#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.

"Puppet"

I was a toy-deprived child.  I know this sounds unthinkable today, but my leisure items were limited to books, Monopoly, chess, checkers, blocks, and Legos.  There was a stupid plastic baby doll with plastic hair, but I hated that thing.  It didn't love me and real babies are messy, noisy and a thousand other irritations.  I learned that fast.

Bro says illo #1 isn't a puppet so I made
this ghost. He says this isn't a puppet either.

My oldest sister had a Barbie knock off and a Ken doll.  I snuck into her things on a regular basis to play with Ken.  I could care less about Tammy, but Ken was dreamy.  Messing with Sis' stuff was flirting with real pain when caught, so eventually Ken and I ended our relationship.  So sad.  I wonder if he ever thinks of me?

Okay, I had a well-loved
hand-me-down Teddy too.

Thus ended my early days of make believe and toys until I was a teenager and the Muppets were on tv.  I bought a Kermit. 
Aware that I never enjoyed the prerequisite amount of play, I took Kermit with me to see his movie.  I went with a friend who brought her own Kermit.  Our mutual friend thought we were hopelessly nuts which just made the whole thing funnier.  I took Kermit to a lot more activities and enjoyed that friend's look of exasperation.

I got Animal to keep Kermit company.  I loved Animal.  He was everything I could relate to, unlike Sis' Tammy.  I wonder if Ken would love my inner "Animal"?

My relationship with toys was therefore somewhat formed, and I was happy with my 2 pets.  I didn't talk to them or anything.  I mean, I knew they were stuffed, inanimate objects, but they made me smile.

Until... yes, another painful parting.

Bro says sock puppet counts :)

I was living in the bottom half of a house when I was in college, when Stacey knocked on my door saying that my upstairs neighbors told her I was looking for a roommate.  I said okay since Pat and Matt recommended her.  They afterwards said they only sent her downstairs to get rid of her.  Aaagh!!!  Lesson: check references.

She wasn't all bad, but I wanted to kill her when her lesbian relationship stood between me and the bathroom.  I had to go outside and around the house to go in the back door, which is annoying enough, but they also xxxxx... Okay, some things don't need to be recorded in blogland.  I'm sure there are some very fine lesbians out there, but Stacey wasn't a desirable roommate.

Our house was broken into and Stacey's cache of cash got stolen with a bunch of other things that the thief obviously knew she had.  My stuff was just tossed around, but intact... except for Animal.  They stole Animal!!!

I wish they'd stolen Stacey instead.  So much for my life with puppets.

TV doodles for art this week.  While scribbling I came up with an idea I'd like to pursue, but that's nowhere near to unveiling yet since it's still just an idea.  What I will share is that sometimes I just scribble and then see what zen pictures are hiding in the scribbles like taking a Rorschach test.  Sometimes the best ideas are waiting to be found that way.

...maybe some fall leaves too?