A Tour of the Otherworld

I actually blogged! Quick, before it runs away! http://caitlynpaxson.wordpress.com/2012/03/28/above-18-2/

Hi everyone! This is just a reminder that skogkatt very kindly syndicated my new wordpress blog for me! This means that if you go Here's today's entry! and click "subscribe", then my entries over at wordpress will show up in your friends feed! Thank you, Julia! You rock!

Just a little update to let you all know that skogkatt very kindly syndicated my new wordpress blog for me! This means that if you go here and click "subscribe", then my entries over at wordpress will show up in your lj friends feed! Thank you, Julia! You rock!

Ooo, and now, thanks to the kindness of deakat, I also have a dreamwidth feed here!

I am rich in savvy friends! Thank you, Deanne! You also rock!

I've made a website for myself! Nothing fancy, but it will do.

It's on Wordpress. Initially, I thought that I would just link to this blog from the new site and keep writing here. But I find that I prefer the posting format there, so I've decided to officially migrate mt blogging over to Wordpress. I wanted to crosspost from there to Livejournal, but couldn't find a way to do so without taking on paying accounts. If anyone out there has any tips for me, I'll take 'em! But in the meantime, I think I'll post links here to any entries I write on the new blog. I want to keep a presence here, because it feels like home, blog-wise, and I still read my friends page with enthusiastic regularity.

So I hope you'll visit! Here's today's entry!

Edited to update: So! skogkatt very kindly syndicated my new blog for me! This means that if you go here and click "subscribe", then my entries over at wordpress will show up in your friends feed! Thank you, Julia! You rock!

Work kind of ate my life in March, and while I was away, my poem Firefly Girls went up at Stone Telling!

I hope you'll like it. It was inspired by the wedding of some dear friends that we attended in Massachusetts last summer, and a twilight walk past a field of flickering fireflies.

Betsie and I make quite a pair. We’re both tall, and have uncommon amounts of long hair. We lean towards eccentric dress and laugh loudly in public. We first became friends as teenagers, by bonding over a shared enthusiasm for attending Renaissance Fairs in elaborate fairy costumes.

A day at the Renaissance Faire would begin in the very early hours of the morning. Costumes were donned, minus the wings of course, because you can’t wear wings on a five hour car trip. Hair was entwined with flowers and vines, green sparkles were plastered across faces and pointy elf ears were glued firmly in place. Then off we went in Betsie’s green Mystique, armed with mapquest printouts that showed elaborate routes across Midwestern highways and back country roads.

Several hours in, we would need to pee. Often the only place to available was an interstate rest stop, populated by families en route to summer vacation spots and truckers.

Two fairies walk into a truck stop diner. Ba dum ching! Were were stared at, hit on, and had lines from Lord of the Rings quoted at us in bulk.

But the strangest encounter we had en route to the Faire was at country gas station in the middle of Nowhere, Michigan. Betsie was in the restroom. I was looking at chocolate bars, waiting my turn, when a young couple walked in and strode up to the counter, where a bored-looking teenage girl was flipping through a magazine. The young man sported sagging jeans and a shaved head, and had a stocky pit bull on a leash. The girl, no older than me, was beaten to a bloody pulp. Black eye, swollen lip, puffy red face – she was a mess. My eyes darted back to the man, wondering if he was the culprit. They greeted the girl at the counter enthusiastically, and she exclaimed over the other girl’s injuries.

I tried to look inconspicuous as I hid behind the Twinkies display. It's hard to look inconspicuous when you're wearing pointy ears and a corset made to look like a giant leaf.

“We’re gonna go fix the guy who beat me up last night,” said the injured girl. “We’re going to fix him good.”

“I found out where he lives,” said the young man. “We’re going to fix him so good. He’ll know what happens when you hit my girl.”

If I just stay hidden back here, I thought, I’ll be okay. I will not get involved in this scene of backwater brutality and revenge.

“Oh no!” cried a gentle voice, from the direction of the bathroom. “You shouldn’t fix him!”

Three sets of eyes turned towards the back of the store, brows furrowed. I gasped in horror and looked over to where Betsie was standing, between the pork rinds and the beer cooler. The bathroom door was still open behind her, its hanging lightbulb bathing her in a ray of light. Her leafy skirt billowed out around her, her hair blew in a breeze from the open window, and her hands, still damp from washing, were held out in front of her as if in a gesture of supplication.

She walked forward towards the trio, who stared at her with their mouths agape.

“More violence isn’t the answer!” she cried earnestly. “If someone hurt you, you should report him to the authorities!”

The gas station trio were mesmerized. They were about to commit bodily harm, and the Good Fairy of Lake Michigan had appeared from nowhere to guide them towards a kinder path. For a moment, a look of wonder passed across their faces. Magic was real, and there was an alternative to violence.

Then the young man said he wanted to buy some cigarettes, the girls giggled, and I dragged Betsie out to the car.

I never did get to pee. But it was worth it to see a Good Fairy at work, even if I did threaten to fix HER good if she ever got us involved in a situation like that again!

Betsie used to make our incredible fairy costumes, and now she makes flowers and leaf scarves that are equally gorgeous. Available here: The Faerie Market

I'm still working away on the next installment of my adventures as a wayward harpist, slow and naughty blogger that I am. But today, whilst searching for stationary, I came across an old letter that my grandfather wrote to his brother years and years ago, before my mother was born.

My grandfather died in an airplane accident when my mother was very small, so I never had the chance to know him. Everything I know about him, I've learned from family stories and old photos. He was a painter. He met my grandmother while they were both studying at the Art Institute. He toured Europe during the Great Depression, where he rode a motorcycle over the Alps, saw Nazis marching in Germany, and painted monks on an island off the coast of Greece. He was in the navy during World War II.

This list of facts is intriguing, but it never gave me more than a ghostly image of him. The loss of him was a phantom at my grandmother's house, and as a little girl, I thought that he haunted the back bedrooms. But I could never quite picture him as a real person.

My mom gave me this letter when I was a young teen, and it made him real to me. He had a real flair for description... I wonder if it was the style then to describe foliage at such length in family letters, or if that impulse was purely his own. In any case, he does it beautifully. Here are a few excerpts:

"The October color in these hills is really nothing less than sensational now. Each humble tree and vine, so lately massed in the common viridian of summer, is crying out its own personal manifesto. Rows of shrubs and trees march off down the hills with all the pageantry of a Venetian festival in the great piazza of Saint Mark's Cathedral. In the visual sense the spectacle has the abandon of All Fools Day in the Middle Ages, when the populace turned its back on society to mill through the streets for a day of riotous joy, noise, pranks, dancing and masquerade...

Pines and spruces point their dark amours up against great splotches of red and yellow maples. A lone ash stands like a goblet of burgundy against the facade of carnival color bordering the woods behind it. There and there an austere telephone pole has been chosen for adornment by some fiery vine that rises like a proclamation of faith along the highway...

It's really no use talking about autumn. You just have to go out and get drunk, for only the inebriate can know the happy glow of the senses which enthralls him. At this season of the year all talk of a sick world - all viewing with alarm - ought to be silenced. It is too much like admitting a specter to the feast, or having the chairman of the Watch and Ward Society snatch us away from Giorgione's glorious painting of Venus in all her best voluptuous nudity."

He goes on to describe shaking an apple tree, and gathering up the bounty in his sweater. I feel like by reading his letter, I get to take that autumn ramble with him through the woods of upstate New York. I can taste the apples.

It was fun writing about my early days of harping on my Black Gate guest post. It got me thinking that maybe people would enjoy hearing more detailed accounts of the life of a wayward harpist. So I think I’ll do a series of posts chronicling my musical adventures.

The first time I started playing the harp, I was 7 years old. My parents owned a folk music centre, and a customer turned friend, who happened to be the principal harpist for the Lyric Opera, suggested that folk harp lessons might be a nice addition to the class roster. I honestly can’t remember if I was really enthused about this or if it was mostly my mother who was enthused (bless her foresight), but I gave it a go.

Here is a picture of me the first time I played a harp:



I’m afraid it didn’t last long. You see, responsible harp teachers place a lot of emphasis on learning to tune your harp by ear. Tuning a harp by ear is not fun for a 7 year old. Actually, it isn’t fun for a 27 year old (all hail the electric tuner). So I wandered away from the harp, preferring to focus my attention on the really important things in life: ponies and fantasy novels.

But here’s the thing about fantasy novels: they’re rotten with harpers. Lloyd Alexander’s Fflewddur Fflam, Ellen Kushner’s Thomas Rhymer... suddenly harping was taking on a new allure. But my mom clearly wanted it too much, so I decided that my archaic instrument of choice would be the lute, which was also properly bardic.

My dad is a luthier (which, ironically, is someone who makes and repairs stringed instruments, not just lutes), so I went to him with my plan.

Me: I want to play the lute.
Dad: No you don’t.
Me: Pretty sure I do.
Dad: There’s a reason no one plays the lute anymore. They’re badly designed. Slide right out of your lap. If you want, I’ll teach you to play the 12 string guitar.
Me: The 12 string guitar is not poetic.
Dad: Maybe not , but it doesn’t slide out of your lap while you play it. How about the mandolin?
Me: *POUTS*
Mom: Why don’t you play the harp again? The harp is poetic.

She was right. The harp is poetic, and soon I was getting to know my very own Triplett lap harp, dragging it around outside, imagining that the back garden was medieval France. It was the perfect size for pretending to be a bard, and totally freaking adorable. We named it The Twerplett. Here’s a picture:



The cat is included for scale.

Fun fact: Triplett harps are made by a company in California, who used to make surf boards, and then one day were like, dude, we could totally make harps.

The Twerplett served me well for many years. The small size is meant to mean that you can bring it onto airplanes as carry-on luggage. I once had to cry to get an airline representative to let me carry it onto a plane the week after September 11. But that’s another story.

Next up: “High School Orchestra” or “Hey That Looks Heavy, Bet You Wish You Played the Flute”

Today I am a guest blogger at the Black Gate Magazine Blog! If you're interesting in hearing about how I became a harpist and other odd tales, please check it out. It also includes an interview with the amazing Anita Best, ballad-singer extraordinaire!

Many thanks to csecooney for giving me the opportunity to guest blog!

To which I say: yes, Men's Fashion. A resounding yes. I'd love to see some of this trickle down into what men wear on the street. It would be both AMUSING and DIVERTING.









These are fall 2011 designs from Thom Browne and John Galliano. I especially like the Galliano. It's inspired by the ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev, and I really think it looks like something from a tragic Russian fairytale ballet.