Art fights

I recently thought of a really funny fight that my brother and I had when he was about seven years old and I was nine. He was chasing me, so I locked myself in the bathroom and was taunting him from the inside.

Then a piece of paper and pencil were slipped to me under the door. It was a drawing of me being chased by bees.
I flipped it over and, in response, drew him dropping an ice cream cone and crying.
He got another piece of paper and drew me stubbing my toe.
In turn, I drew him surrounded by stink lines.

We kept this going wordlessly for a few minutes, each drawing images of each other that were either unflattering or depicted the other in an unpleasant scenario. It culminated in him drawing a picture of Bart Simpson mooning me, and then we both burst out laughing and I unlocked the door.

This is how siblings fought back in the mid '90s, in a house where everyone drew and religiously watched The Simpsons. And I still have that last drawing.

Stretch

There's something calming about long shadows stretched across chain link fences and sidewalks. Maybe because it shows that even a flat facsimile of you can wrap itself around many surfaces at once and reach across the daylight. If you don't have the energy at the moment, it will fill in for you until you do.

Road maps II

Wires and veins and road maps are all similar visually, and linked in concept. Technology connects people as part of a larger body and is the highway we travel together.

Road maps

All my veins are road maps
Leading back to you.
You three: the vessels that once carried me
Now in vessels
Pulsating with paint and
never-dried ink.
All branch into heart and lungs
Coloring outside the lines of time
Filling in the space
between breaths.

Imaginary seats

Today I was on the swing at the park and a 6-year-old girl was on the blue swing next to me. She got off it for a moment, pushed the empty swing, and told me, "I'm pushing nobody!"

I said, "You're pushing an invisible person."

She answered, "Well, I have an imaginary friend named Mickey, so let's say I'm pushing him."

Over the next few minutes, I guess Mickey became a little more real to her. Another girl from her kindergarten class came by and wanted that empty blue swing, but Morgan (the first girl) said, "No, Mickey's on it!"

They started to bicker. I offered my swing, but the other little girl specifically wanted "Mickey's". So I looked at the empty plastic seat and said, "Mickey, I think this girl wants a turn. Can you let her have it for a minute?"

Morgan immediately eased up and said, "Okay!". She and her invisible friend pushed the other girl together, and they both intermittently conversed with "Mickey."

I think it can help to meet little kids where they are. As funny as it is that she wanted her imaginary friend to stay on the swing, it wouldn't have worked to tell her Mickey wasn't real. Sometimes it's most effective to cooperate with their make-believe scenario and solve problems within it.

(Pictured: Mickey on the blue swing.)

Distrust of finite objects

For a while, I've had a theory that people tend to be suspicious of something that holds a lot of information if they can't see the entirety of where that information is stored. It's why I prefer physical books to eBooks or Kindle; I like to see all the pages together. It also seems to be why Arthur Weasley told Ginny in the second Harry Potter book, "Don't trust something that thinks if you can't see where it keeps its brain."

This may also extend, partly, to why so many humans are distrustful of one another. Among other reasons, it may be because we know that people have whole worlds of thoughts contained within a finite body part, and we can't see the thoughts from the outside.

From what I've noticed, white supremacists often have conflicted feelings about Jewish people. On one hand, they're quick to stereotype and ostracize them. On the other, they love using the Jewish community as an example of white people being oppressed based on race (never mind the fact that Jewish people were oppressed for being Jewish, not for being white, and were even considered an ethnic minority as a means to justify the persecution. Also, they were attacked by other white Europeans, not POC). Additionally, racists often assume that all Muslims are anti-Jewish and will cling to that as an Islamophobic stereotype, even if they themselves feel hostile toward Jewish people.

Another factor I've noticed is how they will either say that race isn't the same as nationality/religion or that it is, depending on whether that will further the "white people are oppressed" narrative. This is a pattern that occurs often:

Person: "White people are targeted. Look at what happened to the Irish and the Jews!"

Then the same person will rail against affirmative action, calling it "racism against whites." When told that Irish and Jewish scholarships exist and benefit a lot of white people, they'll backtrack and say, "Well, that doesn't count because those benefits are based on nationality/religion, not race."

Blather, rinse, repeat.