The Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed in the Sun

My favorite books of all time make me feel very uncomfortable. The words are not cold and the situations are not rude. Instead, the very story makes me uncomfortable in my own skin. When I am finished, I feel like I should be doing something. I feel a desperate need to create that crawls through my veins, almost to the point that I can see it happening. My fingers itch to write something - anything - down, but, at the same time, my legs want to run. I get excited, and a little sick, and very inspired - but inspired for what, I don't always know.

I have two "stories" ("stories" are not books. Books are finished. Stories are on-going methods of masochism) that I am working on right now. One is a secret, and one is about a serial killer. I have a good idea of the secret, but not so for the serial killer. It's more like a collection of luminous bubbles floating around in my head. They're there, and I can feel them when they touch me, but they either burst or find some way to escape and become something else entirely. If I could catch onto them, or discipline myself to go on without them, the "story" would be a book by now, and the welts in my brain would have healed themselves. But I can't. I feel like the bubbles contain something genius, and I don't want to abandon them for fear that what I come up with would not be as good.

There's a Chinese legend about a carp that swims upstream and becomes a dragon. It's associated with Children's Day in Japan, where they fly carp streamers. The symbolism of it interests me. Even though it's celebrated in Hawai'i, I've only ever seen the carps. I've never seen anything else involved with Children's day. When I think of it, I see children holding their carps on poles, waiting to grow up and become dragons themselves. Right now, all of my "stories" are carps. Eventually, they will Become, as Dolarhyde would say.