mechtild | Happy Birthday, Bagginses: a manip and a poem by jan-u-wine.

~*~

To celebrate the birthdays of Frodo and Bilbo, this year’s mathom is a [rather silly] manip. Also presented are two poems by jan-u-wine, which are not silly at all. I am hoping her poems will dignify the manip, which is meant to be charming more than convincing. In it the illustrious cousins are wearing party crowns. Or, one could think of it as a portrait of the Halfling Prince and the, um, Halfling Regent.

Most of you will recognize the images used. Bilbo’s portrait comes from the LotR calendar made up of black-and-white photographic portraits by Pierre Vinet. Frodo's image comes from a colour portrait by Vinet, from the gorgeous series of publicity stills for FOTR of Frodo and Gandalf.

Making the manip was relatively easy. I cut out the image of Frodo, flipped it, bled out most of the colour, resized it, inserted it into place and tweaked all the parts. This meant trying to match the hues (since no black-and-white photograph is actually black-and-white), the focus and lighting. The same was done for the crown. The crown came from a site selling party favours. After I'd finished the crowns I positioned them on Bilbo and Frodo's heads, manipping in strands and wisps of hair to make the crowns sit better in their curls.

ETA: lily_the_hobbit asked below if I had a version without the crowns. In fact, I had deleted the png file with the moveable parts. Furthermore, I had done all the fine-tuning with hues and lighting after I had the crowns in place. But I thought I’d give it a go. So I cut the tops of Bilbo and Frodo’s hair out from their source pics, re-tweaked them, fit them onto the crowned version, then clone-brushed the residual crown images out. With a bit more tweaking, they looked good as new.

I hope they will do, Lily! The crownless versions are posted below the poems.

~*~

~ Bilbo and Frodo's Party Portrait: the full manip, reduced to 600 pixels wide:

For a larger version of this manip click HERE.
Be sure to click it open all the way, using the icon
hidden under the lower righ-hand corner.

~ A “close-up”: actually a head-and-shoulders crop of the full-sized image:

Jan-u-wine’s poems.

When I got the idea of making the manip for Bilbo and Frodo’s birthday, I was *hoping* that jan-u-wine might make a poem to go with a birthday manip. Happily, she made two.

To My Cousin, Upon His Birthday contains two poems, one written from young Frodo's point of view, the other from Bilbo's.

I hope you enjoy these exquisite mathoms as much as I do.

~*~

To My Cousin, Upon His Birth-day

To Bilbo:

It is our birth-day.

Ours

Like the hot,

tiny bright
eyes

of fire-works,
the word

ascends,
overwriting,
with soft hope

the shadowy
spaces that lie hidden

within.

If now,
I,

at last

truly belong
somewhere,

am twined to something,
someone,

why,
so is he.

It is a strange thing that a solitary
day,

an hour,
a minute,

took all that mattered to a child's heart
from me,

brown water closing over the heads of those
I loved.

Just as odd the chance, the solitary chance,
out of all time,

that we should share this day.

Within the sharing,
like a circle which has at last come full,
I have found myself again,

found a heart
by whose side my own
might find healing.

Rich brown

closes
over *my* head:

the beloved earth of the Hill.

At last,
I have found Home.

At last,
I have found

our

Birth-day.

To Frodo:

Decidedly,
I recall
the day the lad was born.

How should I not?

The news of it, of course,
found its way from Hall to Hill
some few days thereafter,

I wondered,
greatly, then,

that somehow I should not have known it,
upon the instant,

felt the tiny spark of his presence,
woven tight alongside my own.

Perhaps
I

did know it.

Perhaps it was the watchful
quiet

that fell upon my heart,
that day,

perhaps it was the small
happiness I felt

as the Sun touched the Hill
with the rose-gold fire

of her departure,

perhaps it fell like words
of Elvish making

from the Netted Stars themselves.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

He is
different,

this lad,

my lad,

sunny and yet shadowed,
as if

the world were a joyous
burden

to him,

as if he'd understood,
straight off,

that the pour'd music of
life

is rendered somehow
more

perfect
from the twining of the bitter
midst the sweet......

And it seems to me,
that he

hears them all,

all

the tumbling notes,
too high

(or low)
for fleshly ears to follow.

His heart
follows them,

knows them,
hears them,

answers
them.

I am glad you are here,
little cousin.

I am glad you are here,
upon the

occasion
of our

birth-day.

~*~

More of jan-u-wine's Middle-earth poetry may be found at here, at LOTR Scrapbook.

~ Bilbo and Frodo's Party Portrait *without* the crowns (600 pixels wide):

For a larger version of the “no crowns” manip click HERE.
Be sure to click it open all the way, using the icon
hidden under the lower righ-hand corner.

~ A full-sized head-and-shoulders crop of the “no crowns” version: