Hey friends. ‘Sup, as they say. It’s the last day of school, though it won’t be when I send this — unofficial summer will be underway. My kid came home with straight A’s for his entire freshman year — a pretty fckn rad accomplishment considering how well I’d gotten to know his guidance counselor (a causal relationship, come to think). I paid him for these A’s, a motivating factor (though one I have ambivalence around). As mentioned yesterday in the Pfamily group chat: I basically dropped out of high school (freshman year in particular having been mostly spent leaving school at lunchtime for covert indulgence in the boy-smelling rooms of the trio who lived just a few blocks away: Chris H, Chris B & Mikey T) — a little incentive might not be a bad thing? The kid is very cash-motivated and has recently discovered eBay… today a giant geode arrived, one that I have heard the transit-story of several times a day since it left its prior home some time ago — he hasn’t quite figured out the delayed gratification necessary to online therapy (retail variety).
I’ve been sick for nearly three weeks now, a shitty situation that started mildly enough but has been moving in and out of my chest since day three. I also sent my book/deck proposal off into the world via the wonderful Kelly Van Sant and have been working my printer to-the-quick getting everything ready to ship out (decks, descriptions, prints) and show (prints, all 81 of them & framed to boot). So it’s not really a surprise that I’m still sick? “Rest” being an absentee nurse? It’s all rather overwhelming but if I just keep doing one thing after the other and don’t look at the big picture (the long list) it’s not too much. haha! It is, actually much too much… but doable! totally doable.
In light of all that, this will be a shorter one. You’re welcome!
TEN IDEAS A DAY (some names for our cats)
Bootsies, Bootsy Bibbles
Princess Dingleberry
Mr Budd
Coco le Bon Bon
Herms, the Herminator
Twerple Derples (as in: what is the collective noun of these cats?)
Chizupafu
Floofimus Maximus
Chonkolate
Coconatsu
Shout out to my aunt Paula (Paulissima, the Queen P) who is an utter adept of nicknaming and who, I like to think, taught me its arcane conventions when I was very young and impressionable. She was the christener of Bun Bun Posie, Kelsey’s legendary stuffed rabbit. Bun Bun really deserves her own graphic novel someday.
COMICS ABOUT
Since I introduced these last week (lol, time is a construct), might as well stay on theme. Check out that iPod (click wheel, 4th gen)!
Note: I did, years later, realize who the woman at the buffet table had been. I never mentioned it to her, and she never mentioned it to me. But we both knew. I think this says a lot about codependency, but that’s a whole other topic.
Dead bodies! I have learned in these 20 intervening years from the bodies I've been with since (only four? feels like more) that my comfort with the dead is, though maybe unusual, an asset should I choose to pursue any Charonic devotions … such as volunteering for Hospice, something I’d like to do someday if my people would stop dying long enough for it not to be so personal.
INHALATIONS
My Favorite Thing is Monsters by Emil Ferris is one of those graphic novels that uses every aspect of the medium to its advantage and it’s just bloody astounding. Book 2 just came out — I’d lost hope it ever would — and I’ve spent the last few days totally immersed in the world of were-Karen Reyes and her favorite monsters. Ferris is an Art Institute of Chicago alumnus (like me!) and the story is interspersed with ball point pen renderings of classic paintings and horror-pulp magazine covers… unghhhh it’s so good, just go get it.
Awhile back my lovely neighbor Rebecca of Your House Machine (self-aware home organization hacks? recommend!) endorsed an app called SwipeWipe for cleaning up the ol’ photo library — when mine threatened to reach 100,000 pictures (no joke) I was finally ready to admit I had a problem and downloaded it. It’s quite simple: every day the app presents you with every photo taken on that date of every year. You take a wistful (or not) voyage down the memory stream while swiping left or right to keep or delete (as one does with all manner of connections these days). Not only is it a manageable way to pare one’s image bank into submission, it’s quite a trip:
June 15th | 2022, 2021, 2019, 2018, 2014, 2013 (That's a painting of the Tower for the eventual card, me on a plane to NYC, two kinds of giraffes, a lemonade stand (cash motivated, like I said), Ben embarking on the Pacific Crest Trail and a view of the Sears Tower when I was back in Chicago for the trial of the man (boy!?) who killed Chris H.)
OMG Miranda July’s All Fours (& The New Yorker article interviewing her). I felt, I feel, very seen.
I feel like I should recommend my printer (the Epson Sure Color P900) — because even though it is a home printer (and thus a shitty printer), and it was expensive to start with and the ink is exorbitant and only Epson branded ink will do — it has literally been working day and night for me, rhythmically spitting out hundreds of archival-quality, beautifully colored, highly detailed prints on all manner and sizes of paper (up to 17” wide!), and is truly saving me a heckuvalotta cash in outsourcing. Keep it up, lil buddy! you’re doing great!
I have had more pho in the last few weeks than ever before and I really don’t get tired of it. I might order it right now. This cold sucks so hard.
DRAWING CARDS
The Four of Wands was the second card I drew for the deck and thus the second (numbered) chapter of the book: excerpted below for my dear paying subscribers. Love you all! 💋 Smash that ♡ button for the algorithm!
(P.S. Please, also, pray to the publishing gods that I get a great editor/contract… I dreamed last night that five of the short list all decided at once that my work was the shit (not to be confused with just shit), and the method of my choosing them (how it should be, amirite?) was for each to send me an edited version of my proposal so I could really grok their style (I so badly need an editor). Awesome dream, right?! I woke up sad to wake up.)
FOUR OF WANDS
The second card sets the setting, grounding the reading in a specific time and place. On the first day of 2021 I was most assuredly hungover from the night before — an intimate New Year’s party with another acolyte of the Pentacle Queen: my caretaker-confidante Nikita and two dozen or so impromptu alter-egos invited into our Covid Pod with wigs and a costume box rescued from the attic of the house in the hills.
If we couldn’t go out and mingle with unknown entities (we reckoned), we’d invoke our own.
The next day dawned on Dry January and a return to the vacancy of my unfigured selfhood. I pulled the Four of Wands, reversed. I drew it like a dream I’d had, the life I’d had a dream of home.
Upright, the card is celebration: a wedding, a reunion, the joining of families and bloodlines and energetic beings to create new entities, new systems or collaborations. A Four — stable, secure, somewhat codified — it frames the fire of the Wands, giving them ritual and ceremony. I drew Minas Tirith from memory — Camelot, the fairy kingdom. But I’d been expelled from the castle: across the river, no way back.
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