Passed out almost immediately after child was picked up by his mother yesterday, leaving much laundry, dishes, and other messes to deal with this Monday. Not an ideal way to start the work week. Managed to ink a page of TSG nonetheless. On the second-to-last chapter as we speak. In that so-close-yet-so-far stage of finally completing the book.
Went to see Garland's CIVIL WAR not once, but twice. It is very, very good. Some of its flaws are rather noticeable the second time around, but it is still very good, very powerful. Manages to suggest a great deal despite a rather simple, straightforward plot. Something I oughtta learn to do myself sometime.
#journal #work #film #watches
Gray stormy morning, squirrels huddled on my windowsill. 10:10 AM feels like 7:00. Generic lo-fi beats from a Spotify playlist called Focus Flow make up this morning's soundtrack. Half-inked TSG pages on my drawing table, hot Americano on my side-table, Columbian dark roast.
Today's docket:
1) Put next week's pipeline up on the pegboard.
2) Ink 1-2 TSG pages.
3) Update Garage.Ganzeer.
4) Draft newsletter.
Also some domestic stuff:
– Laundry
– Dishes
– Cook dinner
– Pickup child from daycare
– Plan activities with him for the weekend ahead—which can be a bit of a challenge.
#journal
New portrait shot by Kris Lenore
#journal
Reclining Nude 2024 – Mixed Media on Paper, 22”x15”
#work
Finished PROJECT OLDBOOK and went out to unwind with a friend afterwards, only to lose my wallet.
Not my week, is it?
Pushing newsletter to next week.
Edit: Boy am I one lucky bastard. I was this close to filing a police report for stolen wallet (and all the contents within including state ID, social security card, multiple credit cards, and more), but decided to first check with last night's establishment a second time. Nothing in their lost and found drawer, but lo and behold I found the damn wallet myself waiting for me under the table I was sat at. The weight of a thousand worlds lifted off my shoulders, and I am suddenly far less depressed than I was when I awoke this morning.
#journal
It seems that at least once a year, Houston is struck by a freak weather incident that completely disrupts its power grid. Last couple of years we got “winter freezes” that lasted between 1-3 days each, and just a few days ago it was a tornado and accompanying storm, which only really lasted an hour at most. Was out with my kid when it happened (only received an alert on my phone just when winds were starting to pick up) and managed to shelter at a restaurant. Damage around my neck of the woods hasn't been too bad, but my street has been without power for several days now, which has turned my home into a far from habitable hellbox. Flashes from the opening heatwave scene in Kim Stanley Robinson's MINISTRY OF THE FUTURE strobed in my mind's eye in my first night of overheated delirium, house walls practically incandescent despite all the doors and windows I had wide open throughout the night (windows that were sealed shut until I had the landlord practically break them open upon signing the lease), which invited swarms of mosquitos I attempted to battle off my child's perspiring flesh. Power is still absent, and I have since sought refuge elsewhere.
It really wouldn't be all that bad if temperatures within the house matched temperatures outside. The problem arises from it rising to 10+ degrees hotter in the summer, 10 degrees cooler in winter. A basic failure of architecture, of habitat-construction. We'd be much better off living in caves at this point. But this is the nature of the vast majority real estate development in capitalist America: boxes built out of chip-wood, marketed as luxury dwellings because of all the amenities: central air, washer/dryer, open kitchen, microwave/dishwasher, and all the things that mean fuck all when the power is down.
It's hard not to foresee what the “end of civilization” will look like with each one of these freak weather events. And this one wasn't even that bad, a mere one-hour storm. How will the system withstand a storm that lasts multiple days on end? Throw in a new global pandemic that strains the healthcare system, an overstretched military apparatus, along with political upheaval, and you have a darn good recipe for complete collapse.
#journal
Very close to completing PROJECT OLDBOOK. It wasn't at all mapped out going in. All I had was a very general overarching concept, developing imagery as I went along, consistently surprised by the results as they came about. Despite images at the tail end of the book looking significantly different to the ones at the start, it all works I think, owing primarily to the vessel itself, the actual “old book”, bringing it all together.
Case in point. Rear-page:
Early front-end page:
#work
34 pages left on PROJECT OLDBOOK, after which I'm sure I'll come out the other end completely transformed. Can already feel my brain getting rewired.
“It is to Cubism that the next serious innovators are bound to return.” – John Berger, THE SUCCESS AND FAILURE OF PICASSO
I feel this, in a sense, is very spot on. Not so much Cubism's aesthetic, as much as its intent.
#journal #work #reads
Should've taken yesterday off. The image-conception part of my brain is on the verge of depletion. Could use a getaway, need to recharge, but too much to do.
Recent batch of Mythomatic orders fulfilled, groceries picked up, and coffee ingested. Time to work.
#journal
“Between 1884 and 1900 the European powers added one hundred and fifty million subjects and ten million square miles to their empires. By 1900 they had reached the stage where, for the first time, there was nothing left to claim—except by claiming from one another.”
16 years. A mere sixteen years that are more or less responsible for all the wars and struggles, independence movements, genocides, and border conflicts that have taken place around the world since, including within Europe itself. From John Berger's THE SUCCESS AND FAILURE OF PICASSO, which as the passage suggests touches upon much more than just Picasso. No one exists in a vaccum.
#reads