antidote

Van Gogh’s man­ic depression
would be ex­tra ma­ni­a­cal right now. 

For so many reasons.

 

I don’t know what I hate more … 

en­vi­ron­men­tal degra­da­tion or these children.

Ugh, they bet­ter at LEAST be ve­g­an, those lit­tle shits.
 

Be re­spectable activists
and b*mb the sys­tem in a way that counts, eh?

And in talk­ing about these pro­tes­tors
I say “hate” very loosely. 

It’s a word I don’t usu­al­ly throw around. 

In this case,
I do not tru­ly reg­is­ter any ha­tred in my body. 

It is far clos­er to re­jec­tion of what I saw. 

And se­vere disappointment.
 

Be­cause I can ac­tu­al­ly feel and hear the fear and des­per­a­tion these kids have in speak­ing out against the gi­ant forces that seem to be over­pow­er­ing any tra­jec­to­ry of plan­e­tary heal­ing that there is to offer.

I can hear the shak­i­ness in her voice. 

She was scared. 

And I am scared in the sim­plest sense that the good do not al­ways win. 

But that fear alone makes us victims
to defin­ing ourselves
“in re­sis­tance” to those “in charge,”
in­stead of defin­ing our mis­sions independently. 

It is de­featist from the jump.
 

If I could talk to these kids directly,
I would tell them they have al­ready suc­ceed­ed on one lev­el of goodness. 

They are not their antagonists –
they are not destroyers –
and thus should not be­have in their image. 

But rather de­fine and own the terms of their mission,
in­de­pen­dent of opposition.

It is the dif­fer­ence between
beg­ging for reform –
and sac­ri­fic­ing your val­ues in the compromise – 

or be­ing the revolution.
 

A huge part of
the spir­i­tu­al ex­pe­ri­ence of look­ing at art
is get­ting to see the raw textures
up close and personal, 

where the artist WAS.

 
The irony —
the con­se­quences will be the use of more acrylic shields –
pe­tro­le­um-based products –
to pro­tect paint­ings around the world 

from this trend.

Oh,
and the nev­er-end­ing ridicule of environmentalists.
 

Sor­ry bout the world y’all.

But the beau­ty of the art we love
is it­self an antidote.

 

—ruby roth

Flom­mist Ruby Roth is an artist, de­sign­er, cre­ative strate­gist, and the au­thor-il­lus­tra­tor of four lead­ing books for kids. Her work has been fea­tured on To­day, CNN, FOX, NBC, ABC News, and oth­er ma­jor me­dia out­lets. Copy­right © 2022 Ruby Roth.

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