Shelved

This penultimate unveiling of D.O. images, is of the card that was last to be drawn… Or should that be draaaaaaaaaawn… It came at a much later date and at a point a good while after I had resigned myself to accepting this whole thing as an abandoned project. Typically, if I have something to do, then I work fast! Very fast! I guess it’s the result of having so many kids and for years only having limited windows of opportunity to get things done. Finish this before pick up time because if it gets taken off the desk, it may not make it back out again as something else will have come along. Yeah, the story my brain fed me was that if something isn’t done in one sitting then it was never meant to be. My brain is both my best ally and my worst enemy…

My deck sat at 21 cards and annoyingly, although resigned to binning it off, new ideas refused to come… Any thoughts of new ideas soon drowned under the drip drop drip like a leaky tap in the middle of the night that sounds loud enough to get you out of slumber to fix it so you can get some peace… Drip… Drip… Drip… 22…22…22… bring me 22…

This tested my sanity for what seemed like forever until one day, without journey or casting of runes or pulling of cards, the desk was temporarily flung back into life, and the image was created… There you go! Now Fuck off! Fuck off and leave me alone!

Monstrous birth! I stared into the image at the Trollish visage, I saw then but struggle to capture now… As I looked at it in the eye, flashback came… Treak Cliff Cavern, Castleton, Hope Valley…

Me dragging Mr S by his hand, him gripped in anxiety attack ” No! I’m not going in there!” Me bullying him ” Yeah, yes you are. We’re taking the kids in. It’s great! You’ll love it!” I was not at all convinced he’d be fine and in all honesty, I was not feeling too fine either at the thought of him going into air hunger thrashing whilst deep underground… But I sounded cheery enough for him to trust me… He followed me, even after cracking his head on a low part of the cave. He stills puzzles 15? years on as to how I managed to steer him through there…

What in the card had taken me here? I looked again and the top right-hand corner came into focus and I saw in my mind’s eye, deep within that Derbyshire cave, a slice of Blue John in the wall, lit from behind… Crystalline colours resplendent in the gloom…

I looked back to my image and laughed! OK! You’re a gem?! See you in a thousand and then some years. Go! Go underground… go live in the dark… Shhhh… go live with the dark elves… Shhh… shhh… elves of darkness…sleep ugly baby sleep… You’re Shelved!

Notes were buried to backs of cupboards, stashed away into secret archives… forgotten… go… go away… let my mind clear…

I wondered if I’d done the right thing. At some point later, I don’t recall when but I found myself on a writer’s workshop. I came away with the takeaway advice that a good story will wait… I took a peep in on my sleeping troll… Where was he? Not there… Replaced by nebulous scorpion, like a stellar nursery…oh… so you’re not dead then? Ok… Night, night! Back to sleep…

Today as I look, the scorpion has moved on…today, I see tiny golden seed… or maybe it’s the light at the end of the tunnel… sunlight crossing distant opening, shining a path back up to earth… Wake up baby! It’s time to rise…