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I wanted to update on an up-note:
I'm going to see one of my favorite bands with damned fine company tomorrow night, and then off I go a-wenching for the last weekend of the Northern California Renaissance Faire this season.
I am grateful for everything in my life and I say that with the utmost sincerity (and enough sappiness to gag Walt Disney).

My loves, I miss you too.
Photographic evidence to follow in the next entry; and yes, honest to goodness ART to be posted. I tell no lies.

Adieu,
c

Recession Proof Decompression Exercises

Recession proof decompression exercises as compiled by yours truly.

1. Indulge the hell out of the small things. These include simple things such as: people watching, making coffee at home, enjoying the spaces of time when the sun is actually shining.
2. Creating small projects for each day. Even if it's getting your car serviced on your days off, doing laundry or organizing your damned movies and your crowded bookshelves.
   
3. Music multiplied by ∞
4. Read. Constantly.
   

And on that note,

Basically my favorite song consistently since July.

(I have lived through this I have lived through worse)
all my lovin'
c.i.

Oh, Onion. You Never Let Me Down.

The joke used to be that if you were dating someone and the solitary book they had on their shelves was Catcher in the Rye, to run for the hills.
This still applies.

Newest literary consumption: Doctor Zhivago.
On deck: House of Leaves.

Brought to you by way of many sniffles
and watching Finding Nemo while attempting to find an order to the chaos that is
my living space.
xo
see.eye.

Defining the border

[Photo credit: Elizabeth Dowell, RISD; 2006]

You get to a point to where you can no longer feel guilty about enjoying yourself, but have to maintain a sense of dignity.
If you don't, you won't have anything left.

She was lookin' like an erotic vul-cha

Rather than whine about the past 18 months of my life, I shall only say this:
Few and far in between have I ever had a problem that could not be at least temporarily satiated with art, cartoons and coffee.
Therefore; two in one, and a politically incorrect Bugs Bunny cartoon

see.eye.

When there's nothing left to burn ...

You aggravate the hell out of me, but you showed me something beautiful. I can only hope you find that kind of beauty in your world. I think you have.
I'm still looking for mine.
Final thoughts before indulging in the weekend and the strange thoughts and feelings that they entail:

I'm not sorry I met you
I'm not sorry it's over
I'm not sorry there's nothing left to say.

Naughty Bits via Chagrin
[Fine, yes, I was a copycat. Get over it]

[speechless]

It's been a long time since my faith in humanity has been revived or even restored.

Someone anonymously left a fruit tart and a note for my mother, wishing her a speedy recovery with her recent surgery.

I almost started crying, it was so simple and very beautiful.

Whoever you are, thank you for making my mom the happiest I've seen her in years.

As of late

We rejoiced when it was 95º in the shade, I had fun losing (Thumb Wars, 5-Card Stud Poker), and have never regretted leaving my sketchbook (or even just a BOOK, I normally carry at least one) at home more than this past weekend.
Hello randomly placed sketches and portraits, I missed you.
Don't ever leave me again.

P.S. The foot was from when I had to stay in bed part of June. The face was probably someone sitting in Bay Street. I am the one sporting the Sapporo label (in my top 3 favorite beers, thanks to my Shoko Hori), and I unintentionally did a portrait of a flute player in almost the same exact manner as my brother Michael's portraits of people. Right down to the bright colors.
Gotta love genetics ...?

Zombified, and loving it,

c.i.

Zehn

It's been 10 years today that my uncle was killed down in Mammoth Lakes on a motorcycle trip on his way up to see my mother and I. We were supposed to meet him the next day in Jamestown, just outside of Yosemite and Sonora.
Instead of moping around, mourning the loss, I ditched my Algebra II class this morning to sit out in the sun, listen to music and take a nap.
When I got up I tried to find his obituary online, but instead I got a link to Santa Anita Raceway where he was the finishing photographer for the races. I had no idea, but in the same week a jockey named J.C. Rodriguez was killed. A few lives summed up in a few sentences.

-------

This second weekend of Faire made it so I would miss Newark Days - the annual celebration of suburbia that includes a cast of the same yuppies and carnies every year. Thank God.
The escape came with a price: setting up camp in a space time continuum where nakedness was encouraged, intoxication rained down like the tomatoes at the "Flogging Booth" and the unshowered heathens that I've come to love and cherish in all of our LARP-ing glory resided.

And now, dear Lurker, I sit. I drink my coffee, and try to fudge my way through my online math homework.

Cheers,
c.i.

Ciao Bella, Ren Faire [First Weekend]

I was able to tack on an extra 500 geek points for being employed, very last minute, at the Northern California Renaissance Faire with my lovely Sydney, and will be wenching Gelato every weekend until October 18th.
I realize I have given out this URL to advertise my art, be patient: I need to install my "new" scanner when I'm not bombing online math tests.
And now for something completely different: a shower.

Fractured Ulna, Full Love

You roll off my tongue like smoke, and I'm struggling to keep you in my lungs.

"alone with everybody"
the flesh covers the bone
and they put a mind
in there and
sometimes a soul,
and the women break
vases against the walls
and the men drink too
much
and nobody finds the
one
but keep
looking
crawling in and out
of beds.
flesh covers
the bone and the
flesh searches
for more than
flesh.

there's no chance
at all:
we are all trapped
by a singular
fate.

nobody ever finds
the one.

the city dumps fill
the junkyards fill
the madhouses fill
the hospitals fill
the graveyards fill

nothing else
fills.

-c. b.

9.9.09

This is my brother and
(still feels weird saying this because I'm not even sure if it's official, but)
my sister-in-law, and my niece kinda chilling out.
I'm not sure what names they're coming up with, but I know this:
that kid is going to have some crazy hair and some insane want to draw/photograph people, or buzz their head and play bass and guitar (not like my brother and I ever did that ... -cough-).

Now accepting monetary donations to go see my brother and Melissa in New Mexico.

Also: thanks to the power of the internet, apparently there's a lot more people visiting this site. Bravo for being interested, hopefully you won't get scared off, and keep on lurking, you lurkers ^_^

Cheers,
Auntie C.I.

Anger dwells in the bosom of fools

Thank you Jacob for sending me the Helmetfish. May Wisconsin treat you well in your last year of college.

Yesterday marked the last day of my summer of discontent, surgeries and debauchery, and I mean that in the best possible way.
There are few places I can name or think of that are more comfortable or serene than laying underneath a pine tree around sunset with a good friend. Although we were pursued by an elderly Indian gentleman on a tricked out tricycle (only in Fremont ...), just the general feeling of goofing off brought about recollections of childhood summers where our biggest concerns were sunburns and mosquito bites.
When I woke up this morning, the gray reality of my location, situation and disposition slapped me upside the head: I was running late for school and didn't have time to shower, the coffee my father made at 7:30AM was lukewarm and tasted burnt, and one of my family friends, a Dr. Alan Zacharia, had passed away on Saturday from cancer. The service is today in Daly City, my parents left shortly after I had left for class.
September never seems to be a good month for anyone close to my family; this month marks the 10 year anniversary of my uncle getting killed in a motorcycle accident outside of Mammoth Lakes. The only time I've ever been down there was on a family vacation my freshman year of high school, and I kept straining to see the exact place he died, like I would recognize it just by intuition. I couldn't, and still don't know which blind curve he and his friends went around just to find a Toyota 4Runner with a driver blacked out behind the wheel veering into their lane.

It's about this time that I believe I should take a nap, and upon waking draw some comics, and eventually get back into the responsible routine of (ugh) doing math homework.

Cheers,
c.i.

Herzlichen Glückwunsch zum Geburtstag, Fraulein Trudeau

Album cover & tattoo design: completed.
Images to post for my portfolio AND your viewing pleasure? Fail.
Next investment? Obtain one or all of the following: A drawing pad, Adobe Photoshop/Illustrator Suite, a large scanner, and some sanity.

Cheers,
c.i.

Blossom on the tree, you know how I feel

Got my first (and probably only) commission for the summer to do an album cover for a friend. I'm really excited to have something to do as my Algebra class comes to a close tomorrow (ugh). Actually, in 12 hours.

Fuck.

Post Script
I finished the squarenose-helmetfish painting, and gave it as a going away present.

Post-Post Script
Forgive the poetry if it's not your cup of tea.

Discontent cleared with the fog and left its stain
My dear Supplant, spare me the details;
born and pulled out by the root.
Near your clavicle, shy of your vein,
another open mouth gaped
for sustenance from your
still heart where I used to feed.
A ransom for the sins of mankind,
her act is innocent in one-sided
affection and affliction.
You wept,
open and waiting for the rain.

Abbreviated

Briefly:
- Through the course of this summer, I'm having far too much fun getting coffee and exchanging comic books and music with one Mr. Murray, pictured left in the rain at Greek Theater when we went to see DCFC. Quite the smelly pirate hooker.
- I have a job interview at Buckle in Stoneridge Mall (huzzah monies) on Wednesday. I go back into the retail pit of despair, and answer these questions three. ... Ok, not really.
- Tomorrow my family finds out if we can keep our house.
- Got an unofficial commission to toss around some ideas for a tattoo sleeve of deep sea creatures (FUCK YES), going to start playing around with that and some designs.
- I need to tackle Paul when he comes back from NYC, take him out for lunch or something, and in exchange have him give me a tutorial for screenprinting so I can mass produce some templates for birth announcements (Three couples, my brother included, are all expecting within the same span of this next month). One asked for a design, so why not make some copies.
- I made the mistake of taking a nap when I got home from math class today. Now I get to pretend to be responsible and try to get to sleep before 2AM. Let the battle begin.

Cheers,
xo caitlin