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“There is the story you know about yourself. There is the story everyone knows. You wonder how that story became so distorted — how only your weakest moments matter now, how they expanded to devour everything else.”

The perspective of reading in the second person is new to me and adds a layer of suspense to the experience. Captivating descriptions and imagery. Excited for this!

Reading this literary masterpiece from an objective distance, attempting not to allow taboo’s to strangulate me. So far, encountered some purely beautiful descriptions.

Darlington liked to say that dealing with ghosts was like riding the subway: Do not make eye contact. Do not smile. Do not engage. Otherwise, you never know what might follow you home.

‘. . . I shall try to be an honest servant, gathering such matter as may serve a more skilled hand later – or suggest finished pictures to the eye.
The fact is, that in these private books, I use a kind of shorthand, & make little confessions, as though I wished to propitiate my own eye, reading later.’

Politics in the rough dont much interest me, & seem mostly a waste of time & good English words.

The wind has a wonderful compass of voices. You can hear it running up & down the scale as it swells in force & dies away. But this is a very full bodied tempestuous wind, not one of those that sing high & drearily without much change of key.

I seem to feel Napoleons influence on our quiet evening in the garden – I think I see for a moment how our minds are all threaded together – how any live mind today is of the very same stuff as Plato’s & Euripides. It is only a continuation & development of the same thing. It is this common mind that binds the whole world together & all the world is mind. Then I read a poem say & the same thing is repeated.

Icarus! It’s not as if I have forgotten all names. I remember Icarus. He flew too close to the sun. In the stories, though, it’s worth it. Always worth it to have tried, even if you fail, even if you fall like a meteor forever. Better to have flamed in the darkness, to have inspired others, to have lived, than to have sat in the darkness, cursing the people who borrowed, but did not return, your candle.

Normally, when she took on toad skin, she also took on toad thoughts and spent her days in contemplation of nothing more complicated than earthworms and millipedes moving under the leaves.

“I will not be going out in it, so long as it leaves my little wood alone.”
It was Halim’s turn to sigh. “The world rarely leaves anyone alone,” he said.

He had surprised her, and she could not think fast enough. She had been a toad too long; her blood was sluggish with it . . .

Can it be Neptune?
Behold him there, the monarch of the seas!
Or a mermaid? or a shark? Oh, no! shark is only one syllable. It must be very clever, or he would not have brought it. Oh! Miss Woodhouse, do you think we shall ever find out?”
“Mermaids and sharks! Nonsense! My dear Harriet, what are you thinking of? Where would be the use of his bringing us a charade made by a friend upon a mermaid or a shark?

Simple descriptions of her daily life and those surrounding her. Hardly mentioning her feelings but rather practically focused on her social world. Provides an interesting historical perspective on the upper higher class. A strong dedication to reading installed by her father.

Thelema. Aleister Crowley. Lady. Are we related?

Part 8 is a gem. What a delight.

Ever read something about what you’ve been thinking about lately and think this can’t be a coincidence?

“So goth that she probably bled black mascara” — oh lady, I am so excited to read this.

Creatures that captivate ones consciousness and bring you into a vivid trance of flowers, herbs and spellbound desire. What an experience..

Entrancing……

Thanks for the spoiler of Anna Karenina…