Taking The Hands Of The Maiden Rumoured To Be

what is your favourite fairy tale or myth ?

I've mostly read the short stories of the Grimm Brothers when it comes to fairy tales, so there are too many to choose or differentiate from I think. But for mythology, I really love the story of the bones stolen by Quetzalcoatl, of which here is a short excerpt:

Quetzalcoatl was instrumental in creating people to populate the fifth age. In order to do this, Quetzalcoatl had to sneak into the underworld of Mictlan and trick Mictlantecuhtli and Mictecacihuatl, the Lord and Lady of Death, into giving him the bones they guarded. Mictlantecuhtli would only give the bones to Quetzalcoatl if he could create a sound by blowing into a conch shell with no holes in it. Quetzalcoatl managed to complete this challenge through clever trickery. He had worms drill a hole in the conch, then filled the shell with bees. Quetzalcoatl’s actions successfully tricked Mictlantecuhtli into giving him the bones. But this was not enough for Quetzalcoatl. In an effort to further trick Mictlantecuhtli, Quetzalcoatl told him that he would leave Mictlan without the bones.

Before Quetzalcoatl could escape from Mictlan, however, his deception was discovered by Mictlanecuhtli. A deep pit appeared before Quetzalcoatl, preventing his escape. As he fell into the the pit, Quetzalcoatl was knocked unconscious and mixed up the bones he was carrying. After his eventual escape, Quetzalcoatl combined the now slightly shuffled bones with his blood and corn to create the first humans of the fifth age. The Aztecs used this allegory to explain why people came in all different heights.

(It's interesting how there are parallels in almost every mythology, for example in the Greek myth, Daedalus was lured by a similar puzzle set by King Minos where the contenders would have to thread a delicate conch shell by not doing any damage to it. Daedalus made a small hole at one end and smeared honey over it as well. Then he threaded a string to an ant and pushed it into the shell, and so it clawed through a neat hole without damaging the shell at all) (and also, Prometheus was somewhat of a Quetzalcoatl figure in most myths, aiding humanity with fire as Quetzalcoatl did with life and knowledge)

my activeness on tumblr directly correlates to how much i should not be on tumblr in this moment

October is my empire. Terror is part of me. 一 Tamura Ryūichi

1. Alfonsina Storni, 2. Cy Twombly, 3. William Stanley Merwin, 4. Cy Twombly, 5. Virginia Woolf, 6. Jorge Albericio, 7. Gala Mukomolova, 8. Andrei Tarkovsky, 9. Czesław Miłosz, 10. Andrei Tarkovsky, 11. Thomas Wolfe, 12. Andrei Tarkovsky, 13. Louise Glück

Does anyone else have this strange compulsion to try and - in a sense - store everything you read that moves you, everything you write, as though trying to piece together a cohesive person? almost as if the pieces you’ve collected of yourself could somehow make up for all the life you leave unlived ?

Loneliness sometimes takes strange shapes I suppose, there is a kind that the fervently wants recorded in word or image every thought and deed, an underlying fear of being forgotten, afraid of never being truly known. Perhaps the feverish words scrawled in the middle of the night are just intended to be a reaffirmation of your existence, even though no one might read it.

Butterflies, spinning in celestial delight, over arches

Crumbling and old, divinity longs for the brush of a

Whispering wing. A Darkening sky looms over the cathedral

Of locked bolts, standing tall and stalwart.

Footfalls echo down the hallways of buried thought,

Love lies dreamlessly in a flower wreathed coffin.

A hand gently runs down the jar of forgotten myth,

“Elpis”, the walls softly echo, “You should have

left when you could Have”. The dead roses you

fear are tucked away in the spandrels of memory,

The night is dark and beautiful,

The butterflies linger, will you too?

Queen of hearts, bows to the fools parade, insanity is a strange thing to take comfort in. ‘Mere blood and bone’ will lure you to depths of life/hell which human hand (only) must (only) touch. Vega of the lyre and bellatrix of the Orion in a dance of lights and life, bitterness sings a frayed melody to the hearthstone, listen to her woebegone voice in the soft refrain, fold away your letters and give away your life, for its not sadness but despair that requests it. Believe in phantoms, and one as old as yourself wants to touch your windows and watch its fragile hands pass through the glass. 

Nightfall, hushed and frozen stood the world on its tiptoes,

As the earth and sky together cajole to sleep the

little baby in the dark house, all lonesome and weeping,

Swaying on a broken cradle, has the house god

found a way to stop the sunrise yet? He watches the baby

rise and fall, the house empty and his heart emptier,

The creaks of a cradle fall on a headless ear,

The shrieks of the baby pierce through a stiller air,

The tree top will bend to the wind and

down will come baby, cradle and all.

Salman Rushdie is inside my head and I can’t make him stop talking.