Stitch Witch Papers

Greetings, I am Mistress Mantra. I have taken possession of the Stitch Witch to tell you some tales of my latest adventures. Yes, I have known the Stitch Witch for some time and have even corresponded with Misbah. She has been to several of my performances, but it is very seldom that I am in one place for too long, although in times of need or just to be I like to retreat to my castle.  Yes well I must say I am so excited to at long last be able to post a little hello note to the Stitch Witch papers as I like to think of them. Only recently did I see the Stitch Witch perform somewhere in West End, and it was purely by coincidence, or fate, that I managed to catch her performance. There she tottered like a stuffed doll, eyes wide bleating through a megaphone, sidling up to strangers and I must say it was all rather intimate.  I was intrigued…

However, yes well here I am, and she is blood of my blood, my dearest, and so here I am. I don’t often get a chance to turn to the computers, what a pity, because I’m usually on the back of a white camel or in the arms of some strange acrobat, devising some terribly clever execution of the senses. Well let’s see what should I divulge of myself. Where to begin. Oh I really should get some proper photos to show you all. I’ll see if I can get some pictures of me with my camels, or performing on the side of a mountain.

My latest act is the use of the Mandible instrument. This is an ancient Tibetan musical box that is most peculiar. I had first seen it in a dream. It looks like an old wooden keyboard, but it is far more beautiful and portible. And it sounds like, well the notes sound like human voices, one side of the Mandible has a big pump that I use to pump air through the machine and my other hand is occupied pressing the notes. To this music I have currently begun working on a musical.

Current lyrics include the following

‘Didn’t I tell you to dress warmly?’

‘Oh my love you’ve no head for mountains, though you’re warmer than meeeeeeeeeeee’

Anyway these are some of the lyrics I am currently working on. I recently toured through a Tibetan Monastery and am now on my way to Cuba to do a circuit of tours. I shall send through some photos to the Stitch Witch. I must say riding a camel does really work wonders on the thigh and buttock muscles.

Truly,

Mistress Mantra

Well it was my un-birthday a while ago now. A few months ago actually. May to be precise.

It was a Mad hatter’s tea party. It wasn’t hard for me to find something to wear. I just rolled out of bed in my nightgown. I thought I’d put a post up about something for the sake of something. I’m not really sure. But it was a night. Apparently it was a very good party, ie that there were jolly people at the party, there were party favourites and so forth. But for future reference I would recommend that for one’s own birthday, don’t play host at it. Hire a friend to be the host. Otherwise you barely spend anytime drinking at all.

I mean I was putting people to bed at five am. Yes! I was the last to go to sleep at my own party. There is something very brilliant about that but decidedly sad. It’s easy to see that image in a film isn’t it. As hostess it is also likely that you will have ‘missing my drink’ syndrome all night, whereby you go to put your drink down somewhere because some other person wants you to entertain them but then you can’t remember where you put it. Even when I made a concerted effort to remember, it would disappear.

So the hostess should entertain to some degree, but damn it! so should the guests.

I came very close to calling up the ghost of Oscar Wilde I can tell you. Admittedly I had a good chat with several hard core party types on the kitchen floor at around three am.

This is in my opinion the best time for party chats and deep and meaningfuls and the kitchen is usually the best place for this to occur. For some reason everyone lies around talking about what appears to be highly perceptive ideas. I was at this point lavished with foot massages.

So notes to the would be host/ess for an un-birthday. Do get someone else to have it for you, otherwise you spend half the night being the host and not enjoying oneself. These two never work well together.

Yes it certainly sounds like rain and there hasn’t been any rain. Only filling a bath up not even half way but some way still I see it as a little full rather than mostly empty. Much has been going on which is good for things to be going on. I am writing, painting, reading, drinking, having a few tears spilt here and there. There are spider webs as big as disco balls outside and there are mirrors in my house that seem to reflect eternity. When I stand in them I see into other rooms that are not there. Am tidying up my poetry for hopefully publication as a book. Maybe Virago, or something like that would be fantabulous.

The rain taps on the window. Is it raining or only the leaves hurtling against the glass. I hope it’s raining. Have a tonne of glitter in my hair, must wash it out, it getting into everthing even my eyes. Purple glitter.

I’ve avoided writing for a while because sometimes life gets far too racous and wild for even a blog thing. Which is the way it should be. This is a good sign I think.

Let’s see. Many things covered and uncovered.

Books, of various natures, everywhere all over the bed and floor.

Reading 2000ad comics and sleeping in past ten in the morning sometimes.

Rubbing cinnaman and peppermint oil into my sore muscles.

Cuddling my cats and painting. Yes lots of painting. Fantastical images and colours

I will put some up when they are almost finished. What painting is ever finished?

Poetry performances and impromptu ones on buses coming home. Writing. Finishing editing of my poems. Writing my thesis. Masters coming to completion soon.

Having a wild unbirthday party, Alice in Wonderland, MadHatter’s event. I’m going as

the Queen of tarts. I’ll bake lots of tarts.

My hands look beautiful tonight. More than ever. I’ve never really noticed how long my fingers are. Enjoying a bit of self-love. Enjoying dreaming. How many people enjoy dreaming? So many. We could be dreamtheives.

Anyhoohk

more

soon….

Does a page exist without anyone reading it? Surely. And would a writer be compelled to still write even if they knew that there was no-one reading it ever. Yes this surely must be the case. I think of all the diaries, words pressed between the pages. Decorated on the inside. All human hopes and wishes, bereavements, failures, confessions. I wonder what could be gathered if every diary that ever existed in the entire of human history was gathered and made into a book. How would we appear to ourselves and each other?

To the crows we might be ‘pale shades’. Woolf was right you know. They do speak in greek. She was not mad to discover this. They are the politicians of the bird kingdom.

Does a peacock ever understand what it holds up behind itself? It’s fan of sheer beauty.

It must see the effect on other birds. But would it be like Narcissus if it ever caught a glimpse of it’s own feathers? Forever staring at its plumage, unable to eat, sleep, engage in anything other than transfixiation.

There are lovers all around me. I don’t know how they got there. I see them touching each other and I wander through them. I wander through them like watching shiny shells clustered together. They pair off, like day and night. They compliment each other, comfort. I’m the monstrous feminine. I’m not pliant and deferring.

Sparrows are like unsuccessful kamikaze pilots. The birds of the early morning and the late night are the appreciators of art. They support the writer in the stillness of dark. They call out encouragement, they pay me in songs. Men are guitars. Women are their strings.

Neither know this and if it was found out there would be a lot of uncomfortable silence.

Men are the shiny ornaments really. Women are the elixir to polish them. But I don’t want to polish them. I’m not going to be Echo. I won’t be a dryad hiding to escape.

Would it all be simplified into a quest? The love we want to give. The vexations of our friends, family, the tragedy of mundane existence and the absolute hope in magnificent things. All the secret codes of dreams, all the taboo things we will never admit, all the pain killing devices we employ. All the love we feel.

play i want to play why don’t you because you are pregnant with some future

don’t you want to play why do you need to join a group to play why can’t you kick at the rain or do something it’s all there  I made my body a canvas  I made my consciousness a keyboard with coloured flags I can roll my thoughts across them

play what is it that is play is play only fit for infants or some sort of organisational decision

some serious consideration the shallow waters of a time NO-one can remember except in those childhood photographs where we stare and stare you and I stare and stare at this kid on the verge of crying that we don’t recognise could it be that the child is not some return to never left doesn’t anyone get it

the child never left don’t need any books to tell you any actual decision just the bee in the  hive has to get out and once in a while suck at some sweet nectar drink it up go on just

drink at the wild flowers and the spindly lonesome weeds. DRINK

play don’t you know how to why do you have to ask or get permission or consider it

why did so many people decide to grow up and forget curiousity cat consciousness

and cheekiness and yearnings for more. DRUNK

play play play seriously play play play not like a bog of suggestive possibilities for hooking up in matrimonial conjoining, what about wristbands made of spit and glitter tied together  in sleep

play play play why don’t all these people witch people know how to play or just then catching a raft because it floods and how more beautiful to be in the raft and its raining and all the cars are getting flooded and all the escalators and waterfalls and everything is up for grabs

I want you to go to the furtherest place you could possibly travel to with all the coins stashed in your mouth

I’m going to go too

I want the barefoot midnight rant that has no daylight and doesn’t wait for alarm clocks

could we just pretend to pretend is to play to play is to make and what hellish creature made you think that play was nothing it is everything if the universe didn’t figure out in some dust consciousness the joy the brindle pleasure of play then there would be nowhere to go to

I want you to go to the furtherest location on the next mode of public transport

i want to do it too don’t you want to suck your thumb on the bus don’t you want to laugh at all the shopping bags like security blankets and homes that are like grown up cubby houses without secret knocks and without the powers of invisibility we all had as children

perhaps this is the consolation of growing old….invisibility promise me if you live to be old

that you’ll be the maddest wildest brightest crone I’ve ever seen just as you are now

just as true and resolute and wide-eyed ribbon stashing in your knickers girl that you are now

don’t let the side dish get in the way of the main feast the side dish is to cover up what it is you ordered you’ve got to remember all the time what you ordered even if it doesn’t taste the way you want it to, too much memory, bitterness, contagion, cold, day left overs, you’ve got to want it and own it digest it before you can have the next meal and then I promise if you do this then you’ll never have to order anything again you can go straight to the garden and gather your fruit and hitch up your skirts for the warm giving eggs and make it all over again just the way you want…

something is undone just a thought unravels from me like my cigarette smoke

and I am situated somwhere for the time being in a jungle with a torch in the distance

everyone seems tired these days waiting for something greater to happen

then the daily tasks the inevitable dissolution that we all talk about

it would be undone like jumping from the front windows of your house–any house

flying out in your dressing gown and at the last moment to be caught up in the air currents riding the slipstream forgetting to breathe or eat or sleep or dream

because it seems enough only for one moment eternal caught on the hem of the earth

not gripping on but exhilerating and satisfied not viewing the earth but intrisically a part of it like the taste that goes with longing unshakeable and unfathomable but still forming

itself a crust of tiny glinting particles now embedded in the skin the stuff of dying stars

so when you walk around, listlessly, aimlessly, still the universe walks with you

currently writing. currently reading, Katherine Mansfield short stories, finished her story The Aloe. Reading Rabindranath Tagore–very amazing writer…divine. And now yes I do have a copy of Milton’s Paradise Lost. So I’m very pleased about this as have been wanting to read it for a week or so. There are a few other books but i’ve been pouring myself so much of Katherine Mansfield of late I’m getting sore eyes. Seeking adventures now. Really need rainforest and some boots, those long boots, galloshes? yes and I need to trump around on the ocean floor and had a dream of wild cats, no more flying dreams …yet.

need a flying dream. Just finished a short story, writing that is…lolly bliss and the unpolished mirror. must type it out.

That was from The Importance of Being Earnest. Well it must be a crazy day. That’s two posts written in less than two hours. Usually its a little more sporadic than that. Seeing how all my friends are getting married, and with blessings I send to them, I have decided I am going to marry myself to my art. Yes, I think though it’s had it’s ups and downs and I admit I’ve been moody and dramatic, I think that this relationship is really going to work.

And considering its for life why not cement it with a ring. In fact two rings. So I just recently bought myself two antique rings and amidst a crowd of hundreds I married myself. Now admittedly this was in the Valley Markets and I didn’t know anyone, but who knows anyone really?

I mean considering the fact that I have always remained faithful to myself above all and really due to the way I feel about certain things I think it is a very exciting proposition.

I’m hoping that this marriage will culminate in a publication of my book and many exciting adventures. I intend to wear bright red. And since strange dreamy men write to me from far off lands and tend to be the druidic hippy types I really have decided that I cannot simply be bothered chasing after anyone anymore. I’d much rather design castles and books. Besides I am the Goddess of Love and occasionally I have to work my magic, this means in every way my life is filled with lovely lovely beings and for that I am grateful. It is not perhaps a traditional announcement but it seems more than apt that I should declare my true love worthy of conjoining. I do not need witnesses or vows, but only the secret pacts I make with my work.

So yes, Celebrations resound! Chin Chin. Have a drink on me. Have a party. Have a laugh, cackle, rumble in the hay with a loved one, squeeze a fluffy cat.  Here is a photo of the bride on one of her wedding days. Any day of creation is a day of celebration. This wonderful dress also serves as her dressing gown. What a blushing stitchwitch bride! Ha ha!

Well I stupidly started writing straight onto my site and then it all disappeared and I cannot get it back. Hmm, I guess I’ll start again.

Reading: Various poems, Peeling Apples, Joyflight, and Women with their faces on fire.

OUch. And yes also reading a Blake biography by Ackroyd and consulting a Blake dictionary. Currently my bed is a castle and it is raining and humid and I feel like I am in the tropics.

I have Dante’s Inferno lying on my bed of which I am half-way through.

On my Cd player is an audio book of Gormenghast by Peake. My posters are falling off the walls due to the humidity. One just fell off, it was a sketch of Da Vinci.

I was discussing how much I am in bliss reading and how much I value this. And then I went on about valuing time and letting friends know that just because one is home one might necessarily be working( or reading in bed…which is working!! working on the mind!!)

HOw many times have I read Gormenghast. Well I could be exact and say exactly four times. It is just one of those awesome books I can read over and over again, but seeing that i don’t have a television ( oh the shame ) I like to indulge in audio books. I’ve been reading some 2000 ad comics as well and validating my behaviour by reading a little of Oscar Wilde. Well really a compedium of Oscar Wilde quotes, ‘Guide to Modern Living’, with little phrases that help me get through the day like…” I adore simple pleasures. They are the refuge of the complex”. That’s from A woman of No Importance.

‘My weakness is that I do what I will and get what I want” Wilde

Anyway he’s a good lad to drop into from time to time. He would be fun to have at a dinner party. In fact it would be a party and he would be invited. Who else? Well my friends of course, but well there are a few people I should like to invite. At the moment I can’t think of any.

The last party I had I followed in the footsteps of a Burroughsian signal to his guests that it was time for them to leave. Burroughs used to start taking his clothes off and the guests soon got the message. Well I was extremely spirited that night and it had reached around 2am and I wanted to curl up in bed so I began a simple and delicate gesture of removal. It worked perfectly. No words were needed. This is one of my familiars, Babooshka. She has her own singing career and I might add is quite a lovely singer. She has various recordings due for release. I should really get them out to other cats. Her style is Meowsic and I believe the Cd is Catatronic. She has a sister called Medbh and both live in the Stitch Witch castle , witch while technically is on planet earth, it is not of it. Both her and Medbh have Goddess Parents as well who are my dear friends Luscious Lisa and Chris Razor Kristophasen. I ‘m going to give them something in honour of this role for Bastmas, which is my form of Christmas, since I”m not Christian. Bastmas is the celebration of Bast, who was a very groovy Egyptian Goddess and whose celebrations
fell on the 25th of December. I usually dress up in my cat ears and tail and the kitties get treats . But everyday is Bastmas.