by Michelle Tocher | Sep 25, 2021
It’s amazing how long a picture from a fairy tale can stay with you. For years, I have had a picture in the back of my mind. A princess has been turned into a withering old woman with balding red hair and grey wrinkled skin. She’s stuck in a dusty garret in a castle...
by Michelle Tocher | Jul 10, 2021
The fairy tale has been called “the land of the soul.” It’s a terrain we can enter. We can gaze into wells, wander through forests and castles, swim in lakes, and climb glass mountains. We can dive deeply with the mermaids or soar to the heavens on...
by Michelle Tocher | Mar 20, 2021
Pity the tight, constrained, over-edited lines living their conventional lives lined up in perfect order little scouts, doing what they’re told unable to speak for themselves… Original Thoughts Oh, do you mind? May I break through the lines to ask a few...
by Michelle Tocher | Feb 12, 2021
In Metamorphosis, the Roman poet Ovid tells a story about a man named Erysichthon whose exploitive behavior leads to a harrowing end. At the same time, he has a daughter who offers a very different way of thinking about humanity’s relationship with the natural...
by Michelle Tocher | Dec 21, 2020
Early this morning I woke thinking about the steadfast tin soldier. He often comes to me at Christmas time, that noble fellow who has lost a leg in the manufacturing process. The boys who play on the floor with the soldiers don’t use the one-legged soldier, so he’s...
