Making love via scribbles

The bunny, the bird and the bee

I woke up thinking about how odd it feels to be trying to make pretty pictures in my sketchbook every morning while this Republican government is ending SNAP benefits¹ and the Healthcare subsidies and harming people - including people who don’t themselves need food assistance² ³. Making artistic pictures seems so insignificant in the face of it all. And yet…

And yet resistance⁴ to cruelty has more than one lane⁵ ⁶.

And yet I recognize my feelings - I felt this same sense of futile insignificance in 2020 when COVID hit hard. Back then I drew a rabbit almost daily to share with friends just to keep our spirits up. That felt like a silly thing to do but it was what I could do. By 2021, COVID still a factor in life, I had a whole lot of rabbit drawings, which I put together into a children's book titled This Rabbit⁷. (Free ebook and audio book via Storyberries here ) Doing the rabbits helped me and more than a few people told me that my rabbit drawings helped them get through 2020 too. That small insignificant thing I did mattered.

So I'm reminded that I can create and share art in response to current events - and that might help some now too. Things happen and we do whatever we can in response.

With those thoughts in my mind I drew a scribbly rabbit using a continuous, pen never leaving the page, ink line.

Another morning I continued thinking about how little things can add up …Besides protesting, writing to Congress, donating to the local food bank and very carefully buying from locally owned independent shops, buying from small companies - (see footnotes number 9 and 10! Those are just the new ones I've seen recently and I know there are others⁸. ) - small companies who are trying to pay living wages and also help the community - my personal lane can also include making art that might help lift our spirits a bit and remind us of our humanity and the human touch. Every little thing…

And in several subsequent mornings I added gouache paints on top of the scribbly ink rabbit…

… until it was done.

Here are the materials I used.

My sketchbook art is primarily intended as tangible love for myself, my friends and community. I think of art as like the plate of just-out-of-the-oven homemade cookies given with a loving empathetic hug. That's what I aim to do every morning come what may - make art like a baker makes cookies. We each can do whatever we can to help each other - and this I can do⁹ ¹⁰.

Anyway here's another one of my sketchbook pages related to these thoughts.

Of course art doesn't solve everything and yet the human artistic touch is an ongoing expression of solidarity and love. It's how we get through things¹¹. It always has been. Even in times less fraught than these current ones we're inclined to seek to comforts of music, books, movies etc. When we had a hard day at the office playing music on the drive home could soothe. When we went on vacations we looked for museum and theater tickets. When we were sick in bed we felt a bit better while listening to an audio book.

We need all of the creative comforts we can get just now. We need both the creative comforts other people have made and the creative comforts we can make ourselves. We need to create love for ourselves and for each other. One doesn't have to be a “good” artist or musician to get a benefit from writing, drawing or making music with your own hands¹².

I've said it before: art is how we survive things together. The Arts are where we can regularly, tangibly, feel our connections to community. Think of the audience rising to their feet to applaud musicians or theater actors. Think of the volunteers and attendees in the local fine arts center. Think of the local book clubs.

Those are just a few examples of ongoing community - and love - in action¹³.

And so is this newsletter - you're a part of the community we have together here and I thank you for being here!

While thinking about finding and creating community I thought again of my scribbly drawing method which is about “finding”, with the end of my pen and waterbrush, a drawing reflecting my feelings or thoughts … so I've done a video of my continuous continuous scribbly line method. The video is approximately 5 minutes long and the only sounds are pen noises, sketchbook pages turning and me breathing. Please pour yourself a coffee and take some deep breaths along with me as I draw.

Here are the materials I used in the video.

You're welcome to try the scribble method yourself. The idea is to start scribbling (any pen and paper will do) and as you scribble “see” and “find” shapes that remind you of something - it's like seeing animal shapes in a cloud in the sky. Just move your pen and see what kind of thing the scribble calls to mind and slowly emphasize that. Breathe gently as you move the pen in as relaxed a manner as possible. It's just a scribble. Then when the initial continuous scribble feels like enough you can lift the pen and add more and different kinds of lines (or paints) to make it look even more like that thing you “saw”. Leave any extra stray marks from the original scribble as they are - just emphasize the lines you most want - relaxing and breathing is the point.

I wish for you many peaceful moments full of art and love.

Please donate to your local food bank, check in with your friends and do your best to make your kind of cookies (aka love), no matter how silly or futile you might feel it to be at the moment. Just keep going. We cannot do all of the good that is needed in this world but the world needs every bit of good that we can do¹⁴.

1. The money is there to do the SNAP benefits but the Republicans choose not to do it.

2. The interconnectedness of everything - from SNAP food stamps onwards.

3. “In America, we need to explain these things in the context of other people’s self-interest, which I have a hard time accepting. You’d think we would all just want children to be fed properly but, no, Americans need to understand that they will be adversely affected if we let children go hungry. If we hadn’t been brainwashed into thinking that ours is a country of rugged individualists who don’t need community and don’t care about the commons, then we probably wouldn’t be having this conversation. It would have been enough to say, “We cannot allow children to go hungry.” “👇

The Daily Wrap-Up

4. A resource list of 198 Nonviolent resistance tactics👇
https://commonslibrary.org/198-methods-of-nonviolent-action/

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7. Here's a link to a printed book version of my book This Rabbit https://www.blurb.com/b/10612530-this-rabbit

You can see This Rabbit as a free ebook and audio book at this link https://www.storyberries.com/bedtime-stories-this-rabbit-free-kids-books-online/

8. Mutual Aid Hub - nationwide food and etc support resource finder: https://www.mutualaidhub.org/

9. Portland coffee shop serving free breakfast till SNAP benefits are restored! There's a donation page to support the free breakfast and they ship coffee too!

https://hereticcoffee.com/

10. A pasta company gives dignity to people who need a bit of help. And they ship pasta too!

https://millvalleypasta.com

11. Why art matters - art is where you talk with yourself and find out what you think, feel, hope for... it’s where you’re most human.

AI-art isn't art

12. Art is about autonomy
“...autonomy is the threshold through which wellbeing enters. It is the dignity of choosing one’s own rhythm, one’s own perception, one’s own presence.”

Very Important Distinction: Autonomy, More Often Threatened Than Gaslight

13. Music for the people: do you hear the people sing?

14. “We don’t have to wait for permission to build something better.
We already are.
Every act of care, every dollar rerouted away from their machine, every network formed outside their control—that’s resistance.
That’s government reborn from the ground up.

If they won’t open the government until it belongs to them, fine.
We’ll start building the one that belongs to us.” 👇👇

A Country Without A Government