The Lair of the Emerald Serpent

This is now my 12th time doing Nanowrimo in November
The first time was in 2009 and by coincidence, this year’s days and dates coincide - i.e. In 2009 (and also 2015) the first day of November was a Sunday, which also meant that it is a Black Friday month
The last Black Friday in November was in 2015 and I remember it as if only yesterday because it was the day that a bunch of terrorists attempted to attack a football game in France and managed to kill more than a hundred people in the Bataclan theatre

So aside from those awful anniversaries, what I have noticed over the whole time is that I usually spend the first week in a sluggish snailish state unlike most Nanowrimo squigglers who are full of enthusiasm and bright ideas. They start all bright eyed and bushy tailed and chalk up YUUUGE word counts while I just plod along just managing to reach the daily word count quota of 1,666 words

( The Missing Muse )

I barely lurk in Cyberia at all these days. Not even on Twitter. Even then it is usually to catch up on and of course snaffle the latest David Rowe masterpiece.

( Monsters and weeds )

Today was a seriously busy day. After 2 days of lurking and slinking at Borgin and Burkes eying up the territory and the Enemy, today was the big day.

I had been drawing up the battle plans because auctions are infamous pits of quicksand for those who do not have their reason and wits about them.

( The Serpent's Strategy )

Nanowrimo is over for yet another year and I reached the magical milestone of 50,000 words but added another 5,555 of my own in order to indulge my obsession with pretty and symmetrical numbers

The story that I intended to write was NOT the one that ended up on the pages. Like too often in the last few years Dursley dramas have hijacked any attempts to write normal stories

But there are no regrets. For this giant formless pile of words did not turn into a proper story with a beginning, middle and end but transformed itself instead into a giant Pensieve.

I joined the dots and found all sorts of sneaky but legal ways to get into trance states. The music of Lisa Gerrard is a particularly potent weapon for this purpose. I listened for the tiniest stirrings of the inner serpent and resorted to all sorts of devious means to bring the shy and retiring creature out of hibernation

And that is how the real magic happened. Just in the nick of time too. For if the inner serpent had not come to the rescue, it would have been a dark and difficult time watching Vile Vernon Dursley grandest plan to date to erase the last living trace of Petunia's legacy from the planet

So I have managed to turn the most bitter and sour of lemons into a very bubbly tasty potion indeed.

Such a pretty day on the calendar. I could not help but recall another 22nd November. Not the usual suspect of Friday 22nd November 1963 in Dallas Texas but rather Friday 22nd November 2013 at the Dome Memorial Cafe in Victoria Park. Just outside of downtown Dursleyville

It was a scheduled Nanowrimo write in and I had chosen to write about a zombie invasion of the city and a charismatic leader who declared that only he could save the city from the shuffling hordes
It was kind of creepy because once I got into the zone, this character Theodore Addams started giving stump speeches and rallying his rag tag army of lycra louts with words bearing an uncanny resemblance to the content of the Gettysburg Address. Not to be outdone, John F Kennedy insisted on his 15 minutes of fame too. All a bit peculiar since I actually based him on one Tony Abbott who had just won an Australian federal election that September.

It’s those magical moments in the zone that make all the drudgery worth while. The give away serpent signs often involve Biblical texts such as when the same character - a born again atheist goes to a fortune teller just to take the piss and she goes all Magnificat on him and his mission to vanquish the mighty and to raise the lowly to great heights. Suddenly he finds her very believable but still plots and schemes to get her tried and burned as a witch.

( Musings and meanderings )

It’s Divali today. But I am way too drained to do any party sorts of things.
There are just too many Dursleyish dramas. Every time I manage to get back on my broomstick and flying again, the vile Vernon Dursley hurls a dozen bludgers at me and then I go crashing to the ground all fallen to pieces. And then he sends in his army of Dementors to finish me off. But not totally. That would be way too much like mercy.

Oh No. He would prefer to keep me as his personal Prometheus. Of course he does not even know any of those stories of ancient Greek Gods and mortals but that does not matter. He has the soul and the mind of a predator. No higher brain and all gut instinct. (Uncannily like a certain real estate developer on steroids who has delusions of being a president. Pity there are so many brown nosed sycophants fuelling this illusion. I had a snarky twitter blitz with one of them this evening. )

It is more fun to watch and wait as I slowly crawl into a corner to put myself back together again.
After curling into a ball and having a grand pity party it eventually gets rather tedious and a bit boring. Before long the broomstick is calling. The temptation becomes irresistible and then he strikes again.

He has even totally derailed the grandest of Nanowrimo plans. What began as a story about a tax clerk looking for a big break to set up her own private detective agency has slowly turned into a sordid tale of a Prodigal Father who rejects his own grown up children in favour of a gold digging hippy only to end up broke, alone and friendless and left begging at the door of his disinherited offspring.

When life hands you lemons, make lemonade!

Last March the serpent had grand plans. It was time for a big fat hairy audacious goal and no better deadline than Tuesday 3rd April being the 20th anniversary of being officially declared owner of the Lair. Of course the Izzie had to tweek that a bit. With a Friday 13th just around the corner, that seemed so much more suitable a day for celebrating

So the grand plan was to mark this important milestone with a few achievements on the home front. Mainly a reasonably respectable Lair that would not be a source of embarrassment for potential visitors. A place for everything and everything in its place but most importantly some serious sorting of books and stuff and finally some attention to that grand permaculture garden project

Herb spirals, a teapot tree, scarecrows, a Hexen Ecke and an assortment of other interesting things were plotted and planned and jotted in little green spiral notebooks

But the gods cackle when serpents hatch plans.

In the end, a giant chunk of 2017 from April till October was spent either visiting Petunia in hospital, lurking around with Dudley or Daisy Dursley who came to visit twice or staying over at Number 4 Privet Drive and cooking her meals and stuff and generally trying to dilute the toxic influence of Vile Vernon.

That time period covered pretty much all of the growing season here so not only did very little get planted but the serpen't garden of Eden was very much neglected and quite a few of the weeds on the June solstice stock taking list are well and truly no longer around for the next annual stock take.

But today being the one day of the year when all the shops and pretty much everything is closed and the radio is all war, gloom and doom, it was the perfect day to do the giant garden blitz.

Planted some very precious saffron bulbs, some acorns in a circle around Petunia's new almond tree ( of course there would be no room for them all if they ever did sprout but the Izzie will be well and truly pushing up the daisies before that ever becomes a real problem) and planting out a big fat bunch of cardamon plants to go with all the ginger and turmeric. Of course it is not quite the right time of year but the way the weather is going lately, no danger of anyone getting frostbite

So in between planting, sorting and sweeping, took time to sit and linger and watch the geckos sunning themselves on the rocks.
Now there are no distractions or evenings spent over at Privet Drive which by now is probably a wasteland. There was already trench warfare going on over there just last week.
The Grinch wants to nuke some perfectly good peach and avocado trees because they get in the way when he is mowing the lawn.

Last year he did a hatchet job on the magnificent mulberry and Petunia's vegie patch has been all trashed and trampled

So now it is almost a matter of honor for the serpent to now leave a weedy legacy and to make a haven for birds, critters and green and growing things now that Privet Drive has become a monument to misery.

Got lots done but the biggest job of all - finding new homes for the 20 baby weedlings acquired at the recent garden festival, that will have to wait for another day.
Most of them are banksias and grevilleas which are veritable bird magnets.
But this time I will have to go out of my way to make sure that every single one of them is alive and well this time next year.

This serpent cannot believe that it is now exactly 4 weeks since Petunia departed this mortal coil. Four hellish horrid weeks. I can only hope that the next four will not be so ghastly

In the meantime there are assorted distractions on Twitter. Now the question for Izzie is - who will go into total meltdown first - Vernon Donald Dursley or the original of the species - Don the Con - without his Cohen
Lately it looks like the dreary Dementor Dursley well and truly got Trumped

If I were to shuffle the tarot deck for Don the Con, I bet that Justice and the Tower would turn up. and lots of very sharp pointy swords.

In the meantime, down in the Twitler Bunker

It has been an unusually mild summer. Not one single solitary day over 40c when we normally get 4 or 5 of them
In fact I do not remember such mild weather ever since coming to Oz back in 1993
And then there was the Fringe Festival. 30 decadent days of freak shows and weirdos.
Got to see 18 shows this year. Had saved up a war chest for the occasion but kept on fringe bingeing even when it was empty. The old plastic fantastic to the rescue
But unlike previous years, barely a squeak about them because in spite of all these wonderful things, the best way to describe the last few months would be
“But apart from that Mrs Lincoln, what did you think of the play?”

( The Elephant in the Room )

A quick squiggle from Nanoland. This has been the strangest Camp Nano in the last few years and bears an uncanny resemblance to the adventures of August 2012

The map was all rolled out and ready to go. The path should have been pretty easy. Usually Camp Nano is the perfect occasion to get in a bit of practice in writing and brainstorming by grabbing a pack of Devil’s playing cards as writing prompts then churning through them slowly and steadily in the hope of generating as many ideas and leads as possible for the big event in November.

But this time I decided to do things a bit differently. Instead of laying the foundations for a new project, would devote this time to adding more words to last November’s zero draft. All the serpent needed to do was to add a whole bunch of new scenes and try to steer the story into some relatively coherent shape.

The Art of the Steal was about a devil doing deals and offering numerous political fixes in exchange for souls to fill his bright shiny Celebrity trophy cabinet.

It should have been so easy since Dodgy Donald and his minions have exceeded even the worst of expectations.
Between Twitter snippets and even just following the daily news here, there is bucket loads of raw material so it should have been possible to almost go in zombie mode.

But the inner serpent is not playing nicely.

Of course there have been quite a few distractions in the last few months.

( Playing with the Pensieve )