Tag Archives: dreams

Dragon Comics 96

dragon comics 96_edited-1

I don’t know if there’s something *wrong* with these kids today, but there’s definitely something suspicious about all that energy so early in the morning.

Kids like me; my mom calls me the Pied Piper. I remember what it was like being a kid, and usually, I understand what they’re going through, even if I don’t always have the energy or inclination to deal with them. Your food is touching, you’re not ready to leave the park, nobody understands your deep, abiding need to stay up 5 minutes later. I get it.

I felt like I was a kid until I turned 35, so I guess there’s nothing to complain about there, but it is weird to wake up and realize, wherever the finish line, I’m probably at least halfway there. In a lot of ways, I still feel like a kid, but at the same time, it’s hard to hang on to that “I’m gonna accomplish everything I ever wanted” feeling after a certain period of life. Not if this is as far as you’ve gotten. Not that I haven’t done a lot of amazing stuff and racked up some serious accomplishment and enjoyed myriad enviable life experiences, because I have. I’ve got some great stories.

It’s just that you can’t have everything. Except when you’re a kid and every single avenue is still open. You really could do all those things, if you just make the right choices. Of course when you’re a kid, you don’t necessarily get how important those choices are, that your attitude toward homework, or exercise, or practice can make or break your dreams. But those doors haven’t shut yet. You still could become an astronaut. You still could break a world Olympic record. You still could be a pop star.

Just a Simple Dragon

Needlenose, an aerodynamic dragon

Needlenose, an aerodynamic dragon

This is a small little drawing, I’d say, but it feels complete, for what it is. Needlenose, being aerodynamic, requires no extraneous parts or ostentation. There’s something to be said for pared down design and utilitarian simplicity.

When I dream at night, my dreams usually unfurl like feature-length reels of film: passion, intrigue, and drama in 3 acts. I am a spy, a soldier, a detective. I travel through time. I change genders, I change age, I change race. I change species. I complete quests and solve mysteries. On the rare occasions that I dream myself back in high school or completely naked, I manage to power through the dream without any noticing that I forgot my locker combination or my pants.

My childhood daydreams were even larger. I needed my own island to protect myself from the world. Literally: an island. Specifically: a mansion on an island where I would live in complete seclusion with my books and my faithful manservant. I would write my novels, unaffected by the rest of the world, a one-way system of communication in which my ideas would be received by an adoring public without my ever needing to venture from my protective base. But I know now that what a person dreams and what a person needs are often worlds apart.

Needlenose needs no adornments to fly, and I don’t need an island to exist happily in this world.

I still dream big. But I live economically. Perhaps my lifestyle is not quite so stripped to the bare essentials as this thin little dragon, but it is richer in art than it is in hard currency, and I’m still creating.