breezy: the divine wind

kamikaze |ˌkämiˈkäzē | ORIGIN Japanese, from kami ‘divinity’ + kaze
‘wind’, originally referring to the gale that, in Japanese tradition, destroyed the fleet of invading Mongols in 1281. I love to read Japanese history, especially the Sengoku jidai or "Warring States" period. The picture here is the cover for cigar-tin story #30, and I think she looks very Japanese indeed.

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Cigar-tin stories #31 and #32. I think I'm getting the hang of this now.

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A portrait of me, by my niece Stella ... tell me if I'm wrong, but do my eyes look slightly indecent?

deliberately pale, without shadow

This is the work of Elizabeth Blue Sargent; her colours are always warm and sensitive, her lines always gentle and careworn. If you're on Facebook, please help verify her blog -- it deserves more readers.

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I've always loved this painting.

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I don't know if this is supposed to be me or just cheer me up (yesterday I was complaining -- quite bitterly -- about winter dragging on and on), but one thing's for certain: my niece Stella is a sweetheart. Now, if only my sister could learn the proper spelling of my name (I realize it's quite new, having only had it for forty-one years now), and coach my niece accordingly.

I saw the first cities of snow ...

Just the other night I was on the phone telling someone how people here in Kingston didn't know 'real' winter, how I phsshhed and rolled my eyes when people complained, because before moving here I'd spent ten years in Winnipeg, where winter is like Napoleon's retreat from Moscow, only with toxic clouds of car exhaust instead of dead horses, and the only thought is: I must keep moving. But now I am sick of Kingston's winter, too. It's not that it's so cold, or choked with snow, but rather that it's just this ugly thing that hangs around, and around, like some virus not important enough to see the doctor about. Enough already.

Brought some left-over Chinese food to work today. The fortune cookie tells me: They can because they think they can. Good for them.

held for interrogation

Not open, sharing, playing nicely with others, not working well in groups, not cooperating or collaborating, not enjoying the fraternity of my fellow man, in fact actively resisting the 'wisdom of the crowd', even (unbelievably) doubting the trajectory of the speckled flock. Really, people are just terrible. Ignore, do not complain, just go around.

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C loves this song.

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Everyone is talking about the end of the auto industry, the end of the
car. Yes, fine. But I work with a guy who spends all his time looking at cars online, oohing and ahing over things new and shiny and computer-controlled, and thinking about his next trade, his next lease, his next move in the shell game. And the reason he does this is because the auto-industry is like his crack dealer, albeit with the slickest corners of speed and leather and steel. This is what they do. And my coworker drives everywhere, and everyone he knows drives everywhere, too. It's all driving all the time. There are too many expensive cars, there are too many expensive houses, there is too much flakey financing, there is too much of everything, this giant headache of an unsustainable consumer superhighway, going nowhere. Why don't we just have enough car companies to make enough affordable, dependable cars? Why doesn't the government use all those billions of dollars to create a mass transit system that would be the envy of the world?

{instinct}

What are we? A collection of codes, of genes, of microscopic spots? A pulsing bundle of wires and internal levers, wandering about the landscape in open-mouthed wonder, gaping at everything, waiting for the right signal to tell us what to do? Are we ever anything more than instinct?

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These fellows are from the SS Division Totenkopf, and so are from a path of being very hard indeed (by late 1943 casualties were such that virtually none of the original cadre were left, as evidenced by the young faces here), but when overrun by Allied forces in Normandy it was the instinct for self-preservation which won out, and they duly puddled into that broken mass called surrender.

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Meanwhile, the Canadian middle-class instinct to freeze in the headlights of anything that even feels controversial, to avoid, at all costs, offending anyone, anywhere, no matter what their beliefs, while at the same time making absolutely no effort to have an informed opinion about anything, continues unabated. And then we wonder why our politicians are so awful, like so many robots at Chuck E Cheese.

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Now who wants cookies?

ink drawings

Pen and ink drawings for a chapter in my ongoing long story, coming to the end of it now. I've never worked much with India ink but I enjoyed doing these (once I got going, found my rhythm), and I think I'll do more.

now celebrating: pirates and Venn diagrams

Inspired by Anne Bonny, a female pirate in the early 18th century. Born in Ireland, she moved with her father to Charleston, South Carolina, and lived on a large plantation. When she was 13, she stabbed a servant girl in the stomach with a table knife. As soon as she was old enough she moved off, marrying a sailor and small-time pirate named James Bonny, who had a vague plan to inherit her father's estate. Meanwhile, her father disowned her. In retaliation she set the place on fire before heading off to the Bahamas, where she met John "Calico Jack" Rackham, and began her colourful pirating career. The last we know of her is that she was eventually caught and sentenced to hang. {cover for cigar-tin story #29 -- of course, the pirate story I put inside will be an original, one of my own, and possibly involve sea monsters and the end of the world.}

This fellow puts me in mind of the Great Gatsby, without all the murder and suicide. {cover for cigar-tin story #28} *Sold*.


"And he laid hold on the dragon the old serpent, which is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years." ~ Revelation 20:2. I once had a girlfriend who was terrified of snakes ... actually, that sounds rather dirty. {cover for cigar-tin story #27}

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Cigar-tin stories are $22 in Canada or $24 international, which includes shipping. If you see one you like, either email me or go through my Etsy site. Thanks!

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The other day I identified myself -- through my Facebook "status" -- as a diagram, and several people made sport of that. 'But I am a diagram,' I thought. In point of fact: I am a Venn diagram. All I am, at this moment, can be expressed as a Venn diagram. Now I've created an open Facebook group for all of us who would like to draw ourselves (and others) as Venn diagrams. Try it, it's fun!

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The drawings from last week have now been done over with watercolour. What do you think? It's strange, even disorienting sometimes the way an artist's feelings about his/her work will be at odds with the general reaction of viewers; in this case, while I liked these pictures very much, people's response was muted. Part of that may be explained by the fact that they belong to a story I'm writing, and so have a narrative, both on the page and in my mind, while to everyone else they're just some little watercolours on card. But still ...

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My writing group is doing a reading over a Queen's lunch-hour on February 24th. Best of all: it's free.

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My wife has a cottage for rent this summer -- it sits on a bluff overlooking the Northumberland Strait, with wooden steps down to the beach, the Confederation Bridge visible in the distance, and Prince Edward Island too, just across the water. It is pretty much in the centre of the Maritimes. When we go I like to spend my days swimming, reading, and hitting golf balls along the sandbars. Three bedrooms, fully functioning kitchen and bathroom, with a gas barbecue around back. And she just put up a Facebook fan page!

{time}

Two illo's for a rather long-ish short-story I'm currently writing ... and coming to the end of. Most of my stories are written in a gulp, but with a long story one has to pick their spots, in that you have to find the time to re-acquire the mood of the thing, like rummaging around for the right jacket.

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Two paintings done by my brother Jon, as re-discovered on a recent trip to Montreal.

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The other night, for my birthday, we watched Appaloosa, a Western vehicle for Ed Harris and Viggo Mortensen. As Westerns go, it was pretty good, if lacking a bit in tension (you never really worry about the good guys). It was also marred a wee bit by Renée Zellweger, who, oh my God, is a real pinchy-face.

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Last night C was telling me about the mystery of the Mary Celeste. I already knew much of the story -- as a kid we had one of those big, hardcover books with some title like Amazing, Incredible, Indescribable but True! The Mary Celeste story is one of those vanishing-humans stories, which will always play to a certain shadowy planet of our consciousness.

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I've had a photocopy of this Victor Burgin print on my desk for years.

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Saint Brendan and the Whale ... yeah, like these guys aren't fucked.

oh yea of little faith ...

Well, I didn't think it would happen, I thought I would come home and find C under a blanket on the couch, a glass of wine in one hand and the remote in the other, saying I know I promised but I was so exhausted by the end of the day and all I wanted to do was come home and relax, and I can't get up right now because Ernie (our fat cat) just got settled on my lap, I could see it all in my head even as I trudged my way home, but sometimes luck is on your side, and luckily for me my birthday fell on C's day off, and I, in some kind of miracle, got my requested birthday cake. Of course I still had to cook my own supper, and rent my own movie, but one can't ask for the world.