A Lively Mandala

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Life...don't talk to me about life...

Life…don’t talk to me about life…

Complexity. I really, really want a macro lens for my camera so that I can take pictures of minuscule insects; they tend to have really complex patterns on their little carapaces. So much of the world is not merely beneath the notice of human beings, but beneath the ability of human beings to notice. Yesterday, while helping the girl with vocabulary words, I helped her understand the difference between a telescope and a microscope. Telescopes show us things that are big but too far away to see, while microscopes show us things that are close but too tiny to see.

“But not germs,” she told me. “They’re too tiny for microscopes.”

But of course, they’re not. “They’re too tiny for the microscopes in your school, but not for scanning electron microscopes.”

Those pictures are amazing. Have you seen these high rez images of tardigrades swimming along like the kings of the universe? How about simple viruses and bacteria? There is an entire alien world living in your bellybutton. And smaller than that, photos of atoms: like, the actual building blocks of matter atoms. I remember having my mind blown by this 25 years ago. And then tinier still, subatomic particles whose existence we can observe only in partial glimpses, whose physicality we possibly couldn’t even comprehend even with visual perception.

Extremely small things really demonstrate how large the universe really is. We can’t even sense its superlatives.

Anyway, this mandala looks to me like something a scientist in a movie based on an HP Lovecraft story would observe when asked to magnify small sample of an alien organism. And the pallid, bespectacled academic explorer who’d acquired the sample, which was discovered 100 years ago buried under the Antarctic tundra, would bemoan the fact that the species was long extinct and the world would never know this beautiful creature, but then the scientist would notice that the cell was only dormant. Awakened by the heat of the electronic equipment, the cell would begin rapid mitosis. Within twenty hours, the scientist would be dead and the wild-haired, wild-eyed explorer would be ranting in Arkham Asylum about the ancient menace waiting to devour the world.

Dragon Comics 95

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The times they are a-changing...

The times they are a-changing…

I was force fed a lot of antibiotics as a child. Once, when I was about six or seven, I was prescribed some really foul-tasting white fluid; I suppose it was suggested as an alternative to the excruciating intramuscular shots in the gluteus maximus they used to give me before that. I remember being held down by several people and screaming through those, but at least when you’re held down and given a shot in the ass, there’s nothing you can do and it’s over fast.

This medication, though, was beyond disgusting. It was the absolutely worst thing I’ve ever had in my mouth, ever. It was the taste of moldy shrouds and rotting corpses. It was the taste of nightmares. The first time they forced it into my face, I threw up back up. I cried and begged and pleaded but they gave me a second dose anyway. I also threw that back up. They didn’t make me take it a third time. They claimed it was because I was allergic to the medication, but it had nothing to do with allergies, unless a person can be allergic to being disgusted.

Now, when you go into a pharmacy, they have a list of 150 different flavor additives they can mix into your children’s medicine so they don’t have to taste unpleasant things. My mother wouldn’t have bought that even if it were available then; she felt that children should not expect separate categories of flavoring. We were supposed to eat when adults ate, and that included medicine and toothpaste.

The Girl is actually pretty good at taking medicine. She did state her preference for chocolate cough syrup over tropical fruit cough syrup, but she took the tropical fruit, albeit with a lot of muttering. Last week, I also taught her how to take her allergy medication in pill form, which is a pretty big milestone for a little kid.

Anyway, this comic is just a little bit of silliness. I’m happy about what I’m doing. The world is a funny place.

Also today, Panels ran my love letter to the graphic novel, Beautiful Darkness, which is a really stunning book

Keep on Truckin’

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Swimming upside down? Sideways? No? Good. You're OK. For now. Just keep going. What else can you do?

Swimming upside down? Sideways? No? Good. You’re OK. For now. Just keep going. What else can you do?

Back in high school, I used to write short stories for my friends’ special occasions: birthdays, mostly or if they were going on a long trip. They were irreverent, sometimes angry, but usually hilarious to the people receiving them, tall tales about us and the things we would never do, decorated with the things we longed to do, full of in-jokes and insults. Parents and bullies were cast as easily-disposed antagonists, or hapless casualties to the larger menace; we were always punk rock anti-heroes in a cruel world, destined to inherit the earth.

In the last 18 months, I’ve started about a half dozen serious short speculative stories, all inspired by really wonderful ideas, concepts full of potential, characters with meat. None of them went beyond a few pages, even the ones where I knew how things ended. The only substantial thing I’ve written in that time is the first 3 books of the 5 book graphic novel I’ve been wanting to draw, but the script still isn’t finished. I’ve been drawing every day, using the headspace I used to use to write, so focused on the tablet that even my touch typing has suffered.

A few weeks ago, the Vampire Bat asked me if I could do one of my old stories for her birthday. The Bat is a dear old friend; we have known each other almost 30 years. No kidding. She’s only appeared in about 3 comics so far, but we talk on a pretty regular basis. So I’m writing a story now, and kicking it to the “Creative Scraps” file in my documents folder (where I stick things that refuse to be finished) is not an option, because then, of course, I will fail the friendship test.

It didn’t seem like I knew what to write for her, but of course, I do. When you know someone that long, you know them. It’s all just waiting to come out. And it will come out.

So, it’s good, really. Finishing a story will help this whole experience come full circle. Because I am a good writer. I am a really, really good writer. Even though my writing career hasn’t gone anywhere near where it promised to take me, people have paid me lots of money to write things for them, and a sizable number of great (successful) writers have told me I’m a great writer. And that drawing of the goldfish that’s gonna keep on truckin’? Well, that’s just a little doodle. It didn’t take any time at all, and it’s a million times better than my first webcomic, which I drew a little less than a year ago. So here I am.

I always liked to draw, but I only embarked on this project because I wan’t to try my hand at graphic storytelling. Now I’m just about ready to start this new project. First, I just have to finish a few more things.

Dragon Comics 94

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Yes, obviously I had an extra lot of fun drawing this. Originally baby Cthulhu was supposed to be juggling baby seals, but it got late and the seals weren't working. Just imagine that's what would have come next.

Yes, obviously I had an extra lot of fun drawing this. Originally baby Cthulhu was supposed to be juggling baby seals, but it got late and the seals weren’t working. Just imagine that’s what would have come next.

I feel like I’m finding my way a little more easily; drawing panel 1 was such a joyful experience, and panel 3 came so easily. Panel 2, I was just giggling the whole time I picked colors. Just doing my best here. Have ideas. Go with them. Figure it out along the way. Valkyrie mermaids! Goth rave Alice in Wonderland tea party! Baby Cthulhu juggling baby seals! There is a funny place inside if you know how to get there.

It’s late and I’m feeling more visual than verbal. Been tired and headachey all weekend, probably because there is a fire on the mountain and the air quality is terrible.

Dragon Comics 93

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Some things are just private. Sheesh.

Some things are just private. Sheesh.

Bees are fascinating. I can watch them for a long time. Some people freak out about bees, but generally speaking, unless you’re doing something to aggravate them, they’re not going to bother with you. You can just go stand right next to the hive and watch them zooming in and out, hovering as they maneuver through the traffic, zipping off and landing again like little helicopters.

I mean, don’t lose your cool if there’s one on your head. It probably just likes the smell of your shampoo. Just having a bee on you usually doesn’t result in a bee sting, unless you freak out and do something threatening, like slapping at it. Most creatures don’t like to be slapped. Try gently brushing it away. If you’re in nature, try to walk through some leaves.

In the summertime, they like to visit my swimming pool, which I don’t understand, because it’s saltwater, but that doesn’t seem to deter any creature. The bees misjudge and break the surface tension a lot, though. I’m always pulling them out of the water. I just use my bare hands. They never sting. I like to hold them in my palm and watch them dry their fuzzy selves before they lift off again. I guess they’re too heavy to fly when they’re waterlogged. They’re certainly completely unthreatening in these situations. The only place I’ve ever been stung by a bee is the bottom of my foot: in other words, I actually had to step on one before it tried to hurt me.

Bees are super important, obviously, in terms of the health of the environment that sustains us, but also super cool.

To me, there really is something very passionate about the bee at work. I’ve had moments watching one penetrate the depths of a flower with regular thrusts, then suddenly turn around and look at me in a way that seemed sheepish. It definitely felt like I was interrupting something.

Bees don’t have a work ethic, but they do seem to work ceaselessly. When they’re too old to gather pollen, they do tasks at home. Bees don’t give up; they keep at their job as long as they’re able, and they never require creative inspiration. They just know what to do, and then they do it, and they keep doing it until they die.

I’m no busy bee, but in a way I envy their steadfast intention and finality of purpose. If only I could go about my task, day in and day out, with such unyielding determination.

ETA: A kindly redditor has informed me that I have the work-life cycle of the bee backward, and that it is the youngest bees who stay at home and care for the hive and the oldest bees who fly out to gather pollen. Reddit has a thousand and one household uses.

Natural Geometry Mandala

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Classically beautiful...

Classically beautiful…

I’m in love with this elegant purple mandala. It’s really regular in symmetry and even thought it’s limited and color and shape, that simplicity opens up a greater complexity in the overall design.

Flowers are their own kind of mandala

Flowers are their own kind of mandala

Today was a nice day as far as being an artist goes. I read fairy tales to kindergarteners, repaired books for the school library, and took a rambling walk in the park, mostly for the purpose of take photos of roses. I also spent a lot of time swinging on the swings, for the purpose of giving little dragon some air. How many hours a week did I spend swinging when I was a kid? Jumping rope? Skipping? I mean, seriously, I probably jumped rope a couple hours a week, every week.

Here’s when I stopped swinging a lot: I was probably about 12 or so. I had a Walkman (children…it’s like an MP3 player, but it only holds one album at a time) and I was swinging with my eyes clothes and my headphones on and a toddler ran in front of me and I kicked that little sucker right in the head. I don’t remember the kid’s reaction, but I do remember the mom freaking out. She wanted to be mad at me for swinging with my eyes closed and my headphones on, but she knew it was her own fault for letting her baby run in front of the swings.

So today I didn’t close my eyes. A little girl came over and swung next to me. I could tell she wanted to strike up a conversation–I am a colorful person, after all–but she was too shy. Instead, she tried to swing as high as me. I decided that I was going to outswing this kid, that I would keep going longer and higher than she could. Trying to keep up with kids is better than a FitBit. So I ended up pumping for way longer than I would have otherwise. Eventually, the kid had what sounded like an asthma attack and stopped swinging. Which means I won!!!

Then The Man and I went out with the Missesses Kitty and ate a really unreasonable amount of West African cuisine, which I have been obsessed with all month. Fufu! Peanut sauce! Goat! Good stuff.

Dragon Comics 92

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Their sister site offers a sustainable sourced, fair trade, medium roast Ethiopian coffee for manticores

Their sister site offers a sustainable sourced, fair trade, medium roast Ethiopian coffee for manticores.

My Internet connection has been intermittent all week for no discernible reason, and tonight it was down for almost an hour. It started to get to the point where it didn’t seem like there would even be any possibility of uploading a comic at all tonight. Also, I had a headache. So I almost didn’t draw it. But it all worked out in the end.

I am a fan of sustainably sourced, fair trade, dark chocolate, and I don’t mind paying more for it. Chocolate is one of those things that we really shouldn’t take for granted. It’s worth it to get the highest quality you can, and to make it economically feasible for the people who farm it to continue farming it. People who grow cocoa should be able to live a good life in exchange for their crop, and cocoa should be grown in such a way that humans can continue to grow cocoa indefinitely.

Usually I wouldn’t eat a whole bar, or even half of one, in a day. Typically, about 20% of a good dark (72% cocoa) bar satisfies me. Sometimes (like yesterday) it takes about 75%. But even as I gave myself license to eat as much chocolate as I wanted while drawing this comic, I only wanted 20%.

When I was little, a Hershey’s Bar was one of my favorite things. I can’t eat any of that type of candy now. If you can get it at the mini mart, it doesn’t do anything for me. Last Halloween I couldn’t even finish a single miniature. It doesn’t satisfy anything. You can’t even get the really good kind of candy at a regular grocery store. You have to go somewhere a little bit upscale. Elitist chocolate. Call me a snob, but the older I get, the less I want to consume low quality anything. My pants are probably from Goodwill, but if it’s going inside me, there are standards.

My favorite chocolate, right now, is Endangered Species Chocolate. I like the hazelnut toffee, the almond sea salt, and a couple others (all 72% cocoa). It’s totally fair trade and sustainable and also vegan and organic and gluten free and, if that doesn’t grab you, kosher. I eat between 1 and 3 of them a week, usually, at night, after everyone else has gone to bed, by myself. I almost never share.

Sketchy Stuff

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You didn't hear it either.

You didn’t hear it either.

Submitted for your approval: a few more degrees of weirdness from my fevered brow.

The idea of invisibility is a tempting one, but obviously, people don’t use it for anything other than breaking the law. Sure, some of us are Harry Potter and we’re just employing our ultimately power for the purpose of sneaking into the restricted section of the library, but, by and large, people want invisibility for the purpose of spying. By and large, people want invisibility for the purpose of spying on people in various states of undress. The Invisible Man is not, in fact, someone you’d invited into your home. Of course, if I were invisible I would totally Robin Hood it. Stealing from the rich and giving to the poor would be my calling in life. For real.

I like his leather boots and gloves, and his trench coat and empty scarf. He’s totally inconspicuous in that getup. No one would ever look twice.

Practice makes perfect

Practice makes perfect 

Here comes Tax Day. This year I swore that I would file early. I really have no idea what to expect. We have with withholding incorrectly since we got married and there’s a strong possibility that we’re going to owe the federal government some sum of money we do not actually have on hand. The worst part is that I hire someone to do my taxes every year, because it’s cheaper than spending 3 days crying about how much I hate doing taxes. And I’m still not ready to file, even though I brought him our 1099s and W2s in February. This is 97% my fault.

Anyway, this ballerina, with her oddly muscular arms and her surely uncomfortable thong leotard had to settle for her second choice career. Stay in school, kids!

Clearly, we're missing out on a lot of things that excite dogs.

Clearly, we’re missing out on a lot of things that excite dogs.

Fire hydrants are like newspapers for dogs; everyone knows that. They read smells. I think I read that a dog’s nose is 10,000 times more sensitive than a humans’. I guess this dog is maybe a dalmatian/beagle mix. A dalmeagle? Or a beaglematian? At any rate, he’s picked up on something, recalled that it’s something he’s picked up before, but decided to resmell it. You know, just like some people do with books.

The hot and the cold are both so intense, put 'em together it just makes sense!

The hot and the cold are both so intense, put ’em together it just makes sense!

See, the fire spirit is hitting on the ice cream cone. And the ice cream cone is interested, but ultimately knows how things will end between them. Better safe than sorry, ice cream cone.

Yep. I have like a million of these things. And it absolutely doesn’t matter if anyone else likes them, or even understands them.

Dragon Comics 91

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It doesn't work of course. Politicians are in your schools, your churches, and your police stations. They'll get your kids, one way or another.

It doesn’t work of course. Politicians are in your schools, your churches, and your police stations. They’ll get your kids, one way or another.

Presidential elections terrify me. Our American political process is so bloated and corrupt. Tempers run high. The country is too big; we’re all too different. No single candidate can satisfy even 51% of us, and for people like me, with political views so far out of the mainstream that no one ever represents us, it’s just a farce. The money wasted is just a slap in the face. How many people could be fed, clothed, and housed for the nearly one billion dollars that a couple of billionaires focused on increasing their own assets casually promised to their favorite candidate?

The worst part is the campaigning. It’s not confined to any arena. It’s everywhere, and you can’t escape it, even if you want to. In the last election, I literally couldn’t figure out how to make Google News stop showing me election news. I strongly believe in compartmentalizing, but it’s not possible in presidential elections. Everyone has opinions and everyone shares them everywhere. You can’t not hear the mudslinging and muckraking and empty promises and bombastic bloviation.

It used to be considered in poor taste to discuss politics outside of political gatherings. Now it’s considered ignorant to not constantly spew your views regardless of whether or not people care to hear them. When you ask people to change the subject, they refuse.

I’d like to see some actual degree of democracy in the political process. The way I see it, it would be most fair to lay things out like this: anyone can establish a candidacy with a certain number of signatures on a petition, but all interested individuals would have to attain their own signatures in the same forum. No advertising in any other forum would be allowed, and in the first round, only position statements could be displayed. People would have to go to this political forum to determine which candidates interested them. Then, there would be a series of run-offs to limit the number of candidates to a reasonable degree, after which each viable candidate would be allotted the exact same amount of money to produce whatever campaign materials they needed, all of which could only be distributed through the same political forum: videos, pamphlets, ads. Debates would all be held on the same forum. We could all vote there, online, as well.

It’s the only non-disgusting way I can see it working. Right now what we’ve got is something between an oligarchy and a plutocracy, and it’s not working. Right now, we’d be seriously better off running the presidential campaign like American Idol or Survivor. It would be far more dignified than what we’re going to be subjected to in the next 18 1/2 months.

Dragon Comics 90

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In other words, you paint your own world.

In other words, you paint your own world.

If you haven’t read it already, stop reading at the end of this sentence, go read this Toni Morrison article about what artists do in times of dread, and then come back. Obviously, I can’t say anything as well as Toni Morrison. (But if you’re a rebel who doesn’t follow directions, I can summarize: When the worst things are happening, this is when it is most important for artists to express themselves.)

It’s easy, especially for creatives, to become overwhelmed with sorry, and even with anger, but feelings don’t make a difference. Actions do. We may feel impotent, immobile in the face of forces that seem much larger than our individual strength, but every small voice counts against injustice. If something upsets you, something that feels fundamentally wrong, don’t despair. Say something. Write something. Paint something. Don’t let the enormity of the task overwhelm you. You are not alone. Someone is listening. Someone needs to hear what you have to say.

This comic is for the real kitty and bunny, who sometimes get angry or depressed about the meanness that runs through humanity and frustrated by the feeling that fixing the problem is out of their control. It’s true that all the Problems of the World cannot be solved by one person, but many of the problems of the world can be solved be individuals and small groups. Sometimes just saying the right thing at the right time to the right person is enough to effect a change, to raise up one more spark of the divinity of kindness to light the world.

That’s why I have to keep reminding myself never to harden my heart, and to always answer hatred with love (and also why I can never read the comment forums). I have to be ready with the right answer when the moment presents itself, whether that’s drawing a ridiculous comic in support of a doctrine of love, or speaking up when I hear an ugly microaggression being casually spewed. I mean, I’m not perfect (sometimes I do read the comment forums) but I always feel better with an open heart. I always feel better when I choose to see the light instead of set my mind to the darkness.