Dreaming

I don’t know if you’ve had that experience of dreaming about a place that you know well, and yet in your dream the place is different – you’re flying through the streets, and landmarks are not where they should be; whole streets have come and gone, and there is a carnival set up in the town square, and doors open to new secret rooms that are both terrible and delightful. I dreamt that way of London last night – I was walking from Piccadilly to the Palladium, or rather, I knew I was; but instead of Regent Street there was a long avenue with parkland in the middle and some sort of ancient monument at the end, rather like you’d see in Paris. Everything was a blushing gold, that pinkish shade you see on the face of buildings early in a sunset. I was not dreaming so much of London itself as of the way I feel about it. Big, and magical, and mysterious, full of unforeseen excitement. And, as always, Jonathan was just around the corner, I knew it. I was looking for him and I knew he was nearby. It is a very good and very rare night indeed when I look for Jonathan in my dreams and actually find him – that has happened only three or four times, perhaps, since our brokenness. But often, in my subconscious, I know that he is at least close, and there is something keeping us apart. When I wake up, I know it’s death, but in the dream, it seems to be only space, only lostness.

A Memory from London

But we aren't leaving with Patrick; we're sitting with Bess as she watches the taillights disappear. She sat there for a long time, thinking of her crazy youth: the briskness and constant construction of post-war London, the rough tweedy material of Patrick's dressing-room couch under her bare back, the foolhardy way her heart flung itself at her ribs when she looked into his smiling blue eyes, so hard that once he laid his manicured hand over her heart and said he was afraid it would break through. Desperate, desperate.

A True Story

I saw this link on Twitter this morning: Chuck Wendig's true story of killing the darlings in his writing (it also includes the VERY good advice that having a darling is not, in itself, a good reason to kill it).

http://terribleminds.com/ramble/2013/05/29/a-true-to-life-tale-of-bonafide-darling-killing/

I thought, I could do that. I have loads of dead darlings. Files of them. I have blood on my hands, blood and semicolons and passionate sentences gushing with prepositions. Adverbs seeping out of my desk drawers. Whole characters slain in cold blood. Dismembered chapters underneath the floorboards. And the poetry! Don't even get me started on the poetry.

This is a place for collecting evidence. Evidence of murder most foul. And most necessary.

In memoriam.