Meme1

I have been tagged by Hortensia! This meme includes soming up with some questions of my own and tagging folk, and those will follow on the second entry (was tagged twice).

What is your biggest dream?

"Dreams are like hair ornaments. Young girls want to wear far too many, while old women look silly wearing even one."

I don't think I have many, not any longer. Not dreams that could be considered "biggest" at least. My dreams tend to be smaller the older I get, for example my current dream is to sleep longer than my bf and get to drink coffee that he made (because coffee that was made for you always tastes better than the coffee you make yourself). I also dream of being able to pull a certain move at the pole class, to get a nice job and to learn Icelandic - well, perhaps that last one indeed could be called "big", as dreams go.

What hobbies do you have?
Pole fitness, lolita, eating, sewing, knitting, reading... anything that can be done indoors where it's warm and nice and cozy.

What is your favourite Disney movie?
In fact I don't like Disney movies very much. However, I do love Fantasia!

What kind of music do you like?
This one's difficult to answer because I like so many types of music. Instead, let me just link something I find awesome no matter what mood I'm on.

 

What is your favourite fashion is lolita doesn't count?
OTOME OTOME OTOME I mean IDK I need clothes?

How do you spend your sparetime?
I'd like to say I work so hard I don't have any, but alas the real truth is I'm hanging on FB I'm a secret agent.

Do you like drawing? If so, show one of your works!

Nope and nope! :D But have some art by Patrick Woodroffe instead.

Despite the looks of things I am actually having fun in this photo.

Do you like sports?

Quite the contrary, I actively hate most sports. I can tolerate ski jumping and ice hockey if they're on the television but otherwise pole fitness is the only type I actually like.

I need the babies of the person who made this dress, ferserius.

Do you have some kind of special talent?
I can sleep anywhere, anytime. I can enjoy almost any kind of food. I fangirl stronger than anyone if that's ever needed.

Show your dearest thing. It can be a book, necklace etc.
I can own puffins now because I decided so.

Where would you like to travel?
Home to Finland and once more to Japan.

Jodelling Song.

Jodelling Song

"We bear velvet cream.

Green and babyish

Small leaves seem; each stream

Horses' tails that swish,

And the chimes remind

Us of sweet birds singing,

Like the Jangling bells,

On rose trees ringing.

Man must say farewells

To parents now,

And to William Tell

And to Mrs Cow.

Man must say farewells

To storks and Bettes,

And to roses, 'bells,

And statuettes,

Forests white and black

In spring are blue

With forget-me-nots,

And to lovers true,

Still the sweet bird begs

And tries to cozen

Them:   -- Buy angels' eggs

Sold by the dozen. --

Gone are clouds like inns

On the gardens' brinks,

And the mountain djinns,-

Ganymede sells drinks;

While the days seem grey,

And his heart of ice,

Grey as chamois, or

The edelweiss,

And the mountain streams

Like cowbells sound-

Tirra lirra, drowned

In the waiter's dreams

Who has gone beyond

The forest waves,

While his true and fond

Ones seek their graves."

~Poem by Edith Sitwell, art by Patrick Woodroffe

9 things I like.

#2. I like art that's disturbing and/or gory, or just plain strange.

However, since I know this area is definitely not everyone's cup of tea I'm A) not going to post anything too weird/bloody and B) put the two with actual guro theme under a cut. See that "Read more" link at the end? That's the one.

I must admit I don't know much about all of these pieces. Top row on the right is called "If You Should Catch a Mermaid" and shows a freshwater mermaid that has been fished up by accident. These creatures apparently feign death as their sole means of self-defense, and cannot snap out of it unless danger goes away and they're back in water. Therefore if you don't throw her back she'll eventually die and rot away, leaving only fish bones behind.

Second row on the right is Ich-Theological Metamorphosis. Those pieces were also used in different tomographs illustrating Woodroffe's poem "Hallelujah Anyway".

9 things I like.

Inspired by a blog entry on Zeruda's Wonderland (a blog that's so lovely you all lolis really ought to go see if you haven't seen it already, trust me), I decided to turn this idea into a meme for my personal amusement: rules are pretty much the same as in the lolita-meme because I already know I'm incapable of making a nice and tidy post for all nine. So here goes, in no order of importance:

#1. The mystery of flight, IOW flying machines and the kind.

From top to bottom and left to right: first is a drawing of Mme Sophie Blanchard's hydrogen balloons. She was the first professional female aeronaut and as such a great inspiration to me. I admit, though, that it's her dedication and fearlessness that get to me more than her gender: apparently she was quite a timid, easily startled mousey woman outside of her aircraft, but once in it she became quite a daredevil, masterful enough to earn the title of "Official Aeronaut of the Restoration". She cheated death time and time again.

Until the second picture, of course. She eventually did manage to die in a balloon accident (this making her also the first woman ever to die in an aviation accident) after surviving near drowning in a marsh and a couple of  unconscious moments in altitudes that froze her fingers, not to mention all those times when she set off fireworks from her balloon that, as mentioned, was full of hydrogen...

The third picture is by Patrick Woodroffe again, and along comes one of the cutest poems I know of:

The Mystery of Flight

"Did you know",

Said the crow,

"That a condor can go

With never a flap of his wing?"

"But the moon,"

Said the fly,

"Can remain in the sky

With nary a flap of a thing."

"How, rather than fall,

Can you stay up at all

Is a puzzle to me."

Said the flea.

~Patrick Woodroffe

On the next row is a photo of the insides of Hindenburg and a nameless glider I once found somewhere on the internets. And finally a fail!gif of a hover lolita, all and any resemblance to me is naturally coincidental and I won't admit anything.

Alicia, Sarah and the Bailiff.

Under an oak like a passion parade,
Delicious Alicia and Sarah would wade
Up to their thighs in the bubbling brook,
One gathering flowers, one reading a book.

Alicia´s delice were her eyes made of jade,
And Sarah´s hair fluttered like spilt orangeade:
Their blouses were gaped by a curious breeze,
And not knowing they did it, the temptresses teased

A bailiff in gaiters who sat on a stile
Watching them bathe with a covetous smile.
As they rounded a corner he thrust out his chin,
Leaned out from his perch on the stile and fell in.

When his face struck the water he cried out in fear,
Till the girls of his dreams nursed him over the weir.
The book was neglected, the flowers denied
As the girls and the bailiff did sport in the tide.

And there on a beach where the driftwood doth pile,
From where he had fallen full many a mile,
The face on the corpse bore the trace of a smile,
That´s the tale of the mermaid - country-style.


Image and poem by Patrick Woodroffe 

Valse.

Valse

Daisy and Lily,
Lazy and silly,
Walk by the shore of the wan grassy sea,-
Talking once more 'neath a swan-
bosomed tree.
Rose castles
Tourelles
Those bustles
Where swells
Each foam-bell of ermine
They roam and determine
What fashions have been and what
fashions will be,-
What tartan leaves born,
What Crinolines worn.

By Queen Thetis,
Pelisses
Of tarlatine blue,
Like the thin Plaided leaves that the
Castle crags grew,
Or velours d'Afrande:
On the water-god's land
Her hair seemed gold trees on the
honey-cell sand
When the thickest gold spangles,
on deep water seen,
Were like twanging guitar and like
cold mandoline,
And the nymphs of great caves,
With hair like gold waves,
Of Venus, wore tarlatine
Louise and Charlottine
(Borea's daughters)
And the nymphs of deep waters,
The nymph Taglioni, Grisi the ondine
Wear Plaided Victoria and thin
Clementine
Like the crinolined waterfalls;
Wood-nymphs wear bonnets,
shawls,
Elegant parasols
Floating are seen.
The Amazones wear balzarine of
jonquille

Besides the blond lace of a deep-
falling rill;
Through glades like a nun
They run from and shun
The enormous and gold-rayed
rustling sun;
And the nymphs of the fountains
Descend from the mountains
Like elegant willows
On their deep barouche pillows,
In cashmere Alvandar, barege Isabelle
Like bells of bright water from
clearest wood-well.
Our elegantes favouring
bonnets of blond,
The stars in their apiaries,
Sylphs in their aviaries,
Seeing them, spangle these,
and the sylphs fond
From their aviaries fanned
With each long fluid hand
The manteaux espagnoles,
Mimic the waterfalls
Over the long and the light summer land.
...
So Daisy and Lily,
Lazy and silly
Walk by the shore of the wan grassy Sea,
Talking once more 'neath a swan-
bosomed tree.
Row Castles,
Tourelles,
Those bustles!
Mourelles
Of their shade in their train follow.
Ladies, how vain, - hollow, -
Gone is the sweet swallow, -
Gone, Philomel!"


~Edith Sitwell

Art by Patrick Woodroffe.

15. Current obsession?

Click bigger to view the Frumious Bandersnatch.

I'm sorry, this is perhaps not strictly lolita-related but I figured it could still apply: at the moment my obsessions would be nonsense poetry and art by Patrick Woodroffe. This is nothing new however: I've been a fan of Woodroffe's since 1998 when I first found an artbook by him in our tiny local library and nonsense poetry, well, it grows on you if you like Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

The Coastal Path.

Death of the Air.

This piece comes from Mythopoeikon, a story of a world that perhaps was once somewhere, with a God who slept too much and was absent-minded enough to let one of his creations go mad enough to undo all his work. Before you make assumptions, the creature mentioned was not human - although they inhabited the world as well - but rather someone of higher birth, whose one goal was to destroy humanity to the last member.

This picture was used to illustrate the artbook I mentioned, Hallelujah Anyway!, but sadly I cannot remember the name of the piece of art itself.

From the same book. The pic above and this one are actually both photographs!

The Elven Drummer.

I CANNOT GIVE THE REASONS

I cannot give the reasons,

I only sing the tunes:

the sadness of the seasons

the madness of the moons.

I cannot be didactic

or lucid, but I can

be quite obscure and practic-

ally marzipan.

In gorgery and gushness

and all that's squishified.

My voice has all the lushness

of what I can't abide.

And yet it has a beauty

most proud and terrible

denied to those whose duty

is to be cerebral.

Among the antlered mountains

I make my viscous way

and watch the sepia fountains

throw up their lime-green spray.

~Mervyn Peake