…thanks for the lolz and see you back at the beginning!
a las dos
Big moves this month. Mika went back to America after four years, two zine fairs, hundreds of kissaten, several bikes, and countless, countless talking hours in O-town together. I am moving in with t$, furniture be damned. Temperatures are dropping, fall has finally arrived.
Now rounding the end of October, and it seems like there is only enough time for tying up the loose ends, holding back tears, and moving forward, one newly wool-tighted leg at a time.
little putrid garlic tears
I like to pretend, but let’s not: I am so very messy, and it is starting to get on my nerves.
I live in a smallish, three bedroom apartment, with little furniture, and few other items, so there isn’t really much space to mess things up, but it becomes another story when you liken a floor covered in dirty clothing to carpeting.
I just don’t “get” clean people. How do they find the time and space for all their crap? I thought that clean people just had less said “crap” to deal with, that it was an issue of hording, but one furniture-less, expansive apartment later and I am still finding garlic in my laundry (4 surious).
Perhaps things would be easier if I knew this would be my home forever, but it is just a temporary dwelling, and one underemployed year later, I have little motivation for any home improvement. (i.e. why waste 8000yen on a couch when you can work out your haunches by squatting in from of your computer everyday? why by a folder when your floor makes for easy access filing?)
My workload seems of little consequence; I am barely working five days a week, and yet the dust bunnies who greet me in my open closet grow bigger by the day.
A constant tide of garbage and filth is threatening to engulf my every move, and no matter how I try to quell that tide, things are just made worse. To be human, to be me, is to be devoured by one’s weaknesses. Laziness is defeat.
And yet, there is a comfort in the ever evolving smells of a neglected bag of trash. In the daydreams of a lover who will prove themselves worthy by spending a night on my futon. in the robustness of an immune system evolving to meet the challenges of its environment.
The late afternoon whiff of a musty, sweaty private place no one calls home but me. This is what will be lost. This is what I must weep for as a set about to scrubbing the floor.
Hello fellow rainy-seasoners, how does your lot fair after reading this indulgent drivel about “young, artsy types” taking over Rockaway Beach? My lots are feeling pretty sour, though I always relish the chance to disparage another trend piece about “cool” kids doing “alternative” things (“…the hamptons either too expensive or too bourgeois for their tastes”).
Almost finished Girl Zines, a book by Alison Piepmeier about the awesome power of zines, activism, feminism, self-expression. There are about 20 other feminist/media/cultural theory books on my list of things to read now, not to mention the great zine recommendations.
sigh.
until the rain lets up, just listeninglistening to the splash splash of raintires, click click of othertongues, and this song on repeat.
ThisIs(Not)ProWrestling!!!
Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to meet all the zine fair participants, I was impressed with ThisIs(not)Magazine’s awesome ThisIs(Not)ProWrestling. We were not able to do it on the day of the fair, but I want to someday.
They are where I want to be.
Enjoy!
Happenings
The zine fair was 大成功 (a smashing success).
Check out 堺さん (of Books Dantalion)’s awesome photos of the event here.
It’s taken me a while to post something about it, because 1. for the couple weeks leading up to the fair I was drowning in paper 2. I think I was completely mentally and physically exhausted for about a week afterwards 3. i am bad at updating my blog anyway. Sorry!
But yeah, I just want to say a big ARIGATO to everyone who came out, it was a really special day, I think. I am glad Mika and I were able to hit a nerve of some kind, and bring a lot of really nice, creative people together for a day. Everyone kept asking when the next one will be, and while I know there is more of something in store for the future, I don’t know the whens/wheres/hows.
I do know I am excited to bring the pain to future artistic endeavours, hopefully literally, hopefully soon.
la trop grande proximité des temps
I came home to Philadelphia a couple weeks ago because of the earthquake and impending nuclear crisis in Japan. I lived in Osaka, 400 miles from the reactor in question, but the mom unit was worried, and who am I to ignore the wishes and concerns of the person who gave me life?
Things to consider since arriving home three weeks ago:
1. The seriousness of the need to update my glasses prescription, made clear to me as I stumbled around Target looking for something worthy of a $20 gift card.
2. The slow but serious way in which people in your periphery can disappear without you noticing.
3. The genteel but serious intentions of my mother to keep her new home immaculate.
4. My tolerance for soy chai tea and coconut water(high). My instinctual gravitation to cafe tables in the sun.
5. The library of babel. Getting caught in tautologies.
My heart is in Philadelphia, my heart is in Osaka. In the past, in the future, but at the moment, not really here, with me, in the present.
Somewhere in the universe are the right words to talk about this. Probably on a small piece of paper wedged between some books, piles and piles of them, heaped together at random. A piece of paper you might have written, but also, might not have, though you might have dreamed it. A misplaced paper you think you’ll come across again one day, but which you’ll never find.
I never learned how to draw right
Since some pretty big web personalities recently wrote about their humbling college art class experiences, I thought I might add mine to the haul.
I didn’t know what attracted my predecessors to art in their later college years, but for me (predictably), it had to do with a boy. My boyfriend and I had already broken up, but we spent the summer weeks before the first semester getting drunk together, waking in the afternoon together, and basically wasting a lot of time.
We were more defined by our condescension than our extra-curriculars. We had no internships. We ate cereal at 3 p.m. in the afternoon. We liked soul music and had no post-grad plans. He was my best friend, and I couldn’t find a way out.
Unlike me, R had a cache of “hidden talents”. One of those was drawing. He had always drawn as a kid and (surprise!), finding a lack of direction to his second half of college, decided to start taking art classes. Despite my combined talent/experience deficit compared to R, when I showed him some doodles he encouraged me to draw more. Having experienced some humiliation the semester before in things I was supposed to be good at (creative writing, our relationship), the prospect of being the worst at something I already knew I sucked at was actually kind of uplifting.
I carried that attitude with me on the first day of class; I strode in the class, giant newsprint pad under one arm and hundreds of dollars of supplies in the other, confident that I would learn more than anyone that semester.
It was a strict class, and I ended up with a passing grade. There were small breakthroughs along the way, lots of charcoal on the face, and a great jungle drum ‘n bass soundtrack provided by our TIMARA major nude model. It was three hours of unmediated counseling between my hands and I. One minute, one figure. Can’t erase, time is already up!
Together we made horrible mistakes and, three weeks later, had to hang them up for all to comment on. (In general people didn’t have much to say, and usually it was pretty straight forward: “your table doesn’t have legs.” “your table is falling over” “your table doesn’t look like a table.”) Unlike creative writing critiques, in which I felt unreasonably defensive of my shitty work, here I took each comment to heart. I knew I could do better, and someday, I just might!
I took it as a sign I was on the right track when my professor told me at the last class that he wished we had just a little more time together. (Isn’t that always the case? Just a little more time and we’ll get over that hump, the last item on our to do list will be checked, we will finish the job we came here to do.)
Perhaps he just wanted to say something nice and it was the only thing he could thing of, but I took Prof. Don’s words of encouragement and signed up for Painting 101.
In a bit of luck this next art class turned out to be strictly about “process” and color theory; during crits. this beloved professor would suggest that, “perhaps, maybe, I don’t know, what if you put these tiny sculptures on micro-wheels?”
It was here that I did my best (albeit wheel-less) work. Ignoring my inevitable and uncertain post-graduation fate, like a conquistador I laid waste to color after color, happily knowing nothing, calling it my destiny.
Osaka D.I.Y.
First official announcement: Mika and I are putting on a D.I.Y./Zine festival in Osaka this May. It’s a pretty loose arrangement: we are inviting all the independent comic artists (foreign and Japanese) that we know in the Kansai area to come, and hopefully some from out of town will come as well.
UPDATE:
Mika just made this AWESOME new tumblr for the event!! YEY!!!!
http://osakazinefair.tumblr.com/
