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The Hermitage
intothehermitage.blogspot.com
37
Rima Staines ~ Painter, Illustrator, Maker of Things & Teller of Tales, Librarian of the Hermitage ~ Phantasmagoria of Fancy, Museum of Myth & Realm of the Ridiculous...
#36537 in All

A May Miscellany

A RARE REACH OF SUNLIGHT falls down through our cottage windows, illuminating a years worth of dust and spider architecture. The rain has been unrelenting lately: crashingly deep rivers cascading dow...

03 may 12

Hedgewalking

I HAVE BEEN out wandering the lanes in the early mornings and the not-yet-evenings as the sun lights up the last of the daffodils muddied yellow skirt-hems, which bow out now to the shyest ...

14 apr 12 1 person likes this

The Elf with the Upside-Down Heart

OUR DEAR FRIEND THOMAS died a month ago. His thirty year old dragon-knotof a heart stopped its unique, time-borrowed beating one morning inJanuary where, at home beside his beloved wife Lunar, he fel...

12 mar 12

Rise & Root

I HAD A DREAM a few weeks ago in which several symbols appeared before me. They had no context, just were there. One of them remained with me upon waking, and I became determined to discover its mea...

01 jan 12

Unsnow

THOUGH THERE ARE PRIMROSES growing outside our house, and coat-wearing is a matter of choice, they tell us this is December, and midwinter passed without our breaths becoming visible in the air. Neve...

28 dec 11

Wayfarers Nativity

THE NIGHT COMES EARLY these days, leaning up against our old rattly windowpanes, which ooze condensation an d owlsong from four oclock on. The long evenings afford us time to do Things Indoo...

04 dec 11

Autumn Aflame

YELLOW FIRE licks the clear blue skies of these short November days in a last farewell. At the years retirement, branches give up their last sparks to light the winter fire that will burn for us...

18 nov 11

Atching Tan

A RED SUN-WHEEL burns bright in the blue sky above a green land that could be this land. The sixteen-spoked wheel represents the Romani Gypsy flag, where a red chakra (wheel) spins over a half blue (...

06 nov 11 1 person likes this

The Bagpipe Society

"Pan is the son of Mercury; His head and body form the sign of mercury of the Philosophers, at once solar and lunar. The star on the right is the hieroglyph for harmoniac salt, the thir...

13 oct 11

Flowers in the Hair of Summer, Songs in the River of Green

THESE GREEN EYES have looked out over my summer and seen the fire in the river, the wind in the song, the sky in the feet of our days. Our summer has worn flowers in her hair and uncoiled her jubilan...

17 sep 11

Dark Mountain

THERES A SOUND that comes from the hedgerows in July: a green sound, a great cacophony of young birds with new wings, shouting their proud freedoms over the million wonderful brown rustlings undernea...

18 jul 11

A Brush in the Blue Paintwater Jar of June

WE ARE FROGS crouching disgruntled at the waters edge of a doubtful Summer. So far, this June feels like Mr Jeremy Fishers slippy-sloppy larder; the air hangs damp and grey; we nip out between downpo...

23 jun 11

The Wide Skies

GOODNESS! Its June! Somehow we have leapt over Spring and a wet May, and stand barefoot and blinking on the other side in the tall dry grass. The green is no longer just emerging: it is wild and abun...

06 jun 11

A Wayfarers Cabinet of Curiosities

THESE ARE THE BLOSSOMS of the Wayfaring Tree, a shrub common along the lanes of Southern England, which could be confused with Elder, except that it flowers earlier and bears a scent not nearly as sw...

19 apr 11 1 person likes this

Spring tripped

UNDERNEATH our feet and underneath our eyelids and underneath the dead leaves of last year something has been happening. It came tentatively at first: shyly stepping in, still wrapped in a cloudwool ...

29 mar 11

Owl Words

WESHIMULO the Gypsies call her - Ghost of the Woods - hoohoo could she be?...Owls have fared badly in folklore in general, being portents of death and ill omen:Men beoþ of þe wel [owl] sore aferd. þu...

12 mar 11

The Gate at the Edge of The Village

UP ON THE HILL we climbed yesterday, you could smell sun on the low morning air and see specks of buzzards fly far below. Our lungs and hearts stretched and filled with the day, we drank a thermos of...

25 feb 11

Green & Grey to Brown & Blue or Several Contemplations at the Crossing Places

CROSSING PLACES and boundaries are the habitation of fascination for me. The not-quite-one-nor-the-other is a chancy and magical place, where in-between sorts of people wander, outcasts and wisdom ke...

08 feb 11

The Icicle-Spoked Wheel of Fire

THE YEARS CRANK has been turned again this January. Now it is Two Thousand And Eleven!But this sun rose for us on the old Celtic New Year: Samhain, the day when the aged knuckles of the Winter Crone ...

17 jan 11

White-Ivied

THERES A THICK WHITE SNOWSKIN laid over our village and beyond, we havent been able to venture much beyond it, but trapped in this winterland it is quite wonderful. We have been out in the whitened w...

23 dec 10

Hermitage Bazaar

SNOWS HAVE COME AND GONE, ours the least whitened corner of all the white white country. Perhaps theyll come again (and Ill show you snow soon), but in the meanwhile I am busy in this warm nest of ou...

09 dec 10

Marvels and Tales

HERES A MARVEL & A TALE... This autumn, in the rather marvellous Journal of Fairy Tale Studies published by Wayne State University Press, Marvels & Tales are three drawings of mine, and a few...

24 nov 10

Ventriloquism

Ventriloquism : n. art of throwing ones voice so that it seems to come from some source other than the speaker. 1797, formed as a descriptive noun to ventriloquist, with substitution of the suffix -i...

17 nov 10

The Rootpond Clock & Considerations on Artistic Conversation

THIS BURNT ORANGE TREE grows on my most recent Once Upon OClock, completed a couple of months ago. The Rootpond Clock I called it... there at the roots of this autumnal tree is a circular clock-pond,...

02 nov 10

Octobers Microcosmic Circus

THESE EARLY OCTOBER MORNINGS astound me. Some kind of immense absent-minded god walks the common before anyone is awake and forgets a crystalline miasma all over the undergrowth, as if divine crumbs ...

14 oct 10

Lemniscate

A poet has my heart.He keeps it between the pages of a leather-bound bookpressed petal-like under paper.Word-etched pages of hisclasp me in translucencelike breath between praying palms.He gave me hi...

03 oct 10

Five chapters of summer

A LONG SPACE theres been between the last time I poured tea here and this! Life has brought a satchelful of wonders and works and wanders, so I hardly know where to begin! Perhaps if I rifle through ...

09 aug 10

Old Women Who Paint On Their Walls

I WOULD LIKE TO TELL YOU A STORY about three old women. Their art is an extraordinary sort. And it is by accident that they and their creations have come to light.I have long been interested in what ...

07 jul 10

Old Women Who Paint On Their Walls

I WOULD LIKE TO TELL YOU A STORY about three old women. Their art is an extraordinary sort. And it is by accident that they and their creations have come to light.I have long been interested in what ...

07 jul 10

This ...

THIS IS THE PATH into the woods ...This is the path in bluebell days, when the early summer sun lay down his golden coins amid the blue ...This is the wood, found by the path ...This is the wood in b...

21 jun 10

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