I do not like my own illustration this week.
This is an uncomfortable way to begin an installment of The Hermitess Papers, but honesty is my best available option. Most weeks, I divide my time between writing and drawing. Or more often, one week of drawing, the next week concentrated on writing and editing. I switch back and forth in this mode.
I haven’t figured out which part takes more of my time and energy: drawing, writing, or editing it all.
Still, I show up regularly. My drawings can sit and mellow if I draw weeks ahead of publishing. Sometimes I add to them before I scan them for this publication. Sometimes I decide to redraw an entire illustration for all sorts of reasons. My writing needs time too. I may write words, paragraphs, and ideas in several documents, then I may not finish them until weeks later. Always, my work has at least four or five editing sessions. Usually more.
The Hermitess Papers began in my brain over five years ago. Now, I am deeply in the work. Week eighteen of what I hope will be fifty-two or more installments. An entire book’s worth and, oh my gosh, rushing towards halfway. Okay, I just terrified myself.
An Interruption
Anyway, a few weeks ago, this drawing came to life. My thoughts followed. I immediately wanted to argue with it (with myself?). A man appeared. Not only had he appeared, but he arrived with a pipe, an enormous hat, and the sort of confidence that suggests he believes he belongs there, in my illustration and in this book. I am less convinced.
The longer I looked at the drawing, the stranger it became. My first assumption was that the figure beside him was Betty. That seemed reasonable enough. Betty has appeared before and has a habit of wandering through these pages. After a few days, however, I realized I was mistaken. I do not think this is Betty at all. I think she, the one on the left, is me. Possibly from some other lifetime or dimension. This person with a disappearing belly wants to fight. She’s cross. Unfortunately, this leaves me with fewer answers and better questions. Did I draw anger?
The problem, also the juicy beauty, about long projects like this one is that eventually they develop a will of their own. When I began The Hermitess Papers, I imagined I was making a series of drawings accompanied by essays and poems. I wanted to lean toward feminist curiosity and the strange nature of being a mature woman in 2026. Eighteen installments later, I am no longer certain who is leading whom.
I sit down with a pen. I make marks. A world appears. Then something enters that world without my permission. My role increasingly resembles that of a confused witness taking notes at the scene. There is no crime. Still, I am suspicious.
Take the rain, for example. The rain is attempting to add water to the environment in my drawing. Attempting is the operative word here.
The sky is full of rain. Every mark suggests some sort of weather on the way. Yet none of it falls. The rain remains suspended, waiting, and never arrives. How can a ladder stop rain? I spent an embarrassing amount of time thinking about this before reaching the only logical conclusion available. A dragon passed through earlier and turned the rain into steam.
Poof! The sky is clear. Except it’s not.
And, I have no evidence to support my theory.
I also have no evidence against it.
One advantage of operating within the boundaries of The Hermitess Papers is that reality remains remarkably flexible.
The dragon, however, is not the interesting part. Neither is the mysterious male visitor. What keeps pulling my attention is the landscape behind the figures. Did you ever roll down a steep, freshly mowed hill of grass as a child? I did. Supremely fun, bumpy, and the steeper the hill, the better the roll. There are rolling hills and rolling hills. If you know, you know. Every time I look at the drawing, my eyes move past the figures and toward that distant terrain. The stranger may have interrupted the scene, but the hills draw me in. Where am I going?
I find my own question lingering beyond the page. Eighteen installments into this project, and I am asking myself about the work itself. The Hermitess has wandered through homes, ladders, keys, questions, civilizations, queens, clouds, and various forms of uncertainty. Along the way, I developed the comforting illusion that I understood the territory. Then this fellow walked into the picture and reminded me that I do not.
What troubles me most is that my drawing refuses to stay inside its own borders. Every time I look at it, additional stories dance in my mind. The ladder is the railway to creatures beyond. The hills are invitations to adventures unknown. Unbuttoned buttons are breadcrumbs left behind by giants. Daisies gather for secret meetings. A child’s ice cream cone lands on a summer sidewalk, and the child crouches down to study the sticky mess. Ants come marching quickly too.
Children understand the imaginative world instinctively. They know that a cardboard box is never merely a cardboard box. It is a fort, a spaceship, a castle, a submarine, and even a dragon’s cave that never burns to ash. Clouds become rabbits, elephants, and distant relatives. Their world is unfinished. Therefore, imagination rushes in to help make sense of it all. Somewhere along the way, adults, myself included, become suspicious of this arrangement. We ask for evidence. We want explanations. We prefer weather reports to dragon breath and alligator soup.
The Hermitess’ world is unfinished in the way small children are unfinished: open, sticky, curious, and entirely unconcerned with conclusions. She is in the mud, not making a mud pie. Yet. Possibly eating some of it too, and loving it well enough, even though key lime pie is obviously better.
This is why I am arguing with my own drawing. It has reminded me that true imagination is unruly. It does not care about conclusions. It does not ask permission before wandering off the paper and onto the table, sofa, or nearby wall. One moment I am drawing rain. The next moment, a dragon has stolen it. A cowboy appears where no cowboy was expected. Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck are racing down a chute while somebody else climbs a ladder in the wrong direction, except you can’t see them. Only I can. The hill became a memory. A memory became a question. A question became a story without a clear arc.
That darn farting fellow. Always so brash, so loud, so much, too much.
He was an interruption.
An interruption worthy of exploration, for sure.
As long as I hold onto my curiosity, or better yet, allow my imagination to run as wild as a child, then perhaps all will be okay.
And here we are now, back in reality.
You may have noticed, if you are a weekly reader, that my drawings do not convey clear messages. My essays and poems rarely offer conclusions. I am not trying to solve anything inside the pages of The Hermitess Papers. I am, however, trying to pay attention. There is a difference. One seeks certainty. The other seeks a relationship with uncertainty.
This week, a stranger appeared, and the weather refused to cooperate. My dragon stole the rain, but it could just as easily have been a thirsty alligator. Sometimes the only honest story is to admit that I do not know what happens next.
I do not know if Betty will return. I do not know if Eighthday really is a day. I do not know if inventing words is smart or arrogant.
I do not know if connectelligence is real either, though perhaps this is one small test of it. I make a strange drawing. We look beyond the obvious. Together, we notice what neither of us could have found alone.
What I do know is that I will keep drawing. I will keep writing. I will keep following the path beyond the figures and into the hills, even when I cannot see where my working mind will lead me. I am quite sure I will not roll down the hills, at least not literally. I think it would hurt too much. My body is older now.
So I will roll with curiosity instead. Curiosity has carried this project through eighteen installments. It seems as trustworthy a guide as any. As I approach the end of this essay, I actually wish I had an Eighthday plus a child-like imagination to help me muddle beyond this week’s discomfort.
As for the cowboy, he can go find his horse.
I mean it. He can go find his horse and be gone.
Or maybe not.
Maybe now you are invested in finding out whether the rain ever falls, whether this ridiculous visitor survives Betty’s interrogation (ahem, was it her all along?), and whether rolling down grassy slopes is fun or a farce.
—Suzanne
A summer note about subscribing
SuzZeal is free and will remain free, and The Hermitess Papers will be free through the end of August.
This summer, Wednesday installments are open to all readers while I focus my writing time on this serialized illustrated book. Beginning in September, new installments of The Hermitess Papers will be available to paid subscribers.
This week’s installment has mud, limes, dragon-steamed rain, and a cowboy who may or may not be allowed to stay. Paid subscribers help make room for all of it: the mess, the sweetness, the uncertainty, and the slow practice of following this project before I know where it leads.
Thank you for reading along and supporting The Hermitess Papers.
Quite long, but quite fun. Certainly a stream of consciousness, very seldom are these put on paper and very rarely with an illustration to add to the options. It will be quite a thick book if more of these long form stream of consciousness continue. Hey, you are the author! Jim.