there was this competition called "reflection of the mind". it was an annual thing, not limited to drawing, but certainly limited to the classical forms of art-- writing, photography, etc. and my mom would always urge the family to enter the contest.
a few of us entered, but i think i was the only one who ever did it every year.
it was all because of an eagle feeding its babies. i drew this thing, i don't remember what the reason was, but i drew this eagle dangling a fish for her children and it won first place in the contest.
when you win anything, it's a sort of unwritten rule that you'll look like an idiot if you don't try the following year.
except every year that followed, the best i got was "honorable mention." getting honorable mention is less honorable than straight up not being mentioned. it's a fancier, more pitiful way of saying "fourth place," which is a slightly nicer way of saying, "the first one not to get a medal or prize."
i got honorably mentioned four years in a row.
and my mom would urge me to keep trying.
i was supposed to be the one who could draw in the family. at a time, my dad had made tracing illegal for me and would sometimes randomly approach me and force me to draw a roman gladiator from one of his seventh grade history books.
i hated drawing people.
once, he told me to draw a caricature of my aunt and when i said i didn't want to (because caricatures are something a young kid perceives as insulting rather than funny) my dad told me that by rejecting the offer i had insulted my aunt.
it's a backward world.
this battle with the reflection of the mind continued and at times i almost hated drawing. in the beginning, i really only drew to entertain myself-- i was never trying to win awards or compete with other people who took their work seriously. the pressure and the "honorable mention" ratings started to take the enjoyment out of drawing.
and then one year, i drew this really stupid looking frog on a piece of 8.5x11 paper. it was an ugly brown frog sitting on some equally ugly brown leaves. i forget the frog's actual name, but it's one of those species that blend in with things like dead leaves.
the theme that year had been, "open your eyes and see..." and i, half-assedly, took the theme literally and drew a camouflaged frog. sloppily.
and the fucking thing won.
it's easily the worst drawing i had ever entered and it should've never won. the judges had simply martin scorsesed me. they knew they couldn't keep giving me fourth place if i kept entering and so they let me win with one of my least impressive pieces.
and that god damn drawing got hung on my wall.
it always made me mad and i quit entering the reflection of the mind entirely.
but one year my mom approached me and said she knew i had been only drawing what people told me to draw, or assigned me to. she said she wanted to frame something i wanted to draw.
she actually wanted to me to... draw for fun again. just draw anything-- anything at all--and i'll frame it right up there with the winning drawings.
i totally drew spiderman.
and that drawing is still the one that greets you as soon as you enter our san jose home.
i love my mom for actually hanging a 24 x 36 color-penciled drawing of spiderman swinging through new york. there is no way she wanted a framed drawing of a marvel superhero on her wall. but she did it because she actually cared about me.
remembering that she asked me to do that makes me feel great.
and now i'm on my way back to that san jose house for her birthday with a hand-drawn card.
(not of spiderman.)
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