Current mood:	artistic
Current music:	The Cure - Fear of Ghosts

No one understands me!

Rain on the Glass Listen to the song of the rain on the glass Listen to the shift of the leaves in the wind And know that it's passing like squall on the ocean And know that it's dying like the world in the dark Look at the sky as it hangs low around us Look at the night as its arms draw you in Know that it's fading with the passing of years And know that it's dying with the coming of dark So cling to the world all around you And cling to these echoes long passed And know that nothing's forever That it fades like the rain on the glass And hold close these moments against you Hold close these things you have lost 'Till you must let them go by like the ocean Let them pass like the rain on the glass. . .

I have no idea where that came from. I've just had the line 'Listen to the song of the rain' in my head for the past few hours, and I opened my DeadJournal, wrote it down, and the rest of it just came out.
Maybe it sucks, but I quite like it.

It's raining here now.
Raining like the end of the world and its birth from the primordial choas combined. Hammering down in thick, silver sheets from a low, grey sky.

In the late 1700's, the French Revolution was threatening everything that people held dear in their hearts. They believed it was the end of the world. And looking at the hurricanes and the pouring rain that never seems to stop, the beating sun that intersperses the long days of rain, and the cold and the dark, it's easy to feel the same now. Easy to see all this choas as some kind of sign. Some kind of harbinger telling us that everything is fleeting, and son, everything will end.

In Geneva in 1816 the weather was wild and turmultous. As Lord Byron wrote Darkness, as Mary Shelley sat down to write Frankenstien and Shelley nearly drowned out on Lake Leman, the whole world was rattling around them and everything must have seemed so fleeting. So violent. So wild.

I see myself at a point in my life now much like it was then.

In 1816, the Tamboro volcano had errupted in Indonesia and was causing torrid storms, cascades of lighting and downpours of wintery rain all across the world. Summer was short and hot and intense, and between all those long, hot days was this constant torrent of cold, dead rain over the silver-touched waters of the lake.

As far as I know, we haven't had any volcanic erruptions recently, we have only ourselves to blame for the shifting of the weather, for the violent storms and viscious sunlight that plagues us.

Sitting here alone in my house I don't feel safe from the world out there. Don't feel protected from the squall. It feels as if the rain could seep through at any moment and leave me cold and wet and shaking, walls of cold, hard water could sweep across the world and take everything I know and love away from me.

Perhaps I'm just being fatalistic, but it sounds pretty enough. And maybe that's all the justification I need.

Either way, I have my storms, and now the man who issued me the challenge has his story. He told me to wait for a storm to write it, if that's what I wanted, and I waited and waited and no storm came. So I sat, and I wrote, and since then it hasn't stopped raining. The world hasn't stopped unleashing its fury on this well-worn world.

Perhaps that's what you call irony.
Perhaps it's just the way it goes.

I need to keep writing. Keep riding the wave I'm on at the moment and finish my collection.
God only knows what I'll do with myself when it's done. It's been the driving force in my life for so long now that every creative thought, every feeling, every ounce of my energy has been directed towards it.
When it's done, I suspect I'll be dropped into a cold, dark, directionless void. The same kind of void I find myself in just after I've finished any one specific story, only worse.
Hopefully something else will come out of that void. It's interesting to think that this directionless space is the best time for me to get on and write another, before the energy is gone all together.
Perhaps that same void will guide me on to something else when The Perfect Lie is over.

To move away from my vague musings of substandard poetics, or versifying as Lady Byron once so dumbly put it . . .

I have an interview tomorrow for some temporary work at the Job Centre.
Here's hoping it gives me the money I need so badly.

I may be starting training to become a teacher.
I have an interview at the careers office next week.
I half love the idea of being able to force my love of literature onto young and impressionable minds. Of actually finding a use for my not-so-hard-won degree.
On the other hand, I pity my students.

"Today, children, we were supposed to be studying Shakespeare for your exams. However, Shakespeare sucks, and I don't just mean he sucks a bit, I mean he gives Dyson a run for their money. So, instead, I've found some competant writers for us to study.
"Yeah, you'll proabably fail your exams, but you'll be enlightened and that's what really matters."

Poor sods.
I'll be just like Robin Williams in Dead Poet's Society, only without the body hair.
I hope.
People don't love or appreciate literature any more.
There are some great teachers out that that can still inspire it, but first they need the passion to do it.
Well, I have passion, so I guess it's just a matter of whether I'm any good or not.
It's something interesting to do for six months if nothing else.

In other news, I want this bloody book. I want it more than I've wanted anything in a long, long time. Now all I have to do is find some way of getting together the $250 I need to get it. I first printing of Darkness . . . Oh bestill my fluttering heart. Pressed in 1816, perhaps even while Byron was still in Geneva with the Shelley's. To own that would be something special. Something really, really special. I will own that book. Even if I have to sell my signed copy of Seed of Lost Souls and my Japanese import of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night to get it. People just don't understand how important things like that are. Especailly to me. Something like that would fill me with so much fire and passion and love. It will be mine . . . Oh yes, it will be mine.

And speaking of Lord Byron, and of the current lack of pictures in this entry, here's two versions of my favourite portrait of the man himself:

Now the rain's really hammering down in droves, I should go and try to write, while the moment still has me in its grasp. However, before I do, I thought I'd share this little find with you. It's from Byron's Don Juan, it's the original, so you can take a look at it and see just how terrible his handwriting really is. Now I really better go and write, I'm always worried when it rains like this that it won't last for long. But then, it never does. So, to end this entry the way I began it . . . Cling to the world all around you And cling to these echoes long passed And know that nothing's forever That it fades like the rain on the glass