My Rabbit
I've developed a habit of sharing the things I love with my grandfather. We live a distance apart and don't visit each other often, but when I do visit, I like to bring books. A year or two ago, I started him on the journey towards completing my favorites series: a manga called Pandora Hearts. Seeing as he prefers books with pictures anyway, it suited him well.
The last time I visited, I left him with my favorite volume of the series. My grandfather isn't particularly well versed in the ways of electronic communication, so waiting until next I saw him to discuss the book was arduous. It was as a means to vent that restless, as well as thank him for putting up with my interests, that I decided to create 3-dimensional representations of a pair of stuffed rabbits that were central to the book's plot.
The rabbit was certainly not the most complex clay model I had attempted. The first, which I made for myself, was completed over the course of a single night. The second was more difficult. The difficulty I largely attribute to this: a lack of inspiration.
By virtue of being a new form, the first attempt had forced me to invent new techniques to counter new problems. The bow was especially difficult- it required me to flatten a section of clay until it was thin enough to fold like fabric. On multiple occasions I rolled the clay too thin, and the bow tore apart.
Problems like this were just as, if not more daunting the second time around, now that I knew what to expect but lacked the fresh resolve to attack them. Given the relative lack of quality of the second rabbit, I decided that the sculpture ultimately wasn't enough to represent the sentiment wished to convey to my grandfather.
Thus, I staged am impromptu photo-shoot in my backyard. The photo above is of the first rabbit I made. While the second rabbit isn't visible in this particular picture, it is symbolically represented by the rabbit’s reflection in the mirror behind it. The size of the objects around the rabbit, as well as the angle at which I took the photo, are meant to imply that the rabbit is larger than it is. Though the figure I made was only about the size of my thumb, I wanted to test how convincingly I could represent it as a real stuffed rabbit.
I added a sepia filter and, the following day, borrowed a small printer from my mother to turn the set of photos I had taken into stickers. I presented these, as well as my second rabbit figure, to my grandfather upon on our next visit.
My Birthplace
Once before a time, or place, there was ripple. Its name was Pythia, the first mother, and the greatest mother. She was not darkness, she was not light. She was a tilt and a pull, the slightest crease in a mirror pond. Slowly, the current pulled toward her. This world was so silent that the slightest whisper rang in the grain of all things. By the time this happened, it had always happened, and always would. Such was the nature of change before time.
Rassilon was perhaps the first child to untangle his mind from Pythia's, and he unhappened her with the help of the two other founders. Her loyal ones fled to the sister world Karn. Not before, but maybe slantways, the last curse fell from Pythia's mouth like a stone and rippled and turned into a current that said no lord of Rassillon’s world would ever be able to have children.
Rassilon created a new layer of the world and named it time, which he strung in a straight golden thread. He anchored the thread and declared himself it's master, and his followers the protectors of the web. The laws he wrote then would become the laws that controlled life itself, unchangeable. One of the founders died while making a star. The Other would throw himself into a loom to escape Rassillon’s new world. For eons this kingdom lay beyond where our night sky is, too far away to see. In spite of Pythia's curse, Rassilon would spin new lords of time by plucking patterns from himself, and setting them in machines called looms.
The highest city was split among the great houses, each loyal to Rassilon, each holding a loom and an allowed number of children. These children were born as large as the grown ups, and so their rooms would shift to make them feel smaller inside them. The houses of the great families were spongy and alive, but could only talk to the mind of one keeper, who had to stay with them always or burn. The houses were mad when betrayed, and hungry for those who betrayed the family. Always they were endlessly bigger on the inside than the outside, a sink through layers. The time ships were alive in the same way. At their center was a nothing, whirlpool removed from the stream, a little free from the rules. This thing was a rip in a crease of the Web that drank even light.
With every knot, Rassilon smoothed the thread. When gods were born who might grow to break it, he broke them before they were born. He won the forever war against the Yssgeroth, which sucked the life from whole worlds and were twice their size in all directions. Other intelligent species rose up, and even as their eyes and minds made solid Rassillon’s chosen laws, they were cut loose, or forced to fight games to the death for entertainment. Those who argued against him were unborn, after and until the day he was overthrown like Pythia by the sisters of Karn, and trapped in stones.