Coffee after 4:00pm for me is usually a bad idea, guaranteed to keep me up until well after midnight. So I was surprised to find myself crashing immediately after a 7:00pm Americano, only to reemerge among the living at 1:00am. Circadian rhythm officially fucked.
Phase 1 of PROJECT BLOSSOM complete. Now I can put it aside before entering phase 2 later next week. PROJECT TWENTY-FIVE I must dedicate Monday to, do the whole thing start-to-finish in a single day. Hoping to have 3 full days assigned entirely to TSG next week, need to pencil in a minimum of 6 pages, but more if I can manage. This weekend is for my boy.
The second half of the Penguin edition of Borges' FICTIONS seems to be dedicated to more straightforward short fiction, but much of it still flies over my head regardless. Close to 70% into this strainful little book that I had no idea would be so difficult. Late night gyoza to help me power through.
On a completely different note, love this collection of Kafka covers by Peter Mendelsund.
#journal #work #reads #radar
Borges himself was a translator of some note, and in addition to the translations per se that he left to Spanish culture—a number of German lyrics, Faulkner, Woolf, Whitman, Melville, Carlyle, Swedenborg, and others—he left at least three essays on the act of translation itself.
From Andrew Hurley's A Note on the Translation, printed in the back of this Penguin edition of Borges' FICTIONS (which is oddly hard to find actually).
In “Versions of Homer” (“Las versiones homericas,” 1932), Borges makes it unmistakably clear that every translation is a “version”—not the translation of Homer (or any other author) but a translation.
This is one reason I have resolved to learn Spanish (aside from my desire to spend more time in Mexico City). Having been exposed to works by Arabic authors in both the original Arabic as well as in translation to English, I can see how a work in translation genuinely isn't the same as the original. If I could have things my way, I'd also be learning French, Mandarin, and Hindi, but as a man in his 40s who sucks at multitasking, I've only got so much time for so many battles, and it seems wise to start narrowing one's struggles down to just one or two, maybe three.
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It's been gray and rainy all day. Less than ideal day to venture out for a haircut and groceries, but I'd already planned it that way and stuck to the plan.
Work: Only had enough time to rough out one TSG page, and did some sketching/thinking on PROJECT BLOSSOM.
Reads: Past the 50-page mark on Borges' FICTIONS which I have heard much lore about and have been dying to read for a while now. It's true what they say: slim volume containing universes within. Starts off with what read like reviews of non-existent books, completely fictionized but written about completely straight-faced as if they genuinely existed, despite the absurdity of such a notion, given the nature of said books. The first one is fantastic, and the second one is very good, but by the third I had gotten a little tired of the formula. Fourth and fifth stories take on a more traditional approach to what one might expect of a short story, though the fourth one was quite meta and may require a second read for me to wrap my head around. I can certainly see how he must've influenced an author like Italo Calvino, who does in fact have a blurb printed in the front: “I love his work because every one of his pieces contains a model of the universe.”
Screens: Finished watching KAOS on Netflix, and Warren did not lie, it is very good. Judge it not by the first episode, it gets so much better real fast. Like Warren, I also did not like that they did not adequately tie it all up in the last episode. Doing so wouldn't have denied them the opportunity to create a second season—which is clearly what they're aiming for—the world they created is certainly fertile enough ground for more stories even with a firmly closed first story arc.
Status:
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It is hard to believe that this chapter may very well be the last time I draw her for a very long time if not forever.
My plan for the day turned out to be a little too ambitious after all, but TSG pages are coming along smoothly.
Today's background listening included:
Bret Easton Ellis interviews Paul Schrader — Really great. I particularly love the few Pauline Kael anecdotes Schrader shares. Kael is grossly overrated in my opinion, and I say this having enjoyed a number of her books. She did good to bring actual critical criticism to the field, but neither her taste nor how she expressed it really jive with me.
TRACKMARKS by Hamed Sinno — Sinno, who is one of the most talented and creative people I know, was on a train in London when it got held up because a man on the tracks in what was apparently a suicide attempt. Folks on the train started to get irritated, and that irritation soon ballooned into rage, directed squarely at the distressed man who messed up their schedules. Hamed was wise enough to record this vocalized rage and weave it into a powerful song together with lyrics drawn entirely from advertising slogans seen on the London Underground. 👌
#journal #work #comix #tsg #resistdystopia #radar
The good air blowing through Houston is apparently the result of a tropical storm brewing right off the coast, for which we are being informed to brace ourselves. Third one this year. The city of Houston really ought to consider replacing all its roads and freeways with canals and moats, Netherlands style. The soil doesn't take too well to asphalt anyway, every new paving cracking and morphing within a couple years' time. Americans will criticize communism for its top-down authoritarian inflexibility, but then will insist on constructing all their cities with motorway-first logic irrespective of geography or topography. One-size-fits-all logic but through “free enterprise”. 🎉
Finished Calvino's WINTER'S NIGHT last night and moving onto Jorge Luis Borges' FICTIONS this morning before charging into the jampacked workday ahead.
Two pages worth of TSG pencils on the docket, along with some sketches for PROJECT BLOSSOM, and some thinking about PROJECT TWENTY-FIVE. I'll have to remember to break for exercise at some point, and perhaps take my bike out for a grocery run. A little too ambitious maybe, but things are oddly less daunting when you get that good pre-storm breeze.
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A cool sea-like breeze blew through the city all day today, finally [hopefully] announcing a genuine end to that Texan summer. Day started on a good enough note, was finally able to take my bike out after many months of its sitting idly in my living room. Kiddo started soccer practice again, which is always fun to watch. Spent the remainder of the day tidying up and reading. Then I started meal prepping for the week, and things took a bad turn.
Decided to try my hand at a creamy eggplant curry, with ground beef and potatoes. Things were going well until I realized the coconut cream I added was REALLY EXTRA SWEET! Like CONDENSED MILK SWEET!
I should've just tossed the thing out then and there, but I was foolish enough to carry on anyway, thinking I could fix it. Couple hours of simmering later, the dish was just completely inedible. Put in through a strainer, one scoop at a time, till all the sauce was separated, and still no use.
Now I have a big terrible mess in the kitchen to contend with after four hours of cooking and no food whatsoever to show for it. Fml, I'll deal with it tomorrow.
#journal
Artwork to go with my review of Bob Dylan's CHRONICLES, VOL. 1. A poster edition of the artwork is available from Garage.Ganzeer. I'm afraid I'll be keeping the original.
Issue #212 of my newsletter, RESTRICTED FREQUENCY, went out last night. The Art of Subversion is the title. Here's the web version.
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Finished drafting and scheduling newsletter just in time for my hot date (it's nice to attempt to go about Friday nights like other humans every once in a while). This is edition 212 and it is about the art of subversion.
Sign up for free here to receive it.
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“There's a boundary line: on one side are those who make books, on the other are those who read them, so I take care always to remain on my side of the line. Otherwise, the unsullied pleasure of reading ends, or at least is transformed into something else, which is not what I want. This boundary line is tentative, it tends to get erased: the world of those who deal with books professionally is more and more crowded and tends to become one with the world of readers. Of course, readers are also growing more numerous, but it would seem that those who use books to produce other books are increasing more than those who just like to read books and nothing else.”
Not gonna lie, sometimes my mind drifts off to a world where overnight I obliterate all trace of my online presence and pick up and move someplace I can slip into anonymity. Mexico perhaps, someplace I know no one and no one knows me, and where I don't even know the language. Set aside any semblance of professional pursuit from my creative endeavors and instead get a job waiting tables or tending to a bar or working at a bookshop, a day-to-day affair that requires no longview, all while speed-learning Spanish and spending my free time doing nothing but reading and sketching till the end of my days.
The excerpt at the very top is from Italo Calvino's IF ON A WINTER'S NIGHT A TRAVELLER, which may just be the most post-modern book I've ever laid hands on. It's about an apparently misprinted book, whereby every other chapter seems to belong to a completely different book. In that regard, it can be quite challenging to get into, but in so doing it held up a mirror to me and reminded me of a thing I did in THE SOLAR GRID, in which I relegated the half of each chapter to what may seem like a completely new story, until much later you discover that it is all in fact one story. Which made me realize how challenging I must've made it for readers too.
Sticking with Calvino pays off though, because by around the 75-page mark, you're hooked, and the brilliance of Calvino's ploy begins to dawn on you like eureka.
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We're not always looking for ideas, sometimes ideas are looking for us. Sometimes they violently break through the windows of your mind when you least expect it and sweep through you with unstoppable gusto. Attempting to resist can be futile. No use trying to shutter them windows when the winds of inspiration are too strong.
The thought of revamping my logo wasn't something that ever crossed my mind. I've had the same one for over a dozen years and it seemed to serve me well, but last night for reasons completely unbeknownst to me a new mark made itself known in my mind's eye and I immediately scrawled it into my current vomitbook.
Aside from the obvious eye, the logo is also comprised of 3 letterforms (as was the previous one), G, J and the Arabic letter ج. The G being the first letter in Ganzeer of course, as the ج is in جنزير (Ganzeer in Arabic). The thing about the letter ج though is that it is only pronounced a hard G in Egypt and pronounced J in literally every other Arabic dialect. Which means جنزير will often be pronounced Janzeer when I'm in touch with other Arabic speakers, so the logo is able to represent all possible phonetics in one single symbol. It's as complex as it is simple.
The eye may be a cliche, but fact of the matter is everything I do—be it art, design, or writing—stems from one unshakable trait: observation. Keen, unwavering observation. Without which I doubt I'd ever have anything worthwhile to say. In any medium, really.
I've always been a fan of the kind of symbols you can't help but want to scrawl on your desk when you're a kid. The pentagram is an obvious one, the swastika before we know what it means or where it came from, the eye of Horus, Fido Dido's head, and so on. I think this new logo has something of that quality, more so than the previous one for sure.
I may tinker with proportions and style sometime down the line, but for now I'll try it on raw, see how well it fits.
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