“This book (The Solar Grid) is a singular voice, unique in its eclectic mix of intelligent science fiction, world politics, innovative design, and hardcore punk aesthetic. THE SOLAR GRID is fantastic art and you will be changed after reading it.”
—Farel Dalrymple, author of THE WRENCHIES
Almost 3:00pm and I've already been awake for 12 hours. My circadian rhythms have been all out of whack since I got here. Spent most of the day reading before paying one of my storage units a visit (and coming to terms with the impossibility of completely clearing it out this time around) before situating myself at my cafe of choice. Lter, I pick my son up from school and take him out to dinner.
Given that it is the 5th, and my newsletter goes out every 10th, I should be drafting it right now, but I kind of have nothing to say. You'd think that between my travels, the workshop I just gave, and war breaking out, now would be just the time to have plenty to say, but I really don't. I'm more in a quietly observational mood right now than anything.
Presently house-sitting for a friend, who just so happens to be safekeeping quite a few of my books. So I took it as an opportunity to read through a few I have yet to finish, and just this morning found myself completing DAILY RITUALS by Mason Currey. Nothing groundbreaking but includes a great many amusing vignettes that I think would be delightful for most creatives to leaf through.
“Mencken's routine was simple: work for twelve or fourteen hours a day, every day, and in the late evening, enjoy a drink and conversation. This was his lifestyle as a young bachelor—when he belonged to a drinking club and often met his fellow members at a saloon after work.”
See, it can be done! To be productive and have an active social life. Twelve-to-fourteen-hour workdays however strike me as overkill and wholly unnecessary (though I am guilty of it myself from time to time). The sweet spot it seems, if one can extract a commonality between the vast majority of creatives surveyed in the book, is probably working in 3-4 hour shifts. Either breaking before carrying on for another shift, or calling it a day at that. And this even applies to some of the most prolific creators.
Georges Simenon, for example, who published 425 books over the course of his career, only wrote from 6:30 A.M. to 9:30 A.M. “Then he would go for a long walk, eat lunch at 12:30, and take a one-hour nap. In the afternoon he spent time with his children and took another walk before dinner, television, and bed at 10:00 P.M.”
This schedule seemed to allow for a pretty active social life beyond the home and family too. “When living in Paris, Simenon frequently slept with four different women in the same day. He estimated that he bedded ten thousand women in his life. (His second wife disagreed, putting the total closer to twelve hundred.)”
Active social life or not, there is no doubt that many of us are way too pampered compared to some of the artists of old. Take Willem de Kooning and Elain Fried for example, who would have a breakfast that “consisted mostly of very strong coffee, cut with milk that they kept in winter on a window ledge; they did not have a refrigerator, an appliance that in the early forties was still a luxury. (So was a private phone, which de Kooning would not have until the early sixties.)”
The heat also automatically went “off after five o'clock because they were commercial buildings.”
“The gates at 168 Isabella Avenue opened to a $13 million estate she’d bought in 2000, a figure she mentioned twice before we even parked. What she didn’t mention was the $5 million loan she’d taken after the tech crash or the $60,000 a month it cost just to keep the lights on. Like much in Roomy’s world, it was all show, punctuated by name drops about neighbors like Larry Ellison and Yahoo’s Carol Bartz. Inside, Roomy introduced me to her husband, Sakhawat. Far from the “deadbeat” she’d described, he was educated, seemingly successful, and attentive to their adopted daughter, though far less kind to the maid, Vilma, whose breaks he monitored with unsettling precision. I’d later learn she worked nearly ninety hours a week for $250 and would eventually sue them. The house was dotted with carefully arranged silk scarves and designer handbags, a curated display meant to signal wealth. I’ve learned that people who try that hard to show you how rich they are usually aren’t.”
From WIRED ON WALL STREET via CrimeReads.
“Well I got sick and threw up after my phone was stolen because of anxiety.”
Overheard at a cafe' in Houston.
On a completely different note, Write.As really ought to improve their blogging app. I can only really blog here from my laptop which kind of makes it too much of a “project”.
Wide awake at 2:00 am today; the long journey of overcoming jetlag begins. Hopefully I don't collapse mid workshop tomorrow. Three workshops back-to-back, no mercy for the lecturing artist flying in from across the globe.
I intentionally didn't pack much clothes, because I knew I already had a bunch stored in Houston. In raiding my storage unit for apparel, I discovered in horror the amount of completely unnecessary stuff I had stored in there (like, why on Earth would I store a wastebin?). There's plenty of very important stuff in there (So. Many. Books.), enough to warrant keeping the unit, but too much nonsense that gets in the way of finding the good stuff. I just might make it my mission to clear out everything I'm happy to discard while I'm here, time permitting. Definitely no time to list/sell anything, but as luck would have it, there's a Goodwill just across the street from the storage spot. Perfect.
Ramadan commences back in Cairo today. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't happy to be missing it.
Because I have something like 400 books stored in Houston, a few of which I'd like to bring back to Cairo with me, I decided to travel without a book on my person, and that way I'd have one less book to carry. Instead, I grabbed my kindle—which I hadn't touched in over a year—to start diving into whatever unread book(s) I might have on it. Walter Mosely's ARCHIBALD LAWLESS, ANARCHIST AT LARGE has thus far not disappointed. Apparently, you can hardly ever go wrong with me if the book prominently features a character that tethers between genius and madness.
Enjoyed watching BUGONIA on the long leg from Paris, though its title does strike me as a little forced. I also watched the Francois Ozon film adaptation of Albert Camus' THE STRANGER, which was surprisingly good. Surprising only because the book itself is rather peculiar and doesn't quite lend itself too well to movies, but the black & white cinematography alone is just gorgeous, and all the performances are very on point.
The weather in Houston this time of year is both warm and crisp, and much more pleasant than Cairo right now which has yet to fully shed its winter chill, despite Khamaseen dust storms having just rolled in early this year—typically a sign of incoming spring.
The AirBnB I'm staying at is just around the corner from my kid's place, his school sandwiched in-between. Got to walk him to school this morning, which was just absolutely delightful.
Within a day of receiving a most enviable introduction for THE SOLAR GRID, a potential agent—who's had the manuscript sitting on her desktop for several months now—finally wrote back to tell me she wasn't sure she could agent it because the book isn't mainstream enough. She is of course absolutely right, and I as a matter of fact take her assessment as a compliment. My “idols” have, after all, never been mainstream. Although many have managed to become largely mainstream despite their material being anything but. There's Crumb, Alan Moore, Philip K. Dick, Hunter S. Thompson, and Burroughs to name but a few. Even Vonnegut started out as a fringe writer.
This puts me in the less-than-ideal position of having to agent the work myself, as I'd like the book to exist out in the wild for readers to discover beyond my limited reach.
I was chatting with members of a grant-giving body a few days ago about another potential book project. One of them said, “So you're writing, drawing, and designing it?” To which I nodded. “Wow, one-man show,” she said.
Not gonna lie, I'm a little tired of this whole one-man show business. The thought of working on the material while other better-positioned folks take care of getting it out there strikes me as very appealing, but it does seem to be insistently elusive for one reason or another.
Today I order chicken and make some soup in an attempt to rid my body of whatever new plague has infected me.
Today's soundtrack is a combination of cafe chatter (played via my phone) and Persian jazz (played via my laptop).
Got a haircut the other day and I noticed the barber had the sniffles. So I now have a cold.
Growing up, I don't recall my parents ever succumbing to common ailments. They must've gotten sick, but it seems to me they were always able to carry on as if they hadn't. Not me; When I'm sick—even a little sick—I'm sick. I lose my appetite, subside almost exclusively on herbal teas and honey, and find myself incapable of doing anything other than lazing around and, well, being sick.
This especially sucks because I had plans today, and when plans go astray I become unreasonably unhappy (despite plans going astray all the goddamn time, you'd think I'd be used to it by now).
I'm due to be in Houston in a few weeks to lead a comix-related workshop, and I was counting on preparing the exercise(s) today. Three pieces of concept art are also due for a thing asap, as well as some poster art. I need to do three portraits for the podcast series I've been recording, and a handful of illustrations for some of the extra pages that go into the TSG compilation. As well as a few sketches for furniture pieces I'm having custom-built for my place. All of which I'd like to get out of the way before my trip, so I may have to attempt to take after my parents and power through this stupid sickness if I can.
One of the things I'm sad about having dropped in 2025 is my vomitbook habit. This is largely due to the complete unavailability in Cairo of the slim pocket-sketchbooks I'd grown accustomed to using.
I picked up a small leatherbound sketchbook from Venice some time ago though and I was waiting for the right thing to utilize it towards. It's around the same dimensions as the pocketbooks I'm used to, but much thicker in terms of page-count. Figured I might as well use it as my regular carry throughout 2026 (or however long it'll last). The thickness means I can't carry it around casually in my back-pocket, and I need to have some form of bag if I want it on my person at all times, which is something of an inconvenience, but I suppose we can make it work.
It's been a strange week.
You can't find dead bodies and not become extremely existential in thought. Especially if the bodies pertain to people you were conversing with only a handful of hours prior.
Carbon monoxide poisoning. Looks like they accidentally dozed off and had left something on the stove. Pot overflowed and put out the flame and the gas kept going overnight.
Had to break in. Thought I could save them but it was too late.
Police proceedings afterwards were their own surreal experience.
Really fucking tragic.