Ich fürcht mich so vor der Menschen Wort.
Sie sprechen alles so deutlich aus:
Und dieses heißt Hund und jenes heißt Haus,
und hier ist Beginn und das Ende ist dort.

Mich bangt auch ihr Sinn, ihr Spiel mit dem Spott,
sie wissen alles, was wird und war;
kein Berg ist ihnen mehr wunderbar;
ihr Garten und Gut grenzt grade an Gott.

Ich will immer warnen und wehren: Bleibt fern.
Die Dinge singen hör ich so gern.
Ihr rührt sie an: sie sind starr und stumm.
Ihr bringt mir alle Dinge um.

—

Sorry, it’s not the same in translation, it has to stay in German.

For my beloved husband.

(Click for full view, as always)

Thanks to everyone for playing, it was a great experience.

Click thumb for large version.

The triptych is dedicated to

- Meerkat, The Smile (to the left)

- Kookaburra, Reading To The Crocodile (to the right)

- The whole bunch of you guys: It Was So Much Fun (middle)

- And Eurydice: It is a triptych!

I antagonized for a while already what I would do as my last picture. Of course I wanted to stay in-theme, but simultaneously, I wanted it to be something that stands out a bit. Only an hour ago it flashed through my mind that I had to do a self-portrait.

This theme proved to be not only challenging for me, but also pretty self-revealing. Perhaps this is because books fill a large part of what my self is. So nothing seemed more natural than a self portrait in the end.

Alternate shot within post.

This is my son’s chess book in the background. The chess set is mine, I think it came from my grandfather.

Here is the alternate, which I like a bit more. I chose the first one, though, because in the alternate you cannot recognize the book anymore.

Jack London’s “White Fang”

When I was a girl, I read all those “boys’ books”. I loved Indians, pirates and knights and adventurers, I loved Huck Finn and Oliver Twist, Robin Hood, King Arthur and Robinson Crusoe. Of course, I read Jack London. The Call of the Wild, The Sea-Wolf and many others. My favorite Jack London book was and is White Fang, though, the story of a wolf.

Trying to remember the book which I read once or twice during my childhood, the most vivid memory is the snow. It seemed to be always cold in this book, and Jack London made the snow and the cold come alive like rabid beasts.

Today was such a day here. It snowed and snowed. It snowed 30 cm of new snow onto the already existent 15 centimeters. All the roads were blocked. Hubby and I shoveled and shoveled, and when we were done at one end, there were another 5 cm at the other hand. We never managed to shovel away enough so that we could properly drive up to our house. The cars are still stuck halfway. And the end of the day, I was so sick and tired of it that the heat of my pure frustration should have melted the snow!

It all made me think of White Fang. So in the evening, I went outside again. I placed the book on a patch of immaculate white snow, and I placed this little stone wolf in front of it. The stone wolf comes from the North, just like White Fang, it is a little sculpture of a wolf from Algonquin Park, Ontario, Canada.

So this is for all the Adventurers braving the merciless cold!

I lived in France for a year, and of course I read French there. And yes, that was my existentialist phase. Black turtle neck, intellectual stuff.

I know red wine and Pernod bottles might’ve been more fitting, but these little bottles I brough back from France, because those were my favourite beverages there. So they had to be my hattrick here.

Both the book in the background and the knights belong to Joshua. He has countless books on and about knights. That one is a great book with parts can be swung open and moved around, as the tower and the drawbridge.

After some burnout-days, this was fun again. Thanks so much to everybody for their encouraging comments!

Also, thanks mk for suggesting backlighting. I sort of had forgotten about that and had to try it immediately.

This is not a printed book. It is a little leather book in which I write down the titles of my stories (you do know I am a storyteller, right?).

Once I started, I never forget how a story unfolds. It has not yet happened that I faltered and did not know how to continue.

But it frequently happens that I forget which stories I know. So I divided this little book into topics, and under each topic, I list the stories I know.

Tell me if the background would’ve looked better completely in red (without the black).

As a bonus, you can peek inside:

The Lord of the Rings, book 3: The Return of the King.

Meh. I am not really happy with this one, but I am very tired and considered dropping out today. But then I forced myself to do this, and here is a picture, at least.