You must be all things, Philosopher and Warrior, asshole and saint, Capitalist and Charity, to make it in life. To give into the dichotomy is ultimately to seal your own coffin.
Hello from Miami, where the Sun God burns the unbelievers off the smoldering concrete every day with rays that pierce the skin into the bone, and are thick as an elephant’s legs, pounding into Bone until the steam comes out our ears.
In other words, it’s Hot.
What else is new in a city built on a Swamp as the south end of America’s wang? I always find it hilarious when people wonder how is it we are so messed up. What would happen to us, the Swamp people, down here? We are going to be sane?!?
You want Sanity to go to Massachusetts or something.
Here it’s all humidity, drugs, and scandal.
Read this the other day: It’s straightforward to get comfortable. To build up your life exactly how you want it to be. Minimize inconveniences and hand off the stuff you don’t like to do. Find what you enjoy, where you enjoy it, and never leave.
A velvet rut is what it’s called. It’s nice, but the comfort tricks you into thinking that you’re not stuck.
DAILY STOIC
The Stoics knew that this was a kind of death. That as soon as we stop growing, we start dying. Or at least, we become more vulnerable to the swings of Fate and Fortune. Seneca talked repeatedly about the importance of adversity, of not only embracing the struggle life throws at us but actively seeking out that difficulty, so you can be stronger and better and more prepared. A person who has never been challenged, he said, who always gets their way, is a tragic figure. They have no idea what they are capable of. They are not even close to fulfilling their potential.
I say this to myself everytime I hit that wall of frustration when things don’t go smoothly and figure it’s me; I have to be stronger, adaptable, and on it. The Hustle is accurate, and it’s always there, and it’s always fickle, fleeting, harsh, and a fucker. There is no other way. Sometimes I sit back and say fuck it, and meditate on this, and no that it’s better to grind and dismay, knowing I did my best, than to sit back and allow the foot to rest on my neck.
“Don’t! Pity! Your! Self!
― Tennessee Williams, Camino Real
The wounds of vanity, the many offenses our egos have to endure, being housed in bodies that age and hearts that grow tired, are better accepted with a tolerant smile – like this! – You see?…
Otherwise what you become is a bag full of curdled cream – leche mala as we call it! – attractive to nobody, least of all to yourself!”
ART
Been working again on new paintings, new work, I may even become sculptural in the process over time. I have a canvas I’ve repainted 4 times this year, pulling it here and there, slapping a new layer starting something, and going away again. I’m starting to love the damn thing. In that I dug this, from the MARGINALIAN:
“We love to contemplate blue,” Goethe observed in his theory of color and emotion, “not because it advances to us, but because it draws us after it.” This particular color — or, rather, this universe of hues — seems to have drawn after it more minds than any other, inking the body of culture with a written record of adulation bordering on the religious.
After my recent excursion into the color blue across the past two hundred years of literature, a number of readers pointed out that I had missed an invaluable contemporary addition to the cerulean canon. (I might say “somehow missed,” but somehow implies a level of surprise at the fact, and it is hardly surprising that when one spends one’s days with dead poets, philosophers, scientists, and artists, the living cease to be one’s forte.) I had missed Bluets (public library) by Maggie Nelson — a slim, splendid collection of 240 numbered arguments? meditations? incantations? about the color blue, about its tentacled reach into nearly every chamber of Nelson’s life and into universal questions of desire and destiny, compulsion and choice, the disorienting delusions of memory, the delicious delusions of love.
The Marginalian
Been really getting in tune about getting drawing done in the mornings. I may experiment, and start waking up EARLY ( 8 am) and get to the shop/studio by 9am, ready to go, and work that way. Nights are shit for me. I’m drained and jaded by then, and it’s better to explore with a fresh mind before the daily work makes it into rubble. I’m going to try, waking up is not my thing and i love working at night. When other people dream, I do.
COMICS
Been fun having both series running, it gave me a hankering to make more! Ideas galore now.
ZOMBIE YEARS this week
VIGIL this week
I’m digging webcomics more and more as I look at the feasibility to do print. I don’t see why any comic artist would be working in print right now off the start. The web is a fertile testing ground. But I wonder if there is a real divide between Webcomic readers and Print Readers? Are they really two different crowds?
NOTE
This week we lost a legend, but a very huge influence on me: NEAL ADAMS passed away at 80 years old. To say he was important to comics is an understatement as he was a FORCE more than anything, and not only pushed the craft and mindset behind comics but also help create Opportunities for comic creators to have rights and positions in the business we never had before. We are in debt to him.
As for myself, he was a pillar for the form, a cornerstone that we all drew from, his work and him personally. I was lucky enough to call him a casual friend, someone I waved hi to and occasionally spoke with at conventions and events. I remember one time at a Wizard World he came to a bunch of us working the @creatureentertainmentllc booth watching us grind and draw, and said “this is what its about, working the trenches, you guys are doing it right!” I talked to him and he gave me huge advice that opened my eyes so wide. We laugh at the time he yelled at us about using reference, about getting the job done. He was a force. I kept thinking I would see him on the road again and say hey as always. I’m saddened I won’t see him. My heart goes to his wife Marilyn and son Josh. Rest In Peace sir and thank you for those small words that made a big difference for a comic creator like me.
I have been lucky enough to meet my heroes and dig them all. Amen.
TOYS
Finally back on it, giving myself time to sit down and paint and wreck and make a mess. TENEDOR is on the desk now hope to finish him soon. Have so much to do this week I hope I return soon, wanted to make a good ink wash for him. SIGH. Soon.
FREELANCE
Another portrait for a client, this time a bit risque
From Warren Ellis’s ORBITAL OPERATION newsletter last week, I will refer you to this excellent essay by Martin Scorcese on Fellini, which I re-read last night.
Curating isn’t undemocratic or “elitist,” a term that is now used so often that it’s become meaningless. It’s an act of generosity—you’re sharing what you love and what has inspired you.
Martin Scorcese on Fellini
It’s what I did here, for now, to give you the bits and pieces that come across my brain and make the wheels turn. These are the things I try to do to get across the gap of creation. I love living like this. To think and to act, to not sit back. If I was younger, i think I would be an adventurer by now, in the Ukraine saving Giraffes or somehting. For now I hope to inspire people to do that.
Inspiring is the greatest thing because you are making something from nothing happen in the hearts of the soul. that changes the universe.
FWACATA! 
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