To perceive the ineffable, to glimpse the unseen.
A word of notice: this is Not going to be my typical (what is typical Nick,eh?) text that sometimes accompanies my creations.
So this is your chance to press that little x at the top of your browser tab and I will be on my way.
Otherwise, come with me on a ride where particles collide & cosmic debris are beginning their journey…
First order of business: Clark, if you are reading this I am suing you for damages and then Ford…and finally you Denise!
Usually after I finish a creation I grab a cup of coffee and I write what I have to offer; today…nope, nothing, nada, zilch!
Apart from…words that are coming from and reside in the Six Sentence Café & Bistro…bakin’ hell!!!
You are laughing eh? All three of you….lol
Be warned friends; when Denise writes that the Six Sentence Strories are addictive…yeah, she is telling the truth – it’s not, I repeat, it is not a publicity gimmick.
She also says, for a hundred plus one times, who said the virtual world isn’t real? True fact, if we are talking about the blog hop she is hosting.
You are feeling lost already eh? Why don’t you drop by Ford’s place to see what lost really means ! ( see what I did there mate? Now you can laugh!)
Wait, wait don’t leave yet…here comes the punch line…get over to Clark’s Wakefield Doctrine and if after reading a couple of posts, you won’t pray to return to my (now) perfectly logical words, I will shave my beard (nah, no way Jose) .
Seriously now, the Doctrine “forms the basis for everything. Need to figure out why people act as they do, why they treat you the way that they do, why they react to stimuli differently? The answer awaits you.”
(whaaat? a WD carry on at inSPIRAtion?!!! Now I am definitely suing your *** )
For these reasons and others that are not to be uttered, here we go… buckle up…let them particles collide!!
Ω
It is time to reintroduce myself…as my gals say (more later) if you want the smoke, be the fire. So what do ya say I skip the usual philosophical musings and cut to the chase? Yes, you say…ok 35007 it is ( loose Clark, loose)!
Hi. Nice to finally meet you. My ID name is Nick, as an artist I am (not) known as Spira, as a (not) writer I venture out the sands of time with me mate Ford The Mage as the Wizard; at the Six Sentence Café & Bistro I can be found (legally) as Nick Windward but everybody call me Nick the Gatekeeper; one of the Seven Proprietors of the SSC&B.
I am 51 (and some change) years old. I died once and came back.
Last week got struck down by lightning, two of them… the first sent me to the other world, the second…well, that remains to be seen.
I had a dog…nope, strike that…my dog Snoopy had a human, me…got poisoned by a GDMFSOB. We now have a new member at the family of the SSC&B, Hūnga.
Been a Physical Therapist for (about) 27 years; then came the economic crash and from 2012 I am trying to reinvent myself as Spira…wait, we are trying to reinvent myself as Spira, me and my Sun & Stars; without her, nothing of what you are witnessing here would be possible.
I have loved and been loved.
I have loved and been taken advantage of, only because I tend to put the interests of those I love before mine ( eh, Clark, do I pass the exam?).
Crashed and burned…got up and started again to try and reach the sky (not as the self improvement gurus speak of it, phht)…literally I mean it.
I l o v e music; any music. As long. It possesses a heart.
I am blessed with very, very few but real friends.
I have said I love you to people and they run away with full afterburner.
I have not said anything, to someone(s) I have never met, yet they know…without me uttering the words.
I like single malt, the smokier the better; I like cigars, cheap, honest cigars.
I love riding my motorcycle.
I have never wrote so many sentences that start with I in all my life…and probably never will again.
I believe myself to be honest and that there is” a reason Nick’s called the Gatekeeper and no, not simply because he’s solid and stoic and as sturdy as the oldest tree in the world, which, by the way, is the Great Basin Bristlecone Pine”.
I am not afraid to die. I do not want to die…yet. But if the Fiddler summons me, I will greet him with a smile (a clarklike one).
Finally, I am not going to proof read this post. If I do, I will most certainly delete it.
Now that I am re introduced, let me say that the old Nick is dead. Gone. What days I have left I am spending them as the 5’12” eruption at the Ellipsis by Monkey3.
Meaning : love if you want – when & as you want, grieve if you want – when & as you want, let it be your song, a song that touches a grave”.
Fine & dandy by us Nick, you say. Where is this going?
Does it have to go where any expectations dictate? I warned you, didn’t I? So, save it for another day. Oh, you are leaving. Too bad (not at all, only the kindred spirits now remain, as it should be).
Before I present you my recent creation, the origins of which you need not to know, I trust that the title Nascent now makes sense, right?
One more thing: Hey Denise,
give Roger and the band some time off (without pay) lol. I got some girls I want you to meet!
Sofia, Matilda, Johanna, Linn come on in. My dear Denise, meet Maidvale .
They will be performing at our SSC&B stage till Sunday (let’s see if Roger acts as a jerk again…if you take him and his band back, that is).
If You Want The Smoke, Be The Fire… damn straight.
39cm x 30cm height, driftwood, clay, sculpted plaster on a piece of marble.
To perceive the ineffable, to glimpse the unseen…
[PS: why for ,ahem… let say 4th of July’s… sake, didn’t I use here the labyrinth prompt word for this week’s Six Sentence Stories…LOL]
You…yes …You, who made it here …Thank you! See ya out there.
inSPIRAtion 
All these names, Nick/Spira/Gatekeeper – I’m easily confused. I found the best way to reinvent myself was to move forward with the things about me I liked, leaving behind the things I didn’t… but I’d always forget something and go back for it. That’s probably one of the reasons I stopped ageing at 24. And I think right now, I have everything with me, even the things I was meant to have left behind… so you can tell I’m a master at reinventing myself. 🤔
I like your creation – it changes before my eyes, I’m intrigued by it.
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Yeah, I hear you. In my case though, with the exception of Nick (which is Nikolaos and has a meaning in Hellenic-yeah, what word hasn’t) the rest found me along the way; and I adopted them; and I loved them. I agree that they are more than enough…but then here comes Tom with his Modern Music …Cave, Nick Cave LOL
Some age, others mature. I like your description of your reinventing mode. I believe that some “scars” are meant to be worn with pride.
“And I think right now, I have everything with me, even the things I was meant to have left behind”…that is a statement worthy of a celebration, the SSC&B style!
Why surprised I am not that you can “see” the prismatic aura?
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Greetings, well for myself I saw faces when I read through this post, many faces. In your written text there were (from my point of view) the faces of SPIRA, namely the face of who you were, then the face of who you are now and finally a face of who/what you hope to become. This third face can be seen in your sculpture gazing up to that sky you mention and the dreams it contains being the driftwood cloud.
You have managed to create art whilst being the art himself (the inSPIRAtion for the art) a perfect symbiosis. You created the art, the art is you and the art shows your face…or maybe the face you let us see.
Finally I have to ask, where did you find that last image of the wizened old galactic space warrior? I swear I thought I was looking at my own reflection!
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Hello there!
That is exactly what I am talking about! Your comment demonstrates clearly the beautiful reality of this virtual interaction.
It is that feeling of two or more people sitting at a table of a low lit Bistro, no agendas, no pumped egos, just discussing, exchanging points of view, enriching each other unawares and sometimes find friendship and comfort therein. And is exactly that FT, Clark took the initiative to manifest as The Six Sentence Café & Bistro inside the realm od Denise’s Six Sentence Stories.
Faces you saw…Symbiosis you say…” You created the art, the art is you and the art shows your face”…damn FT, is early morning – I can’t start drinking that early!
If what you just said isn’t one of the ultimate medals an artist aspires to be awarded, I do not know what is!!
Does a thank you encompass my gratitude? No.
Yet, thank you for sharing here what Nascent whispered to your soul.
Speaking of faces, may I point you (and everyone reading this) to another one, easily missed?
Check closely the last photo, the one before my black and white…if you open it in a big screen or enlarge it, you will see one more face.
Wizened…I like that word. Well, that is me my friend, as of few days ago. 🙂
(galactic space warrior…Ford, are you listening?…)
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Hello again, I took a further look and believe I saw the face deep in the dark shadowy crevice of the upper object – a rather skull-like face. I didn’t see that at first because I only have an 11inch laptop screen and the image initially made me think of an eagle or large bird flying toward the camera, the dark area being the head and the rounded lighter parts being the shoulders of it’s wings.
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I confess to being neither learned or talented in sculpture, and cannot offer any more substantive comment on your work (above) than,
“Damn! How cool it is be to be capable of bending the earth into shapes that not only persist, but whisper back to the viewer secrets they would not otherwise share with the world.”
very cool.
You know, while we’re, (Ford and Denise and the other Proprietors), all in awe of the trajectory of your skill acquisition in the writing, the more I think about the sculpting thing, the less impressed I am. Sure it took you a couple, (as in, like, two fricken Six Sentence Story posts), to find your rhetorical voice.
But …but! even though I don’t know about carving and the molding and such, I do claim to know a little about story-telling. And, at least to this non-artist, a sculpture is a story.
Told in a non-verbal medium.
You apparently are able to take the story from your mind and imagination and translate it into a form that does not speak words or write symbols or communicate in language. At all. In words. Out loud.
What the hell!
To me, the closest example of the difference between writing a story in words and creating a piece of art that engages a viewer would be: the person, who, after observing me typing out a Six Sentence Story then grabbing my keyboard, and holding it up to their ear.
I repeat: damn!
Thanks for the kind words about the Wakefield Doctrine. That by understanding how the other person is relating themselves to the world around them allows us to know more about them than we have any right to is cool enough, but it’s also a lot of fun.
We do, always, offer this warning: ‘If you get proficient enough in the characteristics of the three personality types to see the clarks, scotts and rogers in your day-today world, you might find it impossible to not see the clarks, scotts and rogers in your day-to-day world.
good post, yo
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Clark, my dear friend…how can a driftwood of a man answer to your presence? How?
Maybe if I get some sea waves spray…let us walk then this sandy beach, barefooted.
(will try to maintain corresponding paragraphs)
I am in awe…from the clarity, empathy and intensity of your reaction. Remember that line I wrote about humidity? Well, it has exceeded normal levels.
Your timing…like looking under the Christmas tree and although a gift you have received, there it is, one more!
It is a good place to confess also that neither was I taught anything that could facilitate what you see as manifestations of Spira. Everything springs from inside, specific location unknown. Guessing it was a chained reaction that tried to avert tides of depression after the fall (there is always a catalyst named pain, like it or not).
To this day, I gaze upon the finished creation and I wonder – who the hell made this one?
First it was Ford at To Be Born, I Wanted Not…now you as I tear up…what’s next?…Denise with her Kurt G’s to finish me off?!
Daaaamn!
We are at your ” You apparently…” – what a thought to express…coupled with one of the best metaphors I’ve ever read! Wizard my ass…you are the Wizard!
T H A N K Y O U!!!
In conjunction allow me to share a paragraph by Jung I hoped upon reading to be worthy of someday:
“The creative process, so far as we are able to follow it at all, consists in the unconscious activation of an archetypal image, and in elaborating and shaping this image into the finished work. By giving it shape, the artist translates it into the language of the present, and so makes it possible for us to find our way back to the deepest springs of life. Therein lies the social significance of art: it is constantly at work educating the spirit of the age, conjuring up the forms in which the age is most lacking…to compensate the inadequacy and one-sidedness of the present.”
Hell, you say. When you have the time, take a look ( a huge milestone at my evolutionary journey as an artist) Inferno
And some behind the scenes from the six months I spent in hell, because that is the only way I know to create.
Again, and again…thank you!
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I am hushed…there’s so much here, so much within you…the creative genius which suffers hell and comes through the fire. I fear saying too much…and reveal my ignorance, because I cannot pretend I understand everything you say…but think I get the gist of some of it, sufficient to hush me. I do very much love the sculpture, and perhaps therein lies the soul–which I love from compassion, as a sufferer (and perhaps artist) myself. And just a piece of trivia, my one and only true love was an artist. Thank you for inviting me to this post, a holy place of sorts, where angels fear to tread. I don’t understand everything you say (nor do I understand the Wakefield Doctrine, though I’ve read it and tried to–it’s like Math or Physics to me), but I know enough to be respectful and kind–and I pray God blesses you in ways that blow your mind, the mind and soul of every reinvention.
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And now I am hushed…thank you for trusting and confiding.
Your prayer? …🙏🏼…in silence we meet.
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Thank you, and you’re welcome–there is something strange and good in this place, virtual and full of wonder.
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You’ve inspired a poem/prayer as I bid goodnight, seek sleep–shall I send you the link when it posts? No obligation, only invitation.
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No obligation exists. Tire not, I will see it as it appears.
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It appears you’re Following me, for which I thank you–though I’m NOT about the Stats, trust me…I only want the elite handful who are more or less like-minded spirits, if that makes any sense whatsoever. Translation: I’m choosy about the company I keep, even or maybe especially in the virtual world–of which this group knows is “real”. It’s not snobbery…it’s about “life is short”, my days/energy fall shorter now so I make different/better choices (I hope) in this latter season. Take care, Nephew–I’ll be around later💖
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