The Four Pigeons of the Apocalypse

I’m a chronic doodler. Attention span of a gnat. If I’m on the phone, my hand, not my mind reaches for something to doodle on. Envelopes, bills, the phonebook… Sometimes I look at the drawings and scribbles afterwards, and wonder how they got there, what quarter of my brain they have been lurking in. Usually animals and birds, sometimes very depressed-looking people. Who are they? Do I have an army of them?

None of them are close to approaching art, but they are my friends. I let them sit here, next to the phone, before I bin them. I do paint pictures, for fun, but those are very different- maybe I’ll post one or two. These things, the doodles, only exist in the mind of a distracted man. Imagine an artist who can’t create without a phone receiver stuck to his head. It has to be a landline, too. A cell phone takes too much concentration.

This blog gets like that. I sit down, my head gets emptier, the more I try to think of things to write. Eventually, at best, a word pops into my head, and I write, almost automatically, like a disembodied hand in an Arthur Conan Doyle story, scribbling across the keys. Sometimes it works, sometimes, well, see below for details.

I don’t edit, I may go back in and take out a typo, but this is as close as you will get to seeing bilge pouring forth from the engine room of my ship. Wait. Bilge is in the ballast tanks, right? Ah, well, bilge is weighing me down, and I need a place to pump it out. Splaaaaaat.

Very deep stuff. Welcome my four friends above. I call them the Four Pigeons of the Apocalypse. I wanted to name them, but their roles remained unrevealed to me. I think they control my mind... You can fear them or feed them. It’s up to you. Thank you to all of you for holding the receiver up to my ear, instead of throttling me with the cord.