I sleep in a cold, empty white bed, feeling the ice of the sheets chafe against my arms, bared to the elbow. The room glimmers with faint sparkles of electronic light, from the clock, from the laptop. And I lie in bed, shivering against the resistant warmth of a coverlet, wishing for the frosted light of my Tiffany fixture, and feeling the warm dashes of colour from cheap art prints trace feathers across my skin. A book lies in my hands that I do not read. My eyes lazily trace the turn of words across the page-- this is a story I know too well to hear it told. Not because I have read it too many times for originality to thrive; no, because Emily Byrd Starr is me folded onto myself. It makes me cringe from the future, because there is no beneavolent narrator to seek a happy ending for her readers. If I say the words, it is still Emily, for I am Emily and Not-Emily, a strange combination of fact and fiction. Created and re-created, a profile shaped carefully in the golden dim of light.

But Lady Giovanna, who never turned her saintly profile to look squarely at you. Could she have known it-- this subtle, secret fear that one could never put into words?-- that would be so ridiculous if one could put it into words? Dean Priest’s sad, lovely mother. Yes, she had known fear-- it looked out of her pictured eyes now in that dim, furtive light. Emily shut the door and sat down in the armchair beneath Elizabeth Bas’ picture. She could hear the dead, dry leaves of a dead summer rustling eerily on the beach just outside the window. And the wind-- rising-- rising-- rising-- rising. But she liked it. “The wind is free-- not a prisoner like me.” She crushed the unbidden thought down sternly. She would not think such things. Her fetters were of her own forging. She had put them on willingly, even desirously. Nothing to do but wear them gracefully.

From L.M. Montgomery's Emily's Quest.

Today I fell in love.

I suspected it was coming, you know. One can't just turn to adoration in a single moment. . . no, it must creep up up with little white hands pressing shapes into unformed light. It was perhaps not quite what I was expecting, but oh, it was a lovely hour all the same.

With an antique shop.

A comfortable square of a building drew closer to me as dust and gravel rattled the car to a stop. It was a sunny bit of space, tiled floors, airy celings, just an empty box drawn together with a thin grey ribbon. But what a dear little gift was swathed in that bit of tissue! Nondescript booths overflowing with pretty things that wanted to make a house charming with their presence. A funny scrap of silk and satin sewn into a doll's dress. Old-fashioned jewelry, crowded with all the glitter of false gems in butterflies and bracelets. The dignified glamour of a pale rose cameo brooch. The prettiest set of china, all sepia-toned and maroon roses in their fluted charm. Hankerchiefs, clean white ones embroidered with loops of pastel thread lying next to old photographs on stiff backing. Heart-shaped Victorian faces stared somberly out their black and white halos. Hats, little ones that perched on elegant coils of hair, conceding only the sweetest band of veil for the face. A lace bed jacket, late Edwardian, sat on a satin hanger behind a yellow negligee from the Twenties. Hatboxes that just wanted treasures for their holding, boots with a hundred knobby buttons, dolls with sweet-lipped faces and long ringlets.

And the crowning jewel, a real Underwood typewriter that I bowed down and worshipped for a few minutes, knowing that I couldn't possibly afford fifty dollars for what my family would deem a whimsy. I typed a few letters wistfully, drinking in the dulled clicks and indulging in a shameless moment of imagination. I finally bought a little silver ring to console myself for that loss. . . a trarnished one with a prim rose in the centre and the twist of stem and leaves for a band. Five dollars-- but oh, for the lost typewriter!

New pictures from an autumn walk, including one of me.

The bend in the road is so elusive.

You cannot chase it, or seek it. Instead, it steals upon you, adrift in golden light or misted with lightly veiled snows. I have dreamt of those uncanny twists in life's paths for so many years, running eagerly towards the curve that would take me to something-- something-- splendid.

Walking arm in arm with my sister, my fingers secured from cold with a pair of knit black gloves, soft yarn roses clutched in the centre of my hand. She talks on, her sharp, low voice resonating fainty in chilly autumn air, and I wonder. The colours are in a riot around me. They blend with my hair, which shines a burnished gold in the light. I think, suddenly, of bare-headed women in high-collared lace shirtwaists, women hidden under masses of rustling fabric. They loved and lost, and wondered if they were going mad on damp mornings as steam curled up from a nest of heat. Some lived, and others died. More faded, and a few gleamed with stolen allure.

It is the intimacy of their lives that I love, really. Virginia Woolf wrote a novel and never left a room. L.M. Montgomery told a story in a green and white farmhouse. Jane Austen brushed aside war for marriage. The new sleeves, too blue for the rest of the dress. A cake, missing an ingredient. A bend in the road, and a girl arm in arm with her sister. To ask for more seems sacrilege.

In the end, don't we have only ourselves, and those we cling to tightly enough?

The theatre shapes artifice-- toys with it, gently blowing and shaping the fine glass illusion to near-perfection. Everything and everyone seems small and waxy on stage, as if it was merely a child's dollhouse after all, to be positioned and played at will. The empty set, devoid of too-bright jewel tones of speech, is an eerie reflection of life. In the warm pre-show gleam of light, the tiny 1950's living room appears a department store display. The temptation to toss just one of the cushions out of their calculated dissaray tugs at me. The actors will sound life into the stage soon, slamming noise into the story, but it's not until sweat and exhaustion works itself into their faces that I can slip into the plot. Before their humanity reveals itself with flaw, I sit painfully straight on the thinly upholstered chair. I'm too aware, then, that the thirteen dollars I slipped the clerk downstairs is not enough to compensate for this eavesdropping on private affairs.