#o caledonia

[antigonick]

She had discovered a beautiful new word in her Latin dictionary—stillicidium, the dripping of rain water from roofs and gables.

—Elspeth Barker, O Caledonia

[pasdetrois]

Elspeth Barker, O Caledonia

[aboutmercy]

she could no longer have faith in god or man. she transferred any religious impulse which might yet linger within her to the greek gods, who did not even pretend to care especially for humanity or to value its efforts and aspirations, being far too busy with their own competing plots, feuds, and passions. now when she prayed she stood in darkness, beneath the moon, and repeated her message three times, with rigidly clenched fists and unwinking stare, forcing all her strength upwards to the chilly disc or crescent which sometimes glanced slyly back at her, sometimes reeled drunkenly off into the torn clouds. she was in retreat from the world, in a state of numb and impotent horror. francis told her that she was a boring monolith, concentred all in self. he was right, she thought, but she knew no way of expressing her state in words, no way of escaping her carapace. the lonely call of an owl, which once had thrilled her, now pierced her with apprehension. man’s inhumanity to man and beast dominated a world of vicious anarchy and disgrace. only the trees and hills and the night sky held to their orderly beauty: “o look upon the starry firmament.”

she found an astronomical globe and took it to her room; she sat on the floor studying it and she wept. she did not know why she was weeping.

— o’ caledonia by elspeth barker

[lesbianboyfriend]

Janet began to hate the sea. There was so much of it, flowing, counter-flowing, entering other seas, slyly furthering its interests beyond the mind's reckoning; no wonder it could pass itself off as sky; it was infinite, a voracious marine confederacy. She saw how it diminished people as they walked along the shore; they lost their identity, were no more than pebbles, part of the sea's scheme. Once there had been a great forest below the cliffs; there the hairy mammoth had browsed and raised his trunk and trumpeted. There had been mountain crags and deep, sweet valleys of gentle herbivores. The sea had come and taken them. Later it had taken churches too, and on wild nights you could listen for their bells. The air was loud enough with bells already; Janet preferred to listen for the hairy mammoth.

O Caledonia, Elspeth Barker

[the-hearth-and-the-wild]

She would live out her days at Auchnasaugh, a bookish spinster attended by cats and parrots, until that time when she might become ethereal, pure spirit untainted by the woes of flesh, a phantom drifting with the winds. What fun she would have as a ghost. She could hardly wait.

Elspeth Barker, O Caledonia

[jupitersflytrap]

drawings i did a while ago of some characters from books i read for one of my uni courses

[virgin-martyr]

'You’re a big girl now.' She didn’t want to be a big girl. It seemed she was punished for something which happened without her choice or knowledge.

Elspeth Barker, excerpt from O Caledonia

[pinkbowjournal]

She stood on the terrace shaking the wet honeysuckle over her face, breathing its perfume, a creature momentarily compounded of dew and air and fragrance.

Elspeth Barker, O Caledonia.