I got bored today so I did some updates on my long-neglected and rarely-mentioned other project, The Last Ancient House.

I added some details to the template to explain what is going on there to the casual passerby, and added one poem (Where the Moon Is Always Gibbous) and one story (The Owls).

The site was put together with Blogger's novel template and I have assembled there most of my just-for-fun writing stuff in one place for easy reference, since my old website is long gone.

Reviewing some of my old stuff, I am thinking that I really would like to start writing again.

I choose weird stories because they suit my inclination best--one of my strongest and most persistent wishes being to achieve, momentarily, the illusion of some strange suspension or violation of the galling limitations of time, space, and natural law which forever imprison us and frustrate our curiosity about the infinite cosmic spaces...

--H.P. Lovecraft

Phoenix is wondering how to explain Cthulhu to people, and mentioned me in her post.

It isn't something I've ever really bothered with.  I am drawn to this kind of story for the same reasons Lovecraft wrote them, and which is explained in the quote above.

I once had a Cthulhu t-shirt.  The picture of the Great Old One was sort of cartoonish, though.  Someone who saw it asked me if it was anything like Godzilla.  "If Godzilla ever ran into Cthulhu," I answered, "He would run screaming home to his mommy--if he survived at all."

The shirt still exists, but I've outgrown it.  It has been used as a night-shirt by both of my kids at one time or another.

But that's about the extent of any explanations I've ever offered.  It just isn't something that comes up in everyday conversation.  Most people who are drawn to this kind of thing have already discovered the infamous Mythos on their own, although I have tipped a couple of people off to it through the years.

My grandmother, who in her later years began reading lots of fantasy and sci-fi because I kept talking about it to her and loaning her books, couldn't read Lovecraft.  I once loaned her the old Ballantine paperback of The Best of H.P. Lovecraft and she read only the first story, "The Rats in the Walls," and quit.  She said it was too scary.  And that was just monstrous rats and cannibalistic insanity.  She didn't even make it to the bad stuff.

So I usually reserve such references in conversation to the few times when there is someone around who I know will get it without explanation.  These days, that generally means only my kids will know what I'm talking about.  The effect of learning about Cthulhu when they were just old enough to talk remains to be seen.

So I guess I don't really have a good answer.  I will add the disclaimer that I realize all this stuff is simply fiction, and while it is to me a way to fictitiously explore the boundaries, I can also see a huge potential for humor in it.

In honor of the ancient fest of Yule.

---

There is snow on the ground,
  And the valleys are cold,
And a midnight profound
 Blackly squats o'er the wold;
But a light on the hilltops half-seen hints of
  feastings unhallowed and old.

There is death in the clouds,
  There is fear in the night,
For the dead in their shrouds
  Hail the sun's turning flight.
And chant wild in the woods as they dance
  round a Yule-altar fungous and white.

To no gale of Earth's kind
  Sways the forest of oak,
Where the thick boughs entwined
  By mad mistletoes choke,
For these pow'rs are the pow'rs of the dark,
  from the graves of the lost Druid-folk.

And mayst thou to such deeds
  Be an abbot and priest,
Singing cannibal greeds
  At each devil-wrought feast,
And to all the incredulous world
  shewing dimly the sign of the beast.

---

And in case that's not enough for you, here's one I wrote myself, inspired by Lovecraft's story, The Festival (hey, more readers than last year!  it gives me a chance to bore a whole new bunch of people).

Yule Fest

Gathered together for the centuried rite;
Across snow-covered ground we walk bleakly t'ward home,
Through archaic Kingsport and streets seldom trodden,
After sunset's last rays have sunk into the gloam.

Only the lonely and poor still remember
Why we have come to this place out of time;
In this strange haunted city where once lived our elders,
With its gambrels and gables all covered with rime.

In the last ancient house at the end of the alley
We are met by the priest in his waxen-faced mask;
From blasphemous books we relearn the rituals,
Through tunnels beneath we descend to our task.

In green-litten caverns we hold dark communion,
Near a subterrene river where ghouls fear to tread.
With wild harmonies and songs cacophonic,
We sing and we laugh as we feast with the dead.

Then beyond the blackness from over the river,
Where the green flame burns bright and the black waters fall,
Come our mounts that are neither a mole nor a buzzard,
But something a sane man could never recall.

Far back in the shades of these gangrenous caverns,
In the depths of this cosmic Tartarean hall;
Are shapes of vile things that somehow are moving:
Vile things that walk but ought only to crawl.

Maddened, we rush down that black, oily river,
Past chaotic cataracts that thunder and boom;
Through caverns infernal on wings gaunt and membranous,
Our steeds flop and fly as we rejoice in our doom.

Yes, only a few of us old ones remember,
Only the cursed and the sad demon-kissed;
And snow fills the footprints that wend through the alley,
And the last ancient house disappears in the mist.