This weeks IF journal page started off with blind countour line drawings of a table top vise and an old telephone. Since I draw blind contours with one continuous line, I am always reminded of strings. I love the tangle of lines that result in not looking at the paper as I draw. As I worked on the quality of lines, I began to think of how strings can tangle and bind. And recent events in my life brought to mind how so many people are trapped and tangled in the the mediocre, and how they try to bind and tie down others. These are naysayers - people who can never stand up for your vision and will give you a hundred excuses why it won't work. Instead of giving you wings, they give you rhetoric and excuses hoping to tie you to their mediocrity. As I bulit layers of graphite, ink, and watercolor pencil, a tangled figure came to mind, so I created the figure with acrylic, and tied the acrylic into the background with colored pencil.Although the figure is bound, it struggles against the tangle of lines, and stretches upward. Despite the naysayers and the unbelievers, we all must dream and struggle against the ties that bind us to mediocrity.