It’s Furious Balancing

Three times Randolph Carter dreamed of the marvellous city, and three times was he snatched away while still he paused on the high terrace above it. All golden and lovely it blazed in the sunset, with walls, temples, colonnades, and arched bridges of veined marble, silver-basined fountains of prismatic spray in broad squares and perfumed gardens, and wide streets marching between delicate trees and blossom-laden urns and ivory statues in gleaming rows; while on steep northward slopes climbed tiers of red roofs and old peaked gables harbouring little lanes of grassy cobbles.

It was a fever of the gods; a fanfare of supernal trumpets and a clash of immortal cymbals. Mystery hung about it as clouds about a fabulous unvisited mountain; and as Carter stood breathless and expectant on that balustraded parapet there swept up to him the poignancy and suspense of almost-vanished memory, the pain of lost things, and the maddening need to place again what once had an awesome and momentous place.

H.P. Lovecraft, The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath

When I find myself under stress, when I’m overwhelmed, there are several things that always help me feel better.  One of the tried and true methods involves sundry combinations of chocolate, sugar, and caffeine.  Another is immersive computer gaming, fantasy RPG being my preferred genre.  The last, oldest, and perhaps the most important for my mental health is reading.

That should be re-reading, actually.  I go back to my favorite books; they’re comforting and familiar.  It is, perhaps, my choice of books that may appear… unusual.

I’ve been going back to savor the stories of H.P. Lovecraft.  Curling up with Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath or The Case of Charles Dexter Ward has helped maintain my equilibrium for the past week or so.

It’s the delicious, dense, antiquarian prose that draws me in.  I love the sound and shape of words for their own sake, and Lovecraft’s words are what lead to my idea for this post.

When I read, I use a large Post-It note as a bookmark.  I use this to keep track of interesting words I encounter in whatever I’m reading at the time.  Words I want to look up since I’m not quite certain of the meaning.  Words that are complex and multifaceted.  Words that make me pause and think  “Oh, this looks really, really cool.  How delightful.”  These words eventually appear in one of my lists at Wordnik.com

I’ve filled up two Post-It notes and part of the back of an envelope with Lovecraft words.  They’ve been lurking on my nightstand.  When I saw them this morning, I thought — for the first time in a long while — that I had something worth sharing.

Without further ado, in no particular order, and in nowise comprehensive:

miasmal, cenotaph, niter, necrophagous, aegipans, lambent, interdicted, acidulous, eidolon, teratologically, squamous, vigintillion, ductile, ichor, palimpsest, quintile, foetor, cartouche, labyrinthine, cumbrous, illimitable, bas reliefs, terrene, pallid, spheroid, aggultinations, dadoes, cryptical, similitude, austral, Cyclopean, anent, bizarrerie, portent, preternatural, immensurable, trans-montane, ineluctable, nefandous, congeries

The current theme in my world is Catching Up, or rather, Trying to Catch Up.  I’m so incredibly tired of the long lists of tasks — at home and at the office — that I’ve decided to quit talking about them.  It’s the status quo.  Deal with it.

Nonetheless, here’s an FO from last month that didn’t make it to the blog.  Michelle’s Holiday Scarf.

Pattern: February Lace Scarf by Laura Nixon-Corfield

Yarn: Sock Yarn from The Woolen Rabbit in the Pussywillow Colorway

Needles: US Size 4 (3.5mm)

Size: Before blocking – 6” x 42”   After blocking – 5.5” x 60”

Mods: None

Comments: This is a simple 4-row lace repeat, which makes it easy to memorize.  It also makes it Boring Beyond Belief.  You will be ready to stab your eyes out with your knitting needles after 4 inches of knitting.  Srsly.  The upside, though, is that it looks complicated to a non-knitter.

The recipient, whom I’ve known for over a dozen years, was delighted.  I say that I don’t knit for other people.  The truth is, I do; but it’s an extremely short and exclusive list.

If only I had been able to start writing!  But, however I set about it (all too similarly, alas to the resolve to give up alcohol, to go to bed early, to keep fit), whether it was in a spurt of activity, with method, with pleasure, in depriving myself of a walk, or postponing and reserving it as a reward, taking advantage of an hour of feeling well, making use of the inaction forced on me by a day’s illness, the inevitable result of my efforts was a blank page, untouched by writing, as predestined as the forced card that you inevitably wind up drawing in certain tricks, however thoroughly you have first shuffled the pack.

Marcel Proust – The Guermantes Way

And that’s what I have to say about New Year’s Resolutions.

Actually, I need to re-read Proust.  Yes, you read that correctly — RE-read.  I had my first trip through  À la recherche du temps perdu in 1994-1995.  I’ve picked it up, on and off and on again, for years.  I’m thinking it’s time again.