On Water
"Wherever we go, we are friends" -Sloth and Manatee
Sloth and Manatee
Water goes where it goes, according to its water self and its water rules. Until you’ve got an ocean or a river or a canyon or a drop running down your car window.
Water is a friend. Yes, we need it and are made out of it and all this…
Another way to think of water as a friend is, that water is capable of infinite be-friendings.
That is, wherever it is, it shapes itself to the terrain and goes around according to how it works. And it works with whatever is there. No matter what. One could say that water and a slope are friends, in a way. Water and your windshield. Water and a tree. Water and you and molecules and clouds. We are all hanging out together, going along side by side, infinitely. Friends.
There will be no ultimate victory of one group of humans over another group of humans on this watery planet. There will only be further entropy (I’m using that term again), further complexity. Every conflict will generate more factions and more history and more resentment. The more that happens, the more that happens.
But every friendship and re-friendship will be there, too. This is the pattern of water. We can learn from it and make places for water to go, on purpose. One drop at a time.
And so, I’m working on tiny be-friendings. A plant, or my pillow, or a few minutes with our crazy cat. A greeting to someone on the street. Stopping to listen to a bird. Uh, myself.
Small patterns become big patterns. Things happen slowly, until they happen quickly.
Is there something you can be-friend? Your porch? A squirrel? The checker at the store? We flow like water.
Brainwaves
Best of Brainwaves Volume One: The Fountain of Stuff
Best of Brainwaves Volume Two: Mom, Dad, I'm a Cat
License Cartoons from CartoonStock
Art!
Exciting thing! I’ve got a bunch of prints up at a local library (in Orinda, CA), and they’re gonna be for sale and benefit the library/arts. Whee!
Here’s how they looked during setup:
I’ll share the link as soon as I have it in case you want something! I am very grateful to have this much space to fill with all these fellows.
Other exciting thing! I got my first copies of Best of Brainwaves Volume 2, so I’ve got em for cons and such! Here’s what that looks like:
These are available through the book machines, particularly BookShop which benefits indie bookstores, yay!
Making these books is like re-befriending all these cartoons. Hundreds of those fellows!
Things Of The Week
My friend Sacha, who writes about fandom and the web and much more, gave a keynote on returning to The Good Internet, and it’s all about re-befriending. Ourselves, our communities, and the web thingy itself. She put the whole thing here, it’s such a good read. All Sacha’s stuff is.
Here is a wonderful example of re-befriending using an abandoned sofa.
Well, there was this game I was gonna recommend here, that was about guessing what images are by making them more and more detailed, but then I saw that the images it’s using are all AI generated, and so I… didn’t. The thing coulda used real human photographers. It’s not hard. But it didn’t. That sucks.
Okay! That's enough nonsense for now.
May you befriend something, may something befriend you, won't you be my neighbor? - Betsy
HELLO AND THANKS FOR READING!!
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