Tag Archives: insights

Personal Blog

I saw a dead person today…

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My dad was late picking me up to go home for fall break. He was held up by a terrible accident, an SUV toppled and completely flattened, the firemen scrambling to get the survivors out. “How horrible!” I thought idley, as one does.

When we were driving back we approached the accident site, the traffic creeping along due to downed power lines. My dad, keeping his eyes on the road, commented “It was right over there, it was horrible, I wouldn’t be surprised if someone died.”

“Oh..there’s a dead person right there..” I stammered before I realized how silly that sounded, my eyes locked on the site as we rolled past. Logic had tried hopelessly at first,ah, it’s just someone sitting there, because you don’t see dead bodies, you just don’t. But it was fleeting, as my eyes floated on the corpse with a puzzled sort of strain, the same sort of gaze the police and ambulance crew had as they stood there, one of them taking photos.

It could’ve very well been an old man fallen asleep in an easy chair, his head lulled back in a gruesome sort of snore, except for the more graphic parts, I suppose. They had to cut away the entire car to get to him, so he was sprawled there in the seat with a ravaged carcass of metal twisted behind him.

We rolled past, slowly.

“Someone won’t be coming home from work tonight,” my dad sighed solemnly.
“Mmm.” I agreed, unable to rip my eyes from the dead man until we were well out of range.

I turned back with a shudder, my mind full and numb. I still have that icy chill in the pit of my stomach. Such is mortality and the things we take for granted.

Personal Blog

The moral of today’s story is..

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Today I learned several things..

1) Regardless of how miserable and rainy the day is, if you refuse to refer to it as a “bad day” and instead just call it a “wet day”, it gets better quickly.

2) the 3×4 ft panel I’m making for this year’s extended figure study is a helluva lot bigger than the 2×3 ft one I did last year, and it’s intimidating me. This will be the biggest painting I’ve ever done.

3) Tony II, of England adventure fame, said that I am “the deepest of the bunch” and that I have “a lot of interesting things rattling around up there (points to head).” Tony is wise and a good mentor, it flatters me that he has so much faith in me.

4) The days go by quickly, so you must milk them for all they’re worth. Every day, even the bad ones, even the dull ones. Make it the best time of your life each moment.

I’m going home for the weekend, I miss my cats.

Personal Blog

Casualties of Drama

Friendship is very important to me, and I suppose that can be said true for most people. Keary told me once that I take my friendships very seriously, and I guess that’s true as well.

So when your friend walks through the door looking so wounded that they seem to cringe with each step, the only thing I really want to do is hover about and nurse their injuries and shower them in comfort and wish that they were very small, so I could stick them in my pocket and protect them from the world. And, I suppose, I do my best…but it’s rather difficult when the source of pain is so muddled and confusing that you really don’t know what you can do to help it.

It’s as if your friend has some horrible disease, cirrhosis of the liver, perhaps, only you don’t know they have it. Or perhaps, you know they have it, but don’t know what cirrhosis of the liver is, or don’t understand it or how it works. So the only thing you can do is comfort them and care for them and wipe the blood from them, but you can see that it’s something inside of them which is causing them great suffering. But you don’t know how, or what exactly, and you don’t understand how to fix it.

So you sit and wait and hover about and hope that *they* understand it and know what to do. Altogether, it makes you feel a bit on the helpless side.

I am fortunate and grateful to have as many wonderful friends as I do, I suppose I need to make it a point to tell them how important they are to me. I’ll have to do that today, or soon.