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February 4th,
2012 5:25 pm
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And those that of us that must do without need not do so within London for the month's length.
Shutting up shop; temporary but perishable supplies sold exceptionally cheaply.
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November 20th,
2011 8:07 pm
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[It is a lull. A pause between one thing and the other, in copying out one book forbidden by small sect of religious cult who wrote it and now again by the Library (and in a long hand that flows, that rolls seductive over words that have not been said for centuries, over sketches and drawings long deliberated upon before set down and preserved that now are eased out with flick of pen-nib) and the testing, the pinching apart of what rituals can be drawn to their edges, frenetic and taut with all their possibility before they subside, unsatisfied, magic dissapating as it builds up and Eli alone and Eli calm and Eli quiet within room dedicated to the purpose of this effort fruitless as it is life's work. It is the slow, winding presence of magic at fingertips and yet beyond reach perhaps, that makes her swing closer toward the book, away from promises, and the opium sweetness that bleeds bright behind her eyes]
We serve Christmas as neatly as we do all other holidays and high days, Solstice included, pick your poison (and do so without hesitation, nor confession, for do as you will is a sentiment to keep close at hand)
[Rainer]
Has the box confessed all yet?
[Cian Andley]
Are you confessor or lawyer or constable with secrets told and counted out? I would, if the former and never the latter and only arguably the median for that is all they do, feel certain in saying perhaps there is pause that can be taken in the work (work which is not expressly forbidden, you understand, but lies more in the lines and full-stops of the sentiment)
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October 21st,
2011 8:57 pm
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There is a constancy to this woman's inconstancy - a familiar rhythm and repeat like the rolling in and out of tides, knowing that the quick-licking lack of shore-line beneath the roil of sea-waves is to end and to restore what is presently absent. She has been, she has gone, she has returned and it is there in the smoke of sandalwood and orris root, of crumbling-sticky resins burned over brazier that drifts from grate-beneath-the-street and combats the drifting-pretty scents of occult made clean, made pretty for the mortals who dip their hands in magic's shadow and call it by magic's name. It is there in the cracked window above the shop, autumn's breath encouraged to whip in and chill rooms kept deliberately empty. It is there in the newly-lettered cardboard sign, fresh-black in the single windowpane of No.9's door -- "open for business, inquire within". Eli restored to London is like friend-sometimes-lover letting herself in the backdoor and greeting you with tea in hands from long day, it is the kiss to back of neck by surprise in crowded room, it is the drift of eyes across a room catching on what is familiar -- she will leave again, that much is true; this close to winter and it is inevitable the warmth will call to her to coil herself around it, to soak herself in it as much as Curanderos and Lukumi. But she's back -- for now
To advertise offers might imply that the stock is worth only its price (or less, to sell it for so little); suggestions for alternative methods of payment duly welcomed. (Bargain beautifully, valor to be rewarded)
Full complement of new texts, the usual disclaimer as to their use, their contents - grandfathered past the rules and regulations no doubt placed on current publication, to read, to learn rather than to practice.
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July 6th,
2011 11:11 pm
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( It subsides into silence, into the ever-present waiting that is Aurelia’s absence )
If Market magic is safe enough in pockets and purses to avoid avarice of others, then you have been cheated. [Mirth -- mild as it is, mocking somewhat of earnest Librarian a page or so back, but warmed through. Eli's contributions rarely much more than passing commentary]
[Dom]
Pause -- a perambulation of fingers composed and re-composed, pen picked up and pen laid down -- it is only when the sea is glassy-still and quiet, when wine and magic both lulls her that Eli lets ink touch page
There is a seer somewhere in London - part of the circus, you will need the Ringmaster to gain admittance but that should not pose problem for you, darling. Go there for your answers.
[Cian]
Afterthought and amendment both -- not direct, this dance, this next-step and exposure of the knife but bend of head and stepping sideways and Eli's hand curls around itself against the page -- like smile and secret.
Do remind me who present/incumbent possessor of position is that might (merely hypothetical) want to rifle through all incoming books so they might be side-stepped. Resignment to policy can only be seen as surrender, you see.
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June 5th,
2011 10:06 pm
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[In Brussels, the rain is slanting grey and poison-dark, the streets a cloud of drizzle-fog that lets her slide beneath it, unmasked, with magic tingling fingertips, magic combing cold-thrilling fingers through hair, pressing chill-cheek-kiss to skin before darting off and beyond and leaving pupils sparking dark as absinthe drinkers curled into the corner-cafes and bars scattered about. She meandered through Amsterdam - a spell or six in a loft where the slow-sweet-soft breathing of sleepers mingled with the heavy-soaked scent of herbs and magic both, where she coaxed another to glorious almost-death and all her secrets spilled out like seed into cupped palms for scattering, for planting and reaping - Eli will return another time, a later indistinct and shapeless, to pursue what small sowing has been done. She roamed beyond Croatia, to where the blood is thin and cold, to where she can almost envision the rattle-trap of wheels rolling along the roads, of a family's sole-to-self chatter made incomprehensible to outsiders, where the composure of tongue-teeth syllables was a snap and click, a serpent slide that came easily and without thought. She pushed on, stretched far, came back with trunk weighted down with books and things wrapped in soft silk cloths that rot slowly and deadly, things for jars and things to burn flames too-bright for human eyes, for calling back things and substances perhaps not meant to be. And then the teetering turn backward, the slow swanning back through Europe to the place where sun beats down on shiny-painted black door, where the locks on the cellar door are tighter than those on its outward shell, secrets locked deep-dark within and everything else an inconvenience.
Eli is back]
How long does one need to be away for the dust to breed jackals, not rabbits?
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April 9th,
2011 11:30 pm
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[The usual calls to attention of stock as yet unsold, new bargains or the slithering need for a new tome herself that requires inquiry amongst those faceless folk who write new lines beneath her own, the quagmire of the magical community -- these are absent. Eli, who pauses mid-ritual, who scribbles notes to herself never in her journal (for to do so would wilt the illusion, the all-in-control occultist whose fingers drip sensation and that would never do) and consults the next book and the smallest of sighs which is the skipped note in Csontos melody: something will not go right, something will not do as she would wish it, lays down one pen and picks up the other. It is in scudding-bold hand then, wry-laughter dancing against page in letters rather than sound.]
A Market within sight of a moon? What will we observe then, all those desires sent skipping toward satisfaction, or just the slow climb towards calamity, when the two occur as one?
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March 11th,
2011 10:07 pm
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[For those who keep up with the journals, for those who dip in and out but who have an ongoing interest in the information one can buy or find or read or learn or memorise, the kind of information that burns the fingertips until they tingle past tantalizing and become torture, the kind of information that is an inhaled breath of old blood and sweet wine and chalk and ink -- Eli's handwriting is as distinctive as old printing press, the small flaw the ongoing indication of presumed perfection, the ever-constancy of her odd calligraphy sliding sly and shy and twining itself noose-tight across the page offset and made and ever underscored by the hovering doubt as to where precisely she is writing from, whether the door at the magic shop is locked tight and water-swollen with days past and the post cascades about the doormat or whether she is (as usual) curled up in a chair beneath the window, cigarette burning down to nothing in her fingers, and smiling her knowing little look at a moon too full to be utterly unaware]
Istanbul by moonlight, London by street-lamp -- what have you done with your beauty, London?
New stock on Monday, a handful of interesting books for those who are interesting; no permanent sales but interested parties may inquire.
And has London managed to limp along as all romance wilts away without a commercial holiday to coax it on?
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February 14th,
2011 11:09 pm
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The day is thin, shallow as clouds scudding the sky with pink and red sugar veneer over what the mundanes will never think, never say. She watches, with that curl-corner flick of the mouth that is not quite disdain but not quite a smile, all folded arms against black overcoat, as the underground rattles and sways and the yellow light catches couples, palm in palm and leaning into one another like trees starved of light, winding together for something of substance to hold onto. She watches them, these people who are one by one shadow-things every day but this, this excuse for a quiet-well-behaved nation to permit themselves liberties: the skimming touch of fingertips to back of hand, a blouse unbuttoned a touch lower (flicker of lacy lingerie at the next button, there are men whose eyes are drawn, lips part, knowing smile, they know, she knows, it is all a game that London learns to play today) the kiss taken outside the station, rain running in grey-black rivulets against the stone and plastering them together like a twisted statue, a creation of warped hands as it goes on until they are consumed and consuming, caught up in this one day love (sex) is allowed to reign in something other than air-starved secrecy. The day is a veil drawn over the beat of blood, the honey-heady sweetness of the pulse in veins, of how touch is when it is denied, when desire gasps itself out into something promising the preexistence, into something that sparks and dies within the body, when everything is ugly-animal-glorious and these people, these precious people with their manners and their distanced ways of touching (as ever ritualistic as old courts and kings and down-turned eyes in Japanese geisha districts) are a drink away from forgetting they are people and not made to do what they are made to do.
She spends the day in the shop, sells out ingredients for 'charms' and pink-and-red candles, oiled with flaxseed for 'ritual oil' without blinking, takes more money by three than she has done in four weeks and closes the shop before the day is done and spends the rest of it (til nightfall) in her ritual room, with books by candlelight, with salt scattered against the floor and powders strangely coloured, with blood red like wine painting her bare arms to her elbows, until she is lost the way they are all lost, to something elemental, to something more, something that sings and hums insistently, a need kept quiet when the day is not exceptional, when there is not excuse to call it by another name and string it, shining-gold against the other gray ones in that chain of existence.
Be glorious hedonists, you all, for just one night, hm?
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February 8th,
2011 5:54 pm
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If life were as it should be: the throat-clearing, the thick hum-whine-buzz of anticipatory strings on strings, the slow sashay-sway of heavy velvet swinging back and up into folds, tight cluster of possibility bunched up and leaving bare only black maw of the stage, its own endlessness picked out in silver-solo spotlight.
But life is never as it should be, a girl must carry her own clenching-swoop of the stomach with her, that catch of breath that is expectation and turned heads and thus when the old familiar handwriting swoops in, sets itself down on paper a little thinner, a little newer than her fingertips are used to (old stuff thick as dreams, rasping as it turns like old-man-complaints and reluctant secrets teased out with the ripple of language to language, the careless knowledge spread out for perusal, the dying-jewel of its promised potential nipped up in nail-edges) it is of prosaic purpose -- mounted boxes in the stockroom, a delivery signed for with hands blackened with soot & blood & old, old poisons now called other things than drowsy words in forgotten languages and a cant of the head when it is intimated that perhaps old festivals from the depths of the dark, clawless, trimmed down and made impotent, be something to think on, with candle-wax dipped red as arterial blood and pink as burned-away life in flesh stacked up on shelves to sell.
The pen that whisks a way across the page slants through the rice-paper-fragile veil that casts shadow world safe in silence from such things, keeps the mundane dancing, threaded through and jumping with just a little of all that belief - until ink blooms and bruises it, leaves only letters and sentences lined up in its wake and the imagined laughing (always laughing) smile of the woman who carves away the edge of what is for all what could be
Valentine's Day sale, Imbolc, Saturnalia, call it what you like, the demons won't know the difference. Stock to go before next week, A glance across at worn-away chalk on the floor, at a tome that contains worlds within it and we're closed from Thursday.
For the true romantic, Oh the arched eyebrow conveyed, the tight-little smile of disbelief that comes and it goes and leaves those who know raw with the perceived emptiness of all the word conveys we're full to brim with hearts. Rabbit to demon; nothing says it until it is 'enough to buy you hard-to-find ritual ingredients', hm?
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