Flawed [David’s blog on Merely A Thought Monday]

Posted on April 22, 2024 by davidrobinsoncreative

Over time I have grown more and more fond of our cartoon, “Flawed.” It was initially a collaboration between Kerri, 20, and me and was the source of great hope (we attempted to syndicate it) and many giggles. It was also the origin of our Wednesday melange posts: the prompt for Not So Flawed Wednesday was a Flawed Cartoon.

I noticed that writing and drawing a cartoon transforms you into a dedicated ethnographer. It necessitates paying attention to the world unfolding around you. It transforms you into a collector of the beautifully ridiculous.

The material has to come from somewhere. While we were producing Flawed, we’d move through our days with paper and pencil at the ready or we’d whip out our phone, add a note, send an email or text to ourselves. “What’d-ya see?” was a regular question. Everything was fodder for Flawed. A simple trip to the grocery store became a rich expedition for cartoon possibilities.

While hyper-focused on the actions playing out all around us, one thing became abundantly clear: people are flawed. Thank goodness. All of us are pushing our individual carts through life, gathering our stuff, stacking our importance, wishing other people would get out of our way – until we need them – and then we are grateful for their assistance. We rarely see that we are shopping together, all sharing the same store, the same road, all attending to our aloneness in the midst of abundant and ubiquitous support.

No one is perfect. No one has answers to the big questions. No one is free of flaws or quirks or trespasses or cracked-yearnings. It’s possible that our flaws are what bind us. Wabi-sabi. We are kintsugi held together, made better and stronger by the pure gold of our imperfections. That was – that is – the idea behind Flawed Cartoon.