notes from a binbag

a place where words tumble

[mar-claudrin]

'Mycea' This is Mycea, the owl that uses her antlers to wind down the stars every night so the sleepy bairns can chatter with them before they fall asleep. The moon sometimes naps in her chest as well, when it's tired like the bairns. Pastels, watercolour pencils. 2016

[mar-claudrin]

Ask the Harebells

“Daddy, where is my mammy? My heart’s gone wonky on me. It keeps banging, trying to empty.” Ask the harebells, they will know. “Daddy, my eyes keep leaking. Do we need to ask the plumber to fix me, like mammy’s washer?” Ask the harebells, they will know. “Daddy, I cannae fall asleep. There’s a strange noise on the heath. Not wind, nor sheep. What is it?” Ask the harebells, they will know. “Why are we off to the woods with your sharp, heavy shovel? Are we looking for saplings to pinch to put in our garden? Won’t we get wrong for that? Daddy. Where’s mammy gone?” Ask the harebells, they will know. “The clarts in my mouth make me choke. The rain above’s unending, I’m sad. Daddy, daddy, this ground’s so cold. Why do you leave me here, in this hole? Is that mammy you’ve laid me next to? Mammy, oh mammy! Is that really you?” Ask the harebells, they will know. 

(day 26 of NaPoWriMo challenge)

[mar-claudrin]

'4 Signs Your Partner Is Madly In Love With You'

- They bring you the biggest halves of dead worms, still swaddled inside stardust and clarty puddles. - When you howl at the moon, they join in too. - The straightjacket in their attic still has your bite marks on it. - When someone asks where you're coming from, they'll say wherever Emily Bronte's gone.

[mar-claudrin]

Gretel’s Lament

I'm tired of trying to wear a different face the way cinderella's tired of trying to wear different slippers. I'm tired of putting on ashes too. In a forest full of sleeping brambles, I've hidden all my monsters in the eyes of foxholes and the minds of dwarves. On the moors where only silence scarpers with Cathy's ghost, I open my mouth and howl the winds of my anguish out. But it catches in my hair and ends up laughing there as the sky matches my madness with lightning and consequences. I'm tired of this kind of re-becoming - this falling backwards even as I try to run happily to the ever after and away. So I've decided to transform pebbles back into breadcrumbs. Abandon myself over to the woods-life again.

[mar-claudrin]

A song that just demands a falling into.

[mar-claudrin]

‘Once, on a blue moon’

(a composite I created, using an early illustration of Peter by Marjorie Torrey)

[mar-claudrin]

The Onion Man

It’s that magic of being under a table while the grown-ups are going through something grown-up and sad. And you know, even as you sit under the table watching legs from the knees down drift past, that when you come out from under the table, everything is going to change. So you keep sitting under that table, occasionally taking a peek from between her Sunday tablecloth and the chewed chair legs, up to the Onion Man sitting on her windowsill, at the single tear that forever rolls without reaching the end of his pottery face. And he's the colour of beetroot, the Onion Man, though he's supposed to be brown - but an aunt believing earth hues sad - painted him with a bottle of nail varnish, the brightest betalain red. But you still don't come out, you just sit there. And you close your eyes, and pull your knees up to your chest, and try not to hear the voices from the other room sing sadder and sadder. And then it starts raining, and her window where the Onion Man sits is leaking because no-one remembered to shut it, and you're too little to reach even if you could crawl from under the table, but you can't. And then the Onion Man really has tears, and they're rolling down his nail varnished face, while the dog barks to be in but no-one lets him because they're too bewitched with being grown-ups and sad. So you look down at your knees, and the scab on the left   is like an octopus without legs, and the dimples on the right are like eyes in a face, and because you're a kid, you kiss the face and try not to think about the other stuff in that other room. Just about being under the table as the rain comes through the window and washes the onion man happy because finally he can illustrate the intricacies of tears.

[jnorthblr-deactivated20160930]

'Fennel' by John North

I rub fennel between my fingers and some is taken up in the breeze. I take it up to my mouth and chew. It is like aniseed, a universe. And so the Benedictine draws for his botanica and here is my tongue; I suggest taste is a dialogue between man and God - I still suggest it. How the taste has not changed in a thousand years. Or perhaps it has a little, moment by moment, here, or heaven, for it too is written.

[mar-claudrin]

“So dawn goes down to day. Nothing gold can stay.” - Robert Frost.

[mar-claudrin]

Took to stalking leaves and woodpeckers along the river.

[mar-claudrin]

‘The World Is Back To Front, Wrong Way Round and Upside Down‘

By WG Lucas

(https://www.facebook.com/WGLucasArt/)

[mar-claudrin]

My first ever attempt at pumpkin carving. Rather happy with how it turned out though. Still, I miss turnips. Not the hours and hours they’d take to hollow out of course!

[mar-claudrin]

Found beneath my sweet chestnut tree. I’m not saying he’s one of the fae folk, but he even has a magic staff held in one of his wee arms. Nature is amazing. And our minds too - their ability to create stories from chance similarities :)

[mar-claudrin]

This Thing, Called Oh To Be In Love

I just can't handle it. Our thumping hearts hold the ravens in; now I'm waiting for something to fall from the skies, but every time it rains, you're here in my head. I can't get over the way you love me like you do. I should be hoping, but I can't stop thinking this world has only one sweet moment set aside for us. Diving off a rock, into another moment - I think I'm a banana tree! This is where the shadows come to play, born - to love you. If I could learn to twang like a rubberband. I'm hearing secret harmonies pulling up the rhododendrons, so don't become some background noise; the grey of a ghost. Are you ready? Hey, are you ready for this? I feel I want to be up on the roof across the water, across the land. Do you want to hear about the deal that I'm making? Save me. Save me. Save me! I've got a pin-up from a newspaper of Peter Pan. I'll love you 'til I die, Leave behind my Wuthering, Wuthering, Wuthering Heights. Crazy, little thing. Called love. Were you only passing through? (A cento, made from Kate Bush and Queen lyrics)

[mar-claudrin]

A one taken this time last year. Soon, they will be frosted as well. I love Autumn - ‘season of mists and mellow fruitfulness’ indeed.

[mar-claudrin]

Thank you very, very much. You are welcome. I am enjoying reading your writing. And writing with the vigour praise can give; so thank you again. God bless. John

This will probably sound very strange, but you are the reason I finally signed up to Tumblr. Your writing is consistently brilliant. It reaches that border place where intellect, emotion, and spirit press up against each other and merge. And that’s rare, and such a beautiful thing, imo. You have a way with words that just illuminates what the whole wonderful strangeness of being alive is all about. So once again, thank you :) (don’t worry, I am a very unobtrusive stalker ;) x

[mar-claudrin]

‘The Story No One Remembers’ WG Lucas

Because stories like to be remembered, they like to be allowed to come in.

(https://www.facebook.com/WGLucasArt)