The Artistic Response to Group Hatreds

Hello Fellow Seekers of Light and Truth,

Well, I've found yet another thing that pisses me off. I'm gonna have to add one more thing to this list. I know that I can't focus too much on anger, and that I've got to be positive. I know this, I understand this. However, I cannot sit idly by while wrong is done. This time, said wrong is especially insidious and horrible, because it is packaged as "truth," and "virtue," and "religious freedom," and "family values," and then taught to children as gospel truth. Here, the children who are victims become the villains.



You might have come across this video. It comes from Greensburg, Indiana, from a church called the Apostilic Truth Tabernacle. The sickest part of this video is the orgy of applause that the adults, and how they egg the kid on after he is done gleefully exclaiming that 10% of the population deserves to DIE and GO TO HELL. This is the kind of vile public attack on a group usually reserved for Taliban country, or some hideous fascist regime from the 30's, where the Jew was the predator that was corrupting  our fatherland. And don't try to argue on this point because, Oh, they're not calling for anyone to be killed, or They don't hate anybody, they just don't want their kids to think it's okay.

First of all, even if this group hasn't called for anybody to be killed, others have called for it. Listen to Pastor Curtis Knapp from Seneca, Kansas's New Hope Baptist Church.



What sickens me the most is that these men bully, berate, and demonize an entire population, and then they run and hide behind God and Scripture. They don't even have the courage of their convictions to own their hatred and prejudice. While seeing the child's glee is sickening, it is ultimately the adults who are the most at fault. It is the preacher for denying his own insecurity, and flawed nature, by condemning innocent human beings to death, damnation and public contempt just because of who they are driven to love and marry.


This is another truly disturbing video, shown on Saudi TV. If you'll notice, the 3-year-old girl is spouting the same ideas about Jews' alleged guilt as have been used through the millenia to rationalize pogroms, barbarian attacks, and ultimately the Holocaust. This hateful ideology, once again, sung sweetly into the innocent ears of a child, makes me feel nothing but rage. Rage because I know where this leads. This leads directly to genocide, it happened in Germany, it happened in Kosovo, it's happened without much notice in many other places.

I have to be honest, as I watch this kid sing, and as I see the adults riotously applaud, there's an animalistic part of my brain that wants to go, and punch and kick everybody in that audience. The only thing that sickens me even worse than seeing a person hurt, is seeing injustice, cheered and affirmed as righteousness. I used to have a big problem with anger, and sometimes I still get overwhelmed by it. I would only hit another kid in anger, hard as I could, then I would feel really bad for him when I saw him in pain.

There is something visceral about the anger I have when people cheer the beating and attacking of the helpless, the innocent, the righteous. This is just as much violence against a people as going and lynching them. Remember Tyler Clementi, two years ago? He was the Rutgers Student who was outed having a gay affair by his roommate, and then killed himself because he was embarrassed by his peers. They gave the roommate a joke, slap-on-the-hand sentence. Here, the humiliation, the damage, and the no doubt the permanent demonization in the minds of some of his classmates is the key component of the violence done to him, that destroyed him to the point where he felt only death would save him. As far as I'm concerned, if you cause that to happen to a person, you are directly responsible for his death.

I might have told you this, but I first read the book 1984 when I was 15 years old. It was a dark, confusing time in my life. I deeply identified with the struggle against a great tyrannical order. What was even more terrible about this, was that they had the people in their minds and hearts, the people who would surely know this was not just, fully believed that it was the only justice. Even the protagonist was defeated in his own mind and disowned himself, giving himself over to the lie. For a while, because of this, I lost faith in humanity. If we could be conned and taught to embrace such evil, what hope was there? We are all guilty, no matter what our nationality, religion, or societal structure.
Later, I began to learn about Eastern spiritual principles. What has stuck with me about these is that they de-emphasize the doctrine of it, and are more in tune with the flow of life itself. I later came to realize that it was the doctrinal, rhetorical emphasis that lay at the roots of this collective sin, at the risk of getting religious here. When I reviewed literature on Orwell's life and work, five years later, for a review of literature I was doing for Comm. Studies, I realized that what he was attacking was the lock-step behavior of people when they gather in groups.

Groupthink is a term that's come to be used often because of Orwell's work. I've come to use it often myself. Here, we need to ponder a lot about what it means, because I believe it holds some answers. What it means is when people get into groups, their collective behavior and thought process tends to focus on the group's preservation, rather than individual well-being or ethics. In other words, it becomes about how do we win rather than how do we care for each other, and what is the best for everyone. 1984 was an extreme example of this, but the disturbing thing is, all societies embrace this groupthink to some extent.

Think about why the parents gleefully taught this kid to desparage "the homos." It was because, at this church, the doctrine says that gays are evil. That's what the Minister preaches. It is similar to the "two minutes hate," shown in 1984, in that it trains the churchgoers to hate them as the sinners from whom all of the world's problems originate. Then they are trained to praise a "hero" who destroys the "villain," in this case, the child who is taught that when he damns people with his words, he will be rewarded, affirmed. Let's not be ambiguous here: this is violence. This is the reason so many gay, lesbian and transgender kids are killing themselves. This social torture makes them feel so rotten about themselves. When you are told you are worthless, dirty, and evil over and over again, you begin to feel dead inside, to internalize the pain.



So why would I be talking about all of this on an arts blog? Over and over, I have thought about what I would say to the question "Why do you get so political on an arts blog?" Well, as I have alluded to, I used to be much more overtly political and ideological. In fact, not long ago, I thought about getting into politics myself. I was always tense, on edge back then. I would spend hours arguing with points of view in my mind. This made life less enjoyable and more tense and argumentative. Long story short, I realized that there was something about the human experience that I saw, that demanded more than just political activism and struggle. In the last few years, the times when I have learned the most about how to heal people, is when I have explored life without judgement, with a creative eye.

The above video is from a year and a half ago. Joel Burns, a Gay City Councilman from Fort Worth, Texas, decided to give this speech after a rash of young gay kids commiting suicide, just to assure them that they were not alone. Listen to it, please. I couldn't listen to it without tears welling up. It's just a human reaction, I think. This crystallizes what my approach to issue-tackling has been over the last two years. It has to do with working from the experience we have in common, rather than the doctrines that make some good and others evil. Here, kids learn, again, from groupthink strategies, that the only way they can be accepted is for them to either ostracize, humiliate, or physically destroy some kid just because he looks different.

What this blog is about is the experience of life. The heartbreak, the love, the pain, the violence, the redemption. That is why I am talking about groupthink now. It inhibits us from owning our own life experience. We feel like we have to sell ourselves to feel liked, secure, complete. We can't claim our own experience, instead, we are subconsciously taught to hate ourselves in a variety of ways. You know, one thing I was shocked to learn is that when you watch an ad, 90% of what you take in is on a subcoscious level.

This process of melding our groupthink through ads, TV shows, movies, even stories we tell each other, does intense damage to people who are attracted to the "wrong" sex, but I believe it is not just limited to gays. Like I said, I have always loved girls, but what I find distressing is that, when boys get interested in girls, there is a certain unwritten script they expect you both to follow. The girl is expected to be the needy, emotional one who needs protection, and the boy must be confident, able to throw down at all times to protect her, and absent, except for sex. I realized early on that the script wasn't going to work for me. I came to want romance with girls, but something has always bugged me about the blind obedience people have to this way, and the condemnation you face if you ever stray from it.

I could give endless examples. The point is, groupthink kills our potential as human beings. What we need is to find our own way, and find attachments to people and groups that differentiate, in other words, they set boundaries so that we can stay free from the echo chamber that produces prejudices and hatreds against outsiders. We must learn to do this so that our children learn that NO group is sinful or evil by nature of is being different. In order that our children grow up to realize their full potential to live with others, and not claim the contempts of their parents as God's will, remember what I mentioned in the Bully post, the guy who said "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone."

Undoubtedly, some will interpret this to mean that God is without sin, and therefore, God is expressing his hatred of these groups through Christians' discrimination. To me, it means that none of us has the authority to universally condemn another group as intrinsically evil, for the same sins they possess also exist in us. We all have potential to bad, but we are not defined as creatures of sin. That's the main qualm I have with Christianity; all it seems to see is our bad. We need not be defined by our baser tribal instincts, though.

Well, I'll leave it at that for now. Undoubtedly, I'll talk more about this at a future date. I saw this, and as I said I got so angry about it that I decided to convert my angry energy into creative work. It is the same principle I used in my post on Newt Gingrich. So, anyway, I'll have some more good material for you soon.

See ya, and don't forget to live!

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (But Not There Yet...)

 A moving moment between Oskar Schell (Thomas Horn) and his mother (Sandra Bullock).

Hi there everybody,

Well, sorry for that long hiatus since last week's landmark post. I hadn't planned to get so revealing, but that is what this blog will demand. Anyway, the two posts I wanted to do last night ended up getting pushed back to today. However, I have now returned in full force to give you, at last, my post of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.

I had been wanting to see this movie from the day I saw the preview. Usually, when I see previews in the movie theater, I just shake my head, and want to get to the damn movie I came to see. Previews usually look nearly identical and because of this, they don't mean very much to me, you know. However, when I saw the premise of this one, I knew I had to see it.

I'll say right up front that I am biased, somewhat, in favor of Extremely Loud. Because the clips features the young boy, about 11, 12, 13 years old, around the time of 9/11 (that's about the same age I was at that time), and the kid was sad, overwhelmed, but he still took on a lot of challenge in searching for the place for this key. It was really inspirational to see, because when I was in the sixth or seventh grade, I felt really defeated by life, and overwhlemed by all the sights, sounds, and goings on I was encountering in the world. Even the name Extrmely Loud and Incredibly Close feels like life feels to me often. Plus, this boy's life (Oskar is his name) was torn apart by 9/11. So to say that from what I saw, it came very close to my heart, would be a very accurate statement.

However, that said, there were significant faults with this movie. There were many points in the sequence and the plot of Extremely Loud that just did not add up. Now, I don't want to give away too much here, because I highly, highly believe you should see it, or at least netflix it, when it is available. However, in Oskar's search for this key's corresponding lock (likely found in a post box or a safe deposit box), the outcome is left inconclusive, because the theme of the movie changes toward the end. What? You mean you're gonna devote half the movie to this quest, and then you're not gonna say anything about what the search produced? It's one thing to shift your focus, still, you could have at least one scene explaining the outcome of this expedition, and the effect it had on the others involved.

Those plotholes notwithstanding, the characters were what really drove the story, and gave it its credibility. First of all, the centerpiece of this film is the Schell family, with young Oskar, and his parents, played by Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock. Oskar comments that his father, an unusual jeweler "never treated him like a kid," involving his son in all kinds of projects, cartography, and searches. His father tells him of a lost "Sixth Borough" of New York City, and keeps Oskar guessing. Oskar's fears continue to haunt him, like one scene when his father insists that he go on the swing, but Oskar is scared of swing rides, and refuses, leaving his Dad to pout away in a disappointed huff.

One bright morning in early September, terror strikes. Oskar's father went to a meeting high up in the World Trade center, on what Oskar calls "the worst day." After the flights slam into the towers, Thomas, the father, makes several distress calls home "Oskar, are you there?" This is the most raw, jarring part of the film. Just the panic, the sudden ripping of a loved one out of life, really carries this part. Later, reviewing picture accounts of the attack, Oskar finds a man jumping from the building to his death, who resembles his father. Again, it's that image of something so engulfing, so horrible, that it would make someone want to jump to their death, and that happening to someone you love and value, that really tears at the heart, and makes you cry. That's what hurts me when I think about people I care about dying. That imagery stuck with me.

For a whole year after the attack, Oskar will not look at his father's belongings, not being able to face it anymore. Then one night he looks in his closet, and knocks a blue vase off the shelf. As it shatters, it reveals a small envelope, with only the name Black written on it, and a key inside. Now Oskar embarks on the big search, in order that it might resurrect some important part of his father's life. This epic search takes him to every person in New York City named Black. This forces Oskar to go up and talk to a lot of people, which is difficult for Oskar to do.

Sometimes, the people Oskar meets are scary at first, like the renter in his grandmother's apartment. His grandmother doesn't tell him why the renter is dangerous, just that he must be left alone. One night, his grandmother is missing. In the apartment complex, he confronts his fear, and goes into the renter's apartment. He finds only an old man, who doesn't speak, only communicating with quickly written notes. Oskar comes to suspect that the man is, in point of fact, his long-lost grandfather. I thought so, too, since the man looks so much like Tom Hanks.

Throughout all this, Oskar has his own unique character development. For a young boy his age, he wields an extraordinary amount of knowledge on many fronts, but he is also cantankerous and impatient with people. He hustles the old man around with him, and a few times, lashes out severely at his mother. He even proclaims "I wish it was you instead of Dad!" A few moments later, he comes up and says softly "I didn't really mean that." She replies "Yes you did." Clearly Oskar has his dark side. However, there is this essential feeling of vulnerability to him. One scene, he lists, and begins screaming out, all the things in the city that startle or terrify him: crowds, trucks, bridges, subways, airplanes, loud sounds. Throughout the film, Oskar slowly confronts fears, and starts to mellow out by the end.

The above scene got a huge laugh from the audience. It's a good example of something that you laugh at, but you can also connect with. Not that you would want to put on a gas mask when you take the subway, but we've all had times, especially when we're little, that we've had to confront big, scary things. I know lots of times when I was a kid, I had no choice but to go in and get into the thing that made me scared. Maybe you have had that happen, too.

Anyway, soon, it becomes revealed that the point of all this is not just the search itself. It is about dealing with the death of this inspirational father figure. It is in these moments that the movie shows its real strength. There may have been flaws in the execution, but this movie had a lot of heart. Thomas Horn, in his first big role here as Oskar, really showed that he has strength as an actor. Tom Hanks, of course, has a simplicity and identifiable-ness to his role as the father. Any movie with Tom Hanks has an extra degree of credibilty to it, in my book. Sandra Bullock also worked surprisingly well for her role, too, though I find it hard to believe that she would let Oskar go out into all those strange, possibly very dangerous, encounters all alone.

However, that leads to my next point, a key part of the movie. The characters, and the premise, aren't exactly believable. You wouldn't look at it and say, "Oh, yeah, that's totally true!" By the same token, the whole thing isn't totally un-believable, either. Many of the traits of this family weren't exactly part of the "every-family," but they made sense to me somehow. I could see how that would be possible. A lot of brilliant people, when they were young, were really restless, impatient, sometimes downright prickly. I admit I was difficult when I was little. Those same people often have lots of fear, or pain. This makes for complex, deep characters, which is what makes a movie grab you, and never let you forget. So, for all its faults Extremely Loud had a lot of heart. You can't fault it for that.

I know that it's currently Oscars season, and all the movies are hamming up their dramatic credentials, but I think this one came from a deeper place of creativity. This has to do with how we deal with loss, and how we choose to honor our lost loved ones. This is especially true of a horrifying death, like the one Oskar's father suffered. On that note, I have a little sketch I did four years ago that I'd like to show you.

I started out to do this as a quick sketch of a candlelight vigil, but it became more detailed, dark in texture, and soulful. You can see that the two women are huddled together in darkness, with only the light of the candles they hold. This is a simple expression of what Extremely Loud conveys, that it is about bringing people together, and transcending their suffering. To go after the goal set out for him by his father, Oskar must connects with people of all races, classes, and social types. Then, he must connect with his mother, and his own family. That's what amazed me about it, was the bringing together of all these different types of people. They all have that burden of going through losses together.

Think of that the next time you're in some crowded public place, that all of the people you see have, or will have to, deal with sadness, loss, and ultimately their own death. The thing that hurts everybody actually brings us together. Thanks everybody! I'll have some more good material for you guys in the next few days.

See ya, and keep wondering, folks!

Why the Tennessee Tea Party Made a Serious Mistake

Hi there everybody,

Well, it's back to political issues again. I just had to share this little tidbit with you. The reason I am putting this up is because this goes back to the tone of discussion I would like to set. This is a tone of honestly, a willingness to talk about the issue, with all the truths of the people and parties present, however uncomfortable or jarring they may be. To me, this also requires a tone of compassion, of understanding accepting the other, whether you push back on them, call them out, or even take some action against them.

Anyway, the Tennessee Tea Party has demanded to the State's Legislature that, as well as rejecting the Affordable Care Act of two years ago, the history of our "Founding Fathers" and the country's development, be "more truthful," to use their terminology. According to them, the characters of the Founders have been "distorted," treated "unfairly." Huh? Really? Somehow, in Tennessee, of all places, Washington and Jefferson are getting a bad rep. I didn't see that one coming. In all seriousness, I believe that the Tennessee Tea Party here has made a huge mistake (like G.O.B. has below). Here's why.

This re-writing of history (because that's what it is, no matter what anyone wishes to call it) creates a convenient fiction. It promotes a simplistic, almost childlike, view of our history, our heritage, as a country. It just erases facts, important facts about what happened in our past. Don't like some aspect of our past? Just write it out of our textbooks.

This reeks of Ministry of Truth-style renderings of historical knowledge. That's why it is scary to think that one ideological faction could bend, knead, and press history into whatever shape or narrative they wish. If this is the case, how can we have freedom? How could anyone have real freedom? The freedom to explore their world, and reach whatever ideas or conclusions they believe to be right. The truth is, the children of Tennessee would not get the variety of perspective they need to be truly free to see our good work, our mistakes, and ultimately our potential as a people.

A dangerous aspect of this is that the "Founding Fathers" are turned into Gods on Earth, this time at the expense of the non-whites in the America of 1776. The submitted request to the Tennessee Legislature explicitly said this. "No portrayal of minority experience in the history which actually occurred shall obscure the experience or contributions of the Founding Fathers, or the majority of citizens, including those who reached positions of leadership." What this means is that the petitioners here want the curriculum to take out people and incidents which bring to light the white population's oppression of slaves, or their transgressions against the Indians.

Another criticism of theirs is that "the constitution created a republic, not a democracy." I find that interesting. The emphasis here is on the Constitution as it was first ratified back in 1787. They believe that the Constitution must never, ever change from the way it was first conceived of back then. It must never move toward a more democratic framework or expand to "create more rights." Here is the problem with that mindset. In that version of the Constitution, slavery was perfectly accepted, and runaway slaves were even required to be turned in. Slaves had no worth of their own, yet were counted as just three-fifths of a person. Indians were required to be hunted down, butchered and killed. Women were given absolutely no rights outside the home.

The sad truth is that many of the Founding Fathers (with the notable exception of Thomas Paine, who was a real visionary) had slaves of their own. There was, in fact, much concession to the slaveholders in the South, particularly Virginia and Georgia, in the drafting of the Declaration of Independence. The Slave trade was at its height right in the late 18th century, around the time that revolutionary spirit caught fire in what became the US.

The Tea Party people down in Tennessee, as well as Texas and other places, will not accept these parts of our history. When Michele Bachmann intimated that the Founding Fathers ended slavery, she wasn't joking, and she wasn't just being stupid. That is what she, and many other people in this country, do believe, and want to keep believing: that the Founding Fathers can do no wrong. That America can never do anything wrong.

The danger of this belief is that it ignores, or even tries to justify, the very real wrong things done in the name of America. Like the systematic destruction and genocide of the Indians, their ethics, and their way of life. Or the violent uprooting of millions of Africans, tearing apart their culture, and stripping them of their humanity in a land where they were beaten down for the sake of profit and goods in America and Europe. Or the deeply entrenched cultural animosity, across history, towards the French, the Germans, the Eastern European Jews, the Irish, the Italians, the Chinese, and now the Mexicans. If these are ignored, we are blind to our mistakes, and we will be doomed to the same cycle of animosity that has played out since America began to exist.

However, you can't blame the Tea Party people much. Well, you can if you choose, but it would be wrong. After all, seeing the shadow of something you hold so dear is tough. It would be very easy to simply not accept these facts, wish them away and , when given the chance, to simply write them out of history. It seems like you've defeated the issue, the knowledge of the transgression just disappears. However, the animosity does not. People not in the favored race or class will remember it, every time the subtle contempt comes at them.

Facing such unpleasant, even painful truths of our past is a part of growing up. It is a part of viewing our own heritage and society in a mature way. Being patriotic has nothing to do with being blind to our past, or our country being without flaws. It comes from knowing this country, its victories in the quest for truth, justice, freedom, and its downfalls. To me, it's similar to how you would love a member of your family. You would not pretend they were perfect, you would know they had flaws, but care for them, and help them heal anyway.

Paradoxically, it becomes easier to live with and love somebody when you don't have to pretend they are perfect. This goes the same with the United States of America and its people. Like I said before, I think there is a discussion that needs to happen concerning race and class history in this country. We must confront the ways, individual and systemic, intentional or unintentional, that we have marginalized and ignored the poor and the immigrants. This requires us not to blame each other excessively, but rather, to see our abuses for what they have been, in all that it entailed. We must see the dark flip side of the early prosperity of our country-the campaign against the Indians' culture and the slave trade, for all the suffering they caused.

Recently, I have been reading A People's History of the United States by the late Howard Zinn. It shows, through extensive and unknown research and documents, how the beginning of the United States was not a 100% new, radical declaration of the freedom of humanity, but a continuation of many cultural defects of old-racism, sexism, slavery, contempt for the "inferior" (i.e. native) cultures. It is absolutely required for a comprehensive understanding, what is contained in it.

I think that this also misses something, though. There are two strains of cynicism; one says that because we are the "right" ones, whatever we do must therefore be right. the other says that because what you see is not as pure, wholesome and clear cut as it seems, real transcendence is not possible, and it is pointless to try to achieve it. These are both ideas you must be careful of. I think the Tennessee Tea Party is trying to shut down this type of discussion at the very time it is most needed. Thankfully, there are a small number of people who realize that while we do not live up to our own mythologies, we nevertheless have our drives of compassion and a longing for connection.

Wow! That went on way longer than I expected it to. I always promise myself, Okay, this is just gonna be a short entry. Then, sure enough, it just comes out, and then I've written several paragraphs. Thanks for reading. I hope you bear with this, even though it can be hard to focus on these long entries. So, what do you think? Does learning about, for instance, our history with slavery scare you, or upset you? Do you believe that it wasn't really as bad as they say? Or were some of your ancestors perpetrators, or victims, of our country's racial or class divides?

See ya, and keep wondering, folks!

Turning a Bad Morning Around

Snow White Goes Street!

Hi there! Okay, so this isn't really Snow White, but I'll explain it in a moment. The reason for the title is that this morning was not a good one for me. It was just unpleasant, and there were lots of little things that just got on my nerves. First of all, I didn't sleep good at all last night. I guess I was just too jazzed by doing last night's post. That's the problem with doing these deep, creative things, is that they can make you go bonkers. That happens to me sometimes.

Anyway, my circadian rhythms, or whatever, decided "Hey, we're not gonna fall asleep" until about 1:30 in the morning, after an hour and a half of tossing and turning. Then I woke up at 6 this morning, but couldn't get back to sleep, so I was just lying there in bed, with my mind running for another 2 hours. Then I got up, feeling kind of crappy to begin with. Then someone in my family went off on me when I didn't pay enough attention to them. After this, I had that feeling that I sometimes encounter.

This is when I get burned out, overwhelmed by things going on. In the extreme, this can make me feel depressed, really anxious about almost everything, or mad about the world. I often feel some blend of these at the same time. Fortunately, after I got some work done, and then set to work getting this post ready. At that point, what remained of the crappy feeling I had in the morning was receding.

That's the good thing about my mood lately. Even when I get really bent out of shape, I can recognize that things are going wrong, and decide I want to set today on course. I had heard about how having a bad morning can make the whole rest of your day suck. I didn't want that to happen this morning. Thankfully, it didn't happen. The downside is that, still, I feel, simultaneously, like there is very little I can do to change the course of my life in a meaningful way, and that I am not doing enough. Or what I am doing is not good enough, or complete enough, or truthful enough, or, well, you get the idea.

Anyway, this can be hard to really tough to deal with sometimes. Onto the point of this drawing. I came up with this idea as I was working on the Occupy Wall Street-themed illustration. I thought it would be good to illustrate a woman who was an angel, like a Divine Feminine figure, holding a machine gun, in this case, an M16 military-style rifle. The key to the angel figure, is that if you blow it up, and look closely at her face, you see that she has a warm, open expression on her face. I wanted her to show the warmth, love, and compassion in her face, while showing a strong, leveling, uncompromising strength.

So there are two ways you could look at this. Is she a good angel with a bad side, or a bad angel with a good side? Usually, movies, games, or books with really violent overtones freak me out, but I have to admit that when I thought of that subtitle at the top, I got amused when I thought of the toughest street gangs losing firefights to, and living in terror of, this "Snow White" figure. Is that wrong, to be bothered by really violent stuff, yet to enjoy that kind of dark humor?

My two themes here are love and truth. Here, the angel has the aura of absolute love and compassion in the way she looks toward the viewer. Yet, she has the often harsh power of truth and justice. I symbolized it as an M16 here to show how these two can exist in the same entity, in the form of gentleness and strength.

Also, as you have probably seen here, I think female symbolism is a fascinating thing to use in my drawings. I don't know why, but for many years, I have loved to include female subjects in these artistic endeavours. Maybe because women have always been an enigma to me. There is something about them that is interesting and foreign, but also appealing in some ways. So, yes, I do include women in my drawings. Anyway, that's it for now. I will have some more posts up for you soon. See ya guys, and keep wondering!