Category: Odd Little Stories

AI Art, Odd Little Stories, short stories

My Very Own Opera Star

Michele B. Naquaiya

part 1 ❤️

It was in the old wreck of a house on Railroad Hill when I first fell in love.
He was just right for me. He was 9 and I was 8. I have no idea where
he came from. One day he just appeared in the hallway. It was the 2nd floor.
The hallways in that old tennament were always dark and big had winding stairs
and were scary.

I entered the dark hallway and heard a magical voice. It came from out of
nowhere. I followed the voice to see the boy. He was singing arias songs in Italian. He sang his heart out and it echoed and carried in the hall. He sang one aria after another. He was kind of chubby and he had a big tuft of black hair. When he sang, it sent chills down my spine.

I fell in love and that was it. No other way to say it. He looked at me and nodded and
continued to sing. His arms were outstretched as he hit the high notes. It was as though he was appearing live in a big music hall. I’d say, even being so young, in my great
wisdom, I knew he was headed for stardom.

He didn’t speak much English but I understood enough Italian that his family just moved here. He spent his days checking out different the buildings to see how the accoustics were, and which one was his favorite. He told me he liked the hallways in these old brick buildings.

My imagination ran away and took the keys with it. I saw newspaper headlines in
my young head…Young French girl finds famous Italian singer and they tour the world together. We would tour all the great opera houses in Italy. I imagined they would be
decorated with gold statues, velvet curtains, and curly fancy furniture. We would enjoy our days on the gondolas of Venice, and lunch at lovely cafes.

Our lives would be full of travel and fame. I would wear long dresses and little tierras. His costumes would be fancy trousers and colorful embroidered shirts. He would wear big ties and shiny high boots. It had to be true. Why else could this meeting in a dark hallway make sense.
part 2 😍😭
I am sorry to report that none of these dreams came true. In the end there were only a
few hallway meetings. Sigh. One day he was just gone. I cried inside for a long time.

I am by nature a positive person so even though it was sad at the time, I vowed to make the best of it. There is another world outside of the dark, cold, brick buildings and abandoned factories with busted windows. Real love and a full life can appear out of nowhere. Miracles can happen. There are places and people that pop up from out of nowhere. They meet when and where they least expect it. Someone has a wand to make things happen. It’s as though the globe spins constantly and it meets itself around the corner where it started and then starts all over again. Each time something new and amazing happens. I will never forget the Boy Opera Star whose name I never knew.

AI Art, animals, daily paintings, fantasy illustration, humor, Odd Little Stories, Revising Old Work, storytelling art

Candid Cat Conversations

Michele B. Naquaiya

Cats are smart and independent as we all know. Here are a couple of buddies discussing what they’re going to do today, as well as life in general.

After tea, wanna go out and look for a few birds?
I’ll bet when we get out I can beat you to the gate!
Do the Roberts still live in the old farmhouse? I heard they had mice.
Did you ever wonder what it’s like living in an 18th century Chateaux?
I don’t know about you, but I’m sick of this cartoon life!
six months later ——See???? Piece of cake! I told you we could do it!!!!

We dropped by a few weeks later. Check this out!

fyi: I created this little story with prompts and my cat art. When I started putting it together, I had no idea where it was going. All I knew was I wanted a few different breeds of felines and a window with a window sill that I could cover with different fabrics, and a few outdoor views and weather conditions that told different stories. So the teapots eventually became samovars in France??? Doesn’t bother me. I added the idea and the text of Provence because it’s a dreamy place and Freepix offers cool instant graphics. The images become increasingly sophisticated as the story developed. This little story was created in Freepix AI. You can try it out. I’m getting a feel for it. I think with an extended plot , this could become something kind of precious.

This is my watercolor of Jake and Elroy. Collection of July Schlotman.

Your comments are appreciated and sharing is good too. It’s a new world out there and I’m in because I believe AI can help artists. Even artists like me.👌

AI Art, daily paintings, loving mexico, Odd Little Stories, Pen and Ink Drawing, step by step, how to, Tablet Drawing, whimsy

Overwhelming tmi

Michele B. Naquaiya

Too much information is not good for the creative mind. It blocks, it mocks, it kills free thought. Here is a new work in the making… Lost love teenager in Paris.

Odd Little Stories, storytelling art

White Cat in Italy

Michele B. Naquaiya

One upon a long time ago, this was my sweet white cat. I had never had a cat before and here is the story of how she came to me. My love and I rented a very tiny apartment in New Haven, Ct. It was the home of Yale University and the home of what was WNHC TV at the time. We were both working at the tv station. He was selling time over the phone to New York advertising agencies. I was preparing the logs for the following day. I remember typing the log schedules on a big loud machine that were printed on huge mylar sheets. Sometimes I had to run the logs off for emergency changes. Life events happened: clients would buy drive time slots at a high price and they would get pre-empted if there was a national emergency or other local event important enough to cancel. Then I would scurry the edited logs down to engineering to make sure the announcer could get them on time, and the editor could patch and switch to live broadcasting. It was my then boyfriend’s job to schedule a make good commercial time zone at a compensation price the client would accept. This was a hard and fast moving job and he was great at it. It was around 1965 or ’66.
It was an intense time with an intense atmosphere. We always had a full day and looked forward to relaxing in our tiny apartment. In those days, we had a little square portable tv and we used to enjoy Saturday morning cartoons together. Since it was an attic remodeled as an apartment they put the bathroom in the low end of the flat. When you got one third into the room, the ceiling immediately slanted down pretty steep. Careful not to bump your head getting in an out of the tub.
One Saturday we were just hanging around figuring out what to do wih our free two days. We would most likely go for a walk and buy Italian subs for lunch and maybe eat in the park. I looked out the window to the apartment building across the way.
There was a wire that I remember as a phone or utility wire connecting the two buildings. There she was, a beautiful white cat, very heavily pregnant walking across the adjacent tenament to our building on a skiny wire. I thought I was seeing things but it was true. She kept looking at me and balancing with every step of her four paws, carefully making her way across the skinny wire getting closer and closer. She waddled right into our little apartment with every intension of staying.
How odd, delightful and scarey was this? That night she had kittens on the bathroom rug. I had never seen anything like that. She was the first animal I called “mine”. She was happy to be there. She was not really a guest as she ended up staying with me for another twelve years and she traveled across 2,000 miles with us and we all settled in California.
The Illustration “White Cat in Italy” is how I remember her. Delicate and blue eyed, sweet and a fabulous friend. I created the art in Leonardo AI, thinking of how she would have fit right into a little village in Italy instead of a town in Connecticut.

abstract imagination, Odd Little Stories, patterns

Missing– Found wires from days past

Michele B. Naquaiya

Two years ago or so I gave away a precious collection I had worked hard to acquire. What is so hard about giving away a bunch of old smashed wires you say? When you live in Mexico and walk on cobblestones that are five hundred years old, you have to look down as you carefully put one foot in front of the other. If you don’t, you can fall down. For many of us retired folk, falling can be dangerous, dibilitating and down right dangerous.
I used to do a lot more walking when I first arrived here five years ago. Times have changed. The point is in Mexico people are constantly building. There is construction going on everywhere. Building with concrete, steel, brick and mortar and adobe are a different animal than what I’ve been used to. There is constant pulvo or fine dust that accumulates heavily…everywhere. When did a lot of walking, the combination of looking down yielded a new sort of vocation. I began to collect pieces of wire that had been crushed, run over, rusted and every other transformation. They spoke to me with their weird shapes, sometimes very recognizeable as everyday icons. My little bag accumulated amazing things that became a gateway for my imagination. It made the walking more fun. Sometimes people would stare????
I figured I would do something with them one day. The one day never came. I was too busy to play. What was interesting was that friends would leave me treasures that they found on the streets and alleyways. Thank you. My front table was getting full of weird things people would leave me. I met an artist who was a pretty creative guy. He was struggling to make a buck, get seen and respected. As is my usual life path habit, I sacrificed my treasures to friends. I gave him my collection.
He said thanks and I knew immediately it meant nothing to him. I could see it in the blank look on his face. I had imagined him being very appreciative and creating great additions with these bits of wire to embellish his works. It was my personal opinion and only in my head. I never said it to him directly. Somehow I thought he would jump for joy over this stuff….To me these treasures would give more texture and contrast to his pieces. Mistake. Apparently he didn’t see it.
Now I am missing these silly things. To me they are a symbol of dreams lost. They represent my achievement in bringing myself here, leaving my past behind and trying to build another life. The area that I live in is changing so fast that sometimes I have to pinch myself to realize it really is happening. There is a huge new population of Americans and Canadians living here permanently now. Gentrification isn’t a word strong enough. Since I’ve come here, there is a whole new hospital, pharmacy and health clinics of many kinds. There are now quite a few beautiful modern homes in gated communities as well and beautiful upscale shops and stores. I can’t say if it’s right or wrong, good or bad. As long as it doesn’t destroy this wonderful friendly mixed community, I’m good with it and it’s a good thing. All I know is life is not the same. Some things are easier, some things are harder. I guess it depends on who you are, where you live and what you do. So I’m here now and moving on. All the letting go of my life in the U.S. is done. All the tears have been shed. The goodbyes have all been said. It’s time to ease on the throttle and coast a little in future days. Enjoy every day I tell myself.