“Raindrops”, an illustration that I am using for my publication’s logo, 10” h x 12” w, colored pencil on paper, © 2020 by Chas Wyatt
You have stumbled across this publication somehow and are wondering what it is about. Mainly, it will be stories about my life experiences, although I will also throw in fictional stories from time to time and maybe poetry and prose, as the inclination and creative muse strikes.
To have a better understanding of the publication, therefore, I feel it is important to know something about the author of the publication. I am both, an artist and a writer. I feel both to be deeply intertwined and as my art has a narrative element, my stories also paint pictures with words.
I grew up in a small logging town in the Pacific Northwest in the early 1970’s and became deeply immersed in the counter-culture of the times. (Picture, if you will, a long-haired hippie selling underground newspapers in the high school cafeteria of a redneck logging town).
My mother was descended from Ireland and my Great Grandmother was from Scotland. My Great Grandmother traveled to Oregon on a wagon train and had eleven children. My Grandfather homesteaded 3,700 acres on Mary’s Peak (the highest mountain in the Oregon coast range), where he built a log cabin. In addition to farming, he was also an engineer and taught classes in the first college in Benton County. My Grandmother taught piano and accompanied silent movies in theatres during the silver age of cinema.
She wrote a song about Mary’s Peak, using the native name, “Tcha Teemanwi”, which translates as “place where spirits dwell”. Young braves would be sent to the summit of the mountain on vision quests.
Mary’s Peak, or “Tcha Teemanwi”, Oregon
One of my ancestors was the court poet to Henry the VIII, Sir Thomas Wyatt, until he fell out of favor with the king and was locked in the same tower as Anne Boleyn. His likeness can be seen in the opening scene of the 1998 film, “Elizabeth I”, starring Cate Blanchett, where he is being burned at the stake with other miscreants.
So now you know something about the background of the author and many more aspects will be revealed as my stories unfold. I feel that every human being is multi-faceted and would like to summarize with the following quote;
“The longer I live, the more I am satisfied of two things: first, that the truist of lives are those that are cut rose-diamond-fashion, with many facets answering to the many-planed aspects of the world about them; secondly, that society is always trying in some way or other to grind us down to a single flat surface. It is hard work to resist this grinding-down action.” ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes, “The Professor at the Breakfast-Table”, 1859.
Please join me on this “Narrative Sojourn” ~ Chas Wyatt.