Cartoon Number 1

First unforeseen challenge was trying to get my scanner to talk to my computer. I spent an hour doing network troubleshooting yesterday afternoon before giving up and deciding to use the scanner at work.

I didn’t want to ink over the pencil image in case I made a mistake. So, the following cartoon is inked over a photocopy of a penciled cartoon, which means there’s no pencil underlay to erase, which means it has a weird double-lining.

Anyway, this is my first attempt to create a cartoon avatar for myself.

Cartoon #1

Daily Diary

One of the reasons I wanted to return to Lynda Barry’s Syllabus is because I wanted to re-visit her daily diary method.

For this exercise you set aside 6 minutes and then spend 2.5 minutes listing things you did yesterday, then 2.5 minutes listing what you saw, then 30 seconds listing something you heard, and then 30 seconds drawing a quick sketch of something you saw.

I like the specificity of the of the exercise and how it helps me work at paying attention to the details in the world around me. After doing this for awhile I start to look for things for tomorrow’s daily diary. All of this helps build the attention muscles of the brain* (*brain may not have real attention muscles).

For example, here are some random papier-mache monster heads (Krampus!) I saw at the beer store yesterday. I can add that to my list of things seen, and maybe use it for a 30-second sketch.

In 2020 when I first read Syllabus I was not meditating. Now that I am I see how much mindfulness is built into Barry’s exercises. Her technique for getting the brain to slow down its chatter so the artist can pay attention to the page is to slowly draw a spiral.

That’s it.

Focus, draw a spiral, slowly, making the lines as close together as possible without touching. She starts the following writing exercise (a variation of the daily diary page called an x-page) with the spiral and a systematic awareness/relaxation technique to draw the artist away from their chatttering mind and into their body. (The embedded video is nearly a half hour – here’s a ~10 minute version.)

One of the mindfulness techniques I’ve adopted (also found in yoga) is this systematic scan of the body to locate tense spots, ease the tension, and to slow down the chattering mind. I also use the body scan as a way of helping me intentionally relax as I work on falling asleep at night.

Cartoon Sprummer

It’s summertime! Ok, not technically as far as hemispheres, axial tilt, and journeying around the sun, but culturally as spring semester ends and there are several toasty months until fall semester begins.

Today marks the middle of spring and I’ll be exercising my nascent drawing/cartooning skills by posting cartoons, sketches, drawings, etc. here on the blog until the middle of summer. (I wish we had a word for the times between the halfway points of seasons — sprummer?). I see this as near-daily to more-than-daily posts of, and about, cartoons and cartooning.

I attempted something similar to this in the spring of 2020 but the pandemic rearranged my brain (in a metaphorical/symbolic sense) and I dropped my drawing exercises.

My guide for this effort is Lynda Barry’s Syllabus. I read Barry regularly in the 1990s. Not by seeking her out, but because she was one of the random nutrients in my information diet at the time. She dropped off my radar at the turn of the century and popped back on my radar after she was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 2019.

As is the case with many adults, I’m embarrassed by my childish scrawls and crude drawings. Even as a child I never really went through a drawing phase. However, I’ve decided to trust in Professor Lynda and give it a shot for the next few months.

In between posts about cartoons and cartooning I’ll update you about my ASS (arbitrary stupid spirituality aka arbitrary spirituality system). Let the summer begin!

This Year’s Resolution

I am not one to pooh-pooh new year’s resolutions. I love them. Over the years I’ve had resolutions that changed my life in little ways and large. I’ve also had plenty that fizzled out before the first day of February. My resolution this year is to give myself permission.

I’m not exactly sure what that entails, but it’s my resolution nonetheless.

In June Jennifer bought me some ‘magic’ candles for my birthday. I’m not sure why candles promising harmony, or wealth, or creativity, or peace, or love delight me so much. Perhaps I’m charmed by the utter absurdity of an almost no-effort tool to change the universe.

One of the candles she gave me was Permission. My initial interpretation was to wonder what spirtual entity would give me permission if I burned it. Permission from whom? I let it linger while I burned the other candles. It was only in December it occurred to me — waitaminnit! This is not about getting permission from someone or something else, this is about giving myself permission! And so I decided to burn my permission candle at the beginning of 2023 and to make permission my 2023 resolution.

In 2023 I give myself permission to…

I doubt it will be only one thing for which I give myself permission, but the premise is promising and I’m looking forward to learning what sort of inhibitions might fall away.

Post-Hiatus Rejuvenation

Q: How are you feeling?

A: Much better. Thanks for asking!

Q: So what did you do during your hiatus?

A: I think of last fall as a sort of health sabbatical. I quit doing lots and lots of things and focused solely on self-reflection, meditation, and implementing the practices I’ve been learning over the last couple of years. A big part of what I wanted to accomplish was to reduce screen time. I shut down all my social media accounts. I’m no longer on FB, Twitter, Instagram, or anything else. (OK, I do still have a tumblr account I go to to look at illustrations/art. I like having a feed for pretty pictures!) I reduced my RSS feeds from over a hundred to a couple of dozen. I dialed my Google Alerts back to zero.

Q: Since you gave up screen time did you read any good books?

A: Nope. I gave my brain a break. I got a big stack of random comic books from an Ebay seller and that was the most weighty thing I read. Wait! It’s not completely true that I didn’t read any good books. I read a Robin Hobbs trilogy. And I also read Pema Chodron books (and listened to about a zillion Tara Brach talks). But I read very very little compared to every other year of my life.

Q: Was this just about mental and emotional health?

A: Nope. I did more for my physical health as well. More bike riding and more walking. I lost about 30 pounds in 2022. I feel physically better than I have in a long time.

Q: What prompted the hiatus?

A: Mid-life crisis. I’m 57 and was having a little trouble adjusting to the reality that so many of my youthful dreams would forever remain dreams. I had to find the identity of the person I am now instead of holding on to the identity I conjured up years ago that I was still clinging on to. A couple of collegues dealing with cancer caused me to reflect deeply on… well, not to sound too cheesy, but caused me to reflect on the meaning of life.

Q: What’s next?

A: Outwardly I’m not sure if anyone will notice much change. The last few years have been about learning to process a lot of internal stuff. I might do more blogging. (Blogging like it’s 2003!) I really enjoyed the pre-FB/Twitter era of blogging. And I have a creative project in the works, but I’m building it slowly and putting less pressure on myself about quality or completion date. My health remains my priority, so the creative project will probably move slowly. No different than before, really, but now I’m not going to be beating myself up over it.

The process is ongoing but I’m in a much better mind and heart space than I was at the end of last summer. And last summer I was in a much better space than I was a few years before that. I would say that my nadir was probably the summer of 2021.

Ok, enough retrospection. Let’s see what amazing fuckery 2023 has in store for us!

My Very Own Arbitrary Stupid Spirituality (ASS)

In 2022 I started paying more attention to matters of spirit and spirituality. All of my adult life I’ve confidently proclaimed my commitment to reason, rationality, and science. As a teen I went through the stages of belonging to my mother’s church to declaring myself an agnostic and then being spiritual but not religious and then falling into a comfortable atheism.

Because I’m curious about the human experience writ broadly I’ve always been willing to explore and learn about different belief systems and ponder the role of religion, faith, spirituality, and superstition. I never, however, applied any of that to myself. Science over superstition.

In 2022, as it became overwhelmingly clear I needed to stop neglecting my mental and emotional health, I started seeing spitituality in a new light. (This is mostly related to taking up regular meditation.) It turns out there are elements in spiritual systems that are really useful for maintaining and improving my emotional, mental, and psychological health.

Since I’m not about to join any church or proclaim my adherence to any single faith, I started developing my own catalog of practice. So far I’ve drawn from Wicca, Buddhism, and long-lost Aztec faiths, and I’m sure I’ll be adopting more over the course of 2023.

I’m happy to believe the universe, the world, and the human experience is weirder than I can imagine. I’m less happy to imagine interventionist deities meddling in human affairs or making demands of devotion.

I also suspect that religion/spirituality is a socially constructed expression of some collective interpretation of our neurological/physiological experience. Things happen and we turn to ideas in our world to make sense of those happenings. I also suspect that faith/religion played an important role in emotional and psychological health before we had ideas like psychology.

My approach is to view the world’s faiths (and all historical faiths available to me) as a giant cafeteria selection. It’s all there to help me understand my own experience. And from that I’m creating my arbitrary stupid spirituality.

Why stupid? The phrase is inspired by Tamara Shopsin’s book Arbitrary Stupid Goal. I first phrased this idea as arbitrary stupid spirituality to honor Shopsin’s original spark of inspiration. That said, I sometimes have been mis-remembering the name and describing my ASS as an arbitrary spititual system. The latter may ultimately win out as the ‘humor’ of calling this endeavor stupid loses its luster.

I’ll be writing more about this over the first part of this year, but I want to get this background posted so I can link to it in the future.

Happy 2023!

Here’s wishing your 2023 is better than your 2022.

I have so much to write about my hiatus metamorphosis but that can wait for the posts to come. Right now I’m working on some projects and listening to some music.

(At the moment I write this the following came up on my shuffle. Seems like good advice for starting a new year.)

[Intro: Vocals by Bobby Rox]
One, two
Hey, look it’s a fantastic day
As you’re listening to the sounds of WTBG
Tall Black Guy Radio
Put your phone in airplane mode
Hey, look the operative phrase is pay attention
And minimize distractions
People say that life is short
But check this out
It’s the longest thing that we will ever do
So, look
Be a surgeon with your time
Aspire to greatness
Be the best version of yourself
Live your life
Help somebody, help somebody
Pay attention
Minimize distractions
Catch somе good vibes
It’s all about that happiness
Progress, lеss stress
More love, go offline
Take long rides
Cook to it, clean to it
Rock to it in your cubicle
Make love to it
It feels good right?
Airplane mode
Featuring the sounds of the one and the only
Tall Black Guy

Wrapping Up the Week for 31July2022

Intro

What kind of week has this been? Hmmm, I’d have to say it’s a pretty good one. One of the bugaboos of my life is insomnia, but this has been a solid sleep week. It makes so much difference.

Oh! Wednesday was our 22nd wedding anniversary. I feel amazingly lucky to have found someone so extraordinary. I couldn’t love her more if this was the lovingest day of my life and I was hooked up to an electrified loving machine. After dinner we visited a monthly block party not far from where we live: Heighted Senses.

Okra started fruiting this week. Only 3 pods so far, but in about a week we’ll start our summer tradition of okra-all-the-fucking-time. Fortunately I love okra in every possible form. The rest of the plants aren’t doing so well, but the Florida sun can be brutal.

And that’s about it. Here are some links. Hope you find something fun among them.

Art & Illustration

“In February 2017, the Stultifera Navis Institutom made a first expedition to the center of the Baja California peninsula with a specific purpose: to read poetry to the whales. The site chosen was the one where the largest recorded slaughter of this creature ever took place.”

Books & Reading

Cartoons & Comics

Currently Reading

Gardening

Horoscope

Movies

News

I assume you already have your preferred news source(s). Here are sites I use to supplement my news diet.

  • Wonkette – I love the cursing and share their love of Molly Ivins.
  • Popular Information – independent investigative journalism.
  • WikiNews – Wikipedia has a news page. It can be kind of hit or miss, but I always use it when I’m following a breaking news story.

Obituary

Politics

Spirituality/Self Improvement

“Chen Tuan presided over a revival of Taoism, and is especially famous for his dream practice. He spent his later years in a cave at the Jade Clear Spring Monastery. Today it is a shrine with a statue of him in a classic pose of the dream adept known as Sleeping Tiger. He lies on his right side, with his right hand cupping his ear. His followers claimed he would lie in this position for days or even months while he traveled beyond space and time in his subtle body.”

TV

  • This week I watched Harley Quinn (animated series), Only Murders in the Building, and Frighteners (1996).

Writing & Creativity

Coda

If I were in LA, I’d be visiting the Everything But the Kitchen Sink-Group Show Exhibition: July 16 – August 28, 2022 at La Luz de Jesus Gallery.

Wrapping up the Week 24July2022

Intro

Last weekend was a travel weekend. Got out of town and visited friends and family in PA & upstate NY. The weather was beautiful, the flight was mediocre, the driving was pleasant, and it was mostly rejuvenating. Next weekend The week after next we’re heading to the east coast of FL, and when I return work shifts from the slow-paced summer days to prepping for the new semester.

Art & Illustration

  • Monster Brains has some new posts up.
  • I am recently obsessed with the work of Remedios Varo.
  • Scroll down a little to read Claes Oldenburg’s “I Am For…” (RIP January 28, 1929 – July 18, 2022)

“I am for an art that embroils itself with the everyday crap and still comes out on top.
“I am for an art that imitates the human, that is comic, if necessary, or violent, or whatever is necessary.”

Books & Reading

Q: What was your inspiration for A Psalm for the Wild-Built?
A: So many different bits and pieces went into Psalm. A lifelong love of robots. A strong itch to write something solarpunk. Growing up in Los Angeles and living in the woodsy middle of nowhere now. Lapsed Catholicism. Road trips with my wife. Studio Ghibli movies. A bone to pick with the idea that technology and nature are fundamentally at odds. A soft spot for tea, farms, cob houses, bugs, green roofs, and overgrown buildings. A desire to write something that serves as pure comfort for an adult audience.

Cartoons & Comics

Cartoon/Comics Blogging

WWAC write about The Greatest Thing by Sarah Winifred Searle

Columns & Essays

Currently Reading

  • On the flight to PA I read Becky Chambers A Psalm for the Wild-Built and really loved it. I finished it on the first leg of the flight and bought a copy of Lapvona by Ottessa Moshfegh in the airport. Tonally very different than Chambers, but equally amazing in its own way. I finished that and bought Grady Hendrix’s Final Girl Support Group in the airport on the way back. Clever idea and a fun ride.

Games

  • Semantle – “Each guess must be a word. Semantle will tell you how semantically similar it thinks your word is to the secret word. Unlike that other word game, it’s not about the spelling; it’s about the meaning.”

Horoscope

Movies

  • Last night I watched Strawberry Mansion. If you like Dickian reality-twisting dream SF, this is for you. I loved it.

Music

News

I assume you already have your preferred news source(s). Here are sites I use to supplement my news diet.

  • Wonkette – I love the cursing and share their love of Molly Ivins.
  • Popular Information – independent investigative journalism.
  • WikiNews – Wikipedia has a news page. It can be kind of hit or miss, but I always use it when I’m following a breaking news story.

Obituary

Politics

State legislators passed abortion bans. These corporations sent checks.

Here are some of the corporations supporting forced-birth legislators:

  • AT&T
  • CVS
  • Wells Fargo
  • Ford
  • Cigna
  • UnitedHealth
  • Deloitte
  • T-Mobile

TV

Currently watching:

  • Maggie – light-hearted supernatural comedy rom/com series.
  • Umbrella Academy
  • Only Murders in the Building
  • Behind Her Eyes
  • What We Do In the Shadows
  • Harley Quinn (cartoon)

I use justwatch.com to see where a movie/tv show is streaming.

Coda

Don’t forget the 20/20/20 rule – every twenty minutes look away from your screen for twenty seconds and then go live in the woods for twenty years.