(Note: I’ve swiped this whole post from my other new (sigh) blog. I’m a little bit sorry for cheating, but … not much. :))
I hadn’t made a shadowbox for months, but last week, quite suddenly, needed to.
Anyone who knows anything at all about the Science of Fairytales knows they’re supposed to be a good way to safely meet our own fears and the scary parts of the world. I don’t know how true that is. Academics have a great talent for convincing themselves (and their students) that they’re right.
Fairytales are equally valuable – more, if I get a vote – for being doorways into stuff that’s the opposite of villainous and scary. Fairytales are little lands and scenes where my imagination can relax and find all the things we long for: safety, romance, delight, love and fairness.
It doesn’t mean they’re so pretty that they’ve been cleansed of all intricacy and darkness. No no.They’re not antiseptic.They’re events engineered by my mind, after all. Our minds. In my own fairytale-ing, I know that just beyond the borders, life is tapping and waiting patiently with its horrors and grotesqueries and general discouragement.
I can’t begin to deal with those things, much less combat them, if my mind and imagination are drained or if anxiety’s chewing at whatever it chews on.
I do best when I feel warm and when my mind is loose. I don’t expect it to get that all the time (good thing, because it hasn’t happened yet) – just enough to be restored, to revive some of that glittering swoopiness. And that’s what the fairytale that I write and create and imagine for myself is: a scene that lets my me come out.
It has great healing powers.
strangely becoming 
I loved all kinds of fairy tales…trolls under the bridge ones, princesses in a tower or with peas under mattresses, Red Rose was a favorite……I have an album…78’s…of Snow White and Rose Red spoken by The Great Gildersleeve…..I also loved Tennessee Ernie ford and Hopalong Cassidy…just to keep me grounded. That’s me in your shadowbox….dancing with a pretty skirt and long, straight hair. I look beautiful.
I love so much how much you loved (and love) stories. Is that what you loved? The stories? Or the way you could weave yourself into them? I wants to know, if you wants to tell me.
You don’t just look beautiful. You are. Beautiful. I liked her hair very much on this. All charcoal-y and not even trying to be glamorous.
Oh, I was the princess, the troll, the characters. And the stories were mine. Up until I was about 7 or 8 I used to wear my undershirt on my head and pretended I had long hair….after that I switched to scarves. I danced to the Hungarian rhapsodies and pretended I was a ballerina….I was a lone kid and dreamed a lot. I dreamed I was married to Montgomery Clift, oh, lots of movie stars loved me. My mom would buy Hollywood magazine to read and when she was done with them I would cut out the pictures and kept scrap books. I have a fairy tale mind, Cris…..I was born into the wrong family….I should have been a princess and lived in a castle with a moat.
Yes, yes, yes, Rosie! I’m all feathery inside. Your stories. Yours. Aye! There’s so much power and desire unleashed. And all the possibilities of the world are there, at your mind’s fingertips. I could NOT love that phrase more – a fairy tale mind. I have that, too. Until I decided to write about it, I really don’t think I told anyone. If anyone were to ask, I’d say it’s one of a person’s greatest treasures. I’m so, so happy you own this!!
I did and still do love fairy tales…and love that shadow box.
It’s fantastical to me, this love you have for fairytales. I’m sure I must have probably read them when I was little, but I don’t remember. They’re so fascinating. Mostly, I like the fairytale ‘state of mind.’ And yay! for liking this shadowbox. Thank you for that. I don’t know what it’ll look like til all the parts are in place, so it was a happy surprise to me.
I like fairy tales, the darker the better. Disney can do the art (I prefer you however) but Grimm needs to tell the story.
I also like this shadow box. What are the blue orbs in the castle with her? Some sort of sorcery, I suspect? (whoa, alliteration headache)
Of course! I see it, now. You’re a bit of a cottage-with-shutters all decorated for the holidays owner in a Grimm Bros. story.
Those things are floaty disco decoration (for the shadowbox set). You made me happy with your run away alliteration. Thanks.