GENUS LUPUS
STARVE ACRE // RABBIT TRAP : Folk Horror Twin Tales
Starve acre is a sublime folk horror written by Andre Michael Hurley. It follows two parents grieving the death of their disturbed child. Set against the snow of a wintery rural landscape, it drips with gothic galore. I stole the book from my hare-obsessed partner and read it towards the end of last year. For someone suffering from serious doom-scroll-induced-reader’s-block it felt deliciously like tumbling down a rabbit hole. I swallowed the book, or rather it swallowed me, in just over 3 days. It was the first book I had finished (without seriously forcing it) in potentially a couple years. I have been meaning to write a book review, or something about it, ever since. You know when you are so impacted by a piece of art that you feel called to respond? That’s how I felt. Immediately compelled to write a love letter back to the thing I was totally infatuated with. But, as usual, my nature as a self-conscious perfectionist (virgo) got in the way. I was left in a state of complete creative paralysis. Having neglected my creative urge for so long, I simply didn’t know where to start, what to write, what to draw. How could I possibly express how the book had made me feel, when the feeling was so deep in my belly that my tongue couldn’t reach it? How do you talk back to something that is speaking in symbol, that pricks hair on warm skin whilst tugging at some intuitive root you carry, buried and knotted in your dark places? How does the water describe the impact of a raindrop that is still rippling outwards? I couldn’t fathom speaking the same language as Starve Acre, let alone answering back.
Women Should Serve Men
Sorry boys this is my misandry page…Look away!
The page below this image includes a series of facts about ‘violence against women’. I will revisit this page updating it with new statistics periodically. I am not sure why I feel the need to collate these somewhere for myself, but I do. Please proceed with caution and care… you are approaching a statistical cesspit that might leave you seething or weeping. Perhaps don’t scroll beyond the beheading if you wish not to have your day ruined.
Declarations of A Healthy Adult
A Declaration of a Healthy Adult, from “How to Be an Adult” by David Richo
I accept full responsibility for the shape my life has taken. / I need never fear my own truth, powers, fantasies wishes, thoughts, sexuality, dreams, or ghosts. / I trust that “darkness and upheaval always precede an expansion of consciousness”. (Jung) / I let people go away or stay and am still okay.
Honouring Pamela Coleman Smith
Illustrating the Arcane…Whose Name on the Cards?
Birthdays can be most useful. Particularly, because they permit busy-bodies such as myself to correct history under the polite guise of celebration. Today is the birthday of Pamela Coleman Smith. Pamela’s work has been handled, shuffled, breathed upon, and solemly consulted by millions who could not pick her out of a line-up of Edwardian librarians. Many a mystic, dilettante, sceptic, poet, cartomancer and scorned ex-lover will be familiar with, and may even own her works. Yet I doubt not half of them know her name, No Longer!
The Lunatic Fringe
From Mabel Grey To Modern Day… Oh The Moral Perils of Forehead Visibility!
“Of all the positively ugly modes now current, the mode of wearing the hair ‘banged’, or combed down over the brow and cut square is perhaps the ugliest. It had its origins, if we mistake not, in the demimonde of Paris, where so many fashions rise.”
— ‘The Lunatic Fringe’ in the Northern Warder, 14 October, 1880
Mother Holle
A tale of Snow and Industry (Toads not included)
I am blessed with a job that places me in the path of artists, and other inspired individuals. This often makes for interesting conversations and about a month ago, whilst recording a video interview, I was speaking to one such artist, about the inspirations behind one of her sculptures. She turned to her piece and pointed down at a small pewter figure; it all began with the toad.