Let Me Stay,

Strained and wanting

I simmer below the surface,

a thousand pieces of light

stretched thin and glaring

piece together my skin,

thoughts rumbling through

troubled waters, fine lines

and wasted moments,

preoccupied with nothing

“I hate solitude, but I am afraid of intimacy. The substance of my life is a private conversation with myself which to turn into a dialogue would be equivalent to self-destruction.”

— Iris Murdoch, Under the Net  

Friday, 23rd July 2021

The moon was swallowed in a throbbing light

As the thunder began its climbing flight

And in the dawn of a swelling tide

She saw inside the world dressed in spite

I'd prefer to sit awhile

waiting for the storm to come

the heavens rush and clamour and sing

but the rain is kept hidden

beneath the canopy of this weeping willow tree

There is nothing more hopeful than the delicate touch of rain amongst a thunderstorm of clouds.

I would love to see a collection of quotes about the moon/moongazing. Thanks

"We looked at the moon and the moon looked at us."

— Helen Oyeyemi, from ‘White Is for Witching’

"How bright, glaring-bright, the moon […] Shreds of cloud blowing across it like living things."

"A cold-glaring full moon suspended in the sky like the unblinking eye of God."

— Joyce Carol Oates, from ‘We Were the Mulvaneys’

"There is something haunting in the light of the moon; it has all the dispassionateness of a disembodied soul, and something of its inconceivable mystery."

— Joseph Conrad, from 'Lord Jim'

"As the moon’s shadow passes over you—like a rush of gloom, a tornado, a cannonball, a loping god, the heeling over of a boat, a slug of anaesthetic up your arm…"

— Anne Carson, Decreation: Poetry, Essays, Opera; from ‘Totality: The Colour of Eclipse’

"Under the shield of night, / let me unburden the moon."

— Forugh Farrokhzad, Reborn; from ‘Border Walls’, tr. Sholeh Wolpé

"The moon is my mother. She is not sweet like Mary. / Her blue garments unloose small bats and owls."

— Sylvia Plath, Ariel; from 'The Moon and the Yew Tree'

"The brimming moon looked through me and I could not move."

— Ted Hughes, Recklings; from ‘Keats’

"The full moon is out, casting her equivocal corpse-glow over all."

— Margaret Atwood, from ‘The Testaments’

"I never go walking in the moonlight, never, without being met by thoughts of my dead, without the feeling of death and of the future coming over me."

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, from ‘The Sorrows of Young Werther’ tr. David Constantine

"And the moon is wilder every minute."

— W. B. Yeats, Michael Robartes and the Dancer; from 'Solomon and the Witch'

"A moon loosened from a stag’s eye,"

— Theodore Roethke, Praise to the End!; from ‘Give Way, Ye Gates’

"Moon full, moon dark,"

— Sylvia Plath, Collected Poems; from ‘Goatsucker’

"Let’s order one last round and kiss in front of god and the rest of the drunks, then pour ourselves out into the night, following the moon anywhere but home."

— William Taylor Jr., from ‘Literary Sexts: Volume 2′

"In the window, the moon is hanging over the earth, / meaningless but full of messages."

— Louise Glück, A Village Life; from ‘A Village Life’

"while from the moon, my lover’s eye / chills me to death"

— Sylvia Plath, Collected Poems: Juvenilia; from ‘To a Jilted Lover’

"The moon has a strange look to-night. Has she not a strange look? She is like a mad woman, a mad woman who is seeking everywhere for lovers."

"Look at the moon! How strange the moon seems! She is like a woman rising from a tomb. She is like a dead woman."

"Oh! How strange the moon looks. You would think it was the hand of a dead woman who is seeking to cover herself with a shroud."

— Oscar Wilde, from 'Salomé'

"The moon has nothing to be sad about, / Staring from her hood of bone. / She is used to this sort of thing. / Her blacks crackle and drag."

— Sylvia Plath, Collected Poems; from ‘Edge’

"Where, indeed does the moon not look well? What is the scene, confined or expansive, which her orb does not hallow?"

— Charlotte Brontë, from 'Villette'

"And the tarnished sliver of moon glows / Like an old serrated knife."

— Anna Akhmatova, Seventh Book: from ‘In a Broken Mirror’, tr. Judith Hemschemeyer

"In the full moon you dream more."

— Margaret Atwood, Morning in the Burned House; from ‘The Ottawa River By Night’

"…the moon appeared momentarily […] her disk was blood-red and half overcast; she seemed to throw on me one bewildered, dreary glance, and buried herself again instantly in the deep drift of cloud.

— Charlotte Brontë, from ‘Jane Eyre’

"It is not so much moonless as the moon is seen nowhere / And always felt."

— Dorothea Lasky, Black Life; from ‘Poets, You Are Eager’

"If the moon smiled, she would resemble you. / You leave the same impression / Of something beautiful, but annihilating."

— Sylvia Plath, Ariel; from ‘The Rival’

ocean vuong | richard siken

We trace our lives in running circles

always waiting for a new path to show

Glass slippers, yes... SLIPPERS

Whenever the “verre VS vair” debate is brought up, glass shoes or fur shoes, something is pointed out. It is extremely funny that people seem unwilling to accept the “glass” part of the shoes (which in itself is not something weird, especially since as other people pointed out there is a lot of glass in fairytales, up to entire glass mountains) ; but blindly accept and never contest a much more puzzling and weirdest part of the item. “Slippers”. Glass “slippers”.

In French “pantoufle de verre”. The shoes you see in every modern Cinderella iteration are not “pantoufles”. They’re high-heeled shoes, they’re shoes to go outdoor, they are not “slippers”/”pantoufles”. And the very decision of making Cinderella wear “pantoufles” to her ball seems very strange… 

A “pantoufle”/”slipper” (for the sake of simplicity I’ll use the French pantoufle from now on) is not a ball shoe, and certainly a strange choice to go to the ball. A pantoufle is a comfortable “inside shoe”, worn usually inside the house (or sometimes even just in bedrooms), and often the pantoufle was opened up at the back, leaving the heel uncovered. That’s the kind of slipper the 1950s dad wears alongside his pajama robe when he gets out of the house with a pipe in his mouth to go searching for his journal. A quite unelegant and unusual shoewear for a formal ball organized by a prince. 

Maybe we can get some clues from looking at the history of the pantoufle? Let’s see…

The French pantoufle was originally inspired by the Arabian “babouche” (you know, the archetypal “Arabian” shoe you’ll see everyone wear in One Thousand and One Nights). Somehow the fashion of the “babouche” reached France in its Middle-Ages and became there “pantoufles”. Originally pantoufle were peasant and low-class shoes: made out of felt, they were not shoes per se but things people put on their feet when they wore clogs (what in France we call “sabots” shoes) so that it would be much more confortable (”sabots” being thick and hard wooden shoes). So basically it started out as the peasant equivalent of socks. 

But by the 15th century the “pantoufle” suddenly reached the upper-class where it became a true fashion, every gentleman had to wear some, usually made of silk or thin leather (those were costly shoes). These “pantoufles” were notably worn with a sole made of either wood or cork (”liège” as we call it in France), to avoid the pantoufle being dirtied by the muddy ground. 

In the 16th century, a new change to the “pantoufle” was made (which notably became confused and conflicted with another type of slipper known as “mule”). The “pantoufle” became feminized, to the point that it became at one point an exclusively “feminine” fashion, the “pantoufle” becoming womanswear.

Though it had exceptions: notably under the rule of Louis 14 (who was the king under which lived Perrault and whom he served), the servants of the royal palace had to wear “pantoufles” with felt soles for two reasons. 1) So that the sound of their constant travellings throughout the palace wouldn’t disturb the upper-class. 2) So that their shoes wouldn’t damage the floor. 

It was at the end of the 17th century (which is also the time Perrault wrote and published his fairytales) that women started to use “pantoufle” as proper shoes, not just glorified socks. They noted how light and practical and easy to slip on and wear those things were, and so they wore them all on their own - but only inside their house or in their private chambers, due to how fragile they were. As I said, “inside shoes”. 

So in conclusion, we know that in Perrault’s time the “pantoufle” were feminine footwear, traditional footwear of the royal court (but for servants), and fashionable enough to be worn on their own… But at the same time it was still an “inside shoe” of comfort and rest, and still stays a very unusual item to go to a royal ball with. They certainly were not easy shoes to dance with (not even counting how they were made of glass!). 

It is probably just another one of those details that Perrault liked to add to his fairytales just for the sake of having a form of humor in there. But it is fascinating to see how the “pantoufle”/”slipper” concept was rejected through time - in fact, even when people in the 19th century debated the “verre or vair” topic, they often called the shoes “soulier” (which is a type of outdoor shoe much closer to the ones popularized by modern adaptations than the indoor “slippers”, bedroom “pantoufles”).

All in all I can’t give you an answer, but it is an interesting detail that not many people took care of looking at (from my knowledge) ; or if they did, it was themselves to only point out how somehow nobody seemed bothered by the fact the shoes were slippers.