I am so sleepy, but this seemed like a good way to end the day. I’ve been meaning to come back on here for a while and time just keeps getting away from me. The pictures above are of a project I’m working on which is about houses and this woman who is obsessed with them. For my birthday, Henry got me a glass dip pen, ink, and a book I can bind myself, and I finally began using it the other day. I try to draw when I have energy or am too awake, because the strokes and scrumbles are very meditative for me and it fills me with quiet that I’m often lacking. I’ll have to come back here soon and do a post specifically on the pen and drawings.
But today was a very good day. I talked to three friends, and I put away a large pile of laundry on the floor, washed the bedding, and put in a load of towels after that.
Every time I’ve asked Henry to take care of a spider in recent months, he has gone and found a piece of paper and a cup and relocated them, even if they were especially squirrely. I tell him it’s sweet of him, and he just says it’s never sat right with him to kill a spider after he read that poem that ends,
“If I am killed for simply living, let death be kinder than man.”
So, this evening when I was on my phone call and saw a sharp, spindly little creature racketing around my laundry closet, I told my friend offhandedly,
“One second, I have to kill this spider.”
And as I was looking for something to wack it with, I poked my head out to ask Henry to kill it for me, and I remembered that he doesn’t like to kill spiders. And then I remembered the poem. Then I remembered that I don’t like to kill spiders. And so she gets to live in the wash room until she meets her natural end. It’s only fair. I always thought that poem was beautiful, and it broke my heart but for some reason, it wasn’t until I watched someone live it out that I found it in myself to do the same.
A little bit later we went to our favorite restaurant and talked about the art our friends make; one makes impressive, beautiful paintings, the other makes photography with skill I can only aspire to. She got a new camera with 120 mm film, as opposed to her usual 35 mm film. I’m really looking forward to seeing what each of them make this year.
I paid this time, he often does, and when we got in the truck we broke our cookies and read our fortunes. He should be open to adventure on Wednesday, and my night will be filled with connection and love.
He’s in the other room working on an exam, and I’m here, doing chores and writing this letter. And my night is indeed filled with connection, and love.
Here’s hoping some of it gets to you,
—Mabel
Oh, P.S., the poem is “Kinder Than Man” by Althea Davis.
Isn’t that a nice picture? Look how bright the clouds are, and how shimmery the water is. I’m very proud of that one actually.
Henry (my partner and friend I’ve mentioned in past entries) and I went on a long drive and spent the day at the lake. For several months now, I’ve made some rather gruesome jokes about drowning, which he does not appreciate. The thing about it is though, there’s a certain mystique, a certain kind of romance around water and its temperament. Murder mysteries, ghost stories, and ladies of the lake. Not to mention, drowning in art is a lot different than drowning in reality. All kinds of symbolism and even hope in literature that simply is not present in real life accounts; in reality, drowning is just another way to die. Sometimes horrible, sometimes mundane, an unfortunate but not uncommon part of life. In art, it can symbolize anything from feelings of floating and sinking, stagnation, and depression, but also magic, freedom, otherworldliness, peace, and clarity.
As I mentioned though, it’s different in art than in reality and the simple truth is that despite all my jokes, I am actually terrified of drowning. I have been since I was a little girl.
And that’s why it was truly lovely to go to a quiet spot on the lake, pull out some sandwiches, chips and drinks for a nice lunch, and then wade out slowly onto the rocks. The algae was beautiful and absolutely disgusting as our feet kicked it up in the water, Henry grabbing rocks with his toes and “gifting” them to me to throw onto shore. I asked him where the edge of the cliff was under the water and he bobbed over to a spot and said “right about here.”
For the next several hours between bouts of exploring and playing games together, I swam out, rolled onto my back, swam awkwardly and slowly, and went further out than I’ve ever managed to before.
The top layer (about the first two feet) of water were warm. Almost like a bath, very warm. And when I would stop to tread water, looking at the navy blue surface and glassy sheen, I thought back to all those murder mysteries and legends. And the water was so cold. Three feet down it must have dropped 15 degrees or more. It was so refreshing. Motorboats sped past and nearby, families and friends floated lazily with beers in hand.
It was so nice to do something. Something very small, but I’ve never felt the temperature of water change like that. And I’ve never seen a lake from its middle. And no one has ever collected rocks for me with their feet. And I rarely enjoy the sun so much, but I definitely did that day. And sandwiches are rarely that good. And drives back are usually not so sleepy. Evenings not usually so content.
There was nothing earth shattering about that day, but it was nice to feel the reality of being in the water, in addition to thinking about the stories of it. I’m still afraid of drowning though. But that’s fine.
There is a girl who every time she sees my cabin, breaks down crying. She grabs her chest, grips her breasts, falling to her knees and weeps. She loves it here. She’s a woman actually, not a girl, but she feels small and insignificant like although she is technically alive, one day she stopped progressing. Like maybe she didn’t deserve to age like the rest of them so she stopped. Truth be told, I have never actually invited her in.
I built this house for her. I said I built it for others, but it was for her. I assumed she knew that but.
She has never been inside.
I think she loves it because she aches for home. She feels the swirling patterns of the wind in the front yard and she sees the brown leaves it picks up in its arms, and she hears a song by Iron and Wine and she thinks of the man she will send that song to when he’s away and she will tell him he is her home. And earthside, he is. He is the same as the song by Iron and Wine, and the wind and dead leaves, and the blurry idea she has of this cabin as she stands outside it weeping.
I think she weeps because she feels relief and relief feels like grief. She weeps like a woman that is safe. She pays no mind to the fact that she is not invited in. She thinks not of wolves or strange men in the forest. She weeps as though she has lost everything, or that there is no such thing as loss, maybe.
She is not often in my front yard. She does not often haunt my window like the dead. More often, she is driving around an unexplored neighborhood at night with gas she does not have. She sobs about how beautiful the porch lights are. And twinkle lights and garden lights and streetlights. They give her a little relief.
More often, she is buying a cup of ice cream with strawberries and chocolate fudge for seven dollars even though that is a painful price for a cup of ice cream and she should save her money. It gives her a little relief.
More often, she is taking a phone call from her best friend, or maybe her oldest friend, or her love.
More often, she is checking the weather app to see if it says “rain” or “thunderstorm warning” even though she has a shift to work and can’t go outside.
More often she is making a cup of coffee that will hurt her stomach. It offers a little relief, in theory.
Sometimes, without being able to explain why, a person goes dumb with pain and mourning.
If splitting yourself into two people and watching one weep at your window allows you to act with some self-compassion, then split them. Because I have been thinking about a little relief lately. Reliefs that are borrowed. Reliefs that are bought on credit. That run out. That shouldn’t be used.
Two years ago I wrote this same post, basically, except it was about banana splits. I wrote it because there were dead dogs littering the roads in a town I refuse to claim as mine. And there were dogs starving in public parks and people would throw things at them instead of helping. Puppies left to drown in drainage ditches with their broken-down puppy-mill-mothers. And our neighbors shot their Blue Heeler because he chewed the cords on their boat. And they left him for dead in a blizzard. And because I spent five days a week at a struggling animal shelter. And because someone I lived with watched animals screaming and being tortured online with a mixture of rage and grief for them and wouldn’t turn the videos off even when I begged because there was nowhere I could go to escape it. Any of it. But I wrote to you about a banana split because I didn’t want to be alive and I didn’t want to say that and I didn’t want to write about ugliness.
You take your little relief. You go ahead and watch Moomin Valley or play Minecraft or read a silly book or buy yourself a seven-dollar coffee because we will come out of these times if we don’t succumb to them. Things can get better later.
You know, that man that the woman loves, he caught her a dying firefly. It died in his hands before he dropped it into hers.
I waited all winter for firefly season. I usually write about pleasant things, but I won’t today. It was a cold and gray winter. The highways were littered with the bodies of dogs dumped in the streets by their owners. A puppy in the middle of a bridge. Animals shot, but not killed. Police and animal control called, but not answered. Everywhere I looked, there was a starving dog or a cold house filled with suffering people, a junkyard or a sick horse. You volunteer. You step in, or step up, but you can’t save them all. In fact, you can’t save many at all.
I waited all winter for firefly season. They’re still here. But I’ve missed it.
My small dream this Saturday is that next year I would get up and bring a mason jar outside. I’ll catch ten or fifteen lightning bugs. I’ll take a picture. I’ll watch them blink. And then I’ll let them go. A bit of the old magic from childhood. It’s one of the smallest dreams I have on here.
I just said a lot of hopeless things. But I’ve been thinking about this lately: In the story of Jacob and Rachel, Rachel has two children. The first was Joseph. The second child, she named as she lay dying. She called him Ben-Oni, which means ‘Son of my Sorrow.’ Jacob looked at the child and called him Benjamin, ‘Son of my Right Hand.’ I have also heard it said, ‘Son of my Strength.’ What Rachel believed was grief, Jacob named strength. When she died, the child would have to bear his own name. Jacob chose to name him something he would be able to carry.
What we name things, situations, people, matters. What we name ourselves when the hard times come is similarly important. And so often, the things we count as sorrows are the vessels for strength. So if you’re a helper, and I’ve made you feel like it isn’t worthwhile to keep helping, that’s not the right way to view it. This winter I was in pain and that wasn’t wrong of me. But what I called grief, I misnamed. Opportunity. Every ounce of suffering, an opportunity.
“And I have been a constant example of how you can help those in need by working hard. You should remember the words of the Lord Jesus: ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’” Acts 20:35
In the short time I have left, I’ll take pictures of any lighting bugs I catch.
Blessings to you, and don’t waste your firefly season.
–Mabel
P.S. If you look closely at the picture above, you’ll see a tiny orange speck in the background to the right. That my friends, is a window in the dark.
As I was doing the daily devotional for Good Friday, the closing statement said that Jesus’ death on the cross meant that we could never be separated from God’s love, and asked readers to reflect on that before finishing and going on with their day.
In my mind, I couldn’t visualize what that meant. He has always been with me from the time I was a child and came to know him, but what specifically does that look like? All I could see in the present was a blurry haze, so I thought back instead to what that has meant for me in the past.
There was a time when I was struggling not just with sin, but with crippling guilt and shame over something I’d done. I couldn’t bring myself to tell anyone about it, so it stayed inside of me, festering, for years. I had panic attacks, developed really strange, awful tics, had nightmares, and grappled with my faith in a way I didn’t know was possible. I thought God had left me. Though this ordeal lasted over three years, it was about the first six months that I cried myself to sleep every night. I begged God not to leave me. I begged for forgiveness. I begged that any harm I’d done to others could be undone or healed from. I remember sobbing, “Stay.”
Well at the end of that six months, I felt myself changed. I was exhausted. Drained. I was unhappy and sick. But I was also a fundamentally different person than I had been before, and that was the beginning of a blessing.
As more time passed, I gained some distance from myself, and some clarity on what had actually been happening. I felt some calm and peace, though the storm was far from over. Every night that I’d hysterically cried out to Jesus, whether in anguish or terror, He’d been there. When I think back now, I imagine him sitting patiently in an armchair, listening to everything I said. As though I were gripping his arm as I asked him if He was there at all. It was a comfort. When the devotional said that nothing could separate us from God’s love, it was referring to Romans 8:38-39 which says, 38 “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons,[a] neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” What I realized because of that time was that no matter what a person has done, if they’ve allowed Jesus to save them from their sins and trusted in Him as their savior, He saves them. And then He stays. And He continues to love them. He’s not leaving, and that’s final, and it’s fact.
When Jesus died on the cross, a veil in the Holy temple was torn. (Matthew 27:51) Now it’s called a veil, but it was four inches thick, very long and very wide, and it symbolized our separation from God because of sin. When Jesus died, it tore in half from top to bottom with no human interference; God took away the separation. The significance of that is this: Anyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved. No matter what you’ve done, no matter any failings, or pain, guilt, or shame, God is available to everyone. Many people think that Christians believe they’re better than everyone else and that their group is an exclusive club. Some Christians do feel that way, unfortunately, but God has made himself available to everyone. All they must do is ask Jesus to forgive them of their sins, and then turn from them. If they call on Him, He’ll heal them.
After Jesus died, he rose again. Without that detail, none of the others matter. In that moment He defeated sin and death, and made life available to every person. If you’re interested in learning more about Jesus but don’t know where to start, I’d recommend any of the Gospels. My personal favorite is John.
This world seems every day like it’s getting darker and darker. This Easter, I invite you to take up an eternal hope and light. Jesus loves you. Find Him.
When I was a little girl, my mother bought most of our clothes at the thrift shop. She had a gift for finding pants that would fit us exactly, and to this day she claims it was a gift to her from God. We wore striped corduroy, purple patterned jeans with patches, I had this one Scottish looking pair of trousers in red and green plaid. Not only that, but we would get up early on summer mornings and go out to look at our neighborhood’s garage sales. Military bases (at least in my mind) are kind of famous for them. We’d get up, nose about the neighbor’s things, buy something small, and maybe buy a lemonade. My parents and all of my sisters did this, as frequently as we got the opportunity.
Frankly? I loved it.
Now that I’m grown and into Cottagecore, one of the things that I think appeals to people in the movement is the return to simplicity, and creation by one’s own hands. Hobbies include drying your own tea leaves, starting window box herb gardens, and patching sweaters and socks. But another aspect that is inherent to the Cottagecore movement is scrappiness. You make your own breads and flatbreads, saving money at the supermarket. You learn how to make veggie stews, sauces, and curries to save on meat. You patch those old clothes, partially for your own enjoyment, but also because as always, there might not be money in the budget for new ones. Sometimes though, it’s unavoidable; You have to shop. This post details ways to find bargains in person, rather than online. (I might do a separate post on that later.)
As a side note, Cottagecore is in no way the only aesthetic movement with these values, nor the only one to benefit from sales like these. Punk, for example, has an emphasis on sustainable industry and diy, and many art movements can benefit from the oddities found at these kinds of events. There are hundreds of others. Don’t be put off by my use of one movement, I promise you these kinds of sales are versatile and can help anyone.
At the time I’m writing this, it is winter in the United States. Not many people have these kinds of sales during this time of year, however! This is the perfect time to start researching events in your area because as soon as springtime begins, so do the yearly sales.
Everyone knows that garage sales have deals on everything from chainsaws to poodle skirts, but did you know that many areas have designated days when entire towns set up garage and yard sales? Look up Facebook pages, city engagement pages, or ask your local librarians or city hall clerks about upcoming event days. Not only this, but look in the towns surrounding you, and you might find some really interesting things. It’s entirely possible to find good quality shirts, jackets, pants, and boots for under five dollars. It’s also possible to find leather goods, old photos, patches, high quality books, film rolls, and other things that no one ever thinks to look for. Treasures abound when we open our eyes.
Estate Sales
Estate sales generally take place after a death has occurred and a collection of items needs to be removed from a home. These should be treated with respect and the acknowledgment that someone has died, but they are also a wonderful opportunity to honor the legacy of their owner. You can find anything from dinner sets to artworks, books to linens. Clothing, bedding, and furniture at a reasonable price. Research estate sales near you.
Rummage Sales
Rummage sales are unique (they’re not uncommon, just unique). Often churches will hold these kinds of sales, as will thrift shops trying to purge their inventory for the next year or season. Whereas it’s not uncommon to find quality items for a few dollars at garage sales, rummage sales often have a huge amount of inventory with pieces for as little as a quarter. It is possible to buy an entirely new wardrobe of decent quality items for under ten dollars. As mentioned, churches often have sales like these, as do thrift stores. Call around and monitor community and business social media pages to find sales near you.
Flea Markets and Farmers Markets
Flea markets and farmers markets are not even remotely the same thing, but the reason I’ve listed them together is because they both offer access to a range of more specific items, with more variation in price. Flea markets are often a good place to find interesting items, such as lamps, maps, paintings, globes, Persian rugs, antique chess sets, film rolls, silverware, and things far more strange than that.
Farmers Markets often have baked goods, canned goods, fresh produce, honeys, syrups, teas, and sometimes cheese and other dairy products. Some may sell crafts, such as jewelry and small artworks, as well as certain clothing items and leather pieces. Because of the quality of the items, the prices on these will vary. Some will be at bargain prices while others might be fairly expensive. Still, it’s a lovely way to spend a weekend morning before breakfast. (And you’ll have to, like many of these sales, they often begin as early as 6 AM.)
Conclusion
These kinds of sales are a way to curate your life, whatever you want it to look like. They give you new knowledge about quality and style. They provide the opportunity to learn the art of bargaining; when to go all in, and when to gracefully accept a price or walk away. And just like those thrift store visits with my mother, or the family weekends spent together at garage sales, they’re an opportunity to connect with your loved ones—albeit in an odd way—as well. Happy thrifting!
I wish that I could say everything I want to in this first entry, but I know that if I try, I’ll quit before I’ve even started, and I have to start somewhere. So, I’ll simply say,
Hello Strangers, I want you to know that you’re my favorite. For the purposes of this blog, my name is Mabel, and that may change. Before you go further, I want to manage expectations.
I love Cottagecore. I’m a good cook and baker, and I love to sing, dance, paint, and write. I believe that one day I will own some land in an isolated place, with a small house and a garden, as well as (hopefully,) a husband and our adopted children. I’ll be an author. I’ll have a dog.
Here’s the thing.
I also have an interest in street magic, fire breathing, knife throwing, mixed martial arts, metal smithing, mixology, the United States prison system, cryptid mythology, and inventions. I have talents in none of those things. I’m not even a good researcher. I kill potted plants. I genuinely considered going to clown college, and I am a dedicated Christian, and that last one is the most important thing about me; it shows up in mysterious ways.
I say all of this to tell you that I can’t tell you what to expect. I live my life like a range of cartoon characters, each with progressively stranger backgrounds.
I wish I could give you a theme for this site, but the only thing I can promise to provide is the authentic desire to love people, to build a community, and to learn every single hobby I mentioned, as well as some of yours. I hope a sense of family comes from this place, and I hope that it becomes a light in the window.
To All My Strangers 