Creating Beauty: Orange Candle

Our apartment in Tropea, Italy was cold and damp. Living in a 1721 Palazzo may sound romantic, but in January it is cold and damp.

I had read about these clementine orange candles a few months earlier, and wanted to try. There was no shortage of the most beautiful clementines in Calabria - Orange Groves interspersed with Lemon Groves and Olive Groves. And the occasional vineyard. Really very beautiful. 

But inside I needed a little cheer: I mastered the knack of making lanterns out of clementines and olive oil. A beautiful, cheery light in the bleak mid-winter. 

I have seen quite a few comments on a particular Pinterest post that this doesn't work. Here are a few tips:

• Be careful about how you peel the clementine - the wick is the little bit of fibre-spine that goes down the middle of the orange, and it needs to be intact.
• Pour in a reservoir of olive oil - not enough to submerge the wick, but enough to soak through. 
• Light the wick and give it some time. It needs to dry out a little bit. 
• Make sure you cut a whole in the top - the heat needs to escape, and you get more light. 

Apartment Therapy has a great YouTube how-to video if you want better step by step instructions: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfhvqUr0jrU

The City of Spare Parts

So where did I come up with this name? It is a poem by Sylvia Plath.

The line is "The storerooms are full of hearts/ This is the city of spare parts." My reading views The City as a place of unrestricted re-creation, of restoring the broken, the place where "men are mended."


THE STONES

This is the city where men are mended.
I lie on a great anvil.
The flat blue sky-circle

Flew off like the hat of a doll
When I fell out of the light. I entered
The stomach of indifference, the wordless cupboard.

The mother of pestles diminished me.
I became a still pebble.
The stones of the belly were peaceable,

The head-stone quiet, jostled by nothing.
Only the mouth-hole piped out,
Importunate cricket

In a quarry of silences.
The people of the city heard it.
They hunted the stones, taciturn and separate,

The mouth-hole crying their locations.
Drunk as a fetus
I suck at the paps of darkness.

The food tubes embrace me. Sponges kiss my lichens away.
The jewelmaster drives his chisel to pry
Open one stone eye.

This is the after-hell: I see the light.
A wind unstoppers the chamber
Of the ear, old worrier.

Water mollified the flint lip,
And daylight lays its sameness on the wall.
The grafters are cheerful,

Heating the pincers, hoisting the delicate hammers.
A current agitates the wires
Volt upon volt. Catgut stitches my fissures.

A workman walks by carrying a pink torso.
The storerooms are full of hearts.
This is the city of spare parts.

My swaddled legs and arms smell sweet as rubber.
Here they can doctor heads, or any limb.
On Fridays the little children come

To trade their hooks for hands.
Dead men leave eyes for others.
Love is the uniform of my bald nurse.

Love is the bone and sinew of my curse.
The vase, reconstructed, house
The elusive rose.

Ten fingers shape a bowl for shadows.
My mendings itch. There is nothing to do.
I shall be good as new.

Finding Beauty: Mosaics

When we (husband and I) visited the Vatican Museums, I spent most of my time looking down. Yes the Sculpture was beautiful, and the roof of the Sistine Chapel not to be missed, but what took my breath away was the floor. The mosaics were stunning: colour, shape, expression.

I think a couple of these in particular would make beautiful fabric inspirations. Can't wait until my illustrator skills are up to snuff.