The 180 between the soft nothing of December and the hard everything of January has always felt a little jarring. I’m never sure how to rev up this engine and get back into all the projects I left on the doorstep on December 23rd.
This morning I started to dust off an idea I had in late December, and it felt like a good way to get back into the artistic spirit would be to share how an idea begins in real time. I love reading about people’s work processes:
Georgia O’Keefe
“My pleasant disposition likes the world with nobody in it.”
….and rituals:
Louis Bourgeois
She started every morning with a cup of tea and jelly “straight out of the jar”.
And so I present a version of my process, or how my brain goes from nothing (December/no ideas) to everything (January/ideas).
Caveat, dear reader, this substack will not end with me coming up with a brilliant idea, but just with the end of my work day.
December 28
In my last post, I wrote about the pagan god Janus, and how he had two faces : one face looking to what is behind and with one face looking toward what lies ahead. And then, to illustrate that idea, I drew these mice.
This led to the idea to write a children’s book about two mice, one who can see the past, and one who can see the future. A version of Country Mouse and City Mouse but for time. The December version of me, soft and round and full of mulled wine, thought this idea had absolutely no holes and would basically write itself.
January 2nd
Raviv and I sat at a sushi restaurant, I am still soft and round but far more sleepy and I tell him about my idea.
"Perhaps the mouse from the past could plant seeds, Raviv, for the mouse in the future, who is surrounded by flowers.”
Raviv says that while that is a very nice idea, it is not a story about two mice who can see the past and future, but rather a story about a mouse that lives in the past, and a mouse that lives in the future. I start to see the holes. I say perhaps I need to rewatch The Lakehouse. Raviv says yes, always, but also points out that that is also a story about a mouse who lives in the past (Keanu Reeves) and a mouse who lives in the future (Sandra Bullock).
I take a bite of sushi and say actually, you know what, this idea is too complicated, never mind.
January 3rd
I wake up, put on some semblance of a bra but remain in my pajamas because it is raining, make coffee with a sprinkling of cinnamon on top, do 22 minutes of stretches because I have decided that this year I would like to be able to do the splits, and as I am stretching, I remember that one of my favourite storytelling hacks is repurposing an existing narrative. Most importantly, when it is done in teen dramas:
Of course I have already mentioned Country Mouse and City Mouse, so I begin my research there. The original Aesop’s Fable tells of a city mouse visiting their country mouse cousin and scoffing at their lowly lifestyle. The country mouse then visits the city mouse, and while they live in the lap of luxury eating fancy food, they are also chased by a cat, and the moral of the story is:
"I'd rather gnaw a bean than be gnawed by continual fear.”
Too bloody right country mouse!
While this is a lovely energy for a tale of two places, I didn’t immediately pursue this approach for a tale of two times. I remembered how in Aymara culture they believe the past is in front of them and the future is behind them and subsequently worry less about making plans, because they can’t see the future. I personally would rather be a past mouse than a future mouse, gnawing on beans instead of being gnawed on by continual fear, but I didn’t want the story to be that binary, I wanted to embrace the goodness of how both the past and future can feel.
Then I stumbled upon Beatrix Potter’s version of the story, The Tale of Johnny Town-Mouse (1918).
In this she inverted the order of the visits, with the country mouse going to the city first, being frightened by a cat and disliking the food. Returning the visit later, the town mouse is frightened of the rain, the lawnmower and the danger of being stepped on by cows. The story concludes with the reflection that tastes differ.
I found the idea of the city mouse fearing the rain and being stepped on a delightful twist. Perhaps the future mouse could warn the past mouse about oncoming rainstorms. But wait… would it be the past mouse warning the future mouse? Or…
Oh dear, more holes.
But never-mind that now, we’re not filling holes just yet, we’re still making them!
I remembered that was not the first time I have drawn these mice. They were first created for another project that I’m working on with Jack Pendarvis. Here they are in their original iteration:
And just like in their drawing above they are facing in different directions.
Or as one could look as it:
The Past shouting into…
The Future.
Beatrix’s Potter’s version of country mouse and city mouse warmed my cockles. When I looked up the etymology of warming ones cockles I found that:
The term warm the cockles of one’s heart dates back to the mid-1600s, a time when scientific texts were often written in Latin. The Latin term cochleae cordis means ventricles of the heart, and most probably, the word cochleae was corrupted as cockles.
On the same page, I found a whole list of other interesting questions people had asked. One of which was:
Which made me think of time, and the quality of past and future. The past has always felt a little more clear to me, and the future a little more hazy. Or:
Past = Mist: If visibility is reduced but it is still greater than 1000 metres it's a mist
Future = Fog : if it is less than 1000 metres then it's a fog
We’re back on weather!
Still from Pepper and the Fog from Summer Camp Island
Then I remembered watching the Mind Explained episode on memory and learning that the same brain regions are used for both imagining the future and remembering the past. If you lose the part of you that doesn’t remember the past you no longer think or hope for the future. Is this anything?? For our little mice?
I…. I have nothing.
But it did spark a memory of my favourite scene in movie history - when Carol Channing sings “Jam tomorrow, jam yesterday, but never ever jam today” in the 1985 live action “Alice in Wonderland.” In the book, the White Queen offers Alice "jam every other day" as an inducement to work for her, but the kicker is that the jam days are yesterday and tomorrow and never ever today. Louis Bourgeois would not be pleased about that system.
While I have always loved Jam Tomorrow, I have never thought to look up it’s origins:
This is a pun on a mnemonic for the usage of the Latin word iam (formerly often written and pronounced jam), which means "at this time", but only in the future or past tense, not in the present (which is instead nunc "now").
This warmed the cockles of my brain so much that I had to go get a coffee and look at my phone for a bit.
I came back showered and wearing a proper bra and began thinking about mythology. Pollux and Castor, twins from Greek mythology, were often referenced in the Summer Camp writers room when we would talk about Susie and Ramona. The story goes that, “they were so fond of each other that when fate decreed one of them must die and only one be immortal, they decided to share immortality between them.” The two dwell on heaven and earth, and when Pollux goes to one, Castor goes to the other, so that they are never together, but they can both go on living. They are now known as the twin stars, Gemini.
This is just the kind of devastating storytelling I can get behind.
I moved on to researching deities of time and wrote down the details that spoke to me.
Ḥeḥ also known as Huh. The personification of infinity or eternity in the Ogdoad in ancient Egyptian religion. His name originally meant "flood", referring to the watery chaos that the Egyptians believed existed before the creation of the world. This deity is also known as the "god of millions of years".
Ikenga has a lot of similarities to Janus! A horned Alusi found among the Igbo people in southeastern Nigeria, Ikenga is a two-faced god, with one face looking at the old year while one face looks at the new year.
And then I stumbled on this one:
The three Ursitoare in Romanian mythology, are supposed to appear three nights after a child's birth to weave their fate. This is still a tradition that remains to this day. In Transylvania, the godmother of the child's must put some sifted flour, salt, bread and a coin on some white canvas, somewhere in the newborn's room, usually near the window. If after three days and three nights the flour has traces on it, the parents will know that fate fairies visited the child.
This reminded me of Sleeping Beauty, and the three fairies that come to visit Aurora with three gifts, Flora, Fauna and Merriweather:
When I looked up Ursitoare images I found this:
I couldn’t find any definitive writing on whether Sleeping Beauty and the three Ursitoare are linked, but they both have three fairies, weaving, thread….if anyone out there knows if there’s a connection please do share in the comments.
I went on to learn about The Norns which reminded me of the expression Got the Morbs which is Victorian slang that describes a person afflicted with temporary melancholy or sadness. The Norns are also three deities from Norse Mythology who spin the threads of fate for a newborn baby.
The origin of the name norn is uncertain; it may derive from a word meaning "to twine" and which would refer to their twining the thread of fate. Bek-Pedersen suggests that the word norn has relation to the Swedish dialect word norna (nyrna), a verb that means "secretly communicate". This relates to the perception of norns as shadowy, background figures who only really ever reveal their fateful secrets to people as their fates come to pass.
The three Nordic deities represent the past present and future:
Urdr, Norn of the past: derived from the past tense ("that which became or happened")
Verdandi, Norn of the present: derived from the present tense of verða ("that which is happening")
Skuld, Norn of the future: derived from the Old Norse verb skulu, "need/ought to be/shall be"
I of course immediately thought of Scrooge!!! Our December hero. It felt like kismet to discover three fates who weave the threads of time for a newborn baby when we had just spent December exploring three ghosts who try to change the fate of a very old baby, Ebenezer Scrooge.
As i’m all about cyclical living right now this felt like a good place to stop for today. Thank you for joining me as I dust off my winter brain.
Wow this newsletter never fails to be one of the best parts of my week!! love the pollux/castor story and it sort of parallels the titans Gaia and Uranus who were both born of the pre-primeval deity Chaos. Wife and husband, but confined to their individual realms aka the earth and the sky– only to ever meet at the horizon, just out of reach of one another (so not quite as long distance as the twins lol).
Some further lore I learned while fact-checking myself on this, were that their separated existences were still meant to act dependently on one another (instead of just being in two realms with 0 contact, it's more like just barely out of reach), which i found very sweet.
"Uranus, the heaven, was believed to have united himself in marriage with Gaia, the earth; and a moment's reflection will show what a truly poetical, and also what a logical idea this was; for, taken in a figurative sense, this union actually does exist. The smiles of heaven produce the flowers of earth, whereas his long-continued frowns exercise so depressing an influence upon his loving partner, that she no longer decks herself in bright and festive robes, but responds with ready sympathy to his melancholy mood."
I wish Pollux and Castor could be out here influencing each other's day-to-day! Maybe they play gamepigeon games back and forth to keep each other's spirits up <3
I hope this isn't too personal, but I am curious - what is the difference between "some semblance of a bra" and "a proper bra"? Old vs new? Sport vs underwire? Worn vs freshly laundered?