Baba Yaga’s Garden

Baba is all seeing and knowing and is able to see the present, past and future in the crystal ball she keeps in her garden room.
The walls have ears and eyes and the doll is listening and gathering information.
Heather Blakey September 2007

I rode my horse through the wood. With me was the magical bag that the Enchantress had given me, all its articles intact, but I wasn’t thinking about that. I was thinking of the doll I had found lying next to the bag. She had no face, no features, was merely a blob of felt and a bit of yarn. Very primitive. I’d stuffed her in the sack along with the other items. Frankly, my energy was low, and I’d begun to tire of the entire journey, life, all of it. These phases hit me once in a while, and unlike my cheerful little Katy who runs beside me and wags her tail, I have another travel companion. This black dog walks silently, menacingly, and lies close to me, almost too close, when I sleep. I feel suffocated by its attentions. Katy had long returned to my home in Kansas, missing her bed and her biscuits, so I travel on with this other dog, also familiar, but not welcome.

As I enter a clearing, I see a woman standing under a tree. She is young, slightly dirty, and has wild hair. She gestures to me, and I slow.

“A ride to the village, Mistress?”

I can smell her unwashed body and I’m sure I look uncertain.

“If you take me, Mistress, I’ll tell you something you want to know. I’ve the gift, y’know.”

Sighing inwardly at what is likely a lie, I nonetheless allow her to climb aboard behind me, noting with distaste the dirt and sores on her hands as she clasps them around my waist. We ride on. I do not speak. My companion tries to draw me out, but my answers—short, terse, unfriendly—silence her. Still we ride, and I glance down to see the large black dog running at my side. I wish for a moment that I could ride off a cliff, fall into nothingness, part ways with the black dog once and for all. I feel an emptiness; a void, deep within my chest. Suddenly, I feel cold steel at my throat.

“I can accommodate you, Mistress,” the girl says, “if that is truly what you wish.”

My astonishment at both turns—her perception of my thoughts and her immediate threat to my life—is great. I feel the blood running through my veins, my pulse throbbing at the base of my neck, just near the edge of the keen blade, which nicks me as my horse jumps over a log. I feel the hot breath of the girl, and expect her hand to reach for my bag, to snatch away all the magical gifts I had been given. I look to the dog. Its teeth are bared, breath ragged. I think of…nothing. I surrender to my fate, leaning back into the girl, allowing my hands to fall free of the reins. Tears course down my cheeks, and I sob, openly.

“It is as I thought, my dear,” the girl said, only now her voice was cracked and rusty, that of a crone. I twisted in my saddle, feeling the blade yet again. “Ye don’t even know who ye’re fighting, do you?” She reaches for the reins, urges my horse to a halt, and slides off. I see that she has changed. Before me stands a crone, all angles and wrinkles, almost toothless. I lie across the horse’s neck, limply watching her for signs of her next move.

“Life is tricksy, my dear. So are ye, and I, and all of Her creation. I thought to bring ye back to the fight, make ye see what ye hold dear, close to the heart. But instead, ye surrendered yourself—an unusual choice, but an honorable one. There is much to learn in surrender, mistress. I shall not take ye this day, it is not your time to go downriver. Instead, I shall leave you with this blade, and this wisdom: It is important to know just who it is you’re fighting. Is it outside ye, or are ye fighting that one that looks out the mirror at ye?” She handed me the blade, turned, and walked into the forest.

I hardly knew what to do. I placed the blade inside my belt, mounted my horse, and rode on. In the distance, I saw the dog, running parallel, but so far from me he was a mere shadow.

by Karen Roberts

This morning, before rejoining the journey after an absence of too many days, I turned my Sage Woman: A Year on the Goddess Path calendar to October and wonders of wonders, the featured Goddess of the Month turned out to be Baba Yaga. I couldn’t believe it … here I was getting ready to make my way into Her realm and here She is showing up in my real life hide-away in Apache Junction, Arizona. Is this a message? I like to believe that it is, though what it is I don’t know.

The message of the month begins with a prayer to Baba Yaga:
Blessed Baba Yaga
Help me grow old
With wisdom,
Power, and veneration.

The rest of the message of the month reads as follows:

The Russian Crone Goddess, Baba Yaga, is the archetype of a witch flying through the air in her magical mortar and pestle. She is the one who stirs things up, keeps the adventure moving forward, and presents challenges along the spiritual path. Remember the tales of the witch deep in the forest, whose cottage should be approached with great caution? Baba Yaga dwells there and she wants to teach you about setting boundaries, about listening to your intuition about what is and what is not safe, and about respect for elder wisdom. As the wild autumn moon rides high in the tempestuous skies, watch for Baba Yaga and feel your own wild magic answer her call.

Courtesy: 2004 Amber Lotus Publishing
2004 Sage Woman

Quite a coincidence, don’t you think, my returning from a trip to Minnesota to find Baba Yaga waiting for me to turn the page of my calendar?

Vi

Follow One Of Baba’s Yaga’s Guests…if you dare! In
The Hunt for the Main de Glorie

Baba Yaga’s House is at the end of a road that isn’t really there.

Baba’s House finds you, when it wants you and if you’re very lucky (as I have not been in my life) it won’t want you for long.

I went to Baba’s House because she stole my heart, she stole my dreams and she locked them inside of a crude little doll with a small strand of my graying hair sewn into it’s chest.

We’ve been friends ever since.

Me and Baba…not the doll. I hate the doll, sometimes for no reason at all it starts to laugh and laugh and then it sings and that can go on for days. I use to hide it in drawers and in my attic and once I even climbed my cherry tree and tied it to one of the top branches.

It didn’t work.

So I just leave it above my fireplace and when I’m not accidentally knocking it near the open flames or letting my cat play with it I’m able to ignore it when it starts to go insane.

Back to Baba, we have an understanding now and sometimes I go down that weird little road that appears out of nowhere…I can be on my way to the store, walking down the hall in m house to my bathroom and there it is…

The road to Baba Yaga’s House

I don’t talk much to Baba’s guests, they’re under some sort of weird enchantment and they drink tea from broken cups and eat food that if you ask me deserves a chance to run and be free like the rest of us.

I think Baba enjoys watching her guests devour food that’s either too dead or not dead enough.

Well, Baba’s sense of humor and her agenda are her own.

I have my own.

Right now, I want to know who stole my Main de Glorie.

I want it back because it’s mine.

You’d never believe what I went through to get it…to earn it.

She was waiting for me on the top of the steps in her basement which is as far as I will go into Baba’s House…no sense in tempting the old witch, I escaped her once. I won’t be as foolish as to think I could pull a stunt like that on any sort of regular basis.

” You’re wasting your time here Marie ” she told me from the top of the stairs ” but you know that. You know who stole your Main de Glorie. After all, how many of his Couriers heads did you take and stake on the road to his Crypts? Seven…Eight? “

” It was 10 …Count them Baba Yaga it was 10. And you couldn’t stop even one of them from finding this road whenever they felt like it…I nailed 10. “

” And I’m grateful…”

I snorted and went ahead and laughed out loud.

” I need to find the road they took…and I need your help and don’t double deal me Baba you owe me for each of those heads. This is for the first. Show me the road. “

” And if I don’t? “

” All I need is the hand from a hanged man and all things being equal nowadays it can be a hanged woman and all they have to be besides strung up is guilty of murder. Tell me Baba how many bodies have you created in your long, long life? “

I heard her shuffle her feet and try to make her way down the steps to the basement and my neck then I heard her stop…where do you think some of those bodies she created are my Dear Readers? I was down in Baba’s Private Cemetery and don’t think the Hand I could take down here wouldn’t be powerful…very powerful.

She’d never dare to come down here and stand next to me and don’t think I haven’t lost sleep trying to figure out how to get her to do just that.

” While you’re down there de Guzman look to the Corner, the east Corner of the basement. The shovel is hanging on the wall. You’re looking for a man with his eyes and mouth sewn shut. Take his heart you’re going to need it. “

Baba buried the Silent Man deep.

I guess it was her conscious, black as it must be, at work because he wasn’t six feet under he was almost 12 feet under and he was covered with rocks.

Talk about overkill.

I found him and cracked his chest open with one of Baba’s many gardening tools she keeps for such purposes and carefully wrapped his heart in a white linen cloth.

Then I walked out of the Basement and into the back room of my Sister’s funeral home in Leaning Birches and when I passed her in the halls she saw what I was carrying and she rolled her eyes up and walked the other way.

And then I got to work.

Stay tuned for the further Adventures of Marie Guzman!

A lovely way to spend a Sunday. In partial sun life drawing one of the more interesting subjects I have had of late. She stood with gentle timeless curves deep in thought. Perhaps it was those thoughts that transformed her in my eyes from one drawing to the next. The image was not of one woman but all the women she had been during various parts of her life. Not just the more elderly woman who stands before me here.
I saw in her also the young woman full of promise, not yet worn out by life’s obstacles. She was soft and gentle and danced in moonbeams and in front of delighted audiences, the young gypsy dancer. In her own right she was a draw at any box office in the Northern towns where she toured. Not perhaps the first string of dancers, but assuredly the second. She worked hard and was given respect and an income. Who could want more.

She had kept on dancing no doubt, past where she was really up to years of one night stands, at times mounting a production all by herself, making her opportunities where they did not just simply present themselves to Baba Yaga. To get a few extra gigs here and there she danced under various names and each of her performing persona took on solo performances. It is a wonder she could even keep her bookings straight. Then I could see slowly life wearing her down. It was no longer about dancing but in surviving what very often were some very unpleasant realities. Still she could muster a straight, strong back to face the next day, and the next.

At other times of desperation made her so tired she could not even stand up. Life is hard for someone living by heir wits. Talent does not always happily meet up with opportunities to put them to use. That is the very sad thing that by now those days are gone, and the great talent has been betrayed by a body that just simply can no longer keep up with the demands of just talent. Never having reached the stature of “star” performer no allowances would be made to help her earn a living through dance anymore. so she was back, just a gypsy doing gypsy trades, as her mother and grandmother had also done before her.

Life is etched on our faces by the time we are fifty, our bodies are no different. Aside from the lines of time and trouble many women, and Baba among them, have a poetic elegance that though changed by time still is a thing of beauty. I could not help adding this portrait as she sat deep in thought. Not just the sum of her years, but the sum of every emotion, experience and inherited trait. Each of us are precisely so unique not just because of out DNA but the life we live.

by Aletta Mes

“We have to go through the woods, to the house of an old lady who lives by the lake,” Mei Ling said, as I stowed her carefully in the bag so she wouldn’t fall out. “we have to ask her the way to the camp of the Amazons.”

An old lady who lived in the woods? “Will we be leaving a breadcrumb trail,” I said, only half joking.
“There will be no need – I know all the ways through the woods,” Mei Ling said.

So we set off on foot. It was a sunny day, but not too warm for my jacket. I felt quite festive and all I heard as we set off was the lonely barking of a dog from the gypsy camp.

On the way over the bridge I called into the mill for some bread for the journey and the baker wished me luck. He was a bonny young man, with a nut brown face and curly hair. I saw two pretty children playing outside as I left.

On the way, Mei Ling told me some hair raising things about Baba Yaga, the old woman who lived in the forest. I found her description of the fence around the cottage quite unnerving – apparently it was made of human bones.

She sounded like an evil old witch, but it was clear that Mei Ling had a lot of respect for her, and she seemed unafraid. But then, she was a china doll. I got less optimistic when we reached the forest. As we walked along a narrow, twisting path overgrown with tree roots and hedged in by thick shrubs, it seemed to me we were going into an area where light could not penetrate.

When I judged the time to be about mid morning, we stopped and ate some of the bread. Mei Ling ate daintily, refusing the crusts. I had some water with me and we sipped from the bottle, but I realised I should have brought more food with me – I had thought there would be berries and other wild food, but the forest was too dense and dark to offer much in the way of berries. There were mushrooms – or some sort of fungi – but I thought it wise not to experiment.

In spite of Mei Ling’s assurance that she knew where we were going, I felt completely lost, as if we were going round in circlers. I was certain we were passing the same glowering oak tree several times.

But it seemed she did know, because all of a sudden the path forked. One fork led off into some unprepossessing undergrowth – the other had a rickety sign that said No Junk Male, although I couldn’t see a mail box anywhere. This was the path Mei Ling told me to choose.
Ahead of me was the fence Mei Ling had spoken of – the palings were jagged splinters of bone topped with grinning skulls. The gate hung lopsided on its hinges, swinging back and forth with a mournful squeaking noise.

Over the top of the gate I could see a house leaning at an odd angle and – moving.
“The house is falling over,” I said in alarm.
“No, it’s probably just having a scratch.”

I saw what she meant as I inched through the gate. The house was scratching – it stood on two scrawny chicken legs and it was scratching the earth like a chicken – two steps forward, scratch, scratch, then one step back to see what it had exposed. There were two windows either side of a porched door, and these looked for all the world like eyes and a beak. Even the walls and the roof were covered with russet red feathers.
Seeing me, the house stopped scratching and folded its chicken legs neatly. Now it looked like a proper little house, foursquare on the ground.

“Knock on the door,” Mei Ling urged.

There was a knocker hanging there – a human skeleton hand curled into a fist. As I reached gingerly out to take hold of it, the skeletal fingers suddenly straightened out and shook my hand cordially. Then the door swung open and I found myself looking at the ugliest old woman I had ever seen.

She had warts on her face with hairs growing out of them. Her legs were the same as the house, scrawny and chickenlike, and she was dressed in an eclectic collection of skirts, aprons and a peasant blouse and vest that had certainly seen better days.

The first thing she said to me was, “Do you come here of your own free will, or because someone sent you?”
I was about to protest my free will, and then I hesitated. Suddenly I wasn’t sure.
“Well – I said - “actually, on the one hand I was told to come here – but on the other hand, I did choose to go – so I’m not really sure.”
She smiled at that, baring a formidable set of teeth that looked like iron.
“Good answer,” she said. “Well, it looks as if I don’t get to eat you today. Pity,” she added, eyeing my ample hips. She stood aside and I went into her extraordinary home.

I found it strangely comforting. It looked like my Grandmother Bridget’s caravan, with bundles of herbs and onions hanging from the roof, and handcrafted items everywhere. There was a good smell coming from the pot on the stove, that made me twitch with hunger. Baba Yaga cleared a small rickety table – by tossing everything onto a spare chair – and indicated I should sit down. Soon I was tucking into a thick stew fragrant with herbs. To my relief, there was no meat in it, just turnips and barley and thick wedges of potato.

Mei Ling had a small amount as well, and a sip of water. She and Baba Yaga seemed to know each other well, and chatted happily through the meal. It was growing dark outside, and the warmth of the cottage, and the heavy meal, was making me feel sleepy.

“Our guest is tired,” Baba Yaga cackled. “Well, you should sleep now, because we rise with the dawn here and I have some work for you to do.”

She gave me a rough cot by the fire, and I lay thankfully down, my bag on the floor beside me, and Mei Ling resting on the pillow. In no time at all, I was asleep.

The sound of a horse’s hooves woke me, galloping up to the cottage. I jumped out of bed, pausing only to pick up Mei Ling, as Baba Yaga opened the front door and light flooded in. But what a changed Baba Yaga! Now she was a graceful young woman – only the flash of her iron teeth as she smiled at her visitor gave her away.

I peeked over her shoulder. I saw a knight on a white horse, his armor so bright that it cast rays of light.

“Good morning, my bright dawn,” Baba Yaga said playfully. “What does the morning bring?”
“Fresh mushrooms, sorrel and wild thyme for your breakfast eggs,” the knight said, bowing low and offering her a basket filled with these goodies. “And a daisy from the dew sprinkled fields.”

Baba Yaga took the daisy, and gave her white knight a flirtatious smile.

“Nothing else to report, my lady,” he said, “the morning dawns fair and clear on your forest.” And with that he turned the horse and galloped away.
“Mushrooms for breakfast,” Baba Yaga cackled. She was a crone again, and she stood the basket on the table. “That’s your first task,” she said to me. “Collect the eggs.”

I followed her out of the cottage. She spoke some strange incantation at it, and at once it rose, with a great cackling and ruffling of feathers. Lying underneath it, between the chicken legs, were six freshly laid brown eggs.

“These eggs are not free,” Baba Yaga said. “If you want them you must pay for them – the cottage, not me. Leave something of value, or the cottage will sit on you and squash you before you can escape.”
What would a cottage that looked like a chicken (or a chicken that looked like a cottage) consider to be just exchange for its eggs? I looked helplessly at Mei Ling.

“You must give up one of your songs,” she whispered. “A favourite, one you value – sing to it when you take the eggs.”

So I started singing as I walked between the legs of the chicken house. I was singing as I bent to pick up the eggs one by one, and singing as I turned to walk back to Baba Yaga. The legs remained upright, so I continued to sing as I walked safely out from under the house.
And do you know, I cannot for the life of me remember what song it was I sang to the chicken house. It has gone forever, and all I know is that it was precious to me.

Another incantation from Baba Yaga, and the house once again sat down. She cooked a fine breakfast of scrambled eggs with sorrel and wild thyme, and mushrooms on the side.

After breakfast, Baba Yaga wanted to go herb gathering in the woods, so Mei Ling and I followed her through the twisting paths. She stopped frequently to pick some plant or another and told me what each one was for – I realised I was in the presence of great natural wisdom and tried to make notes so I wouldn’t forget. I made little sketches of some of the herbs as well.

On the way back to the cottage we met another knight, this time in red armour and riding a chestnut horse. I looked back at Baba Yaga and was not surprised to see she had changed again. Now she was a mature woman in the full bloom of her beauty, but with lines of experience and wisdom just beginning to be etched around her eyes and mouth.

“Hail, my Red Sun,” she said. “What does the day bring?”
“Tomatoes ripe from the vine,” the knight said, bowing low to both of us. “And full blown roses to reflect your beauty.”
“Salad for lunch,” Baba Yaga said happily as the knight rode away. Her gnarled fingers touched the bloom of the roses gently.

After a very good lunch of salad greens and tomatoes tossed with herbs, she handed me a scroll of parchment.

“Your second task is written here,” she said. But when I unfurled it, the parchment was blank.
My face must have looked much the same, because Mei Ling rolled her expressive eyes and sighed gently. Obviously, the answer was very simple and I should know it already.
“My glasses!” I said, and I grabbed the purple specs from my bag. With these on, I could clearly see Baba Yaga’s spidery writing.
“Name that,” it said, “which you fear most, so much that it blinds you to what you already have. Cast this parchment into the fire and be rid of it forever.”

I thought for a while, and wondered what I would be like without that fear – would I really be myself any more? But then I took up the quill, and I wrote – but I can’t remember what I wrote, because as soon as the parchment burned up in the flames, I was free of it, and I saw that there was so much else in my life that was more important and I knew I could pursue my creative dreams unhindered by it.

So in one morning I had given up something very precious to me for a few eggs, and something I no longer needed. Mei Ling and Baba Yaga were nodding at each other in a conspiratorial manner and I wonder what else they had in store for me.

As the afternoon wore on, I helped Baba Yaga prepare some of her potions and wrote the recipes down for future reference. She used the petals of the rose to make an exquisite lotion which she gave to me in a small bottle.

We settled by the fire and I wondered what my third task would be. I had a feeling it would be the last, and that I would be leaving Baba Yaga very soon. I was sad about that – I found her company delightful, and I had lost my fear of the old fairy tales. Baba Yaga had so far proved to be a vegetarian, anyway.
Suddenly we heard the thunder of hooves approaching the cottage. Baba Yaga opened the door, but this time she did not change. Looking over her shoulder, I saw a black knight on a black horse, studded with stars. There was a silver crescent moon on his helmet, which he raised. I saw the kindly and wise face of an old man.

“Good Eve, my Dark Midnight,” Baba Yaga said. “What does the night bring?”
“News of travellers heading to the Camp of the Amazon Queen, and your guest must join them,” he said. “And a star from the sky for my dear love.” He handed her a diamond so bright it flashed with a million rainbow sparkles.
After the black horse and rider vanished into the darkness, Baba Yaga turned to me.

“One more task,” she said, “then you must be on your way.” She looked at me with her wise old eyes. “I am the guardian of the waters of life and death,” she said. “I can command the Sun, the Moon and the Stars in their courses. I can change time.” She delved into her capacious pocket and drew out three objects hanging from leather thongs, which she laid on the table. One was a small daisy with a heart of gold, and next to it was a finely wrought rose in full bloom. Lastly there was a lump of coal, twisted in a loop of silver wire.
“Choose carefully,” she said.
I understood, as I looked at the pendants, what each one represented. The daisy was the morning of my life – the young woman, setting out with freshness and hope. The rose was the afternoon of my life – the mother caring for her children and nurturing their dreams. But the lump of coal – surely that could not represent the years ahead?

My hand reached out for the rose, because the happiest years I had known were those when my children were young. But they were grown now, and I had grandchildren. If I changed my time, I would be changing theirs as well.

I reached out for the daisy, and again I hesitated. It would be wonderful to be young again, but why would I go that far back when I had finally learned not to long for the past, or fear the future?

So my hand closed around the lump of coal – and as I lifted it up to hang around my neck, it changed into a diamond.

She bothers me, this woman who comes to me in my dreams wrapped in Snakes.

She tries to tell me her name but I won’t listen. She holds the Serpents out but I won’t touch them. She offers to tell me her secrets but I’ve been warned nothing on this journey is free.

It all costs.

Like the Main de Glorie I used to steal my lock of hair back from the Baba Yaga in the House of Bones.

I took the Main de Glorie in and lit it’s waxed covered fingers and when the flames jumped up everything in the House of Bones fell asleep.

I was able to move from room to room and saw people on hooks and racks and hearts in wicker baskets and I saw Baba Yaga herself sitting in a rocking chair with a little doll dressed in red with strands of my hair pinned to it’s head on the table next to her.

Its eyes were taped shut and before I peeled the tape away I knew why I wasn’t able to sleep or waken. Why I’d been walking in twilight for almost a month.

I left the tape on. I didn’t want to wake up in this place. I didn’t want to know where I really was.

I placed the little doll in my pocket and leaned close to Baba Yaga and asked her sleeping form, ” Why, why me? “

And from the place Baba Yaga goes when she dreams I heard her whisper, ” I’m not really asleep you know. “

I expected her eyes to snap open, for her claw like hand to grab me by my throat and squeeze until my face turned black. But she slept and dreamed and I guessed things like the Baba Yaga that live in Nightmare Worlds never sleep.

They’re always there waiting for you to shut your eyes.

” I spent the night in a house built by a Devil because of you. I won’t forget that…ever. It’s all about you and me and revenge Baba Yaga. The things I see now…the things I hear, all of that because of you. It costs Baba Yaga. It’s going to cost you. “

I went out of the House of Bones and walked down that dark road filled with bones and whispers and I took the doll from my pocket and pulled the tape away from the dolls eyes.

The light from the Main de Glorie’s fingers flared blue and orange and died out.

I was plunged into darkness…and it didn’t matter. I could see just fine. I could move sure footed through the Deadwood Forest.

I belonged in this place now.

That was the price you see that I paid for using the Main de Glorie.

It all costs.

And I’ve paid in full.

© anita marie moscoso 2005-text

Baba Yaga has led me on a very interesting journey over the last day or so. In reading her story and struggling to write about my visit to see her, I decided to make my special doll. What a surprise this turned out to be!

To understand my surprise, one would have to know that I love colour and things more on the ‘pretty’ side. My doll has a very earthy feel, is rather shapeless and has a lovely big double chin. So I dialogued with her, telling her that I was surprised at the way she looked and wondered how she could help me. She replied that she would know what I had to do, so that all I had to do was to ask her in trust.

I was then led in a very mysterious way to read some words of wisdom in my book, ‘Women Who Run With The Wolves’. These are the words that struck a chord with me:
“……A wise woman keeps her psyche environ uncluttered. She accomplishes such by keeping a clear head, keeping a clear space for her work, working at completing her ideas and projects…….because it is Baba Yaga’s hut that Vasalisa sweeps, because it Baba Yaga’s yard, we are also speaking of keeping unusual ideas clear and ordered. These ideas include those which are uncommon, soulful and uncanny.
……to cook for the Yaga one lays a fire - a woman must be willing to burn hot, burn with passion, burn with words, with ideas, with desire for whatever it really is that she loves. It is actually this passion which causes the cooking, and a woman’s ideas of substance are what is cooked. To cook for the Yaga, one will arrange that one’s creative life has a consistent fire under it. Most of us would do better if we became more adept at watching the fire under our work………the fire bears watching, for it is easy to let it go out. The Yaga must be fed. There’s hell to pay if she goes hungry. So it is the cooking up of new things, of new directions, of commitments to one’s art and work that continuously nourishes the wild soul.
…..Women’s cycles according to Vasalisa’s tasks are these: To cleanse one’s thinking, renewing one’s values, on a regular basis. To clear one’s psyche of trivia, sweep one’s self, clean up one’s thinking and feeling states on a regular basis and especially to cook up a lot, to feed the relationship between oneself and the wildish nature.”

My doll is now called Clarissa and she has pride of place on my table where I do my work.
posted by Leonie Bryant