I was passing through a neighboring town and seeing the lush, green rolling hills and the blushing blueberry fields and the pale green lichens and fern after fern and while my first thought was my god, what a place to live!, my second thought was how many other animals on this earth look around at their habitat and think the very same, and how sweet that is. my old dog used to sit halfway down our hill and close her eyes. she was listening to the wind pass through, the stream go by, the seasons come in and go out without a sound. I’ll bet the birds and the crickets and the caterpillars do the very same.
She is the princess of moonlight, the daughter of cold winds and frozen dreams. Her winter abode is an abandoned greenhouse filled with the light of antique lamps, fir branches and fragments of childhood dreams hidden in the depths of mirrors... But winter is coming to an end, the line between the ice and the lake surface is blurred. Instead of frosty patterns, tears of rain appear on the glass... And soon she will leave her abode again until next Winter. But now she is dancing in the uneven light of the evening, surrounded by a lace of mist, evoking sleep and touching the silence of this greenhouse of dreams.
spring is coming. Spring IS COMING. You will stand on soft grass again, and feel the sun kiss your cheeks and shoulders. you will eat of the same berries as the animals returned from their hibernation. you will hear the air alive with your collective breathing.
Did you all know that long ago, Neil's fans posted photos from the bath?
Welcome to Tumblr, 2012. Just as adorable and quirky as Tumblr of today, and with just as much Neil Gaiman appreciation, but with fewer fans to fuel the fads:
[link] [link]
(I went looking for Good Omens clues in the time capsule that is the internet, and Tumblr decided that it knew best and instead sent me down this rabbit hole from which I may never recover. 1 point to Tumblr; please send help)
Why were people doing this?? I think it's because there's a poem, Bathing with Gaiman, by Zenobia Frost @zenfrost
And it inspired a dedicated blog, @bathbookneil-blog, featuring an entire collection of fan photos reading his books… in the bath.
Neil encouraged fans to read their books "in the bath naked, fully dressed, they can be of any gender or all, masked, alone, or in groups of as many of them as can fit into a bath." He also suggested trying to read while showering, a feat he said he's attempted, unsuccessfully.
When asked, Neil agreed to share a photo of himself reading in the bath if the donations for the free Audible release of Click-Clack the Rattle Bag reached 100,000 downloads/dollars.
He promised fans a "proper nakedy bath" with some discreet bubbles.
Alas!
I'm not about to reveal a long-lost photo of Neil in the bath.
The donations didn't reach the goal, and the bath-photo-sharing trend quietly wound down.
But maybe he gave us this glorious moment with David Tennant-as-Aziraphale-as-Crowley, to make up for it:
[gif credits @tenthrees, @ferndaphnia, and @bringthekaos]
chandrama deshmukh, a teaspoon of stars / claude monet, snow scene at argenteuil, 1875 / counting crows, a long december / anna mary ‘grandma’ robertson moses, snow ball / natalie diaz, manhattan is a lenape word / laetitia de haas, birds in a winter garden / fritz ward, love letter from inside fatherhood / nate klug, advent / serhiy shyshko, saint volodymyr's hill / w. s. merwin, song of three smiles / charlotte joan sternberg, home through the pines ii / mike chasar, conches on christmas / alfred sisley, la maison sous la neige, 1878 / robert creeley, the door / claude monet, the magpie / sarah kay, winter without you
this morning we had rice porridge with currants and hazelnuts. all of the trees along the footpath had buds on the ends of their fingers, already untwisting and catching the morning light. the baby’s hair is getting long. there is more rust in my bones than I’d like with summer just ahead of me.