Then she’s tells me I’m a creep….
This morning after my swim and my breakfast I cleaned up the table a bit before I launched into my daily drawing. It never really feels like I’ve accomplished anything when I clean. There is always more that I have to do that I have just not gotten to yet, but it is easier to approach my sketchbook when the table is relatively cleaned off and there is space for me to work.
Then I popped on Core which I hadn’t listened to in a while. I had forgotten that I had picked up the first three Stone Temple Pilots albums on cassette but I felt really happy that I had this morning.
It has been a morning of shifting perspectives. Not dramatic shifts, more like an imperceptible plate tectonic sort of move, but a personal weight has been lifted the last couple days that I just could not find a way around previously. Happily that is on its way out.
The Bazooka man feels, in a way, apropos on a day of shifting perspective. He has the biggest gun. Most children will select him first. The word “bazooka” is just so cool to begin with. But what is it to be the man with the biggest gun? What does that feel like? Is it loads of responsibility? Is it the inevitability of being seen?
Currently, I’m reading The Midnight Library, and the main character, Nora Seed, while ruminating on the regret of her abandoned swimming programs and failed relationship with her dad, talks about the pressure of being seen. While it’s true that we all spend the majority of our lives walking around without anyone paying the least bit of attention to us, there is that fear that some of us carry that we will be seen. We feel vulnerable to people’s opinions, shifty looks, and harmful words. Perhaps we even carry those harmful words longer than one should. We develop a chip on our shoulder, people say. We’re too arrogant or stuck up and we don’t want to interact with others. But really, we may just be guarding ourselves, setting boundaries hard so that we are not hurt again by the harmful words of the many.
I wonder if it is ever like that for the bazooka man.