Sacred Imagination for Chapter 4

[pobble_reads]

Again apologies for being so slow at this. I think the logistics of Sacred Imagination particularly slow me up (though I love it as a Practice) but I guess we’ll see if that’s true as I move on to other kinds of Reading. Mostly though I’m just experiencing lockdown related inertia in everything.
Again I recorded myself reading the passage (and went eep! over the sound ,of my voice in recording rather than in my own head) so that I could concentrate on imagining

“Take care! Take care!” Cried Gobbolino, but the hobgoblin made one bound into the dairy and slammed the door.
Now every kitchen cat knows that no one might enter the dairy between sundown and sunrise, except the farmer’s wife, but Gobbolino had no idea with it.
He trotted round and round the kitchen gathering up the wool and the knitting-pins, trying to set them straight again, but all in vain. When the hobgoblin bounced back from the dairy sucking his fingers, which were covered in cream, the tangle was hopeless as ever, and there was nothing to do but put it back on the cradle just as it was.
“Well I’m off!” said the hobgoblin, jumping out of the window in one leap. “Maybe I’ll come back again and see you another night, maybe I won’t. Goodnight, my little witch’s kitten, and pleasant dreams to you!”
Gobbolino feel very relieved when the hobgoblin was gone, and he had bolted the window fast behind him.
“I have learnt the first lesson of the kitchen cat,” he said “I should never open the window again.”
He trotted back to his box beneath the kitchen table and slept the rest of the night without waking.

Comments

[pobble_reads]

Mostly I was Gobbolino because I find the Hobgoblin too unpleasant to be comfortable imagining myself in to (which is prolly a failure of empathy and a good indicator of what I don’t like/am afraid of in myself). But I did briefly have a sense of how pleasurable it would be to lick stolen cream off of my fingers and a kind of wry amusement at seeing what is obviously a witch’s kitten trying it’s best to be a kitchen cat when he plainly doesn’t have the slightest idea of the way he should be behaving in that role. I didn’t feel guilty - I thought I was being clever at getting what I wanted out of a system that’s unfair to hobgoblins (and other magical creatures)

[pobble_reads]

When I was imagining being Gobbolino a felt very flustered trying to make things right and confused by the Hobgoblin’s behaviour. He has said he was cold and lonely and I had thought letting it in was the kind and correct thing to do and then it had asked me strangely personal questions and made a mess of the place. I felt guilty for letting him in and desperate to make thinks right again. I had a touch sensation of gathering up the knitting wool and “pins” (One of my Granny’s always referred to what I call knitting needles as pins so I thought briefly of her, the narration of the novel is very reminiscent of her style of speech and storytelling) and trying uselessly to untangle them - which is impossible with kitten paws instead of human fingers.
I was so shocked at the way that the Hobgoblin had behaved that I barely even had space to be angry with him. I just couldn’t understand this gross breach of hospitality. But I was worried about upsetting my new family and particularly the Farmer’s Wife who had been so kind to me and who’s textile work had been ruined. And I was frightened when the Hobgoblin said that he might come back. Shutting and bolting the door behind him felt very satisfying (although again not a job that is easy with paws). I thought that resolving not to let any one else in would go at least part way to making things right with the Farm family again. I wanted to tidy up more/better than I had been able to but I was overwhelmed and exhausted. I had done the best I could with the knitting (and was aware it wasn’t nearly enough) and I’d already had such a long and difficult day even before the Hobgoblin turned up so I just had to curl up and sleep. I hoped I would be able to do better and make things right in the morning)
(I didn’t imagine there would be anything as nasty as the maliciously written message on the diary floor outing me as a witch’s cat)