Memento Mori

So far today, so good. I'm guzzling water to quench the insatiable thirst I've collected over the course of the night and deciding what I want for breakfast. And waiting for Cake Wrecks to update. Is it twisted that I know this happens at precisely 6.30 every morning?

I think I slept deadly though, judging from the fact that when I did get up to go pee and rinsed my eyes out, they were so stuck together I could still barely get them open.

I really want today to be a Jael Has Energy Day. I'm sick of living in a haze... literally, because when I wake up exhausted, I'm too tired to fool with my glasses that take so much focus to adjust to. So I don't wear them. After this baby comes... we are getting new glasses, because I'm sick to death of the issues with these ones that I've been putting up with for what... five years now? Gah. Never let me be swayed by Swarovski crystals again. Just don't let it happen. Dan suggested I try contacts, and I'm not sure whether I'd be able to handle that. But I guess I'd be willing to give it a trial. Peripheral fuzz *is* one of my hugest annoyances about this current pair I have. They sit so far out on my nose it's utterly ridiculous.

Okay, Cake Wrecks time. Then breakfast.

Busy day ahead of me, but I'm going to try to stay focused on downstairs and not worry about the upstairs just yet. I just wish I could get on top of things. I feel like my entire life is a battle to just keep basic tidiness in effect. I hate my ineptitude. And it's not that I don't have the desire or don't try, because I really do. I hate living in a mess, yet my brain seems to have some connections missing or something as to how to get *rid* of the mess and keep it that way.

Need to make blueberry muffins. Going to try a batch with Rumford baking powder (that has no aluminum) and a second batch with a baking soda/cream of tartar substitute. We'll see how they turn out.

Dan wanted to try the homemade laundry soap Steve and Laura did, so we got all the stuff for it last night and brought it home and then I got a whiff of the Fels Naptha soap and I'm not sure I'm going to be able to handle that. I told him we should try a very small batch first and see whether the smell lasts through washing and if not whether vinegar will take it out. So, we'll give that a whirl on Sunday.

I really just want to go back to bed. This whole week I've felt like I've been in a bit of a daze. Hard to get up in the morning and hard to stay focused on my tasks. Blah. I can't even read more than a couple pages before my mind starts wandering and I realise I've turned pages without having any idea what I just read.

Pray for me. I need it today. Let's just hope I can conveniently time my meltdown well in advance of Bible study tonight.

Book Thirteen: Fabulous Opal Whiteley, by Elbert Bede. 181 pages.

And the longest 181 pages I've read in some time, I might add.

First of all, he should have titled it Fantastic Opal Whiteley, since clearly she is not so much fab as fantasy to him. He constantly refers to her as opalescent (apparently he thought that was witty), an "(adjective) little miss" or a "tot" or an "(adjective) maid", all of which seem to drip with a determination to malign.

The author, a reporter, starts out the book acting as though he supports Opal, appreciates her, and likes her. It doesn't take long, though, before he does a 180 and spends the rest of the book denouncing ad infinitum all the lies and deception she pulled off in her lifetime, all the misery she caused, and on and on.

His style is extremely labourious: he repeats himself a lot, cites a lot of Conveniently Unnamed Sources (pet peeve of mine), and quotes himself quite frequently. He seems to fancy himself an authority on Opal, on the basis of having known her for a time and having received some correspondence from her. He seems to think it clever to write sentences such as the following: ...if they were to appear in my mail some bright morning—or even on a misty morning—I should not be more confounded than I have been by other things... What in the name of overripe mangoes does the mistiness or non-mistiness of a morning matter? Would the contents of a letter change because the sun decided to shine?

Also toward the end of the book we have a passage where Bede says he believes Opal had an assistant helping her fabricate and shred the diary in Los Angeles. He writes:

The name of the one who probably [I should add that this book is liberally peppered with words such as probably, supposedly, maybe, and allegedly] played that part was given me a third of a century ago. I didn't dream that I should be today preparing this manuscript or I most certainly should have endeavoured to follow through on that lead.

He seemed like he didn't pass up any other opportunity to malign at any point. Why this one? He makes himself ridiculous. His attempts to cause Opal to fall flat only make himself look silly.

He closes the book more or less with guesses: unsolved, without information, guess, do not know, are not certain, suspect, have no explanation all appear in one paragraph. And as a parting slap, he callously refers to Opal's then-current residence as a charge of London County, England; "tragedy has stilled the mind of a genius".

In short, I find him a hateful, disgusting man.



I have no answers concerning the shrouding of mystery that is going to remain swirling around Opal until the end of time. I really don't. I don't know if she wrote her diary as a child or not.

But this I can say: Opal and I go way back. I think I understand her on a highly personal level, because the spirit that flows from her pen is kindred to my own in innumerable ways. I believe she did write her diary at the age she said, and while some of its content may have been embroidered figments of imagination (my childhood diaries were full of it before I knew that Opal existed), I think it was part of her world that was real to her. Her play may have happened in her mind, much as mine often did. I wrote constantly of people who were invisible but as real to me as the nose on my face, and thought thoughts in my head that compassed the globe. Why should she not have had similar imagination? She claimed a man for her father who most likely was not her father, and yet he became more real to her than the one she had. We don't need to go into that now.

Granted, Opal eventually seemed to get to a point where the fantasy in her life seemed to take over the reality. The hospital in London confirmed she had a mental condition and probably had her whole life, something that no doubt affected the way she acted, her relations with people, and her strange obsession with imaginary things. Again I can relate, albeit on a less extreme level. We don't need to go into that now, either.

Suffice it to say I did not like this book at all. I give it a half star.

"The Singing Creek Where the Willows Grow" is such a better way to read about Opal's life. It was written by a man who cared for her as a person and loved her work for what it was: genius. He is more specific in his sources, more gentle and level-headed in his approach.