THE SMALLER YOU ARE THE BIGGER CHRISTMAS IS.
Underneath the Christmas tree Christmas is vast, it is a green jungle with red apples and sad, peaceful angels twirling around on cotton thread keeping watch over the entrance to the primaeval forest. In the glass balls the primaeval forest is never-ending; Christmas is a time when you feel absolutely safe, thanks to the Christmas
tree.
- Sculptor's Daughter by Tove Jansson
#dailydrawing #tovejansson
I started by thinking up the most awful things I could, which wasn't particularly difficult. When I had made things as awful as possible I took a run and bounced off the floor and flew away from everything, leaving it all behind me in a deep well. Down there the whole town was burning. Down there Poppolino was padding around in the studio in the dark screaming with loneli-ness. Down there sat the crow saying: it was your fault that I died. And the Unmentionable Thing crawled under the mat.
But I just went on flying.
- Sculptor's Daughter by Tove Jansson
#dailydrawing #tovejansson
Then everything started shrinking. Every piece of furniture became elongated and narrow and disappeared towards the ceiling. There was something crawling under the rag rugs in the hall. It was also narrow and thin and wriggled in the middle, sometimes very quickly and sometimes very slowly.
- Sculptor's Daughter by Tove Jansson
#dailydrawing #tovejansson
"A dark man went on shovelling outside the door and all of a sudden I started to cry and I screamed: I'll bite him! I'll go outside and bite him!
I shouldn't do that, Mummy said. He wouldn't under-stand. She screwed the top on to the bottle of Indian ink and said: what about going home?
Yes, I said.
So we went home."
- Sculptor's Daughter by Tove Jansson
#dailydrawing #tovejansson
In fact, she [Mummy] said after a while, we have gone into hibernation. Nobody can get in any longer and no one can get out!
I looked carefully at her and understood that we were saved. At last we were absolutely safe and protected.
This menacing snow had hidden us inside in the warm for ever and we didn't have to worry a bit about what went on there outside. I was filled with enormous relief, and I shouted, I love you I LOVE YOU, and took all the cushions and threw them at her and laughed and shouted and Mummy threw them all back and in the end we were lying on the floor just laughing.
Then we began our underground life. We walked around in our nighties and did nothing. Mummy didn't draw. We were bears with pine needles in our stomachs and anyone who dared come near our winter lair was torn to pieces. We were lavish with the wood, and threw log after log on to the fire until it roared.
Sometimes we growled. We let the dangerous world outside look after itself, it had died, it had fallen out into space. Only Mummy and I were left.
- Sculptor's Daughter by Tove Jansson
#dailydrawing #tovejansson
I crawled right up to Daddy's modelling mirror which stands on the floor by the box of plaster. A great big black creature was creeping towards me.
I got cautious and stood still. The creature was shapeless. It was one of those creatures that can spread itself out and creep under the furniture or turn into a black fog that gets thicker and thicker until it is quite sticky and gets all around you and fastens itself to you.
I let the creature get a little closer and put its hand out.
The hand crept along the floor and then was pulled back suddenly. The creature came even closer. Suddenly it got scared and ran quickly in an oblique direction and stopped still. Now I was scared.
- Sculptor's Daughter by Tove Jansson
#dailydrawing #tovejansson
I got fed up with her because she wasn't happy. I don't like it when people find life difficult. It gives me a bad conscience and then I get angry and begin to feel that they might as well go somewhere else.
- Sculptor's Daughter by Tove Jansson
#dailydrawing #tovejansson
Last spring we had nineteen canaries. I must tell you, once and for all, that canaries are very virulent birds.
It starts with the mother bird and the father bird.
They have babies. And before the babies get a single feather on their bodies they have to leave home and the father bird sings again and the mother bird lays new eggs. That's how things go with canaries.
- Sculptor's Daughter by Tove Jansson
#dailydrawing #tovejansson
DADDY LOVES ALL ANIMALS BECAUSE THEY don't contradict him. He likes ones that are furry best.
And they love him, too, because they know that they can do just as they like.
But it's quite a different matter with Females.
If you make statues of them they become women but as long as they remain Females things are difficult. They can't even pose properly and they talk much too much.
- Sculptor's Daughter by Tove Jansson
#dailydrawing #tovejansson
I went on ahead to the house, crying all the way, but now it was mostly to make an impression. Daddy followed and lit a candle because all the lamps were in the theater. He showed me the pike he had caught.
It's a lovely one, I said, because one must always say something when someone catches a fish. And then it was too late to cry any more. I put on my ordinary clothes again and we had a cup of tea together.
Sculptor's daughter by Tove Jansson.
#dailydrawing #toveJansson
I stared and stared at her until I had stared her into little pieces and I thought, you're big and scraggy like a carthorse and nobody can hunt for you in the grass and you couldn't hide anywhere because you can be seen the whole time and you can't surprise anybody and make them feel good! You have completely spoilt our games for no reason because you can't play games yourself! O alas and alack! No one wants your presents. He doesn't want them! You're nobody's surprise, and you can't understand because you're not an artist! And so I went a little closer and humiliated her by saying the most terrible thing of all : amateur! You're an amateur! You're not a real artist!
- Sculptor's Daughter by Tove Jansson
#dailydrawing #tovejansson
One year towards autumn a geologist was living in the pilots' hut. He couldn't speak either Finnish ow Swedish, he just smiled and flashed his black eyes. He would look at people and immediately make them feel how surprised and happy he was to meet them at last and then he just walked on with his hammer and hammered a rock here and there. His name was Jeremiah.
- Sculptor's Daughter by Tove Jansson
#dailydrawing #tovejansson
It got cold very quickly and the fog was there, moving thickly around us, shutting us in on all sides. The smooth swell rolled out of the fog, crawled under the raft with a swallowing movement and rolled back into the fog the other side.
....
Albert picked it up by the neck and looked at it, and it began to screech and flap one wing.
Let it go! I shouted. Everything looked so terrifying with the fog and the black water and the bird creeping around and screaming that I was beside myself and said: give it to me, I'll hold it in my lap, we must make it well again.
- Sculptor's Daughter by Tove Jansson
#dailydrawing #tovejansson
It was slow work paddling but we got going We reached deep water, but that was all right because we had both nearly learned to swim. After a while we entered the sound near Red Rock.
- Sculptor's Daughter by Tove Jansson
#dailydrawing #tovejansson
I turned the key and waited. After a while the door opened of its own accord, very slowly as if someone inside the wardrobe was forcing it. And then the black tulle skirt poured forth and the door stood still. I did the same thing several times. Each time Mummy's tulle skirt opened out as it is was alive.
- Sculptor's Daughter by Tove Jansson
#dailydrawing #tovejansson
Once I found a boat made of bark that was called Darling. It was very beautifully made with a hold, rudders, a wheelhouse and cloth sails. But Daddy said I didn't have to find out who owned it.
Maybe nothing is so important provided that it is small enough. At least that's what I think.
- Sculptor's Daughter by Tove Jansson
#dailydrawing #tovejansson
If a thousand girls walked past under this tree not one of them would have the faintest idea that I am sitting up there. The pine cones are green and very hard. My feet are brown. And the wind is blowing right through my hair.
Sculptor's daughter by Tove Jansson.
#dailydrawing #toveJansson
The house is grey, the sky and the sea are grey, and the field is grey with dew. It's four o'clock in the morning and I have saved three important hours which can be counted as extra. Or perhaps three and a half.
I have learned to tell the time, although I'm not yet quite sure about the minutes.
Sculptor's daughter by Tove Jansson.
#dailydrawing #toveJansson
These thoughts are in my mind daily. I take care of my 91 year old father. I'm certain he has dementia but I can't get his doctor to diagnose him. He can easily pass a competency test, even though he is no longer competent. My mind is messy, to say the least.
All men have parties and are pals who never let each other down. A pal can say terrible things which are forgotten the next day. A pal never forgives, he just forgets and a woman forgives but never forgets. That's how it is. That's why women aren't allowed to have parties. Being forgiven is very unpleasant.
- Sculptor's Daughter by Tove Jansson
#dailydrawing #tovejansson
In the end I began to feel weak at the knees and then I knew that soon it would be too late, in a few seconds it would be too late, so I let it fall into the gutter and began rolling very quickly and without looking up. I kept my nose just above the top of the stone so that the room I had hidden us in would be as tiny as possible and I heard very clearly how all the cars stopped and were angry but I drew a line between them and me and just went on rolling and rolling.
You can close your mind to things if something is important enough. It works very well. You make yourself very small, shut your eyes tight and say a big word over and over again until you're safe.
- Sculptor's Daughter by Tove Jansson
#dailydrawing #tovejansson
Behind the Russian Church there is an abyss.
The moss and the rubbish are slippery and jagged old tins glitter at the bottom. For hundreds of years they have piled up higher and higher against a long dark-red house without windows. The red house crawls round the rock and it is very significant that it has no windows. Behind the house is the harbour, a silent harbour with no boats in it. The little wooden door in the rock below the church is always locked.
Hold your breath when you run past it, I told Poyu. Otherwise Putrefaction will come out and catch you. Poyu always has a cold. He can play the piano and holds his hands in front of him as if he were afraid of being attacked or was apologizing to someone. I always scare him and he follows me because he wants to be scared.
- Sculptor's Daughter by Tove Jansson
#dailydrawing #tovejansson
I made my golden calf in the arbour because it was a pagan place and a circle is always a good setting for sculpture.
It was very difficult to get the legs to stay upright but in the end they did and I nailed them to the socle just to make sure. Sometimes I stood still, listening for the first rumble of the wrath of God. But so far he had said nothing. His great eye just looked right down into the arbour through the hole between the tops of the spruce trees. At last I had got him to show some interest.
- Sculptor's Daughter by Tove Jansson
#dailydrawing #tovejansson
God lived on the hill above the rock-garden and there was a forbidden cart up there. At sunset he spread out like a mist over the house and the field. He could make himself quite small and creep in everywhere in order to see what one was doing and sometimes he was only a great big eye. Moreover he looked just like Grandfather.
We raised our voices in the wilderness and were continually disobedient because God so likes to forgive sinners. God forbade us to gather manna under the laburnum tree but we did all the same. Then he sent worms up from the earth to eat up the manna. But we went on being disobedient and we still raised our voices.
- Sculptor's Daughter by Tove Jansson
#dailydrawing #tovejansson