Into The Mansion

Somewhere, once upon a time, I learned an interesting theory about dreams. That theory stated that certain rooms represented certain aspects of the dreamer’s psyche. If you dream of a bedroom, for instance, that’s believed to have something to do with sexuality and intimacy. If you dream of a kitchen, that’s your domestic side, a living room was considered your social, public self … and so on. That, in part is what Into The Mansion is about.

Not long ago in Facebook Land, I shared that I was working on something somewhat different than my usual Horror novel fare. Oh, it’s still about a big, creepy, old house, but instead of prose – it’s poetry. It’s not a new poem. It was written in 1995, though parts of it existed long before that in the world of my dreams.

Instead of just posting it here and forcing you all to read, I’ve created a 7-minute video of the poem that I narrate. It took more times than I care to mention to get a recording I was happy with and though it’s still not perfection – it will do.

And so, without further delay – I extend a hand and say, “Come with me …

INTO THE MANSION

 

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Peter, Peter, Pumpkin-Eater

As I do every year just before Halloween I bought some pumpkins. My heart wasn’t into it as much this time around, but who am I to break a lifelong tradition? I considered carving them into Jack-o’-lanterns, but that never happened. The smallest of the three succumbed early to rot. The other two sat on the porch quietly awaiting their fates. Would they, too, be food for the birds and critters?

Last week Jim asked about them, suggesting I actually process them and make a pie. It was a novel idea and not one I have not considered in the past. It did seem a waste to just let them sit around only to eventually be tossed out back into the compost pile.

On Saturday, I made the commitment and set to work cutting, gutting, cooking, puréeing, and freezing the smaller of the two still edible squashes. I figured the big one wouldn’t be as good for human consumption and frankly I don’t use a lot of pumpkin in anything to begin with. This was more a fun project than anything else. I ended up with 12 cups of home-processed pumpkin. Not a bad haul and easy enough to make.

As my mind is wont to do, it wandered off while all this was going on. It kept repeating that old nursery rhyme in my head, “Peter, Peter, Pumpkin Eater” to the point of turning into something more than a little disturbing.

Consider the whole rhyme for a moment:

Peter, Peter pumpkin eater,
Had a wife but couldn’t keep her;
He put her in a pumpkin shell
And there he kept her very well.

Peter, Peter pumpkin eater,
Had another and didn’t love her;
Peter learned to read and spell,
And then he loved her very well.

Seriously think about this.

This guy Peter, apparently a HUGE fan of pumpkins, can’t seem to keep his wife interested. His solution is to put her inside a pumpkin shell and keep her there. First off, that’s one big pumpkin. Second, how did she go about her domestic duties once put into this shell… or did she? He’s a known eater of pumpkins. He stuffs his difficult wife into a pumpkin. Does he then eat the pumpkin and possibly his wife in the process?

peter-pumpkin-eater

As I cooked my own pumpkins, I pondered this more times than is probably healthy. Maybe Peter was actually a cannibal! Maybe putting her into a pumpkin shell is the nice way of saying he butchered her, ala Mr. Todd and his lovely assistant Mrs. Lovett.

Which brings us to the next verse. The wife Peter stuffed into (and possibly ate) a pumpkin shell was apparently not his one and only. His second wife he was unable to love until he could read and spell (write). I get the feeling Peter was not a particularly bright man. Perhaps he envied this other wife’s education. I’m going to speculate she was pretty well off considering this poem is believed to have been first published around 1825, a time when well-read women weren’t quite so common as they are today.

After eating his first wife, Peter found another woman he admired. Unfortunately, she lived in a world above his. Maybe he was but a mere pumpkin farmer and felt he didn’t have a chance with this new woman until he could improve on his own education. So, Peter somewhere along the line learned to read and spell. Only then was he able to approach this new love with the confidence he needed. It never says if she loved him back, mind you. I would like to think she did, otherwise I’m guessing she, too, would have ended up on the dinner table.

All this because I decided to be frugal and not waste my pumpkins this year.

As Edgar A. Poe once wrote, “I am a writer, therefor I am not sane.” Yeah, I really think there may be some truth to all that. Do sane people think about Peter the Pumpkin Eater as a poorly educated pumpkin farming cannibal?

And yet people continue to ask where horror writers get their twisted and dark ideas from!

Oh, and by the way, enjoy your pumpkin pie at Thanksgiving!

Pumpkin-Pie-Recipe-4

 

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I Think I’m Haunted

Last year was an incredibly active year for me as far as writing poetry is concerned. Oh, I jotted down a wee bit of fiction here and there but poetry was off the chart. With poetry I am able to convey more intense emotions and the whole business of falling in love swept me away. It was also about getting over the crap in the past that I still struggle with now and then. The stories and poems I write often help me get through those struggles in a safe and legal way.  What with all these new gun debates, rules and regulations, I get the feeling society might frown a wee bit on me shooting someone that has done me wrong. And besides, I really am a peaceful person.

However, I can have one of my characters kidnap, tortures, shoot, stab, dismember or what have you another character who might – kinda sorta – resemble either physically or personality-wise folks I’ve developed a certain dislike for, shall we say? On the other hand, there are also characters based on the people in my life I am very fond of. Thank God there are more of those than the other.

The aspect of all this that surprises me the most are the characters that appear like a ghost out of thin air. How they approach me varies. One may give me its name first. Another might tell me what it looks like. Others are more emotional. There was one who told me its occupation long before it ever had any of the other things. The real tough ones are those that don’t let me know much of anything about themselves and just leap at me with a story to tell. If I’m lucky I’ll at least have a first initial to work with. It’s a little like ghost hunting.

In the past couple weeks a new character has started to get brave enough to present herself to me. She was actually introduced to me by my boyfriend while I was visiting him out in Texas. In passing he mentioned that the name “Liberty Hill” would be great for a character in a book. It’s the name of a very small, central Texas town we passed through on one of our jaunts. I agreed and didn’t give it too much thought after; back burner stuff. I already had two novels in progress and didn’t really want to put any energy into thinking about who this Liberty woman might be. Recently, Liberty has had other ideas about that.

I bumped into her in a book store about six days ago. I think she did it on purpose. At any rate, we’d not been in the place five minutes before this phrase flashed before me – as if I was looking at a book title. Liberty was quick to inform me that that’s the title I needed to use when telling her story. As I always carry a small note pad and pen with me, I immediately got both out and wrote the title down. It was rather hard to concentrate on browsing after that. My first thought about the title was that it wasn’t very good for a murder-mystery.

Come to find out, Liberty’s story isn’t a murder mystery. It’s a ghost story. I was only told that yesterday.

I don’t think I’ll be writing much poetry this year. Liberty & Choice, Nell & Lydia, Clint & Bea and Grace & Eric all have other ideas about how I should be spending my time in 2013. Each one is going to nag at me ruthlessly like the ghosts that some of them are, until I tell the world about them and put them to rest – hopefully between the covers of a published novel.

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