I did this drawing and wrote the commentary 5 years ago today. Still one of my favorite quotes. I think the drawing is totally cool too.
Falling Apart
Have you ever had every expectation of what your life is going to be destroyed? I have, twice. It was my injury and burns from a boat explosion the first time and my divorce the second time. In the scheme of things they weren’t nearly as brutal as truly terrible events; a tsunami, a terrorist attack, genocide, maiming, killing, destruction of your physical world. Those are cataclysms that it’s hard to recover from.
I remember being in the hospital in September of 1973 and having someone say something about January, 74 coming up. I remember how impossible it was for me to imagine January. It wasn’t just far away in terms of time, it was psychologically far away. I didn’t believe it would ever come because every day was the same painful day, again and again. The pain was never going to leave and if the pain didn’t leave then time really wasn’t moving forward at all. January was just another word, like bandage or blood, it wasn’t a moment in the future.
In it’s own way, less physically painful than the burns, but emotionally much more devastating, my divorce destroyed a lot of what I was expecting from the future. I hadn’t verbally formulated much of what I expected to happen in the future while I was still married; my ideas were assumptions about how it would go. But once the divorce was in the works those ideas were obliterated. I wouldn’t have a 50 wedding anniversary for example. That was tough to take. I couldn’t allow myself to imagine a new relationship with a new family structure.
Falling Into Place
What happens next? Well, if you are the one whose life has been blown up, then what you can do is have an open and brave heart. That is not an easy thing to do, but it can be done. Not all at once, but over time, you can take a brave step into the future and see where it leads.
My experience of the explosion, recovery and my still existing scars ended up being one of the single most important events of my life, changing me into an artist, friend, husband and father I never would have been otherwise. Everything fell into place in large part because of that event.
My divorce, while unfortunate, led to me dating Linda, marrying her and inheriting a fourth daughter, Caitlin. Both have been blessings beyond what I could have imagined. Everything fell into place in large part because of that divorce.
Time
Of course, you can’t necessarily explain that this obliteration of life is actually an essential part of future happiness to someone who’s just gone through such a trauma; they really don’t want to hear it since it sounds like just so much patronizing crap. And it probably is patronizing crap at the time. But it’s also true. The future can be better than what you allow yourself to imagine.
This is a napkin drawing and commentary from 9 years ago today. Trump had only appeared on the political scene with some birther tirades at this point, and all the dark natured imbeciles who encouraged him were still seen as fringe whackos instead of main stream talking heads that they are now. So, while I wish I could say things have gotten better, they really haven’t.
This is dedicated to some knuckleheads I had the honor of conversing with first thing this morning. They happened to be of the conspiratorial type, sure that the US is in the grips of a secret communist cabal.
But the danger isn’t really about those people, the danger is with people of any stripes, left, right, up down, Christian, Muslim, atheist, etc. who aren’t paying attention to evidence, proof and history.
They instead are purposely bending the little bits they do know (not much) to match their anger, their prejudices and their self-serving agendas.
Whether it be UFO true believers, anti-Obama birthers, anti-Bush anarchists or any number of groups, the test is whether they are truly interested in finding truth, figuring out solutions (including compromises) or if they are interested in just building on their wobbly prejudices with more true believers.
Here are two more monsters in my series, Dracula and The Wolfman
My favorite of all the monsters from my youth was The Wolfman. He was hairy, scary and primal. I liked that The Wolfman was a normal guy until the full moon came out, then he became a super powerful animal-man. Who wouldn’t want to be that!? He was hip and cool, even if he did rip a couple people to shreds now and then.
Dracula was my least favorite because he was a pale, stuck-up wimp. Also, Dracula was stuck always being Dracula. Even when he changed, it was into something gross, like a bat. Who wants to be a bat? He also didn’t get to go out in the sun and had to sleep in a coffin. No thanks.
This drawing and commentary was posted 10 years ago but the drawing is from 17 years ago. Man, I’ve been drawing these a long time!
I love the simplicity and purity of this statement.
The Christian commandment that we do for others as we would like them to do for us does not include the caveat that we only have to do that if they return the favor. In other words, you can’t really know why ‘others’ are here, only yourself. So, pay attention to what you are called to do. That will be the best way to lean the arc of the universe towards good.
“We are here to do good to others. What the others are here for, I don’t know.” – W. H. Auden
I drew the napkin and wrote the commentary way back in 2012 but it is an evergreen post that is always appropriate to revisit at the beginning of any year. Let me know your thoughts.
Think of all that has happened in the last year (2011). I started speaking at conferences for the first time, three of them to be exact. Over a year ago I submitted a proposal for an exhibition of my photo-collages but hadn’t heard back anything by 1/1/11. Now I am 4 days away from the exhibition’s opening night (Living Arts of Tulsa, Friday, January 6th, 6-9pm). I had one daughter living in Tulsa and one in Seattle. Now I have one in parts unknown and one in Berkeley, CA. Those are just a few things among many. Two of those events I made happen by putting myself out there. My daughter’s life events I had very little control over, watching mainly from the sidelines.
What about you? What happened this year? What happen that you had some control over? What happened you had very little control over?
Stuff is going to happen to you in the next year. Stuff you can’t control and have no say in. But there will be plenty of things that will happen ONLY if you decide to make them happen. Are you going to push to make things happen, believing they can happen if you set your mind to it or are you going to let opportunities pass by, believing you are not able or being fearful of possible bad outcomes?
Will you look back on 1/1/13 and feel you did what you could?
This is a napkin drawing and commentary from the last day of 2010. I am republishing it on the first day of 2019 as the first in a year long series of looking back at the evolution of The Napkin and myself. I hope you enjoy!
Make your resolve in 2011 (and 2019) to be about what YOU can control. Don’t make a resolution for your husband or wife, your child away at college, your boss, your neighbor or your friend. Resolve to be, change, move, defeat, create, win over, help, build, enlighten and grow yourself. If in that process you save the world, great. If in that process you are just a better mother or father to your baby, then guess what? You have just saved the world as well.
Drawing and commentary @2019 Marty Coleman | napkindad.com
When I was a young boy I was big into model building. My dad was an aviator so I made a lot of airplane models. But what I really loved making was monster models. I had them all, from Frankenstein and Dracula to the Creature From the Black Lagoon. I spent hours gluing, filing the edges, and painting them. I had them on display in my bedroom and was very proud of them.
A few years ago I got the bug to read some of the original monster novels. I read Dracula, Frankenstein and Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde among others. They were all over the top in emotion and language, and they were a hard slog to get through. But I did it and it gave me a new appreciation for the subtlety of these characters as originally invented in the mind of the authors.
In 2018 I decided I would draw some of these characters. Not as they had been imagined in the books or in the movies, but just as I saw them in my own imagination.
Here are the first two in the series, Mr. and Mrs. Frankenstein. The first, Frankenstein’s Monster, was done on my iPad mini using the Sketchbook app. Bride of Frankenstein was done in my sketchbook then reworked digitally in Photoshop.
The Elegantly Dressed Beautiful Woman | Ink on Paper | 2004-2018
‘The elegantly dressed beautiful woman with the cat as her carry-on wearing black and an orange scarf and visiting her parents in San Diego who can’t have pets and thinks her nose is bigger than I drew it but was flattered and thinks I am lucky.’
I created the line drawing portion of this drawing in December of 2004 while at the airport waiting to go to San Diego. The woman and I kept in touch and I sent her a photo of the drawing. 14 years later I decided to finish it with color.
