.: ahhhhh… a day of grading the rushed and feverishly mediocre proposals of this year’s crop of podlings. Their refusal to access their own wondrous minds is disturbing. They sleep a nautiloid sleep, comforted by the wash of television and playstation images that, by their sheer quantity, nullify their own meaning. But all is not lost: charcoal grilling, ember fires, frankincense (and the ghost of myrrh, isn’t she sweet, even in her absence?), and beer with Patrick serves to re-align, and then remind: not many travel the path that we do, into the books, the words, the theories, the doublespeak, the crawlspaces in our own heads. I shouldn’t fault them, really. In the quantum clouds and butterfly-storms of this time of my life, it is more than sufficient to breathe the aromatic resin’s smoke mingling intimately with the Southern California sky, touched with the moist finger of fog; to feast on words and mushrooms and pork roast; to hear the music of language, from confession to banter to cliffhanger intellectualism to dirt-mongering root.

Still recovering from the last week, the MFA week; which really only means: catch up. Much to do, oh… so much to do. No fears, though– everything is rolling, and its roll is inexorable. I only set this in motion, and that, just barely. But the first of many obstacles has been summarily summited, as they say– it’s shadows dispatched back to the lands of doubt whose vistas I refuse to revisit. A new comic is begun, but will take some time to work on. Meanwhile, my thoughts return to portability: to the laptop, which I must fix; and the sketchbook, in which I plan to– very literally– scribble myself right out of the boxes I have drawn around me.

Looking for a place near the ocean. home, still.

Ok, I am more tired than I thought. It is time to read Ironweed, where Francis is talking to the dead in the Albany cemetary. To think this book has been sitting on my shelf for months. Well, then, dear readers: time for your sullied but ever-enthusiastic superhero to go right another wrong.

Good night. Good dreams. May the incense bear your prayers aloft, to the sky.