A room full of goldfish

Weather appropriate Snow Queen illustration.

Sun, 05 Feb 2012 00:06:00 +0000

Weather appropriate Snow Queen illustration.

Be not afraid of the night

Sat, 04 Feb 2012 23:59:46 +0000

Take the Book with you, you may need it to refer to or to pray on.

The Talisman around your neck will let you in where you need to go. Use it wisely, and show it when you need to buy trust.

The Siren’s screech is fearsome and will beset you without warning. The only way to be rid of it is to face it head on and answer its call.

Choose your battles, pick the right weapons to fight with. You have but a fraction of a second to decide and not many second chances should you get it wrong.

You will not have all the answers, you will not know all the paths. May the powers that be grant you the mental agility to know what you lack, remember what you know and work out what you do not.

If all else fails, hope the cavalry arrives at the right moment.

Above all, have heart. You will have moments where your courage wavers, but remember that as you are toiling, dawn is racing to reach you. Hold the line until it does.

"You - you alone will have the stars as no one else has them…In one of the stars I shall be living...."

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 04:00:05 +0000

“You - you alone will have the stars as no one else has them…In one of the stars I shall be living. In one of them I shall be laughing. And so it will be as if all the stars were laughing, when you look at the sky at night…You - only you - will have stars that can laugh.””

- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Le Petit Prince (via phalene)

Illustration from the Firebird

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 20:11:47 +0000

Illustration from the Firebird

Mourning the loss of eyebrows

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 20:06:00 +0000

Did you even realise they were gone?

You seem the sort of person who would not understand the importance of the unnecessary, like the feel of silk or the influence of cherry blossoms. Or of loyalty or kindness or trust.

I did not, until today, comprehend the significance of them - satirical symmetrical comet tails of facial hair on ridges of bone -and for what? Do they serve as a relic of our shared part-simian origins, a comical remnant from the time of our forefathers? Are they objects maintained only for the enjoyment of fanatics from the cult of aestheticism?

Your orbital ridges are bald, plastic, featureless. Yours is a world without conveyance of surprise or delight or horror or anxiety. Yours is a frustratingly unintelligible, unblemished cavity of isolation.

But you would not mourn that. To mourn that you would have to understand the importance of expression.

But, like your missing eyebrows, this seems increasingly frivolous to you.

oldbookillustrations: The cock and the fox. Ernest Griset, from...

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 18:17:24 +0000

oldbookillustrations:

The cock and the fox.

Ernest Griset, from Æsop’s fables, with text based chiefly upon Croxall, La Fontaine and L’Estrange, London, New York, 1869.

(Source: archive.org)

The Ghostly Heart

Sun, 15 Jan 2012 23:31:00 +0000

Out of the gloom it suddenly appears. Pale, pulsating and otherworldly it floats upside-down through the shadows, it flirts with the idea of becoming visceral.

But it does not, and instead shimmers and teases in a sort of grotesque fascinating burlesque, a vague ethereal organ.

Like a deep-sea creature it half shimmies, half propels itself through the darkness away from prying eyes.

A sneaking creep of hair

Sat, 14 Jan 2012 23:11:50 +0000

Like all things that bear a resemblance to living substance, hair has a wisdom of its own. Observe how left to its own devices stray strands will coalesce into little whorled balls, or weave together in silent unopposed rivers on carpets, streaking down stairs, into corners where they are discovered, in eruptions, matting together quietly.

Even when it belongs wholly to one owner, hair never is content to be sat complacently in one place. It waits for opportunities.

Today as always, Elsa took her place in the parlour and set to work. Her basket was filled with a discarded pageant of small life broken - a nightingale which had sung itself into dissolution by rupturing its chest in an ecstacy of song, a shrew with a jutting corset of displaced ivory ribcage poking through matted bloodied fur, a sad collection of unknown marsupials whose once bright eyes had grown as dull as stone. She worked hard mending, setting, repairing, but her labours were never for the benefit of the creatures she worked on. She worked to her employer’s request, quietly embalming and arranging their restored limbs for display.

Here she was grateful for invisibility and silence. From time to time she reached up with her free hand and pulled fretfully at the remnants of her blunt shorn fringe in a rhythmic, constant motion, to soothe or to punish, she herself did not know.

A silvery bell.

She walked, both invisibly and silently, to the room to which she was summoned. Nervously she reached for her rudimentary forelock, then, remembering, tucked it away hurriedly beneath her lace cap.

The room she entered was rich. The twin ostentatious colours of red and gold dominated its landscape, entwined on a rococco loveseat, embellishing a set of belligerent velvet curtains, on footstools and vases alike. Amidst the decadence, the Green Fairy and her favourite baboon were sat primly facing each other acoss an oak chessboard.

The Green Fairy was difficult to assign a definitive gender to based on appearances. How does one decide on such a thing when faced with a buboe headed being whose bald head was adorned with ripples of skin, with earthy features that can best be described as tuberous?

Elsa watched them wordlessly as the Green Fairy removed single chess pieces to hand them to the baboon, who snapped their heads off immediately and flung the rubble on the floor. It was their favourite game. They did not bother to honour her with a greeting or a pause.

“Where is my display of the dancing swallows? Have you finished embalming them?” enquired the Fairy peevishly between brittle snaps.

“They- they are proving d-difficult to preserve,” began Elsa in a faltering voice, “their wings disintegrate too swiftly for me to -“

“Where are the dancing swallows?” An interruption repeated in tones that barely varied from the previous interrogation.

Elsa began again, more forcefully this time. “Madam the swallows you sent me were not fit for purpose. I rather think that-“

The only warning she received was that an errant knight playing piece was flung at an aggresive vector at her to collide unceremoniously with the panelling behind. The baboon opened its jaws wide and aimed a full shrieking roar in contribution.

“Elsa”, the Fairy began, with a voice the timbre of small bones crunching,” you are wrong. You are WRONG, you are ALWAYS WRONG. You have not been brought here to THINK, you are here to DO. And you are NOT DOING!” The Fairy built up to an exquisite crescendo, “When you happen to have a thought, you stop, and ask ME what you should be DOING. That is all.”

The baboon handed her a scroll. It said “Not to think, here to do.” in small handwriting.

Elsa pulled at her hair over and over again as she left. She felt it run through her fingers, the soft and pliant nature belying its bristle and tensile strength.

She went to lie on the rug in the antechamber. It was woven of a dark rich mahogany springy material, soft, silken and supple. It was made entirely of Elsa’s shorn tresses. She went there whenever she was distressed, to feel its familiar weight and to understand that it was a reminder of yet another part of her that the Green Fairy exploited for her own amusement.

That night after the nth attempt to glue more swallow wings onto their decrepit bodies, Elsa fell asleep. As the candles went out all over the Fairy’s house, there was the minutest of rustles from the antechamber.

By the first stroke of midnight, there was a sighing sweeping noise from the top of the stairs.

By the time the full moon bloomed through the windows of the Red and Gold room there was a rushing bristle from the gaping open door.

By the time the deadly nightshade plants were dallying with witches, there was an unusual blanket of darkness on the bed.

Slowly, very slowly dark tendrils closed tenderly around the thick expanse of puce coloured neck.

Gently, very gently probing fingers reached through the bulbous nasal passages past the throat, causing just the slightest tickle from the odd scraping sensation of hundreds of filaments sliding against membrane.

As insidiously as the growth of hair the asphyxiation of the Green Fairy takes place. Between the slow throttle and the muffling choke, breath is extinguished as subtly as candle flame.

By the morning there was a grey buboe headed tuberous featured figure on the bed with an enormous growth of hair sprouting from every orifice. Elsa spent a moment regarding the ingenious use of rug, and only took one moment to decide that she would refuse to embalm her former employer even if she was asked nicely.

Kay Nielsen illustration of Rapunzel

Sat, 14 Jan 2012 23:01:00 +0000

Kay Nielsen illustration of Rapunzel

oldbookillustrations: With elegant hats and up-to-date rackets,...

Thu, 12 Jan 2012 09:12:54 +0000

oldbookillustrations:

With elegant hats and up-to-date rackets, they did look a handsome pair!

Cecil Aldin, from Cecil Aldin’s merry party, told by May Byron, London, 1913.

(Source: archive.org)

From the exhibition, Vermeer’s Women: Secrets and Silence...

Wed, 11 Jan 2012 09:39:00 +0000

From the exhibition, Vermeer’s Women: Secrets and Silence at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge.

Hands

Mon, 09 Jan 2012 22:37:00 +0000

She washes her hands until they bleed. The actions intended to cleanse, banish and sterilise also chafe, sting and destroy.

As the cracks appear weeping their tiny wellfulls of blood, she thinks, they did not tell me this. They did not say that purification, that trying to remove the remains of the day from oneself is self destructive.

She watches the loss of skin swirl down the plughole.

Rumpelstiltskin

Sat, 07 Jan 2012 22:12:14 +0000

Rumpelstiltskin

"The best moments in reading are when you come across something - a thought, a feeling, a way of..."

Sat, 07 Jan 2012 21:40:00 +0000

““The best moments in reading are when you come across something - a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things - which you had thought special and particular to you. And now, here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come out, and taken yours””

- Alan Bennett

Vintage Children’s book cover

Sat, 07 Jan 2012 04:09:05 +0000

Vintage Children’s book cover

Existence in the Room of Eyes

Fri, 06 Jan 2012 13:07:00 +0000

The problem was that she could not remember from whence she had come from or what she was called. It is a difficult concept, struggling with the ambiguity of one’s existence, for a being who has lost their identity and past is often regarded with frank suspicion for trying so hard not to exist.

In truth, the darkness that currently surrounded her was so enveloping in it’s totality that she had begun to doubt her own existence. Sensation is a reaffirming state of presence that we often take for granted. She persuaded herself that her consciousness was true and felt for her own face in the void. It was there.

So was the sphinx that she surreptitiously tripped over as she was feeling her way. It lit up indignantly like a lightbulb and wrapped its tail closer to its body while scrutinising her intently.

“You’re late,” was all it offered huffily by way of explanation. Before she could respond with any of the befuddled guttural utterances that seemed befitting to the situation, it had arisen gracefully and had begun stalking off, tail slicing the air in irritation.

She followed it because there was not much else to do, and because it was very rapidly withdrawing the comforting glow of light that it had brought with it. It walked purposefully through endless, twisting corridors, which did not contain one whit of light apart from the sphinx.

It came to a surprising stop in a room that was remarkable at first glance mainly because it was lit. Otherwise it was a circular room, like the inside of a tower or turret with walls covered in plain plaster that completely surrounded its viewer.

That was, until the sphinx gave a little cough. Then, alarmingly, a series of fine cracks in the wall began to widen. Each little aperture smoothly folded back its plaster sleeve with a series of little mechanical clicks to brazenly expose smooth elliptical shapes, each with a liquid quivering centre of iris and a darting secret inner circle of pupil. So, now where there was blank wall, now it was studded from floor to ceiling with large, uniformly sized, eyes.

She stood in the centre of the cylindrical room surrounded by eyes appraising her in every angle. She was like a child in their enveloping gaze with her arms folded behind her back shyly.

“Have you the relevant paperwork?” One of them enquired of her in a booming voice, which seemed remarkable, considering it had no vocal apparatus. When she shook her head in confusion, several of them tutted and rolled in their sockets disapprovingly. “Well, how do you expect us to know you exist then?” it continued.

She was dumbfounded. Surely they could see her?

“Firstly we must see your certification of Personage and Status, followed by the verification of your Abilities and Prowess in alphabetical order printed on a series of scrolls that are stamped and bear the letterhead of an expert trainer in those abilities. Of course next we need to see the verification of the trainer’s Abilities and Prowess in alphabetical order, and that of his trainer and so on and so forth”.

“But surely that would result in an infinite amount of papers!” she protested. “And who would ever want to look at them anyway?”

“It protects us from scrutiny,” the eye said in a clipped voice. “And we have devised a series of committees to view, sort and file the evidenciary paperwork in order in a large subterranean crypt where it is safe, but which no-one is keeping an eye on because we can’t spare any because we have formed so many committees to watch you.”

“The thing is, if one of you turned out to be a radical deviant, then at least we would have the evidence that you were not, even if you were. Why, just the other day we saw a nice young man with an entire portfolio of scrolls, heaps and reams of them, all singing his praises- so all we had to do was help him along with his large sack of blood stained axes and he was on his way!”

“So it is alright to allow a person to acquire an entire armoury of weapons without asking questions?”

“My dear, we had no evidence that they were even there, apart from that we could see them. Anyway, it would have been deemed discriminatory to exclude one from his chosen path merely because we felt it was against our principle to have weapons,” it continued.

“Go now, and stop bothering us. If you have nothing to show us, then you are nothing and therefore by that logic, do not exist. The sphinx will show you the way out and give you the necessary form to fill.”

They folded their plaster eyelids closed in resignation.

Outside, the sphinx was waiting.

Sleep and his Half Brother Death, JW Waterhouse

Fri, 06 Jan 2012 04:24:05 +0000

Sleep and his Half Brother Death, JW Waterhouse

Photo

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 21:51:00 +0000

Photo

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 05:48:05 +0000

From Max Ernst’s surrealistic novel

Wed, 04 Jan 2012 15:13:23 +0000

From Max Ernst’s surrealistic novel