Witches Loom

Once upon a time, I lost too many things at once. Country song stuff: dog, truck, job. My mother. The Outgoing Love Interest helpfully summoned a plague of locusts via Craigslist, who relieved me of my art and records and the other good stuff. I strapped what was left to the top of a rented minivan and headed off in the rain with an ear infection to my sister’s, outside a whole new city where I was just gonna start over.

So went the plan, as if all cities are created equal. My sister lived in a subdivision off a highway where I assumed, because of where I’m from, I would catch a bus to a train that would take me into the city where I would play music and meet people and find work. 

No bus. No bus anywhere within walking distance. In fact, one could not even walk to a pack of cigarettes, which we still required in those days. There was one car, hers, which chose to accompany her to work.  But I spent some beautiful spring days, including the First Nice Day, with my 3 year old nephew. I watched every Thomas the Tank Engine ever made. We played music together and built forts and ate spaghetti. 

When he was busy, I sat on the balcony smoking. People walked their dogs and jogged and got caught in the rain, way down there, past the grass. The sidewalk was a circle. I had been looking online but so far no prince. I imagined one, of any gender, maybe holding a bouquet of consulting opportunities, calling to me - “Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair.” I didn’t remember what happened after she let down her hair so I looked it up. 

To paraphrase, a man and a woman live in a house. Those crazy Germans. One day the wife is looking out the second story window at the witch’s garden and sees a beautiful patch of rapunzel growing. She wants it bad. For those who aren’t German speakers or cooks, rapunzel, in the rampion family, is kind of like a scallion. She tells him she is ill and she will die if she can’t get some. Obviously he can’t have that, so he climbs the wall and steals it. 

He gets caught, begs for mercy. The witch tells hubby they can have all the rapunzel they want, but when the baby’s born, they have to hand her over. For some reason, they agree to this. The witch takes baby Rapunzel and raises her and when she’s around twelve the witch locks her in a tower with no doors or stairs. Rapunzel lives her life in there. She sings. She weaves. She stands by the window and stares at the world, which seems to be nothing but forest. 

Then a prince goes riding through the woods and hears singing. He becomes a fan and follows his ear to the singing girl in the window of the tower. He was sure if he could get up there she would like him just as much.

He returns the next day and hides. Eventually the witch turns up, calling from below: “Rapunzel! Rapunzel! Let down your hair to me!” Down comes the hair of shimmering gold, up goes the witch, presumably with some supper and news of the day. I read one version where the witch unraveled whatever Rapunzel had woven that day so she’d have something to do tomorrow. Folks on GlassDoor say it’s still happening all the time.

The prince figures it’s worth a shot and returns a few days later, calling up “Rapunzel, Rapunzel, Let down your hair to me!” She drops the hair without a question, innocence so well preserved at that height. The brothers G were kind enough to give her a moment to freak out before succumbing to the Prince’s obvious charms. He asks her to run away with him, become his wife. She says she’d love to but for the tiny problem of no extra heads of hair. They strategize.

In the meantime, he visits frequently. In the earliest edition, Rapunzel gets busted when her clothes start getting tight. Nearly fifty years later, that part gets bleached and Rapunzel is just stupid and lets it slip. Either way, the witch is unhappy. I mean, she really did work pretty hard to keep the kid a virgin and … dang. She cuts off Rapunzel's hair, drags her far away to some desert and dumps her there to birth twins alone. 

Our witch then waits in the tower for the prince; he climbs the hair to find her instead. She tells him he will never see his love again. He hurls himself from the tower in despair, surviving the fall but blinded by thorns. 

The prince is ruined. He cannot work, or marry. He wanders sightless through the forest, inconsolable, no loss so great as the first. 

Rapunzel’s not so great either, but she is at ease in her own company. She takes care of the kids. She weaves; she sings; time goes by.

One day the prince’s stumbling brings him close enough to her desolate homestead to hear her singing. Suspecting he is hallucinating, he follows again. He stumbles into the clearing and she sees him, runs to him. Her tears of joy fall on his eyes. Turns out that’s the cure for thicket-thorn-grief-blindness (TTGB), so now he can see and they live happily ever after back at the kingdom.

So I wrote a song. Which is a poem if you don’t sing it. 

Rapunzel

Mama’s always hungry and she’s daddy’s very breath

Wicked witch been old so long she done gave up on death

But baby gonna fix it all, up there in her tower tall

Witches loom inside stone walls; weave a ladder from her head and let it fall.

The sun makes home a stone one-eyed cone in the center of the globe

But the walls can grab the moonlight and wrap her in it like a robe.

She says, ‘I know you climbed up all this way cuz you love to see my face,

But if it’s about me like you say, you’ll get me the hell out of this place.’

Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair.

Wicked witch the only one even knows that you’re up there.

Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair.

The prince has come; he’s heard your singing on the twilight air.

But the witch say, ‘you is mine, and he is blind, he’ll never find you…

Sun and sand fleas, sweat and moon-freeze, put all joy behind you’

A daydream of belief, so brief, ain’t built to scale a wall of grief

Best to keep it all up your sleeve cuz time ain’t the only thief

Prince ain’t even tryin now, just wanders cryin cuz he’s lost

Ragin at this witch’s world, no prizes, only cost

But she don’t sing for him no more, still her voice fills up the sky

and there ain’t no desert sun can make this woman’s tears run dry

Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair.

Wicked witch the only one even knows that you’re out there.

Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair.

The prince is gone; there’s just your singing on the twilight air.

Better not to hope for much when you’re hot and prickly to the touch

Absurd to talk of letting go of what was never in your clutch

Can’t be no happy ending if a song can’t point the way

Unless someone else’s tears can make you see the light of day

Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair.

Wicked witch the only one ever knew you were up there.

Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair.

The prince has come; he’s heard your singing on the twilight air.

It’s been twenty years since my sister’s balcony. The song traveled decades to arrive at bandcamp. Princes come and go blindly while tears cure nothing but the urge to cry, and even that, only temporarily. But now, Rapunzel doesn’t have to weave; she can search the web for recipes that bear her name, like the Rapunzel Rampion Salad that started the trouble in the first place. If she still had parents, she'd make it for them.