The wise old tree

Plus: Gentle Judy, spirit animals, ideas in the night and more.

Hi there. I hope this finds you well and good. This week's post is a mixture of stories and drawings, a format I like to roll out occasionally because it allows me to share some of the weird ideas that fill up my notes. Always with the intention of providing some relief and delight in the middle of your week.

I've got some more longer form pieces I'm working on, so I'm hoping to share those in the coming weeks as well. Plus some other bits of news, including various projects I'm tinkering with.

Aside from all that, I hope you enjoy the post, and have a great week!

People used to come for miles to seek the council of the wise old tree.

But slowly that had changed.

The tree had been spending more time online, visiting obscure forums and getting very into conspiracy theories.

It had started saying things like ‘That’s what they want you to think’, and always trying to steer the conversation back to 9/11.

And that tended to turn quite a few people off.

Gentle Judy was light as a feather
She fluttered about on the breeze
The wind, her primary mode of transport—
and that often made her hard to pin down.
‘I’ll check the weather report later’ she would say in response to dinner plans
Before her voice and torso trailed off
and she whooshed up into an air vent.

Huckleberry Finn was a free spirit. 
He spent his days rafting, fishing and going on all sorts of adventures. 
But then later in life, 
he often found it hard to explain to potential employers all the gaps in his resume.

Samir was always getting ideas in the night.

They would come pouring out of him, and so he kept a pen and paper beside his bed.

Last week he'd woken up in a frenzy and frantically scribbled out a recipe for a summer salad. The week prior, whilst still half asleep, he’d leant over and casually knocked out a scathing piece on the state of French cinema.

Other times it was nonsense, and in the cold light of day, he could barely make heads or tails of it. Mad scribbles, random equations, drawings of spiders in dinner jackets.

For weeks on end he'd written down 'face curtains?'

And then only last Thursday, a shopping list, a screenplay for Gladiator 3, and a poem so beautiful he'd wept.

So it was a real mixed bag.

As a young boy, Alan dreamed of building rockets and exploring space. 
And one day his dream came true.
It was quite remarkable, actually.
But then he got distracted by memes, and eventually wrangled himself a government job. 
And properly mucked it up for himself.