Back To The Drawing Board

My brain was being pounded with

Understanding to understanding.

Like a tennis ball,

Back and forth it goes.

In the end, all that remains is

Deflated.

Fluffy.

Ruins.

It's frustrating when you think that you finally understand something, where all the pieces fit in place in your mind like a puzzle and you have that small EUREKA! moment, and then before you know it, that understanding is blown out of the water. Like all those people who believed the Earth was flat. I mean, it makes sense, doesn't it? When you look far away, it appears flat. When you look up in the sky, it seems to just stretch for kilometres. But then they go discover its "roundness" and you feel stupid for you naivety. You're not that smart. You still don't get it. And you have to "go back to the drawing board" and try and wrap your head around something new.

This is Evelyn in a nut shell. She's still searching for answers. She's still trying to "discover" what it means to be alive. And she's still trying to understand the people around her and the way that they work. And where she fits into all of this. It's a typical journey for a young woman growing to be a woman, but there is definitely something different about the way that Evelyn goes about it. She gets beaten to a pulp every time, and yet somehow manages to reappear as if a ball out of a new can, just with the innards of the old.

The Red Tree

Shaun Tan is amazing. Just amazing. I was doing a little bit of research at Pulp Fiction for a Uni assignment on Monday and I came across a stand plastered with his works. I'd heard of him before and hadn't been that impressed, but standing there in that bookstore, seeing it all before my eyes, it suddenly hit me how brilliant his work is. I felt like I was in heaven! I played with the idea in my head of how nice it would be to OWN one of his books, but as I usually do, I talked myself out of it and began to walk away. But I didn't get more than two steps away from the shelf before stopping, turning around, grabbing "The Red Tree", and then quickly buying it before I changed my mind. Nothing could wipe the smile from my face as I walked away from that bookstore, Shaun Tan in my hands. I rarely buy things for myself. And even rarer do I buy things to cheer myself up. But this was a one-off. Oh how glad I am that I changed my mind!

I feel so inspired to create just by thinking about it. If you haven't heard of him before, you don't know what you're missing out on! The Red Tree is a true masterpiece.

I mean, seriously, look at the brilliance in this absurd image:

Nobody Understands Me- Shaun Tan's The Red Tree

The words, so simple, are beautifully crafted prose that resonates deeply within me. And I love a story with a circular story-line. It just feels "good" when you get to the end and it links back to the beginning. Like things have happened, things have changed, and things will be different from now on, and yet we're back where we were before.

As much of a words person I am, I just love stories. So a story with such little words is no problem to me. The less words you use, the better, really. I can't wait to get my hands on "The Arrival". It has no words at all...