Thursday 29 August 2019

Day 3 or 4 “You knowingly and willfully dragged me into this hell!” … “You mean SEASIDE VACATION?!”

Flawless day, finally. For all my planning and plotting last night, to grab another kayak and load it with water and pancakes and go around the island, it was wonderful. I got up super early to make pancakes, distributing some to bribe people into sort of approving of me (and for supper tonight everyone is making pancakes; mine tend to inspire), putting jam in half and Nutella in half and adding a can of mixed fruit with, stuffing it all in a Tupperware. Although there is a tiny puncture in the floor of my boat, it didn’t make a difference, I blew it up and packed it with snorkling gear and sunblock, and rope, in case the General gets too annoyed with having to paddle, I’d just drag him behind. His was a hard boat and had excellent drift. Mine is more comfry, though. One of the blow-up seats enables you to kind of recline and almost paddle laying down. This lets you closer to water and you kind of have a longer pull.
Our first stop was the island-peninsula (depending on the tide) at the northmost end. Ancient earthquake wrinkled the soft sediment bed into this adorable curly formation and in the midst of the tiny bay a sandstone throne, licked into a statuesque shape IDEAL for sex, oral or otherwise. Almost like a kinky altar, that. Even the most reserved of geologists would have to agree.
I explored the terrain a wee bit, scaring the lizards and snakes, spotting a few bunnies and a few incoming tourists who were waiting for the sea level to drop enough for the land bridge between the big and little isles to become a thing.
We had to paddle way around and the sea was as flat as glass. Were it not for the haze, all of the other islands would appear easily accessible. I have my eye on the Barren Isle, but there can’t be any wind or any wave or any currents or I wouldn’t be able to make it. There, yes. Back … not really.
The next stop was three capes down and then we had the picnic, eating the compote fruit and dripping chocolate pancakes with our hands. I snorkeled a little, lightly, and the General sat on the rocks, baking, watching over me. The clouds cleared at that point, though, and nearing noon, it got too hot, so we set back. Got in around one, straight to bed.
To show my appreciation of his effort, I went to town at around four .. (Not the best idea, but okay.) G had a fierce craving for meat, so I offed to find something that sell either BBQ or any kind of stuff I could mix into hi eggs for breakfast. Though it was way too fucking hot for hiking and I am still purple in the face now, after a half-hour cold shower and two hours later, the town wasn’t all that far away. There were plenty local options, for which I was too hot to experiment with, so I went into the super chill supermarket and got G some ready-made sausages, a risotto and beer. I got myself some postcards, ice coffee and strudel. There was a concert in the camp last night, not too terrible, so I am in a mood to listen to my music a little, for a change from sea and crickets and screaming toddlers. Too tired to move, really. I think I’ll call in an early night and go read something trivial.

Tuesday 27 August 2019

Day 2

No arguing today! Amazing! And we had some really good sex, too, once we found out there IS a possibility of doing it in water, with masks on. Kind of like ducks, the female seems to be under constant threat of being drowned. And yet to be under, ocean before me, that golden glimmer of light on the sandy, dune raked floor, fish, shells, water licking me all over, and being sort of pushed forth insistently, slowly, surreal-y, pleasure pumped into me through one particular orifice… It was really transcendent. Building on the fantasy from last night, I imagine that’s totally how a merman would do it.

Slowly and surely my desire to paint is waking back up. I painted three landscapes of the same scene, the same view from our tiny bay, so, mostly just sky, ocean and the rim of a shoal. Tried some other stuff, didn’t quite manage. But there is marvel in how the paints (and some sand and salt, whether I want it or not) dance around the paper before they settle. When we’re not swimming or playing in the water, we’re sitting on just the edge of tide, mild waves licking our toes,G is reading his book on Foreign Legion, and I am painting. I can hardly hear the fucking screaming kids (I know I sound harsh, but man, have you ever tried to enjoy Eden and listen to the waves while a freaking toddler is screaming in horror for an hour at a time when mommy is two feet into the sea, trying to convince them it’s safe and fun… all fucking day … every day … and while two five year olds on a paddling board are screaming without pause about their actions, feelings, intentions and circumstance, so that their basking parent would be involved in their adventure… There’s a hysterical two year old somewhere, who is CONSTANTLY crying about something, really constantly. There’s some kid who screams and shouts for his mother every time she is out of eyesight, and I mean if she is two minutes late for having gone to wash her hands, he is screaming through the entirety of the camp looking for her, that she will miss dinner.

Anyhoo. People are noisy, nature is awesome. ‘Nuff said.

P.S. I know the General is consta dubious about the endless shit I purchase, regarding hiking, but somewhere along the way I bought a freaking AWESOME blankie! It got cool during the night at some point and I couldn’t go back to sleep, so I stumbled and tumbled through the camp in the dark, to get to the cottage where G sleeps, and got the hiking duvet… And it is awesome! Cushy, fluffy, great material, airy and warm, but not in a sticky, sweating kind of a way. It was great. The hammock is good, too, no freezing butt syndrome and you don’t wake up like you’ve just been through a tumble dry. I think I slept a lot better than G on that ugly old edgy makeshift cottage sofa.















Day 1 of vacation. Nearly killing one another.

Other than the date being homicidally disinclined to civility, the arguments G and I have are always about one thing: I want to be a pirate and explorer and of course want to prove to him that it is possible, easy, whereas he wants both his feet on the ground (He actually does that even when he’s sleeping on a hammock, oddly enough, he anchors one leg down to touch the ground and it’s not because swaying would bother him.) and refuses to let me stray. He would divorce or even kill me sooner than allow me to wander into the unknown, that’s how much the idea of just starting to walk and not stopping, whatever road may throw at you, horrifies him. The unknown road.
The one thing on the whole wide world I would cheat on him with. The unknown road.

Our arguments are always crazy dramatic. Trying to explain to him I am border on the spectrum and being surrounded by strange people, with screaming kids and even louder screaming babies and being snappy to me will put me on a defence, nothing to do with him. I WANT to be here, I CHOSE this spot because it is the most beautiful I’ve seen thus far along the coast, but the cottages are positively nightmarish and for him to say he would rather stay inside and read his book - the one instance where a naked man reading a book is not good enough even for me - than explore an unknown island is enough to send me packing and walking into the unknown. Or fucking paddling, if I could get the boat, please? And the pump? And an oar?

People ask how I prevent myself from doing something stupid when I’m angry, like “leaving”. Well. Since you ask. The camera, watercolors and sleeping gear combined weight 60 pounds. Of that the sleeping gear is 9 pounds. And no adventurer on the planet is brave and perky when the night falls and 7 billion mosquitoes the size of sparrows hone in on you.

Funny, this time of my life. I am not afraid of a single thing in nature (okay, maybe gravity, but fear of falling down crumbly rock is not a fear, it is common sense), not darkness, not the ocean (Which is only pleasant when it’s pleasant, in every other instance it’s lethal), not wildlife, snakes, spiders, fish, weather, nothing - but people bother me. Not in the same sense they bother the General, like he can see a small sign saying ‘no nude swimming’ and yet everyone on this side of the island, because it is just 98% wilderness and retreat from civilisation, is mostly naked - he doesn’t like that. If he catches me swimming naked he makes me put trunks on. Not because some fish could swim up my hoo-ha or someone might take a photo or something, no, he just finds that sort of idea uncomfortable and would never take all of his clothes off himself, regardless of his physical superiority. I don’t even care most naked people are hot, I don’t stand looking at them. Their trash, their sounds, their attitudes unsettle me. I am a paying fucking customer, man, I came to your resort as a guest. And these things are not cheap! Why the fuck do you keep acting like it’s bothering you I am here… there is a dozen screaming newborns and infants here, man, how does THAT not drive you crazy? The camp is NEVER quiet. Crickets barely get to have a say.

Had the ferry which brought us here capsized or something, or just broke down so nobody would be hurt, and everyone swam back to the mainland but we were in a boat that got drifted to a remote island, I would be happiest. With everything I packed, all the water, food, books, drawing gear, dingy, swim gear, hiking stuff, camera, coffee, I would be fine for a month. Longer, if we found a water source (karst terrain, no springs, and no dew to speak of, either, for tarp licking last resort) and one of us had the temperament to fish. Or even hunt, if need be, there’s plenty bunnies around, even some wild goats, maybe even some bird eggs. Plenty food if you have no empathy. As if I would ever harm another living thing.

But that would be my paradise. The General, in his obsessive urge to control everything, even the environment, would see it as being stuck on a barren island with a woman who menstruates three times a month, refuses to accept the fact there are other people who wish to have a good time in a pretty patch of the world and spent an hour stomping maniacally on a box of crackers because she couldn’t get the stove to unscrew so she could change the gas charge.

My heaven is his Sartre’s nightmare and his heaven is mine.
If that’s not a group dynamic, I don’t know what is.

Oo, did I ever tell you about a fantasy I have, of a man or a merman coming out of the sea, in the dark, while I am alone sitting on a shore? I’m just saying, THAT, last night, would have been an awesome fuck, because good grief even in silhouette he looks like a conquering titan, were it not for the fucking mosquitoes. 

Sunday 25 August 2019

I wanna show you by example, but give me a week or so ....


The difference between shooting a lovely scene and painting a lovely scene... is day and night. In photography, it's all about the urgency and the math. You spot a good scene and instantly you grab the camera, move into the right angle, wait for the alignment of the elements to get the composition and pray for the ideal light. 
     Painting that exact same scene ... is the exact opposite. It's slow, it's in control of you entirely. You still need to know your gear, know how to control it, but the process is thoroughly separate. First, you find the scene and take it in with all your senses. Then you find a spot to sit, make yourself comfortable, this will take a while. Then you draw what you want, how you want it - the reality is just there to inspire you, maybe even impress you. Take as long as you like. Play as long as you like. 
    In this case, Photoshop IS cheating. 

Sunday 18 August 2019

General's line of the week:

G: They say the best survival tactic when lost in the wilderness with your wife is, send the hag to find help - this should but you at least two days of favorable chances. 

Saturday 17 August 2019



I've bought all this expensive drawing paper for when we go on a vacation and arranged all my colors in a nicer, bigger box with an acorn-shaped ceramic palate (Cutest!) and all my brushes and everything ... And I almost feel like crying, because I simply cannot draw. Still. After all this time. After two fucking years. I cannot, dare not. It's sitting there, mute and barren, I am looking at all of these amazing things people on IG and Pinterest do, and I'm empty. That door to that room simply refuses to unlock. 

Friday 16 August 2019

My logic when buying a new phone

Now, since I broke the lats phone I had in 2009, General-s been giving me his used ones - every few years he buys a new model and I inherit the olde one. He has a Samsung Galaxy 8 or something and I have a 4. It's been acting up, though, so I mentioned it may be time for another upgrade. And this was the conversation we had

Me: They're offering a discount if you return their previous model, so if you give them the 8, the 10 will be something like 50% cheaper.
G: So what then will you have?
Me: That 10.
G And I get to inherit your 4? 

Monday 12 August 2019

Yestereve, riding a train through a green and rocky gorge, watching my face cut out of sharp shadow, I got a notion for the next book, to actually make Paper queen of Dreams - for a very little while. A week or so. And like the scenes in Gorgonaut in the beginning, where at first every minute of every moment drags and she cannot wait to do anything else, towards the end there is urgency and strive - for some reason; I don't yet know what. It was just a thought. Paper so dislikes the idea of having to rule with impunity, but what if? What if? What could possibly go right?

I was fucked.
One week.
I fashioned an hourglass out of specks-full nothing, out of the metallic sawdust in the air from old crowns that never were, and now like the most precious wheat field it swayed and circled downward drain, counting the moments. One week.
I sat on the throne, wearing a costume. Largest of throne rooms open before me, architecture unnaturally swag. The costume was sentry. I wanted to wear something I can hide behind and then take off and return it to bone dust in the air after shift, like a surgeon who lost a patient at midnight. My skin and meat and smell and weight had no business here. I wore a LOT of costume. As much as it was possible to still be able to bare my hands and face, so as to make sure people can see I am sitting very important and am in no mood for being forced to move. The dress and wig and crown, it all went to the sides if the chamber. Had I not been king, it would crush me.

Time meant nothing, it was sand in a sandbox for me to run my hands around, soft, cool, clean and it didn’t stick. Lovely fingernails protruded from jewelry. I wanted to talk to some other Gods, but found nothing to say, they were … I was driving around in a hot desert and came upon forlorn gas station, the single solitary clerk there bored, polite, with nothing in common with strangers. Few words about the weather, about the natural state of affairs. I looked at mortals, singular grains. Hot women, hot men. Sleeping, dancing, fucking, crying. Dying. Without a story, they tasted like nothing. There would have to be a story to make it worthwhile, feathered a halcyon, a hyperon, a harlequin. Me dressed as an eagle, them a young prince ripe for rape. Without biology to suggest reproduction is worth something, it was depressingly otiose.

I looked at my living blood relatives. From afar they didn't exist and from too close their lives were none of my business. There was soothing apathy in knowing nobody missed me enough to go looking for me; if at all they missed me perhaps just enough to look forward to me coming back one day, with a story. Some half-meant prayers peppered the air, but what kind of a life is improved by a prayer answered? Humans are foolish. They would believe anything a God tells them, such a thing is better never said. Learn to solve your own damn problems. Find a better explanation to offer virgin sacrifice.

I looked at the legion of Oneiroi, their naked black wings fluttering everywhere. They had nothing to say to me. None of them needed my assistance.

I looked at myself again, from all perspectives at once. What a stranger.

Every sip of tea and coffee on this and every planet taken right now was mine to taste. I desired for nothing. Suspended in free-fall. Every moment of every moment I thought only if this is how Marowit felt when it happened to him. One moment he drooled though a bog and drowned kids in a swamp and ate raw chickens, the next he ruled auxiliary creation. Only he didn’t have it for a week, he just had it. No wonder he didn’t kill us. This was so lonely I was about to start naming and talking to ants, only I had to make some first.

Trying to sit here was like trying to chew gum and walk at the same time. I held onto the armrests and refused to breathe. It was making love while worried you filed the tax returns wrong. Like eating pasta while watching a documentary about the Body Farm. My brain wanted to be calm and … calm, but there were stars forced to be born within it, I could hear the scraping of every pen on every paper at the same time, all the typing, all the prints thumping relentlessly. I could hear every book being read at the same time. All the creative thinking, all the lyricism of a lover’s chatter. It sounded majesty.
If I wanted, I could zoom out so far the universe was laid before me and everything that dreamed glowed a little bit. If I wanted to zoom in, I could watch any dreaming head from a breath away. And I didn’t have to focus on any of that. I was doing it all at the same time. It was majesty.
I was literally existing because of it, filled to the brim, energized and enthralled. I would exist if there was no light of dreams - I arranged it to glow greenish, my color - but I would be starved and heartbroken from another awfulness of vacuity.
Specs played in the light which shone wonderfully though wonderful windows of a wonderful house. I imagined myself a ninja, a spry cat, being able to jump from one glimmer to the next and be illuminated in each color differently because of the stained glass window.
“Your face,” warned a seneschal. He appeared without a sound, so a servant ought.
I touched my face. It was vaguely feline, whiskers and fur. Guess I thought about cats too closely.
“Deliberate,” I muttered, frowning. “Who’re you?”
“The housekeeper, your majesty.”
“Right. You’re retired.”
“Uh, no, I am…”
“I’m serious. Find a spot you like, build a house, take on sheeping, or take a two week vacation, I don’t care. Just get out of the house. Take everyone with you. I don’t want to have to deal with a single living thing while I’m here.”
“You’ll have to eat.”
“I’m twenty five, I think I can turn my own pancakes.”
“There will be callers. You can’t sit here and hold your breath for two weeks, hoping that--”
“Don’t talk to me like we’re fucking. You’re not Hydeo. I would know if you were, you would have a tattoo going down your dick. Leave. Now. Return when you’re asked for by somebody else.”

I pitied the first caller to drift in asking a favor, though, who ventures willingly into a Dream’s solid hall to think something will change for the better … Surely I will be cruel to them and flippant, if not downright dismissive. Whom will drift in to be humiliated and abused by a bad queen? Whom, hm?

Then I remembered Amis Amanty and all the other warm creatures in chains proverbial or otherwise and thought what if someone comes and I can actually do some good by being strong and clever? Are they all going to be restless phantoms? Was that all that Marowit did all day, settle ghost scores?
What would Marowit do?
Heck, I needed advice from Anduin Wrynn. Maybe he won’t remember me. I should add layers to the costume. Where was Morpheus’ bacchanalia mask when I needed it?

Saturday 10 August 2019

Random poem #486


If you put your hands in my paint box
They would come out in gems
If you put your hands into me
They would be hot and dirty.

The sound of your footsteps approaching
Shifts me in my best drawing pose.
I am shapeliest, most translucent,
When you are opening that door

With a paint-stained handle. 

Every colour of a summer storm at sea ... and kintsugi












Monday 5 August 2019

Posting singles. Not my style, but five bucks is five bucks :P

Thursday 1 August 2019

Fuck a duck I am out of pans again. In three freaking days!!! And I only got through half the recipes I wanted to make!