Naturally, they won't go in order, but if we can get our frail angel to make it through all ten of them - even slightly goofy #one and #three - that would be just precious.

. . .

:... Sin Is Whatever Obscures The Soul #1: Adultery ...:

Eleanore is married when they go to bed in Dubrovnik. When S. comes to see her in Helsinki -
finds her clutching the doorway, a bruise over one eye and cheek, fallow eyes with a sudden glimmer
of recognition - she is wearing a ring. And later: "So when did this happen?" Years ago. Years and years
and years ago. A tic of the eyelid, tear-lined: "Are you telling me I'm an adulterer?" In the white house, she is
begging for forgiveness but he is too far out of tears. For the priest to hear the confession of his lover,
for the demon to glean the blessings of a saint? She is crying. He isn't. He's trying to get out, drained,
agitated, all eaten-up. From room to room they go, and he's insistent, gesturing, saying,
No. No, I won't hear it. I don't want to hear it.

. . .

:... Some Cast To Date ...:

:... Serafeim Křehký ...:
(the angel)

:.. Eleanore Toivonen ...:
(the woman)

:... Miroslav Satan ...:
(the sinner)

:.. Rolf Toivonen ...:
(the bastard)

:.. Francesco Venanzi ...:
(the preferito)

:.. Mikael Vanhanen ...:
(the prior)

:... Constantine Burakgazi ...:
(the holy man)
. . .

Excerpts to follow.

[I didn't even try this, but I love that Eleanore is the only bit of color in the world.]

slaughter in the vatican.

2009-08-30T17:56:44Z

So the question is, realistically, where does an excommunicated Carthrusian go? He has no family and - outside of a potentially damning handful of charity from Burakgazi - no money. He has precisely no experience with secular life and an awful lot of existentialist dread building up over his circumstances: he hasn't lost his faith, only his confidence in the absolution and as such continues to equate Vatican ruling with the will of God. Invitandus excommunication = this newly realized version of God is very, very unhappy. Where does this leave Serafeim, the holy fool, the man in the sacred bubble? In a very bad way, naturally. Two days and one damage-control-desperate cardinal later and abruptly his sense of comprehension is shattered: how does the holy fool go from the silent, incensed dark of high religion to the barren everyday? Not well, clearly. Especially not when he perceives himself to have sinned beyond hope of redemption. Cue the self-hatred and preoccupation with penance. He uses Burakgazi's feeble charity to rent a room in Rome, lingering about the outskirts of this most holy of elections, going slowly insane and attempting appeal after appeal to the See. Unfortunately for our dear protagonist, the cardinal [Venanzi] for whom he acted as confessor is elected to the Papal Office. With Venanzi in control of the Holy Office, there is now no chance whatsoever for the excommunication to be reversed - we recall that Venanzi has his own dread to keep quiet and his own enemies to keep out. Enter BURAKGAZI, who again risks excommunication to lend a hand: Well you can't spend the rest of your life in Rome, sitting in the square... He sets him up with some friends in Dubrovnik, literature translators who have done some work on commission from the See and once, in fact, translated Burakgazi's own book of contemplations from Bulgarian. Croatia's the perfect locale, says Burakgazi, for translating. Right between East and West, so they do a lot of the liturgies that go back and forth between the Roman and Greek churches. If nothing else, it gets you away from this place while still keeping you close enough to Church affairs to beg for some leniency...

:... Wanna Guess Who's Living in Dubrovnik?...:

[Oh hush, of course you do.]

. . .

the land on which i stand.

2009-08-29T02:29:11Z

I'm pretty sure that Serafeim has taken a decided turn towards The Carthusian Order. Which is every so gloriously convenient, since I happen to have Into Great Silence sitting on my hard drive, unwatched and waiting. Is it also gloriously convenient that Into Great Silence is a documentary film of The Carthusian Order? Oh yes. Is it also gloriously convenient that The Carthusian Order is enclosed and damned strict? Let me respond with a question: do you have any idea how utterly convenient this actually is?

. . .

I finally found a monastery for our poor chap. =)

thy hand, belinda.

2009-08-29T00:56:45Z

Consider the philosophy professor, calm and cavalier, nearly absent-minded. He smiles a lot. He seems happy, but he talks about thanatos more than anyone else and works into every Munch painting and Bergman film subtle references to suicide. He tells us that he tried it once. It's not too difficult to believe, looking at him. He pulls himself up to sit on the table and crosses his legs, projector light shining through his graying curls, the halo of the academic. He says that tragedies are about people better than ourselves, comedies about people worse. He writes, "Tragedy is the imitation of an action that is of great magnitude and defines the nature of an individual. Tragic protagonists undergo a tragic fall from happiness to misery. That flaw must be brought about by a flawed action on their part, or else they are simply pitiable victims. But this flaw must be greater than they deserve, or else we will cheer their fall rather than regret it. Tragedy is a catharsis of self-pity, fear or underserved misfortune. No one is as noble as Oedipus. No one is as articulate as Hamlet. If these beautiful, truly beautiful people are ruined so thoroughly... what hope is there for the rest of us?"

. . .

:... Excommunication...:

Ex'com'mu'ni'ca'tion, n. [L. excommunicatio: cf. F. excommunication.]

The act of communicating or ejecting; esp., an ecclesiastical censure whereby the person against whom it is pronounced is, for the time, cast out of the communication of the church; exclusion from fellowship in things spiritual.

⇒ excommunication is of two kinds, the lesser (vitandus) and the greater (invitandus); vitandus excommunication is a separation or suspension from partaking of the Eucharist; invitandus is an absolute execution of the offender from the church and all its rights and advantages, even from social intercourse with the faithful.

:... Invitandus ...:

Serafeim is legally excommunicated when he breaks the seal of confession. The provocation: a near-death experience, a drowning. He was dead for two minutes by the time the paramedics brought him back and he saw precisely nothing. Nothing, that is, until the last moment, when his glimpse of what he perceives to be the afterlife reveals not the benign God to whom he prays but a capriciously cruel identity. He perceives himself going to Hell. The subsequent doubt destroys his confidence and ability to perform his monastic duties. He slips up during mass, can't wake up for matins... falls apart, not to put too fine a point on it. His timing corresponds rather perfectly with the death of the seated Pope, and he travels to Rome with others of his order with intentions of paying his respects to the deceased Holy Father. (There he meets Burakgazi, who crops up again later on. Let's ignore Burakgazi for now.) Where were we? Oh yes. Serafeim. Serafeim, at the Vatican, meets the Preferiti and one of them - wishing to enter purely into this particularly pressurized hour - asks Serafeim to hear his confession. Serafeim obliges, flattered but not pleased: it will be the first confession he's heard since his episode and he doesn't feel remotely up to it... let alone qualified. But hear it he does and hey presto, this cardinal is having real anxiety problems. Not because of the death of the Pope, not because of the chance at the Papal Office, but because he is having very severe doubts this late in life, as to the true blind benevolence of God. Not good for Serafeim. It hits a bit too much of a nerve. He fails to absolve the lost cardinal, and brings his concerns to the prior (who accompanied him to Rome). It's help for his soul that he's after, but shame, which is the primary theme of this cheery little tale, prevents him from assuming responsibility for the question. His only option is to break the seal of confession, whereby he achieves latae sententiae excommunication on the spot. The excommunication is pushed through to invitandus by the aforementioned cardinal, who is feeling understandably insecure about this revelation.

And lo and behold: that's the end of Serafeim Krehky the Cleric.

. . .

Now does that solve all my problems, or does that solve all my problems?

Yay, opening scenarios which don't make complete mincemeat of Canon Law!

*congratulatory cup of tea*

its a world for hopeless lunatics and holy fools.

2009-05-06T21:51:03Z

:... From Genesis Through Revelation: Playlist #2 ...:

I Want My Innocence Back by Emilie Autumn
Keep On Runnin' by Cat Power
Mad World by Gary Jules
I Grieve [For You] by Peter Gabriel
O Come, O Come Emmanuel by Enya
Love to Be Loved by Peter Gabriel
Sadness by Nine Inch Nails
The Half Killed by Dario Marianelli

:... If Prometheus Wept in Winter: The Wisdom of Prometheus Bound ...:

"Prom: I made men cease from contemplating death.

"[The state described is that of men who, through fear of death are all their lifetime subject to bondage. That state, the parent of all superstition, fostered the slavish awe in which Zeus delighted. Prometheus, representing the active intellect of man, bestows new powers, new interests, new hopes which at last divest them from that fear.]"

. . .

Consider Prometheus, after all. Chained to the rocks for millions of years, disemboweled each day by a raptor and left each night to contemplate the coming torture. One might say that this was not Hell, however, for Hell is and has always been known as the absence of God. And Prometheus had God, didn't he? Indeed. It was God who chained him to the rocks.

Some Notes.

I keep going back to Dostoyevsky's "Idiot". I scribbled the word yurodivi in the margin of my letters notebook and watched it evolve, twirled my pen between chilly fingers as the thought spread like cold breath across the page. Holy fool is applicable - at best, the only position for which he is suited. I read bits of the novel. I read bits of "Paint it Black" as well, which is always fictionally inspiring if damned bleak. Its honesty redeems it. There is not an ounce of pretension within those pages, not the hint of a trace of hauteur... just all the things we've never asked and all the things we've never said and it's such a pity to watch unfold. Such a pity to face at the end of the day. I keep writing despite the fact that I've not a clue where I'm going... original plotlines have been scratched, rebuilt, left crumbling and sans completion... only to be resumed again. I write daily towards an ending upon which I still haven't decided, past plot points which beg to be cut, and the writing itself is not writing. It's all elongated sketch, messy and dreamy and hopeless. I wrote the very first sketch of all this nonsense about a year ago, on a page in the middle of my notebook. It expands forward, ever forward, toward the front of the book. Irréversible. My story runs backwards.

i live in the company of twenty-thousand angels.

2009-02-09T01:03:33Z

I spoke with Dr. Shaw in class on Thursday, and he made some truly intriguing - if Nietzschian - points regarding faith. Catholicism, he suggested, is a religion founded by slaves for slaves... designed to make them feel better about being slaves. Because they could not realistically expect their lot to improve in this life, they dwelt on the afterlife. It's a fundamentally unhealthy religion, he told us in lecture, one founded upon the most repugnant principals of masochism: it idolizes the image of a man nailed to a cross, nailed through the hands and feet. (Consider Drakulić - J., akimbo, says "You look like a whore": but S. knows that by accepting the pain with open arms, one can fool oneself into ceasing to feel it.) There is a decided emphasis on denial and mortification - it makes the suffering worthwhile. It makes the suffering mean something.

. . .
:.. To Find Patience in Grace (And End Up Nothing) ...:

cuivus dolori remedium est patrentia
[patience is the cure for all suffering]

:... Miroslav Satan ...:

He had no other recourse. He watched Miroslav because Miroslav was the only man he knew - the only man he had ever truly known - and took note of how he moved. Watched his hands. Watched when Eleanore came by to see if he needed more wine and he leaned into her hip, looked up and inquired, "Why? Are you trying to tell me that I should have more wine?" ... And he wondered, for the slipped end of a moment, what Miroslav saw from that vantage point, temple to belly, ear to hip. The soft curve of a breast and the delicate hollow of the throat? She smiled down and patted the side of his head.

"Maybe not," she said, and took his glass from him. And then she was off to the kitchen, and Miroslav was left to slouch himself vertical again. He smiled at Serafeim from beneath scattered strands of hair, but there was no reaction and the smile eventually faded. The clock on the mantel continued to count the moments. Serafeim leaned forward just slightly, fingers tangled; moved again and glanced towards the kitchen. Strained across the space. Mute. Levity brushed to one side, Miroslav glanced and said, "What is it? What's wrong? Hey - hey, just - " and swung his legs around to sit. "What?"

Serafeim stared. Eyes flickered: once, twice, over and down again. He swayed with elbows on his knees, palms touching for reassurance. An eternity of seconds went by. He watched the slight tic in the temple of the only man he had ever known. "What?" said Miroslav, and without thinking, without quite forming the words, Serafeim asked how it felt. Miroslav stayed still for a moment, brow knit in concern. The darkness was not quite dispelled a moment later, when he wavered backward. Half a flinch, the eyes remained fixed, and "Warm," said he. His hand went to his mouth mid-shrug, and completed the motion. The bottom of his voice fell out of the phrase, "People feel warm when you touch them."

. . .

:.. In Darkness Let Me Dwell ...:

The Code of Canon Law establishes that, "Those upon whom the penalty of excommunication or interdict has been imposed or declared, and others who obstinately persist in manifest grave sin, are not to be admitted to Holy Communion" (can. 915).

Excommunication may result from:

apostasy
heresy
schism
desecration of the eucharist
violence against the pope
ordination of bishops sans papal mandate
violation of the seal of confession

Something possibly useful for later:

Interdict may result from attempting to marry while having a perpetual vow of chastity

In other news, I wrote to the Archdiocese of Philadelphia to ask about the alteration of canon law after Vatican II. Why, you ask? Because I enjoy making men of the cloth uncomfortable. I worry that I shall get some hopelessly bureaucratic form letter in return, thanking me for my correspondence and wishing me joy and contentment in the Lord's blessed light and so forth. NPR gave me a helpful snippet, either way: The Vatican defines heresy as "the obstinate post-baptismal denial of some truth which must be believed with divine or catholic faith, or it is likewise and obstinate doubt concerning the same." ... The drowning may hold up after all.

. . .

[I propose a new bout in the word war, Imp. An additional 5,000 words by next Saturday at midnight, certo? Say yes. Voglio il tramezzo, and I won't have the motivation to write otherwise. ;)]

On the topic of religion - we were on the topic of religion? - I watched Constantine tonight. It was a bit of a blast.

now that i'm clean.

2008-11-29T00:25:53Z

"Fallen angels who were not good enough to be saved, nor bad enough to be lost" say the peasantry...

I read my Tower of Souls notes this afternoon, avoided the musical [critical] analysis paper and the piano practice like plague. Threw the sheet music and the textbooks to one side just for today: today I was going to be a writer again. It was going to be like old times, good times when I was eleven, twelve, thirteen and spent every hour of every day buried in a notebook. It was going to be. But I woke up late and did a bit of homework after all, and by the time I got to my desk I was a bit sad, a bit distanced. So I sat on the floor, heaved the box of notebooks out from under my bed and casually reread the top few clumps of writing. It is the most beautiful feeling to recognize something - something good - that you wrote years ago. It's like visiting an old friend. Like going home. It was a lovely wreck of a novel: the purification of the reincarnation cycle, the Death, The Dream Keeper, Mikhyl the Arch-King, angels did battle with humans and we had Tjaii [who was Majhisti, who was the Death's incarnation] waiting to kill a man - "Go to Hell," he whispered just before pulling the trigger, "and fight a Demon." It was quite a thing to write. And on the topic of going to Hell...

:... It's The Cleanest I've Been...:

More Cast.

Miroslav Satan: A friend... possibly. He serves two purposes. A dark angel like his namesake, and devoid of divinity. He is what he is, does what he does, and ultimately seves dual purposes: catalyst, antagonist. A friend from South Slavia. The name was nicked without hesitation from a boy who lives in my town. I was reading the newspaper one day and came upon his name. He had done something grand at the local high school, apparently. And the name caught my attention: Miroslav Satan, in a little Ukrainian town full of little Ukrainian babas making the sign of the cross at him. Poor thing. I love that these characters are snagged straight from reality, from people I know, people I know of, people I love indirectly and from a distance. (I do believe that there is a Czech Mr. Satan somewhere on the professional ice hockey front, but his name is spelled with the caroned Š, and thus it becomes Shah'ton. I may or may not nick it). For the purposes of our narrative, however, our Miroslav will be black-haired and slick as silk and suave - a thin,dark Livny to contrast Serafeim: S. is a metaphorical angel, M. is a man... an occasionally delinquent man. He hangs out in bars, swears too much... less violent than Livny, more ridiculous. A healthy dose of the Tovish Uncle goes into this fellow. ... He spends a great deal of effort attempting to drag our frail protagonist into the abandonment of his vows of chastity. Odd enough that our Miroslav is the most wretchedly [animalistically, naturally] human of the lot of them. And so continues the theme and postulation that humanity is the most inferior in the divine hierarchy [...Look at me, says an appalled and fallen Lucifer - I'm almost a human being.] He likes living without regrets. He writes about his shameless escapades in Croatian and has Eleanore translate them for the Western market for 20 kuna a page.

. . .

I've been trying to figure out the clergy are involved, with little luck. I don't know how far I want to take this, or how high. And I am, of course, out of time. The NaNovel, which is never written in November, will - of course - spill over into the subsequent years. I love how useless I am on deadlines. And no, you may not have a word count. Excerpts, next time, if you're nice to me.

a fail so epic tolkein should build a world around it.

2008-11-16T04:24:01Z

The impish word-challenge of the week has been failed rather pathetically. I have no substantial excerpts to offer, no earth-shattering character breakthroughs to share, no plot points achieved. I shall soothe my shame-slain wordcount with a cup of tea and some sleep - but before I do, I might as well offer a feeble update. If only to concede to my ever-so-worthy opponent (did she make it to 5,000, I wonder? Let's all swivel about and stare at her until she tells-) and get some of my notes to the relative safety of the internet. ... I'm just waiting for my notebook to get water-logged, spontaneously combust, be stolen. It's university. I've learned to expect anything. ;)

Something interesting which I discovered the other day, wandering aimlessly about cyberspace when I should have been doing music for theatre homework. A dream symbol dictionary: it informed me that dreaming of any sort of cross or crucifix indicates (1) joy, happiness and fufillment after a long and difficult struggle, or (2) a crossroads implying the obvious: two possible paths lie ahead, and a choice must be made. On the subject, Frost manages to be useful for once: Two roads diverged in a yellow wood / And sorry I could not travel both / And be one traveler, long I stood / And looked down one as far as I could / To where it bent in the undergrowth...

Poetry keeps attacking me from the most unlikely places, from Milosz anthologies and books I've nicked from the library. They bleed together like watered-down dye and keeping leaking into my narrative. It is the nature of art, beauty, and divinity to be clean, implies Lang... Wat comments upon the beauty of breathless lungs and Sexton describes the perversity of a God who unties the knot of double hunger in mortals. Memories keep bubbling up from nowhere: a nun who once told me the story of a woman who so loved God that she took communion thrice a day; He decided to test this extraordinarily loyal woman by causing her to bleed for forty years from her fingernails and toes. ["If that's what He does to the people who love him," says Eleanore, "You're off the hook."] Our protagonist would doubtless end up in the realm of "If that's what he does to the people who love him, imagine the retribution which will face me in Hell." ... It positively begs to be thrown into the mix. I initially imagined that I would be too far afield, too out of the loop to write about Roman Catholicism, but I'm starting to realize that it isn't the denomination that matters. It's the small graces, the miniature downfalls, the personal failures which hold the story, not the language of the mass. It's all about the humanity.

:.. [Tell] the Priest, He's the Doctor, He Can Handle the Shocks: Playlist #1...:

Mercy Street by Peter Gabriel
Leave by The Swell Season
Walk Away by The Nadas
Sweet Religion by Imogen Heap
Near To You by A Fine Frenzy
In Darkness Let Me Dwell by Sting & Karamazov
Furious Angels by Rob Dougan
I'm Not Driving Anymore by Rob Dougan
Angel by Massive Attack
Borrowed Time by A Fine Frenzy
I Will Always Love You by Whitney Houston
Terrible Lie by Nine Inch Nails
Nothing At All by Rob Dougan
Puis Qu'en Oubli by Guillame de Marchaut
When the Angels Fall by Sting
Clubbed to Death by Rob Dougan
Darkness by Peter Gabriel
The Road to Chicago [from the Perdition Soundtrack]
The Hill by Marketa Irglova
Sakrelig by Eisbrecher
Mein Blut by Eisbrecher

hope for the hopeless.

2008-11-08T21:31:53Z

So beautiful lungs are, breathless! How calm, when the wrists proclaim
no pulse and the saint meets his maker in a laconic dark. What a clean murder.
A stillbirth from the outset, this Nestorian rhythm, these shattered pieces
of much-loved ikon which shattered so easily against the headboard.
The sheets smell of tea and roses, the breath on his neck so shallow with strain...
Perhaps, after a million and a half petits morts, he will have tasted enough
sweet poison to safely die of shame.

. . .

Word Count: 265 words. It's what I had, scribbled in the margins of physics notes and lying over top of last week's calculus. And even though I was supposed to begin on the 5th, I lose three days to insanity and the pretense of fencing. But here I am! At home, at last: avec laptop, tea, and the cat... in one of those dark, semi-expansive moods so conducive to writing tragedy. Of course I left my notebook back at university, but tonight I plan to be rather brilliant and Chekhovian and wing it.

Not even a school night - who needs sleep? Let's get this party started.

security, security, hello all stations.

2008-10-31T20:21:47Z

Because I have a flagrant disregard for rules - and because I can not realistically expect to survive this week's recital in Price if I write at the same time - I am shifting my NaNo season just a bit to the left.

NaNo '08: November 5 - December 5

Go my total lack of multi-tasking abilities! Also. I keep writing back-stories and dialogues in physics lecture...

my sweet little religion.

2008-10-24T01:38:03Z

:... You Mean Everything To Me...:

A Central Cast of Two.

Serafeim Křehký: literally, "delicate angel". Our frail protagonist who acts as one of his own antagonists - damaged goods, and a psychological wreck. I don't want him to be a common priest, we have misconceptions about priests and he's fundamentally too young to be believable in the role. I'm leaning towards Laity, then, some form of consecrated life within an obscure monastic order. Perhaps. It needs to be self-isolating enough to make his return to the secular world sufficiently messy. Interdict or excommunication, I haven't quite decided which to use. The former, perhaps, or a withdrawn excommunication - if this evolves into him returning to his previous position, I'm going to have to figure out a way around penalty and Catholic law.

Eleanore Toivonen: the love interest. Or, more accurately, the one interested in love. She's atheist, and embodies the finer themes of love: patient, kind, and warm. Hers is a human warmth which has been thus far missing from the existence of our protagonist, but it is no match for divine warmth - her perpetual struggle to free the abovementioned from his emotional and psychological baggage conflicts frequently with her desire to disentangle herself from religion entirely. She is the only female character I have ever written who has not been pure good or pure evil. Rather complex, flawed and confused; possessing a keen desire to protect and to save, and yet frequently unwilling to wholly accept the role of arbiter of sanity. Beautifully imperfect, beautifully human. A good contrast for our angel. The given name just happens to be my very favorite name on the face of this earth. The surname is derived from the old Finnish for 'hope'. She's one of the good guys; makes her living translating novels from obscure languages to well-read ones, and likes heroes who die in the last five pages.

. . .

There is a slew of additional characters - religious and secular, noteworthy and vague, antagonistic and helpful - and they shall be rambled over when I have more time and lucidity. Serafeim and Eleanore are the only two constant personas, however. The rest are shadows, ghosts, and guests which debut in flurries of literary leitmotiv and exit in anonymity. I spent some of my time between classes today trying to pin down the format of chapters, parts, points of view: I know the story and where it goes, but I'm not quite sure how I should be telling it. In the tradition of Konrad, I get the feeling that this novel will be beyond abstract. And on that note. I keep thinking of Draculic's The Taste of a Man. Is that how Serafeim ends up? So far off the edge of the map that the map becomes useless? I tend to hope not... Also, I watched "Goya's Ghosts" the other night, with mein vater: disturbing and about the Inquisition, what could be better? For the purposes of novel writing, it's semi-unfortunate that the Church has so long ago abandoned its incredible bloody-mindedness. I visited the library today, after calculus.

~ Declaration on Religious Freedom of Vatican Council, II - Vatican Council. 2nd.
~ The Wisdom of Catholicism - Anton Pegis
~ The Principles of Monasticism - Bernard Sause
~ Sex in Christianity and Psychoanalysis - William Cole
~ Orthodoxy - G.K. Chesterton
~ The Silent Life - Thomas Merton
~ The Case Worker - Gyorgy Konrad

to test or not to test?

2008-10-22T23:10:03Z

An LJ for my '08 Nano, Mercy Street. The mood theme is thanks to the lovely folks over at frostianmoods, and the template itself may or may not be temporary. I rather like the idea of woodcuts for a novel drenched in Catholicism - brings to mind the good ol' days before Gutenberg. But it's hard to get use to anything other than The Chair: because it's the oldest, the first, the longest, all other LJs seem awkward and out of place in comparison.

I digress.

Let the November madness begin! Though I'm hardly ready for it - and still have a great mass of research to plow through - I'm excited to start writing again. It's been too long, and I've wanted to write this particular novel for the better part of forever. On some level, I assumed that I would put it off forever, but what better way to kill writers block than to leap at something embedded in the future? Also. I will be avoiding caffeinated all-nighters this time around. You may rely on it.