Jackie & Pär

Summer, please hurry up...

 

I know it's barely Easter, but April has definitely been the CRUELEST month this year. (Do I say that every year? Well, this year for certain!) All the blossoms just decided to burst through this week, and most of them look a little frost bitten. 

I've been dying to plant things, perhaps digging in a little too soon. 

PLUS- The deer seem to be eating all the flowers. Nice. 

 

Can we just fast-forward to May? MAY-be then the weather will start cooperating and I'll be able to don my muckboots with confidence.  

 

Methinks that the only cure for early springtime blues is to head somewhere that has summer year round. Oh right! I was in HAWAII & ARIZONA for a bit last March/April. THAT'S where I got my sunshine shot!!! 

 I feel like I should be able to bear the climate, tuck my head under my wing and wait it out like the rest of northern hemisphere humanity. Why can't I find joy in the frosty, brown months? There's usually some sort of hope to look for: violets, snow drops, crocus! This year these signs have been few and far between. 

Oh me, of little sleepy springtime faith.  

Joyeuses Pâques!

I forgot that I took these...

 Lifetimes ago now...

In my next life can I be Rita's dress?

Or at least can I BE Rita, in that dress?

On Paradise Lost and being struck 'stupidly good'

 I'm sort of a geek for Milton. Paradise Lost. Yeah. I wish I had a year to just sift through all the great language and cheer out loud for every clever poetic moment.

The whole work is astounding, and wonderful. But the best by far, for me, is when we spy Eve, alone.

 I so want her job:

"...so thick the roses blushing round

About her glowed; Oft stooping to support

Each flower of slender stalk, whose head, though gay,

Carnation, purple, azure, or specked with gold,

Hung drooping unsustained; them she upstays

Gently with myrtle-band..."

To make it so everything about you lovely and cared for, nurtured. To protect, and make right. To beautify, fortify and renew. Is this not a woman's work?

And in a garden no less...

"...What pleasing seemed, for her now pleases more..."

Yeah. Eve totally rocks.

AND THEN! Without even knowing it. She tames the beast...

"Thus early, thus alone: her heavenly form

Angelick, but more soft, and feminine,

Her graceful innocence, her every air

Of gesture, or least action, overawed

His Malice, and with rapine sweet, bereaved

His fierceness of the fierce intent it brought: 

Thus space the Evil-one abstracted stood

From his own evil, and for the time remained

Stupidly good; of enmity disarmed,

Of guilt, of hate, of envy, or revenge:..."

Satan, is struck 'stupidly good'. 

Women, creative women, nurturing women, wise women can wield this power, and tame any evil, just by being themselves.

This is the real legacy left to us daughters of Eve. Don't know why she gets such a bad rap.

This isn't a painting of Eve. It's a painting of Mary Magdalene by Cassandra Barney.

It strikes me 'stupidly good'.