August 23, 2010

so… what’s going on?

Yeah, I haven’t posted much in awhile, especially any Carnivale updates. Mostly this has been due to the distractions of summer and increased parental responsibilities. But there will be fewer Carnivale updates for a little while for another reason. I’ve been asked by the Nashville Review to do a story for their fall issue and I need to get working on it. They don’t want the story to be published previous to the issue date, so don’t expect any preview pages here. But I’m playing around with doing the story in ink and marker, like the images above. I’m working on thumbnailing the story out now. It’s based off my own experiences after graduating from college and moving up to Seattle, but it’s not autobiographical. Anyway, I’m just hoping I can get the bulk of it done from now till the end of September.

July 23, 2010

Great Aunt Virginia

I just learned that my great aunt Virginia died a few weeks ago. She was married to my grandfather’s brother, so my grandmother, Naomi, and Virginia were sister-in-laws. Yet Naomi always looked down on Virginia, because she thought she was low class. So I had no idea Virginia even existed until the year before my grandmother died. Virginia was the only member of the family still alive, besides a cousin and my mom and I, to visit Naomi before her death. There’s a lesson in that.

Virginia was an incredible woman and I’m glad I got to know her. She had more energy than almost any other person I have ever met. She ran her own farm, sewed uniforms for the local fire fighters, and baked for all the local charities–– and she was in her 80s at the time. I think she embodied the best aspects of the American pioneer spirit. The obit I linked to above shows this side of her. The thing it doesn’t capture is her humor. Virginia had an easy laugh and would actually slap her knee when she really got going. I didn’t know people actually did that.

Basically, Virginia represented a whole way of life for me. She inhabited a world similar to my grandmother’s: a mid-twentieth century, small town, midwestern world where everyone knew his or her neighbor and baked pies for Sunday church. But Virginia’s world was more rural. She lived on a farm which she ran herself, and concepts like “I can’t” or “I’m bored” never entered her consciousness. She just did what had to be done. And, unlike my grandmother (and perhaps myself), she never stopped to criticize what other people were doing or saying. There wasn’t time for that. Perhaps this means she lacked reflection, but it also means she lacked bitterness. I only wish I had got to know her better.

July 21, 2010

archive rebuild

Just a quick note to tell you I’ve redone the archive. I’ve taken away some stories, ones that I’m going to reprint. But I’ve also added a bunch of other stories. It’s kind of a schizophrenic collection, but fuller than before.

Anyway, click on the archive link to the right or above.

April 6, 2010

server maintenance

This site will be off-line for a few hours starting at 11 PM Pacific time tonight. The place that hosts the site will performing server maintenance. If this page is still gone tomorrow, then you know something bad happened.

December 8, 2009

Princess Goldilocks

I was wandering through the rooms of a hotel and quickly the rooms became the secret passageways inside a castle. I was the clandestine lover of Princess Goldilocks. I would sneak into her rooms at night, half-dressed, and then lead her by the hand through the passageways. All the while, we would sneak kisses and press our partially covered bodies against each other. We were young lovers, but without any of the insecurities and self-consciousness young people often have. The passion and arousal were pure and intoxicatingly joyful.

Then the setting shifted to the desert decades later. Princess Goldilocks had been offered many upper class suitors by her parents (like Daisy and Gatsby, our love hadn’t ever been a serious option for her). Since she hadn’t loved any of the suitors, she chose the one who could give her what she wanted. So she chose the one from the southwest who had a huge villa in the desert–the remotest locale from her childhood castle. Goldilocks, her face leathered by the sun, hair cut short and dyed brown, leads her daughter into the red rocks outside her sprawling hacienda. Her intent is to tell her daughter about her one and only love. A warning. Yet as she stares out into the desert, the immediacy of that youthful passion is inaccessible to her. She can’t even picture a time when she remembered that feeling. And she realizes the desert has done what she had long ago wished it would. She may be hard and emotionless, but she is cleaned out, uncluttered and without any regrets. And so she tells her daughter nothing.

-dreamt a few nights ago

November 1, 2009

broken computer

My laptop is acting very strangely. Sometimes it won’t boot up. Other times it will, but the screen will be black. I can access my hard drive by connecting a firewire cable from my computer to my wife’s. So no data is lost, which is good. Anyway, the upshot is that there won’t be any posts until I get things fixed.

October 25, 2009

15 minutes…

I was the quote of the week at the Comics Reporter (should it be “quotation” instead of “quote”?).

October 20, 2009

I killed myself before I was even born

…and they come howling out of the hills, wild-eyed and hungry. The gallop is far off, but I can feel the growing tremble. The hardest thing is to turn and look. The familiar narrative is easiest. Words only show how much isn’t worked out. But the howl reminds me that blind hope will most likely end up unrealized potential. The amount I force myself to smile blindly and stare straight ahead corresponds directly to how much bitterness and self-hatred will be my inheritance. And so I start to write in the obtuse bombast of my teenage years as a way of convincing myself that I’m doing something…

October 2, 2009

refinished drawing board

I’ve been using this drawing board for a few years. It’s a piece of leftover beech butcher block from when we remodeled our kitchen. It’s heavy, but very solid and it has a nice grain. It was untreated when we bought it, so I used paste wax to finish the wood. The problem with paste wax is that it wears off and it isn’t fully waterproof. So drops of ink got into the wood and stained it.

The board was getting so stained that I decided to refinish it this week (which meant a short halt to my work for Carnivale). I sanded the drawing board down, ending with 150 grit sandpaper. Then I applied thin coats of tung oil. About five coats in all. It puts a nice seal on the wood and makes it a nice golden color. It’s not as smelly as polyurethane or as toxic. The overall effect is very nice. We’ll see how it holds up.

On another note, this month is Inktober. Guess I need to do some more ink drawings.

September 10, 2009

blog biz and Haeckel

I just updated Wordpress and the theme I was using- ComicPress- doesn’t seem to work anymore. I was thinking of getting rid of it anyway. I want to go back to something simpler. And I was getting tired of black. It really is difficult to read against. Anyway, expect things to change around a bit over the next few days.

On another note, I found a few pictures by Ernst Haeckel over at ASIFA. I was given the Dover edition of Art Forms in Nature by a housemate in college, and I still refer to the book. It’s wonderful and very inspiring. If you’ve never heard of Haeckel check out the link above. His books are at the bottom of the page there if you’d like to buy them.

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