Of all the dreams I’ve had in my life, the one I had back in July of 2007 as a 14 year old seems to have stuck somewhere in my memory the longest. It involved some airy-fairy death and rebirth of the world and it all got very 2001-sy real quick.
Here’s a retelling of that story...ish.
THE LITTLE OLD WOMAN WITH FIVE COWS
From Favorite Folktales from Around the World by Jane Yolen.
One morning a little old woman got up and went to the field containing her five cows. She took from the earth a herb with five sprouts and, without breaking either root or branch, carried it home and wrapped it in a blanket and placed it on her pillow. Then she went out again and sat down to milk her cows.
Suddenly she heard tambourine bells jingle and scissors fall, on account of which noise she upset the milk. Having run home and looked, she found that the plant was uninjured. Again she issued forth to milk the cows, and again thought she heard the tambourine bells jingle and scissors fall, and once more she spilled her milk.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CnnCvkZpxW0/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
An illustration for a Grimm's Fairy Tale in a Moleskine notebook. This one is for a kind of obscure story called The Companionship of the Cat and the Mouse. Just graphite.
Things I learned from fairy tales.
Being first is not always good. Being second is worse.
And so, slow down and enjoy not being the fastest!
https://www.instagram.com/p/COa3tsAhAWf/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
Graphite drawing in a Moleskine notebook - illustration for Grimm's fairy tale. I'm posting both the raw graphite version and the one I painted in Photoshop b/c I never know which I end up liking better!
A weird inspiration hit me while I was watching Broad City. "What if the dreams didn't come true?' with fairytales. So here's tinkerbell, frail, with no pixie dust, Peter ditched her to go back to the real world and she's lost the magic within.
'in my culture, we believe that everyone becomes a god when we die, but we call them spirits. We plant a tree for them, and it is their new home, from which they commune with us . Spirits guide and protect us, '
