June Diary ‘24
Post-Birthday Blues, Pozzywallah, Notebooks, and The Importance of Being Faceless
The fresh, pink jelly of twenty-seven trips around the sun hits my soul. I spend the day eating cake and writing story ideas in my notebook. Not that I’ve ever gotten out much, but being at home a lot due to bad health sees you appreciate the smaller things in life. The one benefit of divorced parents is separate presents. D & A bought me a notebook from the Mozart Museum in Vienna, a quill and ink from the same place, and a gothic trinket tray.
The news of my sibling’s impending arrival prompts me to revisit the stories I loved as a child. I decide to create my own fantasy world full of eerie stories, thus creating Pozzywallah. The first tale, Dr. Wintooth and the Giant Hogweed, is a retelling of Shelley’s Frankenstein.
I give the stories to the world, but they will always be special for Baby A. My notebooks are full of notes, ideas, scraps, and musings. I do the cryptic crossword in The Times.
I listen to the Betwixt the Sheets podcast and learn about how shredded yams were used as lube in ancient times. History is absolutely fascinating. I love to impart facts on new people.
I read Mary Shelley’s Matilda and post my review here. What a fascinating little book with themes of creation in all its facets. Her father was so disgusted by the themes that he refused to return it after she had sent it to him to publish. I love the little Penguin Classics.
I’ve been thinking about the importance of being faceless. Last year, I made the decision to stop posting photos myself after years of selfie-taking. I was sick of people attaching my value to my outward appearance. I want to sell books on my name alone. Who cares if I’m an old witchy hag if I create good work?
I see so many writers trying to sell themselves through risqué photos and specific poses, and I just find it really sad, but frustrating nonetheless. Why can’t we live by our words? Why must we live by our bodies? I cannot count the amount of times I was called ugly when I was a small child. I remember standing in front of some teachers asking why people don’t like me, and Ms. C said: “When you’re older, they will all be ugly, and you will be the pretty one.”
What an unbalance of scales. Either / Or. Now I am older and those people stay in my mind like bacteria in a petri dish. They are there but barely just. All those insults settled into the gaps in my soul.
Rejections come strolling through my emails. I’ve gone back to fiction for a while. I still have some poetry out on sub, but my focus is back on fiction for a while. My first love was prose, but I have always been poetic.
I receive the posters from the theatre that were used to advertise the plays. My name is on a poster!
It’s Stewart’s birthday. He would have been forty-eight had he lived. I might be living in Canada right now. I wouldn’t have been alone at my first smear test. I would have someone next to me in bed. I light a candle for him and watch his favourite film—Bergman’s ‘The Seventh Seal’.
Look what I’ve done, Mochi, look at where I am. Every book I read, I read for you.
