Nicolas Ostis
Joined Meer in May 2019
Nicolas Ostis

I was born into a humble, nurturing Greek family in 1954. My childhood was idyllic. I was a good student and played sports year-round with a variety of different groups of kids. Even at a young age, I enjoyed diversity.

At 12 I began and completed a six-year curriculum at Boston Latin School, the oldest (est. 1635) school in the USA. As I had no interest in further formal education, enlisting in the military or working a menial job, I started traveling, often hitchhiking alone to California, Florida and down the Pan American Highway through Mexico and Central America. Along the way, I learned to speak basic Spanish.

Later in the 70’s and early 80’s I had the privilege to live in Jamaica and Hawaii, specifically Maui. Hawaii led to Asia, Europe and South America. Back and forth, I traveled - to the USA, Canada and Europe. The more I traveled, the braver and more ambitious I became. At a certain point I had an epiphany: The whole world is my home and all the people in it my family.

My own family worried about my future and well-being but I felt strongly and deep in my heart that my true destiny is The Road, the literal and metaphorical road.

Over the decades I have dabbled in the creative arts - writing, playing music, acting and my current passion, doing poetry readings in urban parks. During the last twenty years in India, I have become an in-demand host/mc for open stages, benefit concerts and special presentations. This was something I used to do - pretend I was an announcer - when I was a little boy. Forty years later I have fulfilled my childhood yearning in my beloved India.

Currently I am engaged in a number of creative projects and look forward to collaborating with like-minded artists, as I did on Zoe’s World, an illustrated children’s book based on my poem of the same name. Ukrainian artist Lesya Bilenko painted the illustrations. Also, I self-publish and sell my volume of poetry and short essays, Attitude of Gratitude, in Dali, Yunnan, China, an art colony, home to innumerable artists of all kinds.

Articles by Nicolas Ostis

Subscribe
Get updates on the Meer