Don't mess with fluffy

... in honor of cooks

Jul 24, 2026

This week I thought about resilience, how the word resilience itself reflects the mundane ability to cope and bounce back which is what helps us survive. Resilience is a personal ability but it's also a communal one. The flashy people often get the attention but it's really all of the people doing the ordinary stuff of life that keeps life going after the flashy has faded. The mundane even made the flash possible in the first place. Someone cooked the meals and someone did the laundry and someone organized the files… those could be 3 or more different someone's working behind the scenes while the alleged hero “starred” in front of the cameras.

Those in the starring power roles who dismiss and disregard the meal makers, as disposeable or interchangeable fluff, who ignore the ordinary people doing daily necessary to life stuff, disrespect us at their own peril.

These thoughts and others inspired my sketchbook page this week. I'll include photos of the stages of my drawing development (ink and gouache) within the rest of my thoughts…

Often the quiet, calm, steady, ordinary people are the very threads that form the fabric of all of our lives simply by doing mundane things well. That's a power akin to a force of nature, like a hive of bees, which is more powerful than any wannabe authoritarian's flashy declarations.

That the ordinary people often do the mundane requirements of daily life in a pleasant manner, well, don't mistake pleasantness for a lack of strength. It's a part of resilience, one of the strongest human strengths there is.

A single steady drip of water can create a canyon in a rocky landscape over time. The individual water drop itself seems inconsequential or even “nice” as it drops but that merely camouflages it's power especially as it drops along with multiple other water drops.

Don't mess with fluffy!

I'm reminded of Herman Melville's short story “Bartleby, the Scrivener” and the power inherent in Bartleby’s repeated phrase “I would prefer not to.” as a way to use free will and also resist impositions by others. It reminds me of the power of our personal choices within daily life where we can “prefer not to” participate in the small or large acts of apathy and cruelty and can prefer to choose empathy and kindness instead.

I'm also reminded of “Who Cooked Adam Smith’s Dinner” by Katrine Marcal which describes, in wry humorous ways, the utter absurdity of those who dismiss as unimportant the daily work of cooking, cleaning and caring even while directly benefiting from those activities.

But I've digressed…

My exhibit at Burnt Bridge Cellars is still up but will be moving after the end of July to the Caplan Art Designs gallery for an expanded exhibit in October. I'm planning to add 5 new artworks between now and then to my Mundane Magic series. (Yes, I'm planning despite currently having health issues.) Besides my exhibit thesis…

… I've updated my general artist statement for use by the gallery.

The whimsy, the pleasantness, the mundanity, of my work is a choice I make because it reflects what I see as the strength of mundane life which, like nature, like reality itself, continues on no matter what bullshit to the contrary a bully, self-styled as a hero, may spew.

Again… don't mess with fluffy!

I’m still recovering and healing from all my health-whats-its so that's an aspect of my “don't mess with fluffy” drawing too. Much of this week I didn't feel well and just wanted to be left alone to drink my fluids and read… as in “it's okay to not be okay”. At the same time I've had that feeling I've been doing my best to be resilient and allow the medical folks and my family and friends to be with me too. Thank you for all of your support and kind comments here! I appreciate all of you!

And I did feel up to drawing a bit on this rabbit using ink and gouache over several mornings until it was finished!

I've also been thinking more about the importance of food and cooking to the resilience (and healing) of both our individual selves and our communities.

So I wrote a poem-parody titled Our Cook and illustrated it…