Graphite Gods...

THIS POST CONTAINS MATURE MATERIAL

If you are young, if girls are still yuk and boys to dumb to talk to?  If that’s the case then get outa here kid, go outside and enjoy the rest of the world, there’s a lot of it to enjoy.  You’ll get to this stage of life soon enough, believe me.



From the Music Collection
Sweet Dreams (are made of this)
Eurythmics, 1983 



You might look at this picture and harrumph a bit,  crinkle an eyebrow and say “ok, yes, obviously there’s some sweet dreams in progress, it isn’t hard to see what’s going on here, but good lord why can’t she have some privacy?   Well, she does have privacy, c’mon, get real, she’s just a graphite drawing.  The lass has all the privacy she needs, she’ll never know we were watching her enjoy herself, looking in on her dream.  Truth is it’s you and I who might be feeling a bit exposed by the whole affair and not quite sure why.

Let me start out by saying the thing about drawing pictures is that to your picture you’re God.  It’s yours to say what’s seen, what’s happening, what’s in the hearts and souls of those you’ve portrayed.  You can choose to hang your picture on the wall for everyone to see or tear it up if you wish.  It’s your picture after all, one slice of life from the private universe of your imagination where you’re God.  The other thing about pictures is that when you look at one you didn’t create you instinctively know you’re in someone else’s universe where they’re God and you’re the visitor, and you always have to wonder if you yourself are appearing in some other frame of their universe.  You look at the picture, and have to wonder what you look like in this universe.  It’s a subtle situation coming and going when you think about it.

The question that goes begging an answer is this:  in the universe of your imagination where you’re God just what kind of a God are you?  No, I’m not blowing bullshit in your direction, it really is a good question if you have any intentions of actually being full master and commander of your own life.  Why?  Because it has been pretty well proven by the head-shrinkers that imagining things isn’t that far short of actually living them in terms of psychology, which means that the things we imagine almost count as experiences.  Think about that.  When you’re playing God to all the other creatures and creations of your private universe you’re also loading things into the backside of your own library of memories.  Are you being a fair God to yourself?  Giving yourself the chance to live as you’d really want to live out in the real world?  A chance to test your own feelings against this situation or that, a chance to grow, a chance to mature?  Or are you a cruel and repressive God to yourself in your own universe, time after time living the same blind fantasy you can’t explain even to yourself, living in the damnation of habits you don’t even remember the source of? 

Would you want the God you look to in the outer reality you share with everyone else to treat you the way you treat yourself when it’s yours to play god?  Before you start talking about how the God of our shared universe is treating you it might be a good idea to look at how the god of the private universe of your imagination is treating you.  There’s a good chance that god is actually more responsible for your life than any other, you know.

As for the lass in the picture?  Don't worry about her, we'll leave her to finish in peace.  She’s safe, she’s a fine wholesome work of young womanhood dreaming of a lover worthy of her trust, a lad who’ll match her flame for flame turning up enough heat to weld two lives into a new family.  She’s a sweetheart, I’m not going to abuse her, not as long as she's living in my universe.  That would be senselessly mean, and I don’t need any more of that sort of stuff thank you very kindly, see enough of that out in the real world.