It's been a while
Mar. 23rd, 2025 07:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
polyproticamory
Unsurprising no one, it has been a few years since I've written in this space. A lot has happened.
When I was in undergrad, I read Lady Oracle by Margaret Atwood. It was the first Margaret Atwood novel I had read, though by that point I knew of The Handmaid's Tale, and my partner had highly recommended Oryx and Crake to me. But I came across a copy of Lady Oracle in a secondhand bookshop and got it for a steal. Not much about it is extremely memorable. I remember thinking that Lady Oracle was published after The Handmaid's Tale because it was about a woman author who fakes her own death after her feminist novel had attracted some ire from the general reading public; my chronology was off, however, and Lady Oracle was published before The Handmaid's Tale—but after The Edible Woman, which I still have not yet read.
But aside from vague recollections of the plot, I vaguely recall a part early in the book where the protagonist describes her life as a baroque mirror: curling and winding in a "flabby" way (I remember specifically the word "flabby" to describe the meandering motion of a baroque design). And every so often, when I feel unfocused, I half-remember that passage. Time seems to spread away from me, unwinding and piling up in tangles of so much thread.
And I've been thinking about what I want this space to be: a public, semi-pseudonymous (this is a username I've used on other platforms tied to my real name, etc.), free space for me to share whatever I like, but I've been feeling a bit too aimless. I've felt like my writing lately has been a baroque mirror: somewhat self-reflective, but circling with no destination.
This page might not really become anything with any real focus, but I'm going to try and write in it more often anyway. It's funny: a lot of writers say that they have a notebook problem, buying more notebooks and never filling any of them, when that has never been my problem. I have very few notebooks that I haven't filled entirely, and I don't tend to hoard notebooks; I only do that when I'm embarking on a big writing project and I know I'll want to fill several notebooks' worth of notes, drafts, etc.
But what I do have are a lot of online spaces that sort of act like notebooks. I have a professional-ish website where I house the writing that has my real name attached so that people know I'm a real person when they Google (or DuckDuckGo, or, heaven forbid, Bing) me. I also have places like these where I'll jot half-formed thoughts, dash off some quick commentary, and then tend to leave abandoned for a while. So consider this entry a kind of revival of a notebook. I might keep this up; I might take three years to post the next entry. Who knows? I certainly don't.
When I was in undergrad, I read Lady Oracle by Margaret Atwood. It was the first Margaret Atwood novel I had read, though by that point I knew of The Handmaid's Tale, and my partner had highly recommended Oryx and Crake to me. But I came across a copy of Lady Oracle in a secondhand bookshop and got it for a steal. Not much about it is extremely memorable. I remember thinking that Lady Oracle was published after The Handmaid's Tale because it was about a woman author who fakes her own death after her feminist novel had attracted some ire from the general reading public; my chronology was off, however, and Lady Oracle was published before The Handmaid's Tale—but after The Edible Woman, which I still have not yet read.
But aside from vague recollections of the plot, I vaguely recall a part early in the book where the protagonist describes her life as a baroque mirror: curling and winding in a "flabby" way (I remember specifically the word "flabby" to describe the meandering motion of a baroque design). And every so often, when I feel unfocused, I half-remember that passage. Time seems to spread away from me, unwinding and piling up in tangles of so much thread.
And I've been thinking about what I want this space to be: a public, semi-pseudonymous (this is a username I've used on other platforms tied to my real name, etc.), free space for me to share whatever I like, but I've been feeling a bit too aimless. I've felt like my writing lately has been a baroque mirror: somewhat self-reflective, but circling with no destination.
This page might not really become anything with any real focus, but I'm going to try and write in it more often anyway. It's funny: a lot of writers say that they have a notebook problem, buying more notebooks and never filling any of them, when that has never been my problem. I have very few notebooks that I haven't filled entirely, and I don't tend to hoard notebooks; I only do that when I'm embarking on a big writing project and I know I'll want to fill several notebooks' worth of notes, drafts, etc.
But what I do have are a lot of online spaces that sort of act like notebooks. I have a professional-ish website where I house the writing that has my real name attached so that people know I'm a real person when they Google (or DuckDuckGo, or, heaven forbid, Bing) me. I also have places like these where I'll jot half-formed thoughts, dash off some quick commentary, and then tend to leave abandoned for a while. So consider this entry a kind of revival of a notebook. I might keep this up; I might take three years to post the next entry. Who knows? I certainly don't.