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

Merry Christmas! - Fourth Friday Post - December 22nd, 2017

Hello everyone!

Since we have five Fridays this month I am going to take this one to wish each of you a Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Yule!

I hope the last 10 days of this year are filled with light, love and the making of wonderful memories!

When I return next week, I'll go back to the Bewildering Pine, my usual fourth Friday post. In January I will begin revealing a bit more about the world I am creating in greater detail but next Friday's post will focus on the why.

Why I am taking time out from an already busy creative life to write these stories and create this elaborate world, what inspired them and where do my characters come from.

So until then, I send love and light to all of you!

Oh, I wanted to share this with you all too. Each Solstice or Equinox Sofie and I chose two fairy guardians for our altar. Last night it was time to pick our Winter Fairy Guardians. We choose them from the vast and well known flower fairy selection of the artist Cicely Mary Barker, then we print them out and mount them on card stock, setting them on the altar window.

Snowdrop Fairy for Sofie

Burdock Fairy for myself!

For me, I am reminded of the mischievousness of the burdock fairy. When I was home last February, I was doing some work for my mother in the driveway and came inside later to find hundreds of the sticky burrs on my pants, socks and coat. . . and just like when I was a kid, I never saw the plant! There they were as if by true fairy magic! It was an unexpected but lovely step back into memories of the past so I had to choose him this year!

Much love and fairy magic to you all!!!

Nicolas

Small Magic - In the Details

My dear blog friend Andrea, at Falling Ladies, has begun a monthly collection of stories and experiences of what she has termed as "Small Magic". You can find this month's post by Andrea by clicking HERE

And the original "Finding Small Magic" Post on her Falling Ladies blog is HERE:

I hope you will take a moment and check them out, add your own (even just a link to a picture or a sentence or two is PLENTY! It need not be as wordy as I tend to be. :)

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Hi all!

I am just a day from leaving on my cross country train excursion to visit mom, and "home", though I sometimes struggle to call it such. I struggle because I have not lived there in over 20 years. Not in the state and not in the house I mostly grew up in.

And I can write this because I know that my mother understands what I am about to tell you.

Home is not just found in the place or the time spent. It is in the details.

The house remains the same, mostly. The rooms, the lot size etc. But all of the details. . . the small magic. . . is mostly gone. The small magic that I now know, made it "home" for all those formative years. Made it a place that, no matter what life in the outside world brought, I could retreat and get lost in the small magic that abounded there.

Small magic that was found in:

The bird feeder my grandmother stocked daily for her assorted feathered friends.
The hand-laid cobblestone road, now paved over with black, ugly asphalt.
The old recliners my grandparents sat in.
The little decorations and extra touches they had added all through the house over the years
The trees: Peach, apricot, plum, blue spruces lining the driveway. . . all gone.
The flowers I planted and tended to for my grandmother or, as my grandfather and I called her, "The Boss", year in and year out.
The stone birdbath which was a joy to watch all year long, even when it froze in winter and we'd poke a hole in it to allow the birds to find water!
The old toolbox in the "junk room", which was my great grandfather's, and had been hand-built.
The gravel lot (the neighbor's property actually) where epic stickball, nerf football and street hockey games were played and where a lot of skin got left behind over the years.
The old TV shows, the old tv (with rabbit ears when you had to actually GET UP to change a channel!!)
The flagstones out the back door that moles found their way beneath and dug their maze of tunnels each year.
The tree house
The ivy covered hillsides along the driveway.
Worn patches of grass in the uneven back yard from wiffle ball
The old red wooden sled in the garage
The old stereo
The simple feeling of timelessness and possibility and love that you can't define, but know it when you feel it.
All the smells of my grandparents cooking, old family recipes, 7 day candles burning, chocolate making and canning all summer and fall.

Maybe most of all, the possibilities of endless days of discovery. All those little trinkets and treausres tucked away over the years in the basement, in the sewing room, in the garage or that junk room, in the piles of boxes, that I would unearth in my childhood adventures and marvel at.

All of it gone. . .

Now, I do still find a lot of little things here and there. And I have, I know,  a keen imagination that allows me to suspend time even in the absence of such things and transport myself back there again and again. But, in truth, it is easier with physical distance. I actively seek the spirits of the past out when I am there. I open myself to that little boy and invite him in and, he DOES show up here and there. But it is often fleeting. My mother, you see, is very much a "here and now" type person, and understandably in her 80's, there is much to worry about I suppose. But I have never been a worrier to any great degree. Life drops what it will in our laps and reality is, as I have learned and proven time and again, very much a creation of choice, circumstance and attitude.And worrying never seemed to be successful at staving those incidents off or prepared one for them to any great degree.

Don't misunderstand. . . I adore seeing my mother and the fact that my coming there, cooking for her and connecting again makes her whole year is enough, truly, to say that it is worth going back. . . but it just is not the same for me. I'm just being honest.

So I will take those moments as I can find them over the next two weeks and try to fill them with whatever magic remains there. I'll try to find the small details, even if they are only in imagination and memory now. . .and I try to create new ones too or rediscover old ones that even I may have forgotten. . . and those are treasures, to be sure.

Since it is February, I am hoping for a real honest to goodness snowfall.
Maybe a few moments of that magical "time travel."
A little childhood inspiration. . . and most of all, just a touch of the innocence from that time.

Mostly though, I suppose I will be counting the hours til I can return to the reality we have created here. Where magic is the rule and not the exception 7 days a week. Where the outside world rarely encroaches or is allowed in. Where my heart soars with every new turn of the page, even the messy ones. . . and where that little boy finds small magic in every thing he creates, day in and day out. :)

See you all in a few weeks.

nicolas

PS, since I will not be able to post a new work post on the first, below is something I just completed for a custom request. A statue of Ereshkigal, a Sumerian deity that I had never made before. With all the details left to me, I pulled from several of her ancient incarnations including her association with having inspired Hecate (thus the owls) and her role in the underworld.

This work I do, I realize, is a perfect blend of adult/little boy. I "play" often and in turn, am fortunate enough to be able to navigate the adult world of expenses/bills from the work I do as well.

It's a far cry from legos and play dough eh? But the root inspiration, interest and exploration are very much the same as they were all those years ago.

Small Magic - Nostalgia

My dear blog friend Andrea, at Falling Ladies, has begun a monthly collection of stories and experiences of what she has termed as "Small Magic". You can find this month's post by Andrea by clicking HERE

And the original "Finding Small Magic" Post on her Falling Ladies blog is HERE:

I hope you will take a moment and check them out, add your own (even just a link to a picture or a sentence or two is PLENTY! It need not be as wordy as I tend to be. :)

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If you've been following my blog or visiting my shoppes on Etsy over the years, you probably are aware that i am a huge fan, and a fierce protector, of the notion of nostalgia. While my childhood was far from perfect and we all tend to gloss over some of the not-so-great aspects of  our lives, I think many people have a tendency to drift, for one reason or another, back to the past. Especially as we get older. 

For some it's childhood, for others it's college or the early years of their own children's lives. But it seems that, in one way or another, we all tend to find those spaces in the past where we can safely dwell for whatever personal reasons. 

Now, when that nostalgia revolves around childhood. . . well, many adults seem to leave it completely behind or, at the very least, rarely speak about it in and among their adult lives. You may see signs of it in someone's doll collection or Teddy bear Hug. Or in the way they interact with their own children during playtime or in creative endeavors. 

I never let go of that past and I am thankful, every day, that I didn't lose sight of it. 

To be completely honest, most of my life I lived with a foot in two worlds. That of the adult world around me and that of the world of my imagination and childhood. The struggle to maintain both led to a lot of frustration and misunderstandings among friends and family who could not see that I just was not cut out for the "adult" world. I needed every spare hour for my imagination and it was a very solitary pursuit for the most part. I made bad decisions. I tried to reconcile the two worlds in so many ways but, in the end, I always felt that the magical/childhood part of me was suffocating in the adult world. 

Then, after an accumulative series of events, I decided that it was time for a leap of faith. I was going to have to open myself up to the possibilities and ask for guidance as I threw myself and my world completely into the pot. All or nothing. Sink or swim. Betting on childhood, imagination and nostalgia over the adult world I had come to loathe.  Now, don't get me wrong, please, there are people who thrive in the adult world and I am  ever so grateful for them because someone has to keep our world running. . . it just couldn't be me anymore. 

I could tell you a dozen stories of what now seem like moments and instances when "angels" appeared, all within months, to be my guiding lights along the way. I also met Sofie who, without fail, has been the only person I have known in my adult life who didn't ask me to balance the two worlds or question my draw to the past, even though hers was a different experience. Despite that, she reveled in my memories , stories and dreams and explored them WITH me. With complete acceptance. We made the break together. And we changed our entire lives from top to bottom to suit the new life we wanted to have. We didn't expect that the world would accommodate our dreams without being willing to change along with it.

Around that same time as I was in the midst of creating what would become the building blocks of the reclusive, creative world we dwell in now, and of the work you see here that I create, the ghosts of Christmas past came to call. I stumbled upon something that I have held to as being a source of inspiration and light ever since.

During a random internet search laced with nostalgic ideas I found that, not far from where I grew up, there was man in his late 60's who had created a website for the history of little Christmas Putz Houses. Those glittery, magical, cardboard houses many of us remember form under our family trees in childhood. The history of them is fascinating but what I was taken by was that this man, and his love for these houses, was a clear channel to and from his childhood. That he REVERED that time and those memories and that he had found a way to keep it close and invest himself within his passion for it so late in life. 

It was a deeply appreciated thread for me to reach out and hold to.  

And the first thing I read from that web site was this:

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"There is but a very brief window in early childhood for many of us, a period of time that lasts from birth until we are cast from the nest and into school. A time when all about the world is new and good. A time when we are open. A time when we take things in so deeply that they will form us ever after. So we imprint upon the Christmas of that time, and what that was is what it will be for us always. 

I think that is what collecting is all about, especially for those who collect for LOVE and not for sterile speculation. 

This is true of most of the toys and trappings of the holidays. 

Artifacts. 

Actual tangible contact with our own past.

It is true that we forget nothing. The power that an object unseen in decades can have to transport us in mind and spirit back to a specific period or moment of our lives - to unlock long-closed doors in the mansion of our memory - is the true value that it has. We can hold such an object in our hands and know those times were real and welcome back whole parts of who we were into who we are - and let the inner child in each of us out once again to play - to live as part of us and and help us see again through our own "Magic Window"  

You will find that those old objects will take you back in time, but NEVER listen to those sad fools who say that you are "living in the past." We are what we are because of our pasts. Would that we could live in the past at will or at least visit from time to time. But we can bring  those things forward, to live within us as we face the uncertainty of the present and the future. 

Those pasts informed everything that we know so never be ashamed of your nostalgia . . .it was, and is, your reverence for the life you had, the path that you have traveled. -T.H. "Papa Ted" Althof

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Sadly, as a second wake-up call, I soon discovered that Ted Althof was dying, having been diagnosed with cancer just as I was diving in to his website in 2009. I'd never really put ityself in mortality's shoes before that. I always had time. Lots of time I thought. Angels, and small magic, really do come in many, many complex forms. 

What I am left to say is this: I wouldn't dream of asking anyone to be anything other than what and who they are. BUT if  this holiday/yule/solstice season you find yourself feeling silly for daydreaming of the best of your memories as a child, or your best memories WITH a child, please embrace it fully instead. We can't actually go back, I know, but allow yourself that time, that place and those memories to come back in a quiet hour. Indulge them fully. I can't say they'll lead you to a life path like mine but they WILL fill you with a bit of small magic and wonder again. And you might just find that today does not have to be so far from that wonderful memory of yesterday.

Have a wonderful and magical season wherever you are and find that SMALL MAGIC always and in all ways!

And  a special thank you to all of you for coming along on MY nostalgic road-trip, offering your kind words, support and patronage as I built this world I thrive in now. 

nicolas

PS:

If you are interested in Christmas Putz houses and their history, there is an archive of the original Papa Ted's Place website, maintained by fans and friends of Mr Althof after he passed in 2012. They kept it just as it was with only a note stating his passing as an addition. It's a relic of a site. Not slick and "squarespaced". . . but that only adds to it's charm and beauty I think. Great old photos, collections, stories, memories. 

The site is here: Papa Ted's