Feeling More
Jan21
on 01/21/2016
at 12:01 am
Chapter: You Know What They Say About Chaos
Location: Cypress City, the apartment
Artists and writers are observers. We watch, we take in and process. Sometimes it is a burden.
Randie and Ryan
Tripping through married life…
Awwww… it’s just an unnamed cartoon animal; one whom we’ve never seen alive. But he WAS just alive. That’s so sad.
Not to take anything away from non-artists/writers, I think you’re right, Brig. I’m feeling so down now from reading today’s page. That poor dog. And I’m so sad for Ryan. I feel his pain as though he were a real friend who’s suffered a real loss.
Imagination is both a blessing and a burden.
I’m sorry that I brought you down with this cartoon. I will say that I am holding up a mirror to life… because as we know, that’s what cartoons do. The death of Farley in “For Better or for Worse” was such a blow in the comic. But it had to happen. Stay with me on this story. I promise it won’t all be bad.
‘Life is a comedy to those who think and a tragedy to those who feel’. It’s a quote attributed to various people over time.
We have to take both the good and the bad in life. I usually run storylines by my people while I write them. I was advised not to do this one (not by Judy) because it was too sad. BUT I felt that I had to … because life is comedy and tragedy. And sometimes you have to deal with the tragedy.
Poor Ryan, he wants to make it better and he can’t. Life is ju.st too real, too painful, sometimes.
Fortunately, feelings have a way of knitting the torn bits, as well.
There is always good that comes from the bad. Yes, knitting up the torn bits is part of what we do… Enid would know this!
Life is such a wonder…and when it ceases it leaves such a loud silence. You page today catches the emotional loss of even witnessing the death of a stranger’s dog. Hurts to read…but thanks for drawing it so well.
Thank you. I actually cried when I was writing this and then again as I was drawing it. There was something about this story that made ME upset and thus that last panel. We cannot stop the bad/sad/uncomfortable things from happening in life. But we must deal with them. Each in his or her own way.
Losing pets is tough, losing pets that way is the toughest of all.
I have had some unfortunateness in the “losing a pet” area. It hurts to think about how I lost my dog, Mocha. So much so that I have to pray “Nepenthe” when I do.
I guess I’m not much of an artist, then, because I can’t get too worked up over a dog being hit by a car. I’ve run over several in my long life (I drive a lot). One was a black dog laying in the middle of the street on a cool night, (I guess the asphalt was warm), who’s owner ran out and started screaming at me “You killed my dog!” Where was she while her dog was sleeping in the middle of a dark street? Two were on the interstate, and one was on a country road, again at night.
None of them were leashed. People who let their dogs run free are the ones who are responsible if they are killed or injured. In the case of a little girl’s pet, it would be her parents.
As a medic working in an Army hospital, I can recall several instances of people being brought into the ER because they tried to avoid someone’s pet and got into an accident, wrecking their car and injuring themselves.
I’ll save my sympathy for the people who are injured because other’s won’t restrain their pets, but profess to love them.
I am not sure how to reply, but I will thank you for sharing your thoughts. Your experience is quite different than I would say most people’s. But it is good to have all sides to a conversation represented. I’ve never, Thank God, had to swerve my vehicle to not hit an animal before. Having lived in Pacific Grove, I HAVE had to slow the car down due to deer being unawares or plain dopey. Pacific Grovers are used to having deer grazing around in their yards or trotting down the street. Tourists, not so much.
I’ll make allowances for wildlife, after all, we’re intruding on their territory. I just get a little testy with people who blame the driver if their pet is killed or injured.
I do like the way that you wrote Ryan’s response, though. He can feel sorrow without assigning blame. And I certainly don’t blame the little girl, or the dog. I will look at what could have prevented it, and who’s responsibility it was. A leash, and her parents.
Maybe I am more rational than some people are comfortable with. While my cat was alive, I treated her with love and respect, and made many allowances for her catly-ness.
But when she died, the companion that I loved was no longer there, so I threw her body in the garbage.
That upset some people, I was even accused of being heartless. But my heart is for the living.
When I die, if someone wants to throw my body in the landfill, I’m fine with that. Why should I care? I won’t be there. My friends and family will have ways (if they wish to) of remembering me that are much better than visiting a patch of grass with a rock at one end.
I’m a professional writer turned game designer. A few years ago I married my Lady Veterinarian who involved me in her volunteer work in animal and wildlife rescues. We save a lot, but too often we have to admit that we’ve come too late. A year ago I found myself holding a dying mountain lion. She actually purred while I was holding her, she was so desperate for comfort. On the one hand I hate that memory every time it comes back, but I would also never want to lose it.
Uncle B… I know what you are saying. The fact that you were able to comfort another living being in their time of need, in their pain is something that you wouldn’t trade but it hurts to see them in that state. I think we can learn a lot by that kind of situation. You do what’s hard in order to help the other.
Growing up, we had a dog named Ginger. When I was about 13, Ginger became ill and my mom took her to the vet. She found out that Ginger was VERY sick. While there were tests being done and the like, Mom and I visited her at the vet the next day. The following day, Mom asked me if I wanted to go see Ginger at the vet and I said no because it was too hard for me to see her like that. Mom went without me. Ginger died that night. It is one of my regrets in life that I didn’t go see her that last time. How it would have been comforting to Ginger had I been there. How far better YOUR memory is of having been there for a dying animal than mine.
I definitely dredged this memory up when I wrote this cartoon… and perhaps it lets those feelings of regret surface and be dealt with.
It was a complex situation for me in many ways. My Lady Veterinarian is also a sixth generation Apache medicine woman, and her grandfather decided to teach me Apache medicine literally the first time we met (I’m actually Cherokee). Because mountain lions are sacred to the Cherokee and because she came to me when I spoke to her in the Apache language, he named me to replace him as Kha’diyin, the Shaman of Ceremonies, and take over the part of Coyote in the Ceremonies of the Seasons. Sometimes we know the most important events in our lives because they never really end.
I do have a fun story for you in the middle of all this sadness. We have a couple of ‘rescue’ foxes, Jessica Greyfox who is deaf and Melody Blackfox who was injured when she needed to learn to hunt (inside joke – my last name is Blackfox) I also have a very precocious kid who has already been set ahead several years in school, so all of her friends are older than she is. A couple of years ago her friends were reading a YA fantasy series in which all the Native American characters were skin walkers. They were afraid to come around for a while, and I suspect that my kid may have encouraged them to believe that the house foxes were really her cousins.
It’s amazing what will trigger a response, and what won’t. You are quite correct, we artists are the observers of all around us. History tells us about what people did, where Art tells us about how people WERE. It amazes me sometimes how I can seem quite jaded about some political situation, yet in the next minute, be touched by something that seems almost insignificant. We humans are a very strange species.
We are an interesting lot for sure. We are moved to tears over the loss of a pet or animal… and yet callous over the homeless living in the street. I don’t want to get all preachy… but there is room in the human heart to perform kindness to all God’s creatures, including ourselves.