Wednesday, November 12, 2014
Teeny Little Chrimble Wreaths for Mice
I collect scraps of paper, or rather, they collect around me. It's an occupational hazard of being a stationer. These recycled wreaths are a good way of using up paper - including coloured envelopes from Christmas cards. I think they make nice little Christmas tree decorations.
Wednesday, November 5, 2014
Aurelia aurita
The common name for the common jellyfish is 'Moon Jelly'. But this is not what their mothers call them.
Moons, in common with vampires, are associated with the night but can
go out in sunlight; it just weakens them. When you see a moon hanging in
the daytime sky it is so reduced it is almost transparent. If you peel
such a moon away from the pale pottery blue of the firmament you will
notice it is thin as a flake of laundry soap.
When these moons fall into the sea they become sodden, and then
gelatinous, and then slowly they billow into bell-shapes, and are
seduced by the watery element.
The
three Ladies of the Moon are Selene, Diana, and Hecate. They know by now
how their daughters wander, and how they fall. They let them go. In the
ebb and flow of the tide, they rock their wayward babies to sleep.
When Natural Philosophy came to name the world, he put on his best embroidered slippers and stuffed his pipe with Nicotiana tabacum.
The lists were long and sometimes he ascribed unworthy names. Resting
his eyes he fell, perhaps, asleep. If he did sleep, in his dream he was
visited by three ladies: the first was young and soft-skinned, with pale
yellow hair and a round, winsome face; the second was most memorable
for her collection of weapons, and the third was an old witch.
'See,' said the young one, her plump delicate finger indicating the
drawing of a primitive sea-animal, 'See our precious babies. We miss
them so, it is a perpetual ache. We wish to name them. It is a kind of
spell, we know, what you do.'
The weaponed one said, 'Their name will feel like a soft caress.'
And the witch added, 'But at the end, there will be a little tskiness, so they know how naughty they have been.'
Then they took his quill, and wrote something in his list. They all
seemed to do this, and all at the same time, as if the witch and the
warrior were shadows of the girl, or as if she were light playing on
their silvering hair.
Natural
Philosophy awoke to a cold dark room. His candle had guttered in the
wax, and the only light came from the stern eye of the moon. The list
was as he had left it before dozing, but with a grateful shudder, he
remembered the name.
Below his tower spread the endless, black, moon-caressed sea. And through it, gazing up at their three mothers, swam Aurelia Aurita, the Moon Jellies.
(This is a re-post of a story I wrote a few years ago).
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