(This is a pile of old railway iron, found in the ground by a bike trail maintenance crew. The trail was built on the right-of-way of one of the many narrow-gauge logging railways that seamed this part of the world right up my youth. All have since been decommissioned; some, like this one, were converted to bike trails.)
Appearing also on My Corner of the World.
"The trouble with people is not that they don’t know, but that they know so much that ain’t so."
Josh Billings
(Graphic courtesy of Nevit Dilmen and Wikimedia Commons.)
“Writing about spiritual stuff for a secular audience is like doing card tricks on the radio."
Mary Karr
(Photo courtesy of Farhan Siddicq and Unsplash.com.)
This is pure genius, but bear with me, because it won't seem like it just from the description.
In Garfield Minus Garfield, Irish tech professional Dan Walsh experiments with the Garfield comic strip by deleting every character from it except Jon, Garfield's long-suffering, socially-awkward caretaker. In so doing, Walsh ends up elucidating a life that's played out in front of us for nearly fifty years, but remained almost invisible.
The results are uncanny. And a little heartrending.
From a Zen standpoint, the project is also a graphic demonstration of delusion. In Walsh's strip, Jon's largely hallucinating his reality; he himself is literally the only thing in-frame.
The point may be a little facile and solipsistic, but it's fascinating to see his Everyman grapple with suffering, in a world he's created between his ears.
Plus it's hilarious.
So if you like dark koanic humour, give it a click.
