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 ghosts. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ghosts. 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
Wednesday, May 14, 2014
The Art of Sincerity and Authenticity
Recently I heard someone state that their belief was that "the universe always rewards authenticity and sincerity in our personal and creative work". While that statement did not come as an epiphany or shed any immediate light on my own thoughts, over the last month it has worked itself into my subconscious and I find myself now writing and thinking about it, and how it relates to my life overall, almost daily.
I cannot say or try to describe what that means for anyone else or even where one would begin to follow that path inthemselves, I just know that, looking back acros 40 years of creating, it rings 100% true in my world.
In retrospect, so much of what I tried to do creatively in my 20's and 30's was not quite either of those things. I felt that I had to find my angle, my way in, my one great idea or concept. All the while ignoring the places I truly came from and knew so well in my heart. Also, I totally bought into the idea of my work having to be "grown up" and to project a mature viewpoint or an adult perspective. I'd at least like to say that while I feel the work I created was always sincere, it usually lacked the personal authenticity that I find people most respond to these days with my creative offerings.
What I have come to understand is that I only really began allowing myself to be completely authentic with my work a few years ago and, with that, came the growth and means to now create for a living.
So I have been listing every possible example of this authentic and sincere approach from my life. Trying to follow it back to the roots of my origins and where my best examples of it came from, mapping it like a travelogue.
A polestar for my creative heart.
In 7th grade there was a boy named Timothy Jackson who sticks out in my mind. While may of us were trying so hard to be cooler or to at least not stick out as easy marks to the bullies, Timothy went about his days just being Timothy. He was an A student who never missed school or an assignment. Over that year we grew to become passing friends and we bonded over what I learned was Timothy's free-time passion. Drawing superheroes, super-villains, medieval worlds, spaceships, aliens and then, sort of out of context, all out army battles on regular lined notebook paper. Stick figure soldiers mostly populated those but the time was put into complex and well-thought-out landscapes, waponry, castles, fortresses, space stations and alien worlds with detailed terrain, battle simulations and situations. I had noticed Timothy often drawing something when he was done with class assignments. . . and at lunch . . . and at assemblies. . . and in homeroom. . . and after school in the library. He was far too smart and too much of a loner to be bullied and too nerdy to be "cool". He was invisible, untouchable, an alien himself to most.
Of course, looking back, he was the coolest kid of all in hindsight.
As we became friends, I took to sharing in this drawing with him and, for most of that year, we were always comparing images and battles waged. We lived too far apart to get together out of school but we found time during the week to share ot drawings and great epic stories told on paper. In 8th grade we shared just one class and then, on different buses sent across town to a school of 3000 kids for high school, we rarely saw each other. But the impression, as I now am understanding, was left just the same.
He is one of the few people I recall clearly from that time that I have nothing but love for in my heart's memory. Authentic. Sincere. Just Timothy being himself every moment. Lost in what I now call a "paracosm".
When I return home, as I did last year for a few days, I can't help but go by the old school which is closed and listed for sale now. The neighborhood is just a shell of what it once was in it's heyday.
The old soda fountain pharmacy. Gone
Steel Mill. Gone.
The old homemade Apple Butter ad painted on the side of the brick post office, Gone.
The little market. Gone.
Five and Dime. Gone.
The Hot sausage sandwich shop. Gone.
Library. Gone. . . well, moved. But no longer in the old gothic brick building that made it a welcoming and timeless place.
An abandoned school is a haunting sight. Sit on those steps and close your eyes and it seems like there is the echoes of laughter and nervous chatter on the wind. So many impressions left behind on those playgrounds along the way.
So much of it seems like a blur. two years in that middle school with so few friends and each day, for the most part, an eye on the clock waiting to be done for the day so I could head home to MY paracosm and my own world of creation. My own authenticity.
It's really only now, all these years later that I am thinking back and realizing how few people I knew then that were living in authenticity and sincerity then. School years are usually about anything but as we try so hard to grow up so fast and become. . . what exactly?
All I can say is that everything I do today. All that you see in my shops and in my work is drawn from those early days exploring my own inner world and creating this paracosm that I have returned to. That I thrive in.
And I just want to add that authenticity and sincerity are not just about creative work of course.
My grandfather, during those two years of middle school. and all four years of high school, rose every day at 4 a.m. (as he had done for 35 years for his job at the the steel mill) to make sure I had breakfast before school. During the middle school years, since the school was just three blocks away, I'd walk home each day at lunch, which he always had waiting for me upon arrival.
That, in my memory, is about the most devoted example of sincerity and authenticity as I can show. That was who he was to his core.
I hope all of you are exploring and expressing and embracing what is natural, sincere and authentic in your own souls. FInding it in your past or present and carrying it with you into the future.
It will, undoubtedly, serve you well.
xo
nicolas
I cannot say or try to describe what that means for anyone else or even where one would begin to follow that path inthemselves, I just know that, looking back acros 40 years of creating, it rings 100% true in my world.
In retrospect, so much of what I tried to do creatively in my 20's and 30's was not quite either of those things. I felt that I had to find my angle, my way in, my one great idea or concept. All the while ignoring the places I truly came from and knew so well in my heart. Also, I totally bought into the idea of my work having to be "grown up" and to project a mature viewpoint or an adult perspective. I'd at least like to say that while I feel the work I created was always sincere, it usually lacked the personal authenticity that I find people most respond to these days with my creative offerings.
What I have come to understand is that I only really began allowing myself to be completely authentic with my work a few years ago and, with that, came the growth and means to now create for a living.
So I have been listing every possible example of this authentic and sincere approach from my life. Trying to follow it back to the roots of my origins and where my best examples of it came from, mapping it like a travelogue.
A polestar for my creative heart.
In 7th grade there was a boy named Timothy Jackson who sticks out in my mind. While may of us were trying so hard to be cooler or to at least not stick out as easy marks to the bullies, Timothy went about his days just being Timothy. He was an A student who never missed school or an assignment. Over that year we grew to become passing friends and we bonded over what I learned was Timothy's free-time passion. Drawing superheroes, super-villains, medieval worlds, spaceships, aliens and then, sort of out of context, all out army battles on regular lined notebook paper. Stick figure soldiers mostly populated those but the time was put into complex and well-thought-out landscapes, waponry, castles, fortresses, space stations and alien worlds with detailed terrain, battle simulations and situations. I had noticed Timothy often drawing something when he was done with class assignments. . . and at lunch . . . and at assemblies. . . and in homeroom. . . and after school in the library. He was far too smart and too much of a loner to be bullied and too nerdy to be "cool". He was invisible, untouchable, an alien himself to most.
Of course, looking back, he was the coolest kid of all in hindsight.
As we became friends, I took to sharing in this drawing with him and, for most of that year, we were always comparing images and battles waged. We lived too far apart to get together out of school but we found time during the week to share ot drawings and great epic stories told on paper. In 8th grade we shared just one class and then, on different buses sent across town to a school of 3000 kids for high school, we rarely saw each other. But the impression, as I now am understanding, was left just the same.
He is one of the few people I recall clearly from that time that I have nothing but love for in my heart's memory. Authentic. Sincere. Just Timothy being himself every moment. Lost in what I now call a "paracosm".
When I return home, as I did last year for a few days, I can't help but go by the old school which is closed and listed for sale now. The neighborhood is just a shell of what it once was in it's heyday.
The old soda fountain pharmacy. Gone
Steel Mill. Gone.
The old homemade Apple Butter ad painted on the side of the brick post office, Gone.
The little market. Gone.
Five and Dime. Gone.
The Hot sausage sandwich shop. Gone.
Library. Gone. . . well, moved. But no longer in the old gothic brick building that made it a welcoming and timeless place.
An abandoned school is a haunting sight. Sit on those steps and close your eyes and it seems like there is the echoes of laughter and nervous chatter on the wind. So many impressions left behind on those playgrounds along the way.
So much of it seems like a blur. two years in that middle school with so few friends and each day, for the most part, an eye on the clock waiting to be done for the day so I could head home to MY paracosm and my own world of creation. My own authenticity.
It's really only now, all these years later that I am thinking back and realizing how few people I knew then that were living in authenticity and sincerity then. School years are usually about anything but as we try so hard to grow up so fast and become. . . what exactly?
All I can say is that everything I do today. All that you see in my shops and in my work is drawn from those early days exploring my own inner world and creating this paracosm that I have returned to. That I thrive in.
And I just want to add that authenticity and sincerity are not just about creative work of course.
My grandfather, during those two years of middle school. and all four years of high school, rose every day at 4 a.m. (as he had done for 35 years for his job at the the steel mill) to make sure I had breakfast before school. During the middle school years, since the school was just three blocks away, I'd walk home each day at lunch, which he always had waiting for me upon arrival.
That, in my memory, is about the most devoted example of sincerity and authenticity as I can show. That was who he was to his core.
I hope all of you are exploring and expressing and embracing what is natural, sincere and authentic in your own souls. FInding it in your past or present and carrying it with you into the future.
It will, undoubtedly, serve you well.
xo
nicolas
Friday, June 8, 2012
Second Skin
"You mean you don't want any of them?" my mother asks, at least semi annually.
She has taken out the shoebox of old photos and cards again.
A semi annual ritual though not one in accord with any changing of seasons or certain anniversaries.
"No, none. . . thank you." I respond
Semi annually
I have never been one for the taking of or keeping of photographs.
As long as I can remember, I never found myself wanting to look into polaroid frames of the past.
At least not ot when the image I would be looking at was myself
This is not a preference derived from avoiding shadows
I had a most wonderful childhood
The images my mother keeps are, I know, happy and light
A family history unstained
She keeps them, I have supposed, to quell her age-old fears that she was the reason I moved far away
That she was somehow a faulty mother
It's much simpler than that though
I do not want to look into those eyes staring from the box.
My eyes
At ten
At thirteen
At fifteen
I am afraid of what I might see there
I am afraid of the sign of a secret separation
While others often keep photographs as markers of their youth and pull them out, or up, to remind themselves of what once was, or what could have been, I tend to walk side by side with my past
Always keeping close to that boy
Of ten
Of thirteen
Of fifteen
He is with me in every way
As much a part of me now as then.
So close that
Sometimes I think of him as a second skin
And I know it can be so easy
To dissolve that part of ourselves into a living, time-line memory
Instead of doing away with the apparitions of adulthood
The ones which keep us stacked in the cardboard shoe boxes
Filed under "Yesterday"
While we struggle daily
Just to breathe and
To find a way home
Again
nicolas hall - 2012
She has taken out the shoebox of old photos and cards again.
A semi annual ritual though not one in accord with any changing of seasons or certain anniversaries.
"No, none. . . thank you." I respond
Semi annually
I have never been one for the taking of or keeping of photographs.
As long as I can remember, I never found myself wanting to look into polaroid frames of the past.
At least not ot when the image I would be looking at was myself
This is not a preference derived from avoiding shadows
I had a most wonderful childhood
The images my mother keeps are, I know, happy and light
A family history unstained
She keeps them, I have supposed, to quell her age-old fears that she was the reason I moved far away
That she was somehow a faulty mother
It's much simpler than that though
I do not want to look into those eyes staring from the box.
My eyes
At ten
At thirteen
At fifteen
I am afraid of what I might see there
I am afraid of the sign of a secret separation
While others often keep photographs as markers of their youth and pull them out, or up, to remind themselves of what once was, or what could have been, I tend to walk side by side with my past
Always keeping close to that boy
Of ten
Of thirteen
Of fifteen
He is with me in every way
As much a part of me now as then.
So close that
Sometimes I think of him as a second skin
And I know it can be so easy
To dissolve that part of ourselves into a living, time-line memory
Instead of doing away with the apparitions of adulthood
The ones which keep us stacked in the cardboard shoe boxes
Filed under "Yesterday"
While we struggle daily
Just to breathe and
To find a way home
Again
nicolas hall - 2012
Thursday, May 10, 2012
Summer Shadows - Poem
To be given the task at 11 or 12
Of filling the gas tank of the old lawnmower
As the warm July sun dropped its late shadows across the oil field
Or to pull the wet leaves from a gutter catch 10 feet off the ground
Or to clean the paint brushes in an old Folgers can filled with turpentine
All under watchful, trusting and loving eyes
It's these little things I miss
The devil is in the details they say
But so then are the angels
And I hope I am as surrounded by them on my last days
As I am today
The memories we've stashed away
Between those long, heroic summer shadows
Often reach back for us
A beacon for the seasons ahead
~nicolas hall 2012
Of filling the gas tank of the old lawnmower
As the warm July sun dropped its late shadows across the oil field
Or to pull the wet leaves from a gutter catch 10 feet off the ground
Or to clean the paint brushes in an old Folgers can filled with turpentine
All under watchful, trusting and loving eyes
It's these little things I miss
The devil is in the details they say
But so then are the angels
And I hope I am as surrounded by them on my last days
As I am today
The memories we've stashed away
Between those long, heroic summer shadows
Often reach back for us
A beacon for the seasons ahead
~nicolas hall 2012
Friday, February 10, 2012
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
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
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