Each day of the year in 2016, I will be attempting to write a short story, using a prompt. It'll be wild and hard and who knows? I might even turn out some good stuff. Maybe you'll even want to do this too. (Dedications go to followers.)
This is par...
68. Random Wikipedia Article: Go to Wikipedia and click on Random Article. Write about whatever the page you get.
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Ferdinand Cheval was a man inspired by dreams. He admired the insubstantial and sought to create it. In a room in his house, he kept a collction of rocks -- pebbles of irregular color, shape, and size. They were as different and yet as similar to each other as could be. These unmoving rocks moved his consciousness into depths of unknowing fantasies, where creation was brightened to vivid colors unbeknownst to man.
It was years ago when he first found his first one. Walking along a road, he happened to stub his toe. He bent to look the culprit and thence saw his muse: a stone, of unique shape. It held such beauty Ferdinand was reminded of a vision he had had many moons again, and had forgotten, but was now remembering. In it he was building something -- a structure of immeasurable loveliness. He could not recall its exact image, but the dream of erecting it blew at him in a force of motivation.
Every day after that Ferdinand would return to that same spot and find more rocks possessing that same arresting shape that brought to his mind ideas of great architectural possibilities. In time, it was not enough to simply use his hands. He would bring a wheelbarrow and collect as he wanted to. Sometimes he discovered many rocks suitable to the image of a building he was rapidly forming in his head. Other times he would find none. It became more than a hobby. Ferdinand did not simply want to imagine. He wanted to create.
Nature had provided the shape. Ferdinand merely wanted to bring it to a larged scale.
In 1879, Ferdinand started to build.
He worked at night, by the paltry light of an oil lamp. People called him crazy, but Ferdinand knew not what exactly constituted that. He was a man with a passion and a goal within which to pour it. He reasoned that men called Noah insane, but Noah was divinely directed, and did he not just as surely feel the hand of Providence in his feverish building?
It took twenty years for Ferdinand to just build the walls. He was painstaking in his attention to detail. From the day he found his first rock, he spent the next thirty-three years daily making his round to find more. He attached them together, using various glueing agents. Thirty-three years he spent making La Palais idéal. Thirty-three years this ordinary postman poured into one project.
Ferdinand wanted nothing more than to be buried with his beloved "Ideal Palace," but such a thing is illegal in France. He spent the next eight years of his life building a magnificent structure within to rest eternally.
Before he died, he began to receive some recognition for his work, and today his Le Palais idéal is a standing monument to one man's creativity and determination.
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A/N: This was actually pretty interesting to learn about it! I might write more about this. Also, 288 days left in this challenge!
