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Friday, November 08, 2019

Give a little bit



What a super happy fun sized mixed bag kind of a week, kids:

Gears of democracy grind along with a TitleIX (sexual harassment) complaint I filed at work several weeks ago (at the time, I did not know that others had filed similar grievances). Thinking a lot about how it is possible to feel simultaneously deleted/minimized and ubervisible/augmented (how being seen as on display accomplishes all of that); how something visited upon my body (the hetero-male proprietary up-and-down gaze, for an example) induces shame in me and not in the one who is raking; and how the gender binary and other social and cultural mores and constructs play into this whole thing. (While I don't bind, I dress down and de-emphasize feminine curves; my hair is short and by common agreements is what we recognize as 'boy cut' (go, Me!); and still, when read as female, there are times when guys do weird and inappropriate shit.)

A favorite author of mine blocked me on Twitter. Uhhhh....what. I'm all compliments in the smattering of wordsmithy comments I've offered, so I haven't yet fathomed how this came to be but am Processing Feelings About It as we speak. And starting to pull out of the subsequent nosedive handily, I may add, by making Art out of it, among other things (go, Me!).

(Is Mercury in retrograde?!)

I applied for a Libary Assistant 2 position at the downtown public library and didn't score an interview. Which is a massive head-scratcher (I know how this works, spent eight hours on the application, and have worked for The City Library before), and I shed a few frustrated tears while walking home on Thursday after I spoke with HR to find out why the dickens it was taking so long to schedule said interviews. (the good news is, I am on 'the back burner', so if they do decide to keep a few of us in reserve for an applicant pool, they will call me for an interview...Go, me!)

Rewatching Downton Abbey is a different experience for me now, after thinking much more about gendered acts, performances, and roles; and reading many books on gender theory, feminism, and the general patriarchical farce we call Life As We Know It in the Broader Community. I still adore it (Downton Abbey), but am seeing it with newly peeled eyes.


Today I made a purple sweet potato pie. I've never used purples! It tastes great. I sniffled a little bit as my hands, almost of their own volition (or maybe having a sweet secret convo with mon coeur), cut out hearts from the extra dough and made this for myself. I love yououuuu, love, Me.







Saturday, October 19, 2019

Wild cows with wings

I've recently joined what I now recognize as a legion. Thousands of us (I do daresay) who are majorly crushed-out on Ivan Coyote, author of a half-dozen books published by Canada's Arsenal Pulp Press. But yeah not just crushed-out! -- also deeply appreciative of their sterling, generous, and funny AF approach to life and advocacy (for self and all others and othereds).

Anyway, I'm watching You Are Here from 2009 and Ivan is storytelling about 2 Mile Hill in Whitehorse and the marsh they cherish but speak about it in the kind of hushed tones that aren't precious and make you cringe but still make you sit up and listen good and prompt, with reverence. Few words delivered and you know how beautiful this place is and how intrinsic to a body's health and hale nature it is. They saw a lynx. They saw a lynx. It's a wild cat. A lynx. Can you imagine. The marsh is a nexus and a gateway and a cradle and a reservoir.

And then it's backfilled to make way for a WalMart and a Starbucks and I had to stop watching and write this because I've not told anyone except the cashier at Kiva what happened early this summer when I was an innocent.

I headed out that absurdly sunny morning with my usual gear. Sturdy pair of sneakers, denim shorts, tank top, backpack with provisions for an urban day or so out and about. I decided I'd hike up the near butte and then see what. So after the butte, I circled back into town from the northeast, crossing the railroad tracks by my least favorite clothing resell joint (Buffalo Exchange) (bunch of twats), very much looking forward to one of my favorite little avenues to stroll down on my way to the library.

This half-block long oasis runs the length of a set of buildings that includes a day care. It's a brick building with character and dimension and there was a stationery store there for decades too. I like hearing the kids outside when I pass by; the yard is enclosed by a slatted fence so that I can't really see inside. It's all natural wood and I think a real sandbox though and the whole atmosphere is so amiable and I think I would have loved being there as a kid. In the seasons when the trees are all fletched out in green, the tall trees provide shade and presence; the lower shrubby trees add their own character. I like walking there because it's a cut-through and off the city street with cars; I just realized that it reminds me somehow of the canyons I loved roaming around in when I was 6 and 7 and 8 years old in San Diego.

It takes all of three minutes to walk the length of this avenue.

I approached it from my usual direction and as I turned the corner, what had been hidden from view erupted into the space before me. The trees had been cut down and the lot adjacent ravaged. It was ugly. It was so abrupt. There was no more avenue. I had just been there a few days ago. All was well. I didn't even think that the new hotel going up on the next block had a foothold here. I hadn't read the local newspaper. I didn't think.

I lost my shit. Completely and utterly. I crumpled right on the spot. I folded onto the ground, crouching and rocking. I must have looked unhinged. I was unhinged. I think a man passing by turned to look at me. I wasn't quiet. I moved my shellshocked self further down the wrecked lane, tucking myself into an alcove just past the daycare, and pulled out my hanky. I keep one of those with me in the summer for mopping up sweat.

I couldn't stop crying, for a long time. Still squatting, feeling five years old in a fifty year old body, wailing in that way of very young children with snot streaming. I've personally never heard anyone cry like I do at my age, but fuck it, no one came around and I was so glad to be left alone with my grief but also really wanting to hold and be held by someone.

Atrocities like this happen. All over the globe. I didn't see this one coming, and it's small-scale but immediately I started bawling my inner eye was like Google maps zooming out and seeing the ecological warfare traversing oceans and continents.

It was quite some time before I could put myself together, and then I shouted a string of foul-mouthed curses because it was a way for me to feel less impotent. Grab that rage and pull it up from the pit of my gut and out my lungs and mouth.

It'll never be the same, that avenue. It's gone forever.
They saw a lynx. They saw a lynx. It's a wild cat. A lynx. Can you imagine.

Today I saw a muttering of cows with wings crouched sentinel high up in a dead tree. I only saw them because I approached the bike path from a tributary I hadn't before, stopping for a pull off my HydroFlask and heard the low-throated lowing of I don't even know what they are! Like tiny shoe-bills or forsaken boobies. They're not buzzards or heron or seagulls or crows how can I not recognize these riparian fowl? 


I did see a heron earlier though; and some crows; and a seagull, at least one; and I heard multitudes of other winged creatures, and the wind defrocking trees.






Sunday, October 13, 2019

Thank you, my dear

I'm loathe to admit this but I'm going to anyway: even as few as eighteen months ago...maybe even twelve...I wouldn't have thought much of some dude asking me for the time. But it went like this yesterday, and I have been thinking about it, and I'm gonna say something about it. Right now.

I pulled in to Paul's Bicycle near the butte for some air. I like that they've fixed the public access compressed air hose and I can just wheel up and not even go inside. I'm bent over my tire (ass-end away from the door and traffic), squatting really, and a fragrant black man exits with his biking onesie and wheeling his wheels out.

"You got the time?" he wafts over to me, in a straightforward way.

"No. I don't even know what time I left the house," I say in a straightforward way, without smiling too much.

He peels his cuff back from  his wrist, "Oh I'm wearing a watch. Just didn't feel like looking."

Inwardly I'm scrunching my face at him. I keep fussing with the hose and Presta valve. He intones, "The time is now...12:10! Have a nice day!"

"You too, thanks," I reply. With a not-high and smiling voice. Just, you know, regular. Not feminine. I'm making sure of that. Not because he's black. Not because I feel menaced. Because I'm regulating my smiley vibes and not actually feeling smiley and hyper-aware of how much of my life I've spent doing a smiley thing especially around men. I offer, because it's true, and we are both obviously into our bicycles and riding them, and we are all a fellowship of bicyclists, "Beautiful day for a ride. Enjoy."

"Thank you, my dear," and he coasts down the ramp.

The thing is, interactions like this, with a particular sort of vibe, and intonation, and body talk, and perfumery, announce to me that this is about a peacock strutting. It's not particularly about me, or making a connection with another human being, with people who display like this. And I didn't feel particularly incensed (which surprised me).

I was so glad that I wasn't effusive with my wishes for a good ride, that I wasn't indulgent. I did recognize that when he asked me for the time, part of my brain was thinking about where my flip phone was and I could haul it out of my inner bag and tell him the time - in tandem, my brain was thinking, "I'm sure there is a clock right on the other side of this wall as you leave the establishment," and then he simply pulled the wristcuff of his sleeve up.

I mean, why would he ask me for the time? You tell me. I know what I think.

And why did he ask me (he seemed straight, maybe he wasn't? maybe he thought I was straight? the vibe was there but maybe it's like reverse gaydar and mine was broken that day but what about my gut feeeeeelings)?? It must be the scarf. Or the leggings. Because otherwise I present as butch. Ish. I think. Or not femmy. I certainly did not turn my head to look at him when he came out of the shop.

Sure! It could be that he just wanted to make a small polite conversation with someone. It could be. And that was probably part of it. But it's so weird to me. SO weird. The more I give guys less attention, the more it seems like they seek to make sure I have a reason to acknowledge them.

On a related note:

I was hanging out with some new friends a few weeks ago. Two sweet fun hilarious trans guys, married to each other (oh my god I love these guys) and a friend of theirs who had just finished up a really long bicycle tour. She had just spent four days on a train to arrive in Eugene. Talk of impending Autumn, and K sure didn't want to wear 'long sleeves' on her legs. She's a plaid-and-cargo-shorts kinda person. I agreed, as I love wearing 'short sleeves' but, I was looking forward to wearing leggings, so comfy.

When I said 'leggings' I swear the room went still*. Something passed through that room. I know I felt weird! It looked to me like they felt weird. These are new friends we're getting along so swimmingly and I want so badly to be liked and loved, my little me voice inside said...what did I say...wrong. Am I not queer enough? Too straight? Too cis? Too something or not enough something? Am I butch? A dyke? A femme? All three? None? Other?

Later when I thought about it I laughed, and I laughed harder thinking of what I wished I had done in that moment (if I wasn't so fixated on playing it cool and ignoring my weird feeling and not crumpling in an unbecoming way because the little me feels like I never fit anywhere, no matter what):

I wished I had looked at each of them in turn with a smile and loud-whispered,

"Leggings...leggings...leggings!"

And then, "Just checking to see if any of us were going to evaporate or self-immolate or something; that word seems to carry some weight?" and been genuinely curious and humorous about it.

Then somehow - how did this happen?? - K talked about boxer shorts. Previously B and S had told me of an incident where a lady neighbor had mistaken their apartment for hers and walked in on them both as they were lounging around in their boxers. I think that was a test of some sort, to see if I could be trusted with this bit of info. Fuck yeah, wear boxers, wear whatever makes you feel good! Of course! But then this day when K dropped in a line about buying boxers and they all nodded about something (a good deal? a good brand? I don't know, I was hyper-aware of body language, subtext, and a frisson of other stuff that I was dealing with internally)...I felt like such a white cis straight female, like I was so straight and vanilla and ugh, ugh. I just let them say whatever they were saying and wished for a plus one or a club cufflink or something.

But I don't like boxers on my body, underneath jeans. I fucking hate the way they bunch up, and feel like even more flesh when I don't want more flesh or wrinkles or bulk. It's like trying to wear long johns underneath jeans. NO. No. Nooooo. I would wear briefs but they're very bulky as well, and binding around the legs. So I wear things that are smooth and do not bind or ruck up.

Looking back on it, if I had been feeling more secure and jocular, I would have chimed in - "I don't know what you're on about, g-strings are the most comfortable by far. I love my thongs!"

I cut my hair so so short this year. I don't think there's any going back. I use a pair of cheap scissors and trimming it is an activity that fulfills my OCDs because with short hair you cut at home without benefit of clippers you just have to trim it continually. I guess I still look and act like a straight female to most guys though. I was approached by a young man at least half my age when I sat down at a bench on the bike path to read (You guys. I turned 50 in February). He crossed over made a beeline for me. I am not even kidding. WHY?!

"How are you?"

"I"m awesome," and I went back to reading my book.

He sat down next to me. "Mind if I sit here?" I said to him, "There are plenty of other benches." And he goes, "Yeah but I want to talk to you." I slapped my book shut, dropped it in my pannier, swung a leg over and said, "Well. I don't feel like talking to anyone."

"Oh. Well stay pretty!"

???

!!!

What? Maybe I should feel comforted by the fact that my chin-wag bits and puckery lined lips (they are not smooth any more not by a long shot) and puffy eyes and crow's feet were, what, surpassed by my stellar cowlick (I actually love my cowlick) and red hair and....euw but gross, dude, you are...you could be my grandson.

On the upside, I was identified twice this year as a 'Sir', by men, who then quickly apologized.

I like leggings*. I like scoop neck shirts. I like button-downs, with all the buttons undone and a tanktop underneath. I like scarves. I love jeans. I have no use for my boobs, but there they are, and I'm not binding them or undergoing top surgery. I could lose 25 pounds and be very boyish looking and in fact I would prefer that, I would UBER prefer that, but I'm not going to diet again, ever (see previous post). I have some short jersey skirts (shout-whispered), I might wear them with my leggings (also shout-whispered) again this year. I love wearing skate shoes with my jeans and scarves. I wish I was rail-thin and had no boobs. I wish I was narrow-hipped. I'm not. I don't like wearing suits or ties. So I guess I'm still making this up as I go along and dressing each day as I feel most comfortable and I'm not a girl or a boy or a woman or a man, so.




* edit, Saturday October 19th. I just stumbled on this article, Fat-Booty Butch Wears Leggings - Confuses World, Confronts Self. Yasssss.

Sunday, September 08, 2019

Pretty Good Year

When you're happy and you show it, shake your fist! Like, you're rolling a pair of dice. Because happiness is such a controversial topic (at least to myselves and to others like me), I'm going to say that happiness - as all emotions and states of somatic being - is trans and, well, it can be dicey too...depending on the flavor of happy. Which in my book is a sustainable sort of setting. Void of course is like active resting; muscles need time to rest in order to perform again; peak experiences wouldn't be peak without the valley below, the lowlands, riiiight amiright?

I often wonder if, on the other side of or on the banks of menopause when the estrogen tide has receded, I'll feel the peaks and valleys. I hear from others that not so much. Will I miss it? Yes. No.

See the thing is, the oscillations between ominous dread; fits of joy; calm assessment; deep absorption in (seemingly, or perfunctory) mundanity; awe; riveting realization of mortality (it is a real thing awrighty and not just for other people 'over there somewhere') tessellate in tandem at a pace I find adroit, incredible, and altogether surreal some days. The thing is, it's ramping up as I approach what I'm pret-ty sure is The Real Deal (menopause).

At the same time, at least this month season, I also feel way-hay-hay more capable of enjoying appreciating the inscrutable ride. Oh god yes! Still freaking out. Maudlin. Freefalling. All that. But (the thing is) I do not feel so utterly alone in it, or as alien (even to myself) as I have before. And that has made a megalithic difference.

Here are my latest reading recommendations:

The Body is not An Apology - The Power of Radical Self-Love / Sony Renee Taylor
Movement Matters / Katy Bowman
Flash County Diary - Menopause and the Vindication of Natural Life / Darcy Steinke
Women, Food and God / Geneen Roth

Last year I made a vow to myself. It'll seem like not much to anyone without disordered / emotional / addictive eating patterns. But if you're an addict of any sort and degree (and everyone is, in our first world capitalist patriarchal matrix) you will appreciate it anyhow. I vowed to never go on a diet again. I gave up calorie counting yeaaaaars ago. It's not about that. It's about a bunch of stuff I don't want to take the time to write about but in a nutshell, refraining from using food (the restriction of) as a means to punish, reward, make up for, any overeating or emotional eating or a means to lose weight. So of course I gained weight and along with it the terrifying notion that I would never stop gaining weight and never get my shit together buuuuut 'getting my shit together' mindset is what got me in this mess (addictive patterns) to begin with.

So I've kept my vow. And things even out, and they go haywire, and for months it's mostly evened out in the realm of extreme eating and bingeing but more importantly the fear around all of that (I am out of control and I  will never be in control / safe / ok) has calmed and doesn't feel (at least this season!) like a Pandora's box inside of a Jack-in-the-Box just waiting to uncoil and vomit all over my carefully (re)constructed life.

So the thing is...I guess (today) I'm feeling more ok with feeling effed up (human); terrified; inscrutable; slippery; or at least I recognize that all that's real but so is effulgence and cool shit in life; other people feeling the same way and we are all on this planet together. And I can't ever 'figure it out'. But by god! I can sure appreciate my good fortune to sit in front of a computer and write all of this after a day of moving my body through space and planes to feel good, to feel, to create tension and torsion, to make myself useful, to gather and crack wild filberts, to meet other bodies with skin muscles fur feathers hair teeth scales and to make decisions all day long about how I want to be in this body alongside all the other ones.

My advice is to move your body. Any old which way, whatever feels good. That's the next vow I made for myself last winter although I didn't know how it would unfold, exactly. I just knew that I needed to ease off the cerebral and chart some territory in my own skin. For me this means slowing down. Paying attention. Living inside my one awesome body, dealing with chronic and acute pain, and listening; responding; learning how to tune in. I mean for reals. No shortcuts. Moving my body because it feels good and not categorically driving it around full throttle in order to burn calories so that I can lose weight is a huge difference in the way I'm feeling and doing things these days.


I'm going for a walk in this wild woolly watershed going on out there today.

Thursday, August 30, 2018

Oh hi, menopause!

I've cried more over Chris Cornell's absence than I ever did about my own mother, dead over twenty years now. I knew my mother; we were very close (for some of her life anyway). I knew Cornell's music and how it affects me, still. I'm almost 50 years old. Such mixed feelings about all that.

I'm crying tonight listening to Burden in My Hand. Now I'm tripping out on Cat Stevens 1976 concert on YouTube (I was 7 living in San Diego at the time and there was a Tea for the Tillerman tape floating around the house which I played and played...thanks mom, for not always being a fucked-up active Mormon and giving us a break from that once in awhile even though it's still shit on my shoe).

Last entry here was exactly four years ago.

What good does writing do? Not much, is what my conclusion was, and so no writing. Maybe I can write something for myself that will do some good, now. I've been reading a lot of good writing (novels) this summer that I feel has done me good.

What is good? I keep feeling the same things over and over. Is that good? Can I just taste a bite of the non-binary for once in my life?

I stopped going through old photos from childhood. The last time I showed them to anyone was to my then-friend Robin, about four years ago, and I felt despairing afterwards. The photos were mostly of just me. I threw most photos out and scanned some, out of some bone-deep need to archive, some biological need for ersatz preservation of what, self, I don't know what. For who though? Nobody is ever going to see those.

I wish I could re-orient myself, how could I do that? So that I didn't feel so shitty for being alone and lonely, and unable / unwilling to try making new friends (that hasn't worked for so long, I always end it, the smothered and judgmental feelings take hold of me); that I could just commit to one goddamned thing for once: be alone, so be it, accept it and my fucked up coping mechanisms, stop. To stop seeing all this mess as a personal failure.

I was just now reading Annie Hartnett's Rabbit Cake and the 11-year-old protagonist runs to the bank of the Chattanooga river where her mother went sleepswimming and drowned; she wanted for the thousandth time to be able to talk with her mother about things. I haven't felt like that about my mother since I was a kid. Even if my mother was alive today I wouldn't go to her to talk things over or ask her for advice. I am still so relieved that she is dead (even though she fucking haunts me daily). I'd like to see her more as the fucked-up/whole composite person she was and feel sad and even glad for her instead of the persistent creeped-out feeling I have when I think about her.

I loved Melissa Broder's The Pisces; it's a book I think I could have written in substance and style. I loved Melissa Broder's Twitter for about two minutes after I read The Pisces (having never read Broder's Twits before) and then I got bored of the repeat (clever and raw as she is) and it reminded me so much of myself that I wanted to upchuck. Just shut the fuck up already (everyone).

I once saw a painting, maybe it's Britt Wilson's? She's a great cartoonist. The painting was a nest of baby birds, mouths open wide as the widest, thrusting front and center and huge, hungry, unrelenting, strident, demanding. Maybe there was a worm with guts all over. The painting is terrifying, it gives me the creeps and the crawls and I'm riveted even on the memory of it and feel compelled to go and find it but I might not and enjoy the propulsive memory of it even more.

As I was typing that last sentence, Chris Cornell on YouTube said that he was terrified during his first acoustic performance because it's terrifying so he grabbed something from home on his way out the door (pointing to a red countertop old-style phone) and that started a thing so now he carries it with him to each subsequent acoustic performance. He said terrifying only two beats after I typed terrifying.

To be continued (somewhere), because I can die now in peace, having been witness to a pretty innocuous but utterly cool synchronicity with Chris Cornell, even though I'm grasping for straws, ha ha.

Saturday, August 30, 2014

So big so small

Talked with a couple of buddies at the Saturday Market today. We agreed that the Market is a happy place, and yet there are those who would spoil it for themselves and others by not checking their ego or their tempers at the door. We further agreed that it is a place meant for fun, not for sourpusses. Young Clayton relayed an incident of a tie-dye tshirt shack owner who insisted on being Un-Grateful, we bemoaned the poor man's fate (he'll never reach the Farther Shore with that attitude and the wheel will keep on turnin'), and Don said, "Look at that dinosaur!" We whipped our heads around in unison:


And then we all laughed......so hard! What perfect timing. That TRex wasn't there a second ago...was it? And no one was paying it any mind at all. Impotent! ha ha......ahaha! awwwwwww.

Sunday, June 29, 2014

So far this summer vacation/break/layoff from LCC has consisted of a lot of sitting and gazing out the window. With and without music. A lot of sitting and gazing and thinking. Writing. Breathing. Walking. Sleeping. How often does anyone sit and listen to music? How often do people actually have or make the time to do so? I haven't done that for a long time. Music is a daily thing but to just sit and listen.....no, it's usually on while I'm doing dishes, art, yoga, what-have-you.





Warpaint - Beetles

I'm not prepared, I just gotta gotta get there
Where am I, why can't I just get it together?
Fuck it, where's my shit?

Oh my God I'm mad at it
Oh my God I'm mad at it

Oh my God I'm mad at it
I wanna throw it out the window
I wanna throw it out the window
I wanna throw it out the window
I wanna throw it out the window

And here I go, hanging on
Nothing new, nothing new,
nothing and nothing
oh no

Let's get naked and rip down the wall that makes me crazy,
tell me how
Someone hold my hand and give me lessons 'cos I wanna
Melt the knot inside of it
I wanna melt the knot inside of it
I wanna melt the knot inside of it
I wanna melt the knot.............

Thursday, June 26, 2014

throwback thursday




This is who I really am.

When I was about 8, my mom took me to the Unicorn Theater in San Diego. This now-closed theater housed a bookstore in front and through a beautifully wrought teakwood door with trees carved into latticework, a theater where they showed cult classics and animation festivals. This time we watched the french film Wild Child (with subtitles! I learned that 'lait' means 'milk'). The film is based on a true story about a boy raised by wolves until the psychologist finds him in the forest. He domesticates Victor by cutting off his beautiful hair (cried) and putting him in shoes (cried again).

I was completely riveted. I celebrated Victor's freedom and feral family and mourned the loss of it. After the film I promptly whipped off my shirt, got down on all fours (arms and feet, not knees), developed a nice loping gait, and proclaimed myself Wild.

Here I am up a tree. Mom insisted that I wear the sandals and socks. It was the only way I was able to continue being Wild in the trees. I didn't like it, but there you have it.

I spent many weeks running around like this.

Actually my whole life......



 

What was I thinking?

Most of my social scene has been on Facebook the last couple-plus years. Obviously I haven't been blah blah blahgging. What've you all been up to? I guess I could find out if I was linked to your lives and blogs.

So this morning I crawled in to my little corner cabinet to pull out some artifacts: CDs to import to my iTunes library, since all the bootleg and other stuff is still on disc.....and I pulled out my old art and writing journals. What was I thinking, paging through summer of 2009? On a cloudy day? With Radiohead waiting in the wings, just begging me stop so they could lift me out of my melancholy?

My takeaway from this morning's session, folded up on the floor like a frog to relieve the soreness in my back and hips, was that I wished I believed in some sort of God. (Or Afters. Like the British Elevensies.)

I don't disbelieve in Other/More. I am aware of Other; it's all around, hello?

Maybe what I really want is to tap more into my animal. The deeper brain I guess. The brain that doesn't endlessly, recursively self-question. Damned emergent properties, opening up avenues and limiting others, allowing me to talk out my ass-end! So preoccupied with all that lint in the navel. To whit: all those iterations in the quantum load of journals I've penned over the years like karma laid out in patterns on college-ruled.

Talking with a friend about how adopting an animal's no-fuss attitude about life and the inevitable end (which they don't even know or think about of course) would lighten the load considerably...she chimed in, "Yeah, we (humans) aren't really necessary." I liked that. Skimmed a lot of that self-importance right off the top that I have a habit of encouraging to ferment and froth over, you know?

I don't know, I guess I just felt like writing something into the ether and posting this badass thing I made yesterday. I really like it. You'll see Vash the Stampede, perhaps - and Grant Morrison's influence as well.


Saturday, September 15, 2012

A Day to Remember


SooOOoooo......I finally felt like making something and writing something. 

This was my day today.

Saying farewell to summer. Or to state it in the positive, although it requires a lot of effort (because as you may know I am not a fan of not-summer which means RAIN RAIN RAIN here): saying hello to Autumn. With Winter close on its heels.

But for now, it's still summery.

Here's a day in pictures.

With captions!



Autzen Stadium. They're lurching along....sorry if any of you are football fans. 







People buying mass quantities of beer today. Post-game fervor. 
I don't follow sports, so I don't know if U of O won or lost.
But there will be much beer-quaffing tonight, I reckon, regardless.




Outside our downtown Green Grocer Market, The Kiva.
Man, I think this is so funny. I rarely park by bicycle out here. 
Wouldn't be so funny if some sports-and-beer-addled driver plowed into
my only-car-is-a-bicycle!
I plant my two-wheeler at the upside-down U-shaped
bike racks up against the store. Off-road.



Stopped at Market of Choice on my way home.
It is a swanky grocery, deli, and more store. 
My plastic still works here though.



 I am so serious.




Thursday, March 22, 2012

Illustration Friday - Shades



Whoo! Just under the wire yet again for this week's IF challenge.

Couple of rare birds, maybe? yuk  yuk yuk (how often do owls wear gigolo sunglasses, hey??!)

Ack! I submitted this on thursday night but somehow...SOMEHOW!...the link I entered was directing folks to a famous author's site - Dan Santat. Oops! So here's last week's which could almost qualify for this week's challenge word ('swamp'). But I'm not going for a double-header here. I'll be concocting something new for this week!

Trying out some different things with Photoshop this time around - namely, working with a chalk brush for much of the image. And playing around with some furry effects. Had fun doing this one!

Next comes more learning about how to render water - there are so many ways! I need to just spend some time with different methods. Copy the masters :)

Like Kazu Kibuishi, Jason Brubaker, Dani Jones,Rad Sechrist, and more. Can you tell I've been reading the Flight series? I found Flight Explorer in the children's comic section at our library and I practically sleep with it!

Also need to learn how to create more of a sense of light. Also.....!...I wanna learn how to use Illustrator. Next level for me. And! Learning how to create shapes that meet without linework. I'll always love cartoons and comics. And I've done a little bit of painting, traditional and digital. So much to explore!!

I started watching the Comics are Great podcast this morning where Jerzy Drozd and Dan Santat are talking about Fear and Courage. I left off to work on the above illustration - just after Dan said he taught himself to draw by copying comic books.

YEAH! That's what I'm talking about!!