Saturday, April 17, 2021

"Lila is the play of creation. . . "

. . . & THAT IS MY THEOLOGICAL EXCUSE TO BUY MORE ORPHAN REDS, and I'm sticking to it.

 "Lila (Hinduism)pronounced Leela: an Indic concept of the universe as a playground of the divine" *

Ha-ha!
But, really. A new girlette arrived last week and soon went out the door again--"I only meant to stay a while"--she's going to live with HM's grandchild.

And two of the four pairs of shoes that came with her went to an old coworker from publishing days who has a couple shoeless girlettes and whose son my age recently took his own life.

"We walk on," I wrote her, "and shoes help the dolls stand up."

So I need to replenish the Orphans.

They want to do a version of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold... with a happy ending.

"They were just pretending to die," Penny Cooper points out.

Me: Penny! You're supposed to warn about Spoilers!

P.C. says that everyone already knows it's a sad ending.

Penny Cooper will play the Richard Burton role in her pink fluffy coat. ("We must adapt.")

Option E is perfect for the Oskar Werner role. He doesn't look so blond and sweet in Spy––in cap,
top left––but you can see the two are pretty much the same person--a person I love:


"the rosebud garden of girls"

I have discovered FB market (another display of humanity that would make a great a comic novel). The dolls there are priced all over the board--often way more but sometimes way less than eBay.
I just scooped up five with outfits and traveling box for $35 (well, $47 with shipping and tax, but still a v. good deal).

I don't need another Miss Clavel (Linda Sue? want her as a gift? She needs to get out of that outfit!), but I've been wondering about having some other orphans to play roles in tableaux. Penny Cooper: Secret Agent may benefit from some supporting actors.

Maybe the doll with long hair can take Clair Bloom's role.

The darkhair girlette is Pepito--a boy in the Madeline books, but the doll has no markers for people who don't know that, so they sometimes turn up as a girl on Instagram, like here, from mlle madeline in Korea: "🍭 Suddenly Fall in 🖤 w/ Madeline".

(The Asian girlettes get The Best Clothes Ever.)

Maybe this doll is Leela, for the playfulness of gender & sex.

(A friend who loves Cabbage Patch dolls [her IG] say people in that doll-dom tend to be conservative and get intense about correctly identifying what gender their dolls are.
I say,
People. These are things of plastic and cloth.

(But of course the dolls are also us, so. )

Here's another thing:
I cannot stand to leave a Girlette in the Orphanage Jail, especially if she is only wearing panties and shoes (and is affordable).
I usually wait a while to see if someone else will take them.
This brave and hopeful darling was on FB market for weeks, so now for [a relatively measly] $7 she is coming here.

Her name might be Maud, from a scrap of poetry I remember:
"Come into the garden, Maud,
For the black bat night is flown..."

Looked it up--that's "Maud" by Tennyson.
Penny Cooper suggests I got the wrong end of the stick, though--this doll's name might be Black Bat Night!
We will have to ask when she arrives.

Wow--I just now see that in "Maud" there's a description of a redhead --"
little head, sunning over with curls"––a rose from "the rosebud garden of girls"!

Queen rose of the rosebud garden of girls,
  Come hither, the dances are done,
In gloss of satin and glimmer of pearls,        55
  Queen lily and rose in one;
Shine out, little head, sunning over with curls,
  To the flowers, and be their sun.

Okay, then!
"Let them name it who can,
The beauty would be the same."

__________________________

* More:
"Lila is the play of creation.
To awakened consciousness, the entire universe, with all its joys and sorrows, pleasures and pains, appears as a divine game, sport, or drama. It is a play in which the one Consciousness performs all the roles.
Alluding to this lila of the Divine Mother the physical universe is a 'mansion of mirth.'"
--Ramakrishna, in Selections from The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna (2005), p. 130

8 comments:

  1. OMG another market? too bad I dumped facebook , well not too bad really. Facebook is shite. Score on the set of Girlettes and Nun and box and shoes! Made my day ! Of course i would never say no to a nun if she were to arrive to check on the orphans and get a new outfit- set free from habit! She would be welcomed with a Stella cake. "grown ups" with no play left in them are suspect...broken, like sad ponies tethered to a single hub just going around in the same worn circle every day, over and over until they drop dead.
    I had a friend whose mother destroyed all of her dolls and bears when the child had her first period at age eleven- She became an alcoholic, drug addicted street person- Died too young- I blame it on the mother robbing her of play. Let THAT be a lesson to all!!!

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  2. The clothes on the Asian dolls are very nice! I don't do Facebook, so I'll never see any orphans there. Woo-Hoo on five dolls all with outfits and of course you had to buy Maud.

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  3. LINDA SUE: OH, your poor friend--what a brutal entrance to puberty, having your toys destroyed. What an awful thing for a mother to do.

    We who maintain our playful spirit... and may even literally play with toys... we are lucky and I hope we help keep the spirit alive for others.
    It is not silly,
    It is life giving!

    Watch out for one doll who is very eager to get new clothes, coming your way...

    RIVER: The handmade doll clothes I see on Instagram from Korea and Japan are so carefully and beautifully made!
    When I make doll clothes, they are roughly stitched together--not that the dolls mind! THey are happy!

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  4. I will look for an orphan doll. What do I enter in the search engine?

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  5. Oh, CROW: PLEASE let me send you the Orphan I just bought, as a gift! (I will send clothes along too--I have extra.)
    I reeeeally don't need any more dolls, I cannot pay attention to them all; I really got her so I could give her away, and she would love to come to YOU.

    Are you still at your home address, or are you staying with your daughter?
    If so, email me her address:
    frescadp@gmail.com

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  6. P.S. CROW: But to answer your question, if you prefer to rescue your own, you can simply search "Madeline doll" on ebay or FB marketplace, or wherever.

    There are several versions---including a 15" soft doll--mine are the 7.5-8 inch dolls, but I don't get too specific in case I miss a listing.

    They're kinda spendy: I try to find them for around $5-10, plus shipping, but they go way, way up from there.

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  7. Thank you! I went to the local fabric store to get felt for shoes and checked my stash of fine fabrics for underthings. What fun!

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  8. Bat Night is a great name! Batty for short.

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