I live in “lusquiver.” No it’s not a town in New England you have never heard of, nor is it a kingdom springing from a fairy tale. It’s a word I stumbled upon in my current favorite book, The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows. “Lusquiver” is
This author, for one, finds this all a most intoxicating mixture. A society seems to always be attempting to scrub clean its past, for better or for worse, while its deep-seated nature continues to bleed through the fine linens of modernity. It is a masquerade of the highest order, and if I am being quite honest, I emerged from Romania changed, transformed in some way that is difficult to be put into words.
But what did I love so much about Toulouse-Lautrec? What drew me to his story, his art, besides the fact that I knew if I were alive back then, we would have been friends. (I never longed to be one of the “society girls” parading about in stiff silk skirts and spending my days swanning about, dressing for meals. No. I would have run away to the Moulin Rouge and spent my days practicing my high kicks in frilly knickers.)
These paintings were not of sunflowers, or starry nights, but instead they were of a family–another kind of passionate aching joy. Vincent had moved to the yellow house in Arles to paint when he became friends with a local postman and his family, the Roulin family. He wanted to work on painting portraits and each member of the family sat for him.
Knowing how Vincent longed for love, he wrote “It’s so easy to love, the hard thing is to be loved,” these paintings seem so poignant, especially the multiple paintings of the mother, Augustine Roulin. In his paintings of her she always has a rope around her wrist because while sitting, she is using the rope to rock the cradle of her newborn child. Van Gogh called the painting “La Berceuse” which means both “lullaby” or “she who rocks the cradle.”
Vincent wrote to his brother about this painting, “I would like to see this painting “in the cabin of a boat” where fishermen “in their melancholy isolation, exposed to all the dangers, alone on the sad sea… would experience a feeling of being rocked, reminding them of their own lullabies.”
Do you know that feeling when you find yourself in the middle of something you never thought would happen to you? Something so dangerous your adrenaline storms your body so that your rational mind turns off and your instinct takes over?
That’s how I felt when I found myself in the middle of a high speed criminal chase in New Orleans the other day.
It was quiet, with only the sound of the river. I have spent my life looking for miracles, so when Sharon and I were driving down the desert highway in New Mexico, with cell service long gone and our only entertainment the gallivanting tumbleweeds crossing
“You must move through the world in a way that enchants you!”
As we checked out, we did a little Game of Thrones photo shoot in the empty rooms we walked through. Mind you, my kids are too young to watch it, so it was just me living my Mother of Dragons fantasy because I so resonate with the character: I feel like I’ve spent a long night in a fire, burning with grief and love and heartbreak, and now as the fire simmers down, I emerge, not burnt and weak, but stronger, braver, with my arms full of fierce baby dragons.
In my family, I am the keeper of the stories, and the stories are my “keep.” In medieval castles, the “heart” of the castle, meaning the inner stronghold, fortified tower, and safest place in the castle is called the “keep.” My family stories are the heart of my family, the narrative that informs who I am, and what stories I choose to pass onto my children. When life starts to feel like being lost in a dark forest without a path, and I feel confused or scared, my family fairy tales, myths, and legends are the golden threads that weave through the trees, like dancing fireflies, lighting my path, guiding me to the deepest, richest, most magical experiences for my soul.
If there exists a land of windswept fairy tales, Skye is it. It feels like you are on the edge of the world. Fog curls around the mountains like gray cotton candy arms wrapping the hills in a hug, pink wildflowers dangle like bells, old stone bridges arch over rushing rivers, the kinds of stone bridges where ancient legends are made, legends of fairies and magical creatures who dance on the bridges at night, bridges from this world to the other world, the magic world.
