Links from the Show at a Glance:

 

Special thanks to Lynelle Eck and Ana Kuprava for supporting Art Ink on Patreon!

 

Check out Lynelle Eck’s children’s book A Zoo for You.

 

Listen to my favorite episode of All Beings Considered on Spotify: The Great Sheep Rambo

 

Artist: the mysterious @daniel.macro on Instagram

Title of Art: Untitled ladybug on a dandelion seed

Link to Original Art: https://www.instagram.com/p/BnotD2sFsI7/

Featured on Curated Instagram Feed: @magic_marvels

 

Cover Artist: Rebekah Nemethy

Title of Art: Spotted Cucumber Beetle

Artist’s Website: rebekahnemethy.com

Instagram: @rebekahnemethy

 

Art Ink Submission Guidelines: rebekahnemethy.com/artinksubs

 

 

Art Ink Podcast Transcript:

 

[Intro:]

 

Hello my fellow artists, art lovers, and storytellers. I am thrilled to welcome you back, and welcome myself back to a new art-inspired adventure today. After the long, drawn out construction of my new voiceover booth, I’m even more thrilled to have more time to get this podcast schedule back on track.

 

If you listened all the way through the last episode you know that I had a limited time offer on Patreon last month for all new subscribers, and I want to give a big shout out as well as virtual hugs to those of you who signed up to support the show! As promised, all of my upcoming characters are named after, and in tribute to, my generous supporters. Today’s story features characters named after Lynelle Johnson Eck and Ana Kuprava. You ladies rock! Thank you!

 

If you missed out on the special offer, don’t worry, you can still get quite a few perks for becoming a Patron. And I wanted to let you all know about a new goal I have for the show. Right now Art Ink comes out 1 or 2 times per month, but if you want more we can totally make that happen. Once I reach 500 supporters I’ll be able to dedicate the time needed to crank out a weekly show. So go ahead and show me that’s what you want by pledging your support today at rebekahnemethy.com/patreon or share the show with a friend and help Art Ink find more listeners who can help.

 

Ok, so today’s episode was actually inspired by an artist who deleted his Instagram account. Waht-waht. That’s what I get for taking so long to make this show happen. So that means I can’t get in touch with him to use his work on the cover. But exactly a year after I’d drafted that story, at my annual creativity retreat, I made a photo that just so happened to work perfectly for the same story and I figured that was a sign not to scrap it.

 

I’ll describe both photos for you and I’ll give you a link in the shownotes to see the original photo by the mysterious “@daniel.macro” where, at least at the time of this recording, it’s still featured on a curated photography feed on Instagram.

 

[Art Description:]

 

The original photo is a close up photo of a fluffy dandelion and a ladybug. The flower’s bare dotted center, which is missing seeds on its top half, fills up the frame’s top left quarter. Wrapped around the edge of that center is an elliptical band of brown seeds still clinging to the flower. The fluffy parts of the bluish white seeds are mostly out of focus throughout the rest of the photo, giving it an overall dreamy feel. But a couple of seeds are sharp, and crawling up the stalk between the fluff and the flower’s center is a red ladybug.

 

Immediately when I saw this photo I thought of wishes. And I wondered what a ladybug would wish for. As I did some quick research, I discovered that many of the bugs I had previously thought were ladybugs were totally different species. When I dug a bit deeper I found that some of these beetles, like the spotted cucumber beetle, weren’t even carnivorous like their ladybug cousins who are reveled by gardeners for their hunting abilities, but instead are more often considered pests.

 

As you already know, those notes remained untapped, until a year later, when I happened to come across a spotted cucumber beetle while I was photographing some interesting flowers. I spent at least an hour with him, and I got several amazing shots, but I’ll just describe my favorite, the one you can find on the cover of this episode in case you don’t get a chance to check it out.

 

The background of my photo is soft, made up of a variation of greens that blend into yellows. Two pink flower petals are coming into the frame from the bottom right corner, and a green spotted cucumber beetle rests toward the left side of the topmost petal. Now that I’m comparing the two insects up close and side by side, I can see their differences. Ladybugs are rounder, and their spots are patterned differently. This green beetle has 3 neat rows of four black spots all lined up perfectly, his body is more oval and elongated, and his antennae are a bit longer.

 

But… just forget about all of those differences… because they’re totally going to ruin my story!

 

Let’s just pretend in this world we’re about to enter into, that ladybugs and cucumber beetles look exactly the same, but are just bugs of a different color.

 

I hope you enjoy, The Ladybug’s Wish.

 

[Story:]

 

“No!!! Don’t eat me, please!”

 

Those were the last words Lynelle heard right before she crunched down on the little mite.

 

“Am I a monster?” she asked herself as she slowly cleaned her antennae, afterwards.

 

It wasn’t like Lynelle wanted to eat other bugs, but a ladybug’s got to eat. As it was, she’d cut back so much on her meals, that she feared she might be slowly starving herself. Most of her peers ate dozens of mites every day, sometimes even up to 100 of them, and it’s no surprise that after eating only half of that, Lynelle’s tummy still ached for more. But she just couldn’t bring herself to kill another innocent insect.

 

“If you make another pass over those antennae, you’re likely to rub your shell away,” called a sweet [southern] voice from above.

 

Lynelle had been reliving the moments leading up to her last meal on repeat, the mite’s haunting pleas for his life echoing as if it were trapped in a cave of infinite depth. She stopped cleaning her antennae. “Oh, hi Ana,” she said, looking up.

 

Ana was resting atop a tiger lily, her iridescent blue wings shimmering in the sunlight as she slowly fluttered them. She brushed the pollen off of her front legs and cleaned her own antennae.

 

Lynelle noticed that the sun had moved quite a bit since the last time she’d looked up. “I guess I just got lost in my head for awhile.”

 

“What’s the matter Miss Lynelle?… why don’t you climb on up here and tell me what’s bothering you?” Ana asked. Then she fluttered up into the air a bit, and then down to rest on a lower orange lily.

 

Lynelle sighed, but then cracked open her red-spotted armor to let her own wings carry her. She landed atop the fluff of a nearby dandelion, and tried to pretend that she didn’t hear the mites screaming beneath her.

 

“Lady-hunter!” one of them shrieked, and Lynelle could feel the vibrations as several bugs escaped down the stalk below her.

 

“That’s what’s wrong,” Lynelle gestured toward the retreating mites with one of her legs, “I’m a monster. Everyone fears me.”

 

“Well everyone’s got to eat, my dear,” Ana replied, “and your kind eat mites.”

 

“But what if I don’t want to be my kind anymore? What if I want to change?” Lynelle was silent for a while, but then she suddenly had an idea, “You’ve changed Ana, you used to be a caterpillar and now you’re a butterfly, can’t you teach me to change like you have?”

 

“I’m… I’m not really sure I can.” Ana said, but then her concentrated expression lightened with a smile. “I don’t think I can help you turn you into a butterfly, but perhaps… perhaps you can make a wish.”

 

“A wish?” Lynelle said doubtfully.

 

“Yes, I always hear the gardener telling her son about the power dandelions have to make wishes come true!” Ana explained excitedly.

 

“Dandelions?” Lynelle looked down at the fluffy surface she was standing on.

 

“Yes! Whenever they’re out here she tells him to pick all of the dandelions, make a wish, and blow all the seeds off the stalk to make it come true. And I’ve also heard her say that the more dandelions he picks, the more likely it is that his wish will come true.” Ana concluded confidently.

 

“I guess… it… couldn’t… hurt to try,” Lynelle said slowly, “but what would I wish for?”

 

“You could wish to transform into a spotted cucumber beetle,” Ana suggested, “then you wouldn’t have to eat mites anymore.”

 

“What a great idea Ana!” Lynelle beamed. It might be hard to learn how to be a different bug altogether like a butterfly, but aside from eating vegetables and having a green shell instead of a red one, spotted cucumber beetles were very similar to ladybugs. She’d still be able to fly and walk the same way. She’d hardly have to relearn anything at all. If only she could guarantee her wish would come true.

 

Lynelle looked across the flowerbed, excited to see there were plenty of fluffly dandelions to wish on.

 

She jumped up into the air, cracking her wings as she held on tight to the fluffy floor at her feet and pulled. Without much effort, a single seed loosened, and Lynelle wished hard. She imagined a green shell. She imagined baby mites sliding down her shell and screaming, not in fear, but in delight. She imagined munching on cucumbers, and melons, and squash without guilt. She imagined what it would feel like to finally be full again.

 

“Ana,” Lynelle said as she began tugging on another seed, “can you help me?” A large clump of the fluffy seeds came free this time, and she floated around Ana on a twisting breeze, leaping off before it carried her too far away. “There are a lot of dandelions here and I figure two wishers are better than one.”

 

“Of course, darlin’,” Ana said, and she took flight.

 

The two of them set off and got to work wishing, defluffing every dandelion in sight, and soon the air throughout the garden was full of floating, flying seeds.

 

As the sun dropped down toward the horizon behind the tree line, the light quivered to the beat of leaves dancing in the breeze. Backlit seeds illuminated like magical orbs in the golden light.

 

A few hours later Lynelle dropped to the ground, exhausted, and tucked in her wings for the night. She sighed as she watched Ana fly away.

 

***

 

Lynelle slowly blinked herself awake as a brighter, newer spectrum of sunshine sparkled through the morning dew. Birdsong made its way into her ears, pulling her further out of her dream world. She’d dreamt she was riding dandelion seeds through a tornado, spinning round and round in chaotic delight.

 

Her stomach rumbled and she groaned, now fully awake.

 

A line of mites marched by and a couple of them looked at her and… could this be right?… smiled at her. Lynelle squinted, trying to narrow in her focus, but then her face went slack as she realized something even more odd: none of them were running away or screaming.

 

“Could it really have happened?” Lynelle whispered to herself, “Did my wish come true?”

 

After the mites had passed and Lynelle could finally rouse herself out of her stupor, she climbed up a blade of grass with a plump dewdrop at the top. As her weight shifted the grass the dewdrop swiftly slid down past her giving her a brief glimpse of her reflection. It was just a flash, but it was a flash of green, not red.

 

Lynelle leapt up into the air as the droplet splattered on the ground below and soaked into the parched soil. Her shell split open above her head like two umbrellas, and her wings released carrying her upward. She could just make out the top edge of her shell if she peered up at it… and it was green!

 

Lynelle did several victory spirals and finally crash-landed into the soft funnel of a tiger lily. Flying was never her best skill and, apparently, that hadn’t changed with her transformation.

 

Pollen clung haphazardly along Lynelle’s antennae and face, but she was unharmed. Her tummy gurgled again and this time she got excited anticipating the garden full of fruits and veggies that awaited her.

 

A shadow passed overhead and a faint vibration resonated from the flower and through Lynelle’s legs. Ana’s pretty face appeared in the lily’s opening as Lynelle made her way back outside.

 

“Oh, Ana, look!” Lynelle said, “It worked! It really worked! Look at me! I’m a cucumber beetle!”

 

Ana smiled knowingly, “Of course it worked.”

 

“Thank you so much for helping me,” Lynelle said, “I couldn’t have done it without you. But I’m absolutely famished, so I’m heading into the vegetable garden.”

 

“Of course you couldn’t have,” Ana muttered beneath a smile, but Lynelle was already flying away and hadn’t heard her.

 

“I’ll see you later!” Lynelle called back to her.

 

***

 

Not much later Lynelle took one last bite of the cucumber she’d been chomping on, lazily let go of her grip, and slid down the vegetable’s long side on her belly to land heavily on her feet at the ground.

 

After gorging herself on watermelon and squash and then finally cucumber, Lynelle felt so full she could hardly move. Despite the slight physical discomfort, though, she was grateful for the weight that was lifted from her mentally. No longer did she have to feel guilty for eating. No longer would she have to choose between feeling hunger pangs or the equally sharp pain of stealing another’s life.

 

As Lynelle was resting and reveling in the events of the past two days, she heard a faint sound that was getting louder fast. Giggles mixed with the delightful screeches of children at play as several tiny mites came sliding down the cucumber and landed on Lynelle’s back.

 

“Woah, that was fun!” said one of the kids.

 

“Let’s do it again!” said another.

 

“Don’t you even think about it!” said a reprimanding voice from high above.

 

Lynelle looked up to see a larger mite briskly making her way down the cucumber as fast as her little legs would carry her.

 

“How many times have I told you, sliding is dangerous! And what if you had run into a predator down here instead of this nice beetle?” she paused to look at Lynelle and gave her an apologetic smile. “I’d never have been able to get to you in time.”

 

Lynelle grinned back at her.

 

“Come down this instant,” the momma mite said, “and don’t you dare—” but before she could finish her sentence the kids were already gleefully sliding down Lynelle’s back.

 

“Weeeee!” they cried out, and Lynelle was stunned into silence. She couldn’t believe that her daydream of making friends with the mites was literally happening in real life—down to the smallest detail.

 

“Eww, what’s that green goop on your back?” one of the children said, jarring Lynelle out of her thoughts.

 

“I dunno, but it’s all over you too,” another giggled out.

 

“All of you, please come here. Right this instant.” Their mom said again, but her tone had changed. There was a quaver in her voice that made it sound less like a demand and more like a desperate plea. She was staring, wide eyed at Lynelle’s shell.

 

One kid followed his mother’s gaze and when his eyes hit their destination his face instantly transformed, reflecting the same shocked expression she wore.

 

“Lady-hunter!!!” the little mite screamed. A wave of panic swept over the group and they all scuttled away.

 

Lynelle tried to call after them. “Wait, what’s wrong? What did I do?” But her confused words were no doubt drowned out by their frenzied screams… not that they would have stopped and answered her if they had heard her… not in the spooked state they were in.

 

Had her wish been revoked? Had her time run out so soon? Had she already lost all she’d thought she’d gained? How else would they have known about the predator she’d transformed from?

 

Lynelle cracked her shell and clumsily flew upwards; all that she’d eaten was weighing her down. She expected to see red when she looked up, but no, her shell was still green… at least the bit of it that she could see.

 

She needed a dewdrop to know for sure though, to confirm that she was still the bug she wanted to be. And there wouldn’t be any dewdrops until morning… unless… unless the gardener would be out soon with her watering can. Lynelle wasn’t sure if the gardener had been out yet, but sometimes there was some leftover water in the can, and if there was, that would be just fine.

 

Her flight was wobbly and strenuous, but she was determined to find out what was going on.

 

Lynelle landed on the edge of the watering can with a huff of a relief and peered inside. The sunlight was hitting her perfectly and her reflection shone bright and colorful against the dark surface of the water below. Her shell was still green.

 

Perplexed, Lynelle carefully rotated herself to look at the other side, and as she did so she remembered that this was the side the kids had slid down.

 

And there it was: the cause of the little bugs’ panic. Even as thin as it was, the bold red popped out against the pale green like a flashlight on a moonless night, and it spanned the whole height of her shell.

 

A light breeze fluttered across Lynelle’s body and Ana appeared beside her, the slightest ripple passed over them in the water below, making Ana’s blue iridescence seem even more magical as it wavered.

 

Lynelle looked up at her miserably. “Wishes don’t come true,” she said, “I’m still the same old ladybug.” She gestured to her reflection in the smooth black pool below and sighed.

 

“I was afraid you’d find out sooner rather than later,” Ana said.

 

“You did this?”

 

“Well, I had a bit of help from some ants, but it was my idea, yes.”

 

“But… why?”

 

“Are you hungry Lynelle?”

 

“No.”

 

“Did you eat any mites?”

 

“No,” she drew out the word as the realization dawned on her.

 

“Wishes start from the inside,” Ana said. “But when we believe we can’t change because of outside circumstances, that belief keeps our inner power locked up tight.” She paused for a moment to let that sink in. “What we believe on the inside is what changes the outside. Trying to do it the other way around, as you can see, is a temporary solution to an ongoing problem. But I thought it might help you to recognize your power.”

 

 

[Conclusion:]

 

So what did you think of that?

 

I’m actually a bit surprised at how this story came out, it could be a children’s book… don’t you think? Which is very interesting to me, because the real life Lynelle, who is one of our newest Patrons, is actually a children’s book author herself. She wrote A Zoo Just for You, which is a really fun book with two of my favorite things: animals and rhyming! I’ll link to that book in the shownotes so you can check it out. But it’s only as I was writing the conclusion to this episode that I realized I must have been channeling Lynelle somehow as I wrote this.

 

Because I’ve never once set out to write specifically for children, in fact this story was supposed to end very differently. The idea came to me at a more cynical time in my life. At the time I was a newer vegan, maybe a year or two from when I stopped eating dairy and eggs. I was still hurting a lot from the truths I’d discovered, and more specifically, from the reactions I’d gotten from some family and friends about my decision.

 

You see, from my perspective I was making a decision that came from a place of love. I was absolutely sure I was doing the biggest thing a single human being in an animal-product heavy culture could do to vote with my wallet. I guess… I thought, that people would, at the very least, respect my decision, at the best, maybe I’d inspire them to make more loving decisions themselves. But I was oh-so-wrong about that.

 

Instead I got tons of resistance, I got lots of cruel jokes, walls went up, and the sensitive introvert in me cowered away from people who were determined to stay trapped in their comfortable bubble of social programming. Don’t get me wrong, there were some who asked thoughtful questions, some who listened to the stories I told as I burst into tears. And though many people accept my decision as a part of who I am, it’s a rare gem that’s willing to go so far as to make changes in their own lives.

 

More than once over the past few years I’ve had to ignore the voice in my head that wants to lock myself away in my own comfort zone, ditch all my lifelong omnivore friends, and move to Woodstock to find a tribe of vegan hipsters that will take me in. But I know that change is hard. I know that seeds planted sometimes take a long time to grow. So I have to keep planting seeds where they can grow, and the most fertile soil is in people who don’t know yet the power they have to change the world. Not just for animals, but for the environment and for their very own health.

 

But anyway… that was a very long tangent to say that I felt like a vegan victim for a long time. I felt like making a decision guided by love had somehow caused people to fear, hate, and feel threatened by me. And so the ladybug was originally going to die in the end. In a shocking twist the gardener was supposed to show up, see the cucumbers in her garden all chewed up, follow the trail of destruction to the green beetle, and crunch it into oblivion for being a “pest.”

 

I know that ending came from a metaphorical sense of self-loathing. I know that by killing off the herbivorous beetle I would’ve been trying to express how I felt the world received my own intentions to live a more peaceful existence.

 

But since then, I’ve had a lot of spiritual growth in my life. I’ve learned more about how the Universe works. I’ve realized that anybody who hurts me is coming from a place of hurt themselves. And so I’ve tried my best to step out of my comfort zone. Instead of quietly hiding my veganism I decided to do something scary. I decided to teach people about vegan choices and the reality of what animal agriculture is doing to harm animals and our rapidly dying planet. I did that by becoming a tour guide at Catskill Animal Sanctuary last year, where I got to hang out with some of the 300 plus lucky cows, pigs, chickens, goats, sheep and horses who live there (among many other animals) and introduce them and their stories to visitors, and if you’re into podcasts you should check out theirs. Kathy Stevens, the founder and host of All Beings Considered, is an amazing storyteller. I’ll link to my favorite episode about a sheep named Rambo in the shownotes. It’s the most inspiring story about a real life animal I’ve ever heard.

 

Anyway, that brings me to another shoutout, because Ana Kuprava, who our butterfly character was named after, is one of my fellow tour guides at the sanctuary, a new vegan friend, and she’s also become a supporter of the show on Patreon. I never had any intention of doing anything other than naming my characters after our new Patrons… but I’d be lying if I didn’t say that memories of lessons learned at Catskill Animal Santuary weren’t running through my head as wrote this story. Especially as I decided that the murderous ending I had in mind didn’t serve the story at all as well as it could.

 

So thank you to both of you, not only for supporting Art Ink on Patreon, but also for inspiring me to make this a better story than it would have been without you!

 

And thank you, my friends, for listening! That’s all for this show, but we’ll be back with a new artist and a new adventure in just a couple of weeks… so stay tuned… but until then, remember that you can be whatever you want to be… the best version of you is already inside of you, you only need to find the courage to be it.

 

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