Artist Feature: When Words Fail — "Flight" by Derek Chatwood - Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community

Jetée · 07-18-2010, 03:00 AM

When Sharks Fly: "The Thing With The Squirrels", illustrated by Derek Chatwood ; (c) 2009. All Rights Reserved

author's comments:
The first hunting season did not go well. Hundreds of tons of shark raining onto the cities below, was a foreseeable unforeseen consequence. Strict limits and safeguards were added to the hunting licenses, most notably confined to remote areas only. Hunters brought in special truck-mounted shark cages, and steel-covered airstreams. The work was difficult, but fears of flying shark overpopulation, were rampant.

Hunkered down in their cages, deep in the wilderness, the hunters made a remarkable discovery. Hiding in the tall trees, the flying squirrels lay in wait. When the sharks prowled low, the squirrels launched from above, landing on their targets and gnawing. The precise mechanism wasn't yet known, but within minutes of a squirrel bite, the shark would fall, quite dead. Within minutes, all predators of the forest descended on the shark carcass, clawing and bickering over the buffet. And where were the squirrels?

Free of the distracted natural predators, the squirrels scoured the forest floor for nuts. But kept their eyes on the sky.

Jetée · 07-19-2010, 03:00 PM

When Sharks Fly, illustrated by Derek Chatwood ; (c) 2008. All Rights Reserved

The saga unfolds...
Jakeem remembered what it was like before the sharks. He could play in the park, and go swimming. Now the only sky he saw, was through steel reinforced wire and glass. He asked his Dad why it happened, but doesn't think he really knows. His Dad said it just happened, somehow. We did something wrong, broke the oceans somehow, and sharks just started flying. All of them.

Jakeem asked his Dad how do they fix it, but doesn't think he knows that, either. His Dad told him they just have to figure it out, or learn how to live with them until it can get figured out. It might take a long time. It also, his Dad's voice going kind of soft, might never happen.

Jakeem looked up at them, through the wire. And hoped it got fixed someday.

Baraka_Guru · 07-19-2010, 03:09 PM

These are fantastic.

Jetée · 07-20-2010, 05:45 PM

When Sharks Fly: "The Thing About Sharks And Cats", illustrated by Derek Chatwood ; (c) 2008. All Rights Reserved

It was a few weeks after the sharks, and the flying. The panic was sinking in, the unreality, punditry, end of the world.. itry. After the initial safety broadcasts, safety broadcast ignorings, and such, there were the inevitable rash of dog eatings. But soon after, it was noticed that among the dog remains, there was something missing.

Cat remains.

Cats weren't being eaten, at least by sharks. Inexplicably, and of only mild slightly more than disinterest to cats, the sharks, for lack of a better word, liked them. But in the opposite of the desire to eat, sense. There was much discussion among the edible folk as to why. Much interest in studying cats, capturing and dissecting them, to learn why, was had. Except.

They had to first get past the sharks.

Jetée · 07-21-2010, 07:30 PM

When Sharks Fly: "That Thing With The Octopi", illustrated by Derek Chatwood ; (c) 2008. All Rights Reserved

When the octopi moved into the rain forests it almost went unnoticed. With all the trouble with the sharks, people had their hands full. Hardly anyone was allowed to drive anymore, not after the unfortunate rush hour feeding frenzies. And no one flew of course. So it was quite a few months before local forest folk realized. The octopi weren't like the sharks, out where everyone could see them. Though they could fly, they were very shy, and preferred the dark and damp of the deeper forests. If a person were quiet and calm, they could walk among them without incident. But a person had to stay quiet, because they didn't like noisy people.

And they didn't like cows.

Men could not come to the forest to cut it down, and cows couldn't come to the new fields to eat. When they would first try, the octopi would swarm in magnificant tentacled flurries, and shower their disapproval in glorious inky downpours. This caused no real harm, but the men did not like the swarms, and the cows did not like the smell, so both would run away and refuse to return.

So in the rainforests men could not raze, and cows could not graze. And on land and in sky, people could not drive nor fly. It began to occur to some folk that this strange and random change, may not have been so random after all.

Jetée · 07-23-2010, 01:00 AM

When Sharks Fly: "Year Two", illustrated by Derek Chatwood ; (c) 2009. All Rights Reserved

The air was so clear, they could see the distant schools of hammerheads near the horizon. The walk to work was pleasant, with no incidents. Some tiger sharks breached the cage last week near downtown, but folks made it to the emergency cages in plenty of time. The Mayor had already made a tv spot with the footage, touting his emergency cage initiative, justifying the higher taxes. Some things, it seemed, would never change.

San Jose, just south of San Francisco, attempted to erect a safety cage over 25 miles of freeway. Their community, designed for driving, was just too spread out for people to expect to walk everywhere. But soon after the grand opening, disaster. The cars, the sudden mass of noise and exhaust and movement, attracted the sharks from everywhere. Thousands and thousands of them, so many that the sky went dark. They converged on the roads, ripping and tearing at the cages with a ferocity not seen since they first took to the air. The feeding frenzy took many lives. The people responsible found themselves locked inside cages of their own.

All plans for resurrecting mass transit were abandoned.

Jetée · 07-23-2010, 09:35 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jetée

When Sharks Fly: "The Thing With The Squirrels", illustrated by Derek Chatwood ; (c) 2009. All Rights Reserved

author's comments:
The first hunting season did not go well. Hundreds of tons of shark raining onto the cities below, was a foreseeable unforeseen consequence. Strict limits and safeguards were added to the hunting licenses, most notably confined to remote areas only. Hunters brought in special truck-mounted shark cages, and steel-covered airstreams. The work was difficult, but fears of flying shark overpopulation, were rampant.

Hunkered down in their cages, deep in the wilderness, the hunters made a remarkable discovery. Hiding in the tall trees, the flying squirrels lay in wait. When the sharks prowled low, the squirrels launched from above, landing on their targets and gnawing. The precise mechanism wasn't yet known, but within minutes of a squirrel bite, the shark would fall, quite dead. Within minutes, all predators of the forest descended on the shark carcass, clawing and bickering over the buffet. And where were the squirrels?

Free of the distracted natural predators, the squirrels scoured the forest floor for nuts. But kept their eyes on the sky.

Jetée · 07-25-2010, 04:00 AM

When Sharks Fly: "The Urchins", illustrated by Derek Chatwood ; (c) 2010. All Rights Reserved

Some time after sharks took over the skies, kids began to notice something. While most people were hiding in their homes and building cages to get around their cities, those who couldn't afford shelter were left to to the sharks. And month after month, year after year, these helpless homeless people were still going about, as alive as the day the sharks swam in the seas. So the kids who wanted to rebel, who wanted freedom, had a very easy way to go about it: they went outside.

These "urchins" braved the abandoned cityscapes and strip malls that their parents abandoned, and followed the habits and tricks of the homeless.
Eventually they knew more about how the sharks behaved in this new world than most anyone. This was a strange new world for the sharks too, after all.

Until one day everything changed. Again.

Jetée · 07-27-2010, 04:01 AM

When Sharks Fly: "Tipping Point", illustrated by Derek Chatwood ; (c) 2010. All Rights Reserved

The chainlink on the window rattled as a curious whitetip sniffed, then flew on. It was nothing new, but the girl still grew scared when the large schools drifted by late at night. Her mother tried to distract her with a story, and hoped she would sleep soon. "When did it start," the girl asked. The mother wondered if she was still too young to understand, but thought she may be less scared if she knew. "Long ago when you were very young," she explained, "we did something bad, something we couldn't fix. We drilled a hole in the bottom of the ocean, and then we couldn't plug it back up."

"We broke the ocean", the girl interrupted. "It started when be broke the ocean?"

"Yes honey," the mother said. The girl's curiosity began to win over her fear. "But why couldn't we fix it? Aren't we supposed to fix the stuff we break?" Her mother thought about how to answer. "We can do a lot of amazing things honey, but some things are bigger than us. Like an earthquake or a hurricane, some events are so huge that all we can do is hunker down and wait for it to pass."

"How long is that going to be," the girl asked. "What happens to all the animals? Are all the oceans going to die?"

"I don't think so, honey. The planet is a lot more durable than people think. Life finds a way, or something happens to keep life safe for a while. Sometimes it's an ice age. This time it's sharks in the sky. It may take many thousands of years, but eventually the planet will rebound and fix itself."

The girl's eyelids were heavy, but she still had questions. "So if the planet is going to be ok, what about us? what about people? Are we going to be ok?" The mother kissed the girl on the forehead, looked up to catch a glimpse of the last of the whitetip school sillouetted against the moonlit sky.

"Go to sleep honey, it's late."

- - - - -

-- This artist's illustration is part of a gallery series, found on flickr, entitled: When Sharks Fly - by The Searcher

07-18-2010, 03:00 AM	#1 (permalink)
Jetée The Reforms Location: Rarely, if ever, here or there, but always in transition	Artist Feature: When Words Fail — "Flight" by Derek Chatwood When Sharks Fly: "The Thing With The Squirrels", illustrated by Derek Chatwood ; (c) 2009. All Rights Reserved author's comments: The first hunting season did not go well. Hundreds of tons of shark raining onto the cities below, was a foreseeable unforeseen consequence. Strict limits and safeguards were added to the hunting licenses, most notably confined to remote areas only. Hunters brought in special truck-mounted shark cages, and steel-covered airstreams. The work was difficult, but fears of flying shark overpopulation, were rampant. Hunkered down in their cages, deep in the wilderness, the hunters made a remarkable discovery. Hiding in the tall trees, the flying squirrels lay in wait. When the sharks prowled low, the squirrels launched from above, landing on their targets and gnawing. The precise mechanism wasn't yet known, but within minutes of a squirrel bite, the shark would fall, quite dead. Within minutes, all predators of the forest descended on the shark carcass, clawing and bickering over the buffet. And where were the squirrels? Free of the distracted natural predators, the squirrels scoured the forest floor for nuts. But kept their eyes on the sky. __________________ As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world (that is the myth of the Atomic Age) as in being able to remake ourselves. —Mohandas K. Gandhi

07-19-2010, 03:00 PM	#2 (permalink)
Jetée The Reforms Location: Rarely, if ever, here or there, but always in transition	The Story Begins When Sharks Fly, illustrated by Derek Chatwood ; (c) 2008. All Rights Reserved The saga unfolds... Jakeem remembered what it was like before the sharks. He could play in the park, and go swimming. Now the only sky he saw, was through steel reinforced wire and glass. He asked his Dad why it happened, but doesn't think he really knows. His Dad said it just happened, somehow. We did something wrong, broke the oceans somehow, and sharks just started flying. All of them. Jakeem asked his Dad how do they fix it, but doesn't think he knows that, either. His Dad told him they just have to figure it out, or learn how to live with them until it can get figured out. It might take a long time. It also, his Dad's voice going kind of soft, might never happen. Jakeem looked up at them, through the wire. And hoped it got fixed someday. __________________ As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world (that is the myth of the Atomic Age) as in being able to remake ourselves. —Mohandas K. Gandhi Last edited by Jetée; 07-19-2010 at 03:05 PM..

07-19-2010, 03:09 PM	#3 (permalink)
Baraka_Guru warrior bodhisattva Super Moderator Location: East-central Canada	These are fantastic. __________________ Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing? —Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön Humankind cannot bear very much reality. —From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

07-20-2010, 05:45 PM	#4 (permalink)
Jetée The Reforms Location: Rarely, if ever, here or there, but always in transition	The Story, continued... When Sharks Fly: "The Thing About Sharks And Cats", illustrated by Derek Chatwood ; (c) 2008. All Rights Reserved It was a few weeks after the sharks, and the flying. The panic was sinking in, the unreality, punditry, end of the world.. itry. After the initial safety broadcasts, safety broadcast ignorings, and such, there were the inevitable rash of dog eatings. But soon after, it was noticed that among the dog remains, there was something missing. Cat remains. Cats weren't being eaten, at least by sharks. Inexplicably, and of only mild slightly more than disinterest to cats, the sharks, for lack of a better word, liked them. But in the opposite of the desire to eat, sense. There was much discussion among the edible folk as to why. Much interest in studying cats, capturing and dissecting them, to learn why, was had. Except. They had to first get past the sharks. __________________ As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world (that is the myth of the Atomic Age) as in being able to remake ourselves. —Mohandas K. Gandhi

07-21-2010, 07:30 PM	#5 (permalink)
Jetée The Reforms Location: Rarely, if ever, here or there, but always in transition	The Plot Thickens... (what with the jungles, and humidity, and the mass of arms) When Sharks Fly: "That Thing With The Octopi", illustrated by Derek Chatwood ; (c) 2008. All Rights Reserved When the octopi moved into the rain forests it almost went unnoticed. With all the trouble with the sharks, people had their hands full. Hardly anyone was allowed to drive anymore, not after the unfortunate rush hour feeding frenzies. And no one flew of course. So it was quite a few months before local forest folk realized. The octopi weren't like the sharks, out where everyone could see them. Though they could fly, they were very shy, and preferred the dark and damp of the deeper forests. If a person were quiet and calm, they could walk among them without incident. But a person had to stay quiet, because they didn't like noisy people. And they didn't like cows. Men could not come to the forest to cut it down, and cows couldn't come to the new fields to eat. When they would first try, the octopi would swarm in magnificant tentacled flurries, and shower their disapproval in glorious inky downpours. This caused no real harm, but the men did not like the swarms, and the cows did not like the smell, so both would run away and refuse to return. So in the rainforests men could not raze, and cows could not graze. And on land and in sky, people could not drive nor fly. It began to occur to some folk that this strange and random change, may not have been so random after all. __________________ As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world (that is the myth of the Atomic Age) as in being able to remake ourselves. —Mohandas K. Gandhi

07-23-2010, 01:00 AM	#6 (permalink)
Jetée The Reforms Location: Rarely, if ever, here or there, but always in transition	The Skys Have Never Been More Unsafe... When Sharks Fly: "Year Two", illustrated by Derek Chatwood ; (c) 2009. All Rights Reserved The air was so clear, they could see the distant schools of hammerheads near the horizon. The walk to work was pleasant, with no incidents. Some tiger sharks breached the cage last week near downtown, but folks made it to the emergency cages in plenty of time. The Mayor had already made a tv spot with the footage, touting his emergency cage initiative, justifying the higher taxes. Some things, it seemed, would never change. San Jose, just south of San Francisco, attempted to erect a safety cage over 25 miles of freeway. Their community, designed for driving, was just too spread out for people to expect to walk everywhere. But soon after the grand opening, disaster. The cars, the sudden mass of noise and exhaust and movement, attracted the sharks from everywhere. Thousands and thousands of them, so many that the sky went dark. They converged on the roads, ripping and tearing at the cages with a ferocity not seen since they first took to the air. The feeding frenzy took many lives. The people responsible found themselves locked inside cages of their own. All plans for resurrecting mass transit were abandoned. __________________ As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world (that is the myth of the Atomic Age) as in being able to remake ourselves. —Mohandas K. Gandhi

07-25-2010, 04:00 AM	#8 (permalink)
Jetée The Reforms Location: Rarely, if ever, here or there, but always in transition	When Sharks Fly: "The Urchins", illustrated by Derek Chatwood ; (c) 2010. All Rights Reserved Some time after sharks took over the skies, kids began to notice something. While most people were hiding in their homes and building cages to get around their cities, those who couldn't afford shelter were left to to the sharks. And month after month, year after year, these helpless homeless people were still going about, as alive as the day the sharks swam in the seas. So the kids who wanted to rebel, who wanted freedom, had a very easy way to go about it: they went outside. These "urchins" braved the abandoned cityscapes and strip malls that their parents abandoned, and followed the habits and tricks of the homeless. Eventually they knew more about how the sharks behaved in this new world than most anyone. This was a strange new world for the sharks too, after all. Until one day everything changed. Again. __________________ As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world (that is the myth of the Atomic Age) as in being able to remake ourselves. —Mohandas K. Gandhi

07-27-2010, 04:01 AM	#9 (permalink)
Jetée The Reforms Location: Rarely, if ever, here or there, but always in transition	When Sharks Fly: "Tipping Point", illustrated by Derek Chatwood ; (c) 2010. All Rights Reserved The chainlink on the window rattled as a curious whitetip sniffed, then flew on. It was nothing new, but the girl still grew scared when the large schools drifted by late at night. Her mother tried to distract her with a story, and hoped she would sleep soon. "When did it start," the girl asked. The mother wondered if she was still too young to understand, but thought she may be less scared if she knew. "Long ago when you were very young," she explained, "we did something bad, something we couldn't fix. We drilled a hole in the bottom of the ocean, and then we couldn't plug it back up." "We broke the ocean", the girl interrupted. "It started when be broke the ocean?" "Yes honey," the mother said. The girl's curiosity began to win over her fear. "But why couldn't we fix it? Aren't we supposed to fix the stuff we break?" Her mother thought about how to answer. "We can do a lot of amazing things honey, but some things are bigger than us. Like an earthquake or a hurricane, some events are so huge that all we can do is hunker down and wait for it to pass." "How long is that going to be," the girl asked. "What happens to all the animals? Are all the oceans going to die?" "I don't think so, honey. The planet is a lot more durable than people think. Life finds a way, or something happens to keep life safe for a while. Sometimes it's an ice age. This time it's sharks in the sky. It may take many thousands of years, but eventually the planet will rebound and fix itself." The girl's eyelids were heavy, but she still had questions. "So if the planet is going to be ok, what about us? what about people? Are we going to be ok?" The mother kissed the girl on the forehead, looked up to catch a glimpse of the last of the whitetip school sillouetted against the moonlit sky. "Go to sleep honey, it's late." - - - - - -- This artist's illustration is part of a gallery series, found on flickr, entitled: When Sharks Fly - by The Searcher __________________ As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world (that is the myth of the Atomic Age) as in being able to remake ourselves. —Mohandas K. Gandhi Last edited by Jetée; 07-27-2010 at 04:05 AM..