Kuriosities

Longing for spring
by K.

follow me, and I promise
that the hands that linger on your tender skin
will be soft, will yield their clenched recesses,
unfurling like cherry blossoms on the branch
in spring, will offer up their hidden treasure;
melted chocolates warm in their wrapper,
a purseful of coloured smooth pebbles, a
purple thread i will wrap around your finger
to remember why…

follow me, and I promise
that these hands will rock your loneliness to sleep
when it cries out in the night, they
will weave a warm nest for
your heart to rest in.

Giftmas and all that it entails has kept me from writing…only days and nights of nonstop work, tucked away in my tiny studio; hands moving non-stop,  mind  racing with new thoughts that cannot yet be born on paper or birthed in metal, clamouring for attention. Just an endless pile of invoices, hearts broken, and longing for comfort, these hands so busy trying to ease the pains of longing and loss with small offerings to wear and to hold. Silvered whispers of I know, I understand…and I do, I really do… It is beautiful and tiring. Fills me and sucks me dry all at once.Can I sleep now? Can I curl up in my den until the crocus peek through the snow. Can I dream a few months?

Wishes and wishes…but no, I am still covered in snow for a while, and am still staying up late to dig my way out. Thankful, yes, but tired…

Facebook is a strange thing….all these people finding me that I haven’t seen since high school, which was longer ago than I truly care to admit. Stranger still is that I hated high school. It was likely one of the worst passages of time, all self loathing and depression, and a sensitivity so keen a gentle breeze could have skinned me alive. Recently I had a friend reach out to me, one of my best friends from teenage days, one of those you are always hoping good things for, and come to mind every now and then with a happy memory and a snug place in your heart. Anyways, a letter written to me in a moment of sadness and need… and an odd phone call to follow, cut short and awkward, and an angry sounding spouse in the background… and then nothing… strange and sad way to leave things…I guess in my mind’s eye he is still my friend of childhood, preserved the way that we left each other, at the age of 18, never growing or changing…how strange to realise that your memories grow in your absence, that their lives tangle around them without you to see it happen. That there is a part of your childhood friend still in the middle, but hard to see for all of the years between. And only this melancholy wish that they muddle through, the way that we all do, and find some happiness hidden here and there, maybe a blissful surprise…

Reading letters upon letters….purchased the letters of Robert Browning to Elizabeth Barrett (Browning), and have been devouring them. I am much more smitten with Elizabeth’s letters, such a quirky soul and a poetic view of the world, and a sense of humour about things…and clever. I also bought a volume of letters between Rilke and Lou Andreas-Salome which I was rather surprised by.  I though that they would be the letters that sparked my imagination, that I would finally discover Lou, what made her the Muse that she was, the inspiration…and so far it seems to me it is her indifference. She gives him little snippets here and there, small intimacies, tiny allowances - but how the man must work for them. I find it hard to read actually – a bit painful, like the anticipation in a dreadful comedy where you know that something will come between the hero and his desired goal again and again and again, until you cannot take the tension of knowing another disaster is about to befall him. Is that what makes a muse? Indifference and apathy. A cold calculating heart? Ugghh. I have put it aside for now until I am in the frame of mind to comprehend. Instead I am allowing myself the courtship, misunderstandings and playful letters of the Brownings, which resonate more at the moment…

I have been working on my “we don’t write letters anymore” project here and there during breaks from paid jewelry work. I am excited and can’t wait to put the ideas into tangible forms….more later…now I am back to hammering out silver bracelets and resigned to the smear and smudge of polishing….

letter excerpt from K.

“Last night there was a terrible storm here, lots of snow and freezing rain. When I went out to the horses this morning after the storm had passed, the little pony Sophie (who may in fact be pregnant) trudged right into the middle of a belly high snowbank and lay down in it and rolled blissfully in the snow, four little hooves kissing the sky. It was so lovely. And I thought of you, and wished that you could see it. Look for the snowbanks…”