A flying squirrel

and other story-friends

I woke up thinking about that space inside each of us, where our core principles are, where we choose yes or no, where we decide how we'll respond to things in the external world¹. That space can be as thin as a line and too easily flown right past.

So one morning I drew the flying squirrel drawing seen above. Another morning I drew a line of blue trees with my fountain pen.

I thought about what helps us keep that inner deciding line within view as I made this mug. (link here)

And I thought about the circulatory aspect of seeing and surveying that line inside ourselves as I made this soup bowl. (link here)

I thought of how writing, drawing and reading are like binoculars - tools we use to bring into focus our ability to track the space of yes/no without flying past it. With that in mind during another morning I thought of a story:

Rocky Airborne loves flying from here to there. A favorite hobby when on the ground is entering raw data into nut accounting books using walnut ink. Rocky says "My ground nut-accounting hobby is very exciting and related to my piloting activities, because I don't always remember where the nuts are… thus my constant flying surveillance and account keeping. I hope you always know where all of your nuts are located. Anyway, here's a look at tonight's nut ledger written in two shades of walnut ink."

Another morning I was still thinking about words and meanings and our ability to see that yes/no line inside. The ways we're able to see and talk about things can affect our perception and comprehension of those things.

In my notebook I wrote another story accompanied by the drawing below:

While the artist is perhaps portraying Kai and Kit as heroic “they who brought home the strawberry for the whole mouse community” there actually were many more mice involved. One mouse saw a strawberry fall. A second mouse told others about it. A third mouse found a long stick. A forth mouse gathered all the mice. A fifth mouse arranged for the littlest mice to be served first. A sixth mouse found a sharp thing to carve the strawberry with... and so on. It was an organized community effort and nothing less. It's purely accidental that the artist only depicts Kai and Kit. You see the strawberry was so big and heavy that they were the only mice who, as they struggled to carry it, moved slowly enough that the artist was able to draw them.

Yet another morning in my notebook I held an “interview” with a very quiet hedgehog named Marlowe. I asked “How do you decide when to curl up in a ball and when to stretch out?” Marlowe's reply is a typed transcript here for clarity as the recorded audio interview isn't audible even after the interviewer (me) went to the effort of getting fresh hearing aid batteries.

Marlowe Moss: “Well, I know that I like relaxing and reading books in warm places … I'm a bit shy… so I often curl up first because of stuff, you know, but then I remember what I enjoy most and I can't read with my nose buried in my tummy so… [long pause] …slowly I uncurl, get my book and go to my favorite warm place. Then I feel better. I hope you too are able to uncurl and enjoy yourself, that you have something good to read in a warm place today and that you know exactly where that warm place is.” [some noises that sound like kisses. Audio ends]

Thank you, to all of you, for your ongoing patronage and support of my work! I appreciate every one of you! If you're a newly paid subscriber please feel free to access or download any or all of the 24 ebooks that I've written and illustrated which you can download and access anytime you wish from this index page.
Thank you again for being here!! 💚💚

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