It is said, that if you look hard enough between the leaves of the trees and the cracks in the pavement, you will see a land of wonder and magic, of twirly things and swirly things and smiles and cuddles. It is officially known as The Land of WooWooShinySprinkles but the people who know just call it KatWorld.
The fair Queen Kat of WooWooShinySprinkles had a magical life. Everywhere she went she saw sunshine and sparkles, her loyal subjects loved her and every day she woke up in her princessly bed, with sheets of muslin and rugs of fur-lined gold, said hello to the sun, donned her multicoloured robes and danced through the day at her wee little shop, right, smack bang in the middle of the land.
She was a good and fair queen and very capable. The land of WooWooShinySprinkles was not very big and it's major currency was dreams and ideas, but the palace's pantry was full, she managed the kitchen, the land's coffers, the upkeep of the grounds and the palace gardens, and all her loyal subjects had what they needed to live comfortably. People would come from far and wide to ask for help and various boons. These she granted with a smile and as a result, she was kept very, very busy banging in nails, fixing lawnmowers and all sorts of things.
She would sit on her throne and visit with the populace, accepting their gifts and presenting them with gifts of her own. She was as happy as any queen could possibly be and while many of her subjects would mention in passing that every happy queen deserves a worthy king she would laugh and say,
'Fearest not, oh loyal subject! I doth ponder this, upon occasion and I vow, I needst not a king?! What happiness could a king provide for me that I doth not have at the present? None. For I have thou and thou and thou and thou art all I needest.'
And this the queen vowed and declared and truly believed for she truly felt that she had everything she could possibly wish for.
Suitors came from far and wide to woo her and claim the throne by her side (or rather, out the back in the shed, under the boxes behind the piano), but to one and all she said,
'In truth, thou art lovely, but I doth have no wish for a king. Have a look in the land up the road - you're sure to find someone nice there.'
Until one day.
One day, when the sun was laughing in the sky and the birds were serenading the flowers in her garden, a funny little man happened by.
Odd of appearance, with curly hair, a grumpy face and a largish kind of nose, he was dressed in coloured tights, a rather strange hat and tap shoes. He stopped at her throne, spoke to her briefly in passing and then was gone. Poof! Just like that.
She thought not much of it at the time - she had many strange and wonderful visitors every day and was used to it. Little did she know, however that the odd little man was actually a powerful wizard who was just very, very tired and didn't like people very much.
AND little did she know that the seed had been planted, the spell had been cast and she was soon to be his, for he had apparently decided that he wanted her and the powerful wizard always got what he wanted.
He just needed to get some sleep first.
Slowly but surely his spell began to work. She started to see him everywhere and she soon realised that underneath the grumpy face was a beautiful smile, a sharp wit and a closet full of dressups. Now, any queen worth her salt (whatever that means...) loves a good dressup, and from that exact moment, she knew that he was the one for her.
They slept in his cave and played in her wee shop together every day and made lots of magical things. He told her stories, fed her and made her laugh. He began to teach her how to do magic. He showed her how much fun it is to fly on two wheels. She gave him cuddles and let him hang out in her really cool shop.
Eventually, though, the wee shop seemed too small to make everything that they wanted to make, so together they cast a spell and created a bigger, even more amazing castle that they could live and play in as well.
Spell after spell was cast as he gave her everything she ever wished for and she gave him lots of cuddles and said thank you a lot.
And they both lived happily ever after.
The End
Ok, well, obviously it's not the end because what would be the point of having a blog...and that's not really the whole story – it's just part of my fairy story...or maybe one fairy story in a collection of them and it's the one that I'm living in, now.
This story isn't really about me and the wizard, it's about me and about how I got to the point where I feel like I've got something to write about.
It's about the struggle to get from fairystory dreams in an ordinary life to fairystory reality and about the fact that for fairytales to exist the mundane has to exist also. It's about juggling and walking the tightrope between everyday and magic.
I was talking to my 20 year old son the other day and he was saying that there seems to be one thing that he's missing and if he could just figure out what that one thing was, that one step he needed to take, he'd have his life sorted.
It's a conversation I've been on the other side of many, many times and I realised as I was listening to him talk that it's taken 20 odd years, but I have finally done the one thing.
And I still don't know what it is.
As you know, by now, I'm an artist – have been for about twenty years.
I am also a mother, domestic goddess, home administrations director, part time woowoo consultant in a local crystal shop and owner of a lovely but ever so slightly neurotic dog called Fysher.
I do commission work for domestic and corporate spaces and have just finished work on my biggest ever commission for a new medical centre.
I have my own little art gallery in a premier seaside suburb in Adelaide where I exhibit my work and the work of other artists. I've set it up as a working gallery and have 2 or 3 artists in residence who use the space for their work in return for keeping it open to the public.
It's a beautiful little place that looks like it's been picked up from a street in Paris and dropped in the middle of Glenelg, so there are plans afoot to merge gallery, artists cooperative and coffee shop into 21sq metres of space.
What you didn't know, is that in the last two years I have gone from dreaming big dreams and making big plans that I never actually did anything about to having those dreams and a few extra ones that I hadn't thought about, come knocking on my door and moving in, in the space of a few short months.
I've gone from painting in my loungeroom, spare room, bedroom, shed or carport to having a real studio that I only have to share with one person. For years I've painted the odd picture for the odd person, given most of my artwork away and fit my arts and crafts hobby around a real job. Now, suddenly, it IS my real job.
Over the years I've been given opportunities to do this and I've not taken them, whether it's been because I haven't felt good enough, haven't known where to start or it's just seemed all too big, all too good to be true. For 20 years I've been suffering from ACS (more on that later), so I've done nothing.
My question is...why are things different this time?
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