Preamble & a beginning: The Weaver and her swans

Hey y’all, & a short preamble

I haven’t written to y’all since a personal cataclysmic, and yet still a tiny happening of last November.
I paused subscriptions. Maybe you noticed, probably you didn’t.
I paused a lot, while also starting slow new things. Maybe we’ll talk about that one day, but for now. I’m coming back here to share a silly fairytale, only it’s not silly, It’s possibly my largest chewed on work. So here we go, onto that:

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Pre-teen to Perimenopause

uhmm, I can’t believe it, just a few years ago I stole an article from my Sapphire….

30 or 35 years ago or, -or somewhere in-between, I picked up my grandmama’s Victoria magazine. There was an english interior designer living in France, re-creating her family Christmas decor every year and that year she happened to be interpreting some version of the fairytale The Wild Swans.
& I’ve been thinking about it ever since.

Now I really mean it:

I’ve thought about it by investigating the Hans Christian Andersen tome,
through the lens of feminism;
I’ve thought about it through the lens of patriarchy,
hell - I’ve thought about it through the view of being the oldest daughter, and damn right - the one most in charge of not just my brother, but errybody I love -the know-it-all parent in the room.

But as I’ve aged? Unbeknownst to me, I’ve thought about this story through the lens of loss, grief, - the void of without, and how it makes us all something more, and something less. Solidly working for re-belonging, and still keening at the same time. What we do when we’re out of time and out of ready soil to plant in? -& y’all my fingers typed soul three times -in place of the word soil, maybe soul wary/weary & lacking too.

So when I share with you my retelling of this tale, I’d have you know a couple things:

ø I’ve been chewing on this longer than a lot of folks have been living

ø I’m writing for grown ups and coming-ups. I love that “fairytales” are for all ages and stages and I hope we lean in as we grow up.

ø I won’t get it right

ø Storytelling/fairytale-ing ain’t about rightness, but it is about realness and how to get along anyway

ø This doesn’t come alone as a story but with images in my mind, visual thoughts, physical fiber arts. It’s a 3 D affair, and I’m mostly good at 1.5 of those three. So I beg y’all’s understanding at my 2-D arts.

ø I’ve walked a hard road this last year, maybe you have too?
Maybe watery thinking is the best type. Maybe we need wisdoms that sink in more than ever into theoretical lines of brilliance & the illusionary evaporating ethers that will always be more blurry than we want to allow. I’d translate that, but maybe that’s both right & hard to understand. Maybe that’s ok.

Lastly, honestly y’all? I could tinker on this forever, and maybe I will. If we’re lucky we’re never done. I’m sharing it as it is now. I hope it’s a work that’s never done. And I hope we all have a life long evolving thesis like that.

And so,

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The Weaver and her swans

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A rush of white feathers, something the boy had never seen in the dark depths of the forest. In one of the last small cool watering holes, the orange beak turned to him, a single moment that meant food in the belly, or no food at all. The boy raised his bow, and aimed.

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It was the driest summer any old wisdom or old timer could remember, crops put up puny harvests. Fields barely grew enough to feed their caretakers, and not nearly enough to sell for taxation time.

Folks were growing desperate, and justifiably scared.

Then there was the Copse family.

Everyone in the village had known of their hardship. Many sorely made the sign of protection when they passed one of the brothers, not wanting to believe poorly in ‘em, but still not quite able to shake the worry.

A quick loss of father and mother was easier to explain away by some ill fortune rather than chance.

& We’ve always done that haven’t we?

Easier to believe it’s some judgment or ill temper we’ve made of the fates than sit with the knowledge that some plants grow, flower, and they thrive; and some? They never reach the sun or the spot of water in time. They never thrive or continue -just because. It’s not the will of the gods, or a punishment of fate. It’s just nature, and mostly it’s hard. Mostly, it sets sorrow in bone deep.

Grief pulls up a chair unbidden and we stand knee deep in its eddies learning the dance of off-balance loss. It’s a dance we all learn, or are the heart of learning for. Not a one of us gets by without its name carved on our arm, gently demanding an aching turn.

When a person is taken in their twilight years we like to say, well they were old…
-as if old means easy. When it’s just loss and heart rending all the same.

Some say grief enters like an old friend, and some say grief thieves like carrion, picking the bones before we’re ready.

But the Copse family, they live close to the land, and they know that regardless of their tact, the toll of decay comes quicker than we’re ready and feeding the crows happens all the same.

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part 1-

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