And the poem goes to......

Congratulations kmkat! I shall spend the next few days thinking about you and trying to write a poem about a blue October (with orange in it).

Thanks to everyone who sent me such kind wishes via my commentbox. I'm having so much fun!!

One hundred and ten

I have just noticed that I have 110 posts on my blog. I'm amazed at myself! You have no idea how much courage I need every time I hit the "publish" button.....why...I actually still cringe slightly every time I do so. I am so very grateful to the person who invented blogging (is there one such person? I wonder) because it has allowed me to tap into a community of such different, interesting, talented and generous women from around the world. I am so grateful that I have readers! In fact, I feel that I have quite a personal connection to my readers, and I do hope that other bloggers also feel that way towards me when I frequent their comment boxes.

I think about you all the time, dear readers. I really do. Yes, I mean YOU!! I think about things you have written and photos you have taken, I think about your artwork and craftwork and gardenwork, I think about your children and your pets and your jobs and your clothes and, of course, I think about the shoes you wear and the food you eat. Those of you who blog anonymously-I imagine what you look like and am convinced that I'm correct, and those of you who are only a name in my comment box with no blog attached...why...I think you may actually be my favourites (hi Laura :-), after all, that's how I got my blog name. I'll never forget that crazy day when I spotted Kim from allconsuming at the Growers' Market, the way she turned her face to me when I introduced myself and flashed her wide and gorgeous grin and said "You're Eleanor from my comment box?!!"

Now. It has come to my attention that many bloggers offer up a little prize to be raffled off to one lucky commenter, in celebration of a blogging anniversary. I have therefore decided to offer (as a lucky comment-box-door-prize) this beautiful knitted pair of socks I whipped up yesterday:













Hahaha. If you fell for that one then you are obviously a very new reader. I cannot knit, nor can I sew (at all!), nor patchwork.

Oh, really? What did you say? Oh, yes, well...that's true.....I do occasionally write a little poem.....yes.....I admit it....what? You say that maybe I might make a poetic offering to one lucky commenter? A poem on demand. I like the sound of that, and yes, I know it is a good idea because it makes me very nervous and self-conscious - that is a sign that I am on the right track here.

So, without further ado (because the lady of the ring MUST continue on her horse-drawn carriage of a journey asap) I proclaim that one of you will have your name drawn out of a hat (Miss Commentbox's hat which I bought her from Etsy for her birthday and which she adores and which I would never have found if I had not been blogging) if you leave a comment below. You comment below should also state the SUBJECT of said poem!!

Good luck and may I not regret this decision tomorrow.

Perspective

The illustrations for this episode of "The Lady of the Ring" can be found here, with many thanks to Alice C (Mrs M).



The lovely lady rushed from one corner of the courtyard to the next, bent down, pushing at the snow, shuffling the powder with her feet, rifling through it with her fingers, desperately searching for the ring. Finally, the lovely lady accepted defeat, sighed, and turned towards the house. She reached out her hand to open the doors and found, much to her astonishment, that the entire house had disappeared. Yes, it was simply gone, gone, and in its place, standing beside her feet, was a tiny doll's house. When the lovely lady knelt down on the snowy ground and peered in through the little windows she could see her tiny bed beside a tiny carpet, a miniature staircase leading down to the shortest of corridors, and there was the breakfast table and the kitchen. In the kitchen was a doll-sized bowl of eggs waiting to be broken and whisked, a plate of triangular sandwiches and an iced chocolate cake the size of a ten pence coin. At first, she feared that she may be dreaming, and then she feared that her past may have been a mere dream. Perhaps all of her memories of the house, and the kitchen, the bed and the food and the staircase, maybe they had all been a twenty-year dream. Maybe her reality was, in fact, so very small that it she could pick it up with one hand and walk down the street with it. Maybe she could pick up her tiny reality and walk all the way into town with it swinging from her hand. Maybe she could walk all the way into town with it and find a fuller house to live in, and in which to store the tiny house.

Well, dear reader, the truth is that the lovely lady did not actually walk into town that day, as the sun began to rise and the birds began to sing. No. The lovely lady was met at her street corner by a large horse-drawn carriage which took her all the way into the big city together with a collection of other people from her local neighbourhood. The lovely lady’s eyes opened wide with wonder as she looked at each of her fellow travellers in turn, noticing the clothes they were wearing and the objects they were carrying, and all the time shaking her head in amazement that she had lived for so long in her big-little house with the Mother Ring and had never ever seen such living creatures before.

Go visit Esti!!

Hello dear reader!
Stop everything and go have a look at Esti's latest drawing.
It is magical. MAGICAL.

A screeching halt

The illustration for this episode of "The Lady of the Ring" can be found here.


Then, one deep dark winter’s night, those two decades of housebound, jewelled wonder came to a screeching halt. It was that screech which woke the lovely lady with a start in the middle of the night and made her sit up in bed, fearful and shocked. She stared into the cold darkness of her bedroom, instinctively standing up, pushing her feet into her thick sheepskin boots , gathering her woollen cloak around her shoulders, and racing down the stairs, along the corridor, through the french doors and into the courtyard.

She found herself standing on a smooth, crisp layer of freshly fallen snow. Her terrified eyes looked down and saw a white expanse of moonlit dust, and on it were the small imprints of a bird’s feet, which she followed, silently, intently, until she saw the two scaly legs, thin and sharp, scratch, scratch, scratching through the snow. As she slowly raised her head, she took in the thick feathered torso, the curve of the neck, and the glossy staring eye. There was the unforgiving beak, the trembling crown, and then, with a rush of air and a rustle reminiscent of the shuffling of a portentous deck of cards, the beast displayed a fan of feathers so magnificent that they brought the lovely lady, with full force, to her knees.

The lovely lady knelt there in the snow, silent, still, watching, and slowly raising her arms towards the beast as if to greet it. As she did so, she felt a painful tugging on the second finger of her left hand which forced her to squeeze her eyes shut and grimace. When she next opened her eyes the feathered beast was gone, and as she pushed herself off the ground her left hand felt strangely free, and as she brought it up before her face, she realised the fabulous, horrifying truth. The ring had departed.

Pitter patter tiny footsteps

How true were the peacock lady’s words. How very true. The lovely lady truly was at the mercy of the ring; unable to step out of her own front door without fear of being discovered, imprisoned, and sentenced to death. She did, at first, try to leave the house. She donned a pair of long silk gloves, kept her hands in her pockets and, during one long, cold winter, she even held a small fur muff. But the ring forbade it; at night, it glowed with a phosphorescence powerful enough to illuminate the depths of the ocean, and during the day, it throbbed with an intense heated glow, spitting tiny, sizzling embers into the air.

The lovely lady soon grew accustomed to the shape of her walls, her front door, her windows. Days turned into months, months to years, and the years continued, one after the other, until two entire decades could be heard running through the lovely lady’s corridors, pitter patter, pitter patter, tiny footsteps. During those years, the ring’s jewel expanded until it was twice its previous size, and its sparkle became brighter until it almost blinded the lovely lady as she went about her daily house-duties. It was both stunningly beautiful and unbearably overpowering. Not a day went by that didn’t have the lovely lady wringing her hands in painful desperation, while simultaneously holding her left hand up to the light so as to marvel at the miraculous beauty glowing on her finger.

***I could not decide on an illustration for this continuation of the tale. So, I ask you, dear silent reader, can a poem illustrate a story? All in favour, say "aye." The ayes have it! So here it is:

THE PEACOCK (By Judith Wright)

Shame on the aldermen who locked
the Peacock in a dirty cage!
his blue and copper sheens are mocked
by habit, hopelessness and age.

The weary Sunday families
along their gravelled paths repeat
the pattern of monotonies
that he treads out with restless feet.

And yet the Peacock shines alone;
and if one metal feather fall
another grows where that was grown.
Love clothes him still, in spite of all.

How pure the hidden spring must rise
that time and custom cannot stain!
It speaks its joy again - again.
Perhaps the aldermen are wise.

The drawing room

Just in case you are a new reader, here is an explanation:

I am in the middle of a short and continuing tale titled "The Lady of the Ring", posted every so often. Due to a coincidental discovery of this photograph which I found here (thanks Suse!), I realised that it would be interesting to illustrate each chapter with a picture or photograph from another blog. So, for Chapter Four, I linked to this photograph (thanks Julia and C) as my "illustration".

I hope that you will understand that I am not copying other artists' work by doing this, but rather linking to it, because the thing I love most about blogging is the constant artistic energy generated by so many wonderful bloggers I read, and communicate with, every day. I really do feel as if I am living in a global village, as corny as that may sound!

The three illustrations I have chosen for Chapter 5 can be found here. They are three photographs of the multi-talented Journeymama, taken by her multi-talented husband.

Chapter Five

Upon entering the drawing room, everything came back in a flash, for standing before her was the woman in black, and on her head was a small, velvet black beret with a very long peacock feather which was attached to one side and formed an extended arc over her head. The feather quivered slightly as the woman blinked, and its colours were emerald and turquoise and topaz and jet, all glistening silk and feathered sharpness. The young lady gasped and pointed at the woman in black and said, “It was you, that night.” “Yes,” the woman nodded and the feather waved, twice, in affirmation. Still pointing, her voice now a vicious, accusing whisper, the lovely lady said “You are the jewel thief, the jewel thief,” and then she raised her left hand from its pocketed hiding-place and thrust it towards the lady’s wide-eyed gaze. “Take it off and take it back, you thief, take it off, take it back,” she shouted with all her might, and as she repeated herself, her voice become even louder and stronger and desperately urgent in a way which was quite terrible to witness. But what was worse, far worse, was that the lady in black simply shook her head and said, quite clearly and calmly, “No, I’m afraid that ring is yours now.”

The young woman let out a deep howl which brought her to her knees and then pushed her down until she was in the most dreadful state known to woman – a state of complete and utter helplessness, cruelly combined with an acute self-knowledge which scraped up against the truth, over and over again. The wind whipped through the tall firs which lined the driveway, the walls of the house shook, the staircase expanded and contracted like an old-time accordion, the flowered wallpaper wilted, a piano was heard from a distance playing an eerily familiar tune, and a tiny baby’s cry pierced through the thick sunlight and cut a hole in a window-pane. The two women, one lying on the thick carpet beside the marble fireplace, the other standing beside the large, forest-green armchair, stared at each other, and then everything stopped.

The lovely lady crawled towards the chair and slowly, painfully pulled herself up. She paused for a moment and then, in a burst of energy most surprising, she hurled herself towards the door of the drawing room. The door was pushed aside and there she was, racing down the long corridor, limping slightly, sweat beading on her brow, lips trembling in anger, and fear, and then she reached the kitchen. Steadying herself on the counter, she reached down and flicked her wrist so that an entire drawer and its contents landed on the black and white tiled floor. With one hand still holding on to the counter, she bent down, reached out, and grasped the thick black handle of a long, butcher knife. The knife glistened in its silvery sharpness, her knuckles turned white as she closed her fist tighter and tighter, and she prepared her left hand by bending each of its fingers, except for the ring-bearing one which lay long and steady, waiting. Her right hand raised the knife and prepared it for the fall, but just as it began its descent, a third hand reached out and grasped it, stopping it in mid-flight.

“No, my dear,” said the woman in black, in her low, calm voice, “Your flesh, and blood, and bone, my sweet, are no longer at the mercy of the knife, but at the mercy of the ring.”