A plague of moths. Armoured moths that won't go down and won't stay out. I am haunted by Gerard de Nerval's poetical black butterflies. They are perverse animals (if you can call them that - they're made of dessicated shit) with long probing tongues and no sense of perspective. Edgar Poe included a Sphinx moth in his story "The Sphinx". The main character mistakenly thinks that the moth on a window is a huge monster. Much to his surprise, his friend points out that it is in fact very close and not on a hill in the distance.
The main character was right all along.
The dragon that St. George fought was the now extinct Dragon Moth. The Lambton Worm was a large, flightless moth that lived in a well and was covered in razor sharp spines. The Kraken is an under-seas moth with many sucker dappled tentacles. If you hit the devil with a towel he leaves a brown smudge on your paintwork.
What do they want from me? Why are they here?
*slightly elderly hip hop reference there
Showing posts with label moths. Show all posts
Showing posts with label moths. Show all posts
Monday, 22 August 2011
Wednesday, 3 August 2011
Death of the Moth by Virginia Woolf
Moths that fly by day are not properly to be called moths; they do not excite that pleasant sense of dark autumn nights and ivy-blossom which the commonest yellow-underwing asleep in the shadow of the curtain never fails to rouse in us. They are hybrid creatures, neither gay like butterflies nor sombre like their own species. Nevertheless the present specimen, with his narrow hay-coloured wings, fringed with a tassel of the same colour, seemed to be content with life. It was a pleasant morning, mid–September, mild, benignant, yet with a keener breath than that of the summer months. The plough was already scoring the field opposite the window, and where the share had been, the earth was pressed flat and gleamed with moisture. Such vigour came rolling in from the fields and the down beyond that it was difficult to keep the eyes strictly turned upon the book. The rooks too were keeping one of their annual festivities; soaring round the tree tops until it looked as if a vast net with thousands of black knots in it had been cast up into the air; which, after a few moments sank slowly down upon the trees until every twig seemed to have a knot at the end of it. Then, suddenly, the net would be thrown into the air again in a wider circle this time, with the utmost clamour and vociferation, as though to be thrown into the air and settle slowly down upon the tree tops were a tremendously exciting experience.
The same energy which inspired the rooks, the ploughmen, the horses, and even, it seemed, the lean bare-backed downs, sent the moth fluttering from side to side of his square of the window-pane. One could not help watching him. One was, indeed, conscious of a queer feeling of pity for him. The possibilities of pleasure seemed that morning so enormous and so various that to have only a moth’s part in life, and a day moth’s at that, appeared a hard fate, and his zest in enjoying his meagre opportunities to the full, pathetic. He flew vigorously to one corner of his compartment, and, after waiting there a second, flew across to the other. What remained for him but to fly to a third corner and then to a fourth? That was all he could do, in spite of the size of the downs, the width of the sky, the far-off smoke of houses, and the romantic voice, now and then, of a steamer out at sea. What he could do he did. Watching him, it seemed as if a fibre, very thin but pure, of the enormous energy of the world had been thrust into his frail and diminutive body. As often as he crossed the pane, I could fancy that a thread of vital light became visible. He was little or nothing but life.
Yet, because he was so small, and so simple a form of the energy that was rolling in at the open window and driving its way through so many narrow and intricate corridors in my own brain and in those of other human beings, there was something marvellous as well as pathetic about him. It was as if someone had taken a tiny bead of pure life and decking it as lightly as possible with down and feathers, had set it dancing and zig-zagging to show us the true nature of life. Thus displayed one could not get over the strangeness of it. One is apt to forget all about life, seeing it humped and bossed and garnished and cumbered so that it has to move with the greatest circumspection and dignity. Again, the thought of all that life might have been had he been born in any other shape caused one to view his simple activities with a kind of pity.
After a time, tired by his dancing apparently, he settled on the window ledge in the sun, and, the queer spectacle being at an end, I forgot about him. Then, looking up, my eye was caught by him. He was trying to resume his dancing, but seemed either so stiff or so awkward that he could only flutter to the bottom of the window-pane; and when he tried to fly across it he failed. Being intent on other matters I watched these futile attempts for a time without thinking, unconsciously waiting for him to resume his flight, as one waits for a machine, that has stopped momentarily, to start again without considering the reason of its failure. After perhaps a seventh attempt he slipped from the wooden ledge and fell, fluttering his wings, on to his back on the window sill. The helplessness of his attitude roused me. It flashed upon me that he was in difficulties; he could no longer raise himself; his legs struggled vainly. But, as I stretched out a pencil, meaning to help him to right himself, it came over me that the failure and awkwardness were the approach of death. I laid the pencil down again.
The legs agitated themselves once more. I looked as if for the enemy against which he struggled. I looked out of doors. What had happened there? Presumably it was midday, and work in the fields had stopped. Stillness and quiet had replaced the previous animation. The birds had taken themselves off to feed in the brooks. The horses stood still. Yet the power was there all the same, massed outside indifferent, impersonal, not attending to anything in particular. Somehow it was opposed to the little hay-coloured moth. It was useless to try to do anything. One could only watch the extraordinary efforts made by those tiny legs against an oncoming doom which could, had it chosen, have submerged an entire city, not merely a city, but masses of human beings; nothing, I knew, had any chance against death. Nevertheless after a pause of exhaustion the legs fluttered again. It was superb this last protest, and so frantic that he succeeded at last in righting himself. One’s sympathies, of course, were all on the side of life. Also, when there was nobody to care or to know, this gigantic effort on the part of an insignificant little moth, against a power of such magnitude, to retain what no one else valued or desired to keep, moved one strangely. Again, somehow, one saw life, a pure bead. I lifted the pencil again, useless though I knew it to be. But even as I did so, the unmistakable tokens of death showed themselves. The body relaxed, and instantly grew stiff. The struggle was over. The insignificant little creature now knew death. As I looked at the dead moth, this minute wayside triumph of so great a force over so mean an antagonist filled me with wonder. Just as life had been strange a few minutes before, so death was now as strange. The moth having righted himself now lay most decently and uncomplainingly composed. O yes, he seemed to say, death is stronger than I am.
The same energy which inspired the rooks, the ploughmen, the horses, and even, it seemed, the lean bare-backed downs, sent the moth fluttering from side to side of his square of the window-pane. One could not help watching him. One was, indeed, conscious of a queer feeling of pity for him. The possibilities of pleasure seemed that morning so enormous and so various that to have only a moth’s part in life, and a day moth’s at that, appeared a hard fate, and his zest in enjoying his meagre opportunities to the full, pathetic. He flew vigorously to one corner of his compartment, and, after waiting there a second, flew across to the other. What remained for him but to fly to a third corner and then to a fourth? That was all he could do, in spite of the size of the downs, the width of the sky, the far-off smoke of houses, and the romantic voice, now and then, of a steamer out at sea. What he could do he did. Watching him, it seemed as if a fibre, very thin but pure, of the enormous energy of the world had been thrust into his frail and diminutive body. As often as he crossed the pane, I could fancy that a thread of vital light became visible. He was little or nothing but life.
Yet, because he was so small, and so simple a form of the energy that was rolling in at the open window and driving its way through so many narrow and intricate corridors in my own brain and in those of other human beings, there was something marvellous as well as pathetic about him. It was as if someone had taken a tiny bead of pure life and decking it as lightly as possible with down and feathers, had set it dancing and zig-zagging to show us the true nature of life. Thus displayed one could not get over the strangeness of it. One is apt to forget all about life, seeing it humped and bossed and garnished and cumbered so that it has to move with the greatest circumspection and dignity. Again, the thought of all that life might have been had he been born in any other shape caused one to view his simple activities with a kind of pity.
After a time, tired by his dancing apparently, he settled on the window ledge in the sun, and, the queer spectacle being at an end, I forgot about him. Then, looking up, my eye was caught by him. He was trying to resume his dancing, but seemed either so stiff or so awkward that he could only flutter to the bottom of the window-pane; and when he tried to fly across it he failed. Being intent on other matters I watched these futile attempts for a time without thinking, unconsciously waiting for him to resume his flight, as one waits for a machine, that has stopped momentarily, to start again without considering the reason of its failure. After perhaps a seventh attempt he slipped from the wooden ledge and fell, fluttering his wings, on to his back on the window sill. The helplessness of his attitude roused me. It flashed upon me that he was in difficulties; he could no longer raise himself; his legs struggled vainly. But, as I stretched out a pencil, meaning to help him to right himself, it came over me that the failure and awkwardness were the approach of death. I laid the pencil down again.
The legs agitated themselves once more. I looked as if for the enemy against which he struggled. I looked out of doors. What had happened there? Presumably it was midday, and work in the fields had stopped. Stillness and quiet had replaced the previous animation. The birds had taken themselves off to feed in the brooks. The horses stood still. Yet the power was there all the same, massed outside indifferent, impersonal, not attending to anything in particular. Somehow it was opposed to the little hay-coloured moth. It was useless to try to do anything. One could only watch the extraordinary efforts made by those tiny legs against an oncoming doom which could, had it chosen, have submerged an entire city, not merely a city, but masses of human beings; nothing, I knew, had any chance against death. Nevertheless after a pause of exhaustion the legs fluttered again. It was superb this last protest, and so frantic that he succeeded at last in righting himself. One’s sympathies, of course, were all on the side of life. Also, when there was nobody to care or to know, this gigantic effort on the part of an insignificant little moth, against a power of such magnitude, to retain what no one else valued or desired to keep, moved one strangely. Again, somehow, one saw life, a pure bead. I lifted the pencil again, useless though I knew it to be. But even as I did so, the unmistakable tokens of death showed themselves. The body relaxed, and instantly grew stiff. The struggle was over. The insignificant little creature now knew death. As I looked at the dead moth, this minute wayside triumph of so great a force over so mean an antagonist filled me with wonder. Just as life had been strange a few minutes before, so death was now as strange. The moth having righted himself now lay most decently and uncomplainingly composed. O yes, he seemed to say, death is stronger than I am.
The Moth-man probably
Terrible night. I spend the day on my own, but for butting neighbour, and do a fair amount of writing. It's rambling, shapeless and repetitive but it's well over the ten thousand words and I feel like I have barely scraped the surface of what I want to say. I will be scratching away at this for some time but it is, if nothing else, a labour of love.
I don't drink. A mistake as it turns out. The moths have been flocking into the house again. As I went to brush my teeth I thought I saw a figure in the mirror as I turned and looked it was not a figure but an enormous shit-brown, dirt-caked moth. This thing had weight. I'd need a shovel to take the fucker out. I err on the side of caution and slowly open the window and turn off the light, closing the door behind me, reasoning that with the temptations of the real world outside my bathroom would seem very slim pickings to your average moth. I don't know what they eat (children's breath? bad dreams?) but I'll wager they wouldn't thrive on a diet of toothpaste and pubes.
I go back to the bedroom. The moth is there; black as a keyhole on my pale curtains. Quietly terrified I trot back to the bathroom. The mirror moth is no longer there - it has somehow passed through the door and into the bedroom. I've had enough of this and crack at it with a towel but have no impact on its armoured shoulders. It lifts listlessly into the air - and down the back of my bed. I wait to see what happens. Moths seems to have taken on a peculiar significance recently and this Moriarty moth, this pumped up dinosaur moth is now my mortal enemy. But still it's three in the morning and I have guests coming later. The moth does nothing. I clamber into bed and attempt sleep. Sleep doesn't come. I toss and turn. I stare wide eyed into the darkness of the room, watching the accelerated diurnal lights of the cars move across the ceiling. Then I hear it; a crunching, rustling sound, like someone unwrapping a toffee during the quiet part of the film. It's moving! Is it eating? What's it doing? How can it weigh that much that I can hear its movements? How can it way that much and fly? Is that why it's walking now? Is it still growing, growing under my bed?
I leap out of bed and go and sleep in the spare room I had prepared for Jess' visit. I'm asleep by 6 and given to dreams of dread and oppression.
* * * * * *
Jess doesn't come in the end. She arrived at Stanstead feeling sick and anxious and as if she were going to faint and then goes straight back home again. Which is clearly the right thing to do - the baby has to come first. And frankly if I'd had the brains to work out she was seven months pregnant I would have put her off completely! Seven months? That girls a nutter! Take care, Jess. Or better be taken care of!
Thursday, 7 July 2011
I get in from the hospital with a chicken pie and a bottle of cheap Beaujolais.I went into the town centre but everything was shut. All that was left of Belfast were leggy emos* squatting like pigeons outside the city-hall and a drunk with a series of face-wounds laughing with ambulance-men.
Lovefilm have sent me "The Never-ending Story". I don't ever remember requesting it but it doesn't seem any more ridiculous than anything else I can watch. The Childlike Empress is a bit creepy, Atrayu a bit shrill and Bastien a bit of a weed but you can't argue with a luck dragon. I sit and watch it, pushing the chicken pie on the plate, swilling the thin acid tang of the wine around my mouth. Today had been another long day. I'd had another sleepless night staying up till four at North road, declaiming bullshit to Stephen, and then I went home and watched a Hancock DVD until six. I had four hours sleep and then couldn't sleep any-more. The rest of the morning I spent in lead boots, wobbling around the house, getting nothing done: it took me three hours to complete a bath. I make it to the hospital at four, getting caught up in school-run traffic, but my taxi driver is agreeable silent probably because I'm openly weeping in the rear-view mirror.
I am assailed by moths. I turn on the bathroom light at night and they fly in, big as birds, shit-brown and shivering next to the brilliance of the bath. They fly at my head while I'm trying to piss and I whip at them with towels like King Kong buzzed by Sopwith Camels. If King Kong used a towel. Which he should have down as they reduce these things to smears of brown dust in seconds. As soon as one is despatched another one bundles in, flying in fifteen different directions and always arriving at the same point - the back of my head. This is the only animal I will kill and not eat - even flies get the benefit of the doubt. This fear and hatred of moths is inherited from Kelly. She was obsessed by moths back in the Victoria Road flat - constantly digging through cupboards, ruthlessly combing through clothes, looking for tell-tales signs of their presence and, on one occasion, freezing tainted jackets or exiling them to the shed, where they slowly rotted. Rather the jackets are rotted and ruined than fallen to the moths.
I remain vigilant. No moths on my watch.
*Belfast is the only place I've ever seen goths wearing fake tan.
Lovefilm have sent me "The Never-ending Story". I don't ever remember requesting it but it doesn't seem any more ridiculous than anything else I can watch. The Childlike Empress is a bit creepy, Atrayu a bit shrill and Bastien a bit of a weed but you can't argue with a luck dragon. I sit and watch it, pushing the chicken pie on the plate, swilling the thin acid tang of the wine around my mouth. Today had been another long day. I'd had another sleepless night staying up till four at North road, declaiming bullshit to Stephen, and then I went home and watched a Hancock DVD until six. I had four hours sleep and then couldn't sleep any-more. The rest of the morning I spent in lead boots, wobbling around the house, getting nothing done: it took me three hours to complete a bath. I make it to the hospital at four, getting caught up in school-run traffic, but my taxi driver is agreeable silent probably because I'm openly weeping in the rear-view mirror.
I am assailed by moths. I turn on the bathroom light at night and they fly in, big as birds, shit-brown and shivering next to the brilliance of the bath. They fly at my head while I'm trying to piss and I whip at them with towels like King Kong buzzed by Sopwith Camels. If King Kong used a towel. Which he should have down as they reduce these things to smears of brown dust in seconds. As soon as one is despatched another one bundles in, flying in fifteen different directions and always arriving at the same point - the back of my head. This is the only animal I will kill and not eat - even flies get the benefit of the doubt. This fear and hatred of moths is inherited from Kelly. She was obsessed by moths back in the Victoria Road flat - constantly digging through cupboards, ruthlessly combing through clothes, looking for tell-tales signs of their presence and, on one occasion, freezing tainted jackets or exiling them to the shed, where they slowly rotted. Rather the jackets are rotted and ruined than fallen to the moths.
I remain vigilant. No moths on my watch.
*Belfast is the only place I've ever seen goths wearing fake tan.
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