Go Play Elsewhere
My mother, in her eighties, does not have a very good memory of late but the things she recalls from the past are crystal clear and, by my own experience as a reference point for them, very accurate.
So, when I told her I was writing about the myriad of odd occurrences I've had in my life, and those of the apartment we lived in until I was 11, she raised an occurrence that I had completely forgotten about but, upon hearing it, it had come rushing back to me so clearly.
It wasn't going to be one of the tales I told but may truly be one of the oddest.
The apartment was complex of 8 buildings lettered A through H. Our building, F, formed a corner, a perfect right angle, with building E and the resulting square yard they created was the only flat, grassy area around the complex. It was perfect size for waffle ball and so it became our field by default. Hitting the wall above the first story was a home run and I can still, with clarity, recall the three times someone hit a plastic ball on top of the third story roof. I remember these more for the fact that it was out only ball on two of the occasions and ended our game. . .
As you might expect, we were kids and we were loud. The result, with the noise bouncing off the brick facades of the large buildings was, I am sure, rattling to those who's windows faced the grassy diamond.
The management of the complex, due I am sure to the complaints of the noise, eventually built a play area on a grassy lot behind the buildings but it was habit to play on this field and we returned to it often. I mean, the buildings DID make for the perfect diamond shade and the height of the walls made for a true "stadium feel". And some summer nights people actually watched us from itheir windows.
Eventually we took to the new play area but it was an adjustment.
So I must have been eight or nine at most at the time this happened.
Very few people complained to us when we played or shooed us away but there was an elderly woman who lived in the very first apartment in F building on the ground floor. I never knew her name nor can I or my mother recall it now but I will refer to her as Mrs. Smith for the purpose of the story.
Mrs. Smith's living room window overlooked the outfield, left field to be precise, and in the summer, when the heat set in, the window was usually open. These were the old wind-out windows, not the sliding kind with a screen.
Once we had been given the new play area and were not supposed to disturb the neighbors by playing on our old field, she made a habit of yelling at us out her window. Aways the same three words and nothing more:
"Go play elsewhere."
She wouldn't come outside or to the front door ( as I believe she used a walker), but instead would just wait for one of us to be close enough to the window to shout it at us as loud as she was able which was, not very loud. That lucky kid then had to relay the message to the rest of the group and we would, of course, pick up and go around the back.
There were times when she wasn't home for weeks at a time though. Maybe visiting family or in the hospital. Those times we fell back into the habit of playing on the diamond again. We did this because one of the kids had a parent who worked in the office of the complex and she had been told it was mostly Mrs Adams who had done the complaining about us being there. So if she wasn't home, we went right back.
So, it must have been a few months since we had played on the old diamond field at all and, for some reason, perhaps the new field had too many small kids on the new swingset, we decided to play a quick game on the diamond between buildings.
It was getting dark earlier then, nearer to Autumn, and as the game was winding down, I was put out in left field. . .Nearest to Mrs Smiths windows.
Later in the inning, as it was almost too dark to see anymore, I had my back to the window but heard Mrs Smith, as usual, calling out to me. . .
"Go Play Elsewhere."
We must have woken her, I thought, because she had not said a word for the hour or so that we had been there up to this point.
Well the game was ending anyway and I told everyone we needed to go. With that, I went inside the building and into our apartment. Soon after, when I was having dinner, mom asked about the game and I told her it had been fine but how mean old Mrs Smith had told us to go play elsewhere as always.
"What?" she asked, her face puzzled.
"She told us to go play elsewhere." I repeated, probably doing a bad impression of her voice.
"Nicolas."
I looked up mid bite and met her eyes.
"Who told you to go away?"
"Mrs Smith — out of her window like she always does. I was the one who was out there and heard her." I said, the last of my Spaghetti O's heaped on my spoon.
She sat down across from me, seeming confused.
"Honey," she said, "Don't lie to me."
"I'm not mom!" I protested unable to understand why she thought I was.
"Look," she said, " you all know that you're not supposed to play there anymore, so don't. And I don't know who yelled at you to be quiet but it wasn't Mrs. Smith. Honey, the poor soul passed away a week ago. There's no one in her apartment."
I do not remember what my reaction to that was. I don't think I had any notion of it being odd or strange and I wasn't going to push it with my mother, to whom lying was the worst offense I could commit. I DO recall now that, though we barely played on the grass diamond afterwards, I refused to play left field when we did. :)
Was it Mrs. Smith? Was it my own self consciousness about us playing there when we were not supposed to? ( I always protested it, knowing it was against the rules, but was often overruled by the Lord of the Flies majority) was it someone else a floor above who probably heard Mrs Smith call out a dozen times or more over the previous summers?
I cannot say. I am amazed that my mother remembered after all these years and though it had slipped my own set of memories, it came back as soon as she mentioned Mrs. Smith.
Eventually an old man moved into Mrs Smith's old apartment and I had a year long battle with him which I will tell you about some other time. It wasn't supernatural in any way, but it was a war of stubborn pre teen and old man attrition. . . lol
Showing posts with label childhood. Show all posts
Showing posts with label childhood. Show all posts
Monday, October 29, 2018
Friday, September 28, 2018
Ghost Stories - There is a Light - The Apartment #2
The room itself wasn't especially anything. Just a small, square bedroom with a closet and a little alcove for a toy chest, a clanky hissing radiator for winter heat and the one window in the room overlooked the front lawn of the apartment building so there were no creepy trees or dark woods beyond.
When I was older I remember having friends who lived across the street from the graveyard where they filmed the original 'Night of the Living Dead' and I would think, How bad would my childhood nightmares have been if we lived there?!
Anyway, the room was fine, as long as it was day time and I was awake. It was in my dreams tha the room came to life. The thick orange curtains, more specifically, or, perhaps, what lay behind them in that realm.
But those were dreams, so I won't count them as a "ghost story". Still, at some point, I realized they were connected to the waking world somehow. There was a portal. Had to be, right? As long as the two worlds stayed separated I was fine.
That's when it started.
I can remember a dozen or so of my favorite things from, this period in my life. The old red Playskool record player (45s only!), my original Star Wars toys, my giant me-sized teddy bear, the wood rocking chair that had a music box attached to it's rail, my collection of plastic batting helmets from the ballpark.
Now any of these seem ripe for the telling of a ghost story right? In such story, perhaps the record player would play on it's own or the rocking chair might start rocking just enough to elicit one or two tones from the music box beneath it. . . but those sorts of made for movie things never happened.
But there was my night-light.
Oh I loved that light.
It was actually a light box that hung on the wall between the alcove and the closet door and I could see it clearly from my bed which faced it. It was the size of a sheet of paper but a bit longer. On it was an image of a little boy sitting up in his bed with striped walls behind hi, and a nightstand that had an old bell-on-top style alarm clock sitting on it. the clock was larger in proportion to the rest of the scene and the face of that little clock was actually a working clock. The light itself came from the clock face. At night, when mom turned out the lights, the clock cast a pale glow that lit up the room just enough to see the end of my bed and the few feet around the night light in every direction. Of course, that tends to make everything else a little darker in the room so I made the effort to look only at the light when I felt a little frightened. ( Could not avoid those old black and white monster movies as a boy!)
The clock hands were silhouetted by the light and I would stare at that light until I fell asleep. It never took long as I have always been a go-til-you-drop kind of kid, high metabolism, crash and burn sleeper. Still am.
I'd wake from those occasional nightmares to find comfort in the light being there on the wall. I knew I was back in my room and safe.
Then, one night, not sure when or at what age but definitely single-digit young as I think I outgrew that clock by 9 or 10 years old, something changed. By then I was feeling a little more threatened by the nightmares as they had worsened and so there were nights that went to bed and did not want to fall asleep. So I would stare at the clock, at the light, and tell myself that I was safe.
That's when it happened. One night, as I was staring at the clock, probably repeating one of the many mantras I had made-up to keep me safe, the light began to. . . fade.
As I stared at the clock, it was becoming dimmer the longer I focused on it. Less of the room seemed to be lit by it and I felt an ominous feeling as it progressed, moving closer towards black.
Let's keep in mind this was NOT a battery operated clock. It plugged into the wall and the bulb was not a dimmer bulb but the standard 15 watt nightlight bulb of our youth.
So it shouldn't have been able to dim. Yet it did.
And my eyes, as all of our eyes do in the dark, should have adjusted in the opposite direction. By nature, it gets easier to see the longer we are in the dark but in this case, the room itself, like the light, grew darker, disappearing as I watched.
At some point I'd close my eyes and bury my head under the pillow and, eventually, I would fall asleep.
It did not happen every night. even nights where I stared at the light like any other, it would sometimes stay bright. There was no rhyme or reason to it but one thing that was consistent was, when it happened, I'd always have a nightmare that night. In them, the heavy rusty orange drapes would move, billowing out and a deep voice, un intelligible, would speak to me from beyond the window.
I've written here before about how that all ended. A dream where the roof above my bed opened and thousands upon thousands of tiny gold, spinning "snowflakes" fell over me as I sat up in bed. I woke, still able to feel them falling on my skin, like tiny pine needles pinching at my entire upper body. I never had another nightmare in that room again afterwards. Not one.
To this day, when I think of that dream, or of the gold snowflakes in particular, I can conjure one right in front of my face. Spinning and hovering about six inches away. I have, since those days, taken it as a sign I was "protected" somehow.
I still do.
Next time: The nosebleeds . . . and the apartment building and it's darkest corners
When I was older I remember having friends who lived across the street from the graveyard where they filmed the original 'Night of the Living Dead' and I would think, How bad would my childhood nightmares have been if we lived there?!
Anyway, the room was fine, as long as it was day time and I was awake. It was in my dreams tha the room came to life. The thick orange curtains, more specifically, or, perhaps, what lay behind them in that realm.
But those were dreams, so I won't count them as a "ghost story". Still, at some point, I realized they were connected to the waking world somehow. There was a portal. Had to be, right? As long as the two worlds stayed separated I was fine.
That's when it started.
I can remember a dozen or so of my favorite things from, this period in my life. The old red Playskool record player (45s only!), my original Star Wars toys, my giant me-sized teddy bear, the wood rocking chair that had a music box attached to it's rail, my collection of plastic batting helmets from the ballpark.
Now any of these seem ripe for the telling of a ghost story right? In such story, perhaps the record player would play on it's own or the rocking chair might start rocking just enough to elicit one or two tones from the music box beneath it. . . but those sorts of made for movie things never happened.
But there was my night-light.
Oh I loved that light.
It was actually a light box that hung on the wall between the alcove and the closet door and I could see it clearly from my bed which faced it. It was the size of a sheet of paper but a bit longer. On it was an image of a little boy sitting up in his bed with striped walls behind hi, and a nightstand that had an old bell-on-top style alarm clock sitting on it. the clock was larger in proportion to the rest of the scene and the face of that little clock was actually a working clock. The light itself came from the clock face. At night, when mom turned out the lights, the clock cast a pale glow that lit up the room just enough to see the end of my bed and the few feet around the night light in every direction. Of course, that tends to make everything else a little darker in the room so I made the effort to look only at the light when I felt a little frightened. ( Could not avoid those old black and white monster movies as a boy!)
The clock hands were silhouetted by the light and I would stare at that light until I fell asleep. It never took long as I have always been a go-til-you-drop kind of kid, high metabolism, crash and burn sleeper. Still am.
I'd wake from those occasional nightmares to find comfort in the light being there on the wall. I knew I was back in my room and safe.
Then, one night, not sure when or at what age but definitely single-digit young as I think I outgrew that clock by 9 or 10 years old, something changed. By then I was feeling a little more threatened by the nightmares as they had worsened and so there were nights that went to bed and did not want to fall asleep. So I would stare at the clock, at the light, and tell myself that I was safe.
That's when it happened. One night, as I was staring at the clock, probably repeating one of the many mantras I had made-up to keep me safe, the light began to. . . fade.
As I stared at the clock, it was becoming dimmer the longer I focused on it. Less of the room seemed to be lit by it and I felt an ominous feeling as it progressed, moving closer towards black.
Let's keep in mind this was NOT a battery operated clock. It plugged into the wall and the bulb was not a dimmer bulb but the standard 15 watt nightlight bulb of our youth.
So it shouldn't have been able to dim. Yet it did.
And my eyes, as all of our eyes do in the dark, should have adjusted in the opposite direction. By nature, it gets easier to see the longer we are in the dark but in this case, the room itself, like the light, grew darker, disappearing as I watched.
At some point I'd close my eyes and bury my head under the pillow and, eventually, I would fall asleep.
It did not happen every night. even nights where I stared at the light like any other, it would sometimes stay bright. There was no rhyme or reason to it but one thing that was consistent was, when it happened, I'd always have a nightmare that night. In them, the heavy rusty orange drapes would move, billowing out and a deep voice, un intelligible, would speak to me from beyond the window.
I've written here before about how that all ended. A dream where the roof above my bed opened and thousands upon thousands of tiny gold, spinning "snowflakes" fell over me as I sat up in bed. I woke, still able to feel them falling on my skin, like tiny pine needles pinching at my entire upper body. I never had another nightmare in that room again afterwards. Not one.
To this day, when I think of that dream, or of the gold snowflakes in particular, I can conjure one right in front of my face. Spinning and hovering about six inches away. I have, since those days, taken it as a sign I was "protected" somehow.
I still do.
Next time: The nosebleeds . . . and the apartment building and it's darkest corners
Saturday, September 1, 2018
Ghost Stories - The Apartment #1
Hey everyone!
So yeah, still not back on track with a weekly post but its all good. It has been really busy here with family visiting and the book and the shops and the cooking and the garden and reading and . . . ok, you get it.
I've been listening to one of my favorite Podcasts, "Spooked" which is put on by the same folks who do "Snap Judgement", another great storytelling podcast. They're telling one persons ghost story each week between now and All Hallow's Eve.
It made me think about the strange experiences I have had over the years, which as I am told time and again, are more numerous than most it seems and I thought it might be fun to share them here.
I've decided to tell them in order, as best I can recall, meaning from my earliest odd memories on up to now. Some are truly scary, some are beautiful to me, and some are odd.
I won't claim which are truly otherworldly, I leave that to you.
It's no surprise to me that so many of them are childhood memories. We are, as children, in some other world much of the time and my wealth of experiences has led me to think that children really are "watching some other show in their heads" a lot of the time. Once, while watching a group of children on a Head Start field trip to a farm, I saw a young boy, maybe 9 or so, who stodgy himself watching a cage that held three rabbits inside. Now, I love rabbits, am awed by every one of nature's creatures, but this kid? The way his eyes were glued to the rabbits, the way his lips formed words, as if he were speaking to them, the way he smiled as the rabbits stopped and turned their large eyes to look at him. The way his own eyes wide and filled with wonder?
Did they. . . speak to him?
Yeah, he was experiencing something I was not. I was 28 or so then. And I decided I needed to get that back. To find my way into that world once more.
I try to find that same type of wonder every day now. Trying to reclaim as much of that time, those frames of mind, as I can. It's what my work is all about. My writing. My art. My daily existence. Choosing those realms over the usual adult fare.
And even spooky stories have their place there too, yes?
Other worlds. Thin veils. Connections adults may never regain. . .
"The Apartment - F3"
My mother and dad divorced when I was young, four years old maybe. I didn't know until I was six or so because he was in merchandising and always traveling. He wanted us to move to NY with him for his job and my mother, who has lived within a half mile of her current location her entire 80 plus years, refused.
The apartment we lived in holds a lot of memories. Not all of them good. I am sure there were some repercussions from the divorce but, in all honesty, I never recall feeling anything lacking or that I was "abandoned" etc. My mother was incredible. More than I could have needed.
The apartment was our home. It just wasn't as kind to me as I might like to recall.
So there were a few creepy things in this building. The old incinerator shaft that seemed to go on forever, the basement with it's classic horror movie, water-drip sounds that echoed through the basement halls, the roar of the furnace/hot water heaters, and the old, cage style storage lockers with the dim bulbs casting wicked shadows across the floor.
But those were all avoidable or limited to daylight visits. The apartment itself? Well, when you live IN it, where can you go?
I built a LOT of forts. No particular reason though, looking back now, I wonder if it was something I did for "protection". I'd stock them with my drawing supplies and toys and spend hours there in my own world.
Another favorite place I played was behind the old sofa. There was room between it and the wall because of the old fashioned steam radiators that were in every room. So, there was the picture window, then the radiator, then the couch and, with my mother's never ending fear of fire, the couch was a good foot or more in front of the radiator. This left a nice space between the back of the couch and the wall to play in.
So, one day, I was no more than five or six, I was playing back there and had my usual compliment of toys, paper, crayons etc. I had my Raggedy Andy and Anne dolls too. I rarely played with them as I recall but I did like them quite a bit. Slept with them. They couldn't "wrestle" with me on the bed like the me-sized stuffed bear or act out scenes like my Star Trek, Superhero and Planet of the Apes action figures, but they were calming to me to have near.
So this night I am playing behind the sofa. Its winter and the hissing and clunk and clatter of the radiator is a constant backdrop.
My mother is in her bedroom and she calls to me to come there for a minute. I set my crayons down and moved the dolls so I could climb over the sofa back without stepping on them. This left Raggedy Anne and Andy sitting side by side against the outside wall where I had been.
I went to see what mom wanted and when I returned, I climbed back over the couch to find Raggedy Andy had slumped over, laying across the other dolls lap, face turned up to the ceiling.
I am sure I thought nothing of this until I picked up Raggedy Andy to set him upright and reclaim my wall spot when both of his shiny black "button eyes" fell right off of his face and into my lap!
BOTH EYES.
What I recall is that they were sew on eyes each with it's own "socket', yet somehow they both came off at exactly the same time, threads hanging from the back of the button loop as is often the case when you lose an old fashioned button due to wear.
To me, even then, it seemed as if they had been ripped out and then set back perfectly in place for me to discover when I picked it up.
I might have hit the doll with my foot scoring over the back of the couch. . .but how do the eye both break their threads and not fall even a bit out of place until I pick the old up?
I showed the doll to my mother who, in her typical mom form, assumed I had been too rough with it. She left it in her room and I went back to play but I just felt weirded out by it and I do not think I spent too much time back behind that sofa after that, which was fine, as I said, I had a LOT of forts!
What makes it so creepy to me all the years later is that these were the only two toys I was really never rough with. Not that I can recall. Those old action figures? They lost arms, legs, heads etc all the time. My bear? I put more stuffing back into him over the years due to all the roughhousing and wrestling.
My grandmother fixed the doll for me that weekend but, if I remember it right, I never took it back to the apartment, keeping both Raggedy dolls at my grandparents house instead from then on.
So yeah, that was my first experience with the creepiness that dwelled in that old apartment. But it would be far from the last. . .
Thanks for reading all, I hope you will enjoy these tales as I go!
XO
nicolas
So yeah, still not back on track with a weekly post but its all good. It has been really busy here with family visiting and the book and the shops and the cooking and the garden and reading and . . . ok, you get it.
I've been listening to one of my favorite Podcasts, "Spooked" which is put on by the same folks who do "Snap Judgement", another great storytelling podcast. They're telling one persons ghost story each week between now and All Hallow's Eve.
It made me think about the strange experiences I have had over the years, which as I am told time and again, are more numerous than most it seems and I thought it might be fun to share them here.
I've decided to tell them in order, as best I can recall, meaning from my earliest odd memories on up to now. Some are truly scary, some are beautiful to me, and some are odd.
I won't claim which are truly otherworldly, I leave that to you.
It's no surprise to me that so many of them are childhood memories. We are, as children, in some other world much of the time and my wealth of experiences has led me to think that children really are "watching some other show in their heads" a lot of the time. Once, while watching a group of children on a Head Start field trip to a farm, I saw a young boy, maybe 9 or so, who stodgy himself watching a cage that held three rabbits inside. Now, I love rabbits, am awed by every one of nature's creatures, but this kid? The way his eyes were glued to the rabbits, the way his lips formed words, as if he were speaking to them, the way he smiled as the rabbits stopped and turned their large eyes to look at him. The way his own eyes wide and filled with wonder?
Did they. . . speak to him?
Yeah, he was experiencing something I was not. I was 28 or so then. And I decided I needed to get that back. To find my way into that world once more.
I try to find that same type of wonder every day now. Trying to reclaim as much of that time, those frames of mind, as I can. It's what my work is all about. My writing. My art. My daily existence. Choosing those realms over the usual adult fare.
And even spooky stories have their place there too, yes?
Other worlds. Thin veils. Connections adults may never regain. . .
"The Apartment - F3"
My mother and dad divorced when I was young, four years old maybe. I didn't know until I was six or so because he was in merchandising and always traveling. He wanted us to move to NY with him for his job and my mother, who has lived within a half mile of her current location her entire 80 plus years, refused.
The apartment we lived in holds a lot of memories. Not all of them good. I am sure there were some repercussions from the divorce but, in all honesty, I never recall feeling anything lacking or that I was "abandoned" etc. My mother was incredible. More than I could have needed.
The apartment was our home. It just wasn't as kind to me as I might like to recall.
So there were a few creepy things in this building. The old incinerator shaft that seemed to go on forever, the basement with it's classic horror movie, water-drip sounds that echoed through the basement halls, the roar of the furnace/hot water heaters, and the old, cage style storage lockers with the dim bulbs casting wicked shadows across the floor.
But those were all avoidable or limited to daylight visits. The apartment itself? Well, when you live IN it, where can you go?
I built a LOT of forts. No particular reason though, looking back now, I wonder if it was something I did for "protection". I'd stock them with my drawing supplies and toys and spend hours there in my own world.
Another favorite place I played was behind the old sofa. There was room between it and the wall because of the old fashioned steam radiators that were in every room. So, there was the picture window, then the radiator, then the couch and, with my mother's never ending fear of fire, the couch was a good foot or more in front of the radiator. This left a nice space between the back of the couch and the wall to play in.
So, one day, I was no more than five or six, I was playing back there and had my usual compliment of toys, paper, crayons etc. I had my Raggedy Andy and Anne dolls too. I rarely played with them as I recall but I did like them quite a bit. Slept with them. They couldn't "wrestle" with me on the bed like the me-sized stuffed bear or act out scenes like my Star Trek, Superhero and Planet of the Apes action figures, but they were calming to me to have near.
So this night I am playing behind the sofa. Its winter and the hissing and clunk and clatter of the radiator is a constant backdrop.
My mother is in her bedroom and she calls to me to come there for a minute. I set my crayons down and moved the dolls so I could climb over the sofa back without stepping on them. This left Raggedy Anne and Andy sitting side by side against the outside wall where I had been.
I went to see what mom wanted and when I returned, I climbed back over the couch to find Raggedy Andy had slumped over, laying across the other dolls lap, face turned up to the ceiling.
I am sure I thought nothing of this until I picked up Raggedy Andy to set him upright and reclaim my wall spot when both of his shiny black "button eyes" fell right off of his face and into my lap!
BOTH EYES.
What I recall is that they were sew on eyes each with it's own "socket', yet somehow they both came off at exactly the same time, threads hanging from the back of the button loop as is often the case when you lose an old fashioned button due to wear.
To me, even then, it seemed as if they had been ripped out and then set back perfectly in place for me to discover when I picked it up.
I might have hit the doll with my foot scoring over the back of the couch. . .but how do the eye both break their threads and not fall even a bit out of place until I pick the old up?
I showed the doll to my mother who, in her typical mom form, assumed I had been too rough with it. She left it in her room and I went back to play but I just felt weirded out by it and I do not think I spent too much time back behind that sofa after that, which was fine, as I said, I had a LOT of forts!
What makes it so creepy to me all the years later is that these were the only two toys I was really never rough with. Not that I can recall. Those old action figures? They lost arms, legs, heads etc all the time. My bear? I put more stuffing back into him over the years due to all the roughhousing and wrestling.
My grandmother fixed the doll for me that weekend but, if I remember it right, I never took it back to the apartment, keeping both Raggedy dolls at my grandparents house instead from then on.
So yeah, that was my first experience with the creepiness that dwelled in that old apartment. But it would be far from the last. . .
Thanks for reading all, I hope you will enjoy these tales as I go!
XO
nicolas
Friday, April 13, 2018
Inspirations and Oddities - Second Friday Post - April 13th, 2018
Does Friday the thirteenth mean anything to you?
While that particular superstition holds little meaning for me, I did grow up with a whole host of little self-created superstitions, mostly rituals and to keep my young self safe from the things that went "bump in the night'. Especially when watching scary movies. I'd lay on the couch, completely wrapped in one of my grandmother's crocheted afghans, no part of my body other than my head exposed. At commercial breaks, IF I wanted to get up for a snack, I had to be back on the couch and fully covered when the movie resumed . . . or else!!!
I look back now at them all with a sense of nostalgia. The power of the mind, the strength of a young spirit to fight the unseen in the shadows and to believe he could prevail.
From those days forward, I have always been a lover of folklore, superstitions urban legends and strange beliefs.
The last year or so, it's been a blast diving into the world building of writing a fantasy book that allows me to create some of my own folklore for the world of the Bewildering Pine. Beyond that, for me, the real treat has been uncovering the folklore and superstitions of other cultures as I've taken that dive in again through reading and research.
A few of the things I've unearthed that have stuck with me are:
Celtic:
The plainest girl will be beautiful if she rises early on May Day and bathes her face in morning dew at sunrise.
Estonian:
Frost is regarded as an ill spirit named Morozco and frost-cracks or breaks in a tree are attributed to him. The cracking sound is the snapping of his fingers!
Romani:
A moth hovering around a candle flame, means a letter will arrive in the morning.
Scandinavian:
The new Year was an auspicious time for healing. Deemed the "seam of the year" it was considered the best time for ritual curatives.
Do YOU have any favorite folklore or old beliefs you love?
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Inspirations and Oddities!!!
I couldn't choose a single story or video that captures the whole idea but, in Catalonia Spain, they participate in these amazing festivals.
"A person dressed as a demon shoots off fireworks during a correfoc, meaning "fire-run," a traditional party in which participants dress as evil mythical creatures and delight in wild pyrotechnic displays."
> I stumbled upon this inspiring sculpture and in-progress making-pics. AMAZING!
Big Fish!
> I LOVED this article and the accompanying images of
"Flying Foxes"
> And finally, I'm looking VERY much forward to the release today of Netflix new Sci-Fi-Fi series, "Lost in Space", a reimagining of the late great 60's show ( who could ever forget the guitar playing robot!) . I got to watch the original in syndication over the years of my childhood and it inspired many wonderful adventures and one or two cardboard box, Jupiter 2's.
I'm hoping to be taken away yet again with the new series. . . and without seeing anything more than the trailer. . . Parker Posey in the role of Dr. Smith???!!! COME ON! That alone makes me quite happy. Looking forward to starting the adventure this evening!
I hope YOUR week has been inspired and at least a little odd!
Nicolas
xo
While that particular superstition holds little meaning for me, I did grow up with a whole host of little self-created superstitions, mostly rituals and to keep my young self safe from the things that went "bump in the night'. Especially when watching scary movies. I'd lay on the couch, completely wrapped in one of my grandmother's crocheted afghans, no part of my body other than my head exposed. At commercial breaks, IF I wanted to get up for a snack, I had to be back on the couch and fully covered when the movie resumed . . . or else!!!
I look back now at them all with a sense of nostalgia. The power of the mind, the strength of a young spirit to fight the unseen in the shadows and to believe he could prevail.
From those days forward, I have always been a lover of folklore, superstitions urban legends and strange beliefs.
The last year or so, it's been a blast diving into the world building of writing a fantasy book that allows me to create some of my own folklore for the world of the Bewildering Pine. Beyond that, for me, the real treat has been uncovering the folklore and superstitions of other cultures as I've taken that dive in again through reading and research.
A few of the things I've unearthed that have stuck with me are:
Celtic:
The plainest girl will be beautiful if she rises early on May Day and bathes her face in morning dew at sunrise.
Estonian:
Frost is regarded as an ill spirit named Morozco and frost-cracks or breaks in a tree are attributed to him. The cracking sound is the snapping of his fingers!
Romani:
A moth hovering around a candle flame, means a letter will arrive in the morning.
Scandinavian:
The new Year was an auspicious time for healing. Deemed the "seam of the year" it was considered the best time for ritual curatives.
Do YOU have any favorite folklore or old beliefs you love?
<>oOo<> <>oOo<> <>oOo<>
Inspirations and Oddities!!!
I couldn't choose a single story or video that captures the whole idea but, in Catalonia Spain, they participate in these amazing festivals.
"A person dressed as a demon shoots off fireworks during a correfoc, meaning "fire-run," a traditional party in which participants dress as evil mythical creatures and delight in wild pyrotechnic displays."
> I stumbled upon this inspiring sculpture and in-progress making-pics. AMAZING!
Big Fish!
> I LOVED this article and the accompanying images of
"Flying Foxes"
> And finally, I'm looking VERY much forward to the release today of Netflix new Sci-Fi-Fi series, "Lost in Space", a reimagining of the late great 60's show ( who could ever forget the guitar playing robot!) . I got to watch the original in syndication over the years of my childhood and it inspired many wonderful adventures and one or two cardboard box, Jupiter 2's.
I'm hoping to be taken away yet again with the new series. . . and without seeing anything more than the trailer. . . Parker Posey in the role of Dr. Smith???!!! COME ON! That alone makes me quite happy. Looking forward to starting the adventure this evening!
I hope YOUR week has been inspired and at least a little odd!
Nicolas
xo
Sunday, February 25, 2018
Nostalgia #1
Hello Everyone!!
I know I missed my usual posting on Friday. I am less than two weeks away from my train trip across the country to visit my mom and I just couldn't fit in a post before the weekend with all the encroaching deadlines.
Instead, today I am going to put up the first post of a series I have been thinking about for some time, which will be called, simply, "Nostalgia".
It's been inspired by my childhood days and experiences, of course.
While I have already detailed a good bit of the inspiration that came thru those years, all of which are part of my creative life now, there remains a lot that I do not often talk about. Maybe because they are smaller events that seem less important or just negative things I would rather just leave behind but as I get older i realize that they all have played their part. All need to be honored for how they've shaped me. And some are just little pieces, glimpses and fragments of the whole that I never want to lose. . .
As you might expect, a trip home is fraught with memories, old patterns and sights and sounds. Being in the house/yard/woods/neighborhood where so much of who I am was formed is both a joy and also a melancholy time
So at random times, often between Fridays, I will post little bits and bobs of those days. I'll try to warn you when it is going to deal with the dark times, not that there were that many, This will, I suppose, be a selfish record of things I never want to forget and many that I have never before written down.
Nostalgia #1
My Winter Olympics
In the years between 10 and 16 I really only had two friends who I played with on a regular basis. I'll talk about them another time. One of them still lives down the street from my mother and seeing him each year is a chance to revisit some of those good times we shared from the past.
But much of my time then, even with two good friends, was spent alone.
In truth, it was preferred. There were so many ideas. games, stories in my head that I knew no-one else would understand or add anything to if I tried to include them.
One of those exploits was my love of the winter olympics. I could not get enough of the wonder of nations from all over the world coming together and competing in events that were so wonderfully strange to me. Luge, bobsled, biathlon, speed skating, etc We all knew about ice hockey and downhill skiing of course. I was 10 the year the olympics were held in Lake Placid, NY. The US hockey team's "Miracle on Ice" is, of course, the prevalent memory of those games for most of us in this country. But what the entire olympic spectacle inspired was a series of years, snow days permitting, where I recreated the Olympics in my back yard. I won't go into too much detail but it was one of those things that I just had to do alone.
What I remember most of about it to this day is that I took an entire day as the snow fell to make small, paper flags of all the countries for my "luge" event. I drew them with markers I think. I had an old encyclopedia that had all the flags of the world (one of my favorite things to look at as a child!) and I meticulously tried to do them justice with my paper and markers. Then they got wrapped around craft sticks. I made medals out gold and silver foil. I was ready.
The "luge" was just on an old red flyer wood sled. The "track" was hardly dangerous or Olympian by any standards. . . a gently sloping hill, maybe 60 or 70 yards in total length from the back porch of our home, down across a concrete lot and then a final dip down a hill past the neighbors house.
Instead of timing the sled runs for speed, I was trying to see how far I could get the sled to go.
The last ten yards or so the sled would slow to a crawl, the weight of my body the only thing pushing it forward until it came to a crunching stop in the snow.
The little flag representing the country I had just pretended to be representing would be stuck in the ground where the front of the sled ended up. Then I'd get up off the sled, haul it back up the gentle slope and do it all over again. Dozens upon dozens of times. With the exception of a rare misstep out of the "starting gate" most of the trips ended up in a very small area, within two feet of each other. Mere inches separating the best from the worst of the runs.
I can still recall, vividly, the feeling of the falling snow in my face as I went along and the internal "broadcast" of the announcers that I ad libbed in silence.
I made dozens of runs and, as the track iced over, it DID become little faster and more fun.
When it ended, I would go inside have a medal ceremony and return the next day for "ice" hockey or biathlon (FYI, plastic bb's are NOT going to be accurate in 20mph whipping, winter winds!) and some events, downhill skiing and speed skating, I had an old Atari Game system to play those out on when it got too dark outside.
The feeling I get when I think of those days is both precious and bittersweet.
I played so many games like that and I'll talk about them more in future Nostalgia posts. I just preferred those solo hours.
I still do in many ways.
When I created the "My Antarctica" photo series a few years back, those memories of cherished events and a few stark turning points from childhood were the impetus for a number of the images.
Most of those, I have never shown, including this one below which was inspired by those childhood Winter Olympics. . .
And while there were many bad moments as well, I never hesitate to say that, given the offer, I would not hesitate to forfeit up a year of my life to go back and live one day in that time (minus the negatives of school, family arguments etc) :)
When I go home, I try. A little at least. So much of it has changed, especially the outdoor landscape. But I still find that if I am very quiet and open. . . it comes back to me.
Thank you for reading!
nicolas
I know I missed my usual posting on Friday. I am less than two weeks away from my train trip across the country to visit my mom and I just couldn't fit in a post before the weekend with all the encroaching deadlines.
Instead, today I am going to put up the first post of a series I have been thinking about for some time, which will be called, simply, "Nostalgia".
It's been inspired by my childhood days and experiences, of course.
While I have already detailed a good bit of the inspiration that came thru those years, all of which are part of my creative life now, there remains a lot that I do not often talk about. Maybe because they are smaller events that seem less important or just negative things I would rather just leave behind but as I get older i realize that they all have played their part. All need to be honored for how they've shaped me. And some are just little pieces, glimpses and fragments of the whole that I never want to lose. . .
As you might expect, a trip home is fraught with memories, old patterns and sights and sounds. Being in the house/yard/woods/neighborhood where so much of who I am was formed is both a joy and also a melancholy time
So at random times, often between Fridays, I will post little bits and bobs of those days. I'll try to warn you when it is going to deal with the dark times, not that there were that many, This will, I suppose, be a selfish record of things I never want to forget and many that I have never before written down.
Nostalgia #1
My Winter Olympics
In the years between 10 and 16 I really only had two friends who I played with on a regular basis. I'll talk about them another time. One of them still lives down the street from my mother and seeing him each year is a chance to revisit some of those good times we shared from the past.
But much of my time then, even with two good friends, was spent alone.
In truth, it was preferred. There were so many ideas. games, stories in my head that I knew no-one else would understand or add anything to if I tried to include them.
One of those exploits was my love of the winter olympics. I could not get enough of the wonder of nations from all over the world coming together and competing in events that were so wonderfully strange to me. Luge, bobsled, biathlon, speed skating, etc We all knew about ice hockey and downhill skiing of course. I was 10 the year the olympics were held in Lake Placid, NY. The US hockey team's "Miracle on Ice" is, of course, the prevalent memory of those games for most of us in this country. But what the entire olympic spectacle inspired was a series of years, snow days permitting, where I recreated the Olympics in my back yard. I won't go into too much detail but it was one of those things that I just had to do alone.
What I remember most of about it to this day is that I took an entire day as the snow fell to make small, paper flags of all the countries for my "luge" event. I drew them with markers I think. I had an old encyclopedia that had all the flags of the world (one of my favorite things to look at as a child!) and I meticulously tried to do them justice with my paper and markers. Then they got wrapped around craft sticks. I made medals out gold and silver foil. I was ready.
The "luge" was just on an old red flyer wood sled. The "track" was hardly dangerous or Olympian by any standards. . . a gently sloping hill, maybe 60 or 70 yards in total length from the back porch of our home, down across a concrete lot and then a final dip down a hill past the neighbors house.
Instead of timing the sled runs for speed, I was trying to see how far I could get the sled to go.
The last ten yards or so the sled would slow to a crawl, the weight of my body the only thing pushing it forward until it came to a crunching stop in the snow.
The little flag representing the country I had just pretended to be representing would be stuck in the ground where the front of the sled ended up. Then I'd get up off the sled, haul it back up the gentle slope and do it all over again. Dozens upon dozens of times. With the exception of a rare misstep out of the "starting gate" most of the trips ended up in a very small area, within two feet of each other. Mere inches separating the best from the worst of the runs.
I can still recall, vividly, the feeling of the falling snow in my face as I went along and the internal "broadcast" of the announcers that I ad libbed in silence.
I made dozens of runs and, as the track iced over, it DID become little faster and more fun.
When it ended, I would go inside have a medal ceremony and return the next day for "ice" hockey or biathlon (FYI, plastic bb's are NOT going to be accurate in 20mph whipping, winter winds!) and some events, downhill skiing and speed skating, I had an old Atari Game system to play those out on when it got too dark outside.
The feeling I get when I think of those days is both precious and bittersweet.
I played so many games like that and I'll talk about them more in future Nostalgia posts. I just preferred those solo hours.
I still do in many ways.
When I created the "My Antarctica" photo series a few years back, those memories of cherished events and a few stark turning points from childhood were the impetus for a number of the images.
Most of those, I have never shown, including this one below which was inspired by those childhood Winter Olympics. . .
And while there were many bad moments as well, I never hesitate to say that, given the offer, I would not hesitate to forfeit up a year of my life to go back and live one day in that time (minus the negatives of school, family arguments etc) :)
When I go home, I try. A little at least. So much of it has changed, especially the outdoor landscape. But I still find that if I am very quiet and open. . . it comes back to me.
Thank you for reading!
nicolas
Friday, October 27, 2017
The Bewildering Pine - Fourth Friday October 27th
Welcome to my first Fourth Friday Post. Every month, on the fourth Friday I will be writing about, and sharing insights into, the Bewildering Pine; a world I've been creating, in one form or another, for as long as I can recall.
I should start by explaining and separating the two main parts of this series and that world.
One, the "Bewildering Pine" is the fictional world where my first (in process) novel length book, "The Ledgerkeepers", is set. It's a fantasy world that pulls from the many influences and inspirations I've had over the years for just such a world. The world is populated by "old world elves", simply referred to as folk, and not the High elves of modern fantasy.
And the second aspect, the Bewilder and Pine, which is the creative outlet for my miniature making. It's my Etsy shoppe and where many of the larger ideas I have been formulating began.
Here, I really want to focus mainly on the book, that world and it's ties to my childhood and adult life but some parts of that world are derived from the experiences and products in the shoppe, and the shoppe in great part inspired the book and everything else that will come beyond it. . . so I will want to dive into both over the coming months.
Today, for the first installment, I do want to focus on what the undertaking of the writing of this book has meant to, and done FOR, my own heart.
It would be easy, I think, for an outsider to look at my miniature work, my writing here and my views on life in general and assume I am stuck in a loop of nostalgia and whimsy, not that there would be anything wrong with that. . . and to a degree it's true. :) I've come to a place in my life where I tend to keep most anyone who I feel is too caught up in the outside or "real" world at arms length. Not because I want to pretend that world doesn't exist but because I believe how much that world affects us is almost entirely up to us most days.
Simply put, if I allowed that world to inundate my daily thoughts and emotions, I could not do what I do for a living. It's not an escape, it's the way I go about and make sense of that very same world while at the same time, giving life to, and protecting, another world I've held within for so many years.
Somewhere along the way I decided that we each have our roles to play, I won't say it's our destiny or our calling. . . or even our path. . . just that we may choose what we do with each moment we are given and for me, that choice slowly over the years became one of deciding that I wanted to put as much beauty and joy into the world as I can every day.
I discovered early on in the Etsy/maker-of-things world that the more I attached stories to my little creations, the more people responded to them. The more stories I created, the more the world that is now the Bewildering Pine of the book, started to creep in and influence my making and the stories I wrote to go with. Tart Carts, crooked towers, shop and village names, houses with different architectural styles, little enigmatic elves who live in the woods or in hermit like solitude. Monks with face like mimes. Old tongues and sacred traditions lost. With each addition another little piece of the puzzle fell into place.
Now, this is going back some eight years to the beginning. In the last few years, the separation had begun to widen in my heart and in my creative desires. I started spending more time on the "side project" which, at the time, I could not have told you what exactly it would become. The world of the book is now vastly different from the world of the Etsy shoppe.
There are still bits and pieces that remain constant but as characters, locations and I suppose, most of all, the plot for the Ledgerkeeper's story started to reveal itself to me, I saw the chance to speak about more than just a fantasy world. It's aim is to be a novel that speaks to cultural identities and traditions, how things change, why things change, and, of course, how everything is not what it seems when story is a foggy subject at best.
As for the writing, this has been a crash course. I've never even attempted to write something like this before. Not seriously. Poetry yes, short stories, yes, letters of all kinds to friends and family, yes.
But to sit down and say, "Right, I want to write a novel!" No, that never crossed my mind once really.
What I've learned more than anything in the last year since I took up the task is WHY so many people start writing a novel, a short story, a memoir and then quit. Because it's reallllllly HARD and it requires something I feel blessed to have been able to find in an already busy life. The space and a routine to do so!!
I believe it's the hardest creative thing I've ever set out to do. It requires persistence, time commitment, belief in it and in yourself. More than all of those, I think, it requires a desire to say something through your fiction. To tell your story or offer a viewpoint.
Nothing has ever brought me face to face with my own resolve and motivations like writing.
I chose the genre of fantasy for obvious reasons. Mostly because at the start of a fantasy story or novel is the world building part of it. That world that only exists in your head has to be fleshed out. Mapped out too. Not all at once but, at some point, you have to think about it all. The cultures, the limitations, the food, the climate, the magic etc.
Often you'll hear writers offer the advice "Write what you know". For some, like David Sedaris, that can mean your close family. For others like George RR Martin, that means the world you've been toying with in your head for your whole life.
To me, the love required is the same and evident in both I think. So yes, write what you love as well as what you know. The great thing is, you can learn so much that you don't know when you start! I may have a fantasy world in my head but it's littered with real world objects and situations that need to be right for the story. How does a water clock work? How were certain vegetables farmed 500 years ago? What happens when you have two moons, not one. The list is endless.
I love fantasy. Myth, legend, magic, the realm of Faerie, elves, surreal nature.
The funny thing is, I've decided to go a whole lot less in the original direction I assumed I would.
I've left magic off the board in this world for the most part. What magic does exist is born more of our own old world beliefs and traditions and the faith of folk in that. I've seen first hand in my life how powerful that can be. So, if it's tinged with magic in the Bewildering Pine, it has roots in something you may recognize. There are no great powers, no mages and wizards. No dark forces. . . at least, not magic ones.
The main characters as well as most of the supporting ones are all based on people I have known as well. From childhood friends to folk I know in the small town I live in currently. All wonderfully unique in their own ways and human to a fault.
I personally fall in love with books for the characters, not just the worlds the author created for them to dwell in.
My favorite books of late all share the core foundation of having very strong characters as well as the world around them being interesting too. But that doesn't mean they have to be a total creation of the imagination.
A Darker Shade of Magic
A Green and Ancient Light
The Queen of the Tearling
The Foretold
The Night Circus
All of these portray vastly different worlds: Four parallel Londons, a non-descript,"post war" European setting, a realm from our very own possible future, an Amazonian tribe/landscape and the underbelly of 19th century London.
What they all have in common are main characters that are stronger than the need to suspend your disbelief because they are relatable. Now, I won't ask you to read any of those if fantasy is not your thing. . .but if you want a short story that sums that same idea up, of the character being more important than the system of magic and the world, I'd suggest seeking out "The Night Market" by Holly Black. It's simply one of the best short stories I've ever read. It's got a bit of fantasy, a bit of magic too, but it's all revolving around the main character, her love of her family and the ending is the true magic of the story, of the world. . . of each of us in our world. It's well worth the read.
So here I am. over a YEAR into this project and just moving forward every day. I spend two hours each morning from 5:30am to 7:30am sitting in the silence of the early hours at the laptop writing, researching, plot sketching, exploring.
Each day starts with feeding and loving on our cat, Bhu, then venturing out to walk to the old-school bakery which is just a block away from our place and opens at 5:30am ( I know, lucky right?) and the day starts with something like this
Finding that space, that time and making it a routine was key to getting along with the writing. It has also been the best adventure ever! Bringing this world to life and creating the characters and all the little details is like nothing else I've done. I 'm hooked. It's no longer hard. No longer a chore. It's just one more thing in my daily routine and I try not to let anything keep me from it.
In the future I want to talk about the beauty of routine and how it is such an important part of my days. I learned it at retreats visiting a Zen monastery years ago. Their set hours for meditation, meals, down time, work etc were a novel idea to me who, as a creative soul, could not stand the notion of incorporating that into my own daily creative world. Yet. . .
Immediately I saw why it worked but I still fell off the "routine wagon" very quickly afterwards. In the last 8 years or so, learning to keep to a schedule has become essential with all that I want to accomplish and make.
The routine I have now is set in stone and it has to be a pretty extraordinary thing for me to break it..
I'll also want to discuss finding your "voice" thru writing. For me, that has been the hardest part of taking up a novel. Different writers create in different ways. It was yet one more reinvention and I seem to have found my own methods to get me there along the way.
At this point in the Ledgerkeepers, I have a prologue and four very strong character chapters. One for each of the main characters. Each also explores a little of the world around them and each, before I found my voice, were wayyyyyy too long expositions of pure world building and description ( a common flaw in fantasy writing) and less of the characters. One of these chapters, for example, was near to 70 pages of discovery writing which I condensed and stripped away to what is now an 11 page first chapter. I found the characters and found THEIR voices, their motivations and their desires.
I'm excited to start sharing some of that world with you all here. And while I am not quite there yet, I want to put out there that I am going to be asking for Alpha and Beta readers in the coming months. (beginning in January most likely) If you have any interest in being among the first to read what I am creating, you can let me know and I will put you on the list of people to open the early chapters of the story up to as it falls into place.
As an alpha reader, I'll ask you to only focus on, and give feedback for four distinct things:
Thank you for coming by and reading! XX
Nicolas
<>oOo<> <>oOo<> <>oOo<>
Beginning in October of 2017 I started to follow the following format for my blog, posting every Friday and under the following headings:
I should start by explaining and separating the two main parts of this series and that world.
One, the "Bewildering Pine" is the fictional world where my first (in process) novel length book, "The Ledgerkeepers", is set. It's a fantasy world that pulls from the many influences and inspirations I've had over the years for just such a world. The world is populated by "old world elves", simply referred to as folk, and not the High elves of modern fantasy.
And the second aspect, the Bewilder and Pine, which is the creative outlet for my miniature making. It's my Etsy shoppe and where many of the larger ideas I have been formulating began.
Here, I really want to focus mainly on the book, that world and it's ties to my childhood and adult life but some parts of that world are derived from the experiences and products in the shoppe, and the shoppe in great part inspired the book and everything else that will come beyond it. . . so I will want to dive into both over the coming months.
Today, for the first installment, I do want to focus on what the undertaking of the writing of this book has meant to, and done FOR, my own heart.
It would be easy, I think, for an outsider to look at my miniature work, my writing here and my views on life in general and assume I am stuck in a loop of nostalgia and whimsy, not that there would be anything wrong with that. . . and to a degree it's true. :) I've come to a place in my life where I tend to keep most anyone who I feel is too caught up in the outside or "real" world at arms length. Not because I want to pretend that world doesn't exist but because I believe how much that world affects us is almost entirely up to us most days.
Simply put, if I allowed that world to inundate my daily thoughts and emotions, I could not do what I do for a living. It's not an escape, it's the way I go about and make sense of that very same world while at the same time, giving life to, and protecting, another world I've held within for so many years.
Somewhere along the way I decided that we each have our roles to play, I won't say it's our destiny or our calling. . . or even our path. . . just that we may choose what we do with each moment we are given and for me, that choice slowly over the years became one of deciding that I wanted to put as much beauty and joy into the world as I can every day.
I discovered early on in the Etsy/maker-of-things world that the more I attached stories to my little creations, the more people responded to them. The more stories I created, the more the world that is now the Bewildering Pine of the book, started to creep in and influence my making and the stories I wrote to go with. Tart Carts, crooked towers, shop and village names, houses with different architectural styles, little enigmatic elves who live in the woods or in hermit like solitude. Monks with face like mimes. Old tongues and sacred traditions lost. With each addition another little piece of the puzzle fell into place.
Now, this is going back some eight years to the beginning. In the last few years, the separation had begun to widen in my heart and in my creative desires. I started spending more time on the "side project" which, at the time, I could not have told you what exactly it would become. The world of the book is now vastly different from the world of the Etsy shoppe.
There are still bits and pieces that remain constant but as characters, locations and I suppose, most of all, the plot for the Ledgerkeeper's story started to reveal itself to me, I saw the chance to speak about more than just a fantasy world. It's aim is to be a novel that speaks to cultural identities and traditions, how things change, why things change, and, of course, how everything is not what it seems when story is a foggy subject at best.
As for the writing, this has been a crash course. I've never even attempted to write something like this before. Not seriously. Poetry yes, short stories, yes, letters of all kinds to friends and family, yes.
But to sit down and say, "Right, I want to write a novel!" No, that never crossed my mind once really.
What I've learned more than anything in the last year since I took up the task is WHY so many people start writing a novel, a short story, a memoir and then quit. Because it's reallllllly HARD and it requires something I feel blessed to have been able to find in an already busy life. The space and a routine to do so!!
I believe it's the hardest creative thing I've ever set out to do. It requires persistence, time commitment, belief in it and in yourself. More than all of those, I think, it requires a desire to say something through your fiction. To tell your story or offer a viewpoint.
Nothing has ever brought me face to face with my own resolve and motivations like writing.
I chose the genre of fantasy for obvious reasons. Mostly because at the start of a fantasy story or novel is the world building part of it. That world that only exists in your head has to be fleshed out. Mapped out too. Not all at once but, at some point, you have to think about it all. The cultures, the limitations, the food, the climate, the magic etc.
Often you'll hear writers offer the advice "Write what you know". For some, like David Sedaris, that can mean your close family. For others like George RR Martin, that means the world you've been toying with in your head for your whole life.
To me, the love required is the same and evident in both I think. So yes, write what you love as well as what you know. The great thing is, you can learn so much that you don't know when you start! I may have a fantasy world in my head but it's littered with real world objects and situations that need to be right for the story. How does a water clock work? How were certain vegetables farmed 500 years ago? What happens when you have two moons, not one. The list is endless.
I love fantasy. Myth, legend, magic, the realm of Faerie, elves, surreal nature.
The funny thing is, I've decided to go a whole lot less in the original direction I assumed I would.
I've left magic off the board in this world for the most part. What magic does exist is born more of our own old world beliefs and traditions and the faith of folk in that. I've seen first hand in my life how powerful that can be. So, if it's tinged with magic in the Bewildering Pine, it has roots in something you may recognize. There are no great powers, no mages and wizards. No dark forces. . . at least, not magic ones.
The main characters as well as most of the supporting ones are all based on people I have known as well. From childhood friends to folk I know in the small town I live in currently. All wonderfully unique in their own ways and human to a fault.
I personally fall in love with books for the characters, not just the worlds the author created for them to dwell in.
My favorite books of late all share the core foundation of having very strong characters as well as the world around them being interesting too. But that doesn't mean they have to be a total creation of the imagination.
A Darker Shade of Magic
A Green and Ancient Light
The Queen of the Tearling
The Foretold
The Night Circus
All of these portray vastly different worlds: Four parallel Londons, a non-descript,"post war" European setting, a realm from our very own possible future, an Amazonian tribe/landscape and the underbelly of 19th century London.
What they all have in common are main characters that are stronger than the need to suspend your disbelief because they are relatable. Now, I won't ask you to read any of those if fantasy is not your thing. . .but if you want a short story that sums that same idea up, of the character being more important than the system of magic and the world, I'd suggest seeking out "The Night Market" by Holly Black. It's simply one of the best short stories I've ever read. It's got a bit of fantasy, a bit of magic too, but it's all revolving around the main character, her love of her family and the ending is the true magic of the story, of the world. . . of each of us in our world. It's well worth the read.
So here I am. over a YEAR into this project and just moving forward every day. I spend two hours each morning from 5:30am to 7:30am sitting in the silence of the early hours at the laptop writing, researching, plot sketching, exploring.
Each day starts with feeding and loving on our cat, Bhu, then venturing out to walk to the old-school bakery which is just a block away from our place and opens at 5:30am ( I know, lucky right?) and the day starts with something like this
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| French Press and a fresh apricot danish. Sorry about the lighting. . . but it WAS taken before 6 in the morning! |
Finding that space, that time and making it a routine was key to getting along with the writing. It has also been the best adventure ever! Bringing this world to life and creating the characters and all the little details is like nothing else I've done. I 'm hooked. It's no longer hard. No longer a chore. It's just one more thing in my daily routine and I try not to let anything keep me from it.
In the future I want to talk about the beauty of routine and how it is such an important part of my days. I learned it at retreats visiting a Zen monastery years ago. Their set hours for meditation, meals, down time, work etc were a novel idea to me who, as a creative soul, could not stand the notion of incorporating that into my own daily creative world. Yet. . .
Immediately I saw why it worked but I still fell off the "routine wagon" very quickly afterwards. In the last 8 years or so, learning to keep to a schedule has become essential with all that I want to accomplish and make.
The routine I have now is set in stone and it has to be a pretty extraordinary thing for me to break it..
I'll also want to discuss finding your "voice" thru writing. For me, that has been the hardest part of taking up a novel. Different writers create in different ways. It was yet one more reinvention and I seem to have found my own methods to get me there along the way.
At this point in the Ledgerkeepers, I have a prologue and four very strong character chapters. One for each of the main characters. Each also explores a little of the world around them and each, before I found my voice, were wayyyyyy too long expositions of pure world building and description ( a common flaw in fantasy writing) and less of the characters. One of these chapters, for example, was near to 70 pages of discovery writing which I condensed and stripped away to what is now an 11 page first chapter. I found the characters and found THEIR voices, their motivations and their desires.
I'm excited to start sharing some of that world with you all here. And while I am not quite there yet, I want to put out there that I am going to be asking for Alpha and Beta readers in the coming months. (beginning in January most likely) If you have any interest in being among the first to read what I am creating, you can let me know and I will put you on the list of people to open the early chapters of the story up to as it falls into place.
As an alpha reader, I'll ask you to only focus on, and give feedback for four distinct things:
- What bores you
- What confuses you
- What don’t you believe
- What’s cool? (So I don’t accidentally “fix” it.)
That's it! No long explanations are necessary. Just simple observations as you go. No other input is required at that first stage. I'll likely post the chapters here with password protection on them and send you the password when I am ready. I tend to like rather short chapters, 8-12 pages on average so it's not a lot of time commitment with each.
Here and there I'll be posting little excerpts on the open blog too. In addition to "The Ledgerkeepers", I am also creating a book born from the world building itself. An "atlas", I suppose, with many of the descriptive details of the villages, architecture, maps, belief systems, flora and fauna, folktales and the ancient origin stories for all of the type of folk who dwell in the world of the Bewildering Pine. As if someone were archiving the world from within the world itself.
Alright, I think that's going to be good for this month's opening installment. I know it was a bit scattered but we'll find a direction with it in the next month or two.
Welcome along for the ride! I look so forward to sharing more of the world with you in the coming months on fourth Fridays. I hope you will enjoy it too.
Welcome along for the ride! I look so forward to sharing more of the world with you in the coming months on fourth Fridays. I hope you will enjoy it too.
Thank you for coming by and reading! XX
Nicolas
<>oOo<> <>oOo<> <>oOo<>
Beginning in October of 2017 I started to follow the following format for my blog, posting every Friday and under the following headings:
1st Friday of Each Month - New work ( New to the shops and a look at the making of one item each month)
2nd Fridays - Inspirations and Oddities (Links and thoughts about what inspires me)
3rd Fridays - The Making of a Maker (advice and shared experiences of how I got "here" to where being a "maker-of-things" is my full time job.)
4th Fridays - The World of Bewilder and Pine ( peeks into the world of the Bewildering Pine, the stories and books to follow and all around fantasy world making)
2nd Fridays - Inspirations and Oddities (Links and thoughts about what inspires me)
3rd Fridays - The Making of a Maker (advice and shared experiences of how I got "here" to where being a "maker-of-things" is my full time job.)
4th Fridays - The World of Bewilder and Pine ( peeks into the world of the Bewildering Pine, the stories and books to follow and all around fantasy world making)
Friday, October 20, 2017
Making of a Maker - Third Friday Post - October 20th
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| The Road to Here |
If there is one thing I have wanted to share most from my experiences in life, it is how I became a maker of things. And by that, I mean the long road to "here". From those first inspirations and indulgences as a child to the present moment.
This weekly third Friday post will focus on exactly that. And maybe even exploring side-roads to talk about what and where "here" is exactly, since it is always changing.
If there is one thing I want to put across right off, it's that what I offer here is just ONE individual's perspective on how it can be achieved. I cannot even be sure I see it clearly in retrospect. I can only talk about the beginnings, the course changes, the bits of luck, inspirations and decisions that led to here and now.
I do NOT think my way is the right way for even a good chunk of folks who want to be artists or indulge in creativity full time. What my path is, is one more viewpoint that perhaps you can take something from it all and go forward with it in your own pursuit of becoming the working artist you want to be.
So where to begin?
How about this, I believe you can reinvent yourself time and again ( I certainly have) but what I've come to learn, all thee years later, is that you have to embrace, or at least make peace, with who you are inherently. Where you come from. What "made" YOU.
You don't have to live in and with it every day if it was, as it sometimes can be, negative or shadowy, but I think that you do have to give it more than just a nod of acknowledgement.
How many times have we all seen that artist's statement, written in the third person, that just doesn't tell you anything about the artist at all? Oh, it's a list and who's who of degrees, schools and mentors to be sure. But then you turn and what you see on the paper or canvas or in three dimensions doesn't seem to have anything to do with that at all. I see that less and less, of course, and I'm happy that we seem to be moving beyond that as a whole in our world. I don't care where you went to school, where you reside, how long you've been drawing those concentric circles etc. . . I care about where you came FROM. What inspires you now and what did then. Who you are inherently and how that is honored today in your life.
I came across a "modern artist" who was quick to tell you, in third person, about walking the same streets of Europe that the masters did and sitting at Van Gogh's cafes, living abroad. . . but who was a midwest farm kid by birth. I never met that particular artist but I am guessing that no matter how they cover it or try to rearrange the parts, the farm-kid's spirit and essence is still there in everything they do and all that they are. Yet it seemed they were trying so hard to separate themselves from it. I know because I did that for years too. But now I'd say it's important to embrace it. You can reinvent yourself and still honor and pay homage to those beginnings.
I say that because for me, going back to that origin, creatively, became a huge part of my road to here. Childhood imagination. The same one I used to escape school bullies and that filled the many hours I had alone in my room as a kid, was still there waiting for me when I ran out of "adult artist" costumes to try on.
Keep in mind that before I came to this realization, I DID create sooooo much. I performed the music I wrote on stages, had gallery shows and was part of collective exhibitions here and there.
What Interested me then was making something from nothing. Even in those childhood, neighborhood sports-playing days we were always making due with less. Less players, less equipment, less than ideal places to play. Gravel instead of grass, slanted side streets instead of level lots. . . sharing gloves and bats, hoping someone brought a decent ball. . . but regardless, we played just the same.
Outside of sports, which was never a full time interest, my attention was put into to creating worlds. With action figures, costumes, props etc a few of us spent entire days lost in scenarios from space exploration to digging out of post apocalyptic ruins, to medieval knights. Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, Lost in Space, Planet of the Apes and so on. Strangely enough, though it was becoming quite the thing and I was aware of it, I never got involved in role playing games like Dungeons and Dragons in those years.
We were, perhaps, the last of the "outdoor" generation of kids. Even on the worst of days weather wise, we spent as much time outside as we could. I mean, when else were we going to be able to pretend we were on that snowy, ice planet of Hoth other than when we were slogging around in the midst of a 12 inch snowfall with gusting 40mph winds!
But I've discovered the amazing worlds of Role Playing Games as an adult and I can see the parallels between the experience we had in our outdoor imagination-born adventures and role playing in the tabletop gaming world.
Paul Lafarge, an essayist, author and long time D&D player and enthusiast, writes how gaming is like reading a book:
"You start outside something (Middle Earth; Dickens’s London; the fascinating world of mosses and lichens), and you go in, bit by bit. You forget where you are, what time it is, and what you were doing. Along the way, you may have occasion to think, to doubt, or even to learn. Then you come back; your work has piled up; it’s past your bedtime; people may wonder what you have been doing. In a society that conditions people to compete, and rewards those who compete successfully, Dungeons & Dragons is countercultural; its project, when you think about it in these terms, is almost utopian. Show people how to have a good time, a mind-blowing, life-changing, all-night-long good time, by cooperating with each other! And perhaps D&D is socially unacceptable because it encourages its players to drop out of the world of competition, in which the popular people win, and to tune in to another world, where things work differently, and everyone wins together."
As we grew a bit older, reaching 'tween years, that small group of us who relied on imagination separated further from the sports playing kids just as the reached that peak competitive phase. My social/play group dwindled to three and, often times, it might just be two.
Of course, the advantage I had over even the D&D kids was that I didn't need a group to have my most memorable fun. The worlds that I explored individually in my alone time, and there was an abundance of it, were the best. Still, to this day, I can recall the games, the characters, the little places in my mind that I would return to again and again.
So lets lay the groundwork for this Third Friday post series like this:
I am a product of many events, circumstances and actions. Like all of us, I made choices, took roads that were more or less traveled and, at times, had to double back to find my way forward again. But in the midst of all of that, there has been a firm, foundational knowledge that the world around me is a magical place. A place of possibility. And that the world we experience and see is just a fraction of what is out there for us.
When that world around me became less than magical, I changed it. When the people around me became less supportive, too destructive or just got too caught up in their own version of the real, adult world, often meaning they gave up on their own dreams and creativity, I left them behind. When the places I've lived became less than magical, I've moved. And I'm aware how that could seem like I am running from something but, in truth, I am protecting something deeper.
And I'd say the greatest lesson I learned was to treat your creativity like a gift of creation itself. I have come to think that our creative pursuits should be treated much like having a child (or kittens, baby birds, puppies. . . whatever you prefer) Your idea for a creative life is born or hatched as the case may be. . . And it needs your attention, care and, especially early on in it's infancy and development, your nurturing and protection from certain influences and experiences. You wouldn't turn your child over to just anyone to "rear and raise", and you wouldn't take just anyone's advice about how to raise them. . . so treat your creative work the same way. It's your dream, your pursuit, your passion. Your child.
It most certainly can be harmed by the wrong hands, the wrong mouths, the wrong hearts.
And, most of all, what parent out there would tell you their life didn't change drastically when their child was born or, to a lesser degree, when a new pet came into the house. We rearrange our lives to take care of them, yes? You put aside many of your other pleasures and indulgences to be there for it at all times, right?
Then that is how you should approach your creative notions too.
Ultimately, if you are really going to develop the creative soul you wish to bring forth. Even the idea of "success", of making a living from it, is just another point on the map, and the map we draft is a lifelong pursuit of putting beauty, whimsy, color, imagination, words, imagery, ideas and thoughts. . . even utilitarian items. . . into our world.
I make a living at what I do. I work harder than I have at anything else in my life. More hours. Like a small child, it's not something I can put away at 5pm, turn off the lights and go home. Since I reached that goal, I've come to realize that it's just another rung of the entire ladder of my life's journey. I want to evolve and grow with it. Whether I can make MORE money from it is immaterial because I know i can adapt and change MY life to suit it.
To close this first installment of the Making of a Maker, there is a poem I adore that I actually was first shown by my Zen teacher. She thought it was perfect for me then because at the time, as I tended to from time to time, I was struggling with these same issues of the making and care of a creative life. To this day, some 15 years later, it remains one of my favorite poems and I think that it sums up the creative soul, the maker, that dwells in all of us so well.
The Way It Is
William Stafford
William Stafford
There’s a thread you follow.
It goes among things that change. But it doesn’t change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can’t get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.
You don’t ever let go of the thread.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can’t get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.
You don’t ever let go of the thread.
Thank you for reading, following and commenting!
Keep MAKING!!!!!
Nicolas XO
<>oOo<> <>oOo<> <>oOo<>
Beginning in October of 2017 I started to follow the following format for my blog, posting every Friday and under the following headings:
1st Friday of Each Month - New work ( New to the shops and a look at the making of one item each month)
2nd Fridays - Inspirations and Oddities (Links and thoughts about what inspires me)
3rd Fridays - The Making of a Maker (advice and shared experiences of how I got "here" to where this is my full time job.)
4th Fridays - The World of Bewilder and Pine ( peeks into the world of the Bewildering Pine, the stories and books to follow and all around fantasy world making)
2nd Fridays - Inspirations and Oddities (Links and thoughts about what inspires me)
3rd Fridays - The Making of a Maker (advice and shared experiences of how I got "here" to where this is my full time job.)
4th Fridays - The World of Bewilder and Pine ( peeks into the world of the Bewildering Pine, the stories and books to follow and all around fantasy world making)
Friday, October 6, 2017
First Friday - New Work - October 6th
First Friday - New Work
Hi all!
Welcome to the first post under my new blog format. First Fridays are reserved for giving you all a peek at some new work. This might be work in progress, truly new creations and/or a series of in progress pics of one or more pieces to give you all a little insight into the way things take shape around here on a daily basis.
It can take a week or two to complete a piece from it's beginning. Mostly this is due to working in batches thru the various processes and, with two completely different shoppes to stock, create for and manage, that can often stretch the time it takes for completing a piece even further. At any one time I can have between 2 and 3 dozen pieces going in some form. Yep, that's why my actual "work area" can be as small as 4 or 5 inches square!
This week's post will give you all a little inside look at how I create some of the statues in Shadow of the Sphinx. I began this piece, a 9" tall standing statue of Nephthys, the Goddess of Mourning, about 10 days ago. I get a few requests a year for Her in one form or another, the most popular being Her kneeling pose. Looking back, I am amazed at how this shoppe has become a bigger and bigger part of my creative world. The requests I get are so varied and not limited to Egyptian/Kemetic antiquity. I've done Mayan, Inuit, Greek, Roman, Norse and Celtic pieces too when requested and always think how wonderful it would be to expand that in the shoppe itself but I can barely keep up as is most months without setting off down yet another road!
The most satisfying part of this work is that, for me, the ancient Egyptian pantheon has been a part of my life since I was 6 or 7. I've written before about how I painted hieroglyphs all over my bedroom closet walls at 12 hrs old, much to the chagrin of my mother when she found them, and how I used to make statues, crowns and amulets out of tin foil and my grandmothers endless craft supplies. And I believe I have mentioned how I used to draw a few of the ancient deities, Anubis, Bast, Djehuty, Auset on the tops of my feet in pen or marker to protect me from nightmares and school bullies.
So it should be little surprise that when I came into working with polymer clay, the first thing I actually thought to try and make was a small Egyptian statue. And it was sooooooo bad. Those foil ones that I made when I was a kid were more realized (foil is a very underrated material! ) But something made me stick with it and keep trying. :)
Over the 7 or so years I have been doing this work, I've figured out a lot about how to make statues, faces, and all the little details that are involved. There are no tutorials, no instructions from the masters of old. . . just lots of antiquities and images to look at. I added in the making of amulets and, eventually, all sorts of non-traditional polymer pieces. I did have a little experience working in clay, but quickly found that it's nothing at all like working with polymer.
Of course, I am always going to be a rather undisciplined maker-of-things, which when it comes to statues means I cannot guarantee the height of a piece at the beginning. I use my eyes to tell me if the proportions are correct and I do not worry about perfect symmetry or balance (except in the faces).
Now, here are some images and short descriptions of the process along the way from start to finish on making the Nephthys statue I completed this week:
So that's a peek into the making of one of my statues. In future first Friday posts, I'll focus in on smaller parts of the process like making heads, clothing etc. I never make two the same, always trying to give each customer a slightly unique look to their statue. In this case, I combined aspects of two traditional renderings of Nephthys from antiquity to create this one.
And here are a few more pieces of New Work as well!
Hope you enjoyed this peek into the making of some of my things! Thank you for reading and for inspiring me as well!
nicolas
<>oOo<> Nephthys <>oOo<>
Nephthys is a member of the Great Ennead of Heliopolis in Egyptian mythology.
Nephthys was known as the goddess of mourning. She was the goddess of night, rivers, sleep, and nature as well. When Nephthys became the goddess of mourning she also became a guide and protector of the dead. When people died their ''Ba'' would be tested by 40 gods, many of whom met up with Nephthys.
Nephthys had many siblings. Her parents were Geb the god of the earth (a goose) and Nut the goddess of the sky ( a female form arched over the land with stars over her body) . She was the sister of Auset/Isis, Osiris and a twin of Sutekh.
<>oOo<> <>oOo<> <>oOo<>
Beginning in October of 2017 I started to follow the following format for my blog, posting every Friday and under the following headings:
Hi all!
Welcome to the first post under my new blog format. First Fridays are reserved for giving you all a peek at some new work. This might be work in progress, truly new creations and/or a series of in progress pics of one or more pieces to give you all a little insight into the way things take shape around here on a daily basis.
It can take a week or two to complete a piece from it's beginning. Mostly this is due to working in batches thru the various processes and, with two completely different shoppes to stock, create for and manage, that can often stretch the time it takes for completing a piece even further. At any one time I can have between 2 and 3 dozen pieces going in some form. Yep, that's why my actual "work area" can be as small as 4 or 5 inches square!
This week's post will give you all a little inside look at how I create some of the statues in Shadow of the Sphinx. I began this piece, a 9" tall standing statue of Nephthys, the Goddess of Mourning, about 10 days ago. I get a few requests a year for Her in one form or another, the most popular being Her kneeling pose. Looking back, I am amazed at how this shoppe has become a bigger and bigger part of my creative world. The requests I get are so varied and not limited to Egyptian/Kemetic antiquity. I've done Mayan, Inuit, Greek, Roman, Norse and Celtic pieces too when requested and always think how wonderful it would be to expand that in the shoppe itself but I can barely keep up as is most months without setting off down yet another road!
The most satisfying part of this work is that, for me, the ancient Egyptian pantheon has been a part of my life since I was 6 or 7. I've written before about how I painted hieroglyphs all over my bedroom closet walls at 12 hrs old, much to the chagrin of my mother when she found them, and how I used to make statues, crowns and amulets out of tin foil and my grandmothers endless craft supplies. And I believe I have mentioned how I used to draw a few of the ancient deities, Anubis, Bast, Djehuty, Auset on the tops of my feet in pen or marker to protect me from nightmares and school bullies.
So it should be little surprise that when I came into working with polymer clay, the first thing I actually thought to try and make was a small Egyptian statue. And it was sooooooo bad. Those foil ones that I made when I was a kid were more realized (foil is a very underrated material! ) But something made me stick with it and keep trying. :)
Over the 7 or so years I have been doing this work, I've figured out a lot about how to make statues, faces, and all the little details that are involved. There are no tutorials, no instructions from the masters of old. . . just lots of antiquities and images to look at. I added in the making of amulets and, eventually, all sorts of non-traditional polymer pieces. I did have a little experience working in clay, but quickly found that it's nothing at all like working with polymer.
Of course, I am always going to be a rather undisciplined maker-of-things, which when it comes to statues means I cannot guarantee the height of a piece at the beginning. I use my eyes to tell me if the proportions are correct and I do not worry about perfect symmetry or balance (except in the faces).
Now, here are some images and short descriptions of the process along the way from start to finish on making the Nephthys statue I completed this week:
 |
| Every statue starts as lumps of raw clay. Basic proportions are made for the body, head and base or plinth the statue will eventually stand on. I'm not exact here since so much will be added and cut away but, over the years, I've become pretty adept at starting with the right amounts. Basic body shaping helps to get that where I want it. |
 |
| Quick form of the body allows me to gauge the finished height a bit better. Once I have that form, I'll make the head to size and then put feet right on the base, this is to allow me to preserve the tiny details like toenails etc because the body will still be handled quite a bit. Arms are added to the body and ears to the head and posture starts to take shape. After an overnight rest so the clay firms up again, I sculpt a little tighter to the the finished form and add the neck plate/aegis, sculpt the hands to the body and insert the tiny Ankh charm in the right hand. At this point, the statue is fired in the oven for the first time. |
 |
| Once the statue is fired, I'll add the headdress and start some of the clothing details. The tall headpiece is a rendering of Nephthys hieroglyph, thought to be a house/building/column with a basket balanced on top. When the statue is fired a second time, painting begins. First a layer of acrylic matte as seen in the second image and then, when dry, the first layer of the metallic pigment, bronze in this case. |
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| A second layer is added after another overnight drying. Then the final coat of pigment and the reactive patina are applied. In the middle image you can see how quickly the changes begin to appear. I began at the top, working down the statue and you can see the greener coloring coming through on the headdress even though it was only done a few minutes prior to the rest of the statue. The final image shows the patina about two hours in. It's pretty close to done but I'll give it the rest of the day to sit and develop. Then a final sponging of the metallic pigment back overtop creates the final look of the piece. |
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| And there She is!!! Nephthys in her final form. Over time, the pigment will fade in luster and look truly aged. The headdress is removable for shipping, easily inserted into the head on a guide wire. |
So that's a peek into the making of one of my statues. In future first Friday posts, I'll focus in on smaller parts of the process like making heads, clothing etc. I never make two the same, always trying to give each customer a slightly unique look to their statue. In this case, I combined aspects of two traditional renderings of Nephthys from antiquity to create this one.
And here are a few more pieces of New Work as well!
Hope you enjoyed this peek into the making of some of my things! Thank you for reading and for inspiring me as well!
nicolas
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| New Fairy Houses with Patina rooftops! |
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| Reliquary gargoyles. . . finished a few weeks ago but they still need their story! :) |
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| New Clara Voyant mini tombstone for Halloween! |
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| A new blue reactive patina to simulate the look of ancient faience work! Totally maddening and hard to control but soooo worth it as this little Taweret/Hippo shows. . . She is is just under 3" tall! |
<>oOo<> Nephthys <>oOo<>
Nephthys is a member of the Great Ennead of Heliopolis in Egyptian mythology.
Nephthys was known as the goddess of mourning. She was the goddess of night, rivers, sleep, and nature as well. When Nephthys became the goddess of mourning she also became a guide and protector of the dead. When people died their ''Ba'' would be tested by 40 gods, many of whom met up with Nephthys.
Nephthys had many siblings. Her parents were Geb the god of the earth (a goose) and Nut the goddess of the sky ( a female form arched over the land with stars over her body) . She was the sister of Auset/Isis, Osiris and a twin of Sutekh.
<>oOo<> <>oOo<> <>oOo<>
Beginning in October of 2017 I started to follow the following format for my blog, posting every Friday and under the following headings:
1st Friday of Each Month - New work ( New to the shops and a look at the making of one item each month)
2nd Fridays - Inspirations and Oddities (Links and thoughts about what inspires me)
3rd Fridays - The Making of a Maker (advice and shared experiences of how I got "here" to where being a "maker-of-things" is my full time job.)
4th Fridays - The World of Bewilder and Pine ( peeks into the world of the Bewildering Pine, the stories and books to follow and all around fantasy world making)
2nd Fridays - Inspirations and Oddities (Links and thoughts about what inspires me)
3rd Fridays - The Making of a Maker (advice and shared experiences of how I got "here" to where being a "maker-of-things" is my full time job.)
4th Fridays - The World of Bewilder and Pine ( peeks into the world of the Bewildering Pine, the stories and books to follow and all around fantasy world making)
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