Fox with color

To the tune of 'Three Blind Mice'

When inspiration fails, I find that setting Lovecraftian lyrics to the melodies of children's rhymes is an excellent standby.

Three fishmen
Clergymen
Feed the sightless ones
Feed them as they come
They're rising up from the murky depths
Horror and gore from the steaming cleft
The dispossessed.
Cultists ...and the rest.

Hoping to Drown

https://soundcloud.com/dougmortenson/hoping-to-drown2

A song I recorded with Jen Wagner last year... finally getting some work done on it. If you're here you probably know Jen's music but if you don't you should check her out on soundcloud
https://soundcloud.com/jen-wagner

Okay so you are all going to be like "duh, Alissa, what else is new" but this was seriously an epiphany for me just now, okay

You guys!

I just realized.

Making a decision is a process

that takes

time.

Who in the hell

gave me the impression

that the space between

having a decision to make

and making the decision

needs to be tiny?

My internal narrative has been

“Aaaauuugh 

I don’t know what I’m doing with my life”

But I just noticed:

I am calm.

Oh. 

Yeah.

I am not lost.

I am not “drifting.”

I am busy making decisions.

To pause

and consider

is really,

truly,

just
fine.

Stay dead.

"Post me!" howled the half-dead poem
Leaden, lumpy and misshapen
"Okay, but if I do" I said
"This time please stay dead?"

Pocket Sketchbook #3 Tour

Just finished another pocket sketchbook. Here's a video of page by page:

Seattle has the sloppiest and most phlegmy early springs

Wet buds. Spring is loom
-ing, messy, muddy, ev'ry
one I know has colds.

Traffic Koan

“I will arrive for work twenty minutes early,” reflected the commuter “unless there’s an accident on five after I leave.”

That day, a seven-car collision occurred before the two best exits for the commuter in the requisite fifteen minute time window. The commuter saw the flashing lights of the emergency vehicles reflected in the glass of the downtown high rises, and in that moment reached enlightenment.


Haiku:
Start. Stop. Clutch. Brake. Honk!!
Tempers are quick; travel slows,
Gridlock commences.


Reflection:
A wise person campaigns for fast, cheap and ubiquitous mass rail transit, while a fool wishes for giant hood-mounted robotic lobster claws that can crush, rip and fling obstacles.

Sketch Pistols

Trouble in productivityland

Like a vision in Mordor

glowing eye

square, captivating

Makin’ me cry

Like a little child

wanting attention

constantly scheming at

reality suspension

Like an unearned vacation

self-care hoax

the internet calls me
and then it chokes

The banality of financial insecurity

What is the use of art imitating life, only to
reflect the sameness of existence and too-rare joys
the quiet persistent desperation of people who
Lose second jobs, and then manage without them
And do without health insurance
And car insurance
And new tyres
And fresh food
And who know how many beds are available at the closest shelter
if this place to sleep falls through.
(It's none.)
Who cope so well but are so consumed with the minutiae of surviving
that there is nothing left with which to be remarkable.

Who thinks about the best order of words
to describe a midnight flit from unpaid rent,
and whatever asininity can't fit in the bag you have right now, when
the constant gnawing hunger of bad nutrition
and aging too soon from bad skin, teeth, joints
and untreated pain
from the labour demanded as payment and penance for the right to exist
claims all of the attention that would be for education.
Where can we go now but nowhere.

It's difficult to be evocative
(yet not of pity)
about surroundings that are anything but an unspoiled scenic wonderland,
places where making a living is as hard,
and the texture of life as drab, as the carpet
installed in suburban rental apartments
of any other place.

And
a good time is smoking pot with the neighbors,
with a soda and maybe some chocolate
And, if you're really lucky, no fight
with someone you know you love
about money later that night.

All of us, though,living this life
have a deep-buried promise of mayhem
mayhem of of some final, awful kind
of breaking from confines, and through to liberty.

Because someday it will get too much
to fail to answer, when asked
"Did you live the life you wanted?"
Could you even ask for it?"

...

Stuck

head

pressure

inside

slow

mind

sluggish

guilt

time

disobediently

passing

eyes

disobediently

glazing

Facebook

crept

into

my phone

Better

sleep

before

procrastination

becomes
sleep deprivation

Last page

Jury summons doodles

Revisiting a shape from December

Blue eyes

More trying new things. I didn't like the penciled outline. I really didn't like the preliminary penning. So I decided it was a throw-away texture experiment and quite to my surprise I think I like it quite a bit now.

Pen

Bus ride

Poetry biopsy

I scraped a poem out of my head
And after a crude dissection
It sat there, a wet and unread
Lexicographic itch in cross section

Next, I dipped it in pixels.
(It's for poems instead of formaldehyde)
So here. Now it's official-
-Ly poetry-brain-tissue apartheid.


(Sorry about that last line. I might come back to it later.)

Not hurting people or buying helicopters, but pretty much anything else

Energy whoosh like a firehose up through my body.
Legs tingling.
I always have to be reminded
I can actually do
whatever I want.

Almost Finished

Only got a couple pages left in this pocket sketchbook.

You won't believe this one weird trick!

‘So how do you do it?' they asked, amazed -
'So calm and collected, together, unfazed?
So zenlike, so peaceful! If only we knew,
Then we'd have effortless composure like you!'
'What is it?' they pressed, ‘Tell us your secret!’
'Religion - or sedation?' they articulated.
'Just answer!' they begged. I sighed, 'I admit:
It's simple, not easy - I don't give a shit.'

Studying faces

Yesterday. Publish failed.

Making Faces

I am not a robot today.

I sat while looking at the stars,
To recall my growing list
Of multitudinous fading scars
From all the things that "missed".

Ring ring

open window brings
lovely babbling brook sounds--
I need more blankets

Uncannyda

Ok, I'm watching myself getting spotty about posting--I'm still here, though, and I love reading/seeing what you guys are posting!

Right now I'm in Vancouver, BC, learning about a therapeutic modality called Somatic Experiencing, a new(ish) technique for treating and healing trauma. It's got great research results so far and a growing and enthusiastic community of practitioners. Today was the first day and it was easy to get swept along in the hope and thrill of new material. At the same time I'm still feeling overwhelmed at the prospect of working with a deeply traumatized population, but then actually, everyone has trauma...

I don't know. What kind of a therapist is Alissa? And how do I avoid beating myself up for not figuring it out 'fast enough'?

All of this is to say, bandwidth for poetry is scarce. But I'm gonna do it! Just watch me phone this in!

Vancouver seems nice.
but I don't actually know how fast 100km/hr is.
Nor do I understand what it means when
the traffic lights blink green.
Oh Canada,
you uncanny valley of countries--
I might be in the US
until someone says "about" or "now"
and the money is called dollars but
it's worth something different here
and it's almost more disorienting than
being somewhere totally
unambiguously
different.

Hellraiser

Fitful sleeping, uneasy dreaming. Hollowed. Scheming thinking waiting followed.
Pulsating.
All the dread, and all the danger, covered up once for a stranger
Bless you, caring, kindly rearranger.
Fretful creeping, borrowed gleaming
Daydreaming in the clear and present danger.

Hellraiser.

Doctor Who

Watching TV is more fun with a second screen. Especially rewatching Doctor Who with my kid :)

Tiny little things WIP

Changing it up a little. Very different thinking involved in this. Not necessarily less planned, but less intentioned, for sure.

Today

This is just to say

I chewed through
the treat bag
hidden on
top the fridge

and which
you were probably
saving
for when I was good.

Forgive me
but don't hide my treats
again
you monkey.

(With apologies to William Carlos Williams, and Oedipuss the Cat.)

Back to the commute

It's all ok when it is

Musty-aired bedroom.
It's been too long since
summer's open windows

Syllable count is not the most important part of a haiku, ok? Sheesh. g'night.

Expressions

Just getting started on the expressions part of the famous artists cartoon course.

Cartoon Course Part 2

now it's a bit more freeform with shapes. This is generally fun practice. I watched Turbo Kid last night, so I threw in a couple of characters from there too :)

Upon learning I have been invited to interview for a job I applied for

When destiny comes calling, and

I’d really like to hide

behind the door, perhaps, or maybe

underneath the slide

The spectre of a grown-up life

with all its freedom, fear,

responsibility and wonder

looming ever near

I try to take a breath and tell

myself to stand up straight

to answer it with humor, or

acknowledgement of fate

I’d like to learn to find my way

and still live with enjoyment.

I shouldn’t have to duck and fear

an honest day’s employment.

Jungle thoughts

Sometimes plans turn out ok.

Today I plan to write a poem
(In plain and rhyming couplets)
A verse to ease what's left broken,
And take away discomfort;

Nature's cruel and folks are wrong
(Velvet fists and iron gloves)
But if you can brave the madding throng,
There's always hope.


And love.

Famous Artis Cartoon Course

Failed posting over the weekend. On the drive to California, started going through the "Famous Artists Cartoon Course" (a now public domain cartoon drawing course that was written in the 50's). Step 1 is to draw a bunch of spherical head shapes in different directions.

Comes love

Just in time for Valentines Day. Alissa singing and Mike on guitar, and his guitar also was used as a midi signal for the klanky piano
https://soundcloud.com/dougmortenson/comes-love2

Fragments

Mistake. Earthquake shake awake and ache, break, fall.
The mask is like the mask before. Turn away, crawl.
Mandrake. Smooth green snake. Replace mask, stall.

***

This life was like a stretch of night, washed in shades of grey
I dragged that world of black and white to the warm light of day.

How do you spell "byakhee"?

Trailing a garland of viscera and veins,
There it is. The beast. Again.
The byakhee, clad in putrescence and gore.
Obligate* interstellar predator.
Closer still, and closer more.
Paramagnetic** hoverer.
(Opportunistic carnivore,
ravenous detritivore).

A Byakhee could carry you anywhere in space
(If it were convinced to cooperate).
The first spell worked, after all -
Ah! close call!
Too late. Alas. Curtain call.
...I cannot, and must not recall.***


*If it spends too much time planetside it would probably collapse, you see.
**Fan theories abound; the byakhee hune is paramagnetic, so it can theoretically be attuned to / resonant with planetary or galactic magnetic fields and exploit them as an energy source.
***Stolen shamelessly from The Festival: "There flapped rhythmically a horde of tame, trained, hybrid winged things...not altogether crows, nor moles, nor buzzards, nor ants, nor decomposed human beings, but something I cannot and must not recall.

Bad cold dawning

Like somebody put

tapioca pudding or maybe

hard candy

right in my eye sockets

oozing down my sinus cavities

to hulk

in

my

throat

Or maybe somebody shoved a golf ball into the back of my throat and then

UP

to live behind my nose

my skin

as if someone has peeled

back

the outer, calloused layer

exposing new skin underneath that

shrinks away

from any touch

It hurts to breathe

it’s 9 o’clock.

I’m going to bed

Oh mirrors...

"You asshole!" I fumed, "that's supposed to be mine -
You're just so selfish! I hate you! Go die!"
I shrieked at the screen "Ha! Your cover is blown!"

But it was a mirror, and I was alone.

Failing at self-care

I guess what I want is

well I don’t know

when my therapist mentions self-care,

I feel like crying

I am failing at self-care,

I want to say.

I know

I know

that’s not the point

self-care is not something

you’re supposed to be able to fail at

help me then.

when it is nearly bedtime

and I have done only a small percentage

of what I mean to have done in the day

What exactly do I do with my

fifteen minutes before bed:

when I don’t know what I need

I hide

Bus ride, with masked man

Awake with the fire

It's one of those days when you awaken with the fire of a conversation who's time has passed. The points that failed to appear that day, leaving doubts and misunderstanding in their absence, now spark to life with no concern for your rest. 

Still things that need to be said, but not now, now it's time to make breakfast and walk my daughter to the bus stop.

My daughter says something to me as I'm failing to multitask making breakfast and an inner monologue.

"Dad, look at my face"

"Sparkly," I reply with a distracted smile.

My wife worries that her life is meaningless, that taking care of our house and daughter, our very lives, is perceived as less important than working in an office and producing for a corporation. Her worries are family, future, personal achievement, health, the most important things, life itself.

My head is burning with things that won't matter in a few years. Technologies that change, business needs, staffing and process failures, all things that will only serve to make my brain scattered and distracted when I age. My head is aflame and torn from sleep and family because of things that don't actually matter. My daughter skips to the bus stop. This fire is not the most important thing in my life, but it burns over the thing that consumes most of my waking time.

My time is too precious to be burned up by this. 

Beware.

I have a fire in me today.

Tired haiku

Sitting in little
tubs full of warm water with
several friends: nice.

Doctor Who - Blink

Slowly watching Doctor Who with Ilya. We just got to the "Blink" episode. Definitely one of my favorites.

and an export from procreate:

Dishwasher poem (found poem, transcription)

kachee…bedonk.

kachee…bedonk.

sllllllurrrrrp

kachee….bedonk.

vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv

kachee…bedonk.

schschschschshchsch

kachee…bedonk.

vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv

sshshshshhshshshsul

vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv

maybe

another

glass of wine

People On the Bus

Tough day for drawing. Just got a few more people on the page from yesterday.

Great derby scrimmage though!

Off to bed

This one is also totally yesterday's post

Seems like we all had a busy weekend! I was on a plane again yesterday. I left my journal up in the overhead compartment and I was too lazy to get up to get it out so this is all that I wrote on the plane, on the napkin they gave me with the peanuts:

why can't I see a sunset
w/o seeing myself seeing the sunset

Which is a sentiment that deserves a proper poem. Maybe that will be my work tonight. I'm reading a new book of poems I got in the airport by Susan Mitchell called "Rapture" and it's completely surreal and enchanting and making me want to leave my usual everyday language.

Today's official post still due for me tonight. Y'all are so awesome for chugging away--I love your stuff!

XOXO
A

Allison's Fox

Allison's fox is complete! I finished this last night, but wanted to post the pic taken in the natural morning light.

Busted

Forgot to post this yesterday

Hand

more hands. On the computer this time. 

Et tu, internet?

"You won't
Believe what
Happens next!"
A website
promised
Bit by bit
But when
I clicked
Again and
Again
I then
I didn't
Give
A shit.



(Ugh.)

Take 6

Guitar solo ideas for a  tune my drummer Doug Kamprath wrote... for some reason the time signature is tricky to play to. He requested a legato feeling to contrast with the hard rhythm.
https://soundcloud.com/dougmortenson/take-6

Lets just pretend I posted this yesterday.

Nanny McFee

Watching Nanny McFee tonight with the family. Such a loaded day, it was the first chance to draw.

Photos from walking around in Durham, NC

This one will count as today's post!

I call this one "doorway to heaven"...

And this is just to capture all the crazy cloud textures there were in the pre-sunset hour

Sorry for the absence! Travel stuff

I'm traveling again this weekend, and the last two days were just so full I didn't have a minute to sit down and post. But I did write two airplane poems yesterday, which I reproduce below for your enjoyment and am counting as yesterday's post.

I'm enjoying a bit of a return to form--I didn't mean for the following poem to be so negative, but that's what the form pulled out of me. This is practice for practice's sake.

Airplane Pantoum

Steady white noise buzzing roar

pressure just this side of the door

sitting in a terrible seat

nothing available to eat

pressure just this side of the door

Visibility is poor

nothing available to eat

peanuts, insufficient meat

Visibility is poor

next to me, insufferable boor

peanuts, insufficient meat

for those who’d rather be elite

Next to me, insufferable boor

full of self and needing more

for those who’d rather be elite

to walk and stretch their dainty feet

full of self and needing more,

I turn to fantasies of gore

to walk and stretch their dainty feet

tired of who I might meet

I turn to fantasies of gore

steady white noise buzzing roar

tired of who I might meet
sitting in a terrible seat

*   *   *

crisp sky above clouds--

descent pulls my body back
to earth's awareness

Commission attempt #1

Tapped on a tiny keyboard

Another light day

playing around with photoshop

So, its not perfect, but I'm trying to teach myself how to create that whimsical, fairy tale look in photoshop. Here is the before and after.

So sleepy

Tapped on a tiny keyboard

Art Walk

Finishing the pioneer square art walk at Jose Luis Rodriguez Guerra's studio. It's amazing here.

Everyday moment

Well at least there's that!

If days are hard; when all I try
Brings doubt and fear and pain.
I quiet my mind, exhale a sigh;
Because poetry remains.

I cannot win

rain massaging the roof

and the house says ahhhhhh

and my eyes say cloooooose
and my computer says faaaaaacebook

Gesture Practice

Doing some quick sketches

Ballz

Singular. Watercolor without penciling first. Eeeee!

Monty the cat's day.

Started to do a comic like Rose's, then started cracking up thinking about doing it for Monty, one of our cats (yes, apparently I have turned into a crazy cat lady), because he is so lazy and sits in a box all of the time. Apparently I am lazy too because this meant I only needed two frames! 

Surprised the picture on the right turned out pretty good. Frame on the left was really rough and scribbled, might try again because i kind of like the idea of the strange perspective.   

2034

Fitful sleep and nightmares. Hollowed. Burdened by the thoughts of all who followed.
All the dread, and all the danger, covered up once for a stranger
Bless you, caring, kindly, money changer.

And the Final Product!

After a disastrous dessert yesterday, I went with something more simple today: vegan thin mint crumble cake. I love the way this one turned out (both the pictures and the cake)!

Fauna

So much for the local wildlife
The black dog’s a faithful beast.
This isn't fucking funny, life.
(...At the very least.)

Foxy!

After doing a number of more time intensive pieces, I just wanted to sketch/doodle tonight. First time using watercolor in this casual kind of way(usually I just doodle with pen & ink) and I am loving how much power color has. Intoxicating.

Conflicted Sonnet

The sentiment expressed herein is one I am ashamed of, and so I’m going to use some words to introduce it. The depth of the pain and systemic betrayal of racial minorities and especially the black community here in Seattle and the US has gotten a lot more viscerally clear to me in the last couple of years. And I’m here looking at it and understanding a tiny bit of how deep the wrongs are and realizing that I have to do something about it if I am to continue to feel ok about myself as a human being. I think this dawning awareness is making me a better person, and it has deepened my compassion and understanding of the way the world works. And yet a not-insignificant part of me resents the hell out of this growing awareness. I don’t want to know because my life was very comfortable before, thank you very much, and I had other things to care about that are still important to me and I don’t wish to neglect them. But right now, for me, if I put anything into the world that DOESN’T address this stuff (and most of my output is still in that category of not addressing) I feel frustrated with myself, like I’m walking past a starving child and trying to enjoy my ice cream. I don’t believe that it is sustainable to focus all my time and attention on “the cause,” but there’s a little voice in my head that says “if you were a person of color, there would never be a moment you could put this burden down” and the unfairness of it all overwhelms me and child me is like SHUT UP I DON’T WANT TO HEAR YOU and it’s all very confusing.

I tried and failed to write about it all a bunch of times so I had to make it a sonnet because there’s something about that form that pulls words out of me, even though it probably isn’t the best form to express the sentiment it contains.

I want to be a warrior! Things are bad

and I will swing my social-justice sword!

Except--I don’t feel violent. I feel sad.

And sorry, scared, uncertain, even bored

of hashing out what seems so obvious.

I am responsible. I feel this now.

But I don’t wish to be. If only just

for moments, I would love to set it down,

and write about the traffic going by,

and how the sunset made me feel, and how

my son explodes my heart with just a sigh.

I think all those things matter—it’s just, now,

I feel compelled by greater urgency.
So who I am is a dichotomy.

Limited art day

Finished the previous page and started a new one on the ride home.

But I did have a great roller derby scrimmage tonight :)

my attempt at food photography

Another area of photography totally outside of my comfort zone, but when someone offers me free girl scout cookies to take a picture of them in a recipe, I'm willing to give it a try. *Note: the recipe that I came up with did NOT turn out well or pretty so oh well - I'll have to try again tomorrow*

Hourly Comic Day

February 1st is the annual Hourly Comic Day, where cartoonists around the world basically draw a little cartoon for every hour they're awake. Participating been on my to-do list for two years! I haven't really done any cartooning since I was veeeery little, so this was a super fun departure. Anyway. Here's my mundane day :)