Woolgathering Animatronic Cryptids 🐛🍃🐑
“In difficult times, organisms find new symbiotic relationships in order to expand their reach. Crisis is the crucible of new relationships.”
– Merlin Sheldrake, Entangled Life
Hello, my fellows.
The readers of this newsletter are quite a creative bunch. You are inspiring folks in a myriad of ways. Thank you to each of you who read this weekly collage!
To be honest, I find you intimidating.
This affects the newsletter in a spectrum of ways, many of them positive, others less so. I am like all the other perfectionists who try to hide their insecurity about sharing the work they make by endlessly fiddling with this phrase, tucking that paragraph, and good heavens! Who put that painting over this section? Does the color palette look like it correlates with the thematic flow?!
None of the themes I have played with for this week have come together according to my standards. You see, (*takes a sip of tea from gilded chinaware glinting in the firelight, then sets it down on the small metal table between our armchairs*) a newsletter named “Loch Ness Robots” should not be heavy on gray, fuzzy wet blanket matters like mortality and emotions.
This place is named after giant animatronic robot actors portraying the anthropomorphic manifestations of ancient cryptids in a sunshine movie production about a battle against the evil cyborg trapeze-artist psychic successor of the mythical wizard Merlin, by gosh and all heck! How may I share the week of reflection after reading this Lenten piece by Anna Hatke entitled Welcome to the Wilderness: A Quarantine Meditation, written in the spring of 2020?
“Silence and listening are great healers of grief – or at least can enable you to enter it. We all have something to grieve now. For the person we once were will be gone on the other end of this.”
—Anna Hatke # (of this absolutely excellent cradle)
Another topic on my mind this week that I have scribbled about in my purple 99¢ spiralbound composition book from the thrift store that houses 60% of a manual for first-time young filmmakers, as well as project idea mind vomit, several outlines for genre films (by genre I mean AU medieval fantasy, obviously), at least three letters that trailed around until they weren’t letters anymore, a to-do list, and I am sure I had a point when this paragraph began that had nothing to do with cheap notebooks.
“Children tend to be really good at self-censorship. They have a pretty good sense of what they are ready for and what they are not, and they walk the line wisely. But walking the line still means you will go past it on occasion. […] I understood that we discovered what our limits were by going beyond them, and then nervously retreating to our places of comfort once more, and growing, and changing, and becoming someone else. Becoming, eventually, adult.”
—Neil Gaiman, The View from the Cheap Seats (What the [Very Bad Swearword] Is a Children’s Book, Anyway?)
For Writers:
I’ve talked about Maryrose Wood here before, but if you are having trouble with your writing, she can help.
Are you a passive writer? How to get unstuck and make stuff up!
Writers get stuck in these two ways. Here’s how to get moving again.
Bonus: the creative process.
Homestead ~ mood board for a short screenplay
“Now, my theory about films is that it’s probably safer to assume that they won’t happen.”
—Neil Gaiman, The View from the Cheap Seats
It is a sweet short film about a lonely young woman and a stray dog.
We plan to film in November.
Here is a playlist.
How to Process Raw Wool
From Wool to Yarn (a practical method for a domestic space)
The Sheep’s Garden (a backyard hippie approach)
And here are my favorite two raw wool documentaries for you:
Wool in the Pyrenees. Dirty wool water to wash manure off of farm clothes? Swishing the fleece in a flowing river like laundry? May we all grow to become at least a little part as cool as these ladies.
Hands: Wool Spinning. Sun-warm drystone walls and bushes to lay the fleece on to dry? Adding vegetable oil or goose fat to wool before spinning it into yarn? Lichen from local rocks as a dye? Simply fabulous.
4 Things from This Week:
The Sea In Between ~ Sailor’s Waltz 🏴☠️
This short film: The Mushroom Huntress
Getting to open a Google Doc and watch a friend write fiction about Things In The Forest 🌘
At the end of this day, or whenever you need it:
put on headphones
lay on the ground
listen to this song from composer James Newton Howard
close your eyes
Quote: 🏹📜🌻
“Earth is Forgiveness School. You might as well start at the dinner table. That way, you can do this work in comfortable pants.”
– Anne Lamott