This week's written snapshots.
ipad
The boy is notorious at not doing his part of cleaning up. One Sunday, the girl figured out a hack, enticing him to help. They took videos of each other cleaning up — and played it backwards on the iPad to great hilarity. Viola! A clean playroom!
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Our daughter had jaundice that kept us in the hospital an extra night after her birth.
Late into that third night, I walked around the ward in a sleep deprived haze. I suddenly realized that my parents were just making shit up as they went. I also realized that this was now my fate for the coming decades.
Maybe some parents know the answers; do they figure it out after the 3rd or fourth kid?
But I ain’t got no epiphany to share after almost ten years in this parenting game.
I’d love to think that I might have something to do with raising them right. But I suspect that our main job is to avoid traumatizing them and to avoid spoiling them. And to share cool stuff along the way.
Between those two wide bounds with that fuzzy directive, I wonder if we actually exert all that much influence over our kids.
Who knows, I’ve been making shit up all along the way.
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06 Jan 2024
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Forty Years Animated
We have limited screen time for the kids, and they have been spending it slowly working through all the free episodes on Pokemon TV. I’m very close to canceling our Disney+ subscription, but here are some goodies from the past few few months.
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Elementals, Peter Sohn, 2023
- Another forgettable Pixar movie. Two months after watching it with the kids, I remember almost nothing from the film.
- But the visuals are cool.
- All I remember are everyone else’s opinions — the overblown negative commentary when it came out, the reaction that it’s actually good, and my kids enjoyment.
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Spirited Away, Hayao Miyazaki, 2001
- The train scene is one of my favorite moments in film. Beautiful, slow paced, fully earned.
- My personal preference still lies with Isao Takahata (My Neighbors the Yamadas and Pom Poko) and Whisper of the Heart (Yomshifumi Kondo, 1995), but this movie is the Ghibli masterpiece. So good that Mama and I talked about watching movies together as a family more often.
- Over the years, I had developed a silly notion that Spirited Away is ponderous. It is slower than blame western animation’s junk food freneticism, but it earns every minute. Each frame is gorgeous and no time is wasted. It’s paced perfectly.
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The Nightmare Before Christmas, Henry Selick, Tim Burton, Danny Elfman, 1993
- Watched it again for Halloween, I suspect this will be a annual tradition.
- Music, visuals, and story all still great.
- Last year, I suddenly noticed Mr. Burton’s cuddly spookiness everywhere. I wonder what it feels like to be an artist who has visually conquered a holiday.
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Mickey’s Christmas Carol, Burney Mattinson, 1983
- As I remembered it from growing up. Fun like The Muppet’s Christmas Carol, but shorter. But we haven’t found our Christmas movie yet.
- The boy kept counting how many ghosts were in the movie.
- The Scots got a bad rap in this film.
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colors
sing
lines
dance
animate
worlds
breathe
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03 Jan 2024
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happy 2024
from Mickey “Fu Manchu” Mouse!
I was toying with the idea celebrating the release (finally!!) of Mickey Mouse into Public Domain.
Then
Elliot Lessing beat me to the punch by a few hours so I had to do it.
But as a compliant citizen of these United States, I’ve embargoed this painstaking painful rendering from public consumption until 12:01 AM, Pacific Standard Time.
If you want to see a fun video on the subject, check out Jake’s analysis on the Corridor Crew.
To get political for a moment (before things get really political this year), I can’t help but rue the opportunity cost of coddling Disney over the past four decades. We can’t see what didn’t happen, but I suspect that our artistic cultural malaise is partly due to giving mega-corps an extended monopoly to milk their cultural content when they should have been inventing new properties (like a Chibi Mannequin) to opiate the masses.
Then again, if I’ve learned anything from foreign cinema, the machine always wins. <Insert commentary on late stage capitalism and neo-liberalism>
Oh well, AI will solve all our problems.
Prompt: Mickey Mouse as Steamboat Willie with a Fu Manchu moustache to hide mistaken shading during the initial drawing. Style to be fountain pen with purple ink on a lined notebook. Add handwritten calligraphy to celebrate the New Year in Gothic blackletter and label the drawing with cramped Uncial.
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(The kids thought the first drawing’s head was a bit small so I gave the people what they wanted)
01 Jan 2024
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2023 Retrospective & 2024 Prospective
I’m trying a new format where I just comment on things with three bullet points. Hopefully it will help me blow through the backlog of old blog drafts. Thought I’d try it out by looking at the year in review and the year to come.
But you must read Andrei Atanasov’s No. 26 – Dancing In A Supermarket first! I don’t care if you make it back.
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2023
My theme this year was “catching up”. I feel like I did just OK with the theme, but the more that I think about it, it was an eventful year as we started re-integrated back into society despite our pandemic caution.
Highlights
- Buying a House
- Visiting San Diego (twice!)
- Two great architects joined the Division
Hobbies
- Reading — Homer and Tarot
- Substack — finding fellow wanderers on Notes
- Fountain Pens — Sketching and Calligraphy
Lowlights
- Getting the house ready for move-in, renovations are still miserable.
- Didn’t exercise nor eat well enough, gained weight.
- Distractions, unfocused focused, especially the second half of this year.
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a year
a life
goodbye
tomorrow
smiles and
sorrow
hello
When calligraphing, I have to be completely focused. This morning I chose John Coltrane’s Giant Steps instead of the usual Chicken and Dumplin’s by Bobby Timmons. That slight change was enough to add an extra O to the page. Fortunately, the early mistake kept me ultra-concentrated for the rest of the exercise.
It’s been twenty years since hand drafting at the ground floor of Ron Bogley’s house. Small residential doesn’t pay well, but it was the most fun I’ve had as an architect. Graphite on vellum is a lot more forgiving so I would listen to the baseball games as I lettered.
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2024
My theme for next year is “settling in”. For the new house and everywhere else. The first half of the year will be a mess between the house and the biennial cycle for my government job. Hopefully the second half will be a time of customizing the home to fit our needs, it’s been a decade of always thinking we’re moving soon.
Settling In
- At the new House
- Returning to the Office (again)
- Digital Places and Processes
Practices
- Sketching and Calligraphy
- Exercising
- Reading my repeating “little library” and pushing forward on the classics
Tiny Targets (and goals)
- Three deep breaths on a yoga mat every morning. (I’d love to do the 8 Brocades three times a week, but I’ll start tiny.)
- Sit down and say a small mantra before eating anything, including snacks. (The big goal is to lose a couple of pounds a month, but the numerical goal failed spectacularly last year. Maybe instilling a mindfulness practice is the first step in the process.)
- Do something with a pen every morning (It would be nice to finish my OPM Letters and clear out my pile of read books to be blogged.)
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new book
new year
new month
new week
new day
Foundational Hand
new font
I wrote this on 12/26 with a new-to-me font from The Art of Calligraphy by David Harris. I messed up the word order on the last line (working from bottom up) and kept it for the rest of the poem. But it sounds wrong so I went back to the original wording in the light blue scribbles.
I’m not sure if I will stick with Foundational Hand for a long period (as I did with Uncial) but I’ll give it at least a week before exploring other fonts.
This morning habit of writing a tiny poem for calligraphy practice has a highlight of this season to close out the year. Thanks to Beth Kempton and Nadia Gerassimenko for catalyzing the #tinypoem project! I just got Mary Oliver’s A Poetry Handbook — hopefully her wisdom will help me write gooder before I start publishing them in earnest.
On to another 366 days of discovery in 2024!
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01 Jan 2024
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Thanks for reading!
Justus