Confessions of a Bibliophile

 

I cut my teeth on love poetry. It never gets old for me. I love to compose verses and rhymes to lovers whether real or imaginary. I don’t think I’m alone in that either. People have been eulogizing their undying love since writing was invented. It helps me to bring my thoughts into focus  to take a step closer to myself and try to put down my feelings on paper…sometimes I realize that there’s something I need to work through because all I can seem to write about will be on one subject. That’s something I love about free verse poetry. It lets you pour out your thoughts as quickly as you can write them down and worry about the pruning later. Make no doubt, I prune and trim my poetry extensively. Some poems I have to keep the first draft of because my shears will shape it into an entirely new creation. I like finding things out about myself. It shows me that I’m growing and moving and changing. Always changing while retaining that which makes me myself.

So here are a few of my softer poems. The loving ones that may or may not have been written for a certain person. Many of them were written for different people. But that’s for me to know and you to just guess at.

 

Do you not love me, sweet friend?
I know now that heartbreak is not the end.
And every day lover, a message I’ll send.
Do you remember me?

I know my sad tears do not hurt you.
This pain I will try to forget.
Beloved, I’ll whisper something that’s true.
I know that you know it…
I remember you.

I’m dying, my heart is not beating.
I know that you don’t want to see.
Try not to remember you did this,
and ignore a last message from me.
But wherever you turn I’ll whisper to you,
I know that you hear it…
I remember you.

 

Red for love, the passion consuming.
Red for blood, for justice is wounding.
Orange for fire that swam in my veins.
Orange for fire, and burns that remain.
Yellow for joy that I had in my lover.
Yellow for pain when our love is uncovered.
Green was for growing, and nurturing life.
Green is now envy, sorrow, and strife.
Blue was the serenity I found in his arms.
Blue now for chill as love loses its charms.
Purple for royalty, I was his queen.
Purple for loyalty. He is my king.
Gray are the tears I have shed for my loss,
Gray are my tears of love losing its gloss.
Black for the ocean of pain that surrounds me,
Black is for pain, for my anger abounding.

 

I love you.
In every cliche turn of phrase imaginable.
Every star for our promises.
We’ll hang them up and see
if we can’t make the night shine a little brighter.
I’ll give you the moon on a necklace.
Maybe her luminent glow
will keep you company when I cannot.
The sun for my heart.
His brazen glory
was never meant to outshine my joy.
I will give you all I have to offer.
And as much as I can promise.
Because you have given me more.
Yourself.

 

 

I love to write. My poetry has always been my refuge when I feel overwhelmed or when I need to work through something that’s bothering me. My notebooks have been a range of varied volumes. Some diaries as such were entrusted and discarded. It’s too easy for other people  to rummage through my mind when I write things down plainly. Thus I began to write in code. My poetry allows me to speak of things that I don’t necessarily want to tell people and not worry as much about my raw feelings being exposed to the world or whoever happens to be flipping the page.

Shakespeare has been my mentor and helper in this. Sometimes I rename people with characters from Shakespeare’s plays or other well known stories, and this helps me to write more explicitly without being any less cryptic. It’s very cathartic. All this to say that I intend to start posting more of my poetry here for you to read.

…I need to install a stat counter soon so I can see how many visits I’m getting.

Many of my poems don’t have a title. I like it that way, to leave them as a train of thought…a whimsy that left the imprint of it’s wings on my paper. Also many of these poems that I will be posting here are over a year old. So, if you think you detect anguish or confusion, know that I’ve worked through it already. I only publicize my past hurts. I hope my struggles and fancies touch you and maybe even help you in your own struggles.

Oberon,
Elven King.
Soot black hair,
Eyes of green.
Lips so full,
Skin so pale.
Lashes long,
fingers frail.
Weaves a magic,
thrills my soul.
For one dark moment,
makes me whole.

 

Paris of Troy,
with your dark eyes and hair.
Gazing so long at Juliet there.
What is she to think?
Besides of you.
And wonder whether
your eyes spoke true.

 

By chance they met.
Through Fate they loved.
The garden birthed
that fragile bud.
But Chance is fickle
she led them away.
Romeo forgot
Sweet Cressida strayed.
But Fate is patient.
She brought them back,
to the garden green,
to try her tact.
But in her arms
Cressida held
a fair sweet babe.
An iron weld.
And when their eyes met
across Juliet’s head,
They both then knew.
The bud is dead.

 

I’ve always wished for an imaginary friend. But I never could muster up the creativity to believe in one. I’ve never been one to talk to thin air. So I satisfied my craving with Barbies. After all you can make them into anyone you want.

Then one day for no particular reason Vanessa appeared. She was everything I wished I could be. She wore a faux corset of black velvet or leather and her skirts and voluminous shirts were varying shades of turquoise. She was a knife throwing master and wore heavy smoky makeup. Her huge hoop earrings and countless bangles had to be pure silver, and her anger was as dangerous as her dazzling smile. She was loyal and smart and daring. Sometimes she wore a stud in her nose. She was frighteningly accurate with the bullwhip she liked to keep coiled about herself.

She was a bright and beautiful collage of all my fantasies. She was an alter ego to hide in when I couldn’t deal with the rougher realities of growing up. Sometimes I signed her name to the poetry I wrote. She wrote dark and frightening songs and poems of hopeless love and dreams of revenge for an injury I could never discover.  She kept her own secrets as well as she kept mine.

She knew the things I couldn’t talk about to anyone else. She vowed vengeance for me when people hurt me. I laughed at her vehemence and soothed her to sanity and thus myself to reason. But through it all I knew, she had my back.

Of course, I couldn’t blame things on her the way some children do their imaginary friends. But I never failed to give her credit for the things she inspired me to. I called her my Dark Side.

As time went on, I learned that she wasn’t all blades and smoke and mirrors. She had a sense of humor too. Admittedly it was dark and twisted, but she liked to laugh. She had a tattoo, I’m sure of it. She would never tell me for sure but what I saw looked like a roaring bear to me. Which was fitting. Like a bear, she was majestic, and you never knew if she was going to just walk away or rip you to shreds. Like a she bear if you hurt someone she loved, you were history.

She took a last name after a while. She was Vanessa B. Wimsey. I thought it was fitting. She became more satirical and sarcastic after that. Wilier too. I suspected her of carrying a revolver at times. She loved to practice archery. She always had some form of danger hidden in her garter. It was never wise to corner her. She hated surprises.

Eventually though she became more distant. At first I wondered and felt abandoned. But as time went on I realized what she was saying. All stories have an ending. We had had many adventures together and it was time to go our separate ways. She no longer needed to shield me from the world.

We still meet sometimes. A friendship so close will always be part of me. I can’t help it. But now I must take responsibility for my own crazy ideas. She has her hands full elsewhere. But I know that she will always be at hand if I ever need her. No more than a thought away so to speak.

Beware of my dark side. She likes to jump out and scare you. 

 

Revenge   by Vanessa B. Wimsey

The madness of anger has passed.
And now I’m as cold as can be.
I sharpen my blade on this stone.
The make of it soon you will see.

My methods have caused me some pain.
Some inconvenience, it’s true.
But intruder you’d better beware,
lest I turn my attention to you.

 

Special thanks to Sam Phillips at http://samphillipsdesign.blogspot.com for letting me use his design!

It’s been far too long since I last posted, I know. So I decided to do something extra…confessional for this comeback post.

Once upon a time, a few years ago, there was somebody I didn’t get along with very well. He was ten years older than me give or take a few years, and his bossy oldest son personality had never really meshed with my aggressive, defiant, and… fiery temperament. At first it was just a matter of me not liking him much and having to deal with it, but as years passed and I got closer to his own size, he started backing off a little. This didn’t do much to improve the warmth of our relationship, but it did introduce more cordiality.

Then, one day a female friend who will remain nameless was walking with me in the unspecified building where most of my interaction with the afore mentioned young man happened, and we found something very interesting on the floor.

His pocketknife.

Now being the vindictive and vengeful 14 year old I was, you can just assume that giving it back directly was completely out of the question. My friend didn’t get along with said young man any better than I did, though she hadn’t known him as long.

We were struck with the richness of the potential in our situation. Just hiding the knife in the ladies bathroom was too easy. We briefly considered throwing it away, but decided that that was too close to stealing for our tender consciences. Then, inspiration struck.

I think it was my idea. These sorts of things usually are.

At first we weren’t sure if even He deserved such a severe punishment for his deeds…but on further reflection we decided that yes, he definitely deserved it.

Minds made up, we moseyed casually along towards the ladies bathroom. No one stopped us. When we reached our destination, we were relieved to find that no one else was present. I snagged one of those yellow latex cleaning gloves from the cupboard as I passed, and we both squeezed into the stall furthest from the door.

I took the knife from my pocket, and hesitated for the briefest of seconds. This was the point of no return.

Our eyes met over the toilet. I think she may have nodded.

*plop*

It was done.

I let it sit and soak for a few seconds, and then donning the glove, I swished it around for good measure. Then I carefully dried it with a paper towel. We had decided before that it would be better for my friend to be the one to give it back to Him, since her halo was a little shinier than mine. Coming from me, he might have suspected something. It was decided that she could just wash her hands afterward since touching the contaminated knife was unavoidable if we were to escape suspicion.

And as far as I know he has never suspected a thing.

Some of you may be shocked. Some may be outraged. And some may be wiping the spit off of your monitors and trying desperately to breathe. To the shocked, and outraged I have one thing to say:

Neener, neener.

To those of you with a sense of humor, Thank you. I’m glad you have a dark and twisted sense of humor like mine…I suppose by way of a disclaimer, I should tell you that the knife wasn’t the sort that He would have ever used on food. And yes, the toilet was flushed. I’m not completely lost to my sense of decency.

But I’m not sorry. Not even a little bit. He had it coming. From me, especially and he’d been asking for it since I was 9. He got  it.

Revenge is indeed a dish best served cold.

I love the story of Peter Pan. It’s one of my favorites. It’s dark and sad, and all about make believe.

I never really was able to appreciate it though before I discovered that Trina Schart Hyman had illustrated it.  Somehow her drawings really brought the whole story into focus for me.

Thus I have gone through my copy of it and taken pictures of my favorite pictures and passages. They fall roughly into three categories. Brutality, Make Believe, and Growing Up. I fully intend to project my own interpretations of the characters upon you here, and hypothesize about things unmentioned in the story itself.

I think I’ll start with Make Believe:

 

I like this picture because it shows us how seriously Wendy took her role as the boys’ mother.  Through the whole story I get the impression that the boys knew all along that it was all for fun. Wendy didn’t. Peter got her to come by appealing to her inborn instinct to protect and to nurture. I love how well she plays at being a grown up while still retaining a child’s self expression. In the part where they are aboard the Jolly Roger it says that at one point she gave Hook

” a look of such frightful contempt that he nearly fainted.”

“No words can tell you how Wendy despised those pirates. To the boys there was at least some glamour in the pirate calling; but all she saw was that the ship had not been scrubbed for years. There was not a porthole on the grimy glass of which you could not have written with your finger “dirty pig”, and she had already written it on several.”

I love J.M. Barrie’s turns of phrase.  I love the way he captured the persistence to the point of the ridiculous that all little boys indulge in.

I can never decide if I love Peter or hate him. He’s too complex for either I suppose. You can see how deeply they sometimes got into their game of Family here.  It’s hard to decide how long they were in Neverland. I think it must have been years. It talks about how little Wendy was in the beginning of the book and throughout the story it talks about how they were there were a long long time.

I think this is one of the saddest parts of the book. This is where Wendy’s illusion is shattered. I think up to this point she had almost convinced herself that it was all real. And I don’t think she was too young to be in love either. Maybe she was too young to recognize it as such, but I think she loved Peter. (More on that in Growing Up) I think that’s also why Tigerlily fades to the background from here on.

Brutality:

I think largely thanks to the film adaptions, most people have very little idea of exactly how dark the story of Peter Pan is.  For example:

If you read the text under the picture, there’s a little four word phrase that sent chills down my spine the first time I grasped the meaning behind it. “Peter thins them out.”  The context is a little more revealing but I think it’s not really needful. They are forbidden to grow up, and when they do, he kills them.  That’s one part of his character that the red headed elf of the cartoon does not possess. Maybe that’s the part of him that attracts the other boys to his group.

I once read a book where the pirates were grown up lost boys. I like that. Hook obviously was never one, but that would explain where he gets so many men when you’re given to understand that the lost boys kill pirates on a regular basis and vice versa.

   

Speaking of pirates, lets talk about Smee. He’s the most lovable pirate, and the only one besides Hook that has a personality. Everyone loves Smee, right? You think of Smee and the adorable little alcoholic of the cartoon floats before your eyes. Read the text.  He named his cutlass, and “wiggled it in the wound” when he stabbed you. How cute.

It says Hook itched to tell Smee that the boys loved him, but it seemed too brutal. Despite his best efforts, Smee was lovable. He believed himself fearsome, but all the boys loved him.  ”He hit them with his palm because he could not hit with his fists.”  I think the picture here is one of my favorites.

John Vs. Hook. I love this. Through the most of the book John is kind of a pompus shadow, and not of much consequence. But here he shines. All boys want to play war, but Hook told him that to be a pirate he had to swear “Down with the King!”. Unthinkable.

Thanks to the cartoon Peter, I think you don’t really get the feeling for how strange and sad the relationship between Peter and Hook is. You miss the part where it was a grown man versus a little boy. In this picture I get the feeling that Hook sometimes forgets it too. That’s another thing I don’t like about the movie, is the part where Hook makes Peter promise not to fly while fighting him. Peter, despite his cockiness needed every advantage he could get.

 

Wendy’s death. Tink scares me a little. She’s a bit of an integral figure, but it doesn’t really tell much about her. If she was capable of trying to murder Wendy like this what had she done to boys who would have inevitably annoyed her? The main point of this picture and text are how ready Peter was to kill. Even his own men, he would have just stabbed Tootles right then and there and been done with it. This part only strengthens my argument earlier about how he kills them for growing up.

I love this picture. It’s the only one that shows the pirates vs. the redskins, though in the beginning it’s quite clear that the redskins attack the pirates regularly on land.

Growing up:

There aren’t really pictures for this part of the book. But it’s sad how fast they all forget. They all retained the ability to fly once they got back, but eventually they forgot. Even Wendy who despite her best efforts, was the kind who liked to grow up and in the end she grew up a day faster than the other girls.

I love the phrase though “Years rolled on and Wendy had a daughter. This ought not to be written in ink but in a golden splash.”

It says that it was strange that Peter did not alight on the church and forbid the banns.

Wendy told her daughter stories of Peter, and was somehow surprised to find that she already knew. Of course that didn’t stop her from wanting to hear again. It’s odd to me that Wendy didn’t see it coming from a mile away that Peter would have to come back someday.

This is the part where I became sure that she loved him in Never land. She broke her heart over him once, and maybe that was why she was able to forget him. He would never have been able to understand it, I’m sure and that’s why it’s so tragic.

“So long as children are gay and innocent and heartless.” Rephrase, so long as children are heartless little beasts ready to break their parent’s hearts on a whim…

Of course this doesn’t come close to covering everything in the book. I didn’t even touch Mrs. Darling or Nana, or the mermaids, and I barely said anything about Hook. I have merely attempted to highlight my favorite bits for you to help you understand why I love it so much.

…And what of it if hello is a perfectly commonplace and nonromantic greeting? It is it’s very commonplaceness that made it perfect. For in it’s ordinarity, she failed to recognize the essential nonhumanity of the speaker. It was a perfect deception.  It was completely unintentional.

 

He of course, being no fool realized almost at once what he had done. He heard her heartbeat speed up and slow back down. He sensed, though he knew not how, the fear that overtook her and then left her almost as quickly as it had come. He felt her relief, and then her intense  curiosity. She spoke then, and her voice more than made up for her unfortunate appearance. She said “Who are you?”

 

I will spare you the dialogue, for that is not easy to convey. It was a perfectly ordinary conversation, and he told her his name. It was long and hard to pronounce, so she just called him Friend. When he heard her name, he was awed. Strength of the Waters. He wondered if she was his prophecy. They chatted amiably, he being careful not to tell her what he was, knowing that her mind was only human, even if her senses weren’t, and that full revelation would surely frighten her beyond repair. I already told you that he was wise.

 

So they met. And again they met. How could they not? After such a meeting, they were practically lovers. She finally had a friend, and was not lonely anymore. He was delighted with the opportunity to observe a human so closely, and such a one at that! He could tell that she had something in her blood that was not wholly human. Something that had to do with the ocean. But she was not one of his people.  This bothered him somwhat, and he often would press her for answers to questions that she considered slightly odd. He would ask her over and over why she was named Strength of the Waters. He would ask her what her parents were like, what their names were. Her parents were named Theresa, and Franklin, but he never seemed satisfied with this. He always followed his intuition, and he could tell that there was something she didn’t know about herself.

 

What? had enough? Shall I tell you who- or rather what, she was? Shall I tell you why the balance had swung when he swam too close? Very well. I’ll tell you this:

 

Yes, he was right in wondering whether she was the prophecy. She was. He was also correct in his suspicion that she was not human, or mermaid. She was part of the ocean in a way that he was not, for she was also irrevocably a creature of the land. She was Strength of the Waters.   Do you begin at last, as he did, to understand it? I only just now have. She was the soul of the ocean.

 

I cannot say exactly when he fully realized it, but I can tell you his emotions when he did. He felt Fear. Anger. Fear. Joy. Fear. Fear. Fear. Yes, he knew her and he was afraid. He knew he must awaken her to the power that was within her, but he did not know how. He did know why it was his work to do it. The prophecy, remember? He must perform this thing, and he would either doom or save his kingdom in the doing of it. He did not know exactly what he would be saving his kingdom from, but kingdoms need saving fairly often, and he knew that not even a king could see every threat. Did you doubt me when I said he was wise?

 

Now, I suppose you must know what the threat was. No, it wasn’t pollution. I refuse to beat that carcass. No, it wasn’t a coup detat led by a jealous rival. Neither was it an evil witch, though that is truly an interesting thought…No. It was a storm. No, I don’t mean a hurricane such as we feel.

 

Next to his palace of coral and bone sat a sunken ship. It was  still fairly new, and had not yet succumbed to rust and decay. Yes, people had died in it. I don’t like to gloss over reality for the sake of sensitivity. The merfolk had gotten used to seeing it next to the kingly palace, and since they had not the means to move it, they had dug graves, buried the dead, and moved on with their lives. They could be very stoic sometimes. So, perchance this ship was very much more unsteady in its place than the merfolk supposed, and the place it sat on was predestined to become a spot of volcanic activity within a few weeks of the day that the mer-king met the girl who was the strength of the waters. A very ordinary sounding danger, and a very real one.

 

Now we turn our eyes back to the King. He had no idea how little time he had, but he was racking his brains trying to think of something to do. For all his wisdom, he did not think of asking his councilors. I did not say he was perfect.

Finally he remembered something that he had heard long before. Maybe he had made it up. But he thought there was some legend about the power of a merman’s first kiss. It’s very possible that he made it up, for though we have not yet realized it, he was in love with Strength of the Waters. He had never yet loved a mermaid, and mermen fall in love only once.

 

Was that perhaps the source of his moment of anger when he found out what she was? He wanted to kiss her. How could he not? I already told you that she was lovely. The story he thought he remembered  was this:

 

Once a merman fell in love with a human girl. He wooed her with every art he knew, but to no avail. She could not leave her home for him. Not even for the place he had prepared, for he was the king. He had taken one of the islands in his domain, and coaxed it to grow anything that a human may eat. he had caused the roots of it to make her a cave above the waters and she could have been happy forever. But since she would not come with him, he begged her for one favor at least. He begged her for a kiss.  And when she granted him this favor, his kiss imparted to her all his knowledge of ocean, and island. When all this knowing flooded her soul, the girl wept and wept for her foolishness. For with her new knowledge she knew that a merman has but one heart, and one first kiss that he may give, and if he is not given one in return, he dies. So this girl became a queen, for she knew all that the king had known, and the merfolk came to her for advice and judgement until she had lived out her short human life.

 

For a whole week, he considered, wept, and strove within himself. He knew that if the legend was true, he would die if she did not love him in return. He also sensed, (for she was not the only one whose soul was rooted in the waters) that he was almost out of time. Finally he made up his mind. He called one of his sevitors to him, and gave him a message to take to the chief counselor in the palace.

 

If he had not returned by the night that the new moon once again kissed the waters, the council was to name a new king.

 

For he knew, that if she were to gain all his knowledge, she would have other things to tend to than to rule the merfolk. You see, he may have had trouble figuring out that she was the soul of the ocean, but once he did, he knew exactly who she was and what she could do.

 

The soul of the ocean is always a human girl. Always a virgin. She is almost always blind, and lonely. She is a sort of guardian, and is very powerful in that hers is the final word in the event of a storm. She can calm any wind, any wave, and (can you guess the next one?) any underwater volcano. She never creates storms, though many believe that she can. And she has a completely human lifespan. No one knows why she remains mortal after she realizes her powers.

This king was a good king. I already told you that. He loved life, and his kingdom. He didn’t particularly love power, although I can’t say he didn’t enjoy it from time to time. All in all, he hoped that Strength of the Waters loved him back, because he didn’t want to die. But live, or die, he was resolved, and he went to their meeting place.

 

When he got there, she was waiting for him. She was weeping. He had known her for a while and he knew that she was often sad. He swam up and waited for her tears to subside. When she has calmed a little, (he noticed that the water calmed with her) he asked her a question. It was not “will you kiss me?” it was not “Do you know who you are?” it was not even “Do you love me?” He asked her something else entirely. He asked her “Why do you weep so often?”

 

I know, I know. Again with the entirely commonplace phrases. Bear with me.

 

She told him she wept because she was lonely. He laughed a little in at this. He told her that she did not have to be alone. He told her a marvelous tale of a merman who gave his eternal kiss to a girl. She cheered a little, but she grew thoughtful when he finished. Then she spoke. She said “Why do you tell me this tale?” Needless to say, he was hoping for that very question. He asked her why it disturbed her. She turned away. Her voice was a whisper.

 

“You tell me this tale, and it embodies my greatest fear. For I know that you love me, and I have sworn to never love a man, and a merman is no different.”  Then he knew. She had never been deceived about him.

 

His heart sank a little, for he now knew that he was indeed sacrificing his life for his kingdom. He took her hand, and she flinched away. He asked her if she believed that he was her friend. She squeezed his hand in answer. Then he put his mouth to her ear and whispered so quietly…

 

No, I will not tell you what he said.

 

He asked her, and she assented. She bent her head a little, and he took her face between his hands. When his lips pressed against hers, she was surprised. She had not expected a merman’s lips to be…warm. He kissed her gently, he kissed her sweetly. And he only kissed her once.

 

For that was all that was needed. He saw her eyes flooded with knowledge, and power. He saw her stand up quickly and wade out deep, so deeply that she must surely be over her head…No! She was rising. The waves were lifting her high, and higher, and she seemed to be reaching into the water…and then she shouted something he couldn’t understand, and made a throwing motion towards the deeps. His eyes were darkening…but he felt it. The danger…the danger was gone.

 

As his eyes closed, she came striding over to him. The shyness, the hesitation of her blindness was no more. She knelt and gathered his unlovely form in her arms. Bending her head, she kissed his brow.  “Rest in peace, most faithful king. You have given more than you received, and asked nothing for yourself. Be happy in the knowledge that your kingdom is saved, and never forget…” She paused, then she whispered something in his ear.

 

No, I will not tell you what it was.

 

The ocean has many secrets. Let that be one of them. For she was the soul of the ocean, and her eyes were the eyes of all sea creatures.

And I’m pretty proud of it.

It’s tragic, if you don’t like Romeo and Juliet type endings, you might not like this. But it’s not similar to R+J in the actual story. Only the end.

So, without further ado, here is the first installment of

Kiss of a Merman

Not so very long ago, there was a girl wading in the ocean.

 

She wasn’t looking for anything . Or maybe she just didn’t know she missing it, whatever it was.  However it happened, she was there and so was he. Oh, you saw this coming, did you? Maybe not.

 

She was lovely. I won’t bore you with particulars, because you don’t need them. If you have the gift, you already know what she looked like. If not, than a little imagining won’t hurt you. Or her.

 

I won’t tell you her name, because it doesn’t matter. But I will tell you what it meant, because that is all that matters. Her name meant “Strength of the Waters”.

 

And he knew it. For he was not human, and his eyes perceived what no land dweller’s eyes could. he knew that she was- but no. I can’t tell you that yet. But perhaps you have guesed his identity? He was a king in his realm, and his form was not beautiful to our eyes.  Yes, he was a merman.

 

On the day that she had gone wading, he had gone hunting. No, he never hunted fish. He and his consorts and courtiers were hunting birds. It was a complicated affair, which would take at least three  paragraphs to explain, and which also has absolutely nothing to do with the girl named Strength of the Waters.

 

Suffice to say that their paths crossed, and he saw her first. Yes, it’s cliche. He was separated from his hunting party, and met a bewitching girl. But he was bewitched, and it was no fault of hers. He had been destined, ever since he hatched (you didn’t think that merfolk gave birth did you?) to be either the salvation or doom of his kingdom. Through what event? No one knew. Most of the older and wiser councilers thought it would probably be either love or war, but some of the more romantically minded youngsters were sure it would be some daring feat of bravery, or perhaps something to do with poison. As it was, this prophecy was a terrific conversation starter, and the discussion of it kept many a young mermaid safe from the assault of the demon Boredom.

 

When he first saw her, he was repulsed. He had heard of these creatures before, strange half animal beings that possesed some small beauty in their upper body, but had little of intelligence, and instead of a graceful tail, their lower half was split into two pieces, like a piece of seaweed.  Of course he had his own name for seaweed, but you could hardly recognize it as such. Perhaps I’ll tell you later what it was. Curiosity got the better of instinct, and he swam a bit closer to look. That’s when it happened. You know of Romeo and Juliet? It was something like that.  He got too close, and his fate was sealed. Yes, I mean the prophecy. No, I won’t tell you which way it was decided, because it wasn’t yet.

 

He had known of the prophecy all his life, and had never worried overmuch about it. He believed in fate, and knew that he couldn’t avoid it, so he never tried to. He was wont to say that “Being the king is a heavy enough thing without worrying over what can’t be avoided.” Thus you see, he was wise. He tried his best to be a fair and just ruler. He never neglected the counsel of those older and wiser than he, and neither did he depend upon them to do his thinking for him. He was a good king.

 

When he saw the girl named Strength of the Waters, I already told you he knew her at once. But not because he had met her before. He knew her because she was…Perhaps I should tell you about her first.

You already know that she was lovely. I tell you now that she was also blind. Her eyes were the color of life, and nothing else. Her eyes were not made for seeing. She loved the ocean, and she lived on the edges of it always. She was not afraid of storms. They never harmed her. She never caught a cold, or minded being cold. Some folk said she was a witch, and that she was born blind as a punishment for something she did in a past life. Although such talk saddened her, she didn’t deny it. Perhaps she was a little bitter. She lived apart, and kept it that way. She was looked after in a distant way by her older brother, but he didn’t do much other than come to her house once a week to bring her some milk, bread, eggs, and butter, and toilet paper.  She didn’t need a computer, or books for obvious reasons, so he contented himself with providing her with the things she couldn’t get for herself, and let her live her life as she wanted. That is, she had a small garden, and he did her shopping for her.

 

She walked in the ocean every day. It calmed her, and no one could tell her tears from the spray. Yes, she cried. She cried a lot. She was lonely. She knew that people weren’t meant to be alone, and she knew that she had done nothing deserving of such desolation as she endured. She was about 17. Maybe older, maybe younger. She didn’t really know. But she was a woman, though she still looked more like a child. When she waded, the sea would calm her. She sometimes thought that it caressed her gently, and sometimes she thought she heard voices…laughing, talking. But she could never quite make out the words. Of course we know it was because she didn’t know their language. She was almost a part of the ocean, and the words she heard were the everyday conversations of the merfolk miles down in their world.

 

On the day that the Mer-King saw her, she was not crying. She was happy. And he was curious.

 

So he swam too close. His fate was sealed. So was hers. Neither knew yet that she had a prophecy as well.

He swam too close, and whispered to himself. “She is not so very hideous.” She heard his voice with ears that were not quite made like other human’s ears. He reached out and touched her foot. She felt, and thought it very like the touch of a fish.

 

Then he raised his head above the waves, (for merfolk can breathe the air as we do.) and he spoke in words that he had never before heard. He said, “Hello. Who are you?”

To be continued…

I have a large and growing collection of what I like to call “My Beautiful Books”.  They aren’t all fairy tales, but they are all lavishly illustrated. My favorite illustrators are :

Trina Schart Hyman

Paul O’ Zelinsky

K.Y. Craft, and

Daniel San Souci

Today I took 5 of my favorites,

,

 

(Not necessarily my very favorites.)

and took pictures of my favorite illustrations and a few passages to share with you. I can’t promise that I’ll get around to doing this very often, but now that my family is (to my knowledge) done scurrying around the Tennessee-Texas area for the year, I’ll most likely be posting more than I have for the past month.

Allllrighty then.

First up is Rapunzel by Paul O’ Zelinsky. I used to check this one out of the library when I was eight years old, and the lavishness of his pictures have always enthralled me.

   

This is one of the only Rapunzel books I’ve seen where she has red hair.

Next is Bearskin by Trina Schart Hyman. My collection of Beautiful Books is almost half made up of books illustrated by her. I only recently realized how many of my old favorites were done by her. I used to check Bearskin out from the library with Rapunzel, and it was with the greatest hysteria, and utmost hyperventilation, that I received my own copy for my birthday.

    

One thing I love about this book is the racial diversity. Trina Hyman’s daughter married a black man, and after that she started varying the colors of people in her books, and I think I read somewhere that she even put her grandbabies in there a few times, which I think makes her books all the more lovely. God created different colors of people in the world because he loves variety. So do I. Can you even imagine how boring it would be if everyone was the same color? Yeek. We would be so inbred…

Next.

The King’s Equal illustrated by Vladmir Vagin. Yet another old favorite. This one I love because of the…Well, quite frankly at age 8 I had somewhat of a crush on the haughty young Prince Raphael.  Also, I loved,loved,loved, (and still do) the gold and pink gown that Rosamund wears in the picture where she is presented him.  Ahem.  Observe:

      

I’m going to have to cut this somewhat short, and end with Beauty and the Beast illustrated by Angela Barret. This is one of the more unusual versions I’ve seen, and the style really intrigued me.

 

…And due to the irritating tendency of WordPress to choke on large pictures, you’ll have to be content with those.

I hope you’re not disappointed by my lack of narrative, but the purpose of this was not to enthrall you with the stories, and my unbearably witty observations. I want you to lose yourself in these pictures as I do.  Maybe you can’t tell from so small a sampling, but almost all of the books I love have a small thread, or “ness” if you will, in common. I don’t really know how well I can convey it for you, because it’s something that appeals to me on a level deeper than I am accustomed to digging.  It’s something that appeals (as Anne of green gables put it,) to the race that knows Joseph.  And if you have never read those books, it’s your own fault, and I don’t feel particularly inclined to explain the notion to you.

The next post like this will be about Peter Pan. I just have too many favorite parts of that book to simply tack it onto the end of this post.

And just to show you that I really am a bibliophile:

These make up about 1/3 of my collection. I only keep my favorites on the shelf. -Oh and see those little black ones in the middle of the front row? Those are about 100 years old. So is the dark red Elizabeth Barrett Browning collection.

 

Dear Blog,

I know you are very young and inexperienced at the art of existing. I know you really want to have some posts to show your new friends. But I’m busy.

I’m going to summer camp for the first time ever.

If you’re good, I may even tell you about it after I get home.

I wouldn’t expect you to understand, but I do promise that I will do a lovely colorful post about fairy tales when I get back.

til then, lots of love.

-Deanna

 

Writing poetry is my hobby. It’s my pastime. As a friend once put it, it’s my “ness”. But one thing I try never to do is write meaningless poetry.
When I write, it’s always about something.

It could be something that happened, or something I’m dreading, maybe someone I’m dreading. Usually I disguise it. I cloak it in names and images so that no one but me can remember what they refer to. My favorite way of doing this is to mask it in a well known theme, like Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, Troilus and Cressida, or sometimes even A Midsummer Night’s Dream.  I’ve found it helps me to work through things that I may be having trouble with to just write them out and prune, and trim them to my satisfaction.

Meaningless poetry, written just for the sake of weaving a pretty picture wastes this therapeutic element. Another way to put it is, since I have no children yet, my poems are almost like my children. I conceive them, I give them birth, and I try to grow and raise them and train them up to be wholesome things of beauty. I want my children to be great leaders, not supermodels.

One reason I try to disguise my poetry a lot of times is because the things I write about tend to be deeply personal. When I write a poem I really am baring my soul to the paper, and I am very choosy about who else gets to see it. I write things into poems for one of three reasons.

1. It’s something beautiful and lovely that I want to save and cherish forever.
2. It’s something ugly that I need to get out of my head.
3. It’s something I’m stressful about that I need to work through.

I already told you about reason 3, and reason 1 needs no explanation, but for reason 2…Sometimes something ugly or painful can be reworked to make something beautiful. James 1:2 says “Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds…”  Gods has given us the strength to persevere, always. And if He has seen fit to give me a means to recycle my painful experiences, so much the better.  I may not have a good memory associated with such and such a poem, but if it ended up being a really good one, I’ll probably keep it.

(And yes, for those that may be reading this blog, I do intend to write about books, and I’ll be working on that later today.)