🍵Dilmah extra strength + Minor Figures oat milk—1/2 full—tepid.
This is another tea gone cold: illustrations, comics, prose and the occasional motley miscellanea by dangerlam.
Previous: 001 – The First Cup
Hey—
Are you in the mood for advice-giving? I’ve been wondering about the best way to keep your ideas in your head, when you’re the kind of person who thinks on the page*. Phrased as a question.
I was recently glazing my eyes into a vague distance, gaze resting in peripheral vision (blinking as required)—when a mood stirred in me. A few clicks later I was perusing an assortment of medical histories for animal patients I had the privilege of treating half a zodiac cycle ago**.
Rooey —
Lily Rosebud —
Pumpkin —
Mr Darcy —
Casper —
Harry Highpants — ***
* As in, how do you hold on to what you know? Disclaimer: I agree with non-attachment, fluidity, letting go, etc. But still!
** During my more prolific days as a veterinarian.
*** All pieces of my heart personified. If pet-stealing was ethical, I would have. Many lived long but alas, are no longer earth-side.
I had emailed these patient notes to myself so that I could research them after-hours, write them up neater, or file them for future pattern recognition purposes. Or maybe just for fondness of the furry subject. None of me would have predicted that years later I would be re-reading them for the purposes of wallowing in past achievements (a merit of peaking early?).
These notes were at once meticulous and concise, open-minded yet convicted, wandering yet systematic. They showed a healthy respect for the unknowns (summed up by a flourishing differential diagnoses list), whilst confidently tapering down to practical next steps. They acknowledged the chaos of a body afflicted with pathology, whilst instilling hope that this kind of body can still be cared for in manners known (and published).
Heck. These notes—they didn’t exist on their own…they came out of someone. Semi-alienated by the rigour of their author, I had to admit as I read the autogenerated ‘KL’ signature on the export-text, that they came out of, apparently, me. Yet I felt like I was reading them for the first time. Like experiencing someone else’s art, taking in a language of expression belonging to another. Impressed and intimidated, awe-filled and intrigued, I noted to self that this would make the ultimate humble-brag, if only I could internalise the pride.
It wasn’t a true wallow in the end. More so, a quizzical humbling.
The present-self bowing down to the superior past-self. I was reading things I didn’t know that I knew, and certainly don’t know now. It then struck me that once you forget what you’ve forgotten, it becomes something you never knew. It’s one of the reasons why I take so many notes*. For ‘just in case…’—a mantra of distrust.
—
Have you ever been walked through the notion of known-knowns, known-unknowns and unknown-unknowns**?
* A less noble reason is a love of stationery. In which stationery consumption begets more stationery consumption.
** Commonly referenced in strategic planning and project management activities:
- Known knowns: things you know you know.
- Known unknowns: things you know you don’t know.
- Unknown unknowns: things you don’t know you don’t know.
People don’t generally look into the unknown knowns (a bit useless in working contexts). But as someone quite prone to self-doubt, the unknown knowns hold relevance.
These are the things you weren’t aware you knew. They are what people mean when they say ‘you’ve got this’. They are untapped intrinsic resources (if you were to commodify yourself). They are also all of the things below, mapped out in a rare moment of quasi-thought-leadership:
The sort of things you can’t google the answer to.
—
A line from Teju Cole in Blind Spot:
“...even if life is only properly understood in the general, it must be lived in the particular.”
And Ellena Savage’s Blueberries:
“In selecting what to write down, what to include, one makes silence of all else.”
I enjoy a life lived in the particulars—towards vividry and away from numbery. As much as the notebook is one of my favourite places to be, it’s also a bit of a crutch to rely on paper objects for intel, about the world or about yourself. I guess what I’d love to know is: how do you keep your knowns known?
Page-thinker,
kim
addendum—
1.
This is my go-to egg recipe. Makes a chicken-broth flavoured egg ‘pudding’, with the consistency of silken tofu. Guaranteed to gladden the cockles of your heart.
2.
The To-Do List to Precede the To-do List-Proper
tl;dr — a procrastination list
Rearranging tchotchkes.
Polishing the disco ball, no facet left unshined.
Testing old pens.
Spring cleaning the dropbox and implementing best-practice naming systems.
Photographic studies of the cat, household plants and afternoon lighting on the two.
Mass unsubscribing (with #konmari mantra ‘thank you for your service’ on repeat, to mitigate feeling mean).
Wiping individual plant leaves with a damp cloth, knowing that in 2 days’ time a new monolayer of dust will settle upon these efforts.
Rearranging garlic bulbs in relation to each other on the platter. Considering/projecting each bulb’s supposed personality and preferences.
Lying on the spare bed staring at the ceiling and contemplating what it is like to be a guest in your own house.
Writing useless lists, like ‘Inventory of All House Plants’, ‘Stationery & Art Supplies Owned by Me’, ‘Gratitudes’ including 50% unoriginal material overlapping with that of days prior, and this list you’re reading now.
Turning extreme non-doing into extreme doing = yay?
Illustration on the left by one of my favourite artists: Leonie Brialey.
3.
A little while back I created a small series of illustrations dubbed Big Cat Small World. The majority of it was made with breath held and hand hopeful as I gave my Kuretake Brush Pen No. 22 its first whirl. And on fancy paper—which made things Very Serious. Watching that blackest black ink melt onto the paper surface (half seeping deeper, half sitting atop) was an intensely odd pleasure akin to the sensation of a cold index finger slowly tracing skin along your hairline. There were lots of hair lines involved.
Inspired by your royal π-ness—my larger-than-life companion of the cat* sort. She, who makes me look cat-obsessed on instagram**. The great distractor, the walking body clock, the toilet shadow, witness to all my private foibles.
* A domestic longhair calico tortoiseshell (female, of course! Hot tip: tortoiseshell cats are almost exclusively female).
** I’m pan-animal obsessed.
Eat — Play — Sleep — Poo is available as a 4-pack risograph set. Only 11 left in stock.