Weblog 134
August 31, 2008~ 12:15am
I'm reading a book by Tess Gerritsen, whose stories often contain esoteric themes and creepy suspense. If you've never picked up a copy of "The Mephisto Club", I urge you to do so. It's a classic.
Her current book, now out in paperback, is called "The Bone Garden", and it flashes back and forth between current times and the 1830's. Being a fan of the Victorian Era, I was so pleased to see the book unfolding the way it does, complete with a Jack the Ripper type killer called 'The Reaper'.
However, this newest book should win an award for being the single novel....
with the most graphic descriptions of stench-- I've ever come across. LOL!! Lord!
Since the plot involves an unearthed corpse in the garden of the female protagonist- and the flashbacks are of smelly, 1800's slums- as well as a medical college anatomist school, it's certainly ripe for scenes of gangrene, childbed fever (and its oozes)- unwashed beggars, and vivid recreations of the body-snatching trade, which thrived in an era when human specimens were very much needed for medical study.
This is certainly not the novel 'The Mephisto Club' was, but for sheer ugliness and love of gruesome, reeking description-- I have to say it's in a category all by itself. The anatomist theater is a repeated scene of organs splatting into buckets-- perforated bowels, and their attendant stench-- the careful verbal depictions of the blood-encrusted cuffs of medical students, their hands sunk deep into abdominal cavities; some of them fainting dead away. (The book can't be beat for atmosphere, and that's a fact.)
Ah..... and by way of tangent here, I'm reminded of a conversation I had recently on the origins of the phrase, "Saved by the bell". One explanation is that it refers to the bells in Victorian graveyards that had strings that continued down into the coffins. It seems there were so many folks buried alive, the bell was a precaution if one should suddenly wake up underground-- "Here I am! I'm not dead..." That explanation may be apocryphal, but it's interesting nevertheless. After all...it wouldn't do to suffocate down there, or perhaps become a victim of the busy resurrectionists (the official bodysnatcher's title of that time.)
Oh my goodness, no!-- that wouldn't do at all.
Because of the advances in hygiene as well as medicine-- there are many reasons to be grateful I'm living today and not back then. However romantic some of it sounds, let's face it: it was a stinky time. LOL!!
August 31, 2008~ 2:15am
Switching from yucky topics to the sublime, click on the moody blue below-
to see the lovely effects of light in these amazing photos. (I think we need a break from fears over Gustav, the general nervousness of the world-- maybe our own negative thoughts.) This site, so full of peace and beauty, should fix you right up. Feel the blood-pressure drop; the eyes go "Ahhhhhh".
September 3, 2008~ 7:30pm
I've been pretty much 'out of it'. It's one of those periods where all of life seems queer and confusing to me; then quickly becomes incomprehensible, overwhelmingly so...
and I 'shut off' for a while. With all the bruhaha over American politics (which I can only gawk at, fearing the worst)--- and all the stories of tragedy- (and they are legion)-- it seems the only thing that moved me in an ontological sense today, is the local story of an emu who'd been found wandering around the New Stanton exit on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, snarling traffic for 45 minutes until the State Police, in utter desperation, tasered it- which did not 'stun', but immediately killed the strange, wondrous, panicked 4ft. tall, flightless bird.
That's a rare, wondrous being, is it not? They think perhaps he fell from a truck and began running about confused and lost, but unwilling to leave the place he'd been plopped. Something touches me about the way cars just stopped.....unwilling to just roll over it...perhaps frightened of something that big, but in my heart of hearts, I think it was wonder- which is so rare nowadays. And even the officers, doubtless at their wits end, thought maybe they could stop it long enough to move it out of the way....get it back to where it came from....I don't think they meant to kill the thing at all.
In reading that story tonight, something moved me. Something 'clicked' inside- and then I recalled a poem by Randall Jarrell about a woman and her invisible eland, a poem filled with such childlike wonder and melancholy that becomes truly magical at the end.
I heard a recording of Jarrell reading just that poem on a CD I own, his voice quivery and touching. If you'd care to read it online, it's right here: Seele im Raum.
Anyway, something in the story of the emu evoked whatever that poem does for me, and it's mysterious and full of shimmery light. Poor frightened emu.....
.....how sad. But how wonderful that such creatures actually exist- and how 'other' they are from ourselves! In a mood such as I've sunken into, it's seems to be only the truly odd that can capture my attention right now, and this story did it. It melted me for a while...it breathed life, even as it was racing toward death. Strange how that happens. And all too often.
September 5, 2008~ 7:15am
And another anomalous eventthat is wonderful. Sometimes, the miracles keep happening!
***
(Return To Weekly Archives)
I'm reading a book by Tess Gerritsen, whose stories often contain esoteric themes and creepy suspense. If you've never picked up a copy of "The Mephisto Club", I urge you to do so. It's a classic.
Her current book, now out in paperback, is called "The Bone Garden", and it flashes back and forth between current times and the 1830's. Being a fan of the Victorian Era, I was so pleased to see the book unfolding the way it does, complete with a Jack the Ripper type killer called 'The Reaper'.
However, this newest book should win an award for being the single novel....
with the most graphic descriptions of stench-- I've ever come across. LOL!! Lord!
Since the plot involves an unearthed corpse in the garden of the female protagonist- and the flashbacks are of smelly, 1800's slums- as well as a medical college anatomist school, it's certainly ripe for scenes of gangrene, childbed fever (and its oozes)- unwashed beggars, and vivid recreations of the body-snatching trade, which thrived in an era when human specimens were very much needed for medical study.
This is certainly not the novel 'The Mephisto Club' was, but for sheer ugliness and love of gruesome, reeking description-- I have to say it's in a category all by itself. The anatomist theater is a repeated scene of organs splatting into buckets-- perforated bowels, and their attendant stench-- the careful verbal depictions of the blood-encrusted cuffs of medical students, their hands sunk deep into abdominal cavities; some of them fainting dead away. (The book can't be beat for atmosphere, and that's a fact.)
Ah..... and by way of tangent here, I'm reminded of a conversation I had recently on the origins of the phrase, "Saved by the bell". One explanation is that it refers to the bells in Victorian graveyards that had strings that continued down into the coffins. It seems there were so many folks buried alive, the bell was a precaution if one should suddenly wake up underground-- "Here I am! I'm not dead..." That explanation may be apocryphal, but it's interesting nevertheless. After all...it wouldn't do to suffocate down there, or perhaps become a victim of the busy resurrectionists (the official bodysnatcher's title of that time.)
Oh my goodness, no!-- that wouldn't do at all.
Because of the advances in hygiene as well as medicine-- there are many reasons to be grateful I'm living today and not back then. However romantic some of it sounds, let's face it: it was a stinky time. LOL!!
August 31, 2008~ 2:15am
Switching from yucky topics to the sublime, click on the moody blue below-
to see the lovely effects of light in these amazing photos. (I think we need a break from fears over Gustav, the general nervousness of the world-- maybe our own negative thoughts.) This site, so full of peace and beauty, should fix you right up. Feel the blood-pressure drop; the eyes go "Ahhhhhh".
September 3, 2008~ 7:30pm
I've been pretty much 'out of it'. It's one of those periods where all of life seems queer and confusing to me; then quickly becomes incomprehensible, overwhelmingly so...
and I 'shut off' for a while. With all the bruhaha over American politics (which I can only gawk at, fearing the worst)--- and all the stories of tragedy- (and they are legion)-- it seems the only thing that moved me in an ontological sense today, is the local story of an emu who'd been found wandering around the New Stanton exit on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, snarling traffic for 45 minutes until the State Police, in utter desperation, tasered it- which did not 'stun', but immediately killed the strange, wondrous, panicked 4ft. tall, flightless bird.
That's a rare, wondrous being, is it not? They think perhaps he fell from a truck and began running about confused and lost, but unwilling to leave the place he'd been plopped. Something touches me about the way cars just stopped.....unwilling to just roll over it...perhaps frightened of something that big, but in my heart of hearts, I think it was wonder- which is so rare nowadays. And even the officers, doubtless at their wits end, thought maybe they could stop it long enough to move it out of the way....get it back to where it came from....I don't think they meant to kill the thing at all.
In reading that story tonight, something moved me. Something 'clicked' inside- and then I recalled a poem by Randall Jarrell about a woman and her invisible eland, a poem filled with such childlike wonder and melancholy that becomes truly magical at the end.
I heard a recording of Jarrell reading just that poem on a CD I own, his voice quivery and touching. If you'd care to read it online, it's right here: Seele im Raum.
Anyway, something in the story of the emu evoked whatever that poem does for me, and it's mysterious and full of shimmery light. Poor frightened emu.....
.....how sad. But how wonderful that such creatures actually exist- and how 'other' they are from ourselves! In a mood such as I've sunken into, it's seems to be only the truly odd that can capture my attention right now, and this story did it. It melted me for a while...it breathed life, even as it was racing toward death. Strange how that happens. And all too often.
September 5, 2008~ 7:15am
And another anomalous eventthat is wonderful. Sometimes, the miracles keep happening!
(Return To Weekly Archives)
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