melancholia

When I say that I love what is melancholy, people usually look at me strange. Perhaps I'm not using the word in it's proper or more common context (sadness, depression), but to me, melancholy is so much more.

 It's a song tinged with sorrow
   a sparrow in the cold, grey snow
a gentle rain that remembers when the world was young,
  before the apple and the snake.

The thunder in a horse's feet
  a flower in the twilight
the sense of regret in a colorless photograph, the faces without names

Is it our own mortality that can make these things so tragically beautiful, or is it a glimpse of longing for a world we were made for but have never known?

inspired by Hannah's post, here

as requested...

this needed to go somewhere...

(See?? No promises = two posts in as many days! Crazy stuff...)

Here are your alarmingly pink and girlish cookies! And for those of you who ordered snow,  I feel I must inform you that it comes with -10*f  temps and a solid horse water tank. It's a package deal, no way 'round it. But don't let that dissuade you - I would happily trade for some Florida sun or even Irish rain!

call me a blackbird

"blackbird can't keep 'is word!" - raggedy yorkshire child

Why don't we just go ahead and agree that every time I say I'll have more time to write/ will write up some posts in advance, that I am suffering from one of those moments of optimistic illusion. I deeply regret not having a Christmas or New Years post, because I had already take many fabulous (in my mind) and artsy photos to correlate with words of seasonal hope and comfort. All for naught, it would seem.
 Well, maybe next Christmas post I can cheat and sneak in a few from last year and no one will be the wiser... Yes, good plan.

To the present!
 Because it's nearly the 14th (you may have to squint your eyes at the calendar) and it's been over a month since any decent festivities have gone down, this morning I made heart-shaped sugar cookies that I have every intention of frosting with garishly pink icing and Red Hot candies. I need this kind of joy in my life.
  This is by far and away the best sugar cookie recipe I've ever found. It's easy-peasy and the dough rolls out so smoothly you'll feel like you know what your doing in a kitchen for once. Once baked the cookies themselves are fluffy and soft like angel cheeks, and they stay soft.

We've just gotten over the January thaw and are again plunged into the spiteful claws of winter. Boo.
It happens every year: we get a week or two of temperatures above freezing and the first seed catalog arrives. You find it sitting in the mailbox like it's no big deal. Like your mind totally doesn't start pulling out concept files on building a new garden fence, new chicken house, what all to plant where this year, and maybe we should start looking at tillers, remember what it's like not to wear shoes? I bet we can start the ponies on jumps this Spring, and GOATS?? calculate cost of purchasing, housing, and keeping two dwarf goats...
 And just when you're about ready to break out the hammers and garden trowels BOOM -5* and snowing. Instant depression. You really start questioning why you live where you live. And you start checking flights to the equator (more depression).
 That's what seed catalogs do to me.

I realize that this photography is rather uninspired, but I tell ya. When your sick to death of that white stuff, making it look interesting and fresh is difficult, to say the least.
I don't want to say I'll write again soon for fear that you won't hear from me till July, but I really hope I've found a time I can carve out for blogging each week. In the mean time, you can find me occasionally on Pinterest!
 Hold on to those Spring dreams, kids.
 ~hazel marie

snowponies | i change my name

i'd like to thank you all once again for your prayers and kind words you left on my last post about Charlie. it seems i've been asking for prayers quite a lot lately, but you always come through.

 thank you. 

it wasn't long after we lost Charlie that we realized we couldn't live with the paralyzing stillness that invaded our house or the left behind toys. we contacted the breeder and learned that by some miracle she had a litter ready to go from Charlie's own parents! So meet his younger brother Tuppence. :)

Is it pathetic that I am over the moon about having a sick day? at last! finally i'm ill enough to stay in bed and work on that mountain of photos and blog posts! Yup, pathetic.
 Despite the cold snap we suffered last week (-30* was the lowest temp recorded by our brave little thermometer) that kept us indoors and close to the fire (I am Lord of the Flame), I have remained up to the nostrils in busyness of one kind or another. I still nanny my nephew (hence forward known as 'Bug') full time, and musically preform at various functions & social gatherings with my friend Songbird.
 Then there has been the enormous task of decorating the house for Christmas, but there will be a post about that in future. I hope.
Turning to blog/writing related things, I've been meaning to - after four years - perhaps... change my Blogger name? I chose 'Gwyn' when I first started because that was Cilla's name all that long time ago, and I had planned on using this blog to write TLOS. That obviously didn't pan out.
 And now that I have a proper nom de plume for my novels, I see little point in keeping the name Gwyn when it is no longer attached to anything of importance. So from now on, if it's not terribly confusing, call me Hazel?
 My pseudonym Hazel Marie has ties to two very important women in my life who have influenced me a great deal and whom I love so very much. It just feels right to honor them, even if in such a small way.

I hope to write up a few more posts before this sickness passes, so that there won't be such a gaping holes between hearing from me. I also plan on introducing more writerly-related posts and perhaps even challenges in future!
xoxo Hazel Marie

it hurt because it mattered

I do not know if there is anyone left to read my words, but I am filled with an unexplainable need to be heard. Even if my voice is small and my words only have meaning to me.

You have not heard from me at all in a very long time. And that is because I had no words. No things I could say, no insight in a time that for me and many close to me was black as pitch. I did not need to speak then, but to grieve. But now I am tired of tears and silence.
 I cannot give a full report on all that has left me paralyzed -- I still don't have the words and neither is it something to foist upon the ears of passing strangers.
 But I can tell you the last straw in a string of sharp, heartbreaking events that broke this camel's back.
My Charlie is dead.
 Just like that.
Momma's cancer therapy dog, he was. The puppy that brought smiles even to the bleakest of days is somehow gone.
 All because one boarder at my neighbor's barn was late for work and sped on our gravel road.
I still don't get it.

Do you ever feel like Job?

Two months and two-thousand miles removed from all that, I have, for the first time since, picked up my novel and pen. Only to find I am extremely out of practice. Oh, for a magic key that will let me back into what I once believed was my own world! Or better yet a magic pen that will write my story for me. That is every writers' dream, right? My favorite quote on the subject remains, "I don't like to write, I like to have written." I know there are those who enjoy the actual process, hacking out the details and so on, but I confess I am not one of them.
 I quit writing, drawing, music, and even taking pictures for the month of September. I had no desire for any of it. But now that Black September is over, I want to come back to my art-loves only to find one of them — my favorite, writing — a stranger.
 I need a new start so I was sent to visit my sister, where I am currently writing from. But even here, in perhaps the most inspiring city in the States, there is no magic cure.

 'It's hard to wait around for something you know might never happen;

 but it's even harder to give up when you know it's everything you want.'

 So I'm going to roll up my sleeves and try again. Because that's all I can do.