Autumn Winds

They walked together in the twilight, arm in arm, down the boulevard and onto the bridge. She had never felt so happy. She glanced up at him, at his profile, and sighed with contentment. Oh, sure, as the years rolled by she'd find out all his irritating faults and foibles and would look at him clearly with both her feet on the ground; but that would be some faraway tomorrow. Now, right now, she saw him through a mist of joy. He was wonderful and perfect and she felt herself dancing among the emerging stars, free from gravity, free from everything except her love for this man. And they would be blissfully together as long as life endured. She smiled, so warm in her love.

And then the stranger approached.

She clutched at her beloved's arm in shock. Was that -- was that stranger real? No, he couldn't be! Although he wore his hat low she could see his face was wan, unnaturally wan with the paleness not of flesh but of a skull. And his eyes were so hidden in shadow that they looked like empty sockets. And in spite of his overcoat she could see he was thin, incredibly, impossibly thin. It can't be real! It's some sort of terrifying vision! And the figure kept advancing toward her. She tried to stop but found herself too weak to resist her unaware companion's steady gait. She tried to whisper her alarm but couldn't make a sound. All she could do was clutch her lover's arm even more tightly and stare at the advancing unreal figure.

And then, mere inches away from her, the figure politely doffed his hat and silently continued on his way into the growing darkness. A short while after he -- or it -- had passed them, she found her voice.

"That thing ... that man! Oh! Didn't you notice him?"

"No, not really," her darling casually replied. "I wasn't paying any particular attention to him. What about him?"

"Didn't you see how bleached his face looked, and how thin he was?"

He patted her hand. "Well, no. What about it, my dear?"

"'What about it?'" she cried. "Why, even with his coat on you could see he was little more than a ... than a walking skeleton! He was a skeleton ... a walking fleshless skeleton!"

He gently kissed her forehead and chuckled, "Well, there's no need to be distressed by that, my dear. It's not all that uncommon. It only means the poor soul is just not comfortable in his own skin."

She shoved him over the bridge and kept on walking into the gathering dusk.

Only Passing Through

The wanderer had no memory of his past (if, indeed, he had any past at all). In fact, he couldn't recall any time when he had not been lost in these woods. But he knew that somewhere beyond this dark expanse he must have a home, a place of calm and warm familiarity, peopled with friendly kith and kin. He had often tried finding his way back home, wherever or whatever that home might be, by the sun and the guiding stars in their courses. It was no good. All his attempted navigation brought him was an uneasy sense that he was straying farther from his home; that instead of escaping this strange forest he was plunging ever deeper into it. If only his surroundings weren't so confusing and overwhelming; it was far too easy to lose oneself forever in them.

Then, at twilight on a drizzly, windswept day,  he stumbled upon a crumbling high bank near a river. At its base was a cave almost undetectable by obscuring shadows and vegetation, and in the cave's farthest recess he could just barely discern ... what? ... could it be a door? He stood staring at it in wonder for some minutes until the ever-growing shadows of approaching evening roused him. 

He cautiously studied the thing in the shadows. Yes, he could make it out now, even through the overhanging vegetation and deepening gloom. It really was a door. How could a door be here, and who could have made it? He felt ... what? ... awe, fear, wonderment? So many emotions ... or instincts ... that he could not name. The door was deep inside the hollow, but from what he could see of it through the overhanging vegetation, he estimated it was roughly six feet tall and three feet wide and seemed to be made of pine. He then became aware of the scent of freshly-turned earth. That caused him to pause once more, although he could not understand why. He roused himself again, took a deep, shuddering breath, and clawed and shoved his way through the entangling roots and vines blocking the cave's entrance.

He broke through. The smell of turned earth was even stronger now. He strained his eyes in the darkness but was no longer able to see the door. Instead, where he thought it had been, where he could have sworn it had been, he now saw a figure. The wanderer stood transfixed, too amazed to be frightened. Somehow the figure was lighter, more distinct than it should be in the surrounding dark, as if it were somehow bioluminescent. The wanderer shook his head. The very idea was absurd. The figure was obviously human ... yet, it was visible in the darkness.

The two stared at each other for a minute or so. Then the figure reached out his hand to the wanderer and smiled. That smile! Even in the darkness there was something about that smile, something wonderful. The wanderer was caught in that smile like a child caught in his parent's loving arms. And then, with a sudden, rushing revelation, he understood. Now smiling himself, he happily realized he was home now ... finally, absolutely home. The figure's smile was the wanderer's home. He now knew it had aways been his home, even when he didn't know it even existed, it was always his home. "Home," the wanderer whispered unconsciously, "home, finally home!" He reached out his hand toward the figure's just as the mouth of the cave collapsed, sealing him off from the woods.

For to Such Belongs the Kingdom of God

 "And He took them in His arms and blessed them, laying His hands upon them."

Merry Christmas!

 May you have a most joyous holiday season!

Tongue-Cut Sparrow

This is another old drawing. One of Kathy's favorite folktales is "The Tongue-Cut Sparrow," so I drew this for her, along with some other drawings illustrating the story. The reason I selected this particular piece is that I recall how much fun I had drawing the anthropomorphic birds.

The Sculptor

There's not a thing to this: no bad pun, no story, no moral -- nothing. It's merely a fun little drawing done only for the amusement one experiences while taking an aimless stroll with a pencil.

Books From the Past

 

Back in 2015, Sarah self-published Sylvan Dreaming, a book of her poetry. She asked me to illustrate it, and how could anyone say no to such a charming individual? I may be biased, but I think the poetry is excellent. Recently coming upon a copy of this book, and the other titles that follow, I toyed with the idea of posting them here. I was averse at first since I felt it would come across as rather repellant bragging. But then I admitted this little footling blog exists only for my rampant ego anyway, so why not? So, if anyone should stumble upon this post, I ask you to both excuse and indulge me in the following unbridled display of conceit. 

First, the illustrations for this title weren't as bad as I remembered. I wouldn't call them good, mind you, but I feel they're not as bad as they might have been. As always, the colors did not reproduce well at all. I don't know if I'm the problem or if it's the computer or a combination of the two. I can overlook that, though, since I'm used to it and, besides, the poetry is so good that the horribly colored accompanying illustrations can't detract from it.

Sarah's next book, also published in 2015, is Mystic Dreaming. Again, the poetry is great, the illustrations could have been better and the coloring could have been a lot better. But now a new problem has raised its ugly head. For some reason, Sarah changed the illustrations' dimensions. Maybe (I can't recall now) I used a different size paper than used for the previous book's pictures, so the image didn't fit as nicely. They're very elongated and distorted, as if seen in a funhouse mirror. A fantastic artist and friend of the family, Mr. Gene Lehman, who also is a computer whiz, worked his computer magic to resize all the images, so they would fit on the page and not be warped. Alas, Sarah never used Gene's corrected images; thus, the book's great poetry is sadly accompanied by ridiculous-looking drawings.

The next book, published in 2017, is Kathy's retelling of a folktale and is titled Marriage of a Mouse. Again, I might be a trifle prejudiced, but I think she did a great job! The cover only has the title with no art, so I used the title page for its image. As for my drawings, unlike Sarah's books where the drawings have their own pages, this one has the text and drawing sharing the same page. Frankly, this made the illustrations too small and, if I remember correctly, there were only a few book sizes offered by the printer, which left a lot of white space. Still, since the book is for little children and is about little mice, perhaps it's all right the images are tiny.

Now, I'm showing the last book out of sheer vanity and gross conceit. It's a series of attempted spooky stories and I wrote it myself. I used the pen name Quillin Potter since other Jeff Potters had books out. The book has no illustrations. I must have proofread that book a billion-billion times and it's still overrun with errors, such as misusing "traverse" and "transverse" and "vertical" for "horizontal." And don't get me started on wild punctuation, syntax and grammar! Maybe I was so obsessed with trying to sound like Edgar A. Poe or H.P. Lovecraft that I wasn't paying enough attention to anything else.

For fun, I checked Amazon's website to see if they still carry these titles. They do! But then, the books are print-on-demand. I was surprised with how expensive they are. But then I recalled each book had to have a minimum price for the printer to at least break even.

And that's it! There's no reason for this post. As I said, I posted this just out of gross vanity ... I guess just like I did with all its sisters.