seize the moment…

We live in times of fear and uncertainty, boys and girls. So think about those closest to you right now, seize the moment and don’t waste time on fear. Let the future look after itself and make love your priority…

Fear and Belief…

Can one be afraid of what we do not believe in? It would seem logical to say no. But if the vampire has gone from legend to myth to even archetype, then it is probably because, though few would confess believing in a she, he or it, the vast majority is nonetheless terrified.

Jacques Sirgent – The book of the Vampires

The danger of stirring up hidden things

I’m afraid to write. It’s so dangerous. Anyone who’s tried, knows. The danger of stirring up hidden things – and the world is not on the surface, it’s hidden in its roots submerged in the depths of the sea. In order to write I must place myself in the void. In this void is where I exist intuitively. But it’s a terribly dangerous void: it’s where I wring out blood. I’m a writer who fears the snare of words: the words I say hide others – which? maybe I’ll say them. Writing is a stone cast down a deep well. 

Clarice Lispector – A Breath of Life 

Spooky experience…

Real life [scares]? When my daughter was one-and-a-half, my wife and I rented a small house in Millburn, NJ. The minute we walked in, I felt afraid. Then, when I saw my little girl turn to an empty corner, wag her finger, and say “No” as if someone was standing there? Well, let’s just say we stayed at the Best Western that night and found new accommodations in the morning. Fun fact: the next time we drove past that site a couple months later, the house was demolished and construction on a new one began. I guess the guy was having trouble renting it out. True story. 

Stephen Chbosky – On the essence of horror 

the female body is powerful…

While the origins of the vampire in literature can be found in early Biblical texts on Lilith, the outpouring of literature on the vampire during the 19^th century reflects a renewed interest in the vampire’s link with sex, power, and death. Especially prominent in these texts are female vampires, often portrayed using major female archetypes: the female predator; the mother of evil; and the fallen woman. But why do these tropes persist even now, into the 21^st century? Where did these depictions come from? And what is it about the female vampire that strikes fear into the hearts especially of men, a fear that seems tied to confrontation with abjection? The link between this fear and the female vampire seems to be female sexuality, and fear of its overt expression. Female vampires are portrayed as lustful, defiling creatures, in a far more sexualized manner than their male counterparts. This portrayal uncovers fear of that shadowy world just outside the boundaries of society where the female body is powerful, women have agency, and they continually violate the boundaries that are crucial to civilized existence. 

Nadia Saleh – La petit mort: female vampirism, the abject, and sexuality 

At risk

Anything good that I have written has, at some point during its composition, left me feeling uneasy and afraid. It has seemed, for a moment at least, to put me at risk. 

Michael Chabon – Maps and Legends 

the face of human death

The ancient Greeks were connoisseurs of fear. The Greek language offered wide-ranging terminology to calibrate different shades and effects: déos, straightforward terror, fear, or apprehension; phóbos, fear that impels panic and battle rout; ekplektos, shock that strikes one dumb. Fear can be krúoeis, chilling, freezing, numbing; or smerdaléos, a huge and terrifying adjective — in origin it appears to have been a dreadful sound, such as the crushing of bones or gnashing of teeth, and is used of the thunder of Zeus. Fear turns warriors green, jabbers their teeth, trembles their limbs. It can be deinós, dread or awe-inspiring, a term used frequently of gods, and a feeble echo of which is captured in our dinosaur — the dread lizard. One terrible object, however, conjured every attribute of fear and every shade of meaning, and this was the head of the monstrous Gorgon, a mere glance at which turned men to stone.

[…]

In a wide-ranging study of the Gorgon head, scholar Stephen Wilk was riveted by a forensic textbook’s description of the physical transformation undergone by a dead human body over the course of several days. Gases cause tissues to swell, “the eyes bulge and the tongue protrudes.” Forensic photographs reveal that even hair undergoes a change, rising in strange coils and rings around the bloated face. From all the manifold images traditionally marshalled, none so dreadfully resembles the Gorgon head as the face of human death.

[…]

If the Gorgoneion originally and unambiguously represented a severed human head, not only are its peculiar physical features convincingly explained, but also its striking presence on Athena’s war gear. Above all, this conjecture conjures the dread object’s power to petrify — to turn to stone — all who gaze upon it. Mythology and ritual often preserve, and even honour, the potency of dark acts that a historical people themselves repudiate. The most terrifying conceivable object, the Greeks well knew, was not a snake-haired monster of imagination, but the concrete work of human hands.”

 Caroline Alexander – The Dread Gorgon

afraid women will laugh at them

“Why do men feel threatened by women?” I asked a male friend of mine. […] “I mean,” I said, “men are bigger, most of the time, they can run faster, strangle better, and they have on the average a lot more money and power.”

“They’re afraid women will laugh at them,” he said. “Undercut their world view.”

Then I asked some women students in a quickie poetry seminar I was giving, “Why do women feel threatened by men?”

“They’re afraid of being killed,” they said.

Margaret Atwood – Writing the Male Character

Fear

Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past me I will turn to see fear’s path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.

Frank Herbert – Dune

The Dark only lets you take one step at a time

I like the early dark. It’s not night. It’s still companionable. […] I don’t know why it is that one kind of dark can be so different from another. Real dark is thicker and quieter, it fills up the space between your jacket and your heart. It gets in your eyes. When I have to be out late at night, it’s not knives and kicks I’m afraid of […]; I’m afraid of the Dark. […] Stand still for five minutes. Stand still in the Dark in a field or down a track. It’s then you know you’re there on sufferance. The Dark only lets you take one step at a time. Step and the Dark closes round your back. In front, there is no space for you until you take it. Darkness is absolute. Walking in the Dark is like swimming underwater except you can’t come up for air.

Jeanette Winterson – The Passion