31. a Letter from Limbo
Inhabiting is never just a process of brute force, my dear. At one point one must level with the house.
“February is nearly always melancholy.”
by Anna de Noailles, from “Your Hidden Fleshly Grace” (collected in “A Life of Poems, Poems of a Life”, 1876-1933, tr. by Norman R. Sharpiro)
01/02/2026, London, UK
My dear,
Today’s letter will be an unusually brief one. My apologies for the slower start to the year, I have been busy packing, and unpacking a great many things. I confess, the coming two months will be a bit quiet on my end, pressed up against the film of the worlds as I am. As I write this, I am in-between homes, half ill, living in the not-quite-now and the not-quite-here. My days are a product neither of presence nor of absence. In my hysterical, compulsive cluttering and decluttering I am anticipating the touch of foot to ground, the momentum of movement where there is stillness. For now, at least. A classic impulse: compensation of displacement. Everything is moved an inch to the left. My dream-self sells belongings, thinks of homesickness, drops glasses.
Continually I am pushing and pulling at people, dominating through sheer force of will, enforcing my vision onto the space I will inhabit soon. But I am also trying to converse with it. To listen to its various rebellions of paint chips and leaks and tired sighs. Crouching down by the large gaps in the Georgian sub-flooring as a descent into the house itself. Katabasis. Inhabiting is never just a process of brute force, my dear. At one point one must level with the house. This is the alternate reality of the move, the physical removal from life into the pause, the breath, the gap. Even something as small as opening a window is a wholly new experience, a submissive one that requires the house to lead, and for the inhabitant to pay attention. Everything known is foreign again.
“Sound it out to an empty house / Was it just like you had before?”
lyrics by Searows, from “House Song” (2023)
If one is sleepwalking through life, the move is like the displacement of the body in sleep. The somnambulist often does not dream in a foreign location except to ask the body where it is, where it has gone, where it has been placed. The panic dissipates but that does not diminish the fact that it was once there, the same way I was once here, in these rooms of mine. Without them the future has lost much of its shape, its location. The imagination roams unanchored. But the image of the room is so potent to the mythos of the writer. Not as a geographical thing, but as a space. It matters less where the room is, where the story is, but its importance hinges on the semiotics of its four walls, its furniture, its character. “My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One or the other of us has to go.”, Oscar Wilde said before his death.
“In the dark, I wait / Right here where I once sunbathed / With all of my dreams unfit for day”
lyrics by Nicole Dollanganger, from “Nymphs finding the Head of Orpheus” (2023)
Somewhere within this woven process, I misplaced the time to write much of substance. I woke up one day and all I owned was bubble-wrapped, boxed up, the drawers of my life taped shut. There is a stack of mail towering over the threshold; the overwhelming insanity of inhabitance. But I am a performer; I do not wish to disappoint. This goes for you, my dear, and for the myriad of movers and builders and executioners I deal with during the sunlit hours. The role of the dictator is one I find ill-fitting, sentimental as I am. But many things are on the chopping block. If I do not mind my head, it will be next. A house is soon a cage if you allow its walls to sneak up on you.
Therefore, my dear, allow me my space to get settled in. Forgive me for emptying the attic of madness and madwomen alike. Be patient with me, be gentle. Where there is absence now, there will be abundance again. Postponement of pleasure should increase it all the more, no? That seems to be the philosophers’ consensus, but I digress. I do not wish to tease you too much, my dear. Just because I am not using the good stationery does not mean I am not writing to you. The letters are just unsent, half-formed creatures in need of tender love and care, and a place to live. Nevertheless, mine are stories1 I am deferring only a month or two. The seasons pass much slower than that. The last shreds of winter will come to pass, and with the months of rebirth I will come up from the underworld to write to you once more. See you on the other side, and much sooner than you think.
“I would love to go back to the old house / But I never will / I never will, I never will”
lyrics by the Smiths, from “Back to the Old House” (1984)
Until my next letter,
With love (and violence),
x Sabrina Angelina, the White Lily Society 𐔌՞. .՞𐦯
Currently reading: “Diary of a Seducer” by Søren Kierkegaard // Most recent read: “Strange Antics: a History of Seduction” by Clement Knox
White Lily Society links // Sabrina Angelina links
A short hiatus is the perfect time to join the White Lily Society, and be pleasantly surprised when the first 6k word bombshell of Gothicism and seduction hits your inbox. Come, join us, and become a martyr of deliciousness.
📼 Song of the (past) month: Cathedral - Affection to Rent
I have started some notes on seduction, a recollection of my experience meeting Dita Von Teese and seeing her new show “Nocturnelle” twice (including a little history of magicians as associated with seduction), and instructions for hosting an “eroticism sleepover”— all of these will be coming in a future letter. Some next month, and some in the letter[s] after. I never wish to send out anything half-chewed, my dear.