Last week was a week of bad news about friends’ ill health. It is inevitable that news like this come, cancer, nervous breakdown, the loneliness of a little boy, as inevitable as the change of seasons, but everything in me strained against it. Like I’m straining against winter coming. Nothing I can do but go with it. Better start getting ready. Sent cards and letters, made phone-calls, lent an ear or two, tried to soothe without denying what is. With winter I can deal after all: bought an extra blanket and three pairs of woolen socks. I envisage myself lying under layers and layers of blankets, like the princess under the pea, with just my head and arms sticking out, wielding the obligatory crocheting hook.
Have started reading some Russian fairy-tales, very fitting, and got caught up with the image of a room heated by a big stove on which two children sleep at night, ‘as warm as little baking cakes’. Reminded me of a favourite childhood tale, also Russian, in which the young hero lies on the stove for seven years, eating lots of sunflower seeds, and annually tries out the strength in his arms by attempting to lift the roof above him. After seven years he manages and goes out into the world and has adventures and of course marries a princess in due course. (One thing I wondered as a child was if he ever got up to go to the loo or to wash himself, but that’s another issue.) I sometimes try to look at my M.E. like that, although I don’t think I’ll come out with strongly muscled arms I hope I’m strengthening some inner muscle, metaphorically speaking.
Anyway. Crocheted these some months ago, when very tired and only up to making really small things, which I put together as a warm-water-sea-anemone-type-doily-thingemy (around 70 cm wide altogether). It now resides on the backrest of my purple sofa and gets dislodged frequently. Currently tieing up loose threads (in the real sense of the word) of my crocheted red dress with around 3.5 m long sleeves which I finally managed to lift out of my wool-basket. It looks very strange, if I may say so myself. Will need some extra energy to photograph it, but watch this space. Such long arms would maybe do very well in terms of reaching out and could embrace a whole lot of friends, couldn’t they.
3 comments:
You are cocooning yourself down for Winter, which is as it should be. For pagans this is a time of embracing the dark, the shadow side of life. We try not to deny the dark but welcome the (sometimes harsh) lessons it imparts. It must be a great comfort to your friends that you acknowledge the dark times they are in.
What is great about blogging is that the soul of a person comes through, unfiltered by physicality; on this blog you are blossoming, every post is interesting, your work growing, your online personality shining.
...so beautiful and true what Kruse wrote.
this time of the year is always so depressing for me ever since i moved upstate where there is more rain and shorter summers. it is easier to deal with the cold itself than the coming of the cold.
i am so sad for the little boy you mentioned...and your friends too but him, he is just too young to be already dealing with something like this...
i have also been reading some fairy tales in trying to find that Manipelt story. i haven't come across it yet but got into reading other ones. made me feel a little bit disenchanted about fairy tales in general. can't quite understand what was it about them that made me so obsessive to seek them out to read when i was younger. well, i do like an imagery from the Godfather Death where there are rows and rows of thousands of candles being lit, the size of the flames indicating how vibrant or fragile the life of each person is.
http://www.grimmstories.com/en/
grimm_fairy-tales/godfather_death
are Russian fairy tales very different from Grimm's? come to think of it, i probably have read them but just don't remember.
like how this doily you're showing here gets "dislodged", like it is coming alive and peeking in and out at its own will. :).
looking forward to see those long long arms....
very long arms to lift the roof of your house and go into the world you want to be part of, which world, are you not already part of this artistic community... Interesting that you are physically limited and still make things that not only physically challenge you but are challenging our physicall perception of what things should be.
Re seasons, I love the change of seasons, for me this is autumn, not winter yet, the colours are beautiful, the sun still warm at midday, the birds still out, the apples still ripening, the chesnuts growing still hopefully. If you live in a grey town, get yourself out to a park, a green, brown, orange and red space on a sunny autumn day, listening to the wind in the leaves, the drying leaves and nature gathering its summergoodness underground where it will cherish it till spring. cocoon. And don't forget there is no dark without light, cosy light, glowing light. Stay warm and sit in the sun, it stays all winter.
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