Sunday, February 27, 2011

Who is this Lacey Reah and what is she like?

To help break the ice, I found some personality interview questions and answered them. If you'd like to know more about me, ask me anything.

1. When are you most alert morning or night? Depends on when I eat the most chocolate. ;)

2. If you were a tree (or animal) what kind of tree (animal) would you be? I would be a hawk. Hawks are sharp, strong, fierce and have foresight and perspective.

3. If you were a Star Trek® [or Star Wars®] character, which one would it be? Nothing like a geek question to verify a person’s geek status. I would definitely be Mr. Spock. I really identify with him, being half Vulcan and half human myself. Let me explain: My father rebelled against his strict religious upbringing and is a hard core atheist who believes strongly in “logic” and science. In fact, I recall him many times in my childhood criticizing me for not being “logical”. I did very well in my philosophy of logic class despite my classmates complaints that it made no sense to them so I often see things differently as most humans, noting that they don’t see the “logic” in things. However, my mother is a very spiritual and intuitive woman so like Spock, I also have a human side. I’ve learned to use both intuition and logic when dealing with my problems.

4. If you could trade places with any other person for a week, famous or not famous, living or dead, real or fictional. With whom would it be? My son

5. If you could be any character in fiction, who would you be? I would be Princess Naussica from the Studio Ghibli film, “Naussica and the Valley of the Wind.” She lives in the toxic future, where plants have become poisonous to breathe and though everyone is afraid of mother earth, she still finds it beautiful and learns how to reverse the toxins. However, she isn’t able to convince the politicians to save the earth because of their own preoccupation with war and destruction. She is fearless and follows her heart. Because of this, she finds answers that other people are too blinded by fear to see.

6. Would you consider yourself as a quiet, calm person or an active person? I’m like a puppy. One moment I’m frisky and running around in circles, and the next moment I’m calm and just lying around

7. If you could be a superhero, what would you want your superpowers to be? Super psychic powers of telepathy and telekinesis.

8. If you had only six months left to live, what would you do with the time? Tell everyone I ever knew how I felt about them and spend most of my time with my love ones, savoring every moment with them.

9. If you were a type of food, what type of food would you be? A supreme pizza.

10. Do you have any interesting habits? If so please list them (Examples might be suck on a finger, twirl hair, roll tongue, double jointed) I have monkey feet and pick things up with my toes when I don’t feel like bending over. I eat a lot, bad habit. I tend to twiddle my toes when I’m anxious. I bend back my fingers and make weird sculptures out of them. I can spin things really fast in many different ways. I kick in my sleep.

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Philosophical Quotes from "Fireflies"

Below are some of my favorite philosophical quotes from the novella, “Fireflies.”  Although the story contains some explicit erotic scenes, it does raise many questions about the meaning of life.


Pierre is a dreamer and is satisfied with keeping his fantasies nothing but that. My dreams become goals and I learn to make them real... —Fireflies by Lacey Reah

She doesn’t snarl. She smiles instead, but it is a half smile. She is hiding something, an imperfection. There is something about her teeth, the sides of them that she doesn’t want me to see. I am fascinated by this unseen flaw. I want to know what she is hiding. Perhaps this is what is missing from my life, some mysterious flaw that I won’t want to correct... —Fireflies by Lacey Reah

How can I not go back? Was it not just the other day that I was musing to myself how perfect my life is? How perfect it was? And even then I wasn’t satisfied until I did something to perfect it even more... —Fireflies by Lacey Reah

Memories frequent my mind of a time when making love was not so rushed, when I was the one being seduced, before it became so important for me to finish the kill. For so long, the need for food and the isolation from mankind has left me indifferent to such thoughts. But lately, I find them plaguing me more and more. Then I meet her... —Fireflies by Lacey Reah

After all, I start to think, when we look back, and I mean, really look back on our lives unconditionally, isn’t it the beautiful moments in time we remember? We might analyze the stories. We might question the feelings of the past, but our true, most accented memories are the brief moments that meant nothing at all, except that they were beautiful in one way or another. I might ask myself many times whether or not I loved this girl. But I’ll never question the fact that we stood on a bed of moss, surrounded by fireflies... —Fireflies by Lacey Reah

She was stronger, but I managed to outmaneuver her. She needs to believe I’m far more powerful. It’s the only way. After all, being nice doesn’t seem to be working... —Fireflies by Lacey Reah

What was it about us? What do we have in us that allowed us to cheat death and change into something new?  I suppose the two of us were already a bit wild. Maybe it doesn’t take as much of a transformation as I think it does. Perhaps we were already halfway to becoming beasts. —Fireflies by Lacey Reah


“No, I should go. You’ve been much too kind.”
“Don’t lose yourself out there, my dear. This city can eat you right up if you let it.”
“I won’t,” I respond reassuringly.
“But there’s always something,” he continues. “Something keeps us going when everyone else has left. Even if it’s a small thing, something is bound to fuel our will to go on—even if it is just a beautiful lady, who is open enough to let me help her.”  He smiles faintly... —Fireflies by Lacey Reah

The fireflies, though scarce, hover in the darkness, watching me. What do they want? How are we connected? —Fireflies by Lacey Reah

Questions are something I thought would never bother me again. They only bother human women, women who are bogged down with the demands of civilization. Yet they bother me now. I thought I had changed... —Fireflies by Lacey Reah

I no longer see fireflies glowing in the surrounding bushes and grasses. I do not see their patterns of flashing light blessing the vast landscape of the great park. There are a few still lingering and they stay close to me. Why are they here in the summer and gone in the spring? Just like Natasha, their lives are transient. What was her fascination with them? Why are they fascinated with us? Vampires live forever. We read about them in strange books. I know the fireflies do not. They are here and gone within the span of a season. In the stories, there are rules. There are answers. People learn quite easily how to kill a werewolf or a vampire. In stories, people find answers to their dilemmas. In stories, people are handed the answers through the advice of a doctor or mystic. I read somewhere that you can make yourself human again if you kill the first vampire in the legacy. I wonder if Jesse believes such crap. Maybe she is just trying everything, hoping that she will find an answer eventually. What will that crazy girl try next? —Fireflies by Lacey Reah

We’re diseased, is what we are. We aren’t some new species of animal. We’re human and those who don’t die by our hands catch what we have. —Fireflies by Lacey Reah


You compare your life to that of a firefly but it is never that simple or fantastic... —Fireflies by Lacey Reah

“We aren’t social creatures,” Natasha once said to me. I believed her. Then why do I feel so alone? I realize now that I was a fool to believe her. What could she have known? I know nothing as does Jesse. —Fireflies by Lacey Reah

Thursday, February 3, 2011

Quills

This blog is dedicated to the character Madeleine from the famous play and movie, “Quills.”  She is a linen maid in an insane asylum who has become friends with the Marqius De Sade and even helps him publish some of his filthy writings from his prison. 

Madeleine: If I wasn't such a bad woman on the page, I couldn't be such a good woman in life. –Quills.

We once had an old friend over for dinner and he looked up at my bookshelf and laughed.  When I asked him what he found so amusing, he noted that the Holy Bible and the Collected Works of the Marquis De Sade were stacked on top of each other.  Last night, I was up with the cough and had trouble sleeping.  My husband couldn’t help noticing that if I wasn’t lulling myself to sleep with some moral or spiritual text written by the Dali Llama or Ghandi or what not, I was escaping into a fantasy world of horror or erotica.  I told him I had been reading a short story about an obsessive compulsive who was sewing up the artery of a victim he had found, or did he kill her?  It was very gory and intricate.  “This is what lulls you to sleep at night?” he asked.  
“Yes, but right next to it is the autobiography of Ghandi and His Experiments With Truth.  I’m reading that too.”  
“You’re weird,” he sighed, shaking his head.

Coulmier: But why must you indulge in his pornography? 
Madeleine: It's a hard days' wages slaving away for madmen, what I've seen in life - it takes a lot to hold my interest. –Quills

When I was a young girl in the summertime and I didn’t have to worry about going to school the next day, I amused myself by watching midnight episodes of The Twilight Zone while the rest of the family was asleep and could no longer fight me over what channel to watch on the set.  Those were my times of peace as I got as far away from reality I could to journey into a world beyond space and time. 

“But what about reality?” people ask.  “You must keep your head out of the clouds.”  Anyone who is acquainted with my life knows that my reality is quite clear.  I have my duties as a working mother and my life is run like a factory.  I have read my share of self help books and professional literature and I work very hard at my business. So when I do have time to myself, I think I deserve escaping into a dark world where I can be shocked and amused by monsters and ghosts.  I don’t scare easily, never have.  I’m not afraid of adventure and I think I’m a better person for it.  Fairy tales were once dark fiction about a castle and an evil queen and a young girl thrown into a horrifying adventure.  Stories we told when our cousin’s came over or around the campfire highlight some of the happiest times of my life.  There’s nothing like a good scare.  It takes me far away from my worries and puts me right to sleep. If I’m lucky, it might just keep me up all night.

Madeleine: Some things belong on paper, others in life. It's a blessed fool who can't tell the difference. –Quills

Madeleine: Your publisher says I'm not to leave without another manuscript. 
Marquis de Sade: I've just the story. It's the unhappy tale... of a virginal laundry lass. The darling of the lower wards where they entomb the criminally insane. 
Madeleine: Is it awfully violent? 
Marquis de Sade: Most assuredly. 
Madeleine: Is it terribly erotic? 
Marquis de Sade: Fiendishly so. But it comes with a price. A kiss for each page.  --Quills