not so very hot as yesterdayYesterday, I wrote 1,062 words on Chapter Two of The Red Tree. Which made it a decent writing day, but not as decent as I needed it to be. The office was just too hot to think clearly. The sun blasting through the blinds, I thought my brain would bake. I feared I'd written nothing but several pages of crap, though when I read it back to Spooky afterwards, it seemed okay. One of my greatest regrets about this book is that I almost certainly will not be able to see it printed as it should be printed, but different typefaces and various drawings and photographs included.
Also, I got word that Frank Woodward's Lovecraft documentary has been accepted for its first film festival, the 2008 Comic Con International Film Festival in San Diego, California. Specifically, for those attending the festival, it will be screened Thursday, July 24th, in Room 26AB from 8-9:45 p.m.
When the writing was done, about 5 p.m., I told Spooky that I just couldn't take the heat anymore, and asked could we please, please flee the house south to Moonstone Beach. She was looking pretty wrung out, as well, having spent the day hanging pictures. She agreed at once. By the time we reached South County, the sky was overcast and a fog was settling across everything. We missed the turn off from the Matunuck School House Road onto Moonstone Beach Road, because we were distracted by great hoards of young rabbits. So, we had to backtrack a bit. The beach was beautiful, the fog getting thicker and thicker, the sky a slaty grey-blue. The surf was rougher than I'd ever seen it at Moonstone, the breakers roaring over the sand as the tide rose. Spooky went off to search for shells and stones, and I sat down and worked on my Book Of Shadows, something I'm writing there about Panthalassa. But the sound of the sea soon distracted me, and I joined Spooky. She'd made one of her impromptu arrangements of pebbles and cobbles. We picked through the the debris washed up along the strand. She found another long frond of kelp, which I think must have been Saccorhiza dermatodea, but now I'm confused over whether or not it's the same species Sonya (
sovay) found at Beavertail last weekend, which I identified as another genus and species altogether, Laminaria agardhii. I'm trying very hard to become familiar with the local marine fauna and flora, but I'm starting the accept it may take me years (and unpacking my microscope). Other taxa I identified yesterday included a convex slipper shell (Crepidula plana; shells of any sort are rare at Moonstone), sea potato (Leathesia difformis), a large and very dead common spider crab (Libinia emarginata), Irish moss (Chrondrus crispus) and sea lettuce (Ulva latuca). After a while, we sat back down on the sand, and I worked on a meditation exercise involving drawing mandalas in the sand, within which Spooky built still more stone mounds. There were still remains of the altars she'd made back on June 10th. We watched several Piping Plovers (Charadrius melodus) racing about on the sand. It was, genuinely, a magickal evening, and when we finally left, about 8 p..m., the day's heat was forgotten, my clothes and hair covered in sand, damp from sea spray and the fog. There's still sand in my hair this morning. Before making the trip back to Providence, we swung by Spooky's mom and dad's farm in Saunderstown, to get eggs (we also got a jar of rather spicy bread-and-butter pickles). Her parents had just returned by train from Brooklyn, where they'd spent a couple of days visiting with her sister, Stephanie, and infant nephew, whose name is Miles. There are photos from the beach, but I have not yet edited them for the journal. Maybe tomorrow.
It was almost ten by the time we made it back home. We warmed up Saturday night's chili, and then I slipped into Second Life for a several hours of good rp (thank you, Lorne and Pontifex). The story of Labyrinth grows and grows.
And I should really go now, because that novel refuses to write itself.
Postscript (1:41 p.m.): I almost forgot. Today marks our one-month anniversary since the escape from Atlanta and our arrival in Providence.