The Rescue.

Coming to SoCal was, as the saying goes, a "learning experience". I have indeed learned much since moving here. Wildfires are scary, for instance, especially when they're burning towards you and all you hold dear. Corporate culture and grade school still have much in common; there's another. Endless sunshine is not as great as it sounds. I remain capable of making a living at art, even here, where the competition is as fierce as it gets and the cost of living puts the "dick" in ridiculous.

Ever notice how sometimes you notice growth because someone else points it out, apropos of nothing, and other times you recognize it because you simply don't have feelings, or attitudes, or inhibitions you once had?

We are constantly urged to go, go, GO in this culture. Yet you can't bring about substantive change in yourself unless you're willing to stop, take a deep breath and look into the places that scare you. Intentional change is pretty much the best there is.

I've proven to myself that I can keep up. That's probably the single greatest revelation to come from my stints at Carbine, Meteor and Red 5. Okay. So I can keep up. That had as much to do with personal growth, if not more, than any art skills I gained. Now I want to get back to growing as an ARTIST.





I've got about a million paintings and drawings to go. Let's get going already.

VIVA, NUEVO SCANNER!

It's Thursday. Time for an update.

Got a brand-new Epson Perfection V700 Photo scanner today. Finally I can start scanning and uploading the efforts of the past year! The nice lady above was a model at Glen Vilppu's head class from last fall. Good good stuff. Here she is again:



Huzzah Technology!

A New Year, And....

Screw you, big giant bullet shell bomb thing. Seriously, screw you. I used to wish you'd just go away. Then I thought maybe I'd bury you so deep I'd forget you ever existed. You got to run the show for a while. I found you again, this time on my own terms, on a proving ground of my own choosing. Now I know you're a part of me. I accept that. One of these days you'll get the love you need. But I'm done with being afraid of your shadow. It's high time you were afraid of mine.

Hang around up there all you want. We both know that's the worst you can manage.

Who's running this show, anyway?

Traumatic events lock a part of us away. That part forms a snapshot of our adaptation to the pressures we were facing at the time. They accumulate. We collect and organize them, mostly without thinking. Then boom! you're all grown up and that family album of snapshots has become a force so close to you it's nearly invisible. It's the you that figured out how to survive at five, or seven, or ten, when the world came up to your sense of innocence and took a big bite out of it.

Trauma's always aimed at the heart. We react instinctively to defend her. What's being defended, though: the heart or the family album? The adult or the ten-year-old?

Be a scientist. Examine where your feelings are coming from. Spell it out for yourself and see if it's as convincing on paper as it is in your head. You aren't a car doomed to be driven by the terrified one inside all that armor. You can choose to take the wheel yourself. You've got that right.

Is this thing on?

Keep screaming. Someone's bound to hear you eventually. Right?

VROOM.

Nobody says you need to stay flat-footed on Earth.



Nobody worth listening to, anyway. Flying is the sort of thing dreamers do. Never take that for granted.

Boy, you're gonna carry that weight.

...really? You sure about that?

I swear you don't have to.