Reason 1 why I love Rice and her Lestat

'The Dark Moment'

From The Vampire Lestat

Anne Rice

And this notion of the meaninglessness of our lives here began to enflame us.
I took up the theme again that music and acting were good because they drove back chaos. Chaos was the meaninglessness of day-to-day life, and if we were to die now, our lives would have been nothing but meaninglessness. In fact, it came to me that my mother dying soon was meaningless and I confided in Nicolas what she had said. 'I'm perfectly horrified. I'm afraid of it.'
Well, if there had been a Golden Moment in the room it was gone now. And something different started to happen.
I should call it the Dark Moment, but it was still high-pitched and full of eerie light. We were talking rapidly, cursing this meaninglessness, and when Nicolas at last sat down and put his head in his hands, I took some glamorous and hearty swigs of wine and went to pacing and gesturing as he had done before.
I realized aloud in the midst of saying it that even when we die we probably don't find out the answer as to why were we ever alive. Even the avowed atheist probably thinks than in death he'll get some answer. I mean God will be there, or there won't be anything at all.
'But that's just it,' I said, 'we don't make any discovery at that moment! We merely stop! We pass into nonexistence without ever knowing a thing.' I saw the universe, a vision of the sun, the planets, the stars, black night going on forever. And I began to laugh.
'Do you realise that! We'll never know why the hell any of it happened, not even when it's over!' I shouted at Nicolas, who was sitting back on the bed, nodding and drinking his wine out of a flagon. 'We're going to die and not even know. We'll never know, and all this meaninglessness will just go on and on and on. And we won't any longer be witnesses to it. We won't have even that little bit of power to give meaning to it in our minds. We'll just be gone, dead, dead, dead, without ever knowing!'
But I had stopped laughing. I stood still and I understood perfectly what I was saying!
There was no judgement day, no final explanation, no luminous moment in which all terrible wrongs would be made right, all horrors redeemed.
The witches burnt at the stake would never be avenged.
No one was ever going to tell us anything!
No, I didn't understand it at this moment. I saw it! And I began to make the single sound: 'Oh!' I said it again 'Oh!' and then I said it louder and louder and louder, and I dropped the wine bottle on the floor. I put my hands to my head and I kept saying it, and I could see my mouth opened in that perfect circle that I had described to my mother and I kept saying, 'Oh, oh, oh!'
I said it like a great hiccuping that I couldn't stop. And Nicolas took hold of me and started shaking me, saying:
'Lestat, stop!'
I couldn't stop. I ran to the window, unlatched it and swung out the heavy little glass, and stared at the stars. I couldn't stand seeing them. I couldn't stand seeing the pure emptiness, the silence, the absoloute absence of any answer, and I started roaring as Nicolas pulled me back from the window-sill and pulled shut the glass.
'You'll be all right,' he said over and over. Someone was beating on the door. It was the innkeeper, demanding why we had to carry on like this.
'You'll feel all right in the morning,' Nicolas kept insisting. 'You just have to sleep.'
We had awakened everyone. I couldn't be quiet. I kept making the same sound over again. And I ran out of the inn with Nicolas behind me, and down the street of the village and up towards the castle with Nicolas trying to catch up with me, and through the gates and up into my room.
'Sleep, that's what you need,' he kept saying to me desperately. I was lying against the wall with my hands over my ears, and that sound kept coming. 'Oh, oh, oh.'
'In the morning,' he said, 'it will be better.'


WELL, it was not better in the morning.
And it was no better by nightfall, and in fact it got worse with the coming of the darkness.
I walked and talked and gestured like a contented human being, but I was flayed. I was shuddering. My teeth were chattering. I couldn't stop it. I was staring at everything around me in horror. The darkness terrified me. I stared at the mace and the flail I'd taken out after the wolves. I stared at the faces of my brothers. I stared at everything, seeing behind every configuration of colour and light and shadow the same thing; death. Only it wasn't just death as I'd thought of it before, it was death the way I saw it now. Real death, total death, inevitable, irreversible, and resolving nothing!
And in this unbearable state of agitation I commenced to do something I'd never done before. I turned to those around me and questioned them relentlessly.
'But do you believe in God?' I asked my brother Augustin, 'How can you live if you don't!'
'But do you really believe in anything? I demanded of my blind father, 'If you knew you were dying at this very minute, would you expect to see God or darkness! Tell me.'
'You're mad, you've always been mad! he shouted. 'Get out of this house! You'll drive us all crazy.'
He stood up, which was hard for him, being crippled and blind, and he tried to throw his goblet at me and naturally he missed.
I couldn't look at my mother. I couldn't be near her. I didn't want to make her suffer with my questions. I went down to the inn. I couldn't bear to think of the witches' place. I would not have walked to that end of the village for anything! I put my hands over my ears and shut my eyes. 'Go away!' I said at the thought of those who'd died like that without ever, ever understanding anything.
The second day, it was no better.
And it wasn't any better by the end of the week either.
I ate, drank, slept, but every waking moment was pure panic and pure pain. I went to the village priest and demanded did he really believe the Body of Christ was present on the altar at the Consecration. And after hearing his stammered answers, and seeing the fear in his eyes, I went away more desparate than before.
'But how do you live, how do you go on breathing and moving and doing things when you know there is no explanation?' I was raving finally. And then Nicolas said maybe the music would make me feel better. He would play the violin.
I was afraid of the intensity of it. But we went to the orchard and in the sunshine Nicolas played every song he knew. I sat there with my arms folded and my knees drawn up, my teeth chattering though we we were right in the hot sun, and the sun was glaring off the little polished violin, and I watched Nicolas swaying into the music as he stood before me, the raw pure sounds swelling magically to fill the orchard and the valley, though it wasn't magic, and Nicolas put his arms around me finally, and we just sat there silent, and then he said very softly, 'Lestat, believe me, this will pass.'
'Play again,' I said. 'The music is innocent.'
Nicolas smiled and nodded. Pamper the madman.
And I knew it wasn't going to pass, and nothing for the moment could make me forget, but what I felt was inexpressible gratitude for the music, that in this horror there could be something as beautiful as that.
You couldn't understand anything; and you couldn't change anything. But you could make music like that. And I felt the same gratitude when I saw the village children dancing, when I saw their arms raised and their knees bent, and their bodies turning to the rhythmn of the songs they sang. I started to cry watching them.
I wandered into the church and on my knees I leaned against the wall and I looked at the ancient statues and I felt the same gratitude looking at the finely carved fingers and the noses and the ears and the expressions on their faces and the deep folds in their garments, and I couldn't stop myself from crying.
At least we had these beautiful things, I said. Such goodness.
But nothing natural seemed beautiful to me now! The very sight of a great tree standing alone in a field could make me tremble and cry out. Fill the orchard with music.
And let me tell you a little secret. It never did pass, really.

WHAT caused it? Was it the late night drinking and talking, or did it have to do with my mother and her saying she was going to die? Did the wolves have something to do with it? Was it a spell cast upon the imagination by the witches' place?
I don't know. It had come like something visited upon me from outside. One minute it was an idea, and the next it was real. I think you can invite that sort of thing, but you can't make it come.
Of course it was to slacken. But the sky was never quite the same shade of blue again. I mean the world looked different forever after, and even in moments of exquisite happiness there was the darkness lurking, the sense of our frailty and our hopelessness.


http://www.bradcolbourne.com/the_dark_moment.html
pages 65-70
The Vampire Lestat
Second Volume of The Vampire Chronicles
By Anne Rice
IBSN 0-7088-3153-2
Warner Books

woot.

Well. Here we are.

I picked up an application to Kohl's for the summer. I might stop by the old people place that just opened up. It's a great confidence boost, this job hunting and making myself seem so utterly amazing. But I don't really enjoy it.

I have to write an essay in the style of Montaigne. Fun stuff. 3-4 pages. Shouldn't be too hard. My problem is that I just have to pick a topic. I also have reading for Kalas to do.

Oh look, the sun is coming out. A little.

Wait, there it is. And it's almost sixty out. Wow, great weather. Really good weather.

Damn I love Washington. But I know I can't stay. That's ok, I'll just visit from time to time.

The breeze is divine. I wish I could bottle it.

Hmmmm...

Should I open this up to my Facebook buddies? Let them find it on their own?

Hmmm.....

For some reason I love baring my soul to the world. Good times.

Oh why the hell not. No one reads this sucker anyway.

I'll just not post my myspace blogs to here. Nope, some Facebook people probably would get hurt by a few on there. If they read the archives.

So yes. Woot. Lady Rain is getting a face. Or, the face is getting Lady Rain.

I'm getting Coldstone in an hour. That will not help me look better in a swimsuit this summer.

Not that anyone I'd be trying to impress would see me. Ah well.

Sit with me, Lestat, just for a little while...

And here we are at another Sunday. Mass, lunch with Josh, Lacamas Park and the Camas Lilly Fields, Oscars, Frosties with Chad, new Postsecrets. And now let's commence the spontaneous and disjointed Facebook musings.

When I'm alone, my heart slowly and silently weeps for you.
...crawl in like a cockroach leaving babies in my bed dropping little reels of tape...

I've had Coldplay's "Fix You" stuck in my head all day.
...lights will guide you home...

I think Camas is becoming my favorite place on earth. As I realize this, I also am beginning to understand why I can't stay there, and how terrified I am of the uncertainty and changes that are likely to take place in my future. I can keep going, honest, I can, I can do it - as long as I have a few good pairs of arms to fall into when I get tired and worn. I'm just scared of it right now, alone, on my bed, in my room, in Camas.

I'm starting to see how dysfunctional my family is becoming in its own way. I also believe that hope is not lost for all to be mended. Times like these I praise God for my optimism. I really hope I do a good job with my kids. Really, really hope.

Lestat Lives. And the next Christ the Lord comes out March 4th. Praise God that Anne Rice is still alive and writing. Thing to do before I die #23: Meet Anne Rice before she dies. If Lestat were real...sometimes I'm not sure that I wouldn't ask him to change me.

I just killed a bug. It was tiny and looked like a yellow ladybug. It made a crunching sound. Like a potato chip. Or the clicky sound my laptop keys make.

After lunch with Josh I took a walk around Lacamas Lake and walked up to the Lilly Field. Or, where it is when they're blooming. It's one of the best stargazing spots in town. It's really not much. It's just special to me because I've been there at night with David and Chris and Nathan and Kayla and Chad and everyone. Illegally, mind you. But no one really is going to catch us, and we're not hurting anything, so no one really cares.

For the first time, I wish Camas and Emmitsburg weren't so far away. Really, really wish Washington and Maryland were closer. I wish my friends in my two worlds could meet each other, I wish I could see them all on breaks. I envy the kids that get to go home on weekends. I do suppose it was important for me to go so far to break the chains. But dang...I really wish I could have a family there. Yes, my college buddies have all become my surrogate family, and I really love them dearly. But there's still that line there. The line that goes away with time and experience. That might just be in my still slightly cautious mind, a mind that doesn't want to impose and overstay her welcome. The line that comes with the fact that remains, that I'm from Washington, that makes me different, and that I'm not really one of them. Yet? Wow that's depressing. Quite depressing. I think I need to take comfort in the fact that I'm beginning a new chapter, a new history there, and heck, I at least have Kayla. But it still makes me feel a bit empty. Not empty. Alone. Lonely. I know what it is. It's the fact that I don't fit completely with the east side yet, but that I'm getting separated from the west side at the same time. It's like I'm in the in between where I'm just a friend in one world and visiting relative in the other. The solid ground beneath me is shaking, and I pray that it doesn't open up beneath my feet to swallow me whole.

I love watching the Oscars. A big reason for it is because I love seeing the gowns the women wear. I think they're so pretty. I like to watch Olympic Figure Skating for similar reasons.

So let's see...feelings of apprehension, loneliness, uncertainty, awe, wonder, excitement, amusement, compassion...

Sounds like a typical day.

Laura and Michel, sitting in a tree...

...K-I-S-S-I-N-G!

I was reading over Petrarch's Sonnets, as part of my studying for Hamel's Lit midterm tomorrow. Oh how I wish I could write poetry. I used to try. It wasn't too bad, either. When I was 12 I was making ample use of extended metaphor and whatnot. I wrote a poem about someone washing their hands, but using a battle instead. Part of me is a bit embarrassed by it, but another part is still proud as heck of it. I'd write about everything. I even pulled off an actual Shakespearian sonnet for English freshman year of high school. I love words. I love the English language. And although Rosencrantz and Guildenstern may be dead, I love them dearly.

If I could write poetry, I could write songs. Oh man, that would be perfect. But as it is I am left to make use of the works of others, copy and paste words from someone else's mouth. I've said it a few times, but I believe in two things: love and music. Maybe there’s a reason why I play the clarinet. So my mouth is too busy making an embouchure to sing while I play.

I love Blue October because their songs are purposeful; they have meaning and use brilliant and harsh imagery. I first heard their song "Hate Me" and what struck me the most was "They crawl in like a cockroach leaving babies in my bed, dropping little reels of tape to remind me that I'm alone, playing movies in my head that make a porno feel like home." And then I saw their music video for "Into the Ocean" and I had a new favorite song. Their music in that song is even bubbly, like water. But currently my favorite by them is "Independently Happy." Perfectly describes my feelings towards living here, because I’m finally happy. But you all know that. If you don’t, consult my previous notes.

But alas, Prose is my voice. I don't mean to say that I'm discontent with it. Far from it, because (these are my Notes, so I can sound incredibly arrogant if I want to) I've got a pretty darn good handle of informal prose when I feel it. It's my voice, and if you want to be happy you have to learn to love your unique voice. Prose is part of my voice. The thing is, even my poetry was always most comfortable for me when written in free or blank verse. It just shows, I guess, that prose is what I'm meant to use, and to use it well. I have the greener disease.

So why do I want poetry? Poetry, real poetry has to come from the heart. It's the same reason why I fall for musicians. Real music comes from the soul. Its fruit of something deep and real and beautiful living there, growing there. A real soul, a real heart that cares about the big questions, that has the capacity to love and be loved. And damn, that's hot. I get excited when I hear that someone (especially guys) writes poetry, or songs, because songs count as poetry. I think part of it also has to do with the fact that I’m a hopeless romantic. Gothic Macabre from Poe, Romanticism from Shakespearian sonnets and drama, and passion from a million other greats.

I think I write a bit like Montaigne does. Start with a topic, make digressions, and maybe come back to the original point. Frankly I haven’t read as much as I am supposed to of his work, but I still feel a bit of affinity with him. Much like how I can relate in a scary way to Catherine of Northanger Abbey. Now that was fun reading. Another Sparknotes Classic. Ah well. There are worse things, I suppose. Besides the fact that Sparknotes is a complete and total insult to the actual reading of literature because it is abused so much to take the place of actual reading. But I read and use them anyway. You could call me a hypocrite; I call me human. I acknowledge my deficiencies and advocate the ideal. Wow, that sounds a lot like Catholic teaching. Regular old wishy washy Christian, even. (again, my dad is Lutheran, so I can bash prots because deep down inside I really love them. It’s the same concept as it being ok for black people to bash black people. I take my excuses for invective when I can get them. Deal with it). Realize we’re sinful, but try to ‘be perfect, just as your heavenly father is perfect.’

Bottom line (But why should there be one?): I love poetry, but I write prose and I’m okay with that. If you write poetry and I have some sick feeble sort of feelings, whatever form they take for you, they’ll be magnified by double if you write poetry, and ten if it’s good. That goes for friends and lovers.

Lovers. HA. Now there’s a funny word. Let the record show that Katelyn is single and happy. Independently Happy.

Damn I love layers of meaning.

Happy (Belated) Valentine’s Day, everyone.

It's that time again

2:19am, and I'm finishing up a multidraft that really lives up to playing the system. I've got no caffeine in my system, folks. This is pure willpower. And Trident gum.

A few thoughts:

I gave up caffeine for Lent, and am committing to playing my clarinet an hour a day for five days a week. Woot. I'm thrilled. Derek (and most people, probably) think I'm crazy to give up caffeine, that it's necessary. True as that may be, we'll see if I can't change my lifestyle to make sure I don't need it.

I ended up writing my multidraft on Child Soldiers. It reminds me of this book called Warchild. You all should read it. It's long, but it's awesome.

I found a song by Blue October. It's from their third album (I think), and it's called "Independently Happy". I think it perfectly describes how I feel about living here. Go youtube it or something.
lyrics:

I feel that it's hard enough to say goodbye.
I feel there's the water. Should I sink or dive?
An empty plate, fill up my sentimental morning star.
I steal the art of putting truth in a lie.
I still want the girl that reall caught my eye.
But, she lives in Oklahoma City, far away from me.
Well there's an empty hope chest.
I quit the dope quest,
And remain independently happy.

I said I'm finally happy...happy...independen

tly happy.

And I deal with the fact that I've forgotten the worst.
And I feel that my social behavior may seem somewhat unrehearsed.
But another page.
A sullen rage.
And I'll be back to my normal self.

I'm finally happy...happy...independently happy.

So I drive to the edge of my considerate plain.
And I apologize to the people I hurt on the way.
But I, I wipe the slate clean.
I kick the daydream,
And remain independently happy.

I said I'm finally happy...happy... independently happy.

Can you keep a secret?

Yeah, it's a lame title. Doesn't resonate with me as much as my others do. Or maybe it does.

There's a man named Frank who asked people to mail them their secrets. Three years later his blog has over 122,000,000 hits (much more after tonight) and he's written three books with them. And every Sunday he publishes a dozen or so more new ones in his blog. The only condition is that it be a secret that the sender hasn't told anyone else, ever. It's called Post Secret. I thought more people knew about it, but I was talking to Kayla about it and she hadn't heard of it, so it may not be as widely known as I had originally thought. But apparently Car and Erica are also avid Post Secret followers.

To be blunt, I love this site. It's one of my internet addictions (along with Facebook, I-Am-Bored.com, and Myspace). And now, ladies and gents, the driving question. Why?

Why do I read them? Easy answer: to feel less alone. But that's so generic and boring. That's why anyone would read them. Not why I would read them.

I read them because I feel like I'm getting free access into someone's soul. Someone, somewhere, is opening up and letting me see a glimpse of who they are and some of their skeletons hiding in their closet. Their dirty laundry. It's like listening in on someone's confession. Total taboo, but at the same time, so tempting. At least with this you've got their permission, so it's ok.

It's like discovering a song by your favorite band (Blue October, "Razorblade"). It's like digging into that brand new book in that series you're following (Harry Potter, anyone?). Or when after Christmas vacation and writers strikes you get a new episode of your TV series (House!). It's like coming up for a new idea for that novel brewing in your head (The name of my heroine). Like the high you get when playing with your fellow musicians (I've written already on that idea).

The whole this is like a drug. So addicting, we just have to know what's next. You need your next high, your next fix. Although, I've never done drugs, so I should probably pick a different metaphor.

Well, my dears, I read because it brings company, I read because I'm a bit morbid and twisted, because it helps me feel more okay with myself and my own Post Secrets.

I read because I need that human element to survive.
Because it distracts me from that drunken cacophony outside my door in that scary world out there.
Because I get a glimpse of the state of society.
Because, when I come back later in the week, I see people helping strangers and lending a hand to the needy in the responses to the Post Secrets. A despairing woman expressed her feelings on a postcard of a train station. Another person asked to meet her there on Feb. 6 at 6pm, that he/she would be wearing a blue coat and that he/she was doing it to let her know she's not alone. Creepy? Most would think so. Me being the naturally gullible/trusting type, I find it beautiful.

So, while I munch on burnt popcorn, go check it out yourself.

www.postsecret.com