July 29th, 2012
disabled veteran and his goat-creature in a space station corridor
EF Rotring pen and big yellow Pelikan pen over pencil
©2012 Pam Bliss

This is actually an autobiographical drawing.  Not that I’ve spent a lot of time in space stations, or am used to drawing goat-creatures or aliens from life.  But I did grow up in the suburbs of a large American city. (Well, it was a large city then.  Not so much any more.  But that’s another story.) It was the mid 1970s when I was first old enough to ride the bus downtown by myself, and the first panhandlers I remember meeting were disabled Vietnam veterans.  There was one man I have never forgotten, less for his disfigured face than for the blanket he wrapped around himself and the big pale dog he always had with him.  Even as I teenager I knew that giving money to people in the street is problematic, but then as now, someone with a good dog can get my spare change when no one else can.

That man and his dog are both long gone now, I’m sure, but I was thinking about them when I drew this.  And I remember being sure that when I was grown up I would be less confused by life’s wild inconsistencies and better at dealing with painful things.

Never happened.