Throwback Post Pick

Throwback Post Pick is a weekly feature where I fling open the vaults of past works – no matter the naivete they reflect – and revel in the making of progress! So come, TBT with me!

There’s just something about this piece that I just adore! I mean not only did I somehow manage to get the line “God and Devil syncopated” in there (seriously) but I also can remember writing it for a now defunct blog back in the day.

It was for a weekly feature that centered around my Tumblr feed. Basically I used pictures to inspire verse, art to inspire writing, etc. and I loved it for a while…that is until it became the only form of expression that seemed left to me. It was a depressing time in my life when I allowed myself to become a hollowed out shell.

Yes there are many things that I would do differently if I could but nothing that I regret for I am in a totally different place now and it is because of the many hell’s that I have walked.

I think we all dream of having a perfect life but it is truly in the details of feeling the lows as well as the highs where true appreciation and experience resides.

Anyway – it came to yet another Tuesday and I was scrambling through pinterest to get something that I could slap stick some rhyme to in hopes of creating at least a semi-passable post. Enter John Bauer – a Swedish painter and fairy tale/folklore illustrator whose (in the words of my post)

Work I absolutely love! The languid lines add such an ethereal essence to the people, it’s absolutely intoxicating! Making me believe all the things!

Yes I can bullshit with the best of them. In fact I have my BS in that very craft!…

You get it. 😉

It’s true that I had often pinned various artist fairy tale renderings, but I was desperate! Now as I peel back the layers of my creation I can see what truly captivated me about the theme.

I was never big into fairy tales like many of my siblings. I wasn’t really read to as a child in fact I hated reading, thanks to a broken public school system whose cracks I just went * swoop* straight through! But that’s a story for another time. I am familiar with several versions and standards and standards of versions (Hello Disney anyone?) but I was never really a princess type. I admired them sure, but I myself was never a princess…unless you count the warrior kind that is. AHLALALALA!

So it is quite the irony that I have more in common with them then I ever could have imagined. I mean I have based so much of my very existence in make believe and fantasy, in far away worlds and mysterious lands. I have existed as woman, I have existed as man. Any many of life I have lived, every manner of human I have at least touched upon the heart or dark hole of. They have existed in me and I through them.

For what else are fairy tales than the sociological and psychological study of human nature?

Ten to one my stories in some form or another come down to the contemplation of good and bad and how no such definition exists. It is based upon ruling opinion passed down to fit the and conform to the societal standards of its day. We deem what is acceptable and unacceptable, moralistic and depraved. Yet look at how over the centuries – hell even decades – it has changed. We grow and we judge by the ever evolving ideals of our times.

And what are fairy tales and folk lore if not a reflection on that?

Still in the words not only do I see a link between the worlds of fairy and me, but also between the lines of where I was and where I longed to be again. Constantly seeking that yellow brick road back to self, back to majesty and mastery that ever seemed out of grasp yet refused to let me go. Trapped in my own form of moralistic torment and making quite the myth of it.

And is that not the truth of regret at its heart? Are we not failing to live up to the romanticized versions of the past we left behind in times unwanted when we ourselves are lost. Instead of using the grandiose versions of past to lift us up with its reminder of capability and possibility we use it to beat us down by its comparison.

Still in the end the worst thing we can do is look away. We must face the beast, slay the dragon, feel the loss without losing the hope, see past the features, walk on the glass, cut off the hands, pay for the sins of another, sleep on the thimble, enter the house, burn in the sun, and hide in the stars, in order to find our happily ever after was in us all along.

 

 

Once I was  a Queen,

Of Fantasy,

Of dreams.

Worlds you can’t conceive,

For they have yet to be.

Mine was singular but plenty,

Soft and light but still heavy…

…

Once I was a Ruler,

So prestigious and so grand,

I could hold a people in the very palm of my hand.

I was larger than life,

I was hope, I was strife,

I was daughter,

I was son,

I was husband,

I was wife.

…

Once I was a Fighter,

Taller,

Stronger,

Then the rest.

I could beat the bad guys,

And prove I was the best.

Yet best can not be risen,

Till its opposite is given…

…

Once I was a Villain,

Evil you can’t imagine.

Destroyer of that which I had created,

God and Devil syncopated.

Then there came a time,

When all this was forgotten,

All left by the wayside.

So what did I become?

How much grander could I get?

When the future is unknown,

Holding stakes I can not bet.

It seems so dark at times,

How could things be greater?

When there was a time when I was thine own creator?

…

Yet sunny skies emerge,

There still so much I have to purge,

So I will keep on being, still creating, and conceiving,

what it is that I deserve,

Still a force within,

And one that cannot be deterred.

~Glory Anna