If you want a summary, look at this:
Yep, that's me, and that's my room: the glorified storage locker that is Mary Chapman Court, Flat 6, Room B. I hope to heck that I don't die here, because if I do, then I am going to haunt the most depressing place to haunt on this plane. And if you were wondering, yes, those ARE oil pastels that I painted on the wall! How kind of you to notice! The first one I made was of Morgan Le Fey.
See? She's wearing a red dress with an apple tree on it!! I rock at symbolism, and I rule at being addicted to mythology. This is an obvious thing, especially because I list myself as an Archetypicalist*, and because I refer to events in life or feelings by what tarot card they relate to best.
The second picture is of Eros and Psyche, and it took me way too long to finish, and used too much pastel, so now my black is shorter than ever. The one above it, which you can only see a little bit of, is a work in progress.I think that the most important thing to talk about is that I've added two writing projects to my schedule. The first is a novel, the first that I've ever planned. It's about a young woman in the 1920s, who becomes a magician in Atlantic City. There's a lot of magical realism and some fantasy in it, but for the most part I want it to be about her and her struggles to figure out the magic that she's trying to master (hint: it's real magic), while also painting a portrait of some sort of American sensibility. Here's a couple extracts or what I've got so far:
They got hot dogs and knee-highs from a stand on the boardwalk the next day and ate them on a bench nearby. The surf whispered under their feet, Maybelle was wearing a white dress with red poppies embroidered on the hem and neckline with black patent leather shoes, Bridget felt dowdy in her pleated skirt and good blouse, which was ivory and had a bow in the front that the wind kept pushing dangerously close to the mustard that dangled from her hot dog. She wore a black hat, Maybelle’s head was bare and her ringlets waved proudly in the breeze.
“I’d like to tell myself that I was just too pretty for the pageant,” she was saying. “Those judges just didn’t know what to do, and that made them too scared to give me the crown.” She laughed at herself and looked at her lap. “But I know that’s not really what happened, anyway. But I like to think that.”
“Well you are very beautiful,” Bridget said, and felt stupid immediately. She was starting to realize that with Maybelle she was a new sort of nervous. She had been nervous when she talked to police officers, or Gimbelli, or her parents, or her landlady, but this was different. She didn’t want Maybelle to get up and walk away.
Maybelle thanked her quietly for the comment and smiled squintingly in the sunlight. Bridget felt more confident. She finished her hot dog and wiped off her hands. “ ‘Ere,” she said, swallowing. “Watch this.” She held her left palm in front of Maybelle, showing both sides. “See? Empty.” She flicked her fingers quickly, and a new silver dollar glinted between her middle and forefinger. She reached over with her right hand and took the coin in her fist. Then she opened her right hand. It was empty.
Maybelle smiled coyly. “I’ve seen that trick, it’s still in your other hand.”
Bridget opened her left hand. Empty. She looked around on the ground, apparently flabbergasted at the coin's dissapearance, then her eyes settled on the side of Maybelle’s face. She grinned and reached behind Maybelle’s ear, retrieving the shining silver dollar.
“Very nice. But I’ve seen that one too. It’s all those hand tricks magicians use.” Maybelle crossed her arms, looking proud of herself for figuring out the illusion.
Bridget looked crestfallen, but only for a second. “Oh,” She said, “I missed one.” Then she reached behind Maybelle’s other ear and pulled out a second silver dollar, holding it next to the first one in her palm. Then she pulled out another. And another. Six silver dollars materialized out of Maybelle’s hair until Bridget finally sighed with exasperation and ran her fingers through Maybelle’s chestnut ringlets, and a shower of silver fell onto the bench and the ground around them.
Maybelle opened her mouth and raised her eyebrows in suprise. Bridget winked, and immediately felt stupid, but Maybelle laughed. “With all those dollars, you should be buying me dinner.” Her skirt was fluttering perfectly, and her lips were red an curved up at the edges, a smile full of friendship and secrets.
......
Herman Gimbal Waite, who called himself the Great Gimbelli until the day he died, had very little about his face or figure that would earn him his assumed title and his renown as a magician. He refused to ever speak of his date or place of birth, though in 1923 most who knew him or knew of him would tell you that he was, at that time, between forty-five and fifty-three years old, and was born and raised somewhere in Ohio. Some claimed that he knew the flyers, Orville and Wilbur Wright, but this was most likely a rumor that he himself planted so that he could have more intrigue around his version of the Levitation trick, which would make his assistant fly circles around the stage, complete with her arms outstretched like airplane wings.
He was not a tiny man, but of no significant stature; but his insecurities about this would make him wear tall shoes while on stage, so as not to be diminished by any female guests or assistants (this happened on several occasions when he was first performing in vaudeville, and it made him blush so much that the ladies would be wrongly flattered). He parted his hair down the middle and waxed it down, though a coffee-colored curl would pop up every now and then, and his mustache was one of the most humble in the business: a simple triangle of hair that stretched to the corners of his lips, which he kept well trimmed. In fact, the Great Gimbelli was quite dashing as soon as he got the hang of performing, and got tailored suits that showed off his slender form, and white gloves that he somehow kept perfectly spotless, and a pair of wire glasses that were the perfect silver to match his perfect blue eyes. To say that he was vain as well is no understatement, Gimbelli was a conjuror and was sure that he had the same effect on women (and, more than likely, certain men) that he did on the coins he would pull out of the air, or the doves he would produce out of hats and tailcoat pockets: they would come to him when he wanted them.
Of course, do not let any of these vanities fool you. Gimbelli was, first and foremost, a fantastically good illusionist. He would not give credit to his inventions and innovations to some secret dead religion or culture, there was no mysterious Sphinx, no Indian Rope Trick, no Alexander The Great’s Vanishing Sword or Solomon’s Magic Flute or any of the other “two-bit foppery” in his act: it was all him. When he spoke about his tricks, he spoke in a strange poetry or mystery and beauty, talking not of old gods and kings but of the cosmos, and fate, life and death, and the inside of the soul and the mind. And few spectators believed it more than Bridget Alcyone.
Not bad, right? By the way, Bridget Alcyone is the main character. I'm doing research about the golden age of magic and so on, and am actually enjoying reading a book called Hiding the Elephant by Jim Steinmeyer. It's not a very difficult book to read, but it's got plenty of information about magic and magicians and, more importantly, illusions and how they were made. The book itself is pretty well outlined for the initial stage, so I think it can be done by the end of this summer if I manage to get more researh done. It's also making me want to take a few magic lessons, which would be fun to look into.
The second project isn't completely mine. For a while now Amanda and I have been looking into the mythology and culture of the American South, and now we're decided that to create a series of American Faerie Stories would be pretty cool. It would be a gradual thing--I don't have anything done yet--and like I said, it's a collaboration project. But it's something to think about. No idea when or if it'll be finished, but I love the idea so I don't mind.
So now I've got Archer, Bridget (whatever the title is I haven't decided yet) and the Southern stories, plus whatever other short stories I write in the meantime. I wish more than anything that they end up, you know, making me money, or at least the pride of being published.
That's it for now, until the next random time that I decide to update; perhaps I'll take a few pictures with my webcam when I take the computer to UEA Tuesday.
Oh, and Henry Smutton liked my Persephone story, and so far I'm pretty confident in saying that, if it isn't the best of the best so far in the class, it's at least very close to the top.
*on Facebook
