I'm looking for commission components this afternoon... I have a couple of interesting requests this month-- prayer beads, a menarche gift, and a necklace to mark graduation. (Liminal, liminal, liminal). Two of my recent commissions have required me to search for high quality gems, and in doing so of course I found something that I needed to have for myself. Well, maybe not for myself to keep, but certainly to work with.


I love labradorite of pretty much all kinds, but sometimes sunset labradorite is stunning like none other. When I saw this piece, I had a synaesthesia moment-- walking down the street, home from the library, feeling magic seep from the church walls and the cracks in the sidewalk. Watching the sun go down over the park, the sky pastel and luminous. Hearing Samuel Barber's "Sure On This Shining Night."

Sure on this shining night
Of star-made shadows round
Kindness must watch for me
This side the ground

The late year lies down the north,
All is healed, all is health
High summer holds the earth,
Hearts all whole

Sure on this shining night
I weep for wonder
Wandr’ing far alone
Of shadows on the stars.

-- James Agee, "Description of Elysium"

I'm sure I've posted this before, but this is the closest I've come to putting it into words and even it doesn't capture the full feeling of it. I think that night was the first time I concretely felt what so many people call "faerie," which isn't to say literal faeries, so much as the understanding that there is another world, a shimmering world, all about and underneath our own.

( When High Summer Comes to South Baltimore.Collapse )

That's what I felt when I saw this piece, so I laid the money down. I don't know what I am going to do with it quite yet, but it will be special. I have another piece-- a smooth, schiller laden sunstone-- that is set aside for similar purposes, and it hasn't finished whispering yet.

I rarely take baths at night, unless it's to help me sleep or if I have company.

I decided on a late afternoon bath because the sky has been overcast and gray. I have been chilly despite the unusual warmth. And there's just something so pleasurable about natural light streaming through the window.

The water was a light, milky violet.

My skin now smells like rose oil and almond, my hair like sweet orange.

I feel more peaceful now.