#pied beauty

[aloysiavirgata]

So lately I’ve been very grateful for friends and read something that likened good ones to someone holding an umbrella over you in a downpour. Even when it’s just a silly text that gives you a smile on a shit day.

Anyway, thinking of that made me hanker for a prompt: AU, either Mulder or Scully stuck in a downpour when suddenly a handsome/pretty stranger opens an umbrella over their head.

Cheers to the real ones.

It’s raining.

It’s been raining forever, she thinks. Since she buried him, her belly like a full moon. Her belly pulling at her hips. Since she delivered his son and put lanolin on her chapped nipples and went shh, shh, through endless colicky nights full of Mylicon drops.

Since she handed the stranger - Vanessa, but still a stranger - her son and thought Eili, eili, lama sabachtani?

Raining since then, somewhere. Cold and grey and numbingly staccato. Raining, raining. The sky so fleecy and low.

She’s looking up at his apartment, as she does now; her belly flat as a Midwest highway.

“Jesus,” the man says, canting his umbrella over her as well. It’s a big golf umbrella, pied, as the most beautiful things are. “You look cold in this rain,” he says, tall and handsome as the surgeon she planned to marry once.

Once.

“I left it at work,” she says, a little breathless.

The man smiles down. “Jacob,” he says, and holds out his hand. He’s heterochromatic; one eye as blue as her own, as William’s. One eye as strange as Mulder’s.

“Dana,” she says, a little hitch in her voice. A little sob.

She’s cold and cold and cold, even with her hair grown out around her hollow face. Even with Doggett, who says “Agent Scully.”

Even with Skinner, who says, “Scully. Dana, DANA.”

***

Jacob, didn’t he fight an angel? Didn’t he wait fourteen years for the woman he loved? She’s drunk on a mid-range Beaujolais, can’t remember.

Fucks Jacob so she doesn’t freeze. Doesn’t burn. It’s good and warm and honest and she’s so very sorry. She’s so sorry, his lashes like the fringe on a velvet lampshade.

Scully sees his umbrella against the wall, wet and black and white. Furled like the wings of a bat as she leaves. The moon outside is a crescent. A rib. scythe.

“I love you,” she gasps, to no one. “I love you always.”

Grief is love with nowhere to go.

It’s drizzling, noncommittal and misty. “Spitting,” Mulder would say. Oxford.

He would say it, if he were here.

***

Jacob calls, even when the sun is shining.

She doesn’t answer. She looks away.

He calls less.

He doesn’t call.

***

“All things counter, original, spare, strange;

Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)

With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;

He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:

Praise him.”

[uwmspeccoll]

It's Fine Press Friday!

This edition of the poem Pied Beauty, by the 19th-century English poet and Jesuit priest Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889), was designed, printed, and bound in Silver Spring, Maryland by calligrapher Rose Folsom using Adobe Photoshop and Gudrun Zapf von Hesse's Nofret type in an edition of 50 copies in 1999. Here is the complete poem:

Glory be to God for dappled things –    For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;       For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim; Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;    Landscape plotted and pieced – fold, fallow, and plough;       And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim. All things counter, original, spare, strange;    Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)       With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim; He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:                                 Praise him.

Rose Folsom, a Wisconsin native, has been a leading calligraphic practitioner for decades, and she is also a Roman Catholic convert, a motivational speaker, and a lay member of the Dominican Order. Our copy of Pied Beauty is another donation from the estate of our late friend Dennis Bayuzick, who was also interested in Catholic theology, and is signed to Bayuzick by Rose Folsom.

View more books from the collection of Dennis Bayuzick.

View more Fine Press Friday posts.

[loudlylovingreview]

Gerard Manley Hopkins: Pied Beauty

Glory be to God for dappled things – For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow; For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings; Landscape plotted and pieced – fold, fallow, and plough; And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.All things counter, original, spare, strange; Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?) With swift, slow;…

[kiss-me-over-the-garden-gate]

PIED BEAUTY by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Glory be to God for dappled things—    For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;        For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim; Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;    Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;        And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;    Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)        With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim; He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:                                      Praise Him.

[alphareleasemedia]

Pied Beauty -- Gerard Manley Hopkins

Glory be to God for dappled things-- For skies of couple-color as a brinded cow; For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim; Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches' wings; Landscape plotted and pieced--fold, fallow, and plow; And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange; Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?) With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim; He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change: Praise him.

[klavier]

Pied Beauty

Glory be to God for dappled things —   For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;     For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim; Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches' wings;   Landscape plotted and pieced — fold, fallow, and plough;     And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;   Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)     With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim; He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:                 Praise him.

Gerard Manley Hopkins written 1877.

[outsiderlookinginward]

Gerard Manley Hopkins and Robert Bridges: Glory be to God for altruism

A draft manuscript of Victorian poet Gerard Manley Hopkins’ celebrated work “Binsey Poplars” has been bought at auction by Oxford’s Bodleian Libraries. Written in 1879, the poem was first published in 1918. (more…) “”

[xoxoxogirl69]

Can u massage my feet while I relax babe???

[great-and-small]

Lots of discussion about which bird has the most beautiful high-contrast plumage on my other post so I say we put it to a vote. Who’s your pick?

[thedavinagold1]

[ventsesh24]

the zodiac signs as pies 🥧⊹₊⟡ 🕯️ ༄˖°.🍂.ೃ࿔ 💌

[odddogs]

an outstandingly athletic looking little dog, i think she could have another life as a personal trainer

[happyheidi]

[barksbog]

i didn´t think i would end up getting violently autistic about leopard gecko genetics but here we are

[jasart2-blog]