Friday, March 1, 2024

The Journey Home


For all the ones we have had to say goodbye to. As long as you are in our hearts you will never be gone. And you are ever in our hearts.

Thursday, February 1, 2024

Monday, January 1, 2024

Synopsis


Happy New Year!
And yet another drawing done many years ago. With every new entry on this site I grow more doubtful that I'll ever post anything else, so this may be the last of its race. The sketch isn't much, but I guess I said what I wanted to say with it way back when, so I'll be content if this does turn out to be the last image. I just wanted to post something to celebrate the new year, and since I didn't have any recent doodles on hand I disinterred this one. I don't know if you can see it, but it has some water damage. I assume that means it will decay far faster than its sisters so I wanted to post it before it disintegrates. But all that is neither here nor there. All that really needs to be said about this piece is that I hope it brings you a smile. And, once more, Happy New Year! May this coming year bring you both many more smiles and very much laughter.

Friday, December 1, 2023

Merry Christmas

Alas, I still can't figure out how to reproduce colors on the computer! There are some yellows that didn't reproduce at all, the blues and oranges look wildly different from the original, and the skin tones of the figure don't look nearly as cadaverous in "real life." I could go on complaining but this isn't the season for grousing: it's the season to be merry and happy. So, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

 

Wednesday, November 1, 2023

Profiles


Here's yet another old piece. I assumed, when I first disinterred it from a pile of ancient doodles, that I drew it for Sarah, perhaps as an illustration for some made-up fairy tale I would tell her at bedtime. The only trouble is the date on the back shows it was drawn when Sarah might have been a bit too old for such tales. So now I'm dubious that there is any reason behind this piece other than just the mere pleasure of taking a pencil for a walk, of letting it rove where it will. Besides, drawing just to draw, "art for art's sake" with no other goal or agenda behind it, is a wonderfully good reason for any drawing's existence. So it seems this drawing was only drawn for the fun of it. And a good thing, too, since I have no idea what story I would have had to come up with to go along with it.

Sunday, October 1, 2023

Mnemosyne


"This place," I brooded, "all these people... forgotten, all forgotten." The cemetery stretched before me. There were countless fallen tombstones that, by nature's wry sense of either humor or poetic justice, were themselves all but buried beneath matted weeds. And the few monuments yet standing, pockmarked and lichen-encrusted, tottered at crazy angles, their epitaphs long ago eroded into illegibility. Wrapping my cloak more tightly about me as the dead leaves spiraled in the wind, I lifted my eyes from a fallen gravestone and saw the ghost gliding toward me.

"You look like someone lost in grave contemplation," he said with a smile.

I sighed. "Why is it," I thought, "that the worse a ghost is as a comedian, the more it wants one's attention?"

"Oh," I replied, more politely than I wanted to, "my thoughts are not too solemn, not really. But, after all, it is October, when the skies are 'ashen and sober' and the leaves are 'withering and sere,' so a certain small degree of wistfulness isn't to be unexpected. Still, my thoughts are far from melancholy."

His smile betrayed that he didn't believe me. "Even so, one mustn't forget that a time such as this, a place such as this, do seem to sadden one's thoughts."

"Yet you smile."

My attempted barb only made the dead thing chuckle. "Surely you do not think me an irreverent revenant?" 

I sighed again. "He has no intention of letting me rest in peace," I thought, and so I changed the subject to something I found quite curious. "What," I asked, "is that structure over that grave? It looks like a cage."

"Oh, that's a mortsafe."

"'Mortsafe'? What is that?"

"Ah! It's been obsolete for some time, so I guess it might be forgotten. Basically, it's a construction to prevent grave robbers from plying their trade. They were somewhat popular in the 1800s."

"The 19th century! But it's only a little rusted. Is it new?"

"Well," smiled the specter, "since its original unsavory purpose is forgotten, it does serve a new function, at least in this place, so it's still being made. Don't you remember?"

"Remember? Remember what?"

Now it was the dead thing's turn to sigh. "You don't remember. They never remember! As I said, originally the mortsafe was a sort of barricade meant to deter the living from defiling the dead. Now, here, it keeps us dead from defiling the living."

"'Us'?" I repeated numbly. "'Dead'?"

"But of course! You, me: the dead. Don't you remember what you are?"

"I... I'm... I don't..."

He took me by the hand and led me to the grave. "You," he said, "are a memory, only a memory now. Your survivors, if they recall you at all, should recall you in sweet memories. Instead, you relentlessly haunt them, my friend. You give them no rest, no peace. You keep digging yourself up and rob them of their present. Instead of being a sweet memory you are a suffocating obsession; and you know that's not right. After all, in memoriam in moderation."

I tried to understand, to remember. "So this structure once protected my body from others, but now..."

"But now?"

My confusion dissipated as all became wonderfully clear. "But now it protects others from me... well, from a morbid clinging to memories of me. It is my time, my place to be only an occasional memory to those on their side of the veil. I remember now!" 

And with that realization I climbed on top of the mortsafe and bade the ghost goodbye. He gave me one last smile as I wafted down through the iron grating, down through the heavy iron plate and down into the cold and comforting earth.


Friday, September 1, 2023

Waiting for the Cue


 I'm going through a moldering pile of drawings I have hidden away. This came from that stack. It was done in 2002. I'm not enthusiastic about it and, as always, earnestly hope I can do better than that now. Like so many other pieces on this site, the reason I'm posting it is that I recall Kathy saying she liked it. And now it's back to the moldering pile for this picture.

The Journey Home

For all the ones we have had to say goodbye to. As long as you are in our hearts you will never be gone. And you are ever in our hearts.