On Writing

I began writing today. I mean really writing, I’ve fiddled before with some painstakingly constructed paragraphs and essays, but this is the first time I’ve really tried to write a story.
I had a little ember of an idea yesterday and thought about it all night, then spent most of the afternoon sitting on the couch and jotting down an idea when one would happen to occur to me. After a full day I had basically nothing to go one except a vague idea of what the plot would be and a hazy silhouette of the characters I want to portray.
So, I decided to wing it and start writing. I figure no matter how clunky it is, it’ll be better to have something really bad to fix than to have nothing at all. So I’m plowing along, concentrating on keeping the story moving forward and ignoring how sloppy it is so far. I have never written a real story, and I’ve never ever written dialogue, and it is so HARD. It takes so much work to make it sound genuine!
I’m not ready at all to post what I’ve got so far. I spent a little over an hour on the first page… I can’t wait to get to that part of the journey when I can write for hours and hours without missing a beat. If I keep at it, I’ll get there eventually…

I don’t have a damn post title let me post it anyway!

I worked a whole eight hours today! I’m pretty happy about that. Tomorrow is up in the air; I was hired during a slow period. It’ll pick up again though. Plumbing is really interesting. You have to know how to do a little of everything. We worked three jobs today, one sprinkler job (outdoors) a bathroom job, and another outdoor faucet thing. So its kind of cool to see how varied the career can be. The first house we went to was some rich guy’s house. He lived way up on a hill and he had a hot tub on the back porch overlooking the valley below. He also had orange and lime trees all over the yard. Some people are lucky.

My wife is in the next room watching some horrible rape movie. It sounds really brutal. I don’t like watching rape movies, and I don’t know how Aimee can stand it. A few years ago I would not have cared what was happening to anyone on the screen but now that I actually care about someone else and don’t want to die all the time, I can’t stand to watch that garbage. All I can think about is what it would feel like if it happened to someone I love.

Sighhhhh soon it’ll be over and I can beg her to consider having taco night tonight. Wish me luck! Less inane posts to follow later…

Memory Lane

Took a trip down memory lane today. All my life I’ve had a soft spot for nostalgia. My Achilles’ heel. Remembering the past the wrong way and putting it up on a pedestal can sometimes be dangerous, but in this case it just raised questions. I spent the majority of the afternoon perusing Aimee’s old deadjournal and sifting through the memories there.

Why did it seem like we were happier back then? Not “us” as a couple, but… Life seemed so optimistic and full of possibilities then. We weren’t worrying about anything at all, the only thing that really mattered is that we were together. All we have now is worry. It saddens me that no matter how hard you try, the real world will eventually pierce the comfortable little womb you’ve created for yourself and crush everything you love into dust. I honestly never thought that the outside world would be able to infiltrate our little corner of the universe, but it has and it feels like it is sapping all the innocence and happiness of our relationship.

I’m not implying that we don’t love each other. I’m saying that nowadays I am having trouble finding a reason to smile, or even to let go for just a second.

California is a disaster. I can’t believe how badly its going and I can’t help but think that the universe is giving us such a hard time because we simply weren’t supposed to come out here. I knew it was a pretty hair-brained idea, but there was nothing left on cape. I honestly thought that the universe rewarded those who go with their heart. The one time I go with my heart instead of my fierce, robot-like logic and my sad little life imploded on itself and somehow became even less than it was living in my parent’s basement. Is it possible that the universe is just as sterile and logical as I am?

We are so deeply in debt that I fear we will never get out. I finally have a job that could very possibly take me somewhere, but to start I will be working part time at minimum wage. Mind you, this is only for a month or so, but its tough getting off to a slow start after a long hiatus.  Part of me is glad that I finally found a real chance at an actual career, but the other part of me is disappointed that I’ve gotten myself involved in something that can tether me to this place indefinitely. We don’t have the money to leave right now. We don’t have the money to stay here either. We don’t even have the money to get back home, because gas costs almost five dollars a gallon. Nothing really to even go home to. I can see how people wind up homeless. Most of them end up that way because they are insane or addicted to one substance or another and couldn’t hold it all together. But some people, well, they weren’t bad people necessarily, they just missed one of the stepping stones. Got lost in the cracks somewhere. It seems to me that this is a definite possibility for us right now.

Aimee has always been the one to settle me down and let me know that everything is going to be alright. She grounds me when I start to fly off the handle. But even she is showing cracks in her foundation and that frightens me more than I have words to tell you. Its like watching a parent cry for the first time. I didn’t know you were mortal too. I want someone to tell me that everything is fine, and I want to really know in my heart that yes, everything will find a way to work itself out and there is no need to keep myself up at night. I want to know that if I let go, I will close my eyes and drift along with the current, rather than sink.

I want to be standing back in that poolhall over a year ago, smelling your hair as you settle gently against me, smiling and swaying ever so slightly to whatever song I had picked on the jukebox. I remember how perfectly my arm fit around you. How small and delicate and yet infinite you felt there, the warmth of you settling into me. I remember the way the room blurred and slowed to a trickle, filling with a soft white noise. It made me think of being a boy in winter, how everything sounded so different after the snow fell, after the world was born again as I slept. How it made everything feel far away, like walking through an old memory. I remember feeling the same way with you in my arms at the poolhall, the rest of the world a thousand miles away. I remember inhaling slowly and deeply. Closing my eyes, and dreaming happily of nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Yay, Old Shit!

So in response to my last post, my wife asked if I would show any other art stuff I’ve done. Unfortunately, none of the good stuff I was doing over the winter was ever photographed or scanned, and is sitting in my parents basement on the other side of the country. I did remember my old photobucket login though, and found some older stuff that is, if nothing else, interesting. I’ve selected the stuff that isn’t humiliating to display here…

Pencil stuff from a few years ago. The one on the top left is a picture I copied form an ad in a magazine because it looked like my sister. Top Right is a Giger rip off called The Oracle.

   
GrayFox from Metal Gear Solid on left, Copy of Davinci’s Antique Warrior on the right

Oh, my Graffiti phase… *sigh*
Copy of raccoons by supakitch on the left, done with sharpies. Murdoc from Gorillaz on the right, also done with sharpies but blended with alcohol.

  

My favorite- A stencil of Queens Of The Stone Age (sans Dave Grohl because he is a douche and they put his damn face on the album cover even though he only played drums on one song.) These were done by drawing all the negative space on a piece of cardstock, then cutting it out with an exacto knife and spray painted. Josh Homme, the one on the right was the first one I did, then I proceeded left. You can tell the one on the right is my first because its pretty sloppy and took me two hours. Nick Olivieri, The one on the left took about 20 minutes. The Guy in the middle is Mark Lanegan, if you’re curious.

Frank, from Donnie Darko. Same method here.

Microsoft: You Need Us. Last I checked it was hanging in matt’s room…

Revolver Ocelot from Metal Gear Solid on left, an Ashley Wood copy.
This one on the right was done in crayon and got me into one of the better art schools in Boston, mostly because it was done in crayon. This one could be anywhere by now, I sent it in with my application to another school to accompany an essay critiquing it I had to write with the application.

Neato zombie thing. Clay head, the body is made of wire and duct tape melted with a blow torch then painted. Later ruined after it was left at an ex’s house. I wouldn’t have wanted it back anyway.

“Virus” done last week. I had plans to paint it and seal it and keep it in a jar of “formaldehyde” but most of it’s tentacles snapped while it was drying. lousy brittle clay…

This was done several years ago. The thing on it’s head is like… Kind of like a living tumor, I guess. It looks pretty choppy now, but I loved it then. This is solid clay and features heavy antique gears I found at the farm. It weighed nearly 30 pounds! It was later pained (poorly I might add) and left for dead at the same ex’s house who ruined the zombie frame thing. As far as I know she either smashed it or encased it in a cocoon of cigarette resin.

My first Brass Goggles! I love steampunk stuff. These were actually pretty terrible, they sad crooked on your face no matter how you put them on. But they look swell sitting on the counter, eh?

My second foray into steampunk related eyewear. This is a dissection monocle; The lense is a magnifying glass and feature a built in light for close examination.

also feature a built in battery case

And there’s some wacko modeling it.

Yep…. That’s all I could find.  I’m going to post all of this anyway even though I’m somewhat embarrassed at my readiness to prattle on about my own shit…

New Drawing

I actually drew something! I was too tired to figure out what to do with the bottom half of this one, but I’m still excited because this is the first time I’ve picked up a pencil in nearly three months.
Not really sure what this is exactly. I spent too much time today marveling at Keith Thompson’s  awesome talent. I suppose the thing growing out of the guy’s stomach resembles Cthulhu. Just a variation on an idea that’s been stuck in my head all day… Could this be the art bug starting to bite me again? we’ll see, though I wouldn’t count on it. Feels good to do something again either way…

Two Things

Two things, very quickly;

1) I think I could write if something had ever happened to me. But I think I’d feel like a douche writing about myself or something I personally had done. especially if it turned out to be uninteresting.

2) I got really excited for just a moment while I was fiddling with the “your profile” editor on my WordPress page thing. Why? Because The Top Line says Personal Options, but I, for a split second, thought it said Personal Opinions, and I got excited that I’d have a nice cage to keep all of mine.

Picking it up again…

I like my new job, and I am really feeling like this might be the one that fits me, finally. I hope that Matt (my new boss) thinks I’m a good employee. He is a cool guy, not too much older than me. He has the life I want. 2 kids, wife, house, vehicles, breathing room etc.

I’ve been wanting to get back into art lately. When I was thinking of leaving tattooing my Dad said he didn’t want me to just because he thought that it was great I was doing so much with my art and he didn’t want me to give it up. I said I’d never give it up, then promptly gave away all my art supplies and haven’t nurtured a creative thought since.  It kills me that I do this to myself all the time. The act itself comes so easily to me, so why do I have such a hard time keeping up with it? It frustrates me so much that I finally have a job again but we’re so in debt that I wont be able to take my first paycheck out and buy paint. In fact, I won’t be able to buy any art supplies with my next few month’s paychecks, as far as I can see. I have all these ideas, but all my supplies are gone forever. You never realize how much shit you need until you don’t have any of it. Its like filling a fridge for the first time. You imagine that a sandwich couldn’t possibly cost that much to make. SO you buy ham. And cheese. And bread. Then you realize that your parent’s fridge always just had mayonnaise, but this one doesn’t so there’s another thing to buy. Then mustard. Oh wait, I don’t own a knife. Or a plate. Or napkins.

Its like that with art supplies. Oh I want to make a cheap sculpture? Well I need wire… That’s not much. But I need something to cut the wire with because I learned the hard way that a butcher knife doesn’t work when I cut my thumb off last month. Oh I need clay. Oh I need sculpting tools. Oh I need a frame to hang it from. Oh I need oil paints. Oh wait I also need brushes, a palette, linseed oil, paint thinner and rags. I used to have all that shit and more in my basement. I had anything and everything you could possibly need, I spent YEARS amassing what I would consider to be a fortune in knick knacks, miscellaneous supplies, odds and ends, junk, tools, frames, canvas, and any artistic medium you could think of, even a damn woodburning kit. I thought it’d be fun to throw everything away because it was so sad that I had nothing to buy at the art supply store anymore and it’d be neato to buy it all again. Which in theory may be a good idea but now I’m broke and have nothing to get these ideas out of me with. It gets harder to push it forward when you don’t do it everyday. I try to draw now and its just a muddled unhappy tedium…

I hope I can get it back soon.

I found this fucked up video today. Its a clip from a short lived cartoon called The Adventures Of Mark Twain. It went on and promptly off the air in 1985, and featured an episode in which Twain introduces the other kids on the show to Satan himself. The interpretation of Satan here is really unique.. Very creepy. I hope the embed video thing works here. If not, check out my myspace I guess.

Christ I’m Tired…

Haven’t been sleeping too much at all lately. I know I’ve got too much on my mind and that doesnt help. I also havent worked in about two weeks, so I havent been moving around at all. I wake up after sleeping 8 hours feeling exhausted and sick. I’m nodding off all day long until I finally goto bed after being awake for 20 hours, and I can’t sleep. Part of its stress. Part of its the heat in this stupid state and our poorly designed apartment that doesnt let air from the AC down the hall into our bedroom, and the idiots next door and below us who smoke on their porch all day and all night so we cant open the windows to filter the air. Part of it is our new cat. She sleeps all day but goes nuts right at bedtime and at 6am.
It is 11:45, and I have a ridealong for a newspaper route I’m doing at 2am. Should last until 5, which I think I could do, but I have a job interview schedule in Grass Valley (40 minutes away) at 9am. So I feel like a living dead body right now, but I knwo I won’t get to sleep until noon or so. Tried getting a nap but drank too much caffeine during the day and couldn’t pull it off. An hour would lessen the weight on my eyes and make this whole thing all the more bearable.

On another note, sometimes I can’t believe how much I love my wife. Maybe this is hitting me so hard because I’ve been listening to music all day that I listened to when I really missed her over the winter and its making me nostalgic. I love how wonderful and patient she is with me. Like the song says, I’m no easy ride. The thought of leaving her sleeping in bed tonight while I walk downtown at 2am is making me unbearably sad; I dont want the dark to swallow me up. I don’t know if that makes sense to anyone. I jsut worry soemtimes that the world will swallow her up while I’m not looking. I would die without her. Did you know that listening to you breathe at night keeps me grounded here on earth? The sound of your breathing anchors me to reality, when I need to keep from floating away forever.

I must sound like a lunatic. I might be.

I played the guitar a little today. This is a habit I picked up in highschool; I will pick up the guitar and play it religiously for a week or two, then put it down for a year, sometimes two. I wish I found it more interesting. I know that if I took the time to really learn the instrument, I could really express myself with it. But it doesnt come as easy to me as drawing or painting and that makes it difficult to keep up with. I dont even have to keep up with the artwork to get better at it. I can leave it alone for years, as I have done, and when I come back, I’m somehow a little better at it. I leave the guitar alone for a month and my fingers are retarded.
I can still play drifting, though. If anyone is actually reading this and downt know what the song is, look it up on youtube. Its called Drifting by Andy Mckee. It took so long to get that one down.
Anyway. I’d really like to try and stick with it this time. Just enough to learn how to play a song and sing along with it. I like to sing. I dont know if I’m any good at it, but I like it anyway. Singing while playing an instrument is one of the most difficult things on earth to learn how to do. I honestly can’t imagine how anyone else has ever learned to do it.

Applebees is horrible and has confined me to the bathroom for most of the evening. And that is where I’m headed now.

The End.

Finally a good day

Aimee and I took a trip down to the community pool today. I was reluctant to go when she first suggested it; my head beginning to fills with imagine of shrieking unsupervised children and swimming in other people’s urine. Not to mention My bathing suit was but just a shade too large for me and if I swim or hoist myself out of the pool just a little too fast it falls right off.
We went anyway, and it turned out to be a lot of fun. I was excited the moment I got there for whatever reason. It was only three dollars each and you can stay as long as you want. The pool was big and clean and there is a smaller pool next to it that only gets 3 feet deep so the really younger kids don’t get in the way. I think I liked the pool so much because I secretly wish I had been born in the fifties. A boy and his summer will always have a magic feeling, but I wonder if everyone who was 12 in 1965 knows that they were living in they heyday of magical summers… How is it that I feel nostalgic for a time I never lived in? who knows. Either way, spending a blistering Saturday afternoon at the community pool is something I most likely would have done if I had been born in 53 like I wanted. The only thing it was missing was a snack bar.
On a side note, I want to mention the kiddy pool. I can’t imagine a more delightful place to spend the day. Why is it that they make a bath water warm pool with a giant mushroom cascading water over it’s sides with a slide, and then decide that its for children? Honestly. I really wanted to go hang around over there, but people tend to frown upon a strange man swimming in a glorified urine puddle with infants. They should make an adult version. The mushroom would have a waterfall and a bar. Wouldn’t that be spectacular?
So we got some sun, a little exercise, laughed at some fat people, it was a nice way to spend the afternoon, I’d recommend it to anyone.

Hangover

So Aimee convinced me to leave the house yesterday. We met up with a couple of her coworkers at this little Mexican restaurant down the street and proceeded to get drunker than I have been in at least three years. It was embarrassing being that drunk around people I didn’t really know. To make matters worse I smoked like a hundred cigarettes and heckled the band and just acted like an ass. To top it all off I drove home, which is just insane. I had no business what so ever driving. I mean driving drunk on cape cod is one thing, but Auburn is crowded and there are lots of pedestrians around.
I can’t believe I used to drink like this every night. Its nice that I don’t drink so much anymore. Feeling foolish and regretful isn’t a lot of fun though. I also haven’t been this hungover in a long time either. Being hungover is just a pain in the ass. I cant eat anything and I have too much of a headache to get back to sleep. I cant imagine why some people think this is a way to live…
Oh well. Alcohol is a depressant which is probably why i feel so bad about something that really isn’t such a huge deal.

sighhhhhh