"Fire is motion / Work is repetition / This is my document / We are all all we've done / We are all all we've done / We are all all we've done / We are all all defenses."

- Cap'N Jazz, "Oh Messy Life," Analphabetapolothology

Monday, December 26, 2011

all that glitters is gold

ever since a friend told me about golden birthdays, when we were probably 7 or 8 years old, i've been sorta latently anticipating it, slowly building it into this Moment that would like, validate my life. like, i kept telling myself by the time of my 26th birthday, my golden birthday, that i will have figured my life out.

because 26, to a 7 or 8-year-old, seemed so old. and i remember wondering at the time what kind of person i would be in what seemed like such a distant future (2011 sounded futuristic in the early 90s). would i be married? would i have kids by then? what would i be doing? how tall would i be? would i still have the same friends and enjoy the same books, where would i live? would i finally have pets by the age of 26?

as a kid, i figured by the time i became a 26-year-old, by the time of my golden birthday, i would have my shit figured out. i would have grown out of insecurities and achieved some dreams of mine, that surely by 26, life would be a little less rocky, i'd be a little more sure of myself, i'd be, you know, an adult.

another thing: the reason, i think, i put so much emphasis on my golden birthday as a kid was because earlier in my childhood, one of my teachers at the Montessori school told our entire class during circle time about the Hale-Bopp comet. apparently, this amazing astronomical event, this once-in-a-lifetime event, had just occurred the previous night and i had totally missed it. what was i doing!? this knowledge, that i would be dead the next time Hale-Bopp passed into visibility, was just too tragic and agonizing for me to handle as a small child. i think i cried thinking about myself dead in the ground while a magnificent meteor passed overhead and me without the eyes to see it, and then maybe possibly i threw up a little on the inside. henceforth i took to staring a lot at the sun, even though my teachers and parents told me to look away, and stood outside once in the winter with my dad observing a lunar eclipse - i had just taken a shower and it was so cold outside that my hair froze stiff in a rolled bun on top of my head.

basically, my golden birthday was my personal Hale-Bopp comet. i knew i was only going to get one chance at this in my lifetime, and i'd better get it right.

but you know what? i thought what i wanted on my birthday was luxurious, extravagant celebrations, a gilded cake, to be swaddled in gold lurex and lame and parade around like a Macy's day float. but what it turned out i needed most was to spend my birthday with my family and allow myself to be reminded how wonderful small moments can feel and how these moments can erase all the uncertainty i have about my life. every little day is a Hale-Bopp, you know? and i'd rather live my life appreciating the beauty of a million everyday stars than lament forever one shooting star.

Wednesday, December 07, 2011

cubicle chronicles

i have started drawing at my desk as a way of coping with the feelings of horrible boredom and waste of my life's potential that comes with my job. it is also an excellent way of managing my anger and frustration and staving off my daily existential crises.

i like to "free draw," that is, i like to make random lines on a page and turn those into drawings. i like to think of it as "liberating" the drawings on the page. all this to say, i definitely don't consider myself a serious artist, and i don't know what i'm doing.

but the other day, i was drawing, and the drawing turned out to look a little/ a lot like me.

i gave her a mean stare (because this is how my face probably looks most of the time at work), combat boots and nunchucks, so she'd be tough and not stand crap from anybody (because most of the time at work i feel silenced and powerless). 

and then i decided to keep going with it, and i started making these comics. i put her in situations that bother me at work, like when people at the cubicle next to mine start clipping their nails at their desk, or when my supervisor who smokes and drinks lots of coffee decides to breathe into my face. soon i'll have her confronting the people at work who don't recycle, who talk really loud on their phones, who don't clean up the microwave. it's been surprisingly therapeutic. these are the drawings i've done so far (click to enlarge):

The Nail-Clipper


Coffee-Cigarette Breath