some people hear the peculiar sound and decide to open the door and let them step across the threshold.
Something showed up at my doorstep yesterday...quite unexpected and unimagined.
Several months ago I was lamenting (probably more like whining) that I could not find a decent Quarter Moon door knocker for my house in Asheville...I think it was on the TOSAT thread....
grumbling about my misfortunes amid the usual Whitman Sampler of postings about things going down, going up, going right or going wrong in the greater membership's lives....real stuff as compared to my petty disappointments
Amid the banter, din and racket of the TOSAT...for some inexplicable reason a certain individual heard my squeak amid the din...while this individual is usually dismissed as a close cousin to Krampus (and a fierce lawn guardian) he decided to set aside his disguise and enlist the aid of a resident elf on the DMF who runs the Triangle Forge
This gem arrived at my door yesterday, I apologize for the poor imagery.... my iPhone's camera quality setting must be stuck on the "IZ effect"...the photo does not do justice to the hand-forged and hammered beauty of my new Man in the Moon door knocker, if you want something of beauty beaten into a piece of metal the Triangle Forge clearly should be your first stop
In any event I sent off a note of appreciation to these two unlikely DMF'ers
and I thought it would only be appropriate that they understand the underlying drivers behind the how's and why's of my fruitless search. I have excerpted my explanation to them as follows:
"The Man in the Moon-Quarter Moon was an icon dating back to my early childhood from the time I first saw it rendered in one of my grandmother's old Maxfield Parrish sort of art books as a little kid.
To me it was a safety icon...one of the small handful of totems that kept me going through a pretty unpleasant and transient childhood.
Nowhere was really a home, there was no safe place wherever we lived.... and that whimsical (lol) magical old 1920's-30's era picture, to me, portrayed the safety found in remoteness, the beauty of escaping into the night time sky, and it reminded me of the warmth, generosity and kindness found in my maternal grandmother's old english tudor home when I would always too briefly, stay with her...
a reminder that there was a different, far better world and far better people out there than the one(s) I had known
So you can guess it carries a lot of weight with me still, since I felt it was a symbol that belonged on the one house I have and love that represents my best cobbled-together sense of "home", of safety, of a safe harbor for any of my children or their children. Back up in the very mountains my family never should have left.
I damn near wore the tips of my fingers off on the keyboard searching for the right representation of it on the web ...and I am a demon researcher..if it exists I can near always find it...but everything fell short until FedEx rolled up to my door yesterday"So there ya' go...
sometimes you never get to know the value of a random act of kindness...
whether if it is keeping some little kid's hopes alive............... or reminding them years later that paying things forward is an essential part of a life well-lived
Thanks again Nate and Brad
Merry Christmas, Festivus and Happy Holidays to us all
RAT
