Pink Summer Storms

In my dream, a great salmon-colored sea of slime and muck slapped and gurgled against the jutting rocks along the shore.

Deep currents ran beneath its surface. Even while standing on the cold sand, where only the thinnest layer of the tide could brush my toes, I could feel the ageless, eternal, pull.

The undertow runs down to a place of irrevocable return. Tucked back in to the bottomless pants pocket of the world.

"Slimy sea whose name has long been forgotten! What do you have to teach me? What will your roaring chorus stir and awaken in my own oozy depths?"

A pause

and then

"I am listening!"

But the sea of slime did not respond. So I spoke again.

I shouted, "You are the great salty pink sea of ooze! And I am a walking collection of dust. I am here to return the things you may have left in me by mistake."

And as the waves crashed and receded I gave to the sea my love, fear, dreams, wishes, emotions, and words and words and words. They all sank.

That could be a lie. Maybe you can't give anything to the sea. Maybe you can't return it. It's all stuck inside and can't get out.

Or maybe the darkest depths empty right back inside yourself. And maybe there's some other stuff in there too. Something new that got caught and dragged along. Good things certainly stem from movement.

Casual, Charming... Charsuaming

Every day you're becoming more of who you are! (sorta)

Soft Shell

Today:

Made popcorn without the use of popcorn-specific cooking tools. 

Yesterday:
Was eating lunch in the parking lot of the school I work at and an image of 'terror' and 'blossoming' popped into my head. It sounded too dramatic but I did like how it crept up while I was enjoying my lunch on a sunny afternoon in the shade of a tree having just finished up a short day at a fun job.

And furthermore, the picture up there that the words appear on has almost nothing to do with them.

But, I think that most things I've accomplished or done or thought are an offshoot or tangent to whatever my original intention was. To the point where the conscious objective almost never gets realized and maybe setting out to do a specific something guarantees that it won't happen. You still have to want it to happen though. Or you won't really pursue it and you won't get the unknown side benefits (which are unpredictable).

And that's why sincerity is pretty cool to me.

Fruitself

Be your own fruit and eat it too.

Depth for Depth

There's a five pound bag of peanuts above the kitchen cabinets in my apartment. It is perched up there. Like a fat, earthy, wombat. The bag longs to take flight--to leap from the ledge and soar on an updraft. Plastic packaging will catch the currents and hum along a cushion of air out the door and into the Great Wide Open Spaces.

The bag of peanuts will hang on powerlines and tempt unsuspecting squirrels. When the squirrels have gotten too close to escape they will be body-slammed and crash on to the roof of a car pulling into a busy intersection. The metal roof will dent and crumple a little. The car stops. The driver gets out and sees a squirrel frantically fighting the unseen force pulling the squirrel into the center of the bag. Everyone in the intersection will stare.

A meandering thought caught in a grate, a drain, a cattle-catcher, rustling and out-of-place. Wonderfully out-of-place.

Flying free, tenaciously!

This is a sketch for a thing I'll do of Mr. Kahoat. Hopefully with lots of gritty and unsightly details to boot. I want to really make his teeth pop.

Dan Kahoat.

A man who demands respect. From all objects. Animate or otherwise. The slugs that cross his path will ooze golden slime. The trees will bend their branches to tickle his face with their leaves.

How could he not be important when he plays a central role in every single part of his existence?

The sun was invented when the world decided it needed a more efficient way to dry his wet clothing. Fish, mud, and crying babies are all part of the pedestal on which he stands--the pedestal that raises him above mediocrity and allows him to survey his domain.

His throat muscles are like ropes that clench and bulge when he screams, bellows, and booms. 

"There are ant-goblins in my teeth but I can't see or feel them!"

Rex Carlburger

Charger for old laptop is busted. Plan to go to Staples tomorrow to try to find a new one. Do not have access to tablet for to make drawing.

Drew this at work.

We have fun

A bootiful picture!

Busyness

You are skating on a frozen pond on a bright winter day. The wind is harsh and smells like rancid anchovies. You are skating fast and free.

The nice part about being busy, overwhelmed even, is that it doesn't take a whole lot of words to convince yourself that at the end of the day you're doing well.

GOING TO COLORADO!

GETTING BACK THE 16th!

AHHHHHHH!!! YOU MAKE-A DREAMS COME TRUE!

More of the things that you see

Some rougher knight sketches.

I like the idea of a mailbox as a helmet but I'm not sure how much historical accuracy you want to maintain.

The very bottom one seems overly stupid. I like the one in the top right corner. Or the guy with the mullet next to him.

The guy in the top left has a lot of potential for simpleton-ery.

Do any of these stand out as winners?

Kinda liking this guy.

Did this at work.

I've taken to calling him Dan Kahoat (Kahote?)

Notice the ever-growing sword.

Draw Armor? Psssh naw!

My friend (SchabsRaisedtothePowerofCrab), told me about this knight character he imagined based loosely on Don Quixote. Meaning a stupid knight.

This is a sketch just to get something down.

All I could think of to convey ineptitude was 

-big nose

-mustache

-visor over eyes

-purple armor (?)

-flag with the letter 'Q' on it

He's a fairly standard build right now but making him exceptionally tall/fat/skinny/short could be done.

Idontknow. It was fun to make.

The Dog

Kynos

MAXIMUM HAPPINESS!

I think I'm a vegetarian now which is something I never thought I'd be. These legs are full of octopi--something I never thought I'd see.

But this burning sun is brightly shining through my windows and on the plants coiling and curling as the "the force that through the green fuse drives the flower" into something that looks like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich I digest and release and turn into movement--

the force that through the green limbs drives the runner around the lake six times and three times almost hitting an old lady and her dog but feeling strong like my big wheels are still on

still on and steady and not off to need help or even push back and so I must drive forward

driving to the dental lab beneath my house to collect dentures and molars and canines and rapidly expanding bovine people sitting around the pool and yelling at their children.

But I'm calm in the muck. Quietly absorbing as the spokes turn and I lean to the left as I learn the winds that make clouds move are above me. Many things worth having are above me. But it's fun to look. It's fun to imagine.

Cats in sneakers and robots with big pants. Fun is the most important part.

Plates

Learned about Plato today.

I didn't learn anything that you can't easily find if you wikipedia him.

One thing I noticed that's kind of strange to me is that if I'm not doing anything and have time to think about it, when I try to ask myself questions like "what is the happiest/best way to live?" or "what do I think is after death?"

My mind goes blank. It's like someone demanding, after a long weighted silence, "speak." And you can't possibly think of anything to start a conversation with.

Except it's "live a happy and good life!" and I become hyper-aware of how little I'm doing. And how little I could possibly do in this moment that would be meaningful to that kind of question.

And the ironic thing is that when you are in the middle of something truly important and life is really happening to you--you would never stop to think about those sorts of questions.

So--is it important to keep asking yourself these questions to be able to do it when it probably matters most? Or do you need to be able to remember those moments and the feelings in those moments and reflect on them after they've past?

The first would give you immediate perspective but if you got too good at it would you ever really experience something? It seems kind of numbing.

The second allows you to live your life as you would normally while presumably making adjustments but there is that distance between the event and the reflection. Memory biases abound! It seems like something that demands an awareness as its happening.

So, it's a whole lot of "can't have one or neither or both."

Also Plato died of a lice infection.

Switching Gears

It's June! Hooray June! The month in which my sister got borned!

But enough about that, for this month, or for maybe just this solitary post, I'm gonna talk about "thinkers."

People who have thinked and the thoughts they thunked.

We'll start with Socrates. Because I got this book from the library called the Examined Lives by James Miller. It gives little biographies about some philosophers and I thought I'd read it because I never took philosophy in college boo hoo.

the only picture in the entire post yet also applies to every single sentence if you think about it hard enough

Socrates. He liked to question people about everything. That's about all he cared about. He didn't uphold anything other than questioning everything and the things he didn't do were because a voice in his head told him not to.

Socrates's big thing was that after he was sentenced to death by drinking hemlock, he remained calm right up to the end.

Which is probably the earliest origins of people being bored and unimpressed by everything to look cool. Little do they know that that is only really cool when you're dead or about to be dead. There should be a state that brings back dinosaurs and makes them in charge of the Sincerity Police.  

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What to learn from Socrates?

"Know thyself" Socrates was all the time trying to know his self. His psyche. His soul or his breath. And he never gave a real answer. But he died in a way that seemed to confirm his knowledge of his self.

So either he discovered the secret and didn't tell anyone, or he faked it, or he put some serious weight behind the idea that you can only know your self through the pursuit of trying to know your self. 

It's the process that counts and any final product is an illusion or just outright false. Conclusions are just more fuel for the fire of inquiry. You have to live in a state of constant revaluation and criticism.  

And then you'll die happy. After being ordered to kill yourself by a group of 501 people.

Socrates was also super idiosyncratic and weird. He would stand around sometimes for hours and hours while thinking about something important like who owed him money or where a good chicken restaurant might be. Something like that.

"Know thy idiosyncrasies"