Well, it took a while (!), but now you will finally know what happened with the vicious Man in the Moon aboard the ship... :)

Please Note: If you haven't read The Man in the Moon I suggest you read it first, so you have the background to the story.



The Captain's Grand Fight

The captain woke again at three

He looked around the room to see

What woke him this time –

For it surely was a crime

To wake your captain twice one night!

The captain readied himself for a fight

 

How lucky that he was ready to fight!

For what he saw was an awful sight

Coming towards him with a spoon

O dear, o dear: the Man with Balloon!

He looked vicious and hungry, a murderer mean

And there began a fight you ought to have seen!

 

“Aha! So you lied! You Man in the Moon!

Coming to eat me with your silver spoon?”

cried the captain and reached for his gun

“I did, yes I did, and I thought it was fun!”

replied the man, took the gun, and roared

“Now you’ll see what comes of letting me aboard!”

 

It looked very grim for the captain this time

Would the criminal succeed with his horrid crime?

“So, captain, your gun is out of reach

Now you’ll die!” was the murderer’s speech

Cruel and short, with a horrible end

Would this be the fate of our sea faring friend?

 

 But the captain wasn’t a captain for naught

He found his sword and then they fought

There in the chamber and up in the mast

The gleam of the metal flashing fast

For an hour or two, perchance even more

Until their arms were feeling quite sore

 

“I say” said the Captain while gasping for breath

“why don’t you give up? Do you with for death?”

Answered the fiend with a crooked sneer:

“O Captain, I sense your end drawing near!

I’m the Man in the Moon, and I do not die,

For who then would rule over the nightly sky?”

 

“What say you, you beast, that I should give up?

I’m the Captain I am, you tiny pup!”

With renewed strength because of his wrath

He threw his foe into the Great Bath

Then he jumped after, to finish the fight

The sea was blacker than black in the night

 

“I care not if the Moon never rises no more

– I care for my crew, all forty-four!

But I’ll tell you this: You will not succeed!”

He flickered his sword and took the lead

so the villain lost his silver spoon

Thus the Captain slay the Man in the Moon

 

The crew had awoken, and ran to the railing

“Well, fish me up so we can keep on sailing!”

said the Captain as if he’d just took a swim

and the crew was quite used to a Captain’s whim

and asked not a question or said a phrase

Well, at least not for several days…

 

Until a clear night with no bright moon

Then they remembered the yellow balloon

That stood on the deck, as round as ever

And Parrot-Jim, who thought himself clever

Asked: “What became of the Man with Balloon?”

The Captain replied “I’ll tell ye soon

 

– I’ll just figure out how to fix the Moon”

Image from Google search

 

 

for I have done my Christmas shopping today! It's amazing how much money you can spend even when you think you're not buying that much. I do like to buy presents though, so it feels worth it - at least if people like what I give them... Let's see, for my brother I bought something he doesn't know he wants (but I think he should want), for my mother something that she said before she wanted, for my sister something that she mentioned she was interested in (but I don't know how serious she was, which makes it a little risky), and for my father something even though he said he didn't want any presents. I'm a selfish girl and buys him a present anyways - because I want to give him one! Oh dear - but giving really is a lot of fun!

I am so tired! Have been for a while. First it was exhaustion after a stressful (but wonderful!) course, and then, a couple of weeks ago, I fell ill. I suppose it was some kind of cold, but oh my, what a cold! It started quietly, but then attacked with all its might. Yesterday was the first day for a long time that I didn’t spend mostly in bed, under the covers, watching TV. Sadly I also lost my voice, which meant that I have not been able to sing for an awfully long time, and could not be in the St Lucia concert today (I missed the last French seminar of the term as well). I also still get ridiculously tired over small things.

However, one of the most annoying things about all this fatigue, is how tired I feel inside. Although I don’t really feel depressed right now (depression is worse than what I feel now), it is similar in the way I don’t want to do anything. I have no ambitions, and even things I normally think is fun seem like work. I had an excellent opportunity this past week to watch lots and lots of movies, and yet I didn’t want to. I couldn’t think of anything I wanted to read. I haven’t wanted to read blogs, and definitely not write anything. It’s driving me crazy! I want to want to do things…

I have a strange relationship with mirrors. Or a fascination rather. Actually, it's not the mirror that is fascinating, it's the reflection in it. The face I see in the mirror, is that really my reflection? Is that me?

I have noticed, and it has been pointed out to me, that I can look a little too much at my reflection in the mirror. If there’s a mirror near me, I can stand and look in it for quite a while. My eyes are almost drawn to it. It’s not vanity. At least I don’t think that’s the main reason why I do this (most of the time I do it without realising I’m doing it) – I don’t stand there admiring myself. I’m not doing the opposite either, and stand there looking at my reflection and thinking I’m ugly. Rather, I try to understand that the woman in the mirror is me. You’d think that after around 25 ¾ years I should know pretty well what I look like. I do. In a way. I know what to expect from my reflection, or a photograph of me. It’s just that I can’t really really connect that image to me.

I have a kind mental image of what I think I look like. A picture of me. And that picture isn’t terribly alike my reflection. They just do not completely agree. There are similarities of course, but generally I often get surprised when I see myself in the mirror. Even my facial expressions don’t look like they feel.

I think this is the reason why I so often look can stand and stare at my own reflection, making different faces or watching my every move. I try to understand how that picture can be me. To connect the outward image with the inner person. It’s not what I look like. Is it? Is that what other people see?
Maybe it sounds odd. Maybe it is. Welcome to my world.

Two more pictures! Made today.         Can't. Stop. Drawing.

Once again, click to see them bigger.

My favourite part about this one is the brick wall. Really like the brick wall. Once again disappointed with how the face turned out though.

I had a frame for this one, but it stole so much focus from the picture that I took it away on the computer. The black spot in the lake is supposed to be a man in a boat, but I don't think it is visable. I think it is quite a happy picture. Idyllic. Which I like.





Oh, and today was Father's Day here in Sweden, so we (me, my brother, my sister and her hubby) gathered together and gave my dad a lamp, and had cookies and cake. Very nice!

I would like to show you a bit of what I've been doing lately. I took out my old water colours, and have done some paintings. I don't know how to make the images bigger without getting them blurry in the blogpost, but if you click on them I think you can see them bigger.

My second one, an illustration to a story I have written an outline to. I like that I managed to draw her running without having to look at a picture or a model... You can see that she is running, right? :)


A girl from the 70's. One of two pictures I have done today. It looks different on the computer, but it wasn't a bad change. :) I was disappointed with her face though. It was prettier at first, but then the ink was slightly smeared, especially around the eyes. Perhaps you can't tell - but I can...


A 50's girl. The other one I did today. I like how there is a mood in the picture, and her sad look in the face. I don't like that she is sad of course, but that I managed to draw that expression (although you could see it more clearly before I coloured it). I'm not good at expressions. I also like the water, and the silouettes in the back, which were unplanned but effectful. I also like her bonnet :)  - it's very much like one I had when I was a toddler (and I think Mom had it when she was little too).

In case anyone is interested of what else I've been reading in school, here's more:

The American Renaissance (The Trancendentalists)

Song of Myself   by Walt Whitman (poetry)  

Emily Dickinson's poems
"I taste a liquor never brewed"
"A bird came down the walk"
"I heard a fly buzz"
"Because I could not stop for death"    [The last one is one that can get stuck in my head because of its rhymes and melody.]


The Victorian Age (British lit.)

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë  (novel)  [This is the only novel in the course that I had already read. I like it a lot. The Victorian Age interests me, and the novel shows many angles and issues of that time. It's a bit long, but I don't think it's very boring, and the characters are capturing. I recommend it!]

"The Cry of the Children"  by Elizabeth Barret Browning  (poetry)

"Sonnets from the Portuguese 43: How Do I Love Thee?"  also by Elizabeth Barret Browning (poetry)  [Famous. Nice. I knew half of it by heart before this course.]

"Dover Beach" by Matthew Arnold  (poetry)

"In An Artist's Studio"  by Christina Rossetti  (poetry)

"The Windhover" by Gerald Manley Hopkins (poetry) 


American Realism and Modernism

Langston Hughes's poems:
"Dream Deferred", "Mother to Son", "I, too", "Democracy" 

The Great Gatsby  by F. Scott Fitzgerald  (novel) [one of those books that I think is quite good, but didn't like any character at all...]


Modernism (British Lit.)

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Condrad (novel)  

"An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's Heart of Darkness" by Chinua Achebe  (article) 

"Professions for women" by Virginia Woolf 

"The Dead"  by James Joyce (short story)   [I liked it]

"The Second Coming"  by William Butler Yeats  (poetry) [not easy to understand, but fun to try...]

"The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock" by TS Eliot  (poetry)

"The Snake" by DH Lawrence (poetry) 

Postwar Literature and Ideas (Postmodernism)

City of Glass by Paul Auster (short novel)  [I liked it much better than I thought I would, for I find postmodernism to be a bit depressing, but the book was fun sometimes, and very interesting to think about. Raised questions about identity and reality. Read it, but expect to be surprised and perhaps even annoyed :) ]




Now all is left is the exam. :(

When I’m writing this, it’s 02:49 in the morning. I can’t sleep. An urge of writing came over me, and I decided to obey it. I sensed it the whole evening, but I couldn’t write anything earlier. Writer’s block. The story of my life. Right now, I can’t write a novel or any stories, for my imagination won’t allow it (so I produce a bunch of blogposts instead…). Sometimes I have all the imagination but not the words to write it down. Both are very frustrating.

Some day when both the imagination and words will work together is when I will create my Masterpiece. I wonder what it will be about? Really curious actually! I’ve never written anything near it yet. I have written a few shorter things I quite like. I also wrote almost half a (children’s) novel a few years ago. Then I gave up. I felt the story was too depressing, and there were some things I did not understand about my main character’s behaviour. She was bullied, but never told her parents about it, which didn’t really make sense. It wasn’t her personality to suffer in silence, and I could never understand why she didn’t speak up about it. I have however figured out a possible answer to that now (but I’m not gonna tell ya’…), and with it created a subplot. Subplot sounds really fancy and literary! Maybe I’ll return to the book someday. I haven’t read it for at least two years. 

 

I just lost the thread. And it’s now 03:00 AM. G’night.

 
I hope you had cinnemon rolls today, as this was the day to celebrate the "kanelbulle"! :-)
These were ours, but we cheated and bought them from the store... They're enormous!

... you should not drink three large cups of tea before going to bed:

1. You'll soon long for the bathroom

2. You get back to bed, then immidiately start longing for the bathroom again

3. Too soon you feel the pressing need to go to the little room again.