Moonlitmirror - Could Ever Hear By Tale Or History

when I say “everyone’s on their own timeline”, I mean it.

there’s no right age to learn something by. there’s no right age to be settled down, to move out of home, or to start your own family. there’s no right age to start working, if you work at all. there’s no right age to graduate.

life isn’t a series of boxes you need to tick. do things at your own pace. slow down if you need to. it’s okay.

In writing I find a solace in growing my love to give, until the words become me and everything I did 

Thursday, 8th July 2021

There is freedom in the shadowed storm as the veil-wrapped sky billows in a climbing release. I lay here on the rough strewn ground, a wilderness of rain-kissed grass, tumbled yarn, and loose cut threads. Find me in the running lake carving eyes into the overgrown path, lost to the planted sky now curling into a silver smile.

Freedom is more than just running through the rain on Thursday afternoons.

I've been doing a lot of research recently into Cinderella as a cross-cultural tale and can't stop thinking about writing my own version. The story and the film has always been something close to me growing up, especially as somebody who also grew up in an abusive home environment. And it was also something I had in common with my mother. She had gone through the same but ended up hating the story. She rarely uses that word and only does so because she saw the story as a wish fulfillment, something that never comes true like a dream or fantasy. Her reality never turned out like that and as a historian who loves loves the early modern period, I can't help but agree. Marriage was a way out but that never turned out well for my mother. Reality is lost in the tale - maybe because there is a magic godmother with fairy powers, who knew - but it stood out to me because it was a story of a strong woman knowing her situation and looking out for the friends that she loved. The romance meant nothing to me when I was younger and still doesn't. But at the end of the day, it is a story that speaks of hope and wish fulfillment that, departing from various historical contexts, is contradictory of everyday life for the majority of modern people.

How about in 2024 we stop it with reading books with the goal in mind to finish the book so you can add it to your list of read books and start reading books slowly and intentionally with the goal to rip it into pieces with your mind and be touched by it and formed by it and changed by it

Introduction

I’m Ruth (she/her) and I write a lot, mainly poems, but I am also a historian, proofreader, and tarot card reader. I don't want to spill my whole life story but I'm also dyspraxic and hypermobile. I’m currently studying dress and textile histories, and my research is focused on deliberately concealed garments in UK buildings. I’m going to list a few of my WIPs and projects so that you know what to expect from my blog!

WIPs and Projects: 

Substack - I now have a newsletter for my historical research if you are interested! It is about deliberately concealed garments and concealment rituals around clothing and shoes, the stories of the people who owned these objects and their emotional dimensions.

Poetry collection - Holly House. I need to go back over some of my posts and add tags for the poems that are part of this collection. Holly House refers to the name of the house that I first started writing poems in and that has been a massive source of inspiration. 

Mirror World WIP - a historical fantasy/magical realism book I have been planning for a long time

Tales and Stories of the Fairy Kind - I can't help but dabble in rewriting fairy tales, but with much more of a historical perspective. Right now, I am writing a seventeenth century take on Cinderella that focuses on domestic relationships and how romance and fantasy is used as a means of escape and freedom for many people surviving through abuse

Here are all my links:

My Substack

My Etsy

My Instagram

My Pinterest

Thank you for stopping by!

Ruth

George Seferis, tr. by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard, from The Collected Poems 1924-1955; “And if the soul”

You can get lost in nature

it entices you into its graceful grasp

luring you into a dream

of eternal sunshine

I fought so hard to remain unseen, merely a shadow on the wall that could go unnoticed when I fell over my own two feet and into words that dropped like pebbles.

And now I fight myself to be seen again, pulling myself in from currents that I found first instead of drowning myself in shadows.

@triinpaja