Of or pertaining to blood; consisting of or containing blood.
Causing or delighting in bloodshed; bloody, sanguinary.
In medieval and later physiology: Belonging to that one of the four ‘complexions’…indicated by a ruddy countenance and a courageous, hopeful, and amorous disposition.
Blood-red. (OED)
I’ve never been good at keeping a diary, or finishing a story - I forget that satisfaction can be found in not putting oneself under the encyclopaedic weight of flowering perfection. i’m not sure what this will be - except likely very self-indulgent - but that’s ok! i am an archivist at heart and I want somewhere to serve these slippery thoughts.
today, I put in a tampon for the first time in approximately five years. You dont appreciate the joys of the menstrual cup until it one day grows legs and scuttles away… no sucking pop - slick and salacious - no tadpole blood clots lovingly cradled in palm. The danger of the menstrual cup is that it leaves one prone to dangerous, unsavory thoughts (that period art is cool and that you should make some).
When i was 16, I went to a party covered in blood crafted from golden syrup and food colouring. the theme was SES, and I figured that what would be simultaneously most subversive and suggestive would be to dress as a hapless victim. There are numerous pictures of me necking someone at that party on the internet, friends and strangers posing around me while i - lost in the blissful knowledge I was gaining social capital by the hickey - shut my eyes tightly. Nowadays I’m not even really sure I am a girl. Gobbies have been surprisingly hot topic of conversation lately (a gleeful mastication of guttural vowels tossed back and forth between friends). I was always too honest in drinking games.
I sliced my finger open on my 21st birthday, with an oak-boned hunting knife I didn’t know how to handle. glinting on its blade is the word obstreperously - petulance, pugnacity, testiness and tetchiness. I fainted, just as if I had tasted goblin fruits too plump and perfect. Exsanguinate - to be drained of blood. I had never actually fainted before, just pretended to in chapel when I was bored and my socks were itchy. That’s where it’s from; Christina Rosetti’s Goblin Market ;
White and golden Lizzie stood,
Like a lily in a flood,—
Like a rock of blue-vein’d stone
Lash’d by tides obstreperously,—
Like a beacon left alone
In a hoary roaring sea,
Sending up a golden fire,—
Like a fruit-crown’d orange-tree
White with blossoms honey-sweet
Sore beset by wasp and bee,—
Like a royal virgin town
Topp’d with gilded dome and spire
Close beleaguer’d by a fleet
Mad to tug her standard down.
I’ve already written on that.
Please find enclosed a playlist, to be listened to in order, if you wish.
Until next time,
Niamh