/ Sky's Coming Down Again

I have spent the last few months trying to create sketches to remind me that I don't hate my characters, and that they are not trying to bore me or act in ways I never would, or worse always would, but I am a cruel mommy to my babies, and when he walked away from fear, I used the FIND AND REPLACE function to give him an ambiguously feminine name, and not one that's even close, but one like Leslie or Gayle or Elizabeth.

And when she got a little too confident in her abilities, I wrote a single line at the beginning giving her the gift of a shorter right leg, and now she has to get by with a little limp. Not only that, but as a corollary, I gave him a litany of unintentionally hurtful lines, such as, "I think we're gonna come up a little short," and, "We don't really have the right to be here," and, "If you're so awesome, how come you run with that freaky limp like thing?"

I trapped three inside a burning truck because I was in a bad mood, totally unrelated to anything they did, but while you can change the names, you can't bring the dead back to life. Dust to dust, my friends. Sorry, train gone.

I turned the old guy into a hopeless alcoholic, and although I haven't put to paper the scene where he soils himself, it is in my mental notes, so he'd better just watch it.

The old woman used to be a wholly likable character. It is awful hard to actually like people who are impossible not to like. So I would be afraid if I were her.

* * *

It's funny, whenever you sit and think too long about something, but then let it go and forget it, come back later after thinking on something else, it's almost like hearing an old song done acoustic or maybe covered by someone with a better voice, and you are torn. Which was the better version, you wonder, knowing full well that the original is always better, but my god isn't it nice to see a different angle of someone you have loved so hard, so long. She wasn't always that pretty, was she? And then you hear someone say, 'My god, she's pretty,' and you think, 'Yes. Thank you.'

You can't take back some things, but you can look at them different, and the toughest kid I ever knew had a girl's name and wore pink t-shirts. And the valedictorian of my high school didn't care about her shortcomings, and I saw her run down the hallways one time, do backflips all the way past homeroom. And everyone else I've known til this point, I can't help but see them differently, except those that I have loved so much, and they shine enigmatically, like a comet captured in a photograph between fireworks on one side and lightning on the other.

Oh, I am all over you, indecision, don't get careless. Because the keys to your lockbox work however I type them out, and it's not a matter of whether or not I can open you, it's just a matter of what I will find when I do. I am interested in surprises far more than jewels, so watch yourself. There's no telling what you may have to surrender. There is no telling.