"I Chew Pitch Gum"

Catherine Coulson, who died yesterday, in her best known role as the Log Lady from Twin Peaks, discussing the meaning of dreams and an in between state. And she's talking about a quality of mystery that is essential to art and which many people who aren't artists can't understand. In the class I'm taking now on John Milton, I've been surprised to see how many of the students adamantly refuse to believe there was anything about Paradise Lost which Milton did not intend despite the fact Milton's piety has been too well established by now to think he'd willingly create what came to be known as the Satanic Hero. Some things will always be hidden and finding the right balance between control and asking the magic to "do as you will", as a character in The Last Unicorn put it, is the essence of creating art. Above all, it means letting go of prejudices.

Those who restrain desire, do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained; and the restrainer or reason usurps its place & governs the unwilling.
And being restraind, it by degrees becomes passive, till it is only the shadow of desire.
The history of this is written in Paradise Lost, & the Governor or Reason is call'd Messiah.
And the original Archangel, or possessor of the command of the heavenly host, is calld the Devil or Satan, and his children are call'd Sin & Death .
For in the Book of Job, Milton's Messiah is call'd Satan. >> note
For this history has been adopted by both parties.
It indeed appear'd to Reason as if Desire was cast out; but the Devil's account is, that the Messiah fell, & formed a heaven of what he stole from the Abyss.* * *

Note. The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels & God, and at liberty when of Devils & Hell, is because he was a true Poet and of the Devil's party without knowing it.
-- William Blake from The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

There were two versions of a new Sirenia Digest released to-day because Caitlin accidentally featured a story, "The Drowned Geologist", that she'd already featured in the Digest before. She originally wrote it for a Sherlock Holmes/Lovecraft Mythos crossover anthology and in her Prolegomenon she discusses how she likes the story better now than she originally did, saying that her previous discontent with it was due to it not being the story she had intended it to be. It'd been years since I'd read the story, but I still admire the sense of mysterious dread in it, a touch more melancholy than Lovecraft's similar sense of unknowable menace tended to be.

Twitter Sonnet #795

A blue bird interposed before my meal.
A new array of pegs must first be posed.
Newborn serpents implore a fresher seal.
Ether ignites where Rip Van Winkle dozed.
September drummed torpedoes underground.
Aforementioned lax waterfalls are dry.
But no, the falls 'came not subject of sound.
A fish was formed for socks up in the sky.
A bowl of blood was last Henry Morgan's.
In clover combs of earth are spider shrouds.
A dusty space has filled with jade organs.
Topiltzin's late return plays tricks in clouds.
Machine God velvet turns clockwise the switch.
The light is put out and put out to pitch.