Just finished reading Angela Carter's "The Infernal desire manchines of Dr Hoffman" and I feel propelled by an intense desire to respond to her tale. her tale of macabre, beauty, the absurd and colours which leap off some fantastical paintings looking for lodgings in some parts of your mind. Moulding and making itself into some part of my being. Which sometimes strike me as plastic, always waiting for new elements to fall into its glob and re-configure itself into some fantastical form of monstrosity or some great beauty but which always escapes scrutiny.

Perhaps my love for fairy tales is part of the reason why I feel so drawn by Angela Carter's tale, or perhaps it is just the beauty and intensity of the world which she presented, offering it in a crystal cup, a dark ruby liquid which on drinking I feel drugged and slightly poisoned. Just with enough dosage to sting, and immobilize but not to kill, so her tale lives, propagates in some abandoned corner of the mind. A tiny spark which if it lands in a dry prairie would explode with all the dazzling colours of a firework exploding itself. Savage and unordered her imagination, aroused desires for such freedom from within. Without guardrails of the ordinary to guide the evolution of new stories, it seems a scary journey into the unknown. What form would the imagination take? To where would it stray? Her story of a man's journey does it not reflect her own journey as a writer into the wilderness, some unknown region, where many are too frightened to enter into for fear they would lose their way back? She plunges into the ocean. No, it is more accurate to say through mirrors. not the doorways through which one can safely return. Which was why Alice arrived at wonderland. It was not through a safe and sure doorway where one can see the other side clearly. But one which was blocked, only reflecting what is on this side but not the other. Dare I dive into the liquid mercury imitating a mirror? Quite thankfully, both Angela Carter and Alice returned from wonderland. But what if one got lost? For if we really think about it, it is merely by coincidences which Alice manages to escape from her dreamscape, and for Angela Carter it may be her skill as a writer and a person grounded in absolute reality. But the plunge is one way. It is not a walk through the mirror. It is a terrible dive, greater than even a leap of faith, down down down into a river of unconsciousness beyond the cold hard surface of the mirror.