Beautiful imagery

I can't stop thinking about the poem "Annabel Lee" by Edgar Allan Poe. It's come to the forefront of my mind because of singer/songwriter Sarah Jarosz. I found out about her just by chance and have been enchanted. Her music is lovely and some of it is downright haunting - sticking with you like a determined ghost. Two songs in particular have struck my fancy: "Run Away" and "Annabelle Lee." The former is the song I heard in a second on the radio while I was flipping through channels. I heard it and knew I was going to go home and buy her album, which I did. The latter song is the treasure I found on her album once I'd purchased it through iTunes.

Sarah's "Annabelle Lee" is Edgar Allan Poe's poem adapted to a beautiful song she wrote. I've always delighted in the macabre, and the poem "Annabel Lee" is just that. It's beautiful, sad and more than a little disturbing if you pay attention. Sarah's version is almost exactly that, but she adds some fantastic lines that add even more amazing imagery to the already magnificent original poem. In particular, these two:

They shut her up in a tomb
Below this kingdom by the sea
But no maiden's grave could sever my soul 
From the love she bore for me


and

For many years I've wandered
Through this kingdom by the sea
I've laid myself beside the bones
Of my beautiful Annabelle Lee


In Poe's original, he speaks of no angels above or demons below being able to sever his soul from Annabel's love, but Sarah Jarosz's "maiden's grave" is just enchanting. The same goes for the second quote. In the original, Poe's narrator lies "down by the side" of Annabel in her tomb, so you know that he's in her tomb, but she could be in a coffin for all we know. With Sarah's lyrics, however, you've got that narrator right next to his darling Annabelle's exposed bones. It makes you see him wandering all these years since his love's death just to finally give up and break into her silent tomb to lie down beside her bones and wait for death. It's hauntingly beautiful, isn't it?

I've gone for a bit without any good inspiration for my writing, but Sarah Jarosz's "Follow Me Down" album is proving a wonderful jolt for my mind and imagination. Close your eyes and just listen:

Interesting dream

So...I got a wig in the mail the other day. I'd ordered it from an eBay seller in China from whom I bought my lovely Kaylee wig earlier this year. It was supposed to be a gorgeous long, blonde wig, but that's not what came. When I opened the package, it was quite pretty, but the danged thing was yellow. You know, like anime yellow.  I like that and sometimes I think I want to buy a Sailor Moon wig in this particular shade of yellow, but that was not what was in the picture and that was not what I ordered for my mermaid character.

My mermaids have always been very natural, long haired creatures with little to no makeup, which is exactly what this new mermaid character will be. (However, I may opt for some makeup because I'll have my "makeup artist" sister with me.) I wanted her to have hair like this, but blonde:

Sooo...I got my money back from China (and still got to keep the wig, interestingly enough; who knows what I'm going to do with the yellow thing) and bought a new one this morning from California. I do hope it will be what I saw in the picture on eBay. These things are always iffy. 

Oh, and during that whole wig debacle, I had a dream about being a mermaid. That, in and of itself, is nothing new or remarkable (those are some of my favorite recurring dreams), but it actually pulled reality and some of my everyday interests into it as well. It was interesting to say the least, so here it is: 

I was a mermaid and I had a friend with me. We were in human form, walking along toward our destination, which was a stately manor in Georgia. However, on our way, we had to cross a river...a very wide, deep, murky brown river. With misgivings we slipped into the dingy water and knew immediately that something was wrong. There was another mermaid - a strange creature - living in the river, watching us too closely. As we swam faster to get to the other side, something sharp and ragged tugged at my fin. I could feel her harsh, questioning thoughts and possessive nature all around me as she let go. It was a warning, but we had to get out fast; she wasn't going to let me go a second time. My friend tried to reach out to her with her thoughts, but was raked along her side with claw-like nails without so much as a glimpse at the creature. Faster and faster we swam and, just as we could feel we has overstayed our grace period, we reached the other side of the river and clambered out of reach of the water. Looking back, our hearts beating almost too quickly, we held onto our tails and watched as a silvery flash flicked the surface of the water just a few yards from the edge - much too close. The negative feelings that we'd felt in the creature's water lingered as long as we were wet, so we stretched out and dried ourselves with the bright sun. It wasn't pleasant, drying out so completely, but it had to be done. Right as we were beginning to dry a little too much, a familiar voice called to us from the mansion; we jolted up, having almost forgotten about our quest, and dashed into the mansion. 

Inside was large and hollow. Of course there were all sorts of appropriate furnishings and trappings for an antebellum Georgian manor house, but something was off. There was a television, a gramophone, a telephone and a few other modernities that threw me off. Ignoring the strangeness, I led my fellow mermaid upstairs to where the only sounds in the house were coming from: a bedroom. We heard laughter and the muffled sound of a television show behind the closed door and, when we opened it, I wasn't surprised at all anymore. There were Captain Jack Sparrow and Captain Barbossa (before his promotion) sitting around a computer, laughing. Sparrow looked up to see us in the doorway and beckoned, his eyes bright and playful.

"Hector and I just HAD to show this to you two! We thought you'd love it with your love of pretties and things..." he said. Barbossa just kept chuckling to himself. 

Coming around to the other side of the monitor, I saw an episode of "My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic" playing. The bright colors and moving pictures fascinated both myself and my friend and we watched, enraptured. It seemed familiar somehow and, next thing I knew, I was in a clawed-foot bathtub, being kept wet by a running showerhead. There were agitated voices in the hallway and I felt scared, like I should flee. I tried to move, but I couldn't and as I tried to figure out why, I woke up.