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35 chapter twelve Adollmaker rarely is required to be inventive—at least the sort of dollmaker I am, who works with a paring knife and some wood. I do stray, from time to time, into apples—wizened faces to hang on string. Yet even the apples require no contribution from me. I simply read them. In my old profession, I often had to learn new technology , and sometimes invent it; I was the Lead Figurist for a very famous studio, and built models for animation. All that dimension, all that 3-D expression! To be sure this was challenging work for a mind that prefers flatness. Yes, it was a prestigious mode of employment, particularly in a technological age that admires life-likeness. But my heart wasn’t in it. Ah,the heart,that delicate ... Alas it is not that my heart is in doll-making either. I’ve discovered, strangely, that I never have had to engage the heart; life has come simply to me,including life’s pleasures and pains. I’ve never been much for thinking or feeling, nor had a need to distance myself from either behavior. That is why my wooden dolls are so pleasing. Expressionless —you could even say wooden—they mean nothing to anyone except to the children who love them. I find the 36 one-to-one relationship of thing to meaning extremely . . . pleasant. Indeed, pleasant. Relieving. Here at Triple E, I find myself in communion with nature . I gather the wood in the forest and sit in my little back room. Wearing fingerless mittens, I make the dolls. Or rather, the dolls instruct me how to make them: I can’t say I’m glad about this, but I hear the wood talking. Or maybe it is the trees. In the end I had no pride in my profession as a Figurist. Strangely,for people often tried then to ply me with drinks and invite me to parties—and bed me! Yet I found that if I attended for drinking or love-making, they expected me to give them something—to gush over their portfolios or scripts or paintings—and goodness, I never knew quite what to say. “You don’t understand,” I wanted to tell them. “For me figure-making is simply a natural skill. I have nothing to say on the subject of what you yourself create.” Oh, not out of hostility toward their sweet needs! Just lack of interest, you see. So of course it was not the profession for me—so public. Besides, filling things out with expressions I myself had to design, that wasn’t for me. What a strange new tradition it seemed—so limiting and so very human. When I was a child, the world seemed so lifelike to me. Uncanny! Ha! Hee! ...

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