stonepicnicking_okapi

I realized I have things I can post for the main prompt of challenge #6 hyacinth (I was derailed, I confess, at the beginning because I had 'hydrangea' and 'hyacinth' confused.

The collage is to preserve the flower that Minisculus gave me on one of our first 'family' walks during the pandemic when there wasn't much else to do and we didn't really know what was going on. And the poem is about that. And because I'm me, I actually have a fic called Hyacinth. It's ACD porn for a Season of Kink bingo fill for waxing/shaving so, you know, not everyone's cup of tea.

grape hyacinth by okapi

remember that spring when to all hives went all bees?
I remember these purple flowers
without knowing their worth, how circumstances would seize
grape hyacinth, they are what towers
above all, all normal things, the everyday sneeze
in memory consigned import
plump and clustered, scattered and short
found unexpectedly and of interest, that breeze
what created islands of all
must’ve carried seeds, let them fall
much discussed and debated, woes and cries and pleas,
as seasons changed, the raisin stems,
while everything changed, and changed, and changed, with ease,
rested in sight like shriveled gems
I’ve forgotten all but the hands which gave me these




Hyacinth (3000 words) by okapi
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Characters: Sherlock Holmes, John Watson, Original Characters
Additional Tags: Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Crossdressing, Crossdressing Sherlock Holmes, Shaving, Waxing, Watson has a Smooth Leg Fetish, Oral Sex, Intercrural Sex, Sherlock Holmes is Violet Mohels, Hand Jobs, Anal Sex, mention of prostitution
Summary:

Miss Violet Mohels goes undercover as music hall performer Miss Hyacinth.

PWP. Crossdressing Holmes/Watson. Smooth leg fetish. This is in the same 'verse as Hand in Glove.

There's a fine line between orange and coral, but I am very pleased with this one. The theme is sewing and orange roses and it might not be apparent from the image but some of the flower stickers are on little tiny 'peg' sticker to make them rise off the page and give a nice subtle 3D effect. Some are flat on the page but some are not and it looks real nice in real life. And there's some interesting questions, mainly about the lady with her face in the handkerchief--what's going on there???

My late grandfather grew roses. He had a rose bush for each of his six grandchildren. I don't remember my cousins' but my sister's rose was a coral/orange one called Tropicana and mine was a pale lavender rose named Sterling Silver. I have always considered lavender roses 'my rose.'

Iris

I do collage journalling, and I did a small spread in my art journal of Van Gogh's irises. Inspired by my friend smallhobbit's photo and ficlet of yellow irises also did a [Sherlock Holmes (ACD) gen, g-rate, 800 words] ficlet on emotion100 about Mrs. Hudson & Mrs. Turner's friendship and a bouquet of yellow irises: Uncertain.



Pink Rose

But my big thing is I want to do a Monthly Tarot prompt. So my prompt for July is: The Magician.

It can mean resourcefulness, inspired action, power, or literally, magic. It can mean going from 'I'm ready' to 'I'm actually doing this.'

I did a spread with pink roses and I invite any and everyone who might be inspired to use it as they will in whatever form.

1. Instead of a moodboard, I did a collage (with stickers, washi tape, and paper) and took a photo. I do have an amethyst sticker.



2. Using this painting by Hans Hilsoe [1923] called Sunlit Interior. I did a poem (a sestina, rating: gen) about Miss Marple and Lucy Eylesbarrow [from Agatha Christie's 4:50 from Paddington].




Miss Lucy Eylesbarrrow is set to painting
this early morning as few and fainting
are the demands on her precious spare time
near easel and bench is mutely sitting
Miss Marple and her fleecy knitting
thinking of wool and not, for once, of crime

‘to not paint this morning, would be a crime,’
exclaims dear Lucy, seeing the painting
manifesting in her mind, knitting
brows at sunlit interior, fainting
at the daunting prospect of one sitting
to capture the beauty; there wasn’t time!

while mixing, Lucy remembers the time
Miss Marple and she were all about crime,
and there she is, so quietly sitting,
Lucy mixes pigments for her painting
if the world only knew, they’d be fainting,
if they knew the mind about that knitting

clickety-click go the needles of knitting
clock-like, beating a sure and steady time
Lucy paints, the sunlit walls, oils fainting
into view, amethyst, mauve, plum, a crime
how (there the rug, there the vase) a painting
so poorly imitates the scene sitting

but is Miss Marple napping not sitting?
Lucy might suspect but for the knitting
the frames, the doors, Lucy goes on painting
like an artist, losing all track of time
until she hears ‘oh, yes, it was crime,
sinister and cruel, not for the fainting.’

‘excuse me, what is not for the fainting?’
asks Lucy, sensing she won’t be sitting
for much longer. Miss Marple and her crime!
‘I’ve been slow, but there’s nothing like knitting
for working things out. We must go. There’s time!’
says Miss Marple, rising, ‘Lovely painting!’

not for the fainting, indeed, a foul crime
is avenged while a painting is sitting
and waiting, like knitting, for the next time

I had never heard of kyanite, but it's a pretty stone.



I read a little bit about it and was struck by the line: Kyanite occurs as elongated blades principally in gneisses and schists.

So I was thinking geologically, which led to writing a poem called a xenolith (which is named after the geological term 'xenolith' a fragment of extraneous rock embedded in magma or another rock).

its name from kyanos, Greek for blue, from dark to light
a mineral, its hues like ice
found principally in schists and gneiss
the many shades of blue of precious kyanite
cerulean like sea at rest, a calming sight
it forms in elongated blades
in clay-rich sedimental grades
an indigo like cloudless sky of fancy’s flight,
an indicator in the main
of deep burial of terrain
a sapphire of silken wings or cats’ eyes at night
used to trace metamorphic zones
a cobalt employed to reproduce artist’s sight
in different directions, these stones
form sprays of healing, grounding azure stalagmite

1. Rose Quartz moodboard



2. Italian sonnet about the Adonis-Aphrodite myth about the origins of rose quartz

once Aphrodite loved a boy in sooth
which so enraged the jealous god of war
he promptly took the form of savage boar
and slew poor Adonis, that hapless youth;
love’s goddess, when she learned the truth,
made for her lover’s side in haste and roar
not pausing even once to note she wore
upon her arm the scratch of briar’s tooth

the blood of dying Adonis combined
with that of Aphrodite as she clasped
him in her arms and heard his plaintive moan;
immortal and mortal flows thus twined
and spilled upon the rocks; together, rasped,
with grief and love, they carved the rose quartz stone

The last prompt is Zephyrus (the west wind).

( full prompt text )

The idea of 'sharing a letter with my younger self' makes me nauseated. I have so much regret about most of the decisions I've made over the past 30 years. It's really painful to look back and see just how many, many ways I went wrong. A letter would be 'don't trust X' and 'keep your mouth shut about Q' and 'don't do A or B or Z.' There is no gentleness, and I feel no welcome at rebirth because it has been thrust upon me. I have burned so many bridges on so many continents and in so many decades, I've had to reinvent myself because I am still breathing and my horrible choices have often made staying the same not an option.

So, I end the Sunshine Challenge on a cloudy note. Sorry, happy friends.

1. Moodboard.



2. Sonnet.

having never known the gentle west wind,
called Zephyrus, the bringer of the spring,
the tender harbinger of winter’s end,
this wasteland cannot make the sonnet sing

here, in barren fields, no breeze brings new growth,
with nothing living, naught left to consume,
cold exhausts itself with grumble and oath,
and vacuum reluctantly yields to bloom

for no other reason than tilts and spins
and eyes open as thick earthworms maintain
their rich domain, earth’s rebirth begins
because the days march on, boredom and bane

of lore, of fable, Zephyrus, west wind,
here, none shepherd lambs nor darling buds tend

The prompt: Furies

( full prompt text )

1. Music. The only thing I could find was Dance of the Furies, which is Act 2, Scene 1 of Gluck's opera Orfeo ed Euridice [1762].



2. Poem. Using 3 card from my Edward Gorey deck, I constructed a narrative verse of Orpheus at the gates of Hell, soothing the Furies by singing their backstories. The past O is Orestes.

The young man’s name was O. He stood before the gate.
Hell’s iron fence was strong. Beyond lived sisters three.
Called sisters, of three bloods, they stood, they made him wait,
remembering an O they’d doggèd verily
they’d hounded him to death, to final breath, the three.
That O had slain his mare. This O did tote a lyre.
This O had lost his love, he sang out wretchedly,
he knew them as they neared, history and desire,
with song, he sung their early days, with song, he drew them with his lyre.

( rest of poem )

3. Moodboard. Of poem.



4. TV/Fic. And finally, in the TV show Lewis Season 1, Episode 1, Whom the Gods Would Destroy, the instigator calls herself Fury and she is avenging a past murder. I liked Professor Gold in this. I did a ficlet inspired by this called Happier Endings [800 words, rating: Teen] in which Sherlock Holmes recounts to Watson the story of how during his uni years, he prevented the original murder in the Lewis episode.

The second prompt is Eos (Dawn).

( Prompt text )

I did a moodboard, a poem, and a fic.

1. Moodboard



2. Poem

This is poem is an alba/aubade done in four Spenserian stanzas. The most famous alba in Western literature is one in Romeo and Juliet [Moodoboard square #4] but John Donne's "The Rising Sun" [Moodboard square #6] is also one. Albas are poems by lovers lamenting the dawn.

the waking happens slowly, all at once
a monograph might pen itself on how
in dawdling obscurity, for the nonce,
concluding vestiges of night avow
such different strains of passion, which allow
the mingling, like lovers’ limbs, the feel
of too-soon dread, the bliss of here and now;
in this bed of roses sown with blood meal
there follows ardent night, the watchman’s cockcrow peal

a work of art, the rolling hills of flesh,
the handsome lover slumbering in gloom,
with tenderness the heart is filled afresh,
like tidal pool, like many chambered room,
the coupling, its lingering perfume
then suddenly, the slackening of grip,
the legerdemain of light and smoke, flume
of daybreak threatening, filaments rip
the urge to cling is fierce, the watchman’s warnings nip

to memory, committing features grey
anew, then eyes meet eyes as shadow drains,
it ebbs out of this space as two hands stray
to blanket’s edge, they race, the quicker gains,
exposed, not tucked in warm, the nude remains
a joy observed for span of one more sigh
one sigh, lust is a chemical that stains
like dawn, like creeping light, like lark-song spry
oh, damn the nightingale and curse the watchman’s cry!

ignoring day and duty, seizing yes
and grasping now, collapsing into haste
in frenzy, bodies sanctify and bless
with song of creaks, censer which reeks, crude baste,
until, at last, in dross and pant and waste,
what must be done will not a moment wait
toes, heels, soles greet the boards with frank distaste
upright, afoot, the siren songs abate
lament no more the watchman’s song, the lovers’ fate

3. Fic

Title; First Light
Fandom: Sherlock Holmes (ACD)
Pairing: Holmes/Watson
Length: 800 words
Rating: Mature.
Notes: Trans Holmes. For the Genderqueering Holmes comm July prompt: first.
Summary: Watson laments the dawn after a night of passion with Holmes.