January 2008                        Issue 11

  "The lesson that life constantly enforces is 'Look underfoot.' You are

always nearer to the true sources of your power than you think. The lure 

of the distant and the difficult is deceptive. The great opportunity is 

where you are. Don't despise your own place and hour. 

Every place is the center of the world."

 -Naturalist John Burroughs

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Aye!  It's a wee spinning doily....

Or, as big D puts it:

animated cookie...er...piece of colored sandpaper...

er... hypnotic doily...

(Kandra's first attempt at animation-)

(alright, so it's slightly obnoxious and makes you dizzy- hey- 

I just had to see if I could make the spiral go round and round...)

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The Spiral Doilies in their dormant mode.

Yes, these are non-active doilies...usually they just lay there peacefully.

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Ah...January...the Beginning....

A fresh new year.

Another round. Beginning begins again.

Another chance... for something already there to deepen...

For something to be old and new at the same time...

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So what has Kandra been doing on these cold winter nights?

Well. One night she got together with the 
"Yarn Wig Fairy"

and the next morning! Voila! There were 135 yarn wigs on the livingroom floor

nicely arranged in a semi-circle.

Then she started

 painting a mural of the mountains and...

ok, I thought I didn't have a story for this month- but- yes, I guess there is the ghost story...

Tuesday, January 08, 2008 

 The Haunted Bedroom 

Even when we saw pictures of the house, I always saw that room as a guest bedroom- since it has it's own entrance...

but no- oh no- it's the Master bedroom- it's supposed to be MY bedroom- the queen of the house gets the Master bedroom. Great.

Well, I am not sleeping in there.

Sorry, I told Bill- You want to sleep in there, you go ahead, but I am going to sleep in the livingroom.

So he dragged the inflatable mattress into the livingroom, which is where it still is.

It's fine in front of the fireplace. 

What's wrong? Well- I felt it the moment I set foot in that room- something repelled me-

and it was not in the adjoining bathroom with it's friendly lady's walk-in closet-

 no- it was right where the previous owner's bed used to be- there's a stain on the carpet there...

and a brown area on the wall- and this is a pristine house- so what's with the weird stains?

The first time we stayed overnight in the house, we sat on the livingroom floor talking and inflating the bed,

 and I felt an uneasiness when we dragged the bed into that bedroom- a feeling of dread- I could not sleep in that room.

 Bill covered up the stains, but it was no good- he tried washing them out too- whatever it was about those stains, they were permanently there-

the energy of them was disturbing and- still there.

Now, I'll admit, I am not crazy about inflatable mattresses- there is always some level of discomfort with the mattress- but it wasn't just the mattress.

 I tossed and turned and simply could not sleep. I felt repelled... I got up and walked around the house at night, not wanting to go back to bed.

While I was up meandering, I couldn't help thinking about the man who had died-

The previous owners found out on the very day that they closed on this house that the man had cancer.

He died four months later. This was his bedroom.

The whole thing was very sudden and the woman was left a widow. She remained living in the house for three more years. She told us this story herself.

So I am feeling repelled from the bedroom. Although I feel better with the bed out of there, yet I get the impression that Bill thinks that I am just going to "get over it".

And I also realize that it is absurd to think that we can forever sleep in the livingroom.

So...

I wandered around in circles for days and one night I spotted my big drum pushed off in a corner. I picked it up... right then, I knew what I had to do.

 I hit it as hard as I could to let the spirit in the bedroom know I was coming,

(Bill jumped about three inches off of his chair in the kitchen)

and step by step I came nearer and nearer to the bedroom door, emphasizing every step with a real loud pounding on that big old drum.

Well, when I got inside the room, I gave that spirit the old what-for.

The walls resounded with the reverberations of me beating my drum in a startling variety of inspired-by-the-moment rhythms

as I proclaimed the space to be mine.

 The inner shaman came way out and that spirit backed off.

And when I was done, I let that spirit know that the entire vile carpet would be removed and destroyed just as soon as I finished using it for a drop cloth,

and that was when I got a pencil and drew the horizon line all the way around the room, perfectly even with the line of the mountains, as seen through the bedroom windows.

The next day we got the paint.

Sky blue for the sky, and purple-mountains-majesty for the mountains, and I did not stop that night until the entire room was painted blue and purple...

the spirit was drenched with the intensity of my imposition and fled with my pastels at his heels-

yes I DO think it was the man who died- and he has the whole real sky to go to, so he needs to leave my bedroom and move on-

it's healthier for him too...there is no real sense in hanging on to sorrow past a certain point.

Yes, even moldy old spirits consumed with injustice can prosper by releasing negativity.

We will find out when we return to the house in February whether he left for good or just trot-glided on back, but either way, we love our new mural.

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fOOLING AROUND WITH aNIMATION

ah the irresistible lure of simple animations....

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"If you do just a little research, it is going to become evident to you that anyone that ever accomplished anything did not know HOW they were going to do it.

They only knew they were going to do it."

-Bob Proctor

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I saw some animations I liked 

which were mainly about changes in light and texture. 

So, that is what I tried next.

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While I was learning how to make these wee movies

 Blackie laid three eggs in three days. 

This was a big deal around here, since she is an older hen and stopped laying eggs over a year ago.

One day I just found an egg. And then another and another...

In celebration, Blackie's eggs became the subject of my next animation.

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but then

my aspirations turned toward animating the dolls....

New Years Resolution:

As an aspiring Intender...

  ...I will have a growing knack 

for gravitating toward wilder, wetter, more interesting problems.

 More and more, I will be drawn to the kind of gain that doesn't require pain. 

I'll be so alive and awake that I'll cheerfully push myself out of my comfort zone...

in the direction of my personal frontier well before 

I'm forced to do so by divine kicks in the ass....

-  Rob Bresney

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Ah... primitive, strange, and low-budget as it may be...

Presenting  my first  Doll Animation.......

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"Every great and commanding moment in the annals of 

the world is the triumph of some enthusiasm." 

-Emerson

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January Painting:

"The Flats"

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"I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore

 and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, 

whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me."

- Isaac Newton- Statement

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Man On a Journey

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(special order- made January 2008)

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Leo Buscaglia, 

a well-known author in the US once said,  

Love is life. And if you miss love, you miss life. 

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wow. So live with passion, my friends. Til we meet again, 

Kandra Niagra, dollmaker

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Miss Blackie

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last edited 05/17