[Image: promotional still from The Troll Hunter, a 2010 “mockumentary” from
Norway about — well, perhaps you can guess.]
From whiskey river:
Fairy tales were maps formed of blood and hair and bones; they were the knots of the sub-conscious unwound. Every word in every tale was real and as true as apples and stones. They all led to the story inside the story.
(Alice Hoffman [source])
…and:
Sky Burial
This is the way they dispose of the dead
in Tibet. Letting nothing go to waste.
The loose bodies, with their blood still,
are lifted to high roofs, offered to the sky.
In this way everything becomes a temple
and bells ring to catch the carrion birds
in flight. Glorious bells! Unsettling circlers!
They alight like balding mathematicians,
like ancient men huddled over maps.Their steepled wings flap now and again
like a preacher searching a hymnal;
their beaks could be penning red sermons
as the umbral body is unsewn, consumed—
concealed through all avenues of heaven,
borne again aloft in a scream of grace
echoing down the mausoleum of dark.
(Michael Titus [source])
