Moonlight Held in Flesh

Originally, this was posted on 19th April 2009. I'd never experienced depression before. Depression was simply something that had happened to a couple of friends and family members. This was... a sort of contribution to what I interpreted that feeling to be, inspired by the Placebo song Without you I'm nothing.

Now it's four years later. I've struggled a lot over the last six months and I have a deeper of the understanding of these words I wrote way back then. They just need to be here now, unchanged.

**

Young girl, sitting in a corner in her room, guitar sitting between her legs and fingers lazily strumming the notes, the chords. Her younger sister had come in to tell her to be quieter, but it had been a while ago and it seemed the sister had accepted the noise. Dark hair, almost black, falls over her eyes as the girl bends her head to look over the chords she plays. It's not a special song, certainly not one she's made up. She's just learning the chords from a well loved Placebo song.

I'm unclean, a libertine
And every time you vent your spleen,
I seem to lose the power of speech,
You're slipping slowly from my reach.
You grow me like an evergreen,
You never see the lonely me at all

A loud sigh is heard as the door to her bedroom is open. Her friend's tall and lanky form is the first figure to be betrayed, but the opening of her door reveals also her younger sister behind his shoulder. She's granted another opportunity to vent her displeasure before the door is closed again.

The girl makes one last strum of a chord and then puts the guitar aside. Her friend takes her bed, slim fingers touching each other at the tips as he glances her way. He's self possessed and she wishes she was self possessed. He makes messy look like a fashion statement, yet his hair over his eyes reminds her of the hair she has haphazardly tied back to keep from her face. She smiles, maybe sadly, maybe self deprecatingly, as her friend tips his head in a silent question, but it is a smile all the same, and boys are well practiced at accepting what is shown on the surface.

"What's up?" Her fingers twitch for the sake of finishing song and she curls her fingers so her small nails bite palms.

The boy inclines his head. "You weren't at practice."

Without her guitar, the girl is free to stand, to move out of the corner of her room and towards the window. "I didn't think I needed to be."

Practice had been orchestrated for the purpose of the new drummer getting a feel for the sounds of the rest of the guys. Vocals would come later, but she would have been welcome to attend.

There was no reply for a while. Her bed wasn't the kind that creaked when someone moved on it. As a result, her friend managed to stand and cross the room so that she was unaware of it until his arms were around her waist. "What's wrong?"

"Oh, you know." A weak shrug of the shoulder. "Just one of those days."

"Anything I can do to help?"

His head was bent, his lips near her throat, and she could think of many things. She smiled again, this time a smile he could not see.

"You're already doing everything you can do to help."

The houses outside of her window were mostly lower storey houses, and she was glancing out at a forest of roofs. She was dancing on those roofs at the same time as being held in the arms of her friend. She was dancing, she was still.

There have been a bunch of people asking me what is going on with this 'new job' that I've been talking about on my Twitter this last week. People are bound to start doing the same when I start writing about the boy's 'new job' as well. So this is a post that is aimed to fix that.

The Goss:

Two Saturdays ago, I was told I wasn't needed at Of Science and Swords. Sad face. Lots of big damned crying actually, as well as my absence at a good friend's birthday party. Which is why I haven't gone into detail about that. I loved that job, and I wasn't really happy by the way it was handled at the end of it. But I have two beautiful boys who looked after me and whom I really didn't leave the sight of for the next four days.
*loves on*

I had been looking around for jobs that were going to give me more hours in addition to the bookshop job, as one day work a week (maybe two if someone was sick / had a funeral), was not enough. Especially since I finished my Honours and decided against picking up a PhD straight away.

Without any continuing obligations owing to Of Science and Swords, I upped my job search from part time to full time. Last Tuesday I had an interview. Last Thursday I had a job. Tomorrow I'll have been in training for an Origin customer service role for a week. Not highly interesting stuff but, like at the bookshop, they've been good enough to let me go for a casual pay rate and so I feel like I've had a dollar per hour increase in wages for another job where I can sit in front of a computer and deal with customers. Albeit, I won't be so interested in the product people are asking about but what can you do?

The truly exciting news is the news one of my boys came home with tonight. For the last week, we've been sitting on the news that a company has been head-hunting him. There have been to-ing and fro-ing emails arranging things like his job description, pay packet, location for work as they are a Sydney based company. In the last week, we've been asked if we would consider moving up to Sydney.



We did consider it, and then came back with a firm answer of no. Pretty much, you guys are all too damned awesome to leave behind.

So we're not moving to Sydney. But they were still interested in hiring my boy. Basically, they wanted his experience and expertise and are willing to do a lot to have it. Today, he came home with the news that the job had been formally offered to him, with conditions that he was pleased to accept and that, in two weeks, he will be moving from his current company to the new one.

And spending the next two weeks over in Sydney. Starting the day before his 31st birthday.*

Yeaaah.

Still, many of these things are good things and of the moving forward variety!


*It's the boy's request that if congratulations are forthcoming, they be said in person or through private messages on FB. Thanks :)

I'm really starting to hate this stereotype that women need to hate Valentine's Day, or at least be indifferent to it, in order to be some sort of kickass modern girl. Statements like 'she's my kind of girl' that seem to follow this observation are really starting to piss me off. Seems to insinuate that there's something wrong with any girl who gets excited over Valentine's Day. And there's not. Not any more than a girl who hates it or is indifferent to the whole gimmick.

Valentine's Day is merely one day out of the year that can be put aside to spend with your loved one(s). I've seen it spark of other lovely offshoots, such as I'm Already Busy on Tuesday, Let's Go Out On Thursday Instead Day (February 16th), Polyamorous Chocolate Day (March 14th), and even We Haven't Gone Out For a While and That Dinner We Had in Feb Was Great, So Let's Do It Again Day (Dates to be confirmed).

Negativity such as 'But it's just a commercial holiday to sell cards and chocolates' has no place there. Apart from perhaps, 'Yes. And?' Because I've found the responce to that most commonly is some regurgitation of,'And I'm a Modern Woman. I don't need to feed in to commercial culture to feel special.'

Well, why not? What's wrong with being spoilt by your partner for a night? And what's wrong with, months or weeks later, you decide to return the favour and spoil them right back? What's the harm in Valentine's Day then? Most of my Valentine's Days haven't even included a card or any chocolates, but a nice dinner at a favoured restaurant instead.

With this swing towards anti-Valentine's Day, I can't help but be put in mind of the way that housewives were treated after women's liberation had women going out into the work force. A woman liking Valentine's Day has almost become the new, 'But I like being a housewife and I like looking after my husband and kids' made her less of a modern woman. She was kicking women's lib in the teeth, or knocking it back 20 years, or some nonsense.



I don't like the idea of being a housewife. Cleaning bathrooms squicks me out far too much for that, especially when I have a perfectly good boy to do it for me. Never mind the kids! But I really like looking after my boy, my girl, or whoever I'm dating, when it comes down to it. I didn't always like Valentine's Day. As a teen girl, I too felt the empowerment of 'I don't need Valentine's Day. Valentine's Day is stupid and lame and I don't want any part in it.' Maybe that's the reason why I'm standing here on my soap box. Looking back, I can't see any good reason why I didn't celebrate Valentine's Day with my first boyfriend, especially since we had a regular date night around the middle of each month every month except for February.

And I don't think that makes me any less than the next girl because I like Valentine's Day.

I sincerely love this blog that @gailcarriger has incidentally gotten me onto.


http://steampunkscholar.blogspot.com.au/

In the most recent post, he writes about Gail Carriger's steampunk novel, the beginning of the Parasol Protectorate series, Soulless, compares it to Bram Stoker's Dracula and draws parallels between the New Woman of works written 100 years ago and now but set in the same time. The combination of contemporary content and academic exploration makes this a blog after my own heart!

Also on the site, he has tabs for both primary and secondary sources for her steampunk PhD for people to trawl through.

One of the recent posts up there is on Sherlock Holmes: The Breath of God by Guy Adams, which I'm just about to read and didn't even know about till I found this blog.

So, its our last night away already. And I've had such a gorgeous day.

Had a loooong walk along the beach today. Two, actually. The first was for gelati-lunch. The second was fish and chips later on. I came back from that trip wet from the hips down and planning more beach trips in my head. We are so lucky here in Australia to have such gorgeous coastlines. All too often I take it for granted.

And there was more writing. But, more than that, there was reading. I've really gotten into Joanne Harris. Reading Blackberry Wine right now, along with Silence of the Lambs. Finally got to the point in the book today where I understood why the book is called that. That was fun. Had a great exclamation about it that led me to reading the passage aloud to my boy.

Anyway, heading into the bathroom to have a shower right now. I don't know. Got these cold legs from running around in the shallows of the ocean tonight. I mean, who does that, really?

:D

So, we got to the beach house at about 10pm last night. Had trouble opening the door, had to call the friend who is loading us the house. It was a whole big thing.

But then we got into the house...

It's this gorgeous big house like you see in the movies with a huge window facing the beach. When I stepped out of the bedroom this morning, it was the first thing I saw. I was struck absolutely dumb. We are so close to the beach. It's like the movie Something's Gotta Give. Diane Keaton? It's like that. Stunning. Absolutely. And I'm here till Friday!

Right now, I'm curled up right in front of the big window, reading Silence of the Lambs and getting utterly distracted by the view in front of me.

I may have been completely disillusioned by True Blood this last season, but words can't express just how much I'm looking forward to the new season of Game of Thrones!!!

This is actually not the first time I've dipped my feet into the waters of writing. Why have I returned, you ask?



I'm real good at talking to my friends and helping them come to 'epiphany' moments. "Oh, I realise this was what was getting me down," or "Damn, I really didn't think about it like that, but..."

My partner is this really inspiring man who sees what he wants in front of him and immediately starts taking strides towards getting it. This isn't without faults -sometimes he pushes too hard, sometimes he falls too low when someone tells him he's dreaming too high- but he takes this stuff in stride, and keeps going. Always keeps going. I kinda look at him in awe.

A good friend just posted the list of Hugos and associated prizes winners, and I realised, I want to win Best New Writer one day. That friend and I have come up with a harmonious deal between us that we will keep each other posted and then keep out of the way during each others' chosen years.

A friend that I work with has just released a book of short stories on Kindle.


http://www.amazon.com/King-Other-Stories-ebook/dp/B005HW4CNM/

I've had it in my head for so long that I'm not going to be a 'Worthwhile Writer (TM)' unless my work is picked up and recognised by a publishing house and, because of that, have sat there on my thumbs and done very little about it.

This is particularly daft because I have been picked up and e-published over in America several times and, for the last five years, have belittled that achievement because 1/ it was genre writing, and 2/ it was e-published.

Then there's this stigma about self-publishing that this exists even though it seems to become less relevant the more technologically savvy and e-book reader reliant we (even in Australia) become. However, that stigma seems to be mainly to do with the quality of editing that these self-published books have.

It was already so hard to get yourself picked up by a publishing house when I was in high school; it's about a hundred or so times more difficult these days. And then, even if/when you get picked up, there are the internal politics of most publishing houses that will put the books/authors that are more known against the unknown writer of dubious sales. I've even heard of someone's book being accepted and then never published, though the house ended up keeping the option for the rest of the two years of the contract.

Don't get me into the fact that, in this day and age, any aspiring writer -or any writer at all, really- needs to get hip deep into their own marketing/publicity side. Again, unless you are a well known author, the majority of publishing houses just aren't going to do that for you.

I look at all of this and I wonder what, really, is the good of waiting for a publishing house to sit up and discover me?

I have these amazing contacts and friends from my e-publishing times, and have since made many more.

I have a workshopping circle I meet with most Tuesdays, and several people who have either established proof reading business or upcoming ones. Hell, the number of people I've had offer just to read my creative thesis as experience for their proof reading business before the end of the year has astounded and flattered me.

I have this wonderful idea for a series of hand bound chapbooks that I've been sitting on for almost a year now (okay, there have been reasons, and perhaps even this close to the end of honours is not the best time for me to be picking this up again but, so, whatever..)

I have this amazing boss who has already told me not to undersell myself if/when I put these chapbooks together and that they will happily sit in our science fiction and fantasy bookshop.

Not to mention the many friends that have come up to me over the years and said that, if I ever do get any of my work published, even self published, that they want to read it because I'm one of the few amateur writers whose work they already enjoy.


So, you know what? I have a goal ahead of me. And that goal is made up of a whole bunch of teeny tiny little steps that may, one day, lead up to that great big goal in the sky: Best New Writer.

The Queen is dark. Dark skin, dark nails polished and pointy at the ends. Dark lashes grow long from her eyelids, creating cruel shadows over sharp cheekbones. Spider web gossamer makes up the dress that flows from shoulders to ankles. Her dark hair is broken by florescent pink highlights; the only colour.

Around her, subjects pay court. They are in many different shapes and sizes. Horns and wings are popular themes. One small creature seems clothed entirely in vines. Another has bark for hair. They like to leave bark in place of the ones they steal. Bark and bracken. They laugh about it afterwards.

Before them all, a serpentine girl awaits their pleasure. Awaits the Queen's pleasure. None of those paying court are moving. They all are there awaiting the Queen's pleasure; dreading her displeasure.

"Play." The Queen's word is formal.

The serpentine girl is blue and green. Her arms and legs are long, flowing; fingers and toes have extra joints. She is beautiful, hair flowing like water, trinkets in it like goldfish swimming through sea weeds. Her painted skin is bare, perfect globes for breasts that barely move as she twists and turns in impossible contortions that seem perfectly natural to her form.

Her audience stares in silence that is only broken occasionally by awed gasps that she seems hardly aware of. Her hair flows into her face and away again. Her gaze has attached itself to a far-away point on the wall.

"I tire of this quickly," says the Queen. Courtiers look around and a new silence, made of in-held breaths, replaces the last.

The serpentine girl seems not at all surprised. Rumours of this Queen have come a long way, so that when the serpentine girl was summoned, she knew her likely fate. Once, death had been terrible to the long-lived races. Not so with this Queen. Still she had come to make this dance.

As her fate came to fall down upon her, the serpentine girl moved not at all, fingers still and clasped before her smooth nether regions, hair long but still, as though it had never looked like water. Her lips seem big now, pronounced, out of place. Her nose is small. Her gaze is no longer fixed on some far off point. Her stare pins every faerie in place, calling them on their compliance to let this action occur.

It is almost a relief when her head is relieved from her shoulders. It rolls towards several courtiers to the right of the Queen. They all step back into the faeries behind them.

Even the blood runs blue.

The Queen is unmoved. The night is young.

"Next!"

**

I wrote this -- something like this -- a very long time ago.. and then promptly lost it. It's been playing around in my head ever since and tonight, buried nose deep in my new copies of Holly Black's the idea came to me again and I decided to rewrite it. There's a whole novel attached to this vignette, less than half of which is written.

I'm torn between writing that novel for my PhD, or the piece I've been working on and off with since I was 16. 11 years on and I can still stand the sight of the latter. But my interests and exegesis are more in line with the mostly unwritten novel that I've had in mind for only 3 or 4 years.

But hey, at least I'm talking about my PhD again!

I meant to write many posts on here. Original writing, fandom, pictures of anything. Everything.

Truth is, life just got busy. Right now, I'm nearing the end of my first semester of Honours, and that's taking up a lot of the background of my mind. I'm loving it, and I feel like I've managed my time really well. If I get offered more hours at work next semester, I feel like I can take them. Thesis is in full whole draft stage. Two course work units are both at final draft stages. Yet, even when I'm sitting around on my computer doing nothing much (like right now), I'm thinking about how much I'm not!doing Honours work/reading/writing/etc.

It's just... tiring. When I stop and think about it... I realise it's a lot more tiring than I've been giving credence too.

I've been filling my time more liberally with social stuff these last couple of weeks. Unconsciously, I suppose, I've realised that spending all of my time on my Honours is not healthy. My boy has already taken and practiced crazyjane's advice of taking papers I was reading from me and calmly saying, "Not now."

That the weather doesn't know what it's doing isn't helping, and what's really not helping was having a solid week of overcast in the week just gone which made my wakefulness seem... difficult. Most of Friday disappeared in a sort of dream. Overcast is the worst. Inevitably, by the end of the day, I have that feeling of having not slept the night before and ready to fall over the minute it gets dark.

And then, of course, there was my Glee marathon two nights ago that made the world a happier place, and kept me up till 4.30am.


On happier places, I have a new girlfriend, and my boy has a new almost!girlfriend. I sometimes catch myself staring off into space with this foolish smile on my face. Those are wonderful moments, and not just because they are also moments in which I completely forget about the Honours work that I am not!reading/writing/etc.

I want more time. I'm absolutely loving everything in my life right now. At the moment, I seem to be managing to juggle everything so that nothing and nobody important is neglected. But I do want more time. This last week, particularly, I've been taking more time to myself than I usually do. I really feel like, with all the things going on at the moment, I need to make sure that I am quite aware of where my own head's at. And I am getting on top of that. I just also feel like... if I could let go of this tiredness, just a little bit, I would be enjoying everything that much more :)


Edit: And, yes, the irony of making a post about tiredness at 11pm instead of simply going to bed is not at all lost on me :D

*trundles to bed*