Braiding

There she weaves by night and day
A magic web with colours gay.
She has heard a whisper say,
A curse is on her if she stay
To look down to Camelot.
She knows not what the curse may be,
And so she weaveth steadily,
And little other care hath she,
The Lady of Shalott.

When I saw your painting of Skadi with her loom Winnie I immediately thought of the Lady of Shalot and the curse that has been laid upon her. Right now I feel like I share her space.

I sit here at my loom, lighning bolts filling the night sky, braiding, trying to rejoin the umbilical cord to the submerged Lemuria in the vain? hope that some answer will appear, that I will find meaning, that at the very least my pain will be palliated and my soul nourished.

Like The Lady of Shalott, Lot's wife, I daren't look into the mirror to see what is behind me for I am sheltering us from the scissors Atrophe holds so menacingly. I don't want to acknowledge that she is there, refuse to look, to in any way countenance the notion that the appointed time is approaching.

And down the river's dim expanse
Like some bold seer in a trance,
Seeing all his own mischance --
With a glassy countenance
Did she look to Camelot.
And at the closing of the day
She loosed the chain, and down she lay;
The broad stream bore her far away,
The Lady of Shalott.

Lying, robed in snowy white
That loosely flew to left and right --
The leaves upon her falling light --
Thro' the noises of the night,
She floated down to Camelot:
And as the boat-head wound along
The willowy hills and fields among,
They heard her singing her last song,
The Lady of Shalott.

Heard a carol, mournful, holy,
Chanted loudly, chanted lowly,
Till her blood was frozen slowly,
And her eyes were darkened wholly,
Turn'd to tower'd Camelot.
For ere she reach'd upon the tide
The first house by the water-side,
Singing in her song she died,
The Lady of Shalott.