moondrunkmoth

[moondrunkmoth]

In the End

In the end there was nothing. Endless nothing. Cal surveyed their new domain of emptiness, and felt content. This is where he wanted to be, what he’d longed for, to slip into the ethereal without even having to try too hard.

Nothing as a concept to corporeal beings is almost impossible to imagine. To exist is to be something, to belong somewhere, perceive it, think of it, wonder if there is more, yearn for understanding. But that was all over for Cal now. Cal could finally just relax in the nothing. 

Cal can you hear me? Cal?

That wasn’t nothing…

Ignore it. Yes. Return to the void. Emptiness without form or need or expectations.

I had a body once, Cal mused to himself, but now it felt a lot like it was down there. As if down there was the bottom of well or the end of an infinitely long corridor and here was somewhere above, or below. ‘Down’ and ‘here’ are constructs Cal didn’t need to worry himself with anyway, this state did not require any understanding. Truly bliss. You could just be, in the comfort of knowing that even that would cease soon.

Oh my god he’s not breathing!

Ignore it.

Breath doesn’t exist here. This is freedom from all those niggling details like breathing, and eating, and shitting. Alone at last. 

Cal had the sensation of something, which was the distinct opposite of the nothing. A minuscule spark on the backdrop of the nothing that was akin to a firework exploding in your face set off Cals synapses. Searing, shattering pain jolted the realm for a second then faded just as instantly. This pissed off Cal. He reached for the nothing again. Whatever limb or organ that was making a bid for attention he didn’t need where he was going. 

Please Cal. Come back to me. Breath! Please breathe…

The feint sound of someone in a panicked pleading sob swam through his consciousness further interrupting the nothing. For fucks sake, thought Cal, leave me. Please. I like it here. I want to stay.

Migraine purple & red hues bled into the void dropping ink-like corrosive tendrils that bounced like lightning on a cloud. With every jolt, pain. Pain, again and again. 

Stop! Shouted Cal. If Cal had a voice, a mouth, or breath, someone might have heard him. If he wasn’t alone in this nothingness, someone might respond. It was no use. The pain was increasing. 

A rhythmic pulsing like hammering anvils brought awareness to what he assumed was his ear drums. With every throb it felt like the void was shrinking. Cal slowly realised the painful purple-red interrupting the vast nothingness, was in fact the underside of his own eyelids.

An alarming sensation of feeling like he was going to burst like a balloon was his lungs taking their first full breath. His throat felt on fire as he exhaled. Somewhere in his periphery the sobbing desperation had turned into sobbing relief. 

There were hands now on his face. Someone was speaking. He couldn’t make out the words. 

Cal flickered his eyes open a fraction & blinding light immediately caused them to screw shut. This is definitely not nothing, Cal thought. He tried opening his eyes again, squinting through his eyelashes. A familiar face looked back, tears streaking down their cheeks, a smile that was closer to a grimace. Whatever part of the brain does a systems check came to the conclusion that everything hurts and this really fucking sucks. 

“It’s ok Cal, you’re going to be ok. You’ve been in an accident. Don’t try to move, ok.”

That was the day Cal realised, all he really wanted his whole life was to die.

He’d never tried to make it happen, he’d never really realised that’s what he wanted. He’d just never tried too hard to live. In fact the only thing he’d ever tried to do wholeheartedly was to meet death when it finally came.

Cal sat, in pain from his recovering injuries, sipping coffee, reflecting on his brief time at the end of it all. The temptation to return to a state of relief from life was ever present. The rapture he felt at the end compared to no drug or substance he’d ever experienced. He got a taste of something forbidden, secret, and a voice that wasn’t quite his own was coaxing him back to that beyond. It would be so easy to go back there, the voice purred, and this time stay there. The voice had been there all along, Cal realised, whispering and insidious. This was the first time it was clear, distinct. A veil had been lifted on a nefarious hitchhiker in his unconscious who’s only goal was to get back to the sweet nothingness.

Cal could feel organs he never even considered before, because they hurt. Cal took another sip of his coffee. Noted how he felt his limb move, the weight of the mug enclosed in five digits, the pressure and warmth in his fingertips. How the temperature felt as he swallowed and traveled down his oesophagus & left a bitter taste on his tongue. Bringing the mug away from his lips he inhaled the scent & watched steam that swirled upwards. It’s funny, drinking coffee never felt this vivid before. Existing had somehow gone from grey to colour, and this dark hitchhiker stood out more than ever on a technicolour backdrop. He decided this entity was unwelcome.

And that was the day Cal decided, he really wanted to live his whole life.

[moondrunkmoth]

Am I a writer?

Do I fancy myself a writer? Do I think I am good enough to write things not just I like reading? I have no bloody idea. The last thing I need is another hyperfixation but here we are. 

I’ve decided to give myself some time away from daily sketching to explore this with daily writing. When a certain book arrives I will do some more art. The next step in that journey is constructing poses into compositions. Now I have made sense of how to make a pose from imagination, I think it will benefit me to put them in context from now on. I prefer to work this way, layering complexity. Such as, it is technically easier to practice posing one limb at a time, but my brain prefers to construct the whole thing as I go. Kind of like when I write. I rarely used a plan, essays and stories would pour out onto the paper like it already existed in my head and I just had to transcribe it. 

I have been learning about writing a little, there is a common term for what I do, it is being a Pantser. This means that you write by the seat of your pants. Conversely there is the Outliner, who plans & maps out everything. I think from the outside what I do looks a lot like a Pantser but I suspect that I already have the outline in my head somewhere, I just never ‘show my working-out’ as teachers always put it.

The same thing happens with art. I received a crit the other day about not using boxes for rotations. When it comes down to it, everything you draw is in a box. Studying boxes in rotation & perspective is the underlying tool for drawing just about anything. So I found it odd that I got a crit for this point because in order to complete the exercise I had to have used this technique, it’s just that I didn’t draw the box on paper first, I simply had it in mind. Still, I am learning, always learning, so I suppose I should listen to the what the teachers of my childhood would say and draw the actual box too. I am probably making it harder on myself by not drawing the box, or not doing the outline. To be fair that is the advice I’d give to anyone else learning a thing, even if they feel they didn’t need that step, do it anyway, you’ll thank yourself later. To me it feels a lot like training with ankle weights, you’ll still get stronger without them & its way more fun to not feel weighed down by this extra step, it feels like it’s holding you back and taking longer, but when you take them off you’ll be stronger and faster in the long term.

I enjoy using the tool of plotting out characters and story outlines in terms of visual development and building your own IP. Before designing anything you have to write it all down so when you start drawing you don’t have to think about what to draw, only execute your list. So if you’re designing an environment, you have a list of the furniture, personal items, decor style etc. Or for characters, their style, tools they carry, their appearance, traits and so on. It’s probably a good idea to do this for writing as well so, say if you ever get stuck on how your character might respond to something, you only need to look at the character map you made to remember oh, she’s a coward, she’d run away. Easy. 

I suppose the ultimate culmination of all this would be drawing a cool visual novel. Combining story telling, world building, design, and art. I’m not sure I could make anything cool enough though. Now that I think about it, before getting stuck into something this fancy, I should try to tell a familiar story first. So I don’t have to design whole new characters, only the setting, or visa versa. And I ought to stop worrying about being cool enough. Since I am my own target audience it’s inevitable at this point anything I do will most likely appeal to people like me anyway, middle aged nerds.