The Horned Girl & Other Bedtime Stories

These pictures stir fleeting memories in various stages of my childhood - and  deeply, so that I am suddenly floating in someone's bed - maybe between Baka and Dedo, they are reading the Bible and I am looking at the pictures in my Grimm Fairy Tales book, snuggled or stuck in the middle of the warmth.  Baka is clucking, not so silently, one blue eye on the grimly lit strangely arousing illustrations while her finger follows the path of the psalms. I am five.

And, in love always with the maiden and the Bull Headed man..stories of the deep forest and the patiently waiting white horse....tricky territory in an adolescent girls mind. I am lounging in the small patch of grass by the pool, below the concrete balcony under the sleepy gaze of the maids' eyes. Maybe I'm eleven.

The horned girl reminds me of my Girl in the future. The Secret is so strong in them and they are mad for it and protect it at all costs. Beautiful. I maybe thirteen.

Back at four in Baka's kitchen. I'm pretty sure Bakica had a little picture like this taped on the inside of one of her cupboards. Lest she forget to clean, clean, clean...those stains of sin are hard to clean off, Boze sacuvaj, the sins of others against you even harder. "Scrub!" orders that Mean Father Sun.

As I grew up and returned to her kitchen with the ever patient and oppressive cross of Christ the Martyr in the corner I prayed to the moon in spite. Not the Son, not the Sun. That fat cat, always pushing his rays in your face and elsewhere, omnipotent Apollo, pushy motherfucker.

The Moon, instead, soft light & ghostly luminescence, white satin, teletransporter into magic, star studded liberty. Pliable. Willing to fly.

via @goldenagecb

Illustrations one, two and three are by Artus Scheiner and can be found on the Flicker stream of one Josef Skrhola