DOOR.....creaaakkeeee.

  Indeed...

 I want to tell you all a story, that I trust you will find most delightful and I'm sorry to say, have only ever audibly told people before: never written.

  So let's see how madly this will effect you....

   There was a town by the sea, to the South of Australia. This town was grey. It's people, its buildings and their hearts were grey.

  This, it seemed, was not only due to the rain and storm clouds that never left the town, but a darkness that had filled their hearts so much that they'd forgotten it was there.

    Because of this endless gloom, the towns' people would day after day continue their monotonous business work yet failed to birth new ideas.

  Inspiration was lost, and many of the tools and technology that we find commonplace in our own lives, were never created in the town.

  It was on one of these grey and listless days that a boy was wandering along a grey street, the rain lightly pounding his shoulders. He walked with his head down, as most people did in the town, and as he walked, he heard something. He stopped suddenly, because it was very unusual to hear anything out of the ordinary, and he had.

 He heard the sound again and he knew, that he had to follow it. He walked without hesitation and began to follow the sound. He travelled through alleyways, down ladders, up ladders, across bridges and through the cracks between buildings until he arrived at...a door.

  

   The sound grew louder so he opened the door. He followed the sound down a dirt tunnel until he arrived at a spiral staircase travelling down. 

   He clattered down the staircase until he arrived in a dimly lit tunnel with wider walls.

  He followed the sound down the tunnel until he came to a darker space in which sat...a well.

   He walked up to the well and looked down into the black water that filled it. For a moment all that he saw was darkness.

  Then, in the very depths, a light stirred. It grew and grew in the water until it burst out into the room. It surrounded the boy and in that moment he realized that this was the reason he had been born, and had been walking along that grey road and been the one to hear the sound.

  That this light, was the cure for their gloom and the never ceasing grey rain.

 The light took the boy and together they swept into the town, filling it until the clouds' broke, the rain ceased and a warm breeze blew the endless cold of that town away. Sunlight crept in and the people threw down their brief cases and ties and turned their faces to the sky, smiles leaping to life,

  Inspiration was re-born and their darkness was forgotten.

 Come on! Where would life be without the simple, straightforward happy ending stories? I feel there's a place for both the ones that have meaning and the ones that don't. Though really in some ways they have just as much meaning if not more.

   

  I have also decided that if I ever did open my own creative writing college, and scouts were sent out (haha, that rhymed), they would test people applying to join the college would be asked to tell a story, out loud and improvised. 

  I love improvisation. :D

  It is also my desire that tomorrow I am going to do something constructive with my time and make a chicken, leek and feta pie. Oh yeah....

  You know I could seriously just travel to America just so I can eat at an American diner. :] I also would love to go to Rio for their three day parties and to America again for their Spring break. So cool.

 Well I've bothered you enough, and will leave you with the fourth part of my poem.

Much Love,

Miss CLScarlett xx

Story of a Wolf Part IV:

Me.

Then one-day his cries they ceased, his wounds began to heal – he allowed them to be...

He finally took love, when before he wanted death and my love became even more...

For the first time I could see him, no longer did he twitch and waver...

Instead I saw his beauty, his inky midnight fur and those eyes – the colour of gold, that poured forth from shadows...

Alas, as I had said, it was my choice to take him in – what he did not know could not hurt him, no more would he sorrow...

On a fiery night of glistening sparks, I released him upon the moors, and with a roar he thundered forward – and the night it seemed to sing a tune...

All except me, who finally fell, 

not just from missing him, 

but from all the turmoil...scars lying under my skin...

He didn't know that the night he let himself start breathing, I stopped...

But then, as I lay in the darkness I had created, I heard a sound – a sound that paled all else...

From the starry sky he came,

Brilliance bursting from between the world...

He swept down and gathered me up, and at once I was in his grasp...

He breathed upon me life, and a warm everlasting hope,

until finally, I could breath on my own.

      Pstt! You see? The old girl didn't have it in her to keep confronting that darkness. I know you, dear readers would have preferred that Scarlett keep the fight and darkness of the poem longer, yet no she goes and spoils it with a, gasp, happy ending! She never does have it in her...I must say.

  Regards,

Mr. White and S.

A Remedy for Post-Apocalyptic Beasties and a Way to open a Door without a Key...

  The full potential of living has been lost to us, and the greatest mistake seems to be that we believe that we are certain people. That I couldn't do that because I'm not an artists or a musician or a writer or a scientist.
  What we tell ourselves will eventually come true, and it is only then that we will realize that we want what we don't have and don't want what we have.
  Our beliefs will become reality and we won't want them.
  I however, have decided that I like to believe that for argument's sake, everything is possible. True a lot of it can't be done without money and oh we dream of all the things we will do when we have more dollars or less chaos in our lives.
  However we'll still continue not to do those things even if we have all the resources necessary, unless we learn to look beyond the gigantic goals and focus on the potential we do have access to.

  So...

   List of things to do if you Do happen to be Mr. or Mrs. Money-tootin-bags...

Get a week off work, close your eyes, point to a random spot on a world map and then go there: no matter where it happens to be.

(Except perhaps Iran)

If you happen to be desperate for food that isn't microwaveable or made from corn starch, buy a cookbook and bake every recipe in it. 

Believe me, if your life is monotonous you will find it extremely enjoyable.

  Travel to really obscure, hard-to-find places around the area you live and send challenges by text message for your friends or family to find you. 

  Create a college for creative writer's in which young writer's with potential are scouted out for possible scholarships there. The college would give student's access to every asset and tool they need while working with the best editor's and writer's in the world to create their own masterpiece. Even if it took years, by the end of it, the college would guarantee their publication.

  (Okay...that's just my dream heehee)

Things to do if you do happen to mostly-be-broke...

Write a book. 

(Seriously, everyone does it these days, and if you haven't yet because of how common it seems, do it anyway!)

Have a two hour hot bath with candles and incense.

Explore a forest (if you can find one), or your own neighbourhood.

Build a hideaway.

Create your own language or learn one.

 Read a really old book.

  Spend a day inside a library (believe me, the people you meet!)

  Set yourself up in a shady spot outside with a jug of cold drink and an extravagant sun hat if need be and watch the world go by.

Send letters to all your friends.

.............

Ahm, I'm sorry for this interruption but Miss Scarlett has temporarily faded and has in all regards rewarded me the position of host for the remainder of this blog.

You might know me by many names (though dear Scarlett will have most likely misled you with her tall tales and gloomy fears)

I know however that you are not people to dwell on gloom dear friends.

I am that voice in your ear and heart that you have not ever seen fit to name, though I won't hold that against you.

No...you are the people who will excel in the world, and I must say...it is not through hard work - like she says. Why is it that the most rich and corrupt in this world are also the most successful? 

It is exactly that! It is the lowlife's that run this world, and without them society would perish.

If there were no law-breaker's , there would be no need for police and laws, and really all the government is designed to do is keep us in order: so if there were no disorder there would be no need for order tactics.

Therefore what need would we have for them and what need is there to pay them?

The entire world would become even more broke than it is!

My point, if you will allow me...is none of this. 

May I be that small suspicion that you have, that small thrilling sensation to step harder on that brake peddle, "just one more sip" from that bottle. 

No one will care if you do that, hundreds of people, no thousands of people have done it already and they aren't dead, where is the harm?

Dead is dead yes? Alive is alive.

And you are still alive...aren't you?

So for now I will continue to whisper...

  Enough please! I will give in to demands and post the third instalment of Scar's poem. I must say though that the dear girl didn't find herself strong enough to confront the darkness she found when writing these poems. 

  For that, she stopped writing this particular set of poems at the fifth instalment. Tish, such a shame that she takes herself so seriously.

  Regards my friends,

Ah and a piece of advice...Be the Bad,

Mr. White and S.

Story of a Wolf Part III:

Him or Me?

Half his pain was his anger, the way he'd scream and claw...
Ripping up the walls of his room, tearing his own jaws...
It wasn't just hunger, or the will to feel, but a burning pain that screwed his heart...
kept it beating when he wanted death...
That wolfs' howl echoed, each and every night...
Until it sunk, impressed on my mind...
His eyes were the creators, of his own demise...
His life the curse, his body the chains...
His body hung limp, not just from what they'd done...
It was because he let them.
His days had decided to resist,
though he begged them to stop...
He refused to eat, to love, to live, even when I tried...
For him.
He gouged my heart, after I had so willingly thrown...
He could not feel, turned blind with hatred...
Each night I'd hear him screaming, 
the dints in his walls the only clue,
The pulled out claws I was forced to ignore in the hope he would be cured...
I fought for reason, in a world where there was not,
Tried to love him, when my scars grew more than bones...
He was a beast, scalding to kill, not me, but himself...
I could only watch, as he drove himself from slumber, night after night, after night, after night...
Pacing a path in the floor,
I screamed at myself, to let it go...let him go, keep me,
Yet he took what I had, because I offered and gave,
My tracks matched his.
Who am I? Him or me?

My Bedsheets are on Fire and my watch grew Legs and left me...

Such is life, and such are the things we love in it.

   You know I read this book, a very peculiar beautiful one, that was literally, all about the art of tea, but it started off with this whole section about what it would be like if teacups could speak.
  What if any normal, everyday object could speak?

You know it's like trees: the really old ones. They can live for centuries, and maybe it's been programmed into our imagination to believe that there's something otherly about them, but I still like to think that while they may not be able to get up and walk, they are soulful.
  I mean, without them we would die and without us and all the other mammals on earth (and other creatures that breathe out carbon dioxide), they would die.
   Strange to have a connection like that with things around us. (Although, like I mentioned in a previous entry, we're all made of the same basic matter). So really we're all connected at a primal level.

   Well I must say I feel rather stupid (though I really don't expect anyone I knew actually waited at Nerang to see if I would turn up in a fancy costume on Friday), but still...I said I'd do it and I ended up hiding at home. Heehee. I was...you know, worried about the potential mass murderers and book thieves running about Nerang these days. :]

   You know, it's strange, sometimes I just find life so magnificent and beautiful that it's near impossible to bare. I mean that in a good way too. I also have the suspicion that I wouldn't enjoy it all so much if I didn't have my doom-ridden days where Sodom and all the rest are right by my ear...whispering their lies to me. However I still have fantastic days, and hey...I'm sure it's exactly the same for anyone else whose reading this. (If...people are :] )

  Ah, but returning briefly to the subject of trees, and I know that anyone else who has read the Lord of the Rings books, you'll know which trees I'm talking about.

  But it's in the section where the Hobbit's first meet Tom Bombadil, or rather when they're making their way through that dark, old forest. The trees there are so ancient and bitter about what happened in their past that it's made them alive, and vicious. Then there's the talking and walking trees in the books, I think they're called Ents. 

  A type of tree similar to the bitter trees from the story that I came up with some time ago, belonged on some of the islands in the Black Ocean I designed. (They're also in a new novel I'm working on), but these trees are pretty ancient too, and basically they trap victims in their roots and keep them alive as energy-providers for the trees. However while the victim is caught, the trees' mind causes the victim's mind to go to this other world. Mostly the victim ends up forgetting that their even trapped as a living meal for the tree. There's a lot more to it, but that's the basic idea I had.

  I've also got the feeling, that it's not always through lack of want or inspiration that we don't write or choose not to write. I think it can even be a question of influence.

  I remember when I first started trying to write novel-sized books, (and I don't mean any bitterness or regret here), but I let some members of my family read it (won't say who :] ), and they told me that a lot of what I write was too violent, or didn't seem very Christian.

  Because of that, I didn't finish a lot of books, but, I can't help it at times! When we find a groove that brings passion to us, and makes writing enjoyable, no matter what it is, it should be our own decision to decide to trek down the danger's of that path. To write for yourself and no one else: not publishers, not editors and not even people you know. Or, you can flip this idea and write for someone you've lost or who you love. Whatever helps you.

  

  What I'm saying is that....we shouldn't feel ashamed to write, or tell others that we write. Yet of course we do still; it's all very well for me to say all this stuff, but I often still question myself and feel guilty. Particularly, I feel guilty and embarrassed when I tell people the amount of books I've written, like it's too unbelievable and I'm boasting and I've made it up. (It's 7 by the way, not including the ten documentaries I've written and sketched and the new one I'm working on, and the revisions of my first five books).

  Sounds stupid.

  I hope these blogs don't seem too monotonous to any readers, and that there's still some hilarity in what I write.

  You know, I thought I'd say that there's just something about the books of back then that is so much more than any of the books written now (definitely including my own), but I mean ones like Lord of the Rings and Jennie etc... But these books have a light to them, and they could write whatever they wanted, and however long-winded they wished.

  In some parts of the Lord of the Rings they have two or three pages just devoted to a poem one of the Hobbit's has decided to sing.

  How cool is that?

amy sol blog

One last thing if you would humour me dear friends. I wanted to share a memory I had with you:

  I was with my family visiting some friends in Adelaide a few years back (quite a few), and we decided to walk there by way of this amazing beach. 

  The walk took four or so hours, but seriously, if there was a purgatory place I had to spend an eternity in, it would be that beach (or perhaps Bogatil beach)

  We passed crystal areas of water, kittens playing amongst the rocks by the sea, millions of tiny pebbles and shells. 

  Perhaps what also made it magical for me was when I was walking be myself and out of nowhere I just felt as though someone had placed a hand on my shoulder, warm and solid. I looked behind me yet my family was a fair way back. 

  Despite the mystery of it, it gave me comfort.

   So I will stop pestering you with chatter and leave you with the second part of my poem.

Don't let your dreams be eaten Lovers,

Miss CLScarlett xx

Story of a Wolf Part II:

Stillness.

I watched the fight from afar that night, mist curling in my wake...

As I saw a beast as black as shadows, curl and rip and shake...

He wore a hooded light and fought because he was forced...

Breath held fury, night held tears as those wolves, they attacked him near death...

He bayed his call, leapt like a deer, swung back to hold his ground...

Only to be beset by teeth, and calls for meat...his very own breed his doom,

Fought and fought, for hours they did until the streets were covered with murk...

A ghost-like yelp, crimson fear and the fleeing paws of many a wolf...

Crept into silence, and chill-cold night as he slowly lay silent...forgetting his name...

After an hour or so, once I was sure they had left I ran to the spot he had fell...

Looked upon he, hurt not just in flesh, and took him upon my soul...

I carried him, and the night became still.

  

Labyrinthian Thoughts

I have become lost in the labyrinth...

where thoughts and pale eyes bind me tight,

I did not succeed today, and so shall melt back into the melting pot.

If indeed you seek me, look twenty billion light years into space 

and then from there, twenty leagues deep under the earth.

Follow the winding staircase, ignore the chants and look into the well.

A thought: decide to decline.

The House that Became a Sea and the Mystery of Wilson the Pineapple...who seems to be missing

     Take a deep breath my friends, find a nice quiet space with lot's of paper and no people. Then...I want you to scream and tear all the paper up. Don't worry about wasting paper, and don't worry about how you look.
  We are terrified to scream because it so blandly says that we are unsettled and not proper and how the world wants us to be.
  Without the ability to scream, the world, and all of us shall suffocate.


On other notes I have been convinced through slight-of-hand that I should go and do my stress down day thing tomorrow. Alas, the gathering-donations-side of it won't probably work out as apparently there's too many legal ramifications, especially if I kinda wanted to just set up a donation tin without telling Lifeline first. Mm, conflict of interest and all that.
       Ah hoo...enough talk about that, what I want to know is your soul. (serious eyes blinking). No, you can keep that safe.

  You know I was up at exuberant late hours last night and for the first time in a while I found that I could write at that time of night. It was quite eerie though...what with the storm and thunder raging outside, hey, maybe that storm was the key to my inspiration. (It certainly made me feel more alive)

   I also had a half-formed weird idea while I was pacing the house muttering to myself and Sodom yesterday. An idea that I tried out. To see if by staring at my own reflection in the mirror and talking to it, as though it was talking back to me, if I could eventually convince my mind that the real me is the one in the mirror and I'm just the reflection. Didn't really work but it gave me a great idea for a possible video tape: in which 'my other half' is giving strange advice to the real me, as I take it in turns filming them both.
  Teehee.
 
  I also tried something similar with a spoon once, in that they say that if you try and do something enough, eventually it will happen. Such as if a very stupid person decided from birth to press themselves against a wall and will themselves to pass through it, and stayed like that for their lifetime, that eventually they would succeed.
  Okay, you ask, why would anyone want to do that? Yes you might be able to walk through the damn wall on your death, but who in their right minds would consider it worth the effort? In that respect anything is possible. Ah, so is it a fact than that we don't accomplish all we could because it seems too time consuming?

  The answer? Of course!  

   However back to the spoon. My idea was that for an hour each day I'd stare at the spoon, memorizing every line and silver contour of it until eventually, I would be able to move it with my mind.

Needless to say, I gave up, heehee.

Also needless to say, I have far too much time on my hands.

In regards to more time-bending nonsense the part of my second book in Cara's adventures is kinda unsettling me. In that, she (Cara) has woken up to find herself deep in the subconsciousness of her darker side: which comes to her in the form of a gravelly voice and a dark presence. 

Meanwhile, she is at times transported back and forwards through to memories of her previous self and life while also discovering that she has a part of her that belongs to a brilliant, golden, living force of light.

Sound complex? It's doing my head in, but once again not all is lost.

  I don't seem to have a lot of inspiration today, so I'll basically end this journal here, with this small line:

DON'T LOOK BEHIND YOU.

( :] I made you look, didn't I? Didn't I? :] )

No seriously, look behind you now!

We shall joust more later, much love,

Miss CLScarlett xx

P.S. I have decided that I'll post up the four-part poem that I wrote while I was in Bali, about a wolf. 

        Hope you like it...

   Wolf of Night: 

Story of a Wolf Part I

Wolves are prowling my streets tonight, they follow me wherever I am...

Trying to teach what I already know, leading me through the corners of my eye...
Some are blind, some fill my heart...others I can't bear the sight,
Yet the one I know more than any other, can fill up the very night...
His shadow it sways, the moon dims glowing...his howl, the scream of wind,
His paws are molten, while his fur leaks tears...he is bonded to me by flight,
He was dying that first time – when I found him late one night...
His eyes lunging razor claws,
As I stooped into shadows when what I wanted was light, reached down and gripped hold...
His body weighed me down, yet his bones were thin...like splinters and his heart like ash,
He could not stand, yet I could, he leant on me...took and took,
I cried my heart, held him strong, that black fur of night, herald thereafter by a song...
Each night I write of him, his ghostly beige eyes – they haunt my thoughts, hiss – guide...
I took him to my deepest chamber, wrapped him tight in mind and slowly healed his many wounds, that were deeper than just skin and bone...
He raged in me, filled me with black nights...his claws slowly became mine,
I healed him but...he healed me, yet wounded me deep as deep,
Days turned to nights and black into light as slowly he regained his name,
Became not a beast of dust but a wiry strong thane,
Soon he could run and I ceased to try, soon he could scream, my sound ceasing...soon he could live, while I could not.
He left, like a winters last day, never-ending but gone just like that.
You couldn't see, you couldn't think 
I couldn't be.
Now he is forever and I am his past,

he can toss a stone for me and howl at night for the time I took my last breath.   

Writers Procrastination Cold Hits Hard....and is estimated to last into the foreseeable Future...

   You know, I really went through this time earlier this year and most of the years previously where I was always galloping in everything I did.
  I'm not sure why, maybe I just have this enlarged fear that if I slow down, or don't try hard enough, my life will run away from me and I'll wake up one morning at like sixty years old and realize that my life was a waste and I never impacted the world or anyone in it.
  But...the problem is galloping: especially in how I wrote and sometimes still do. It's the biggest guarantee that publishers will reject your submissions and half the time not even tell you why.
   It's like with the first copy of The Beginning of an End (and you can find a link to a page that shows some of the pages of the self-published version, here):
  Self-Published First Novel

  But if you do take a moment to look at the book and how it was compared to the version I've been posting on this blog, you'll see that there's been some improvements. My point is that if you really want to get properly published and for people to want to look at your work and not chuck it away (and I'm still yet to reach this stage), then really the main idea is that you need to go over your book, every word and phrase and instance of spelling until you can hardly bare the sight of a word any longer, and you know the words to your book, or the very least the sequence of events in your novel so well that you can explain it with your eyes closed.
  A bit insane? Well, yes. I also think it's all about motivation and having confidence in yourself and your ability but at the same time always believing that you could and should improve and receive advice.
  When I started re-editing my first book, I was determined to take it all one step at a time. I even drew up a graph that showed the detailed steps of my plan that would eventually end with full publication.
 

  If you would be so good as to humour me for a short while, I've placed a rough graph similar to the one I made:

Step One: Basic Re-write of manuscript
Two: Second Re-Vision
Three: Second Opinion (aka, as many other eyes as possible to view and edit your work)
Four: Re-Edit
Five: Final Edit
Six: Final look-over

- Repeat these steps for your cover letter and author biography.
 - Even after all this you should still be going over your work looking for anything you've missed. Face what your problems are in your writing and try hard to fix them. It's also a really good idea to do character biographies and try and find any holes in the plot or clichés.
 - Make copies of your work, endless back-up. Print the final copy, as well as keeping it on your computer, on your hardrive and USB and even the old floppy disk or information CD is a must.
  - Find every publisher and company everywhere in the world that publishers work in the genre of your novel, and make them want to read your book and publish it. Sell yourself as well, because often the author needs to be as trendy as the current climate in book-genre. Go overseas if need be and don't give up, if you've been shown and told and know in your heart that your book is good and worth something, then someone has to publish you eventually.

  I also think us writer's are entitled to our tantrums and oddities. We are our own worst critic and some days all I can do is stare at my computer screen and tell myself that I'm a terrible writer and will never manage another sentence again.
  It's not so good though, too much of that negative talk, so I got to actually taping motivational messages on the side of my computer.
  The most important ones: You are a good writer. One Step at a time. Don't gallop.
 
  But as I've said before we'll do anything to procrastinate, but really it's all just in our head and what needs to be done is to just write, even if you're incredibly bored or in a funk. (Though be wary of the boredom thing). Probably the hardest thing we can ever experience is when we lose interest in our own writing. That happened with one of my books, in that I and a friend I have (who...is a a published author), were super-editing one of my novel's to send into the competition, and the novel was too short.
  It's strange because the story still ended up being great, but the second half I wrote, I wrote without any desire to write it. It just...wasn't in me. But I did it, and well it's still not published but hey, maybe soon.

   It really is incredible though, the writing bug. It makes us previously-sane people step onto the path that is near-impossible to get off. We want the simplest thing, to see our creation in print with a version of our name on the cover, to be able to hold it, and yet the world can often make that simple thing the hardest to accomplish. Yet even when we are rejected endless times, we still doggedly keep at it.
  We must keep at it. The main points that keep me going, is that I cannot let myself think that there's no point in writing because I can't see when in my future I'll ever be published. To write as though it is your only career, well that is challenging to a degree. It also makes no sense to me that others and myself have written all these books that have embedded themselves in our hearts and that they are not meant to be published.
  Where is the justice in that?

So we keep trying, and keep writing.

   Just one last thing dear friends before I stop jabbering away to you. This has all stemmed (the topic of this blog today), because I recently got feedback from a competition I entered eight months ago. 'Grace Notes Publishing'. It's a really good idea, in that it's one of the only competitions I've come across where the judges give you feedback and then give you the opportunity to re-submit it to them as a revised copy.

  Only problem was that the book I sent to them wasn't that well edited or finished, I was galloping when I submitted it.

  It wasn't an altogether bad review, but I think it needs tonnes of work (the book that is). The part of the critique I actually found funny was this line: 

...over use of clichés, and a style that seems to want to be pedantic but can’t quite manage it. 

    But enough said, and I have decided to sink into oblivion until the part of my grand scheme that focusses on finding publishers is ready to be put into effect, then I shall work to submit my novel as though there was nothing else left to me.

  If my previous-unpublished self could not get published then perhaps C.L.Scarlett can.

Much love Little Lanternas,

Miss CLScarlett xx

my Cupcake of DOOOOOM!! eek, Martian eyes,,,,,

Ooh the....Fascinating witches who put scintillating stitches in the britches of the boys who put the powder on the noses of the faces of the ladies of the Harem of the court of King Caracticuss, were just passing by...by by...Hi :D


    My gosh that was a stupidly fun song, you start with just the first line (ladies of the court of king Caracticuss, were just passing by...), and you repeat it about three times and keep adding on each line, until you can barely hold your breath long enough to say it.
Ah....good times that we have.
    You know, it's pretty amazing the possibilities we still saw for ourselves when we were much younger. I don't really believe that there was ever a time in our childhood when we were wholly innocent and untouched by the world. The youngest child can be marred by horror and hardly anyone is treated as sacred. In saying so there are some things we should never have given up but that we did to achieve glory or respect or whatever love someone will throw at us. One day we'll realize that those things are things we never should have sold.
  But....what I meant to say was that in some aspects we were innocent, it's like I remember this time I was still in school and I was staying for dinner at a friends house, and her youngest sister (this darling little girl), well I can't exactly recall what the conversation was about but I just know that in response to something this little girl replied: just ask God about it. As if that was the simplest and most straight-forward thing in the world.
  I'm not trying to turn this in anyway into a Bible-bashing thing (and I would hate myself if I did that), but I did believe moreso back then, and it just stunned me, the belief she had. My first response to her statement was to say, well no...it's not as simple as that. But then maybe it is, maybe that's the key thing we miss about being a kid, that we do believe things more, and we are always in the here and now. That's why dogs are so damn happy heehee. I have two of the creatures and they just look at me with confused eyes when they find that they have no bed to sleep on that night because they tore it to pieces earlier that day! They are just so in the moment that it's both amusing and pitying, I think.

   (Which is why, I might rant, a lot of people do not like cats, because cats are like women, and un-like dogs, they will not wag their tail and be happy to see you even if you have just locked them outside or shouted at them (which I don't by the way: shouting that is), whereas cats have a vain-countenance and will only show affection on their terms. :] They have a mind of their own.)

   Anyway....

Do you know what I find curious? The shifts in our personality. Yes maybe it is because I have more poison's to enhance my mind at night, but even without them, I still find that my mind drifts to another realm along with my emotions when night comes. Usually the day will depend on just...meh, getting through it and all that (and really it is amazing how much more inspiration and steadiness I feel after I go for a run first thing, though I often hate the run, because well...ahm, it's exercise!). But usually that will change in an instant if it rains or howls with thunder, because it doesn't matter what the time is or what I'm doing or what mood I may have been in, as soon as it starts to rain or storm or be windy, it's like an electricity is thrown into my blood, and I just feel alive and wide-eyed and just...I'm not focussed on myself so much. (Strangely that's when I'm happiest, hm...). 

   But then, when night comes...I'll have all these thoughts and ideas and inspirations that will just come to me.  I'll often get into my weirder debates with myself and my respective-Sodom side when I'm in these mind frames and nightly hours. (Though really it's mostly all the time I debate with him, in essence he's really the voice of my conscience. That is, if you can count your conscience as being someone who doesn't necessarily always have kind words for you. Hmf. Devil-may-care brute)

   But, ahm, my point with all this, is that like a light switch, all the inspirational thoughts and plans I had for the following day during the night, just turn off when I wake up the next day. Daytime is set in stone (except when it's stormy), but in night...it feels like a puzzle box, that if you could find just the right pressure point, it would unlock a whole other world.

  There's this whole attraction I feel, towards not having to sleep, but at the same time I crave the world of dreaming and the chance for anything to come to you as you're dead to the world. But at the same time - almost because of the lack of control we have while we're asleep (and that I feel I'm missing out on things I could discover) - I would much rather be awake.

   Once I was presented with a wondrous week and a half of insomnia. And I just couldn't figure it out, how is it that I could only really force myself to go to sleep at 4ish in the morning, and then wake up at 6 or 7 am? How can a human body continue to function with such a small amount of sleep? I loved it, because well, all the great artists and poets and visionaries of our history, had insomnia, so it definitely gave me fuel for inspiration.

   But really what do you do in those small hours? Sometimes I can't write then because literally the silence feels too loud at those times of night, and I feel a certain wariness about immersing myself in my stories and characters when the world already feels so strange. No need to add more strangeness mate.

   I think I most loved that time, 4 am or 5 perhaps, in that - if it's the right time of the year - you have just beaten the darkness, and just as that strange cold blue light appears in the sky, then I find it easy and peaceful to sleep.

   

  What is there to fear, but fear itself? Everything that we consider too dark to look at, is merely terrifying to us because we don't understand it. That is the fear of society it seems, and honestly, the greatest falling of it all, I believe is that no one ever teaches you how to deal with horror. With the fact of death, and even just losing people or things you care about. 

It's not as though there's a set of rules one must follow if they're experiencing loss. Is it better to scream, or stay silent for fear you will never stop screaming once you start? 

Is the reason you run and drink and party to not have to be still and look the monsters in the face?

I think the main point is, that everyone deals differently, and the only consolation is that none of it is our fault. We aren't some medieval society who believes that a million gods are going to strike us down for swearing or making a mistake, no...all it is, all we are in the eyes of fate are a few thousand chess pieces for fate to play with, and deal out swords or bullets/bombs/scars. 

  How can we help acting as we do? Blow off someone's left foot or their house and family and of course their going to go out, buy a gun and shoot the people responsible. It's the world that makes the evil, not any single person.

  Circumstance.

  But please, enough darkness and gloom, and I will leave you with this bright note that I hope will please you and make you laugh....

Click me..... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTSA_sWGM44 

   

Miss CLScarlett xx

I Downed the Poison, my Eyes became red...and in my mind a Balloon appeared, tied to a Mouse

   Well my dear friends...
Another day, another way, and it's only three days until I do my own Stress Down Day and really, sometimes I feel like such a recluse, in that I'd much rather not have to ever leave the house and keep my routine and so on.
  I just keep telling myself it will be fun, and I'll be fine when the day comes. I shouldn't worry about being robbed, or arrested, or being mugged or being swarmed by people or...or a comet landing. (Or one of my evil characters popping into existence and haunting me while I'm there).
   Ahm....whistlewhistle teetee
 You know sometimes I get so fanatical about wanting some of my characters to be real that I actually search the internet for ways: even the weird ones, and hey maybe the only way to truly have it happen is to become mad and insane enough, as I've been saying.
   Heehee.
Ah but it's always on my mind, the desire to create something beautiful but that has no real use or purpose. The world is strange enough, so if we really put our minds' to it, surely we could create anything?
   It's like (in preparation actually for the Stress Down Day), I've made my own wings to wear. They're a bit odd, and small but they've turned out okay. I was going to put a photo of them on here today, but alas, my phone won't allow me to and my camera is dead as a doornail. So I'll put them up tomorrow.

   But deciding to do something unusual: like that egg-shaped thing I mentioned trying to make and which I wrote the poem about. Dressing up extravagantly, or going into a theatre when it's abandoned and eerie, or building a lantern or sending a bottle out to sea or whatever.

  I used to paint a lot, at one time, and I got it into my head to complete a giant mural on my bedroom wall. It took me a year (and now unfortunately it's painted over again), but it really had no point, and most things that stretch your heart and focus the most, more times than not, they are the easiest things to lose.

  I'm not sure why either, maybe they're just too fragile, or maybe the world or fate begins to feel uneasy when we have too many things we love around us. As soon as we get attached to something, BAM, something happens to take it away.

  Makes for a certain hilarity and black-humour, don't you think?

  Ah, one thing I really was inspired by - and I'm not entirely sure where it originated from, was the idea of the sky having mechanics, and an other side that we can't see with our normal eyes. Part of this was perhaps inspired by an illustration I saw on DeviantArt, but it grew from there. (This is also a tiny sneak-look into a future part of my Golden Dragon Series books). But those that could see what the sky could see (that's the way I made it), would see booming colours and hear deep sounds, like the Northern Lights on some drug. There'd be gears and enlarged planets from our solar system moving at crazy speeds, and stars bursting and exploding with colour. Living plants.

  Yeah, I loved that idea.

My Mural

I'm actually beginning to crave baking again. It seemingly came to a fact that after working for a year on my island making the same pastries day in and day out mostly, I had to have a long break from making them.

  But if I had money I'd make them now, and feed them to people. :] But it was always, cooky day on Monday, Tues: Choc, orange and almond cake, apricot shortcake, Wed: Choc coconut cake and lemon meringue pie, Thurs: French Night! Paris Brest, Pear, White Choc and Almond Tart and Profiteroles, Fri: Choc Tart, Strawberry n Custard Tart, White Choc Cheesecake, White choc mousse cake with choc crackle base, Sat: Banoffee Pie, Red Velvet Choc Cake, Pineapple Upside Down Cake, Sun: Choc Mousse Cake and Apple Crumble.

  Okay this is becoming painful, argh....

     So yes, time does fly, and I often wish I could grow wings, or not feel like time is running faster by the second. Because well, that's how I feel and have always felt, even when I was much younger, that the more I and others go through life the faster and faster everything and time becomes. It's all heading towards something, and it feels like the world can't go on much longer, maybe a while, but it's nearing a close, I think.

    They take my hand. and whisper strange things, their eyes haunt and their fingers freezing, they drag me to that cold, otherly place where I sit with my back to the chilled knife edge, while I try and answer his questions yet never can. 

  What do you want? What do you want? What do you want?

If I had an answer to that maybe the world wouldn't seem so gloomy and endlessly consuming.

  We can help, I will help you.

If you could step into the light you would...but as it is, all you are is a fanciful devil-may-care friend who appears when my thoughts crowd me too much and the gnawing inside of me becomes deafening,

  Sometimes I frighten myself, sometimes I make myself laugh, sometimes I could just burn everything, along with myself.

  It seems more and more that his white eyes are the only things keeping me chained to this earth and desk.

Ha ha, no, do not worry about me, and I hope that your day has been filled with curious things, I will talk to you all again soon.

Miss CLScarlett xx