Protectors

I believe one of the many things we tend to leave behind as adults from our childhoods is the many forms of a Protector that we create in our imaginations and in our creativity at those young ages.

For me the role of protector came in many forms. From improvised sing-songs and night time routines that kept me safe from scary movie creatures and dark shadows to the devotional candles my grandmother kept burning round the clock in our home to the many little internal bets I made about how long I could do a certain task, with the inevitable success granting me safe passage or dreams.

There also were dream images themselves. And voices. . . which, as it turned out, DID save my life on two occasions but that is all for another time.

My draw to the pantheon of ancient Egypt dates back to when I was 6 or 7 and the treasures of Tutankhamen were touring the US for the first time.  The images of Tut's burial treasures were on the cover of every major magazine and many books were released about the discovery and the history of the tomb.

It was in grade school that I first was shown one of those books by my teacher. That was followed by a trip to the library and a venture through our family encyclopedia. (Anyone remember those? )

I was completely enchanted by the anthropomorphic Gods and Goddesses and the amazing array of symbols and meanings attributed to them all.

I fashioned many of the objects I saw out of whatever materials I could find. The  tin foil roll was a favorite target of mine, much to the dismay of my mother, and I made countless small little statuettes of the figures out of it.  This led to my first bit of sculpting clay but i was not good with it at all. I was much better at drawing and so, in short order, the walls of my bedroom closet became a tomb with hieroglyphs drawn on all three walls.

This also did not go over well with mom. :) 

I can tell you that I felt protected by the strange and wonderful figures. I memorized their names and forms. . . Horus, Isis, Anubis and Hathor were my favorites to render and, by age 10, I had taken to drawing them on the tops of my feet in felt tip pen, also with the understanding that they would protect me. Though I never felt I needed protection against anything in particular.

So when took up polymer clay work a few years ago, it seemed natural to want to create something from my childhood. Perhaps something I never could then. And while it did not leap off the page into my head to make Egyptian statues, it was not far behind the first thoughts.

One thing that had NOT changed was my lack of ability with clay. Art, in almost every form, comes somewhat naturally to me. But clay, even polymer clay, just felt so foreign at first.

Once I began trying to create votive statues of the ancient Egyptian pantheon, it all fell into place and I suddenly had the incentive and the motivation to stick with the clay. It has, to say the least, paid off.

I never knew there were so many forms and deities spread throughout the history of ancient Egypt. I'll never master them all but I do so love the time spent researching and learning just as I did as a child. It is as important as the art that comes from it.

 One of the forms I never knew of in my youth but who I am so drawn to now, is Bes, a multifaceted and infinitely interesting Deity of many faces and forms. Celebrated as the full-service protector god who served as the champion of everything good and the protector against anything bad, Bes had a long and impressive list of deity duties, including:

Protector of Women
Protector and Entertainer of Children
Guardian against Nightmares and Dangerous Animals of the Night.
Patron of Warriors, Hunters and Travelers
Patron of Music and Dancing
Guardian of Families and Keeper of Domestic Happiness
God of Good Fortune, Luck and Probability
God of Commerce
Guardian of the Vineyards
Guardian Against All Manner of Misfortune

I almost never make the exact same form of Bes twice! This is my latest.

Now, the world is filled with guardian spirits, angels, entities and deities. Bes is just one of many form cultures of every corner of the globe.

But what is often missing in the adult versions we hold to is the child's ability to take the image, the idol, the entity and expand it in our own universe.

Essentially, to reinvent and create it. And then, in doing so, to believe in it fully.

And while many people I know tend to believe this is because we "know" too much about the world around us and it's inherent dangers, I think it is quite the opposite.

We have forgotten far more than we have learned since childhood. For some, that is not a choice. Bad things. . . terrible things, definitely do happen to us. Sometimes placing us beyond the point of return.

For me, each statue and amulet. . .  or each fairy world or gargoyle . . .  or each elf or miniature house I create is a protector. Everything I create in fact could be seen as such. I find that the mystery is everywhere around us. . . and, unfortunately, there are still a few monsters out there too.

The deal we make with these created protectors is a simple one to strike.

I believe fully in it as I create it and, in doing so, it opens the door for another to believe in it as they decide to bring it into their own world. In whatever form, when it arrives, it is an acceptance of something that binds from the earliest days of our creativity.

 It is a desire to make sense of the world around us in the very same way the ancient Egyptians belief in their pantheon came to be.  It changes, it grows, it adapts and it reinvents itself over and over and over. . .

As we should too.

Every piece I create is a step into that reinvention.  It's a claiming of something that was inherently mine all those years ago and, for whatever time I have left in this world, I want it back as completely as I can manage.

And, along that road each day, I leave these little markers. These Descansos. All of them protective icons and imagery that allows me to step forward without fear again tomorrow.

Into the unknown and the well known.
All at once.

After the Pause. . .

When it comes to starting or maintaining blogs, more than anything else, the one thing I I hear people say about starting one is, "I just want to wait til I know exactly what I want to say."

Which is when I turn and say,  "It's more important to just sit down at the computer and write and let others decide what is of value and what is worth reading. . . you can always delete later"

It comes down to fear, of course.

But there are times, once the writing is started, to pause and think this over too. Not out of fear but out of a desire for more succinct expression.  And, for me, the first three weeks of 2013 have been that.

I could keep on going with just random thoughts, creative inspirations, mystic meanderings and poetic expression and that, of course, would be just fine as they are all part of me. But I am finding myself, on this rising side of 40, wanting to be a bit more succinct and to lay down the stories and thoughts that have taken me thru my life to this place. To a life I have CREATED just as I have created all thru my years and will for the rest of them, if I am able.

So first, what is "this place?"

It would be easy to say the "place" is a very small town on the Oregon Coast I chose because it allows me to live and work as an artist with little or no worry about needing to make more money to survive or combating the frantic and disconnected vibe of a city.

But it would be more succinct to say that this "place" is the whole of my inner existence. Much of which I , as many of us do, tried to shake off in my young adult years thru my early 30's.  under the guise of "growing up".

I feel fortunate now to have been allowed the gift of seeing myself clearly again. To have recognized that the only people I have met who are truly happy souls are those that are doing what they love. Those who are living their entire lives creatively and choosing their actions each day with thought and consideration to how it does, or does not, facilitate that dream.

It's not the creativity of painting or writing or sculpting. . . it's the deeper creative force of living. 

I am fortunate to have come to this place and time and to have believed in it, and in myself, enough to walk away from the rest and to create this world of my own imagining.  To trust what feels right and what opportunity seems to be presented along the way.

I also have left so much behind.
This life includes few people by nature of the necessity of so much internal and uncluttered time .
Few material "things" that are not true needs and only truly soulful luxuries.
It is not about acquisition or compiling something for the unforeseeable future.
It is about the one thing I know I have to believe and trust in.
The greatest privilege that any of us have
Living FULLY today

My direction then, for this blog, is to tell the story of how I got to this place again. The cycle from childhood to adulthood that took me right back to what I always was. A maker of things. And how I came to believe again in it and to create a life built from that instead of from what we are taught life is supposed to be.

If I am lucky, I will find the words to put even a piece of it into some sensible structure. . . and I will hope that it helps someone else out there to have the courage to step into who they are and to leave the rest behind as well. . .

Allowing them to come home again and to live their todays as fully as they can too.

Here's to hoping that is you. . . today. . . and always.

nicolas

Cycle of Seasons

I haven't written anything here for some time.

This is not out of a lack of ideas or content. . . it is more that my brain has been overloaded with thoughts.
Creative ideas
Reflections
Nostalgia
Memories
Possibilities and questions

It's autumn. . . or close enough
My mind does this at the end of every summer as it has since the days of grade school.

It's like fall is a reset button in my soul.
I find myself purging old thoughts and attitudes
My eyes open to new things and something in me seems to connect with the faltering of summer
and the transformations of fall.

It's the beginning of my creative season too
Following the warmest season which always seems to leave me in a fog. . .

And this year, on top of it all, I find myself thinking more about the possibility of whether there is a divine plan to it all

My life has had more than it's share of turning points and moments I can only describe as "guided"
All along, since I was 7, possibly earlier, I've felt the presence of other forms and entities around me.
Voices have, literally, saved my life
Imagination too has been a saviour of sorts
And I've gone off course before over the years
Only to pulled back by luck, fate, timing, circumstance. . .
Call it what you will
It comes along with the cycle of seasons too. . .
And life as one big cycle, is fulfilling that as well now
In the summer of my life, the fog all around me, I lost the way
Not completely mind you
But I read the signs wrong
Missed the opportunities to advance and grow
Or perhaps, I was just "biding my time"

Now, the autumn of life is here for me
The years are past their brightest and fullest point
this, I expect, is a very good thing

The fog is clearing
The voices and dreams are returning
I am on course again
Finding the strength to stay steady
Is a daily challenge
And so I come back to imagination
As I always have
The worlds I invent
Are what keep me in reality
As I create it
Walk through it
And disappear

nicolas hall

Postcards

In the postcard, the old man is stands along the edge of a rough and stony shore
It's on an inlet or a bay perhaps
A wooden fishing skiff sits at the water's edge
Weathered and worn as the man

The scene around him is vivid and raw
Stones reach to the sky, jutting from the water
Their outlines worn and shaped by the ever present forces of time

The obvious natural beauty of the scene is not the essence of the image though
To me, the draw to it is something more
The man in the postcard belongs
This land is clearly as much a part of him
And he is of it

There is so much talk in our country of seeking in a spiritual context
And it occurs to me now that perhaps what is missing is not the lack of community or of a faith
Not the lack of belonging to an organization or a lineage
But the lack of belonging to a place
To a landscape

But instead, here, people flock in droves to the same urban bone yards
And what their spirit seeks is never going to be found there
We've leveled and scorched that landscape
We've built above and through it's heart
We've left ghosts and shadows on this bloated vista
 Inhabited by empty souls
Dead weight

Our place can't be found among the hordes and the groups born of so called common interest
That is not what we are bound to connect with in this life
We have created that purpose in our mind
To stave off the constant hunger
Just as we have created so many other distractions
So many other false starts

But maybe you have felt it stirring inside of you
Along a weekend country drive
Or at the water's edge
Across a plain or a plateau
In the forest or the sea 
Just a moment perhaps, when everything you deem your life was left behind
When it all disappeared into a dream
And the place filled you
Consumed you
Recognized you
As you seemed to recognize the place
What lie did you tell your heart then?

Often, in the end, we let all our superficial needs pull to the bone yards again
How would we live without our pleasured distraction?
How would we live without our tribe and causes?
How would we live without ambitions and status?
How would we survive?

The answers is
If you truly listened
Heard the landscape
Opened to that spirit
You might actually find yourself
You might actually find that you ARE alive there
You might just. . .

One day I hope to be the old man in a postcard
In the right place
A part of the landscape somebody captures
Whatever the background
Wheteher a storm is coming
Whether it is dusk or dawn
Whether it is sea or sage
I want to look, not like an awkward visitor
Not like a stranger
I want to look
As if I too
Belonged

nicolas hall 2012

Crossroads

A few months ago I left the city to return to the Oregon Coast. Leaving the spiraling, urban sprawl of 600,000 for a quiet fishing village of 900.  The return to a simpler place and a less frantic pace has allowed me to breathe for what seems like the first time in years.

I return to the city twice a month, for now, to help out at the coffeehouse I used to own. I work two shifts in a little more than 24 hours and I get to see many people who were part of my daily routine over the previous 10 years.

I am asked time and again "Do you miss it?" and the answer, without hesitation is "No."

Now, I left the urban sprawl and static once before, years ago. And, after five years in a similar small town, I felt I had to get back to where things were "happening".

So what is different this time? Most people would tend to put it down to little more than the fact that  I am 10 years older?

In retrospect, I think it is simply that I realize the site of the crossroads when I am at them now.

In any lifetime, I believe we come to those crossroads again and again.
Many times over actually.
Some large and some small
Some almost daily.

But all of them are marked by choices we make or have to make and then, by the directions we turn. Often we do not turn. We just plow ahead with no acknowledgment that we are even passing through one or slowing to think about where the other road might lead.

We think that the slick, well paved highway we are on must lead to a better place than that little dusty road that transects it.  But that well paved road was once just dirt and gravel too.

When I return to the city, I walk about  25 minutes from the train station to the coffeehouse. Crossing through downtown and then across the river into the old industrial SE area of the city. I pass by hundreds of people going about their day. Some walking firmly with each step a foot-fallen vow to "make it" and some stumbling along just barely making it.

And I fee l this hanging, smoldering presence pressing down on so many of those I pass.

They've all reached the crossroads in life too.
Many did not think to slow down at all.
Most did not turn.
They just kept on going.
They made choices at each crossing whether they know it or not
And they are living out the result and destination of their choices.

Yes, it gets harder to go back each time

I am grateful to have seen the signs
To have known when the time was right
And to have turned down this little dusty road where few would think to turn
Off of the fast track
Leading to a place where I belong
Where I can slow down
And now
Thrive

-nicolas hall

Charity - Poem

Charity

My grandmother loved to give her money to charity
The unemployed sitting in the diner
The sisters from the church
The starving overseas
And then my brother who, daily, needed "a couple bucks for gas"
So he could drive the 20 or so blocks to his favorite bar.
My mother said she was, "trying to buy her way into heaven".

The rest of her mad money would go to buy flower seeds and bulbs
And I, who wouldn't take a dollar from her without earning it,
Planted these each year
From April through September

When I moved across the country
I called her that first February to tell her
That the camellias and the daffodils and the crocuses
Were in full bloom out here already

"Boyyyyy aren't you lucky!" she said
"We'll have to wait and see if anything blooms at all here this spring."
Her tone made it seem as if that might actually be in doubt
And I, basking in the glory of my early season, suddenly realized
It was never about giving anything to charity
Or buying a ticket into heaven
Or disappearing gas

It was simply, for her
A matter of hope

~nicolas hall 2012

All Our Yesterdays

"I have lost the idealism of my 20's,  as I feared I would" - Annie Dillard

Add me to the list.  I remember fondly that wonderful, take-on-the-world-and-change-it fire that burns so bright in our youthful adult years . . . it filled me with purpose and, like the separation of of a space capsule from it's booster rockets, sent me into deep space. . . far away from my childhood home.

But then, over time, across thousands of orbits of that strange unknown world, it somehow quietly slips away. Time erodes it with washes of reality and our new found angst and uncertainty over what we are here for, or to do, with this life we are given. 

Many of us just hang there. . . suspended in that slowly eroding orbit. Waiting for the crash and burn.

Some of us escape and go on to explore other worlds.

As for me, well I do not wish to return to those days. What has replaced that explosive sense of youthful power and possibility is, as I experience it daily,  even more powerful. . . and possibly what will keep me going, albeit with a different fire, for the remainder of my years on this voyage.

That voyage is not out there, into some unknown and uncharted space.
It is right here. The point of origin and the place I began.
It is the idealism born of all that came BEFORE that time.

It's the source and the core of all of the wonders I held as truths as a child.

I sit, daily now, looking out over this beautiful corner of nature I have chosen to call home and I craft visual and three dimensional art that is all connected, in some way, to the days of my formative youth. The youth that really mattered and defined who I was to be. 

As life goes, I feel we never get very far from those years.  We never evolve into anything that was not born in those early experiences and we never learn any lessons that we did not already know, in some form, back then as well.

We are simply cycling on those themes over and over and, if we are lucky, we are able to, once again, befriend that young child who we were. We take them under our wing and either embrace them or comfort them for what they have been through and brought to these adult lives.

If we are wise, we listen.
Truly listen.

We sit with them and we realize that they have as much to teach us now as they ever did. As anyone or anything ever will again.

I consider this phase of my life to be a form of "school" all over again. I am a quick learner. I am learning once more how to lose track of time. How to immerse myself into the solitude and creative bliss that I love and have craved to return to for so many years.  I am learning how to not feel bad or "less than" for doing so.  I am learning that the world responds to people working with "what they know" far more than it does to people pretending to be in the know.

It is, as any life decision will be, a choice. 
For me, it is one based in creating, above all else, simplicity.

As far as I am concerned, you can keep the world of the "adult".  Take the politics, policies and anxieties and all the future fears that fill the days and nights of the bustling, climbing, worrying human race and jetison them into deep space.  And you can do that in a little space capsule that I will build of clay and wood.

Send it off with a hearty bon voyage!

So, now then, I am here.
Right where I was all those years ago and where I will now plan to remain as long as I am alive
Creating everything that my soul can bring forth to share
Everything that I have to offer
Everything I know

There is a shaodow over my shoulder
Hello little one
I am here for you
Again

~nicolas 

In Every Dream Home A Heartache

I needed a place to stay and my friend Carla told me her boyfriend had a house I could rent. It was the house he grew up in and though it had not been lived in for years, she said that it would be good for Henry to "clean it up and move on."

I was not sure what she meant by that but I was excited by the prospect of having a two story house to live in for under 400 dollars.

Time passed and I definitely got the sense that Henry was in no hurry to have anyone move into the house. He was always too busy or too tired to go over and do the clean up as was needed. Finally, after about two months, Carla said, 'Let's you and I just go over there so you can see the house. That will help Henry get motivated.

When the day came, Henry managed to take off work to accompany us. He said he was going to start cleaning while we looked around.

Entering the house was like entering a moment frozen in time. Nothing had changed from the last time someone had actually lived here which was, by my understanding Some 11 years before. Everything was fairly outdated from the furniture to the calender on the kitchen wall that had not been turned in that same 11 year period.

Henry spoke of his childhood and his family. Growing up in that house and all the memories that were clearly tied to each item he touched and each corner he turned. .His Mother had died first and then, several years later, his father passed. Since then, the house had remained pretty much the way it was.

His bedroom closet was filled with clothes from his college days. The wine cellar had kegs of homemade wine pressed from the fruit of the grapevines in the backyard. The yard, overgrown and rough, still had garden spots marked carefully by sticks and trellis.

The whole thing shook me a bit and left me unsure as to whether or not I even wanted to live there but Carla was insistent. "Henry needs to move on." she said. We will clean it out this weekend and you can move in.

They did.

I did.

I am certain I told this story many times back then to family and friends and, at the time, I am sure I laughed and thought it unreasonable that anyone would maintain a house like that for so many years after their parents were gone and yet, not live there or change it around at all.

Suddenly, the other day, this story resurfaced in my mind. And, as i have battled for many years to find the words to explain to my own mother why I do not wish to live in the city of my birth, let alone in the house I grew up in, it all suddenly looked very different.

The house I grew up in has changed so much.  My mother, after the passing of HER parents took a course of action that was meant to simplify the care of the house. In doing so, she took away all of those things that would make my soul desire to cling, as Henry's did, to the wonderful times passed.

The trees I played in and around as a boy are gone. The giant blue spruces that I hid under and whose thick, spiny branches shaded me on hot summer days are all gone. The mass of ivy along the driveway that held bits and pieces of my childhood imaginings for me to rediscover, like an archaeologist, every year as I helped my grandfather with summer chores into adulthood, is gone. The basement room that, as I grew up in into my teens, that I lived in, created in, dreamed in is now changed completely. The kitchen, the living room, the back yard, the front porch. . . all the places I have such beautiful memories of are no longer as they were.

The things I hold onto in time deep inside of my soul, the old wooden tool chest or the armoire of my grandfather, the sewing machine or the Lowery organ of my grandmother

The lawn mower, the smell of saturday cook fests, the warmth of the house on biting winter days.

The clamor of great aunts and uncles visitng and playing cards. The trips to the mall with my mother, the sound of the old rotary phone ringing, the days spent creating worlds of my own choosing. Playing make believe games and winning make believe championships. . .

The truth is, if these things were somehow still present there, I would likely be drawn back. I would want to dwell within them for a little while longer.

But I know things change. They have to.
I realize this.

Today, I owe Henry a huge apology.  All these years later, the house that I thought so odd and so unusual. The way I probably spoke of it all then. . .

No Henry, YOU had it right. To hold onto what is good and precious to you as long as you can is always to be an honored decision. Maybe it WAS time for you to "move on" but that should always be up to the person who is living with those memories and within that reality. Especially a reality that was so comprised of love.

It's one thing you can truly call your own, after all.

Image from myantarctica shop on Etsy

In Every Dream Home
Copyright 2010 nicolas hall