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Ligeia’s Poet: The Ghost in the Corner
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A life of pleasure, a persuit of divinity only to find failure after failure. This remained the only option: women, wine, sex and gorgeous unadulterated pleasures. Into her 30s, she thought ‘perhaps children could redeem this existence’.
Helena Peabody had tried again and again in her life, to create meaning.
She could not find meaning in the poets nor the painters, nor the sculptors of her Mother’s visual landscapes. Mother—the deliverer of meaning and of security and home and every damned thing that Helena had once needed but could never quite find. No matter how hard she tried, she could not create an answer to the questions of her heart, of her spirit. And she wanted to be more, for herself, for her children, these treasures she invited into her life on a whim, but who now gave it meaning.
Though her face could launch a thousand ships of men, the ones who fell at her feet were no match for the women she would rather chase. Women, whose limbs and breasts and bellies and hips were cast also from the hands of celestial artists. Women, within whom she could bury herself and her need—women who were always ready to nurture her, only to run when they became frightened of the depths of her despair.
A lover had once said (as they often did, playing on her name), ““Helena, your face could launch a thousand ships and drive men to their deaths in ocean currents.”
To which Helena had replied, “Isn’t that lucky.”
“What do you mean?” had come the confused response.
“Well, if thousands of men are drowned in the waves, that leaves thousands of women for me to enjoy.” And with this, her lover knew that she could never satisfy this creature.
Perhaps, she mused, she pushed these women away. Perhaps she did not feel that she truly deserved happiness and love.
Perhaps this was the reason why she chose to love, truly and deeply, a woman with whom it would be impossible to be intimate. She loved this woman from far and from near. They were lovers of a kind, but could not reveal their love, even to one another.
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The only thing better than Bette and Helena living in sin and following their bliss career-wise is two helebette posts in quick succession. Bette’s idea of a separate table for Jenny is inspired! I can just picture Jenny scribbling away in her special little corner, oblivious to the rest of the universe as per usual.
Aw shucks, they’re moving in together! And they’re opening a cafe/gallery. Surely they are blending their lives together. And you make it seem so sweet and right, helebette. But one thing troubles me: I’m frightened to comtemplate who Jenny’s favorites might be. But I’m still curious, anyway.
If we’re talking about old movies, I can top all of you…I have seen Eye of the Storm, with Lillian Gish..as a child, even!! It was a silent film and made two or three years before God was born. Now, about Jenny’s favorite authors…who is the master of psycho, but our beloved Mr Poe!
To continue the psycho theme, I think Bret Easton Ellis, author of American Psycho, would also appeal to our zombified little oddity.
susannah, don’t you mean “Orphans of the Storm” with her sister Dorothy? “The Wind” was a good one, too and “Way Down East” was the one where Lillian was floating down a river on an actual ice flow. Well, she WAS a sucker (pun?) for Mr. Griffith. Do you think William S. Burroughs would be weird enough to suit Jenny?
Yeah I probably do mean that, funny, I guess..I don’t hang with the gish sisters much!! Now, for authors, of course Sylvia Plath…Jenny would love her..and Dorothy Parker, next to whom Sylvia looks positively giddy, and how about Nathaniel Hawthorne, all that east coast goth abounding…
hmmmm…perhaps something of a much older bette davis with runny makeup and a babydoll dress and a crazed look in her eye…the birds from the Birds…
OMG, I saw Whatever Happened to Baby Jane when I was a kid and it STILL gives me nightmares!! Definitely, a pic of Bette Davis on Jenny’s psycho table. Joan Crawford was pretty psycho too, with those devil eyes and shoulder pads…
i love that movie…right up there with Invasion of the Body Snatchers. see, funnyone, i do like old movies! jenny would have pictures of bonnie and clyde i think, and perhaps that photo of bogart staring at marilyn monroe’s cleavage…probably some betty page pin ups?
If Jenny is the devoted Joan Crawford fan I fondly imagine her to be, her psycho photo table should definitely include that famous pic of a deranged JC wielding the ax in Strait-Jacket. Other images spring to mind. With Crawford, there’s so much to choose from!
Hel I loved it, both will now have a business and live together love it!!!!!
I’m proud of you HB, but I think we still disagree as to what constitutes ‘old’. So far you haven’t mentioned a film predating my birth, damn it! How about Lon Chaney (sr, not jr) as the Phantom of the Opera and/or a cast photo from Tod Browning’s Freaks (they were REAL freaks, not made up actors-boy, they just don’t make ’em like that anymore). How about Robert Mitchum from Cape Fear-looked normal, but what menace! And you could get a two for one out of susannah’s suggestion and have Faye Dunaway as Joan Crawford in Mommy Dearest-NO WIRE HANGARS-EVER! Betty Page is always welcome. Now who would Jenny admire as an author?
I love my Bette and Helena, and two back to back is a real treat! I absolutely think they should live together..it’s been a year you say? I would imagine they are basically living together now anyway. I really like the ideas for the cafe/gallery. Too bad Jenny’s table can’t be down the block! Who would her favorites be? Well, prolly Cruella DeVille, for one..both are capable of doing dastardly things to dogs to get what they want…then there is Morticia Addams, Sybil…TINA…*laughing, I scamper away*
lol, rufus and funnyone, your anti-IC and/or anti-jenny remarks never fail to amuse me. poor jenny, zombified little oddity…i shall name an older film, i shall!
The term “author” is way too exalted for a hack like IC, but I can see Jenny being a fan. IC and Jenny are both self-involved poseurs. For Jenny, admiring IC would amount to self-admiration, a Jenny trademark.