Astrid Magnussen (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
white_oleander) wrote2020-06-25 09:13 am
white_oleander) wrote2020-06-25 09:13 am
Entry tags:
Room 210; Thursday Afternoon [06/25].
Astrid couldn't remember the last time she'd felt so good, so consistently, for such a long period of time, but ever since she fed her mother's words right back to her, she felt as though a weight was lifted from her shoulders. She felt as if she'd been given a whole new view of the world. How clear it was without her mother behind her eyes. She was reborn, a Siamese twin who had finally been separated from its hated, cumbersome double. There were days now where she woke early, expectant as a small child, to a world washed clean of her mother’s poisonous fog, her milky miasmas. There was such a force of possibility behind it, and instead of scaring her like it may have once upon a time, it energized her. Who would she be now that she had taken herself back, to be Astrid Magnussen, finally, alone.
It was hard to imagine anything could tarnish this new view of the world.
Until something actually did.
It was just an envelope, but never just an envelope, because she recognized the spidery handwriting, the return address, the generic stamps and the crinkled edges. There was a letter, from her mother. Ingrid had written back.
Dear Astrid,
Bravo! Though your letter as poetry leaves something to be desired, at least it indicates a spark, a capacity for fire which I never would have believed you possessed. But really, you cannot think you wiit cut yourself free of me so easily. I live in you, in your bones, the delicate coils of your mind. I made you. I formed the thoughts you find, the moods you carry. Your blood whispers my name. Even in rebellion, you are mine.
You want my penitence, demand my shame! Why would you want me to be less than I am, so you could find it easier to dismiss me? Id rather you think me grotesque, florid with fantasy.
I’m out of segregation, thank you for asking. Waiting forme on my restoration to Barneburg B was, among other missives, a letter from Harper’s. Oh the praise, a jail-house Plath! (Although I am no suicide, no baked poetess with my head among the potatoes.)
Do not give up on me so soon, Astrid. There are people who are interested in my case. I will not molder here like the Man in the Iron Mask. This is the millennium. Anything can happen. And if I had to be wrongly imprisoned to be noticed by Harper’s—well . . . you could almost say it was worth it.
And to think, when I was out, a good day was a handwritten rejection from Dog Breath Review.
They’re taking a long poem on bird themes—the prison crows, migratory geese, I even used the doves, remember them? On St. Andrew's Place. Of course you do. You remember everything. You were afraid of the ruined dovecote, wouldn't go out into the yard until I’d prodded among the clumps of ivy to scare off snakes.
You were always frightened of the wrong thing. I found the fact that the doves returned, though the chicken wire had long since given way to ivy, a far more troubling prospect.
You want to write me off? Try. Just realise when you’re cutting off the plank upon which you stand, which end of it is nailed to the ship.
I will survive, but will you? I have a following--I call them my children. Young pierced artists avid with admiration, they make their pilgrimage here from Fontana and Long Beach, Sonoma and San Bernardino, they come from as far away as Vancouver, B.C. And if I can say so, they are much more to my taste than trembling actresses with two-carat wedding bands. They claim a network of renegade feminists, lesbians, practitioners of Wicca and performance artists up and down the West Coast, a sort of Underground Goddess Train. They’re ready to help me any way that they can; they are willing to forgive me anything. Why aren't you?
Your loving mother,
Masturbating Rot Crow
P.S. I have a surprise for you. I’ve just met with my new attorney, Susan D. Valeris. Recognise the name? Attorney for the feminine damned? The one in the black curls, red lips like those chattering windup teeth? She’s come to exploit my martyrdom. I don I begrudge her. There’s more than enough for everyone.
Astrid sat on her bed,staring across the room at the blurring colors of Sabine's side of the room. They would not let her out. She killed a man, he was only thirty-two. Why should it matter that she was a poet, a jail-house Plath? A man was dead because of her. He wasn’t perfect, he was selfish, a flawed person, so what? She would do it again, next time with even less reason. Look at what she did to Claire. Astrid could not believe any attorney would consider representing her.
No, she was making this up. Trying to snare her, trip her up, stuff her back in her sack. It wasn’t going to work, not anymore. Astrid had freed herself from her strange womb, she would not be lured back. Let Ingrid wrap her new children in fantasy, conspire with them under the ficuses in the visitors yard.
Ingrid was wrong, again. Astrid did know what there was to be frightened about. They had no idea there were snakes in the ivy.
[[ door and post are open! Pieces lifted from Chapter 27 of White Oleander by Janet Fitch! ]]
It was hard to imagine anything could tarnish this new view of the world.
Until something actually did.
It was just an envelope, but never just an envelope, because she recognized the spidery handwriting, the return address, the generic stamps and the crinkled edges. There was a letter, from her mother. Ingrid had written back.
Dear Astrid,
Bravo! Though your letter as poetry leaves something to be desired, at least it indicates a spark, a capacity for fire which I never would have believed you possessed. But really, you cannot think you wiit cut yourself free of me so easily. I live in you, in your bones, the delicate coils of your mind. I made you. I formed the thoughts you find, the moods you carry. Your blood whispers my name. Even in rebellion, you are mine.
You want my penitence, demand my shame! Why would you want me to be less than I am, so you could find it easier to dismiss me? Id rather you think me grotesque, florid with fantasy.
I’m out of segregation, thank you for asking. Waiting forme on my restoration to Barneburg B was, among other missives, a letter from Harper’s. Oh the praise, a jail-house Plath! (Although I am no suicide, no baked poetess with my head among the potatoes.)
Do not give up on me so soon, Astrid. There are people who are interested in my case. I will not molder here like the Man in the Iron Mask. This is the millennium. Anything can happen. And if I had to be wrongly imprisoned to be noticed by Harper’s—well . . . you could almost say it was worth it.
And to think, when I was out, a good day was a handwritten rejection from Dog Breath Review.
They’re taking a long poem on bird themes—the prison crows, migratory geese, I even used the doves, remember them? On St. Andrew's Place. Of course you do. You remember everything. You were afraid of the ruined dovecote, wouldn't go out into the yard until I’d prodded among the clumps of ivy to scare off snakes.
You were always frightened of the wrong thing. I found the fact that the doves returned, though the chicken wire had long since given way to ivy, a far more troubling prospect.
You want to write me off? Try. Just realise when you’re cutting off the plank upon which you stand, which end of it is nailed to the ship.
I will survive, but will you? I have a following--I call them my children. Young pierced artists avid with admiration, they make their pilgrimage here from Fontana and Long Beach, Sonoma and San Bernardino, they come from as far away as Vancouver, B.C. And if I can say so, they are much more to my taste than trembling actresses with two-carat wedding bands. They claim a network of renegade feminists, lesbians, practitioners of Wicca and performance artists up and down the West Coast, a sort of Underground Goddess Train. They’re ready to help me any way that they can; they are willing to forgive me anything. Why aren't you?
Your loving mother,
Masturbating Rot Crow
P.S. I have a surprise for you. I’ve just met with my new attorney, Susan D. Valeris. Recognise the name? Attorney for the feminine damned? The one in the black curls, red lips like those chattering windup teeth? She’s come to exploit my martyrdom. I don I begrudge her. There’s more than enough for everyone.
Astrid sat on her bed,staring across the room at the blurring colors of Sabine's side of the room. They would not let her out. She killed a man, he was only thirty-two. Why should it matter that she was a poet, a jail-house Plath? A man was dead because of her. He wasn’t perfect, he was selfish, a flawed person, so what? She would do it again, next time with even less reason. Look at what she did to Claire. Astrid could not believe any attorney would consider representing her.
No, she was making this up. Trying to snare her, trip her up, stuff her back in her sack. It wasn’t going to work, not anymore. Astrid had freed herself from her strange womb, she would not be lured back. Let Ingrid wrap her new children in fantasy, conspire with them under the ficuses in the visitors yard.
Ingrid was wrong, again. Astrid did know what there was to be frightened about. They had no idea there were snakes in the ivy.
[[ door and post are open! Pieces lifted from Chapter 27 of White Oleander by Janet Fitch! ]]