#inktober52, #inktober, "Puppet", "Shell"

A doll is a puppet, right?  Well, close enough.  I've been working on my Barbie paintings and haven't had any close enough words for the week to share them.  This is obviously Equestrian Barbie.

This painting took forever and a day to create.  Okay, most of that was avoidance, but I think that's got to count into things too, right?  If only people paid me for thinking and avoiding!  I don't want to get into all my thoughts about why I struggled on this.  Let's zip straight to the insight I got after the battle with myself was won.  Some people bully their way through life and other people get injured.  We see the bullying and say, "You hit me and I feel hurt!".  It's much harder to recognize the problem when the injury is caused by inaction.  A lot of my sitting around thinking and procrastinating has been spent on this very simple idea (though Equestrian Barbie's sling has nothing to do with someone else injuring her).

I often find the world reflects something going on within myself.  I was thinking of how others' inaction caused me harm while US blacks have been loudly saying white people's inaction harms them.  I find this understandable.  I'm with them in spirit.  I don't want to actually go out and march because I don't want to be tear gassed, catch Covid-19, or deal with city parking, but I applaud on the sidelines.  I'm not alone.  Surveys show most Americans are sympathetic to black people's issues, and while quite a few people have joined the protests, most aren't actually marching.  Does our inaction injure their just cause?  On a personal level, have you spoken up when someone else needed you to speak up?

I can't deal with watching the video of George Floyd dying, but I've seen bits of it.  The cop doing the murdering is clearly doing an evil action.  The thing that I keep thinking about though is all the other cops who allowed it to happen.  George wouldn't have died if any one of those other cops had stopped it.  The system of protecting police misconduct allowed that cop to murder George.  The politicians that allow cops to self-police misconduct allowed the murder.  The apathy of voters to protecting blacks' rights allowed it.  Perhaps the biggest sin in all of this is the inaction.

I'm thinking of all this on the national level and in one-on-one interactions.  Be the pebble that knocks things out of the rut.  Do what you can.

I've been fighting migraines lately, so my apologies for dropping off the net.  Here's a shell for last week's word and a larger view of the Equestrian Barbie painting.