At Home with the Nod Gods (and Knuck Gods)

"Don't dwell on the past," people keep saying, "the past is a different country". Yes, yes, but the task here is to explore how an innocuous doodle should become imbued with its own life, sustaining itself and multiplying infinitely: bursting out from a billion twitchy cocoons until an entire new species petitions its progenitor(s) for "upgrades". To understand why this unusual situation should come about, the detritus of the past must be picked over, and its earthworks surveyed. Someone once explained to me that the human body's cellular matter regenerates itself about every seven years, therefore an individual in the year 1995 isn't the same person as that individual in 2008. But this only relates to the physical. Some things never change. It is strange that I should be so infatuated with the Nod God creatures now as I was throughout the 1990s, if not more so.

As I mentioned in the last posting here, giving Nod Gods cameos in schoolwork was a favourite diversion of mine. I always considered the concept of homework to be very discordant: home is a place of leisure, relaxation and creation, not of grindingly depressing written work unsanctioned by my own fancies. Being instructed to take schoolbooks into one's own bedroom is offensive. When I did eventually perchance to bring the spitball-flecked schoolbooks over the threshold, I was careful to place tissues onto the desk surface on which they lay, lest the contaminants of a hate-ridden school-malaise infect my room so pregnant with inspiration and joy. It was therefore natural to bring these vast reserves of life-force into action to dissipate the grinding tedium and its accompanying memories of torment. Nod Gods acted as fine footmen for this cause, and once stationed within a piece of work, never became frozen in trepidation, but continued to radiate forth their character. Even when the Nod Gods were slaughtered for quasi-comedic effect, they lent such a heavy interestingness quotient to the work that the exercise book often felt physically heavier as a result!

In this assignment for 'English' dated 25th January 1994, I managed to give the Nod Gods a very prominent role, and even included a picture of the Nods Gods!

Welcome to my house. This house has been infested with bad Nod Gods, flesh colour, sweaty creatures with drooping eyes.
The door is locked so you venture into the back garden. The garden is scattered with smashed up electronic circuitboards. Luckily the back door is open - you enter the kitchen.
In the kitchen you get a nice view of the garden. It has a warm atmosphere. Then, suddenly you see a gigantic, sweaty, sphere shaped Nod God, you open one of the many drawers and take out the longest, most sharpest knife and rip its intestines out. You scratch its forehead as hard as you can and slice it. You put it in the oven and turn the heat on and you cant bear to watch as intestinal fluid run outs the oven as it bursts with green gunge, anyway, enough of that. There is a short-cut to the living room so you take it.
The living room is a small and cosy place with the T.V. in the middle. You proceed up the stairs. On your left is a locked closed door, just to think there might be a Nod God in there makes your bones shiver. You turn right.
Beside you now is the toilet from which you hear a rapid 'bud' sound at various intervals. You kick the door down, unfortunately it was already open. In the bath is a very sweaty Nod God enjoying himself, singing to himself. You grab a bottle of bubble-bath and pour it in his eyes. You rush out, lock the door and go into a bedroom and relax yourself by playing on the computer. But you noticed the Y-function RS232 resolution cable isn't in place and you get an electric shock and die. A Nod God devours you for its lunchtime snack.
Now you will be able to find your way around my house. Hopefully no Nod Gods should be there.

This piece of work was even given special merit points by the teacher, Mrs. D----, giving me hope for the possibility of introducing them into other subjects. At the same time, the Nod Gods seemed to be approaching me as an 'agent' to get them roles in various works. I found that in certain subjects it was very very difficult to get them parts. 'History' was difficult for the Nods. One would expect it troublesome to introduce a Nod God into any work for 'Religious Education' lessons, but bizarrely, it proved surprisingly accommodating at times, mainly when title pages were needed, but the Nods took centre stage on a depiction of 'limbo': an afterlife for ambiguous souls.

Getting the Nod Gods into school homework was clearly easier than I had anticipated. The next logical step was to introduce the Nod Gods into schoolwork during school hours. If this was possible, the whole drab atmosphere of intolerance and scorn that dogged me could be transformed. My friend Matt C. (who shared my affection for the Nod Gods and the inventiveness they demanded) developed a genius solution that enabled the spirit of the Nods to be omnipresent during hours of life-sapping tedium - a mind-blowingly simple transformation of the hand. A Nod God face was drawn on the hand, resulting in what became known as a 'Knuck God', or 'Knuck' for short. It was instantly animated, and possessed such warmth of character that many people, even those oftentimes hostile, experimented with these transformations of the hand, referring to them as "knuck knucks". Now I would only have to glance at the Knuck God on my befisted hand to restore excitement during tedious lessons and unpleasant moments.
Despite the power of the Knucks, there was still one subject that couldn't accommodate interestingness. One subject that simply would never ever tolerate the Nod Gods was 'Physical Education' or 'Games' for the obvious reason that these lessons dwelt firmly on hard, cold physical reality and no artefacts were to be created. The dreamworlds of the beyond populated with the wraith-like muses awaiting communion were strictly out of bounds in 'P.E.'. The competitiveness, breathless wheezing, the energy depletion, the humiliation, the naked showers, the underarm deodorant machismo, the thunderous instruction of teachers more animal than human - all these factors systematically drop-kicked the muses into oblivion. Wherever the mob mentality festers, I am ostracised. To be ostracised without even being allowed to vent gubbins of the muse is simply torture. Furthermore, why should the affairs of the body be so bloody public? 'P.E.' may claim to "strengthen", but I considered it to be profoundly weakening. In my eyes 'P.E.' was (and is) a destructive subject - firstly it imparts inferiority complexes whereby the bully-types are unfailingly glorified, secondly it exhausts the body and mind leaving it uncreative for some time thereafter, thirdly it celebrates and revels in unnecessarily induced panic, and lastly, its exertions destroy fat cells, speeding up the regeneration of cellular matter in the body, as I mentioned earlier - thereby conspiring with the destructive aspect of time: imposing a different and more mature, thus life-weary, person upon oneself. The fact that 'P.E.' offered no creative leeway at all for the artifactual inclusion of Nod Gods was truly nightmarish. Knucks couldn't save me - I yearned for pen and paper. During the 'cross country' excursions we ran through the nearby suburbs and parklands, where I frequently found myself almost delirious with exhaustion, subsequently becoming the butt of ridicule for my peers and teachers alike, but the thoughts and echoes of the Nod Gods sustained me during these painful episodes. But the showers we were forced to take afterwards were traumatic enough to render me inert for the rest of the day.

I don't remember too much about these times, memory seems to fail under times of strain, but I recall an urgent need for something to be done about 'P.E.' and its all too real evils. For all I knew, 'P.E.' lessons were responsible for the tides cruelty in our year. An eternal sicknote was required for me to avoid 'P.E.' and 'Games' lessons. Try as I might to demonstrate ailments to my parents, sicknotes were never forthcoming, and nor was I confident of my ability to forge my parents' handwriting. Well, the only other option - and one that may also help other people discover their muse - was to utterly destroy the offices and changing rooms of this hope-forsaken faculty. 'P.E.' should be made to feel the destructiveness that it preached. The Nod Gods came to the rescue on Sunday 9th April 1995 when the Pavilion changing rooms were blown-up, as can be seen in this article from the local paper I cut out:
The Nods must've heard my thoughts, or perhaps even taken control of my body like a council of puppeteers and made me enact this misdeed without my knowledge or consent. Perhaps somebody else did it, and it merely coincided with my intense anti-P.E. thoughts. Whatever, when I saw what had happened, I felt very worried about many things. How did it happen? This was before the use of CCTV cameras became widespread, so no footage could be obtained (I felt that physical manifestations of Nod Gods and Nod Buds - spherical sweaty beings and their humanesque compatriots - were to blame here). Nods are known to temporarily hover by forcing vast reserves methane (thanks to a diet of grassy vegetation) out tiny orifices from their undersides, perhaps this is the 'flammable vapour' referred to in the newspaper report. How would the school react?

For awhile after this building was destroyed, P.E. and Games lessons were relocated to the warm indoors which was a little more comforting. Two years later a new, two-storey cricket pavilion was built on the same spot as the old one, with huge changing rooms and even more horrific communal showers in a gloomy central narrow corridor. Nothing had truly changed... Except the sense that Nod Gods were stepping further toward reality!