Appetite

A comic about the fear of losing control

I made this comic the week I started keeping a dream journal. I wanted to record my dreams to make better sense of what my brain was trying to tell me.

I don’t always remember my dreams, but according to other dream journalists (have I invented a title!?) the more you write, the more you will train your brain to remember.

But primarily, I wanted to write my dreams down because it gave me a moment to pause, breathe and engage with myself as a human being, before I reached for my phone and became a pair of eyes glued to the unfolding disasters of the world we currently live in.

It is difficult to care about our lovingly tended-to, small and nourishing gardens of creativity when it feels like everything on fire. It feels selfish and pointless to be making/writing/thinking about anything except the systems that are failing us, and the ways in which we are complicit in them.

So I’ll just say this: those difficult feelings are the point. And so is making art, tending to gardens, sharing dreams about pleasure and creativity with one another. There is little that is more human than trying to salvage hope from the wreckage.

Here’s a visual representation of what my brain has felt like lately, thanks to the genocide, the fires, the billionaires, the psychopaths and the nightmarish revelations about a graphic novelist I once adored. If you’re feeling similarly squeezed, consider this a bouquet from my garden.

love

Nish