< the sum of its parts

Spent the week tooling with various combinations of media. Just how many combinations of layered gunge can I devise? Seemingly limitless, but four to be precise. Each looking more bedraggled than the last. The result has been a massive repapering of the walls of every wastebasket in the house. In a thousand glorious shades of grey.

Creeps and Peeps

He is risen.

Back into your cupboard.

Sliced and diced.

What happens when you reach too fucking far.

Trapdoors that you can't come back from.

Gravid women at windows. It's a Grimm specialty. Rapunzel's mother. Rapunzel herself, if you want to get squeamishly literal. Snow White's mother. There's something in the image. Women being consumed from within, battered from without. Not technically indoors, not technically out-of. And not at all in possession of themselves while they stand between the two. Shades at doorways. Or doorways themselves.

The End.

Because Smokey's got nothing better to do than watch an empty coffin.

Not fair.

Brutal honesty is what you get when you don't feed your mirrorgod.

Do-ray-me-fa-so-la-Heigh-Ho.

Little known truth that dwarves are master singers. Of course, it would be silly romanticism to assume that the song is the product of joyous spirits--they're a stony-faced, hardhearted bunch and that is well documented. Fact is, it has everything to do with stones. Turns out that the rare gems have an affinity for music. A well-tuned song will work its way into the inner lattices of a stone and set its crystal structure to vibrating. A few taps on a surfaced vein to establish pitch and the worker can hum-hum his way along all the truest faultlines of the mineral--singing while hammering out the finest, most unblemished product. Harmonic mining. And dwarves--with their bellow lungs and their mobile mouths and their unmatched perfectionism--are the best. A practiced miner can winnow out his quarry--while aboveground--simply by emitting a series of sweet, high-pitched shrills*. A stone will practically dance from its mooring at the sound of dwarfsong. Which in actuality, is all very romantic, and the closest to a love affair that these small, grim men can get.

*Gives a whole new meaning to "whistle while you work".

Quick. Grab a beer and your DS.

The animal in his natural habitat.

Knew that, inevitably, things would devolve into ten-'til-midnight portrait sessions.

Bird Maiden

Locks of love...

...that clearly did not keep intruders out. Themely, if unseemly--especially if you've seen Alex's newly shorn pate.

Sacrificing quality for speed.

Not a swift wit, Snow White, but someone should have advised her to look down. The shoes make the man. No common peddlar woman would have the funds for Seven League Boots. And no sorceress worth her salt would travel without them.

Falling Short.

Oh, who the hell knows? I could fudge some things, but the number five doesn't really figure prominently anywhere that I know. Maybe I should check the Eastern logs.

Heartless.

Disney pretties things up, but it was actually the liver and lungs of Snow White that the witch demands, pickles, fries, and consumes. Provided instead by an obliging fawn.

There will be blood.

Really, this time.

A little Daniel for your Day. Maybe it's the rise of the mustachioed man that led me to it. Or maybe years later I'm still smarting over the gross miscast of a role that should have been Lewis's. Either way, it seems he's my hunter of choice.

March Forth!

Throwing common sense--and a healthy haunch of salted pork--to the winds.

Where the Laboratory meets the Vanity.

Something from Snow White. Don't know why it never occurred to me that the Mirror-Mirror might be less looking glass and more scrying glass. My horizons needs broadening--quite literally. I suppose that's the risk you run when operating constantly on the verticle. Turn the paper ninety degrees and utility takes on a different meaning

Eat right off your golden plate.

Missing: One sceptered amphibian. Behind the curtain? Seated observer? Already tucking in? Victim of a tragic misunderstanding in the palace kitchens? The serving platter indicates as much.

Odd Coincidence:

Best Gift--East of the Sun, West of the Moon--Mayer's gorgeous riff on the Frog Prince.

Day One, Part Two

A bit of sheepishness for the story that comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb.

Book of Five Rings.

The castle spread out from an ancient center in a series of concentric circles decreasing in age. Each circle was separated from the others by stone walls--more labrynthine than fortress, clasping and overlapping like petals. Each wall was carved in fantastic bas relief showing scenes of the hunt. None was ever still.

The outermost ring depicted the FoxHunt. Costumed men and women armed with tiny bugles. Terriers made dainty attempts at capturing a thinking, reasoning prey. Within these walls was the library, the greenhouse, and a handful of tea-rooms overlooking a lawn. Here she read and studied and was left to herself.

The second ring was the StagHunt. King and retinue, faithful dogs and hawks. Bows and arrows, long-legged steeds, and a quarry that would rather run than hide. The killing blow was always left to the King--possession of land and beast unquestioned, even in stone. Within these walls were the kitchens, the gardens, the aviary. Here she walked the grounds with him and ate with him every night.

The third ring was the BoarHunt. Warlord and men at arms. Long lances, hounds like horses, horses like harts. Success was no certainty and more often than not the warrior king went abidingly to death--staked to the ground by a tusk and snout that demanded sacrifice. Within these walls was a wood and a hall. Here she danced with him, at first unwillingly, but he would always escort her back.

In the fourth ring, the Hunt was reversed. Men of stone, armed with stone, backs to a fire and eyes fixed on the descending pack. Here she did not go, but she could see the tops of oak and black pine over the wall and a host of invisible gardeners was always set to pruning the barriers.

The fifth ring was seen by only one and depicted no Hunt at all. Only a mass of creatures running, running. Some ran on four legs, some ran on more, and there were those that ran on two, but they were no less animal than the rest. Who is to know what this wall contained? It is only left to say that the roads that led inward were many and the road that led out was one. And when The Change came about he could not find any of them and he did not try.

Willing...

...to try one pic a day.

Into the blue.

From Werke, kritische Gesamtausgabe: Tischreden:

Eight years ago [in the year 1532] at Dessau, I, Dr. Martin Luther, saw and touched a changeling. It was twelve years old, and from its eyes and the fact that it had all of its senses, one could have thought that it was a real child. It did nothing but eat; in fact, it ate enough for any four peasants or threshers. It ate, shit, and pissed, and whenever someone touched it, it cried. When bad things happened in the house, it laughed and was happy; but when things went well, it cried. It had these two virtues. I said to the Princes of Anhalt: "If I were the prince or the ruler here, I would throw this child into the water--into the Molda that flows by Dessau. I would dare commit homicidium on him!" But the Elector of Saxony, who was with me at Dessau, and the Princes of Anhalt did not want to follow my advice. Therefore, I said: "Then you should have all Christians repeat the Lord's Prayer in church that God may exorcise the devil." They did this daily at Dessau, and the changeling child died in the following year.... Such a changeling child is only a piece of flesh, a massa carnis, because it has no soul.

--Martin Luther

Come Again?

Why don't you just crawl in there and see if the oven is hot enough?

One of the more suspensful moments in folklore and all I can think is "Her hair is hanging all over that food." Quick thinking, bravery, and a good set of forearms ignored at the prospect of a ruined batch of hot crossed buns. Little girls who forget to don their hairnets deserve Purification by Flame.

A tale dominated by the bellies of evil women. At the first pang of hunger, a frau drives her children out of the home. Into, of course, the waiting hands of a Butcher and Baker who fattens her captives up--probably on gingerbread men--with the intent of baking them down--potentially into gingerbread men (you've gotta search for the cannibalism--there're savory nibblets where you might not think to look). Ultimately the witch can't ignore the demands of her own stomach and a couple of inconvenient grumbles send her tumbling into the fire. Craft and cunning forfeited for the sake of a few extra pounds. Even poor, chubbed up Hansel seems to have lost all reason ("Both of us on the duck? Are you mad, man?"). So things are left to the famished Gretel, who blows on her fingers, cinches her belt, and keeps her wits about her.

Makes you want to throw out those heart-shaped cookies.

Have designs.

Just waiting for the euro to drop a bit more.

Everybody needs to know it's the year of the rat.

As lucky can be.

The confounding chimney sweep.

Is it insensitve to suggest what seems so reasonable--that these are the bastard sons of witches and St. Nick? Where else would Santa take his indiscretions but aloft? Witches are a tempting lot--or at least a welcome change from the Pillsbury softness to which he would be accustomed--thorny and wild, legs wrapped around straw and stars and not much else, and not exactly discriminating when it comes to love. An oddly appropriate, if ill-fitting pair. And the mythologies (if not quite equinanimous) share similar leylines.

Of course, the offspring of these blasphemous unions would always be out of step. Stout believers of Kris Kringle could never bear the implications, and the chambers of a witch's heart are tenanted only by her cats, her owls, her faithful toads. So, orphaned and forgotten, their children would be relegated to the the frilled outer edges of each world--the rooftops.

And so become the sweeps.

In grace and appearance they well resemble their mothers, but their temperaments are much more cheery. They are on friendly terms with the sky but are content with small plots of brick and tile, and they travel the chimneyways with inherited ease. Prim, fastidious, and the perfect caretakers of the supernatural highways, they sweep the hearth, clear the stacks, scuttle the vapor trails, and buff that raw coppery line where city meets sky--smoothing all roads for their absentee parents.

And of course, close the days with a bit of mending:





hemming the skirts of Great Auntie Horizon where they peep up around her red stockinged ankles.

In essence, they are the interworldly janitors, but it's a lofty custodianship.

Bon voyage, Gabby!

Eat your vegetables.

Indulge that gum-popping voice in the back of your head and RENT THIS.

RSVP regrets only.

As I was saying....

And the life of the ebony clock went out with that of the last of the gay. And the flames of the tripods expired. And Darkness and Decay held illimitable dominion over all.

Edgar Allen Poe "The Masque of the Red Death"

The Importance of Beating Ernest.

My senior year of high school, I had an English teacher who graded me particularly harshly. On my midterm paper on A Farewell to Arms she slashed through the title page with an injunction to "Stay away from Hemingway!". I think she thought she was being glib. I just thought she was being mean. This picture reminds me of her. Not only for the strong resemblance she bore to your standard kettle stirrer, but also because I've a hunch she would have scrolled something similar across any of my rooftop drawings. "Try to escape the cityscape!". "If it's in the trees, hold back your B's! (pencils, that is)". "Avoid the gables, if you're able!".

I ignore her now as I did then.

Let's go for a stroll.

Outside of a few delusions of grandeur from the Welsh, shoemaking has traditionally been the realm of elves. Honest to goodness elves, proud and undiluted since that first Master Cobbler with Hammers-for-Fingers, with the Pincushion Mouth. No sprite mixed in for humor, nor fairy for whimsy. No dwarvish conscientiousness, or gnomish sense of fair. Which means, of course, that poured into your wingtips is pure Elf--unmitigated by equity or charm. Bad attidudes tap-tapped into your leather, small magicks pooling in your soles. Waiting for your first misstep. And, wrapping themselves around your digits, they will take you where they will.

Harrowdown.

There was an old woman of Harrow,

Who visited in a wheelbarrow;

And her servant before,

Knocked loud at each door,

To announce the old woman of Harrow.

We are not accepting submissions at this time.

A runner's plea.

I realize it must be tempting to stand at the back door and save your Uggs a nasty muddying while Fido takes a shit, but for christ's sake...tie up your goddamned dogs, Buffalo.

Yip-yip.

Another elusive Mother Goose. Farmer drives his comely kid into town. Bird spooks horse. Kid gets bucked. I'd like to say I was drawn to the cautionary tone--"pride coming before a fall" and whatnot--but I suspect it has something more to do with horses asses. I'm not one to argue with powerful trends. Let's just call it a January theme.

NY Salad.

While folding laundry, I struck up discourse with the denizens in the back room. The lampshade shadows are shifty but they don't miss much; and, once the temperature hits sixty-four, the radiator pipes start to squeal and gossip like little girls. So I turned up the heat and decided to address domestic matters--notably defense plans for whatever has taken to writhing around in the midroom walls. I suggested a potential loose plaster problem. The pipes disagreed and(claiming more intimate knowledge of apartment viscera) chattered on about dust serpents. The shadows dropped dark eyes and whistled which I took to indicate something worse. Of course, all attempts at strategy eventually lost themselves along more conversational routes--from questions regarding the seasonal Livingston ban on chocolate chip cookies, to the Tube Sock Currency Issue, to philosophies on why the buoyant mushroom is really the most congenial of all foods. More pressing matters of hearth and home.

To 2008.

Skumps.

Where the drifts get deeper.

The wood grew wilder, her mood milder. And winter eventually cracked and bled the color of roses.

Exhaustivo.

Last one. Promise.

Last year's leftovers.

Found this at the back of the icebox. Scraped off the rime, peeled back the layers of foil, took a cautious sniff, and decided that, with a nice holly garnish, it might just be fit for consumption.

He who would pun would pick a pocket.

Not exactly drawn in the spirit of the holidays, but, 'tis the season for shearing. It's more 'greyish lamb' than 'black sheep' and, if there's any allegorical 'lord/queen/church' to 'master/dame/little boy' parrallel to be drawn, I've probably missed the mark. But it's gotten me somewhat shakily back on track and has kept me from any, ahem, ...woolgathering.

Don't spray it.

Been overdosing on Mother Goose. Here's a little known jewel:

Whistle, daughter, whistle,

And you shall have a sheep.

Mother, I cannot whistle,

Neither can I sleep.*

Whistle, daughter, whistle,

And you shall have a cow.

Mother, I cannot whistle,

Neither know I how.

Whistle, daughter, whistle,

And you shall have a man.

Mother, I cannot whistle,

But I'll do the best I can.

This, days after my grandmother waggled her finger at me over lunch and said (around a mouthful of raisin bread), "Hsst! Ladies never whistle!" Perplexing when one's only sources of Old World counsel contradict each other.

*Intentional correllation between sleep and sheep?

Also comes in flavors "Smashing Pumpkin" and "Metallica".

Ever wonder what radiohead would sound like in lullabye format? I confess, after the String Quartet Tribute To and Christopher O'Riley Plays...I did.

Pale green things.

There was really no use in talking him down--a bullfrog has his pride. And there was no one willing to do it if he would--amphibians are notorious gamblers. Once the notion of a bet is lodged in the clay deposits of their brains, they are intransigent. So between the stubborness of a bullfrog with something to prove and a mass of singleminded high rollers, things were not going to budge. They don't call it a bog for nothing.

And so the bets were placed, and slick fingers passed every type of swampland currency: marshpearls and methane baubles, tiny beetles trapped in amber, and lilypads stamped with the image of All-Father Heron. While a thousand wet voices warbled together, and a thousand webbed feet slapped the stone, and each nicitating eyelid fluttered in an ecstasy of trade, while the bullfrog creaked more with every lungful. Until the whole swamp was...fit...to...burst.

Shaking two trees.

Turning your milk to curd and switching your babies out for birchbark. Making your purses lighter and your eyelids leaden. Twisting your evening curls into bramble. The Bad Boys of Unseelie.

Shades of mediocrity.

Knees have turned uniformly black after last week's tumble.
Adding brocoli to the lunchly mac n cheese for a pep turns my pasta greeeen. With envy.
Seeing red on the couches--spilled red wine and bulldog ooze-face. The wine comes off, the ooze does not.
Sworn off the Raw Sienna 552 that's commandeered every brush I own.

Living in just one mind.

Trying my luck, my hand at Peter S. Beagle's "Two Hearts". If you haven't read it, good christ, already. Gorgeous, as ever.

Hard to pluck the Grifiin out from the shadow of the Harpy--she's so dominant a feature in the lunar landscape of the first book. Furthermore, it was difficult to approve the fevered second monster held next to the Harpy's chillier aspects. The Griffin is all heart(s) and stomach, blood and guts, to her cool. Jaws for the flocks, blood for the fields, and a singleminded focus on rapine without romance. No regard for the myth properties that even the Harpy had sense to acknowledge. Denied even a gendered pronoun, it is simply reduced to a weapon.

So I nocked the thing onto a tightly strung moon and used it according to purpose.

What's your poison?

For every princess that needs a good humbling, there are three kings disguised as beggars and twelve castle kitchens full of ready tasks. It's simply a matter of cultural palate. Do your countrymen prefer mintrels to potmakers, or dishes to drapes*? The author is usually obliging enough to salt to taste.

*The English take to hearthtending, the Germans to food preparation, the French--livestock

In memoriam.

Paul Norris (1914-2007).

A gentle mind, a gentle line.

Then again, maybe not.

A cool option.

For those without the wherewithal for NaNo.

No. I'm calling this one The Perfect Swish.

Dictionary.com Word of the Day: Ensorcell.

Pelting.

They all saw her, but of course they let her run. They turned their eyes and scrubbed the kit. Vigorously flavored the stew. Yelled a little too loudly for the pail. In those last seconds while the sun lingered in the streets to set her hair traitorously ablaze, the townspeople that had pitied her and worshipped her mother gave her safe passage into shadow.

And so exhaled their concerns--as much for themselves as for her. For if a king's strength is enough to inflame his people, there was the thought that his madness might be enough to infect them.

W-w-w-want some candy?

Second sight: Always a privilege of that littlest child with the untied shoes and the flyaway hair.

Seven, eight. Stay out late.

There's nothing up there. No life at all. Excepting the mountain, of course, and he's an unreliable sort of ally. And there's no sound--or was none that day. No animal movement, or breath of wind. Only the memory of rain for company. And that too was leaving--offering itself back to the sky in great clouds. Leaving along with any remaining light.

The elements plotted against us.

How shall we punish these two sillies caught out at dusk?
Smothering?
Yes, that will do!

It was a gentle suffocation, to be sure--caught between falling night and the pleasantly perspiring earth. Perfectly poetic. But all I could think of was our stone colored dresses, and our clay-stiff hands and how no one would find us here washed onto and into the rock. The lookouts from the castle had been sharp-eyed once--two generations back. The flocks of sparrows were notoriously careless and cruel--if they even remembered us in the morning, it would be with a snicker. The mountain himself might have noticed--but at the moment was cozying up with a floozy cumulonimbus, settling in for the night, curling us into oblivion with his littlest finger.

Just us and the False Folk. And that thought is enough to make a person cry out in terror. But the closing dark left no room for even a squawk, and our muteness worked against us. So the wordless spaces filled with dark eyes and pale fingers and wide mouths that knew neither song nor rhyme, and we despaired of any rescue.

You really had me goin' there for a minute or two.

Where the edge of the Watch meets the frilled cuff of the Green, there forms a pocket of leaf and iron and the blades of each deter all light. In the deepest shadow of this pocket there is a seat, studded with flowers that nod and are the color of bone. Deeper still there is a thing--shaped loosely into the form of a man. And he does not nod with the flowers. And he does not sit in the seat. He stands, very still, rooted to the ground like a gate of ivy, like a tree of spears.

He only moves within the fringes of sight, and there his face is blurred by fear. Your own.

In the way of all of Those Who Follow, if you look back, you'll have trapped him. If you run without acknowledgement, it will be the reverse.

For the seat is not for him, you see.

Wyld Stallynz.

There was a heated debate over who'd get linking rights to the new radiohead cd. Alex got first dibs thanks to an unlikely blurb on NPR, but in honor of that gorgeous, sleepless sound, I'll offer this.

These are the moments.

Smack in the middle of my run, it decided to turn to fall.

Down from the door where it began.

Kept a running log of every vaguely literary place we passed on our ten day loop of the eastern seaboard. Found some (forced some) regional themes.

Headed south (Western PA, WV, NC): Ripley, Starbuck, Tesla Road, Amity, a few Lykan Buslines. Brutish, practical, no nonsense. Perhaps not surprising from the land of Hi-Tech corridors and the GITRDUN license plate.

Going east (Eastern PA, NYC area, Connecticut, Massachusettes): Ichabod Road, Hamlin (as in the Pied Piper of), Cheshire, Buckland Street (LOTR), Peter Pan Buslines. Charming and relatively fresh-faced in the realm of story. All bouncing off one another like so many pins and balls rumbling through the Hudson River hills.

Northward bound (New Hampshire, VT): Glastonbury, Boreas Road, Milton, Minerva. No messing around here. Between bear sign and the steely-eyed locals, there's clearly no room for whimsy. Only contracts signed with Old World gods will save you from being frozen out.

Back home: The Hyde Collection, Moreau (The Island of Doctor), Leatherstocking Region. We're New Yorkers. If we're dealing in fictions or folktales, we want them bound, packaged, and preferably in novel form. Nothing if not neat expediency. And don't forget the tight confederacy of NY city-states (Utica, Syracuse, Ithaca, Homer, Ilion, Rome). The perfect welcome back to the pen weilding, regimented traveller.

Fo Fum.

What's up, scanner? I thought we had a deal. You play nice with my lines and I don't grind your bones into meal.

The other side of the Seven Ravens. From where I sit, things are looking more sparrow than crow, but the metamorphosis isn't complete, and it's not quite October.

Crazy Grandma quote of the day.

She'd called the ambulance for what turned out to be vertigo, and phoned me afterwards to crow about her adventures. "Come tuck me in! I'm as tired as a pig in shit!".

I arrived to find her in the kitchen, grinning, berobed, and tucking away at an entire lemon meringue pie.

Me (panting, not a little sweaty): "--Grandma?"
Grandma (winking and gesturing with her spoon at the half-finished pie): "Want some Chinese food?"

And the fire with all the strength it hath.

"Ahead of her was a tremendous ryhthmic swirl of wind and flame, but it was wind and flame quite different from the cherumbim's; this was a dance, a dance ordered and graceful, and yet giving an impression of complete and utter freedom, of ineffable joy. As the dance progressed, the movement accelerated, and the pattern became clearer, closer, wind and fire moving together, and there was great joy, and song, melody soaring, gathering together as wind and fire united.
And then wind, flame, dance, song cohered in a great swirling, leaping, dancing, single sphere.
..."What was that?"
..."The birth of a star.""

--from A Wind in the Door,
Madeleine L'Engle (November 29, 1918-September 6, 2007)

Revelry.

Maybe not in the strictest sense, but spoonfuls can be quite enough. Spoonfuls of airy powdered-sugar fun.

And liters of body wash.

Because New Orleans stinks. Literally.

Perhaps it's the layers of heat--heat of a thousand categories. Or perhaps it's the irrepressible plant life left to rot and riot and rot again. Or the fluids produced by body and building--sweat and piss and beer and coffee and fourth-story runoff--travelling in milky rivulets down every street, over every stone, between unwary toes. But the smell has a presence, if not a name. And it clings to that fat insistent dance partner that is Southern summer.

A city of glorious excretion, but I fear it's never coming off.

As the crow flies, you fools.

Ravens everywhere yesterday. I spent the afternoon portioning off the sky to accommodate groups of seven. Sometimes--the auguries--they need a helping hand.

Sometimes not. Last night at Barnes&Noble, I'd seen myself off to the back aisles. Nothing so comforting as the serene ballroom progression from L's to M's in Sci-Fi/Fantasy. Le Guinn... McCaffrey... McKinley... and two-two-three, and three-two-three and bow. I blindly struck out a finger at the first spine, and withdrew--of all things--a retelling of The Seven Ravens.

Those odds? A little troubling.

M.F.E.O.

A: Come up and join me?
C: Thanks, but no.
A: Hmph. Then stop exhaling my way. Your breath is searing the upperairs.
C: And your arm is too short by at least an eighth.