FASHUNI know next to nothing about fashion, and with every passing season I’m fairly certain my knowledge diminishes rather than increases–but that doesn’t mean I love it any less. For me, at its best, it is glorious art, it is a political statement, it is a snapshot of our times–the good, the bad, and the ugly.  At its worst…well, actually, the worst thing, the most offensive thing a fashion design can do, is bore me.  But at its best, it thrills, it inspires, it sometimes agitates or confounds, or quite possibly it makes you giggle with glee roar or with laughter (my personal favorite.)

At any rate, I don’t take my interest in it seriously. Or at least I try not to! But when the Fall collections begin walking the runway, I am riveted.  Here are some of my favorites right now.

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Comme des Garçons Fall 2017 Ready To Wear offers us a sensible, down to earth collection that that definitely won’t leave your family and friends and coworkers confused and concerned as to your deteriorating mental state. Full of waddling, exaggerated silhouettes evoking over-sized dress forms or perhaps even ancient goddess imagery, you’d be forgiven for thinking huh, this looks like an enormous, gore-soaked maxi-pad.

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On the other hand, I want to wear Yohji Yamamoto’s 2017 Fall Ready collection everywhere that my bright & sunny presence is requested; PTA meetings (I don’t have kids but whatevs), bridal showers, church picnics. The possibilities are endless.

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Valentino’s Fall 2017 Ready To Wear collection, with romantic colors ranging from rich raspberry to ice cream pastels, luxe textures, delicate embroidery and sequins reminds me of several coffee table books belonging to my grandmother. These books were basically photographed tours through various estate homes and I’d spend hours mesmerized by the sumptuous decor: opulent damask curtains framing dusty glass windows overlooking flowering garden mazes, lavish boudoirs swathed in velvets and silks, shimmering crystalline chandeliers. The ensembles featured in this collection conjure these intoxicating, daydream homes.

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To be perfectly honest, all I see when I gaze too long upon Givenchy’s Fall 2017 Ready To Wear collection is a scarlet coven of demonic teletubbies.

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Though I really want to love a couture collection inspired by the symbolism of Twin Peaks, MSGM’s Fall 2017 ready to wear offerings are comprised of an almost offensive degree of fug.

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Are you ready for Gareth Pugh’s sleep-deprived garbage bag dystopia?

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Anne Demeulemeester’s ghostly veils (top) and Rick Owens’ (bottom) grimly towering headdresses are extremely pleasing to me.

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And finally Alexander McQueen’s collection of jacquard and brocade with feather stitch details, trailing beads of jet with memento ribbons threaded through tweeds and leather, was imbued with dense imagery woven into every motif- whether witchy sun and moon symbolism or medieval tapestry inspired flora and fauna–and utterly brimming with both youthful and traditional female energy and power. Gorgeousness.

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Harry Crosby and unidentified woman, Four Arts Ball, Paris

Yet it was precisely in his character … to invest all his loyalty and energy in magic: at first the approved magic of established religion; later the witchwork of poetry and sun worship; finally the black mass of violence” -Geoffrey Wolf, Author of Black Sun: The Brief Transit and Violent Eclipse of Harry Crosby

Harry Crosby – self indulgent socialite, tortured poet, wealthy mystic …. a playboy who lived his life with reckless abandon – was a man both adored and reviled. He has been described by some as “a representative figure of the so-called Lost Generation”, the bohemian 1920s.

A godson of J.P. Morgan Jr., Harry was a Harvard graduate and a decorated war veteran, who had left school to become an ambulance driver in France with his upper-crust chums during World War I. He ended up with the Croix de Guerre for valor and, after a few frustrating years back in Boston, fled to Paris for the rest of his short life. Married in 1922 to Mary Phelps Jacob, known as “Caresse”, they lived the “ultimate Bohemian lives as poets, artists, and patrons in Paris in the 1920’s. To every adventure their answer was always ‘yes’.” Harry once sent a telegram from Paris to his father, the quintessential sober, patriarch, which read, “Please sell $10,000 worth in stock. We intend to live a mad and extravagant life.”

While living and writing in Paris Harry Crosby founded The Black Sun Press, one of the “finest small presses of the twentieth century”.   In 1924, the Crosbys went public with their first book. The following year, they each published their first collections of verse. Harry commissioned Alastair – a “spectacularly camp” German creator of beautifully decadent and Gothic fantasies – to illustrate his second collection, Red Skeletons.  Soon they were issuing works by other writers, including Poe, James, Wilde, Joyce and D. H. Lawrence.

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Color plate from Red Skeletons, by artist Alastair

On December 10, 1929, Harry was found in bed with a .25 caliber bullet hole in his right temple next to his mistress, the newly married Josephine Bigelow who had a matching hole in her left temple, in an apparent suicide pact. Harry’s toenails were painted red and strange symbols were tattooed between his shoulder blades and on the soles of his feet. A lover of dark mysteries to the last, he left no suicide note. London’s Daily Mirror speculated on psychological motives, while New York’s Daily News blamed poetry and passion: “Death itself had been the motive, others speculated, just as aspiring poet Harry’s life had been his greatest artwork.”

We recently caught up with Erik Rodgers, founder of String and a Can Productions, and director of The Black Sun: The Life and Death of Harry Crosby, who provides his own insight into Harry Crosby’s strange, short life and speaks to what makes the man such a fascinating study.

How did you come to decide Harry Crosby might make good material for a play – what it was about him or his life that inspired you, or what aspect of him you were hoping to shed more light on? How did you come across him to begin with?

Erik Rodgers: I actually came upon Caresse first, while developing a project on Salvador Dalí.  [My business partner] was intrigued by the idea of such an accomplished and independent female from that era, and started researching her life.   Of course as soon as she began reading about Caresse, she discovered Harry as well.  Their story captured her imagination, and she began relating to me some of the details as she read them. We both felt there was something vital and overlooked in their story, something that had been obscured by all the scandal and negative criticism.

Over the next few months, I sat down with Geoffrey Wolff’s incredibly well researched biography, as well as several works on Caresse.  Time and again, I was struck by the incredible amount of negativity, dismissiveness and judgement that surrounded Harry and Caresse.  Even Mr. Wolff felt it necessary to defend and explain away his decision to dignify Harry with the full biographical treatment.   I felt disappointed by the apologia of an afterward he wrote for the nyrb edition.  After all, from our contemporary vantage point, considering the near century of work and popular culture that has followed, Harry hardly seems shocking…

I didn’t immediately resolve to write about Harry, but he stayed in my mind for some time.  Still a bit of an enigma, I felt the vital pulse of his life, his work, but had yet to find a context for it.  It was several months later, when encouraged by Devin and some friends to develop a project for us all to work on, that the idea of the play struck.

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image via String and a Can Productions, artist Egon Scheile

How did you find the process to be for this particular medium, translating Harry’s life/works into material for the stage? Are there any other projects you have in mind for Harry Crosby?

By limiting the play to three characters, Harry, Caresse, and Josephine, and using the stage as more of an abstract space, I set out to let the characters observe, confront and relive specific moments across time and space. It was a way, I felt, to do more than relate their story, or explore Harry’s personal mythos. It was a way to deconstruct, unlock, and hopefully reclaim them back into our collective consciousness.

I began reading Harry’s work in earnest once I resolved to write the play, including his diaries Shadows of the Sun. This era was a specialty of mine back in college (Lawrence, Hemingway, Joyce et al) and I was surprised that I hadn’t really encountered Harry’s work before. I found that the more I read, the more powerful … Harry’s vision became. It is indeed difficult to sum up Harry’s work by sharing a poem or a line here or there. There is a cumulative effect to the work, something remarked upon in Eliot’s essay on Harry. As a result, I used a lot of Harry’s own work as source material, crafting scenes from poems or diary entries. I did this not only to keep true to the story, but also to hopefully let Harry’s vision unfold over the length of the play. It was important to me to let them be taken on their own terms, by their own ambitions and their own vision. In many ways, to me that was what Harry’s life was about.

[…]In writing the play, however, I also wanted to wrestle with the very human aspect of their lives as well– the volatility of Harry, the toll that took on Caresse, the anguish in Josephine that found some answer in Harry’s elaborate mythos. Harry and Caresse’s own depictions of their lives are always a little unsatisfying to our modern sensibilities in that they don’t submit to easy psychological types. Questions linger about who they were, even after you’d heard all the juicy details. How much did the war or Harry’s Dad play into his tumultuous behavior? Were Caresse’s attempts to leave sincere? Was she a bit relieved at his final passing? Who pulled the trigger first, Harry or Josephine? How did that fateful meeting transpire, exactly? These are some of the mysteries that propel the story.

On a personal note, this last October, I had the pleasure of visiting the Athenaeum in Boston and arranging a viewing some of the original Black Sun Books. The experience was striking in two ways in particular. I was struck with the strange power of viewing such rare texts that had been made with such care. From the gold wrapping of Transit of Venus, to the uncut folio pages of Torchbearers, it was as if you were viewing something sacred. In an era of mass printing, it’s hard to imagine the power such handcrafted books can have. The other thing that struck me in viewing the books was a feeling of direct connection with Harry and Caresse, something I had strived for through the research and the writing. This reaffirmed my convictions about them that underlined the play, and reinforced for me the importance of their story.

I have also just completed composing a series of music inspired by Harry’s work and the play. You’ve heard some of the temp tracks on the page for the play, but I’ve now completed the cycle and am looking to make a live recording of it all.

In addition to the original site for the play, there’s also a larger effort underway to commemorate and honor the legacy of Harry and Caresse. Info on the nascent Black Sun Theatre Foundation can be found here.

Harry Crosby’s Black Sun was originally published at Coilhouse on March 16, 2010.

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Harper's Bazaar, May 1976, one-piece by Gil Aimbez for Genre, sandals and necklace by Yves Saint Laurent
Harper’s Bazaar, May 1976, one-piece by Gil Aimbez for Genre, sandals and necklace by Yves Saint Laurent

I suppose it all really started with my love of all the beautiful things I’ve amassed from Babooshka Boutique in recent years; the roomy, flowing tops, tunics, and dresses that waft and whirl around me now as I go about my day. They’re easy to dress up or they can be casual, they are exquisitely comfortable, and they are pretty much perfect. At this point I’m afraid I have really come to resent garments with zippers or buttons or hooks or or fasteners–closures are prickly and poky! And so oppressive and stifling! There’s no going back. I just wanna let it all hang out, basically.

Sadly, Babooshka Boutique is closing this year, so I am beginning to look elsewhere for my fix as it relates to a wardrobe that beguilingly balloons around my bod, or which cocoons me in crazy coziness. Luckily, I think I have found some things that fit the bill, and I am quite excited about them.

See below for a few voluminous / balloonimous / cocoonimous things currently on my wishlist. Don’t be too shocked if you see some colors. It was bound to happen one day.

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I love this botanical print tie-front shift dress from Rundholz; I don’t love that it’s a white background, but there’s enough interesting artwork here to distract me from that. £139.00

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I’d forgive you for thinking the print/color combination on this Charisma dress from shonmodern is a bit fug; but there’s something about the asymmetric cut and the easy shape (and pockets!) that strikes me as both flattering and super comfy. Also, if you prefer, if comes in plain black.  $299

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I think these calf-skimming, floofy linen Lantern pants are adorable, so shut your mouth. $65

IMG_4423 IMG_4398_fcf57dce-cba1-44c8-8f63-b535f91f5848I am desperately coveting both of these lovely, loose fitting black tops with geometric graphics from UZI NYC at mooreaseal: the beams tunic $99 & the broken lines kimono $116

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I recall being intrigued by this etsy seller’s wares a long time ago, but I never took the plunge to order something back then, especially after hearing a friend’s review of the poor quality of said wares. Still, to this day I covet these billowy linen Moon Water pants … because pants that look like a skirt? I reckon that’s the best thing I ever heard of. $58

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And lastly, I love everything about this short maxi dress from Metamorphoza–the oversized shape contrasted with the knee-brushed length, the swingy cut, the pockets and, most of all–that (gasp!) powerfully, gorgeous blue color. Who am I anymore? The older I get, the more I hope I never have an answer for that. $52

So…to sum up, this season’s look for me is clothing that screams “WE’VE BEEN MADE! SMUGGLE OUT AS MUCH STUFF AS YOU CAN FIT UNDER THIS DRESS!”

What’s inspiring you right now in terms of wardrobe for spring and summer?

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 : Over at Haute Macabre you can peek to see what Samantha, Erin, Maika, Sonya and I have been reading over the past 28 days! While I thrilled to every word of one of the books I read, the other piqued my ire frequently. Curious as to my thoughts? Visit Haute Macabre to read more! And be sure to tell me what you’ve been reading, in the comments.
{image: Bill Crisafi for BloodMilk Exquisite Corpse “The Comfort of Dust”.}

AuralFixation

…and also, while we’re at it, Haute Macabre rolled out my favorite new feature this evening, in which we all blather on about the sounds we currently have on heavy rotation:

 Aural Fixation.

{art provided by Becky Munich}

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INVISIBLE OREGON: a study of light across time and space from Sam Forencich on Vimeo.

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Bluebeard & the Final Girl: Feminist Retellings of Perrault’s Classic

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Remembering the Morbid Anatomy Museum

The Snake Women of Kazuo Umezu

The 1940s Horror Movie That Embraced Lesbianism and Satanism

Museums Shared Their Creepiest Possessions On Twitter And They’re Kind OfTerrifying

Listen to the Sweet, Soft Warble Common Ravens Sing to Their Partners

Unearthly Laments: Two Records with which to refract time through the prism of sound.

9 Pretty Baby Names Inspired By Real British Witches

Suicides, Psychokillers, and the Question of Audience; The violence of girlhood in contemporary fiction

Haunting a Tiny House with Lady Delaney

Nagoro: Japan’s Strange Village of Dolls

Dracula’s Lost Icelandic Sister Text

How Dana Scully Inspired a Generation of Women

The Forbidden Desire of “Lover’s Eyes”

The Mysteries of the First-Ever Map of the North Pole

Bad Books For Bad People Episode 6: Alraune – The Ultimate Femme Fatale

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Artist: Katrin Berge

A gathering of death related links that I have encountered in the past month or so. From somber to hilarious, from informative to creepy, here’s a snippet of things that have been reported on or journaled about in or related to the Death Industry recently.

This time last year: Links of the Dead {February 2016}

💀 Why it is now more important than ever for the death positive movement to be political.
💀 Ghost Marriages: Where the Living Wed the Dead
💀 Death Hacker: You’re Going to Die, Here’s How to Deal With It
💀 How the Unrelenting Threat of Death Shapes Our Behavior
💀 The Skeleton Rocker: A Cozy Reminder of Our Mortality
💀 In Europe’s First Forensic Cemetery, Corpses Decompose for Science
💀 Santa Muerte as Religious Resistance
💀 Dealing with debts when someone dies
💀 The Challenge of Identifying The Dead In a Disaster
💀 Grieving Someone You Didn’t Like (because it happens)
💀 A Company Will Press Your Ashes Into A Working Vinyl Album
💀 Diet culture is just another way of dealing with the fear of death.
💀 “Famous last words” and Japanese death poems offer two strikingly different approaches to mortality.
💀 Why the #DeathPositive movement is important for public research
💀 The Year After My Dad’s Death Was the Best of My Life
💀 New technology is forcing us to confront the ethics of bringing people back from the dead
💀 These Elderly DIYers Came To Peace With Death–By Crafting Their Own Coffins
💀 Bad Taste in Funeral Flowers: 1895-1914
💀 Art and Death in Medieval Byzantium
💀 The woman who washes the dead
💀 “The Phone Of The Wind” Connects Both The Living And The Dead

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{In which I am pleased to introduce a new monthy (ish) feature wherein my sister writes about a book we have read for our “sister book club”. Full disclosure: I just got this book from the library today. Don’t laugh! I’ll be better prepared next month. In this month’s discussion we are featuring Susan Hill’s Howards End Is on the Landing: A Year of Reading from Home. We hope you will join along!}

In less than a month, I will be moving to a new place, and so will be packing up about 20 boxes of books. As I do, I know I will come across several titles that I think, “Why haven’t I read that yet?” or “Why am I still hanging on to this?” And then I’ll toss the books into their respective boxes and dutifully lug them to my new home, unpack them, and completely forget about them for another year or so.

I’m not the only one guilty of this–talented and successful author Susan Hill (whom you may know as the author of The Woman in Black, which was then made into the movie starring Harry Potter) went on a hunt through her house one day, attempting to locate one book, and came across several others, long forgotten, instead. Then and there, she promised herself to only read what books she already had, for one year. No shopping, no libraries, nothing new. Just pillaging from the previously-purchased piles. And thusly was born the premise for Howards End Is on the Landing: A Year of Reading from Home.

Now, I don’t know about you, but I am a voracious acquirer of books. Fortunately for my wallet, I work at the Library, so I check out most of the books. Yet for every one book I check out and read, there are two more that I check out and don’t read–my eyes are bigger than my stomach (or perhaps, my brain) so back to the library those unread books go. However, from time to time, I still do purchase, or am gifted, a book. And I KNOW Eldest buys far more books than she has the opportunity to read. Ergo, we can relate to Susan Hill’s situation. Excitedly, I texted Eldest, and before long, we had hatched a plan (bringing Middle into it, of course) to read it together and discuss it. You know, like a long-distance book discussion group on Skype. With wine, of course.

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I cannot place too fine a point on this: I love books. I love reading. There may, in fact, be little else in the world I love to do more than read. Unless it’s wandering around in Half-Priced Books, my library (or any library, really), or Barnes and Noble. Or talking about books. Or meeting a favorite author. Do you see a theme emerging? So to read a book about books and reading…and then to talk about it with my sisters? WITH WINE, OF COURSE. Holy cow.

And what a book this is! Susan Hill is a damned fine writer, particularly if you are a reader who enjoys descriptive writing. Consider the line from page 11:

“Now on a golden day in late September, I took two books out to a deckchair in the garden, The first apples were thumping down. The last swallows were dipping and soaring, dipping and soaring over the pond. A dragonfly hovered, its electric-blue back catching the sunlight.”

It’s not all fun and games and a bucolic English idyll, no fears on that count…

“Outside my window, the trees are bare. It is early dark but a silver paring of moon is bright in the sky, with a thousand frosty stars. The air smells of cold. A fox barks from the field.
Dickens for winter.
Throw another log on the fire.”

A memoir of books and reading books. A book about books. (I think this is where I insert a sentence with the word “meta” in it, but let’s just skip that part, okay? Oh, wait…) Some of the books that Hill reads, she has actually read before, and so she plunges headfirst into her recollections of them, and so it is that we are immersed in the literary world of London in the 1960s, and what a world it is. With a vague sense of giddy voyeurism, I found myself immersed in a London library, nodding somberly to E.M. Forester and C. Day Lewis as Hill runs into them in the stacks.

Towards the end of the book, my attention started to lag, perhaps due to my anxiety that the book was overdue. (Hehehe, the irony, had I purchased this book!) And it seemed like this was a book that was less about the year Hill spent reading and more about the role books and authors have played in her life. You come away asking yourself questions like: What are the 40 books YOU could not live without? If you had to write up your life story, framed by books that you read at various times in your life, what would the books be, and how do they relate to your life at that time?

Ultimately, I found this to be a thoughtful, descriptive meditation on the reading life–a memoir of a life in books.

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Grim Gastronomy, Creepy Cuisine: A Macabre Cookbook Collection

At Haute Macabre this week, I talk about some very important things: my cookbook collection. Let no one say that I don’t have my priorities straight!

TL;DR The cookbooks listed in this article are: Feeding Hannibal: A Connoisseur’s CookbookDamn Fine Cherry Pie: And Other Recipes from TV’s Twin PeaksDeath Warmed Over: Funeral Food, Rituals, and Customs from Around the WorldThe Decadent Cookbook: Recipes of Obsession and ExcessDeath & Co. Classic Modern CocktailsChas Addams Half-Baked CookbookThe Dark Shadows CookbookSon of the Martini Cookbook

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Currently I am having a rough go of it. I find myself shuffling from one end of the house to the other, without thought or purpose or even memory of doing so. I cannot focus or concentrate, so work is all but impossible, and yet I haven’t taken any time off, either. I find it difficult to justify time off when I already work from home, you know? So I’ve just been sitting at my desk, dazed, thoughts both a million miles away and no where, and desperately hoping that the phone does not ring.  Inevitably it does.  And so, a week has passed since we lost our Mawga.

“A readjustment of reality, ” is how a friend summed up some of what I am feeling.  I spent so many years worrying and fretting over my grandmother, paying her bills, keeping up with her house, handling all the what-ifs and emergencies as they arose, paying her a visit after work every day…now that I no longer have these things to do (these things that sometimes I was honestly quite bitter and resentful of) I am feeling unmoored, adrift, purposeless. Instead of having to sneak my knitting or reading into spare pockets of time, stolen and emptied from other portions of my life, I now am at leisure to do these things as I please. But for the moment (and I do know it is a momentary, passing thing) …I just …can’t.

But I do feel the compelling, compulsive need, as I do every month, do vaguely document the things I have been doing–and so to keep to a routine and regain a sense of normalcy, here is some photographic evidence that there was life and liveliness over the past month. And I suppose, even though it doesn’t feel like it now, there will be again.

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A fantastic box of Vegan Treats morbid chocolates from my beau. This has become our Valentine’s Day tradition. Somehow we manage to make these delectable morsels last a month or more; I think three years in, we have managed to become pros at it.

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Also honor of Valentines madness and treating myself, I took a break from the No-Buy to grab the Fire Walk With Me soundtrack from Mondo and this gorgeous antique print of The Young Widow by Henry Hutt.

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A few weekends ago we sat in the afternoon sun and planted all kinds of seeds–marigolds, morning glories, carrots, radishes, squash. It will be a miracle if any of them make it. I also planted a few little succulents in the hollowed dome of this cranial planter, an osteological-inspired marvel sculpted by the phenomenal Kermit Tesoro.

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Last Saturday I got my got my bangs cut. My hair has been all one-length for the past twenty years, so this is a weird adjustment. And I probably won’t keep it this way forever (sweaty humid bangs on my forehead in July? Ugh) but for now, I think I really dig it. It’s got a sort of Stevie Nicks or Ann & Nancy Wilson vibe. And it’s certainly an improvement on this, a photo which was taken a day or so before the big chop.

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Currently reading Something In The Blood: The Untold Story of Bram Stoker. I was so excited to read about the author of my very favorite novel, but I am finding that while it is not dry reading, exactly, it is certainly dense and packed with information and taking me a rather long time to muddle through. Much more than just a biography, it immerses the reader in the culture and the history of the Victorian era, encountering various celebrities and characters along the way. It’s enjoyable, it really is…but there’s just so much of it. I broke up the monotony of it with Fingersmith by Sarah Waters, which is something I’d been meaning to read for awhile as I loved all of her other books, but for whatever reason, I’d never gotten to it. After reading a few chapters I was sorely lamenting watching Chan Wook Parks film adaptation of it, The Handmaiden, just last year. It was exactly the same story (but you know, London, instead of Korea) and I knew what to expect! I was disappointed that I already knew the twists and turns before they could surprise me. Ahhh, but not so. I read on and after a while I was glad of having seen the film first. And I ended up adoring the book as much as the film. I cannot recommend them highly enough. Make them both priorities on your to-watch/to-read lists.

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One word movie reviews!

Absentia–maybe (on amazon prime)
Trouble Every Day–perhaps (on amazon prime)
Blair Witch–skip
The Love Witch–Yes
The Editor–YES
The Village–ugh
VHS–probably (on netflix)
The OA–absolutely (on netflix)

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I sincerely thought that I had prepared myself for the loss of my maternal grandmother; that I had steeled myself for the absence of her weird light, that I was ready to brave a world in which the wisest, kindest, most influential woman in my life no longer existed. The passage of recent years saw the loss of all of her children, including my mother, and then a year and a half ago, the death of her husband of 72 years, our beloved grandfather. My grandma had lost so much, and had been unwell for so long; she was ready to let go…the only problem was that, her body, though it was slowly shutting down, was certainly taking its time and wasn’t ready to let her pass to the next big thing just yet.

My sisters and I used to whisper that perhaps our grandmother was a witch, or a vampire, or maybe even a Highlander. A creature who had bargained for immortality, or perhaps she had it unwittingly bestowed upon her– but regardless, she would end up outliving us all. I think we truly believed this supernatural theory regarding her longevity after watching several years of this ninety-something-year-old woman bouncing back from various maladies and afflictions and health-related dramas–a little worse for wear each time, but she would never lose that mysterious, mischievous twinkle in her eye. “Ha!” it seemed to glint and tease, “…think again! You’re not getting rid of me that easily!”

But regardless of whether it was some vital bit of sorcery on the part of her own body or the spell cast by the fierce love of her granddaughters, death came for her in the end after all, and I suppose there is no magic that I know of, which can–or should–defy that call.

My grandmother’s death marks the passing of the last adult figure in my life, which is a pretty strange feeling, I can tell you that. Or at least, I know that to be true on an intellectual level, but to be honest, I’ve been feeling her absence long before her passing. For so long she was lucid and “with it” and even if she’d only met you once in her life and even if it was 50 years ago, she would always remember you. But on New Year’s Day in 2017, two months after she turned 95, a cerebral episode left her increasingly confused and disoriented, and this rapidly developed to a point where she didn’t know where she was, or who we were anymore. We had worked so hard to keep her at home, and she didn’t believe it was her home anymore. It was a heartbreaking decline.

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I love this hazy, old photo of her. It is strange to admit, but I never actually thought of my grandmother as having legs; for as long as I can remember she suffered knee problems, and then for the last fifteen-twenty or so years she had either been using a walker, very slowly and painfully. In her last year of life, she had been confined to her armchair, and finally, a hospice bed. But I know when she was younger she would carefully crouch while tending to her vegetable garden, kneel reverently whilst cultivating her otherworldly roses, and spend time on her back porch feeding her beloved birds, spryly chasing off the chipmunks and squirrels from the seeds in winter, sitting cross-legged watching for deer and rabbits at the edge of their heavily wooded property in the spring.  Seeing her pretty legs stretched out in the summer sun like this makes me so happy, especially when I reflect upon her last few months under layers of socks and blankets, her pale legs, weak, immobile, and never warm enough.

kitchen witch

I am forever indebted to my grandmother for bestowing upon me her love of cooking. I received no formal culinary teaching at her hands, but she always allowed me to hover nearby and watch, or give me a turn to stir the gravy, or roll out some dough, or a spoon to lick, while her murmuring of the ingredients and recipe became a gentle incantation that I can still hear when attempting any sort of kitchen witchery in my own home. I remember the fearful curses that flew from her lips when a meringue would droop or a pudding would fail to set, but I also recall the peaceful magics that would beset a room when my sisters and I would tuck into a bowl of chicken and dumplings or Cincinnati chili that had earlier been bubbling merrily away on the stove. She never made me feel like I was a nuisance, or in the way, and she genuinely seemed to be pleased with my company. In later years, when standing became too difficult, she would direct the proceedings from a kitchen chair, while I carried out the steps for new recipes that she wanted to try. She had a grand appreciation for a good meal and a tremendous appetite for all kinds of junk food, too. Last May, when she recovered from an infection that left her bed-bound, the first thing she said when she was feeling herself again, was that she was hungry for fried chicken! She had her priorities straight, we always liked to say.Magpie

Also, like my grandmother, I am a bit of a magpie. I spent so much of my childhood trawling through her mother of pearl jewelry box and playing dress-up with her dangling earrings and sparkling brooches; everything carried the lingering scent of her signature scent– Estee Lauder’s Youth Dew–and for the longest time I thought that all baubles and gems emanated a musty, metallic tang, a strange witches brew of heady, formidable glamour and aggressive luxury. Even now, stealing sniffs from her almost empty perfume bottle, my memories glimmer and gleam with the treasures associated with that fragrance. Never opals, though. Opals are bad luck unless they are your birthstone, she’d caution me in a dire tone. I’m still frightened of them and to this day, I won’t even touch an opal.

An astrology enthusiast who insisted she had the second sight, my grandmother was also, as she liked to remind us, “a good, Christian woman”. This God-fearing woman believed that we absolutely should not date any Scorpios (I wish I had heeded that particular warning) and that she was a little bit psychic; unfortunately her premonitions only extended to bad news and death, and which I personally thought had more a tinge of those “see I told you that’s what would happen”, cautionary energies rather the manifestation of the metaphysical. She was a good woman, that part I know for sure. Our holidays were often crowded with friends who had no families, and to whom she had extended invitations to her home in perpetuity so that they would never have to spend a holiday alone. My own mother was a complicated woman who fought and lost to many of her demons, but my grandmother was always a steady, dependable force who was there for my sisters and me when our mom was not. No one could have taken better care of us; my grandparents ensured that we always had clothes to wear, books to read, and food to eat (we thought that everyone’s dinner table was provided for by a grandmother who drove around with meatloaf and tuna casserole in the trunk of their car).

I owe everything I am to my grandmother…even the weird, problematic bits. She had a morbid, melancholic streak, as did my mother, and I don’t believe that depression develops in a vacuum. I remember her telling me once that she used to write poetry sometimes in high school, and recalling my own flair for melodrama, I was not the least bit surprised to hear that. Depression for my grandmother took the form of long naps and early bedtimes, and when I cannot bestir myself in the morning because of a gloomy mood, I know it for the echoes of her unhappiness running through my blood.

She loved true crime novels and sat spellbound watching dramatic court cases. She enthusiastically perused celebrity gossip magazines and oddly enough, thoroughly enjoyed South Park. I think she found the nature of human drama utterly fascinating, even and especially the sensationalist kind. But as much as she enjoyed connecting with people, she hated talking on the phone, and would only use the telephone in the event of an emergency. I too am made anxious at the thought of phone conversations, and I loved her for assuring me that we weren’t the odd ones for having that aversion. We were perfectly normal–it was the rest of the world that was weird.

And no matter what we believed, or said, or did, or didn’t do–she thought her granddaughters were smart and beautiful, and perfect.

And this sage, strange, weird, wonderful woman, oh, how we thought the same of her.
We’re going to miss you so much, Mawga.

In loving memory of Valora E. Derrickson. 11/28/21 to 2/15/17

 

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