241. 'Call me a doodling-bug', she commanded.
words of magic, and the beta becoming the alpha.
Dear reader,
In The Moor’s Last Sigh, the protagonist’s mother, Aurora Zogoiby, is a painter in newly independent India. The following passage grabbed me this week, right before I went to bed, and continued long after I was asleep to haunt my dreams, and the next day painted over everything else in the chambers of my freshly-empty-but-rapidly-accumulating-noise morning brain. I-tho am here just like that. You should read it too (emphasis mine):
In a culture so inundated by media, words become easy to dismiss. So easy to think it is just a story, not a real thing. But what is more real than stories? Stories take root inside our minds, and breathe our air, and grow with us, and move us in ways seen and unseen. Experiences are stories that we tell ourselves. Memories are stories we tell others, inventing, reinvented. Facts are stories too, the ones you choose to believe. And you can use stories to do great things.
Maybe this tiny story will help me to be more bold when I go out to draw and feel that familiar compulsion to remain inconspicuous, sneaky.
Ignore-o me, I could say. I-tho am here just like that.
Like an incantation. Maybe it will work? Like magic?
The SneakyArt Post is a publication of secretly drawn art of the world. Every week I share the latest pages from my sketchbooks, and the best ideas from my journey as an artist, writer, and fumbling parent.
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I may have to start reading Rushdie. In return I suggest The Covenant of Water.
I love this quote. Thanks for posting. And I need to read this book . . .