Terri Windling's Blog, page 187

Light and shadow, midsummer

''My first memory is of light - the brightness of light - light all around.''
- Georgia O'Keeffe

''I'll tell you how the sun rose a ribbon at a time...'' - Emily Dickinson

''There is a muscular energy in sunlight corresponding to the spiritual energy of wind.''
- Annie Dillard

''From within or from behind, a light shines through us upon things, and
makes us aware that we are nothing, but the light is all.'' - Ralph Waldo Emerson

''How is one to live a moral and compassionate existence when one finds
darkness not only in one's culture but within oneself? There are simply
no answers to some of the great pressing questions. You continue to
live them out, making your life a worthy expression of leaning into the
light.''
- Barry Lopez

Widdershins

 

There's a lovely post on the "Widdershins" exhibition over on Rima Staines' blog, The Hermitage ... with lots of good pictures ... including photos of some of the quotes and poems I wrote on the gallery walls. (Which, by the way, is something I've always wanted to do for an exhibition like this, and I'm so grateful to the show's curator, Carol Harvey, for giving me the chance!) 

The art above, "Witch Bottle," is one of several beautiful pieces that Rima has in the show.

Tunes for a Monday Morning

Today: kicking off the week with two irresistible bands from Melbourne, Australia.

Above, "I Left the Wolves Behind That Night," by The Tiger & Me, filmed for Sideshow Alley.

Below, in a very different mood, the band's heart-breaking, beautiful song "The Smoke."

And last, to brighten the morning again:

"It's Been a Long Time Awaiting," performed The Nymphs. Jane Hendry, of The Tiger & Me, is also a member of this delightful a cappella quartet.

Recommended Reading

The Los Angeles Review of Books continues their series on fairy tales with a discussion of The Little Mermaid.

The illustration above is by the German artist and mystic Sulamith Wülfing (1901-1989).

Last call...

Advance tickets are now officially sold out, but they've reserved some to sell on the door...so do come. This, too, is a Benefit event, with all money collected going to support Green Hill, Moretonhampstead's beautiful community art space.

Last call....

Yeah, the organizers have made the tickets a little pricey, but all the money goes to support the Green Hill Arts centre, a community owned, volunteer run art space -- and it's a rare chance to hear three publicity-shy artists talk about their work and creative process in a very intimate setting. There are still a few tickets left for you last-minute sorts, so if you're local, jump in a car or on your bike, come see wonders, and help support a very worthy cause.

Into the Woods, 15: Living Wild

"Thomas Merton wrote, 'there is always a temptation to diddle around in the contemplative life, making itsy-bitsy statues.' There is always an enormous temptation in all of life to diddle around making itsy-bitsy friends and meals and journeys for itsy-bitsy years on end. It is so self-conscious, so apparently moral, simply to step aside from the gaps where the creeks and winds pour down, saying, I never merited this grace, quite rightly, and then to sulk along the rest of your days on the edge of rage.

"I won’t have it. The world is wilder than that in all directions, more dangerous and bitter, more extravagant and bright. We are making hay when we should be making whoopee; we are raising tomatoes when we should be raising Cain, or Lazarus. Go up into the gaps. If you can find them; they shift and vanish too. Stalk the gaps. Squeak into a gap in the soil, turn, and unlock -- more than a maple -- a universe. This is how you spend this afternoon, and tomorrow morning, and tomorrow afternoon. Spend the afternoon. You can’t take it with you."

  - Annie Dillard (Pilgrim at Tinker Creek)

"Maybe freedom really is nothing left to lose. You had it once in childhood, when it was okay to climb a tree, to paint a crazy picture and wipe out on your bike, to get hurt. The spirit of risk gradually takes its leave. It follows the wild cries of joy and pain down the wind, through the hedgerow, growing ever fainter. What was that sound? A dog barking far off? That was our life calling to us, the one that was vigorous and undefended and curious.” 

-  Peter Heller (Hell or High Water)

“If it's wild to your own heart, protect it. Preserve it. Love it. And fight for it, and dedicate yourself to it, whether it's a mountain range, your wife, your husband, or even (god forbid) your job. It doesn't matter if it's wild to anyone else: if it's what makes your heart sing, if it's what makes your days soar like a hawk in the summertime, then focus on it. Because for sure, it's wild, and if it's wild, it'll mean you're still free. No matter where you are.”  ― Rick Bass

“There are so many unsung heroines and heroes at this broken moment in our collective story, so many courageous persons who, unbeknownst to themselves, are holding together the world by their resolute love or contagious joy. Although I do not know your names, I can feel you out there.”   - David Abram

"It is never too late to be what you might have been.
"  - George Elliot

Into the Woods, 14: Living Wild

"Thomas Merton wrote, 'there is always a temptation to diddle around in the contemplative life, making itsy-bitsy statues.' There is always an enormous temptation in all of life to diddle around making itsy-bitsy friends and meals and journeys for itsy-bitsy years on end. It is so self-conscious, so apparently moral, simply to step aside from the gaps where the creeks and winds pour down, saying, I never merited this grace, quite rightly, and then to sulk along the rest of your days on the edge of rage.

"I won’t have it. The world is wilder than that in all directions, more dangerous and bitter, more extravagant and bright. We are making hay when we should be making whoopee; we are raising tomatoes when we should be raising Cain, or Lazarus. Go up into the gaps. If you can find them; they shift and vanish too. Stalk the gaps. Squeak into a gap in the soil, turn, and unlock -- more than a maple -- a universe. This is how you spend this afternoon, and tomorrow morning, and tomorrow afternoon. Spend the afternoon. You can’t take it with you."

  - Annie Dillard (Pilgrim at Tinker Creek)

"Maybe freedom really is nothing left to lose. You had it once in childhood, when it was okay to climb a tree, to paint a crazy picture and wipe out on your bike, to get hurt. The spirit of risk gradually takes its leave. It follows the wild cries of joy and pain down the wind, through the hedgerow, growing ever fainter. What was that sound? A dog barking far off? That was our life calling to us, the one that was vigorous and undefended and curious.” 

-  Peter Heller (Hell or High Water)

“If it's wild to your own heart, protect it. Preserve it. Love it. And fight for it, and dedicate yourself to it, whether it's a mountain range, your wife, your husband, or even (god forbid) your job. It doesn't matter if it's wild to anyone else: if it's what makes your heart sing, if it's what makes your days soar like a hawk in the summertime, then focus on it. Because for sure, it's wild, and if it's wild, it'll mean you're still free. No matter where you are.”  ― Rick Bass

“There are so many unsung heroines and heroes at this broken moment in our collective story, so many courageous persons who, unbeknownst to themselves, are holding together the world by their resolute love or contagious joy. Although I do not know your names, I can feel you out there.”   - David Abram

"It is never too late to be what you might have been.
"  - George Elliot

On the trail of the big bad wolf....

As a follow-up to yesterday's post, here's Daniel Egnéus discussing the creation of his illustrations for "Little Red Riding Hood." Egnéus is a Swedish-born artist who now lives and works in Italy.

Into the Woods, 14: Art From the Fairy Tale Forest

"What
was the appeal [of fairy tales]? It's hard to be definite about that.
The stories didn't have any direct application to our real lives. They
weren't much good from a practicle point of view. At this time, we were
living half the year in the Canadian north woods, and we knew if we went
for a walk there, we were unlikely to come upon any castles, if we met
any wolves or bears they wouldn't be the talking kind, if we kissed a
frog it would most likely pee on us, and if we got lost, we wouldn't
find any short-sighted, evil old women with patisserie cottages and
child-sized ovens. Rescue, if any, would not be applied by princes. So
it wasn't our outer lives that Grimms' tales addressed: it was our inner
ones. These stories have survived as stories, over so many centuries
and in so many variations, because they do make such an appeal to the
inner life -- you could say 'the dreaming self' and not be far wrong,
because they are both the stuff of nightmare and magical thinking. As
Margaret Drabble says, there is a mystery in such stories which is
beyond the rational mind."
   - Margaret Atwood

"From time to time, I still pull [Grimms' Fairy Tales] down from the shelf,
especially when I am writing; I recently discovered details from 'The
Maiden Without Hands' and 'Godfather Death' popping up in the novel at
which I am currently at work. I found myself rereading the stories,
mesmerized once again.; I was startled to realize that the fairy tales
were still deeply twined into my unconscious life, and because the act
of writing taps the vein of the unconcious so silently, the tales flood
back into my current stories with their metaphors and morals at the
times when I am most unaware, most deeply immersed in creation. I
thought I could leave the Grimms brothers behind, but -- as with any
strong and complicated relationship -- it has not proved to be nearly as
simple as that."  - Linda Gray Sexton

"Fairy
Tales were the refuge of my troubled childhood. Despite all the
messages contained in them about being a dutiful daughter, a good
girl, which I internalized to some extent, I was most obsessed with
the idea of justice, the insistence in most tales that the righteous
would prevail.”
  - bell hooks

"The more one knows fairy tales the less fantastical they appear; they
can be vehicles of the grimmest realism, expressing hope against all the
odds with gritted teeth.”  - Marina Warner

"Early on I realized that stories could  save you. " - Julia Alvarez

Kinder– und Haumärchen

by Diane Thiel

Liegt in dem Märchen miener Kinderjahre

Als in der Wahrheit, die das Leben lehrt.

—Frederich Schiller

(Deeper meaning lies in the fairy tales of my childhood

than in the truth that is taught in life.)

Saint Nikolaus had a giant gunny sack

to put the children in if they were bad.

It was a hole so deep you'd never come back.

A porch swing full of stories, where the smoke

went up in hot, concentric, perfect rings

and filled our heads with unbelievable things

A nursery heavy with a history

where nothing was whatever it had seemed,

where Aschenputtel's sisters cut their feet

half off — so desperate they were to fit.

And in the end, they also lost their eyes

when steel–grey birds descended from the skies.

Rotkäppchen's wolf was someone that she knew,

who wooed her with a man's words in the woods.

But she escaped. It always struck me most

how Grandmother, whose world was swallowed whole,

leapt fully formed out of the wolf alive.

Her will came down the decades to survive

in mine — my heart still desperately believes

the stories where somebody re–conceives

herself, emerges from the hidden belly,

the warring home dug deep inside the city.

We live today those stories we were told.

Es war einmal im tiefen tiefen Wald.

"This earth that we live on is full of stories in the same way that, for a
fish, the ocean is full of ocean. Some people say when we are born
we’re born into stories. I say we’re also born from stories."
 
- Ben Okri

Indeed, we are.

The art of the fairy tale forest above is: "Snow White" by Nancy Ekholm Burkert, "Snow White" by Yvonne Gilbert, The Twelve Dancing Princesses" by Ruth Sanderson, "Donkeyskin" by Nadezhda Illarionova, "Donkeyskin" by Toshiyuki Enoki, "Little Red Riding Hood" by Daniel Egnéus, "Little Red Cap" by Lisbeth Zwerger, "Sleeping Beauty" illustrations by  Errol Le Cain, Kinuko Y. Craft, and Mercer Mayer.