When I ask this question in my classes Iâm often met with silence. Sometimes people canât say because they had no name for what they saw. Sometimes they were too busy âreadingâ to notice what they felt. Sometimes, if theyâre honest, theyâll say that they couldnât finish it, or got distracted or went on to other things. Theyâre often polite and donât like to use words like bored or bothered but you can hear those words clanking their chains around the table. Continue reading What Do You See…→
Of all the objects in fairy tales, magical or otherwise, shoes are the most iconic. Who can forget Cinderellaâs glass slipper, the titular Boots of the ingenious Puss, or the alluring, alas devastating, Red Shoes. In different times, Hermes had his winged sandals and Dorothy her ruby slippers; but they all imply the same thing â wear them and you become something different, something more than what you were. They will empower and transform you and take you places youâve never been before. With them you become more alive, more beautiful, more everything. Continue reading A Slippery Slope: the Twelve Dancing Princesses→
The Black Bull of Norroway was my first ‘grown-up’ fairy tale. (Click here to read it.) I found it referenced in an essay, entitled “On Fairy Stories” by J.R.R. Tolkien. I was so taken by his clear rapture about the power of a true fairy tale that I just had to find it for myself. For me it was an epiphany. I’ve always loved my childhood tales, but I was unsure that I could either go back to them again and still find them fresh and alive or that I could ever be ‘captured’ by a new one. The Black Bull of Norroway was the gatekeeper that led me back into the realm, as Tolkien would say, of Faerie. Continue reading Finding My Way Back→
What do you see when you look into a fairy tale?
