Hi there Reader,

Welcome back to my Wayward Cottage at the edge of the woods.

Before the Wayward Cottage, I lived in an old carriage house that had once belonged to a grand estate. Think: questionable kitchen in an old horse stall, bedroom in the hayloft. And more giant spider visitors than I care to recount. The place was rather wayward as well, now that I come to think of it. 😏

The mansion itself was long gone. All that was left was an empty field. There wasn't even a foundation.

But this wall remained:

Back in 2009 I must have photographed this wall dozens of times: my cat perched on the wall, friends sitting on them as well, people emerging from between the columns. At the time, I think I was fascinated by the strangeness of them: an entrance to a place that no longer existed. Evidence of something much larger, with the thing itself missing.

I’ve been looking through these old photographs recently, and this one stopped me.

Because sixteen years later, I’m writing a story set in a landscape scattered with the remnants of a civilization its inhabitants barely remember. They live among old structures. They use things whose original purposes have been forgotten. The world that made them is mostly gone, but its shape is still there.

And, when I see these photos, I realize that apparently I've been circling that idea for a very long time.

There is something that fascinates me about remnants. A wall without its house. A road whose destination has disappeared. An object separated from the person who once held it. The way something absent can still determine the shape of what remains.

Sometimes I think making art is less about inventing our obsessions than discovering we’ve been circling the same ones all along.

So now I offer this to you:
​Here. Carry this one with you. 🕯️
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​​Haunted Lanterns are occasional dispatches from my Wayward Cottage — notes on making things, noticing things, and following strange threads through art, story, landscape, and the creative life. Subscribers sometimes receive a little something to carry away.

​If you’d like the next Lantern delivered to you, you can join me here. ​

Happy wandering,

Jen
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