Like a shower after weeks of raw sun, or the clouds breaking from months of the grey winter in the north, one's mood changes slowly and then suddenly across the calendar pages, but with a consistency similar to that of the weather. Spring showers, dry July and the snow in late October: ambition welling in early fall, seeking distraction in winter, reflection as the world comes back to life.

It is worth thinking how much better one is for drawing a pittance each day than the destitution of the most basic ability that no upkeep at all would bring about. Perhaps one is even improving–well, no need to be fanciful. I'll remark, however, that here's a surprising amount to learn: anime/manga is like getting acquainted with the human form all over again (a process at an early stage itself). The shape of face and balance of things has its own subtleties, that also perhaps a mirror of life, the great teacher neglected today and most days for cartoon. Ah, it is dangerous to indulge in them but cartoons also teach abstraction and demand construction to grope with the unreal yet exacting and subtle form. To record life or generate facsimile cartoon, life unfolds a myriad path as the years loom and fleet-footedly race by.

A problem with language is that it requires a shared set of knowledge: we must all know what the color brown looks like, or what when we speak of the abstract, language can become difficult to relate to. The concepts of 'perseverance' or 'sadness' or 'happiness,' for example, may represent entirely different feelings from person to person, and so when we say 'persevere!' or 'be happy!' we offer vague, unuseful concepts, for our meanings do not fit. Perhaps this is only natural. We cannot easily know how others see the world, even after decades with them. Even our own ideas and feelings of what 'happy' and 'sad' are may change day by day, year by year and decade by decade.

Yet, it severely limits communication. How can communicate that which is not already understood in the other's mind? Well, we can combine known concepts into new ones. Perhaps someone has an understanding of 'brown' and 'good,' but that does not mean they know 'brown is good.' We grasp meaning represented by sounds–morphemes–that is a bedrock of language, but not the arrangements they are moved into by the hand of grammar. Grammar does not reflect the same breed of meaning that words do. Can one become fluent in grammar?

Moreover, we can communicate that which is not already in another's mind by storytelling. To tell a story is to explain a sentiment, introduce a reality that is not conceived by the audience. As creation myths have shown since time immemorial, to tell a story would be to change the conception of the world. Stories can teach us the meaning of words–and perhaps grammar, too.