Some thoughts on Puella Magi Madoka Magica

I want to talk about an experience I've had a couple times. I think this experience is as much a part of my own temperament as it is a response to the work of art that provokes it. In other words, I expect that someone reading this essay will not have a similar reaction to the art works I'm going to discuss now. Nevertheless, I think it is an interesting experience (at least to me) and since it is so etherial I want to put it into words before it is lost in the depths of my memory.

The first time I recall having this experience was over ten years ago. Sometime before I moved out to Boston, likely in the mid to late 2000s. A friend who was into classic rock loaned me her entire CD collection. At some point I got to The Byrds greatest hits, including their cover of Dylan's "All I Really Want to Do." I wasn't aware at the time that it was a cover. Listening to the song now I can appreciate what The Byrds bring to it and I like the song in a different way than I did after my first listening. When I first listened to it I felt that there was a significant falling off from the opening melody and the rest of the song. What was interesting is how this falling off made the song better; the opening suggested another and greater song to my imagination. This feeling that a good or even great work of art can be more interesting when it is a window to something even greater that is only dimly perceived is what I found so very powerful and moving. I suspect I've had this experience before, if only in more subtle ways, that I cannot now recall. 

The only other time I remember experiencing this was while watching Madoka Magica. I never finished the series. Or rather, after having watched the first 3 or 4 episodes and been blown away I took a long hiatus of over a year from the show and subsequently forced myself through the series, watching an episode or two before I going to bed, often times half-asleep. So I barely remember most of the series. It may sound strange to write about a show that has left such a strong impression by saying I was unable to watch it.  I should add that I'm giving the series a second viewing now and may write another post after completing my second attempt.

The reason I struggled to finish the show the first time around wasn't because I didn't like it enough, but rather because my first impression was so overwhelmingly powerful that I felt a necessary disappointment in every direction the story took. I could not appreciate the story for what it was because of the strong suggestions it made on my imagination. 

I'll try to say something about those suggestions now. 

First, the story has layers. It is most obviously a kind of commentary on the magical girl genre of anime. It  is entirely sincere, however dark, and not satire. Unlike Sailor Moon, it lacks the manic comedic energy typical of the genre. The warmth and humor Madoka Magica does have is always surface thin. From the first episode it is clear that innocence of this world will not last, that the good humor of the protagonist will be dispelled. Writing this I feel that the story is beginning to sound very bleak. It is bleak. But that isn't quite the impression I had from the first few episodes. Rather, the warmth of your average anime is there alongside the menacing fear that this innocence is an illusion. In those first few episodes we easily recognize that the red eyed cat creature has, at the very least, impure intentions. The "contract" to become a magical girl is never presented as something benign. And yet, the protagonist and her friends want to convince themselves it is. 

I'm circling around, trying however unsuccessfully to describe my experience. The impression of the world was the first moods that I was aware of watching it. The even more powerful mood was the battles with the witches. The art style for these battles is effective, but I wouldn't say it's optimal. What really makes these scenes compelling is the music and battle art direction. I would describe the music as having a redemptive tone. It is uplifting with a choral and orchestral sound. It is the song of a person who had been defeated but is returning to fight again. It is the perfect music for the series, but I can't describe why, especially in the context of how bleak the show is and what we come to learn about who the magical girls *are* and why they are fighting the witches. I want to go on and continue watching the show, but I really want to pause on my feelings and figure out why I respond so powerfully to this combination of a world that has a thin innocent surface with a deep darkness underneath. A world, and now I mean the show as itself a world, that revolves around these battles with witches and that has the seemingly disjunctive redemptive music. 

I said before that the show was a commentary on the magical girl genre of anime. That may not be entirely true. I have also read that the show is a critique of the destructive culture around Japan's real-life pop idols. In one of the battles with the witches (episode 3) the labyrinth is made of cakes and candies. It may be referring to temptations idols face while adhering to strict diet regiments. These considerations though pull me away from the experience I was having in the same way a moving pop song seems less so when you realize it's just about someone having broken up with a boyfriend or girlfriend. As in Hamlet, there seems an excess of emotion. The mood is greater than its subject, however important that subject might be. 

It is the discontinuities in the themes that make the anime powerful. The disjunction of a thinly innocent world and the labyrinths with a redemptive musical theme with characters performing combat as a dance pulling rifles and guns from their clothing. A hair ribbon becomes a giant revolver for example. In episode three the character comments on how she is performing for the two girls she hopes to recruit. She is showing them that this game is fun and glamorous. They are persuaded, we are not.  

Writing this essay, oddly enough, I'm beginning to see why the scenes are powerful within the context of the shows own themes. Who knows, the show may supplant in my memory the imagination of that other show I merely glimpsed. 

My imagined show would be of a world with another world under the surface. The characters would be presented to it in a way that would make it seem less threatening and slightly glamorous. The musical theme and battle sequence would challenge our ability to decide how to respond. If we thought that this thin innocence over a dark experience is bad the music would suggest that it is neither good nor bad, but something else. That there is merely existence and that this existence is very difficult and fraught. One acts in this world with grace and at times violence to get survive, trying not to betray how difficult it is. 

I'm not sure if that is exactly what my feeling was. I feel like this too is a reduction. What is most interesting to me is having a world setting as a type of thing and having the musical scene as something (an agent) set against that theme. There seems to be an aesthetic dynamic between the location and the agent. How the agent affects how the location is perceived and vice versa. 

 

 

Project Update

 

Project Update

 

Having recently finished the first section of my graphic novel (a massive 14 pages) I thought now would be a good time to reflect on the project as a whole. A few years ago I was going through some of my old Peace Corps journals and found an outline for a story with a few fragments from 2003 that bears some resemblance to the story I’m writing now. So in a sense I’ve been working on this story for almost 20 years. After finishing my Peace Corps service in 2005 I enrolled in a graduate program in English literature. I still drew and painted, but did not do any fiction writing. I would not start writing this story until shortly before moving to Boston in 2012. 

 

What I began to write was a memoir of my time in the Peace Corps. From the get go the memoir was intended to be merely a jumping off point for the kind of story I wanted to write, which I envisioned as an allegorical medieval manuscript. I had been admiring Walter Crane’s illustrations for the Faerie Queene, William Morris’s illustrations for Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, and Aubrey Beardsley illustrations for Le Morte d’Arthur and hoped to do something in that spirit. 

I originally considered making a sonnet sequence. 14 sonnets in two groups of 7. Each sonnet with an illustration and probably some ornate borders as well. I did the 14 illustrations and finished about 7 or so poems. I ended up not writing more than two sonnets and a few verse fragments. I even took a poetry class around this time in Cambridge. I wanted the story to use images from my Peace Corps experiences, but to be structured around a fictional wedding. The first 7 poems told of a character meeting an artist friend with whom he would spend the day painting by a river, waiting for the wedding party to begin. The second 7 poems would be at night during the wedding. I wasn’t entirely happy with my poetry and realized it wasn’t the write medium for the kind of story I wanted to tell. I reverted to prose and began again. This was around 2013. For the next few years I would be working on this story, which I called The Marriage Engine. I finished a draft version of around 50 pages in 2015.

 

In the fall of 2016 I set up a FB page to showcase my art work. This was a big step for me, up until this time my drawings were an entirely private affair. In the fall of 2017 I had an art show. For 2018 I occupied myself with putting together an art book that I could pass out at the Massachusetts Independent Comic Expo (MICE). 

In 2019 I set out once again to produce a book. From past experience I knew that I must have a clear idea of how long I wanted the book to be. Many of my past projects never materialized because I could never finish them. I told myself that the book would not be longer than approximately 40 pages. I decided to begin the project with an experiment. I would try to draw a page a day for about a month. I did this for the month of January. That same month I also wrote an essay on Percy Bysshe Shelley that I had published in my old classmates’ journal, Jesus the Imagination. I made an accompanying illustration for the essay.

 

The short comic was the story of a family on a pilgrimage to an island where there was an abandoned temple deep in a labyrinthine cave. This image of a temple and a labyrinth goes back to a story I wrote in high school, around 1995-1997. I later found the same image in Angus Fletcher’s study of the fifth book of Spenser’s Faerie Queene, The Prophetic Moment. The book remains one of my favorite works of literary criticism. In my story the father travels to the temple to study murals on the temple walls and write a commentary on them. I had done a series of four illustrations on Northrop Frye’s essay on Blake, “The Keys to the Gates.” These illustrations were to be the basis of the murals in the temple. I liked the idea of having layered texts and images. There would be the murals, the story itself, the father’s commentary, and perhaps a further layer—that of the person who compiled this material in its present form. The commentary was to be a kind of encyclopedia. It would include basic ideas that served as the building blocks for all other ideas. I called this person the red man. He came to the island by boat with his own tribe with the mission of establishing a civilization on the island. The temple was a power he wished to use to create this civilization. My problem, as I saw it, was to figure out how to integrate these various strands in a satisfying way. As I began to sketch out this story it quickly exceeded the planned 40 page limit. One outline I made ran over 100 pages. Another was as long as 600 pages. I decided to scrap this idea and start over. 

 

For my second attempt I returned to my original story for inspiration. That story was to be 14 chapters, in two groups of 7. The idea there was, in part, the 7 days of creation. Except I would have 7 days and 7 nights, as the kabbalists have. Another subtext of that story was Harold Bloom’s 6 revisionary ratios, also modeled on the days of creation. For my new story I was attracted to Spenser’s Shepherd’s Calendar. Using the Shepherd’s Calendar as a basis for my story would fulfill my most important needs. It would restrict the story to a set length (now 24 pages, 2 pages per month). It would also allow for the kind of encyclopedic scope I wanted. In Spenser’s poem each month touches on important themes such as youth and old age, rural and urban life, poetry, art, politics, philosophy, etc. So would mine.

 

I set myself to adapting my original story to the 12 month structure. This would mean it was cyclical. It would still concern a family, the red man, but now the multiple layers would have to be confined to within the calendar. 

 

I came up with the idea that the son was an orphan, that he had been transported into this other world and after being transported he lost the ability to speak. I eventual stumbled on the idea that he would speak through images. The son, using images, would be able to undo the charm the red man had over the city. The tenth month would be a descent into the cave. I considered including the four murals at this point. The son would descend after the red man, find the murals, and have some kind of confrontation and apotheosis or disintegration, I wasn’t sure which. His step sister would play an important role. She had been the only one to truly understand him, his friend and companion. I considered having her abandon him in the caves, as he realizes that she was merely a projection of himself, a projection he could not maintain. The eleventh and twelfth months would be the resolution and setup for the cycle to repeat. 

 

I drew the first two months and sketched out the first 8. I was getting ready to ink and color the first two months, but thought it best to practice various techniques before moving forward and so around October I began another short comic, Simon on the Shores of Ruin. It was a wordless story, 6 pages, that I penciled, inked, and colored. It took the rest of the year to finish.

 

While working on this story I began to once again rethink my project. I struggled on deciding how to make the boy speak in images. Should I show little symbols over his head. The frames were already small and cramped. There was no room for text, let alone symbols. I thought about making large cards, each 7x7 inches, one card per story panel, 12 cards per page. This would total 288 cards. Once again the story was spirally out of control. I only drew a couple cards before discarding that idea, but it was a worthwhile experiment, because I would use the idea of cards for something else. I then considered making this a wordless story like Simon on the Shores of Ruin. Now not only does the boy not speak, no one does. The boy leaves the world at the end and shares his story, through images, with our world. The story then would have two sections, one of our world and one of the story itself. The our world section could be in prose and the story in wordless images. I wrote out much of the text for the prose section and began to  rethink and redraw the calendar section to fit these new ideas. I ultimately decided that I would have the prose section as a standard comic, but I would do it in monochrome to contrast it with the wordless section. I saw that, once again, the book was growing beyond my original intended scope. How long would the prose section be? If it was the same length as the wordless section that would put the comic at 48 pages. But the prose section I had sketched out would need to be much longer than that. Once again it was becoming untenable. I considered having the book comprised of four parts, each part covering 3 months. I even considered including my old Marriage Engine story within this story.  The structure would look like this:

 

PART 1

Prose      Wordless   Prose      Wordless  Prose     Wordless   Prose

6 pgs. à 2 pgs. à   6 pgs.à   2 pgs.à   6 pgs.à  2 pgs.à    6 pgs.

 

PART 2

Prose      Wordless   Prose      Wordless  Prose     Wordless   Prose

6 pgs. à 2 pgs. à   6 pgs.à   2 pgs.à   6 pgs.à  2 pgs.à    6 pgs.

 

INTERLUDE

The Marriage Engine

 

PART 3

Prose      Wordless   Prose      Wordless  Prose     Wordless   Prose

6 pgs. à 2 pgs. à   6 pgs.à   2 pgs.à   6 pgs.à  2 pgs.à    6 pgs.

 

PART 4

Prose      Wordless   Prose      Wordless  Prose     Wordless   Prose

6 pgs. à 2 pgs. à   6 pgs.à   2 pgs.à   6 pgs.à  2 pgs.à    6 pgs.

 

 

Each section would be 30 pages. I planned to finish the first part and if I was happy with it continue on with the rest. The scope was becoming overwhelming though and I told myself that if I did finish part 1 I would take a year vacation before going forward. 

 

It so happened that around this time I was given a new job opportunity, one that would require me traveling to Washington state for a sixth months for job training. I brought my drawing materials to Washington, but the new job proved to be more demanding than I expected and I was not able to make any progress on my story for the next few months. In October I renegotiated with my boss to only do half of the work load (the “half” I took was actually more like 25%, although it was still half the pay). I now once again had time to draw. For a few years I had wanted to participate in the online group, Inktober, so instead of working on the comic, I did a separate Inktober comic to unwind. I drew a picture a day for 31 days. It was another short wordless comic marginally related to my project. 

 

Before coming out to Washington I had bought IA Richards’ How to Read a Page. The book informed some ideas in my comic, Simon on the Shores of Ruin. I had been reworking these ideas in the Inktober comic, the idea of a kind of gameboard, with each square representing one of Richard’s 100 most important words. The Richards book I found to be profoundly moving and eloquent. It solved a problem I had, how to structure the encyclopedic component to the story. Here, in such a simple fashion, was a way to include a great breadth of knowledge simply and elegantly. I began working out symbols and images to represent 81 (a 9x9 grid) of Richards’ 100 words. I had begun to do this in early 2020. 

 

The story of characters who speak in images now had a new component, here was their language. A language that could be played like a game. But how could this game be played? This is a challenge I am still working out.

 

I believe it was shortly after returning to Boston in late 2020 that I had an important revelation. I would not make my story in four parts. I would stick to my original plan of having a short story of approximately 40 pages. So, I would have all twelve months in this story. The structure would now look like this: 

 

Prose      Wordless   Prose      Wordless  Prose     Wordless   Prose

6 pgs. à 8 pgs. à   6 pgs.à   8 pgs.à   6 pgs.à  8 pgs.à    6 pgs.

 

It would be 48 pages. Still doable. It was a relief to decide on this. I wanted to finish this story, I did not want it hanging over my head for years. I should add, that I am considering changing the structure again a bit, the second and third prose sections will have 12 pages. I’ve found that I can write and draw these sections much faster than the wordless sections (surprisingly). Mostly because I reuse the same backgrounds and have a simpler coloring scheme. That would put the page count up to 60. 

 

The year is almost halfway over, do I still expect to finish the book this year? I am concerned. But, I have solved most of the problems, I see the path ahead as mostly putting down on paper what I’ve already worked out in my head and sketchpad. I’ve divided the book into three sections and a coda. Having finished the first section I’ve also figured out a method for quickly coloring. I believe the next two sections should go much faster. Certainly I should be able to finish section two and at least start on section three. 

 

Another reason for hope is that I lost 8 weeks of work on the comic earlier this year to a comic art class I took from late January to late March. During this time I didn’t do much work on the comic. I also spent quite a bit of time working out the card game. If I focus entirely on part 2 I should be able to finish it by October, God willing. 

 

Of course, even as I say this the doubts flood in. I am a bit unhappy with the watercolors on the wordless section. They are too muddy for my liking. I think I may be able to touch them up in photoshop, but I still want to make them look better on paper. For section two I plan on doing a few things differently. First, I will use a higher quality paper. Second, I will make my base layer much lighter. I also am not entirely happy with my line work. The markers I’m using on the prose section compensate for problems with the lines, but the watercolors tend to highlight those problems. This is something I need to work out. But I’ve resigned myself to continue moving forward regardless. Not that I haven’t been tempted to rework all of the watercolor pages, but no, I will charge forward and finish this book. After it is scanned, edited, and printed then maybe I will go return to it for a revised second edition. 

 

In conclusion, while I want to focus on the work at hand, I can’t help but say a few words about what I want to do next. The card game in this story will not be fully worked out, it is only intended to be suggestive. But I would like to continue to develop the game and maybe do something with it later. I’ve always wanted to make a video game and have been seriously thinking about converting this story into a game. That will be a massive undertaking. The game would be similar in scope to Toby Fox’s Undertale. Simple graphics, modest length. While I think it will be a challenge, I don’t think it will be impossible. Lastly, I’d like to start a new story. This is another story I’ve been thinking about and messing around with for a long time. It is the story of a world-wide train network. It’s also the history of America. Once again, it is many stories that I’d like to tell as one story. I have a few ideas about how I might do this. One idea is to tell of an underground network of knights/samurai poets. In this story Shelley never dies, but travels to America (as in Elinor Wylie’s novel, The Orphan Angel (which I haven’t read). In my story Shelley meets Emerson. Shelley’s spirit, it is shown, is an old spirit that has been around since the dawn of human culture. It is the spirit of poetry. The story will chart this spirit. The spirit has an architectural quality and trains, as a vehicle of freedom of movement are one of its manifestations. The story will explore the relationship of movement, freedom, and poetry. “I will go on until I am stopped and I am never stopped.”

 

Final note, I had an idea, long ago, that I would write three books. The book I’m working on now, Living Words, is the first. The book about trains, which I have the working title of America: Pasts and Futures, is the second. The third would be The Marriage Engine. I hope to write all three. I’d also like to write a book of criticism, Thinking in Images. 

Month in Review: November

Books Read: 
Moses Finley, The World of Odysseus
Gilbert Ryle, Plato's Progress
Kim Stanley Robinson, The Ministry for the Future

Project Update:
Not able to do much drawing on the drive home. We left on November 23rd, a Tuesday, around 10 am. We arrive in Superior, MT that evening and stayed at the Sheep Mountain Lodge. There are two lodges on the property, both owned by a retired dentist living in Seattle. Each is a kind of trophy museum housing a variety of mounted deer heads, moose heads, two stuffed bears, and many other random souvenirs. The lodge we stayed in was very nice. We had access to the whole two floors of the lodge. There were two large fireplaces, a kitchen, and on the second floor, a bridge with a kind of cave-like tunnel that goes through the twin fireplaces to a balcony out back. 

We left around 2pm the next day and drove to Bozeman, MT. We stayed around Bozeman for the rest of the day and all the next day, which happened to be Thanksgiving. We were able to put together a modest Thanksgiving dinner that we had at our hotel. 

The next day, Friday the 27th, we had a Thanksgiving breakfast with a family we met in Bozeman. They recommended a hiking trail in Blue Sky, which is an hour south of Bozeman. We ended up driving to Blue Sky that afternoon and reached our hotel just before nightfall.

On Saturday, the 28th, we hiked up to Ousel Falls. The hike was a very nice snow-covered alpine trail, about 30 to 45 minutes each way. I used the chest strap to carry Emily. She fell asleep half-way through the hike and slept four nearly an hour. After the hike we toured the resort area and base camp. One of the hotels had a restaurant open that we had dinner at. Around 9pm we headed onto our next destination, Billings, MT. We arrived in Billings around 12:30 am. 

Sunday, the 29th, we arrived in Billings. The hotel we stayed at had a large in-door waterpark. Lily and Emily spent the day there. Lily was having so much fun that I felt bad dragging her away, but her lips had turned blue and Emily looked like a prune. Helen then took the kids out for the day so I could catch up on work. I worked from around 2 to 10 pm and was able to catch up on a week's worth of work. Helen picked up a nice dinner and we had a pleasant end to the day.

Monday, the 30th, today. Lily is back to school. The girls got up early and had a swim before her class began. Lily then had class from 10 - 1pm. After class Helen took them to the zoo, while I cleaned up the room. I've spent the rest of the time writing this blog. It's hard to guess how long it will take to finish the trip. I hope to drive 6 hours a day. At that rate we will be back on Sunday. There is a Laura Ingalls Wiler house in Minnesota we might do a quick stop at. We will also be passing by Chicago and I thought it might be fun to at least drive through and see the Christmas lights. Both Dakotas have severe Covid outbreaks, so I plan on driving through South Dakota quickly. Other then that, there isn't anything I want to see, but still. It's hard to tell.

Month in Review: October

 Books Read:

Peter Frase; Four Futures: Life After Capitalism
Eric Lonergan and Mark Blyth; Angrynomics
Howard Cruse; Stuck Rubber Baby
Robert D. Putnam and Shaylyn Romney Garrett; The Upswing: How America Came Together a Century Ago and How We Can Do It Again
Heather Cox Richardson; How the South Won the Civil War: Oligarchy, Democracy, and the Continuing Fight for the Soul of America

 

Project Update:

 

I haven’t said much about what I’ve been up to recently. I took a new job last May with a notary company based outside of Seattle. The principle reason I took the job is that it allows me to work remotely. The work has two components: accounting and scheduling. I was able to learn the accounting aspect from home and spent May and June getting comfortable with this. The scheduling needed to be done in person and since my new boss was a friend of my wife’s we decided to make the training an occasion for a family road trip. 

In planning this trip I realized that the two cities, Boston and Seattle, are connected by a single highway, I-90, the longest highway in the US. We had already taken many road trips between Boston and my home state of Michigan, so the first leg of the trip was mostly uneventful. We were able to reach Columbus, OH on the first day. We didn’t make as much progress the second day and ultimately stopped after 5 hours on the road in Joliet, IL. That day we noticed some water leaking from the dashboard on the passenger side. We called our mechanic who suspected it was coming from the AC unit. The AC unit had been making some noises and so we trusted him and assuming it was nothing major kept driving. 

The next day we made it to South Dakota and the following day we stopped at the Badlands National Park and later that afternoon Mount Rushmore. Leaving Mount Rushmore we drove through a pretty amazing storm. I tried to google the technical name for this kind of cloud formation, but was unable to come up with anything. It looked like an enormous inverted step or plate coming out of the clouds. I would say it was the beginning of a tornado, but it didn’t move. The diameter of the plate must have been a mile or more across. We were driving at least 50 miles an hour and it took us at least 15 to 20 minutes to reach and then pass the plate. Shortly after we were hit with a pretty bad hail storm. 

The following day we began driving through Wyoming. After an hour or so of admiring the majestic slopping hills and expansive vistas, I decided to crack the sunroof and let Lily stick her head out. It was probably the most fun we had had driving on the trip so far. South Dakota had been nice, but I was really blown away by Wyoming. After stopping for gas and driving a few more miles I noticed that Emily was uncomfortable in her seat so we stopped on the side of the highway to adjust her. When I tried to start the car again it wouldn’t turn over. Not being able to figure out what the problem was we ended up spending three hours on the side of the road in 90 degree heat waiting for a tow truck. I positioned blankets over the windows to block out the sun and keep the kids relatively comfortable. Luckily, we weren’t too far from civilization. While waiting for the tow truck a couple people stopped by to check on us. The first guy to stop offered to give Helen a ride into town. In retrospect, I realized he would be the first of several similar encounters: a friendly guy offers to help who also ends up being a Trump supporter. What I found interesting in all these encounters, was the kind of off-hand devil-may-care way he spoke about Trump, “I’ll probably vote for him.”  

 

Once back in Sheridan we were hit with some good and bad news. Sheridan, WY, was sizable enough town and we were able to find an auto repair shop immediately adjacent to a reasonably priced hotel. That was the good news. The bad news was that our car was totaled. I would end up borrowing a luggage cart from the hotel to haul all our luggage out of the van after learning the car would not be salvageable. 

 

I wonder if there is a name for situations like this, where you pass through a location or meet a person that seems insignificant to our situation, only to later find them to be of much significance. Anyways, it was strange to be stranded in a town we earlier thought was just one rest stop out of many. We ended up spending several days in Sheridan trying to get our car situation worked out. We discovered that all the fluid of our car had leaked out and the engine was basically toast. Not surprisingly, the insurance company wouldn’t cover the repairs. To add insult on top of injury, there were no rental cars available in Sheridan or any nearby cities. 

We ended up hitching a ride with a guy who worked at our hotel to his mother’s house in Billings, MT. We hoped that we might find a way of getting to Seattle from Billings. We ended up having no more luck there than in Sheridan. As a last resort he called up his mother who often hosted guests at her house. She had an RV in her driveway and agreed to let us rent it out from her until we got things settled. Since I was already late to my training appointment we decided it was best for me to fly out to Seattle, finish the training, and then rent a car and drive back to pick up the family. 

The family we stayed with bought a chicken dinner for us that first night. They had a pool in the backyard and Lily went swimming with their two daughters. They also had a lot of small dogs Lily enjoyed playing with.  

This ended up working out well. I had been rushing most of the trip, while everyone else wanted to slow down and explore. Helen was happy to spend a week in Montana while did my training and caught up on work. On the drive back to Wyoming I stopped in North Bend WA, a city known as the home to iconic scenes from Twin Peaks. I stopped at the famed Snoqualmie Falls, took a photo of where the Twin Peaks sign had once been, and had breakfast at the admittedly pricey “Double R” Diner. The drive back was awe inspiring. The evergreen hills outside Seattle, then the river gorge past the mountain range. Washington, I would learn, had nearly every environmental habitat. Driving by myself I was able to make good time and was back in Montana by 6am that night. 

 

While in Seattle I would regularly call and check in. They seemed to be having a pleasant enough time. It wasn’t until I picked them up and we were on our way back that I learned Helen had ultimately grew a bit uncomfortable being there. The family was very conservative and pro-Trump and spent every evening watching Fox News. 

 

The drive back ended up taking 3 times as long. This was is in part because we spent a day in Kellogg, ID looking for a replacement car at the Dave Smith auto dealership. While searching for cars we rented out a room from a sweat lady who decorated her home with Asian art in a way that reminded me of my own Aunt’s home. Driving through Idaho we had seen many signings advertising Huckleberries. Helen was happy to finally find someone in the town willing to sell some to her. The rest of the drive was mostly uneventful and we arrived at our final destination of Mukilteo, WA on July 22^nd, where we would stay for the next 3 and a half months. 

 

The first thing we noticed driving into town was Mukilteo’s expansive Boeing factory. It was really cool to drive by the hangars and see the planes being built inside. While waiting for our landlord to arrive we took a trip down to the harbor. We discovered a ferry service there. Along the beach were community fire pits where mostly younger people gathered to grill hot dogs and socialize. There were piers made of floating platforms that were a lot of fun for Lily to walk on. There were also large logs along the beach Lily played on. I was excited to have this vibrant community to be a part of our new home.

 

I quickly realized that the work load I had agreed to take on was considerably more than what I anticipated or thought we had agreed on, which was that this was a typical 9-5 job. I remember the first day, as 5 pm approached and passed, when my boss was going to let me call it a day. We had a back and forth for the next few days where I awkwardly threw in the towel around 6. Ultimately I settled on wrapping up at 7, although many days I didn’t finish until 8 and on a few days was still working at 9. The long term plan had been for me take over my boss’ role of scheduling and doing the accounting, so he could focus on troubleshooting and getting new clients. Well, I quickly realized that I would be working 10-12 hours a day just doing the scheduling, with an additional 4 – 5 hours of accounting work. The first two weeks I tried to keep up with each day’s work, but it wasn’t long before I put off the accounting work for the weekend and then, being exhausted, put that work off as well asking for days off to catch up. Around mid-September I decided that I’d need to have a reduction of hours and was allowed to just do the accounting work. So now I have 4 – 5 hours of work a day, which I’m allowed to do at any time. My last day doing scheduling was October 5^th, and it took me the rest of the month to catch up. 

 

So, for much of the trip I sat at my desk looking out the window. We were staying in a second story two-bedroom condo. I had a few of neighboring buildings and a large maple tree that I enjoyed watching change colors over the past two weeks. I watched many of the neighbors come and go through the day, the lawn service blowing leaves and lawn clippings, package delivery men and women. The weather never rose above 80 through August and early September and has yet to dip below 40. 

 

I did make some time for family outings during our stay. Our first trips were back to North Bend. I took the family to see Snoqualmie Falls and a couple days later we went back to pick blue berries. We went one evening to Seattle. This was around the time of the protests, which took place in a park near the Eliot Bay Book Company, where I ended up parking so Helen could check them out while I waited in the car with Lily an Emily. There were helicopters circling overhead and young people walking down the streets carrying sticks and bats. Many businesses had their windows and doors boarded up as a precaution. I was surprised to see all of the homeless tents, which I remembered reading about, but had not remembered until we arrived. 

 

A week after that we took a weekend trip to the Olympic Peninsula where we visited Ruby Beach and the Hoh Rainforest. Another memorable event was the forest fires in Oregon and the south of Washington state, the smoke of which traveled all the way up to where we were, which was about 15 miles north of Seattle. I woke up that morning to see the skies a hazy orange. Later that day we drove out to Seattle. By that time the skies were more of a gray. The air had a tangy taste that reminded me of Beijing. The bad air stuck around for at least 3 or 4 days. A few weeks after that we visited the Northern Cascades National Park. And then my schedule lightened up, allowing for more flexibility. We took a trip to Portland for a few days and then a trip to Mount St. Helens. We also did a lot of day hikes on local trails. I made a point of telling my boss I needed time for daily walks and I’ve been pretty good about taking at least one walk a day, many of them with the family. 

 

The trip certainly has had its bumpy moments. The long hours of scheduling put considerable stress on me. Drawing and reading fell by the wayside. Helen and the kids took advantage of being out here and were able to do a lot more exploring than I was able to. 

 

The last few weeks have been much more peaceful and fulfilling. Lily discovered Pokemon a few weeks ago and while we were watching the anime together and researching various “mon” we discovered Pokemon Go which I’ve since become addicted to. Now my daily walks include visiting Pokemon Gyms and Poke Stops.  

 

While catching up on accounting work in October I made time for myself to draw. I had long wanted to in Inktober, the social media event where you draw a picture every day for the month of October, and was finally able to do so. I finished the 31 drawings for that event yesterday. My drawings form a story, which is mostly a playful working out of some ideas for the larger story I’ve been working on the past two years. In fact, I’ve now made 3 extraneous iterations/elaborations on this story. 

 

One lesson I’ve learned in this last iteration, a lesson I’ve admittedly learned before and since forgotten, is that I really need to stop fixating on some ideal and just focus on putting stuff out. I’ve now spent two years on this comic and am quite sure it won’t be done this year, even though I had at one point expected to finish by July. So I am now committed to bulldozing through it. Once I get it down, if only in a kind of finished draft, then I can, if I choose to, rework it. But at this point I’d rather be in the state of reworking than in fretting over screwing it up and so not doing anything at all. 

I’ve also committed myself to doing a collaborative 40 page comic with a writer I met online. I have been chatting with him about this project all year, but have yet to do any work on it, outside of reading his script. I’ve also committed myself to writing two book reviews and an cover illustration for a friend’s book.

 

So, it is now Wednesday, November 11, 2020. We are planning to leave next Monday. Our current plan is to take a circuitous route back home. We plan on driving south to San Francisco and from there to Arizona. We will then either continue south to Texas and possibly New Orleans or just head home. I guess it will depend on how we are all doing and how the car is holding up.

Month in Review: September

 October 2nd was the official last day of what I'll just call my busy schedule. I'll go into more detail in a later post, but for now I'll just say the past two plus months have been some of the most work intense days of my life. I'm still wrapping things up and so while I'm technically done, my schedule hasn't entirely slowed down yet. Even though this week was still busy, I was able to get in some long walks with Lily and Emily. I've also been able to start drawing and reading again. But this is all for October! September, alas was a bit of a wash. You may as well read my August review. On second thought, better not. It's pretty bleak. 

Month in Review: August

I've been unexpectedly busy this summer with work and other things and have unfortunately had almost no time at all to do any reading or drawing. I'm disappointed to have fallen short of my goal to complete my story by the end of June. At this rate, I can only hope it is completed by the end of the year. 

I had begun a few books in August, but I figure I may as well leave this month a blank and put those books on next month's review. 

This year has been a very bleak, but August may have been the nadir, at least for me. As bi-partisan support for BLM continued to wane and, like everything in this country, become weaponized for political purposes so too did any hope that this country might be able to unify around some common good. America is fractured and the various splinters have so calcified that there is no hope, at least for the foreseeable future, that they could ever grow back into a whole. Given the malfeasance of the Republican party, it seems quite likely that we will have four more years of fascism. If 45 does not win the election outright, then it will most likely be contested, brought to the Supreme Court and, well, I have no illusions on how that that scenario will play out.

I fear the human project has run its course. 

Growing up in a Christian home, I was told by my youth leaders and other church leaders, that we were in a culture war. We were called on to be martyrs. Christian bookstores were lined with books on the end times. The Left Behind series was very popular. When you convince congregations that secular liberals kill babies it isn't hard to start a culture war. I don't go to church much anymore. I have a kind of spirituality, but it is rooted in the arts and sciences. I have no hope or concern for the afterlife. Still, my wife attends church and wants our Lily to as well. I don't entirely mind, Lily is only five and she may as well learn about religion. With the pandemic going on though, she just attends zoom Bible studies. Listening in on one the other day I heard Lily's Sunday school teacher say that we were at war with the world. It was weird hearing those words said again, when the country was quite literally on the brink of real war. 

So, it seems, we are at war. Once the guns begin to come out in earnest I wonder what Christians will think of this war they've been anticipating for so long. It will undoubtedly be much uglier than its advocates expect. The sides will be murkier too. The Christians, I hope, will feel uncomfortable having Neo-Nazis and the KKK as bedfellows. 

But whatever fighting happening breaks out after the election will be a mere gentle prelude to what will come once climate change kicks in in earnest.

The forest fires and storms we are seeing now are only the beginnings of climate change. Things will get much worse. As the oceans acidify, as the global crop yield decreases as population increases, as the habitably areas shrink and migration grows, we will find ourselves in an increasingly cramped planet with fewer and fewer resources. 

And with so little trust among each other, with so little willingness to work together, I don't see how we will be able to pull through this. It would require the cooperation of all nations, around the world. It would require a kind of massive mobilization and self-sacrifice unseen in human history. And like the pandemic, the longer we wait the more difficult this project will become. I fear that the game is already lost. 

Month in Review: July

Books Read:

Tim Maughan, Infinite Detail: A Novel

Philip Kitcher, Joyce's Kaleidoscope (still reading)

Project Update:

Slowly but surely.