Bauhaus need not apply

I am feeling the need for all things gothic this evening.

In no way do I mean that I have a desire to wear copious amounts of black eyeliner and listen to Einstürzende Neubauten or Peter Murphy.

Give me lonesome, windswept moors and mysterious English manors built of dark, heavy stone. Right now it feels like nothing could beat the heavy gloom of Jane Eyre or the fading glamour of the country mansion in Rebecca. I feel like Catherine Morland in Northanger Abbey: in love with anything mysterious, ancient, and supernatural. I wish desperately for a castle lit only by candlelight, filled with tempestuous ghosts and long-lost secrets.

Until my dreams are realized I suppose I will have to settle for dressing myself in a long, flowing dress and letting my hair spill around my shoulders, my skin white as the dust off a moth's wings*. And reading a bit of The Mysteries of Udolpho or Bleak House. By the light of a flickering candle, of course.

Then, perhaps a viewing of Dragonwyck or The Others to lull me off to sleep, perchance to dream of secret passages and thunderstorms.


*Thanks to years spent avoiding direct sunlight due to the fact that it immediately makes my skin freckle and turn pink.