Month in Review: September

I was converted to a full-time "regular" position. This means two days off a week and no more mandatory overtime. There have been some family demands that have prevented me from working as much on personal projects as I'd like, but I'm still making progress. I'm very close to begin the next phase of the big project, inking. Because I'm not as comfortable with my inking skills as I'd like to be, I've decided to start a side project as kind of a practice ground. I finished a rough of the first strip this morning. It isn't perfect, but it is serving it's purpose.

As for reading, I didn't do quite as much this month. I'm in the middle of Daniel Defoe's *Roxanna.* I also read a third of Elizabeth Anderson's *Private Government* and even less of Adam Smith's *Theory of Moral Sentiments.* I recently started David Harvey's *Neoliberalism.* Unless I'm mistaken, these are the only books I read all month. Pretty sad, only four and I didn't finish a single one.  I've also been listening to older episodes of the amimetobios class, "Imagining Money." I hope to write up a review of the class soon. I have watched quite a bit of Star Trek TNG and am now on season 4. Here are a few books I hope to read in October:

Dostoyevsky, *The Gambler*
Catherynne M. Valente, *The Orphan's Tales: In the City of Coins and Spice*

Philip Pullman, *The Secret Commonwealth*

Robert Wiebe, *Self-Rule*
Elizabeth Anderson, *Private Government* (finish)
Adam Smith, *A Theory of Moral Sentiments*
David Harvey, *A Brief History of Neoliberalism*

Month in Review: August

The weather was considerably more temperate this month than last. There were only a few 80+ days, most were in the low to mid 70s and there were even a few cool days. It was a welcome reprieve. It's no surprise I was able to read significantly more than last month. Here's the list:

Walter Tevis, Mockingbird

Rick Perlstein, Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus 

Emile Zola, Money

John Steinbeck, In Dubious Battle

Jefferson R. Cowie, Stayin’ Alive

Kerascoet, Beauty

Kerascoet, Little Miss Don’t Touch Me vol. 1

Mandeville, Fable of the Bees

Still Reading: 

Paul Cartledge, Democracy: A Life

Kent Flannery and Joyce Marcus, The Creation of Inequality: How Our Prehistoric Ancestors Set the Stage for Monarchy, Slavery, and Empire

Progress on my comic book is still chugging along. I’ve now sketched out chapters 1-5 (of 12) and have story outlines for chapters 6-9. I basically know what I want to do with the remaining 3 chapters although I plan to hold off sketching them out until I’ve brought chapters 1-9 to a more finished form. I’ve found that I work best on my days off and that if I’m well rested and have 4-6 hours of free time I can sketch out an entire chapter. That is basically a chapter a week. So, for next month I hope to finish the next 3 chapters. After having sketched them out I will need to work on dialogue and some significant edits and revisions. I’m still debating whether to color them and how. I may try to color them digitally (which I will have to teach myself how to do).  

Dreaming and Reality in The Leftovers

These are rough notes towards what I may later work into a longer essay.

I am in the middle of the final episode of The Leftovers TV series and was struck with an observation. The series has had two opening montages and different opening musical scores for each season with the final season having unique musical scores for each episode (only the final episode reuses the music for season two's opening). It is all popular music as opposed to musical scores, only season one used a musical score. Popular music is interspersed almost at random throughout every episode of season 3. It felt at times either jarring or at least contrary to what seemed the mood of a given scene. Here is my theory for what is going on.

The theme of this series is trauma, trauma of the worst sort. It is an unresolvable trauma and so one that apparently cannot be healed. The trauma only grows worse and less bearable as time passes. The series has many moments where it powerfully conveys this sense to the viewer. Seasons one and two end in riots and chaos, where the reserves of sanity have broken away. We participate in this breaking down.

The series also has three dream episodes, where Kevin Garvey temporarily dies and so is allowed to enter the realm of the afterlife. When Kevin from one of these journeys he's asked if he was afraid. He says that on the contrary, he wasn't afraid but felt more fully alive.

David Lynch, whose films are often said to be dream-like, is a master of creating a sense of dread. His films are suffused with a palpable silence, often in the form of an electrical hum. The feeling his films evoke in me are more powerful than just about all other contemporary films. It is a kind of existential fear. Is this reality?

Watching The Leftovers sometimes I desired something along the Lynchian lines. I wanted to see the film delve deeper into this emotional state of the characters. Instead, there was a Hollywood quality to the show. For every step it advanced towards a depiction of trauma, it moved several steps back. One means of doing this is through the introduction of popular music. Listening to music, whether it is a song we know, or a style of music that summons up memories of other songs, evokes in us our own realities that seem just as real as the sense of dread.

Music has the power to create a real world, a world that is convincingly safe and knowable. It is not the world of the unknown and the unresolved. When Kevin enters his dreams and enacts a role, such as assassin or president, he is, like music, making a narrative of his life. In this kind of created reality he does feel more real.

Month in Review: July

I've been working 6 days a week consistently for most of the year. This month I went two weeks without a day off.  The hottest days of the summer were also in July. We had two periods of exceptionally hot days, where the temperatures once went as high as 110 degrees. The hottest days stretched out for as long as 3-4 days. But even when the heat did slightly break, the temperature remained in the high 80s. I'm writing this in mid-August and can look back in relief. It has been significantly cooler so far this month and even if we do have a few more hot days, I don't expect anything like July. Because of the heat and my general exhaustion I didn't listen to as many audiobooks or do as much reading at home as I had previous months. I mostly went home, had dinner, and watched an episode or two of Star Trek or The Leftovers. On the advice of Ron Drummond I watched the Australian film Walkabout which is referenced in season 3 of the Leftovers.  I read Marianne Williamson's A Politics of Love. I also read another Culture novel, Player of Games, this month. I saw this years Shakespeare in the Boston Common play, Cymbeline twice. Once with Dennis Donohue and later with my brother Joe. As far as the comic goes, I had more good ideas here and there. I picked away at it more. I did have the idea recently that I wanted to set the more modest goal of sketching the whole thing out for this year and then start releasing it next year, editing and revising along the way. I'll release a page (actually two pages-each "page" is a spread) a month.

Month in Review: June

We've eclipsed the summer solstice. The year and all our plans for it have reached their crux, or so it seems to me. After a few months of lying fallow, I'm ready to begin again in earnest to plow up the fields of my mind and preparing again to sow and reap a new harvest. The ideas I've been quietly tending are coming together and I think I will still be able to hold to my earlier promise to have a complete story by November. The current form of this story is radically different than the story I shared earlier this year. The overall design is still the same, it is to be a story in images (perhaps wordless). The length has been substantially circumscribed, now limited to a mere 12 two-sided pages. The story I've come up with though is short and simple enough to work well in this limited scope. I've already sketched out the first three pages and am happy with them. I plan to post some progress pics in July.

I haven't done much reading this month, besides some skimming. I did manage to finish Joanna Russ' We who are about to, my first Russ novel. I wanted to like this one more than I did. I also read Michel Bernanos, The Other Side of the Mountain, which Selwyn Rodda recommended to me several months ago upon learning that I was a fan of David Lindsay's A Voyage to Arcturus. There are definitely some similarities, and I enjoyed this one much more than the Russ, but still it is not a novel I loved. I've also been reading Ben Katchor's graphic novel, Hand Drying in America, for inspiration. Somewhat like my story, Ben's graphic novel is composed of single page self-contained stories.  

Instead of reading I've been watching some TV. I watched the first two seasons of The Leftovers as well as the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation. I'm very engaged in both series. I also recently started Russian Doll which I think is a very sharp comedy and one I look forward to following. There are too many other tv shows I hope to get around to eventually, but should probably ignore if I hope to make any progress on my other projects. 

Lastly, the third volume of Jesus The Imagination was published this month with my essay on Shelley. I still haven't received my copy although I imagine it is in the mail. 

I thought I'd wrap up with a list of potential lists. Below are four topics (each with a dozen or more titles related to it) which I hope to get around to reading in the relative near future: 

• Economics and Utopia (currently working on, to be finished this year)
• Finnegans Wake (next year begin lightly and intensify later)
• Language, Philosophy, and Philology (or, the difficulty of creating a system): Wittgenstein, Laura Riding, Sellars, Pierce, Hans Blumenberg (perhaps next year?)
• American Literature (in a few years)

Month in Review: May

Books Read:

Dashiell Hammett, The Maltese Falcon
Ada Palmer, The Will to Battle
David B., Epileptic

TV and Movies:

Game of Thrones, Season 8
Infinity War
End Game

A busy month. I was having much car troubles leading eventually to the buying of a new car. Add home repairs on top of that (built a new shed in the backyard). Two trips to Michigan, one when my grandmother was put in the ICU after coming down with several severe infections and then a few weeks later for her funeral. And yet, as trying as these things were, I still feel embarassed by how little I've accomplished. I did have several important ideas, in fact, I probably had more important ideas for my story this month then at any point all year.

Grandmom's Funeral

I got a call last night (June 6) from my mom letting me know that my grandmother, Dolores Naggie, died, after having been in the ICU for over 3 weeks, most of the time on a ventilator and feeding tube. I had gone out two weeks ago and spent three days with her. The ventilator prevented her from speaking, so I spent the time there holding her hand.

I first went out to visit her Monday, May 27. She had been admitted to the hospital the previous Sunday (May 19). On Tuesday (May 21) they discovered several infections. I believe they put her on life support on Wednesday (May 22) and a social worker came to speak with my family on Thursday (May 23). I went to see her on Monday (May 27) and everyone told me she was looking much better. On Tuesday (May 28) morning they took out the ventilator and she was able to say a few words with difficulty. She said she loved me. Apparently my Aunt Kathy came early Wednesday (May 29) and spent a lot of time with her. By the time we arrived she was exhausted and slept for most of the visit.

I just got off work and need to quickly shower, dress, and pack before heading to the airport. This post was written in part as an excuse for my delayed reflections on last month, which I'll write when I return.