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    There Was An Old Woman Who Lived In Her Head
    There Was An Old Woman Who Lived In Her Head
    There Was An Old Woman Who Lived In Her Head
    Ebook114 pages1 hour

    There Was An Old Woman Who Lived In Her Head

    By L J Carr

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    About this ebook

    As a postmodern fiction for imaginative readers of all ages, THERE WAS AN OLD WOMAN WHO LIVED IN HER HEAD devolves the ‘world’ of Samuel Beckett into that of Lewis Carroll.
    The eponymous Old Woman relives and retells her trauma of adolescence, as she remains perpetually locked into her younger Self: she is the perpetual school-leaver who, as a dreamer, is ambitious and yet without any real prospects. Her companion for these odd adventures is a full-size bunny-boy who, ambiguously, is both her friend and her fantasy. His life-quest is to compose opera, hers to dance professionally. Together, they journey through a trauma of disillusionment and enlightenment, as they experience the process of Life educating them into its ambiguities and absurdities: it is also the somewhat painfully-funny progress of their going nowhere.
    This is no conventional novella but a ‘long’ short-story in symphonic form: there are no chapters (as such) only illustrative ‘markers’ that divide the story (per se) into its musical ‘movements’; and all such images appear as variations if its thematic nucleus, as are the divertissements of a classical ballet; the final pages of this story being, quite literally, a brilliant piece of music especially composed by Peter Bourne. These illustrative images represent the Old Woman in her life-long static dance (as a tree in a high wind). Look at these images! Listen to the concluding music!
    This novella is an intelligent, erudite, witty and lively fiction, in which every element is simultaneously both fictive and self-consciously factive. And yet, although there is nothing of ‘new’ in all this text, every element is as ‘new’ as yesterday’s leftovers and as ‘old’ as the prospect of tomorrow...As it says in an inset song: Watch those claws!

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherL J Carr
    Release dateApr 30, 2013
    ISBN9781301541386
    There Was An Old Woman Who Lived In Her Head
    Author

    L J Carr

    Senior Lecturer in Drama & Literature

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      Book preview

      There Was An Old Woman Who Lived In Her Head - L J Carr

      There Was An Old Woman Who Lived In Her Head

      By L.J. Carr

      Smashwords Edition

      Copyright 2013 L. J Carr

      License Notes: This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this ebook with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      Ebook formatting by www.ebooklaunch.com

      Table of Contents

      There Was an Old Woman Who Lived In Her Head

      The Old Woman Remembers

      The Old Woman Reads Her Story

      The Old Woman Remembers

      There was an old woman who lived in her head

      Where too much was fiction from books she had read:

      The rest was remembered as ‘fact’ when in fact

      ‘T was mostly all nonsense (absurdly intact)

      .

      From a time when her life was a child’s nursery rhyme.

      This story’s for those who will never grow up,

      In whose dreams are voices that never shut up,

      Which speak about what never was or will be -

      As if we all live in the madhouse...You see?

      .

      Maddeningly, Lewis Carroll left unanswered this riddle: Why is a raven like a writing-desk? A constituent element of There Was An Old Woman Who Lived In Her Head is this attempt to answer Dodgson’s riddle: One keeps its darkness on the outside, the other in its inside: which as a solution may well seem rather lame but, after years of speculation, it is the best I can offer...With such a perspective as its genesis, this story locates its materials in a deliberately topsy-turvy world that is not Alice’s ‘Underground’ but somewhere deep in the mind of an old woman who, mentally, remains in the ‘Wonderland’ of her own childhood and its literature. For her, darkness is both internal and external: she is, so to speak metaphorically, both the ‘raven’ and the ‘writing-desk’.

      There Was an Old Woman Who Lived In Her Head

      The Old Woman Remembers

      I’ve sat here in this park for fifty years: in front of me is a children’s playground with a climbing frame that looks like an old railway station and a roundabout that looks like an old steam train. Small children play there when the sun shines. I sit here on my bench in the park whether the sun shines or not: it’s nothing to me.

      Behind me is a school: or at least I think it’s still an institution of some kind. I half remember I went to that school but now I’m not certain: I’m not certain of anything anymore. All I remember is living through all sorts of books I was not expected to understand and many others I was forced to read. I know all about fairies: after all, I was once a fairy. I still am. I like stories. I’ve always liked stories, even when I was a girl at school, if ever I was. I’m not certain, not about anything. That building behind me may not even be a school, not now: it may never have been a school. But I do remember living there when I was a not-so-little girl, if ever I was. And I remember I used to speak very nicely, and I used to dance too. And that was all I ever did while I lived over there in that derelict building behind me. I used to play fairies, to talk to myself, to tell stories, and I used to dance: that was not all I did, I’m certain!

      Beyond the playground in front of me is a cricket-square fenced off with string: which is where men in white coats supervise a game with other men in white pyjamas. Even today I don’t understand what they do: I never did. Obviously what they do is not croquet. I know how to play croquet.

      On my lap is a biscuit tin, or it may be a cake tin of some kind: I’m not sure. In it I keep my story written in blue ink...in an old school exercise-book with lines: twenty five lines to each page...I wrote about myself, of course: that’s what anyone-who-writes writes about, if you see what I’m saying; and I keep all I ever wrote safe in my cake tin; or it may be a biscuit tin, I’m not sure. I’m not certain of anything any more...My exercise books are all that I have left from a time I was at school, if ever I was. I know that while I lived as a child in that building I had to invent friends with whom I danced, to whom I told stories: there was nobody else...because I was always alone and by myself, especially during holiday-times when the others - if they were scholars - went home, if they had homes to go to. But me, I lived all year in that building behind me...I still do.

      Every day I come to this park where I sit on my bench...As ever, as always...Here I am.

      My special tin has on its lid an embossed Chinese landscape, mostly misty mountains. One mountain on a ridge of mountains looks like a Chinese dragon, just like the dragon portrait in the takeaway next to a queen who is not Victoria. I know all about Queen Victoria. I was once told I was illegitimately descended from one of Victoria’s many unacknowledged children’s grandchildren, or something like that. I don’t know. I’m not certain. I’m not certain of anything any more...I don’t believe any of it, although perhaps I did once upon a time.

      Every day in summer I make the effort to sit here on my bench in the park in order to re-read all that I wrote when I was at school, if ever I was ‘at school’ in that building behind me, I’m not sure I ever was ‘at school’, although I do remember having spent my last holidays here: which is what I wrote about in these exercise-books I still keep in my special tin. See here. All this happened at least fifty years ago, if ever it happened. I’m not certain of anything, not any more.

      What I’m telling you is, of course, all made-up; is all a fiction, because I tell myself stories that may or may not be true. I don’t know, because I have to take medicine that keeps me calm. They tell me I have a history of violence; and for at least the last fifty years I’ve been taking my medicine like a good girl: I am now! They tell me I wasn’t always as ‘cool’ as now, sitting here on my park bench, looking up at birds that never fly and looking into the children’s playground with its climbing-frame like a railway station and its roundabout like an old-fashioned steam-train...You don’t see it?...That’s not surprising, because the playground in front of me is now full of plastic-coloured apparatus and my old railway-station and steam-train have long gone: they were considered ‘dangerous’, a Health-and-Safety ‘hazard’, rusty and long derelict, just leftovers from an earlier

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