Warning: Banal Pet Post Ahead

This is for all those that know and adore our cat Ranger (a.k.a. Joe Bob, a.k.a., Moby, a.k.a. Goldfarb).

Who is clearly still spry enough to take Kip down for the count.

Nothing serious, just a current state of his condition for all those who know I’ve been fussing over his health. Basically he’s just an old cantankerous cat.

After over a week of a chronically weeping eye, we decided to take him to the vet. The following was discovered:

1-He has a slight eye infection, which the drops the vet gave us seems to
have just about cleared up.

2-He has dropped a pound and a half in the past 8 months (not good). The vet
thought it could be one of a couple of reasons, and so blood work was done.
Thankfully, it wasn’t the kidneys, but:

3-He has a hyper active thyroid gland. Apparently a normal reading is 5.4,
Ranger’s was 19.2. He’s on medication that will hopefully stabilize
him. Then, in month, we will see if he would benefit best from surgery or a life
long non-invasive treatment.

4-He’s on a new medication for his poor old hips which will hopefully
help. Also, new pain killer.

Beyond that, he’s pretty much Ranger. Still purrs like a locomotive at the drop of a hat, or a pin, or if a motorcycle goes down the street, or if you call out “Cat!”, or touch him, or look at him the right way. (has all that constant purring degraded the cartilage in his hips? Hmmm, I wonder…)

He still prefers to drink any water besides the cool fresh water just poured in his clean bowl. Including the stuff that briefly sits on top of the soil when I water the plants. And, on related note, he still has a perpetually dirty nose, all my efforts with a washcloth are for naught.

And none of what has been going on with him health-wise has deterred him from his 4 am recitals of epic poetry, in modulating tone and pitch. Currently he’s favoring the acoustics of the bathroom right next to our bedroom for said recitals.

The darnedest things make me happy

Like wind blown curtains in moody lighting. This is pretty much my view from my computer and when I sat down to do some touch-up work on the latest page of Dicebox yesterday, this is what I saw. It pleased me no end and I spent some minutes acting like a cat and just watched them flutter. Except flutter is too delicate a word, these were gusts of wind that accompanied the swift moving clouds I could see from my office/studio window. Autumn type effects that just fill me with joy and melancholy. I love autumn passionately and can‘t wait for it to arrive. Even if the Pacific Northwest variant is so damned disappointing compared to the New England Northeast ones I grew up with.

Roman and his psychic toe

The title of this post is in reference to all the bad poetry within Chutney
Point that Indigo
insisted I read last night at the hopefully now monthly gathering of Portland
cartoonists. I would call last night a successful and very enjoyable dry run—some
people couldn’t make it and there were others we realized we should have
had notified. I was at least still a little too out of it from San Diego to
be very organized. In fact, this gathering was spearheaded and co-ordinated by Indy.

But as for who was there, well, Indy and myself obviously, Kip,
Lee
Purvis, David Youngblood,
Ezra Clayton Daniels, David
Hahn and wife Robin, Steve
Lieber, Sara
Ryan and
Kevin Moore. There was the usual getting to know each other amongst cartoonists,
questions of “What do you do?” and the passing of actual work. I
actually got the “I didn‘t know you lived in Portland” line
from David Hahn that I‘ve previously heard in reference to Indigo, Linda
Medley, Craig
Thompson and Steve. I was amused and flattered.

We took up a nice bit of
square footage as is was at the Lucky
Labrador so I am amused that we want to at least double the number
next time. ’Cause Portland is just lousy with cartoonists.

There’s a quote from Chuck Palahniuk‘s book Fugitives
and Refugees, a book all about the odd pleasures of Portland about the
than explains the sheer volume of cartoonists for me:

Katherine’s [Dunn] theory is that everyone looking to make a new life
migrates west, across America to the Pacific Ocean. Once there, the cheapest
city where they can live is Portland. This gives us the most cracked of the
crackpots. The misfits among misfits.

Many thanks to Pittsburgh cartoonist Bill
Mudron for sending me an uncorrected proof of this book a couple months
before its official release, giving me a chance to share stories that not even
some of the Portland natives knew of. Also, I can see if they did any continuity
editing to take in to account those things, alas, now gone. Kip thinks many
accounts in Fugitives and Refugees would make good comics.

The Return of E-sheep

Spider 3.5 by Patrick Farley is up and stable and waiting for you.

Random Access Mind

So, July was a busy month for me. I think I’m still tired from it, but that might be my lingering cold.

It was a month of much visiting, comics and art that was neatly bookended for me by Portland’s two major art outings, First Thursday and Last Thursday. And I have to tell ya, fantabulous gallery show receptions at Pushdot Studio aside, it’s Last Thursday for me.

This past one was the last social event Kip and I would have with Christopher and Bethanne in a while as they were about to move to Olympia—actually, they have moved at this point. We were joined by at various times Sara, Steve, Amy, Aaron, Charles, Bethanne’s friend Kat and her companion. As we were bopping around, I was reminded of how First Thursday was back when I was visiting Amy in ‘92, the visit that made me realize I wanted to live in Portland.

And part of that good feeling was First Thursday, back when the Pearl District was still a place where active industry took place, where warehouse and cold storage building had been converted to art spaces and trains still trundled down the streets delivered grain in the wee hours to the Weinhardt brewery. The only industry that still exists in the Pearl are the auto shops and the large commercial printers. And First Thursday was enthuiastic chaos–beyond the art there were live bands every other building, street performers, art cars and random vendors. Pretty much what Last Thurday is like except the Pearl was a warehouse district where as Alberta was always a shop front street. One of the most striking and long lasting images I have of that First Thursday were the twenty foot canvases of expressionistically painted skeletal body parts hanging in a huge brick ware house that I believe used to hold machine parts.

Now I don’t want to go on and on about how the Pearl is rapidly becoming crammed with condo buildings—excuse me, “lofts”–many with first names (the Henry, the Gregory, the Elizabeth, one exception I can think of is the Edge. [snicker]). A gallery or unique shop seems to disappear every month to be replaced by a day spa or boutique. And the galleries that remain are becoming dominantly, well, high class mall art joints and import stores. I am worried for Blue Sky, the Blackfish and the like.

Nope, I’d rather talk about the art. You see, my biggest complaint about the Pearl gallery offerings is the art. I can take the rude shi-shi types, cell-phone in one hand, margarita in the other as they coax their Landcruiser around a corner, but the art is becoming, well, so pedestrian. It is usually technically flawless, and that is all I can say of it. The general experience is thus “This is picture of a beautiful flower. The end.” Leaving me to think “nice enough” and I move on without breaking stride.

Now, at this past Last Thursday, our motley crew spotted some paintings that compelled us to cross the busy street and then over the empty lot full of trip hazards to the wall of the building that they were propped up against. And is was worth it, they were striking as well as fully engaging. We poor artists types even inquired after prices, which he gave us willing while talking of payment plans. And we are still thinking about it. In fact the first non comic original art Kip and I bought was at a Last Thursday at Alberta, in a space much less hospitable than an empty lot.

And we kept seeing things that made us stop and consider, in gallery and on the street. Maybe it was just the mood I was in, but even if I didn’t find the object d’art perfect, it still had something to offer.

This all fed something I’ve been turning over in my mind— my relation to art in all its forms, including my own art. Actually there are a few topics of discussion going on in this brain of mine, some I’ve been expounding on to othes, some I don’t think I ever will, at least not directly. After the stimulating month I’ve had, that really isn’t surprising, but what I do find unusual is how they all have been stewing for quite a while and how they might be all related. This can be both exasperating (moodiness, incoherent discussions with people as I work out my thoughts, lack of focus) and exciting (pulling together threads, a general opening of the brain that has allowed me to solve many nagging problems in writing and drawing).

But back to this one, art and how I relate to it. Actually let me open that further, all types of art and their stories and my relation to it. You see, I‘m a strong believer that the entirety of the human experience is defined by stories and how we access them. So you know that comics is going to enter this at some point.

One of the more interesting thoughts that popped out of nowhere was this concept from Art History of how when a building or some other large work was completed, the master builder would put a deliberate flaw in it. Now I had remembered he reason being that you needed that flaw in order to understand the perfection
of the rest. But I couldn’t recall the exact source. I farmed the question out to others, including Kip who came back with the other reason to this practice that I had thought of—you put the flaw in because of God. Either one had to humble one’s self before God, or God couldn’t stand perfection or none was perfect but God, so don’t even bother. Personally, I didn’t care for that concept, preferred my own mis-remebering if that was the case.

However, Patrick came back with the Japanese concept of Wabi-Sabi, one definition I found is “It is a beauty of things imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete.” from Wabi-Sabi For Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers by Leonard Koren. That was much closer to the concept I was after, as is this quote from a website discussing Wabi-Sabi:

“A related term in literature and the arts is “clinamen”, the act of deliberately breaking a stylistic rule to enhance the beauty of an otherwise perfect whole.”

And I think why I am so doggedly pursuing this particular aspect is that I believe it is the flaw that lets me in. Hard to be part of something that is perfect or get anything from it without breaking it. And by flaw I don‘t mean a crack or marred surface. Actually I think the flaw I’m really looking for is an opinion.

The way an opinion can be called a flaw is that it’s never perfect or finalized and it leaves one open–either to attack or understanding. Opinion is neither wrong or right; by definition not Fact but something even more revealing. It’s open to exchange and discussion the way a fact is not. And that’s where the story comes in.

I have more to say on this, especially in term of comics, but I’m still trying to work this all out. So I’ll leave it here for now.