...UNDER CONSTRUCTION...
(As of May, 2024)
This here site won't be done until I'm ready to publish my novel, a dramatic comedy about an introverted artist who quits his life on 21st century Earth to travel to a distant star system where he learns to see through alien eyes. In the meantime, although the entirely prose novel ain't illustrated, I am a visual thinker, so the walls of my apartment are covered with the illustrated notes I made during the writing process, and I thought I'd share some of them notes here:
The above schematic is a bird's-eye view of the alien statues in the yard behind J.R.'s house. I briefly mentioned J.R. in my id-blog when I wrote about my first picture book and novel. So if you've read that blog entry you might remember that he's a pale, four-foot tall, pot-bellied alien with an unusually long and pointed head.
I'll put a picture of him on here eventually. Until then, I thought it'd be funny to compare my crazy-lookin' notes to someone else's:
Looks to me like the above notes are just about the same-exact aspect ratio and everything. Although I don't know what they're about, 'cause I can't read da Vinci's handwriting any better than you can read mine. And even if I could, I'd probably need a mirror to do it, because old Leonardo wrote backwards (I think this here set of notes may even be upside-down).
Maybe you can figure it out. But if you want to get back to reading regular words, you just follow this here link to my first homepage.
...A Wider View...
(As of June, 2024)
Still ain't ready to publish the novel. It's technically done in that the chapters are all written, and the story has a beginning, middle, and end. But the endeavor of self publishing and promoting my picture books is something I'm still learning from. So, while the learning process continues, I thought I'd put a few more pictures of my crazy notes online, beginning with this here:
This here picture was taken in my living room. And as you can see, I lead a very minimalist lifestyle. I have almost no furniture, no pictures of family or friends, and no art on the walls other than my own.
100% of the artwork pictured was done for the novel, and it's all been laid out from start to finish as a kind of timeline:
The pictures ain't high quality, and I don't expect nobody to glean any detail from looking at my notes at this distance. But the novel's been the most important thing in the world to me for several years, and, in the off chance that a wider view might provide some future insight, notes on my walls are meant to be read from right to left. The notes above are relevant to chapters 06-12, and the notes below are relevant to chapters 12-15:
If you look very carefully at the letter-sized sheet of paper beneath the circular rainbow, you'll see the previously mentioned draft of alien statues in J.R.'s backyard. The colorful figures below that are closeups of some of them aliens, who, collectively, represent the cast of characters and creatures in a fictional alien myth:
Moving to the left, the notes become relevant to chapters 15-20, and although many of the figures remain alien, the aesthetics become relevant to an extinct culture of South American Indians who were known as the Selk'nam:
Again, moving from right to left, the notes become relevant to chapters 20-23. In the real world, I spent some of that time working in a factory that produced pasta, and many of the notes were scribbled on company stationary and/or product labels. The company's colors were relentlessly red, black, and white, and low-level workers like me spent all day everyday wearing white uniforms, in a white room, surrounded by metallic-gray machinery. That's when my interest in rainbows as a symbolic motif really began, and the interest became so consuming that I would later rewrite previous chapters to incorporate it. Ultimately deciding to use rainbows and light as the basis for the aliens' fictional religion:
Around the corner, we see chapters 24 and 25. For personal reasons, these were among the most difficult chapters to write, and I've returned to them many times to make rewrites and additions:
Moving around another corner, we see chapters 26 and 27. The weird light in the picture's right-hand side is coming from my bedroom, where my desk and laptop are surrounded by red, green, and violet lights. Sometimes the violet bulb is replaced by a black-light bulb to represent ultraviolet, and sometimes the red bulb is replaced by a heat-lamp bulb to represent infrared. But the green bulb is always the same, representing visible green:
Still moving to the left, we see notes for chapters 28 and 29. The poster-sized piece of paper again depicts characters from the alien myth, and I'll have to post closeups of them characters at a later date. But the barely visible schematic on the letter-sized piece of paper above the dancing figures is what was most relevant to the two chapters. It's an exploded view of a rainbow-colored house:
And these here are my notes on the final chapter, seen in normal, visible light. But by this time my obsession with rainbows and full-spectrum lighting had become fully developed, so I was taking notes and coloring them with pigments that are better viewed in alternative light. And, just for fun, I took the following picture a few days later:
And this here's a closeup:
And, if I manage to live that long, this here's a normal-lighting view of some of my notes for the novel's sequel:
...J.R., As Promised...
(As of July, 2024)
I started this here blog with a schematic of a J.R.'s house and backyard, then promised to post a picture of the man himself (or alien himself) latter. And here it is, the very first picture of J.R. that I ever drew:
I know it ain't the greatest drawing you ever seen, but I had to start somewhere. And remember: the novel ain't illustrated, so this ain't technically an illustration... it's a note... something I scribbled on the back of a piece of register paper when I should've been paying attention at some job I hated.
I don't know why I did it, but I guess the answer has something to do with why anybody makes any kind of art. Sometimes you just get an idea for something and then you just gotta make it real any way you can. Having a picture to look at helped, but I made J.R. and his whole world real by writing.
The interesting thing is that as I wrote, the pictures changed. I can't post them all online, otherwise it might reveal too much of the story, but I can share a few. This here's another one:
This here was drawn on the back of an old envelope. It was done pretty early in the writing process, so I guess I was still trying to make J.R. real with pictures rather than prose... thus the slightly more realistic facial features. But what's interesting about looking through my old notes now is that I don't seem to have ever drawn J.R. in the same way twice. And I guess that's because I kept seeing something new in him every time. This here's another picture:
I don't why, but it's always been one of my favorites. He's sad in the picture, but he's almost smiling, and I didn't draw him smiling too often. He spends most of his time getting riled up, and it's funny when he is does, but I put a smile on him once in a while:
He should've been smiling in the picture below. But I drew the picture before I wrote the chapter... then I rewrote the chapter, then rewrote it again:
It ain't obvious, but some of the stripes on J.R.'s costume were colored with sparkling-yellow, i.e., gold ink. Others were colored in fluorescent-yellow, meaning that they appear to glow under a black light.
Again, I can't get into too much detail without giving away too much of the story, but I'm sure I've mentioned that most of the novel's characters are alien, and that I used rainbows and light as the basis for the aliens' fictional religion. So this here's another picture of J.R., standing in a doorway between two alien goddesses:
I don't think the picture reveals too much, because I was still coming up with the alien religion at the time. So I wasn't sure what ideas to keep and what to throw out... I reckon the idea what's real important is the linear expression of a full-spectrum rainbow... it just sucks that truly sparkling/fluorescent colors don't show up too good on screens, because if they did you'd see that I was using sparkling, normal, and fluorescent-colored pens to represent the infrared, vivid, and ultraviolet spectra.
I would've liked to use more colors to represent x-ray, gamma, microwave, and radio... but it's hard to find good pens cheap, and I already spent a bunch of time and money on the pens I got.
...More Characters...
(As of August, 2024)
Since I put a few pictures of J.R. online, I reckon I oughta talk about some of the novel's other characters. And since most them are aliens, I reckon that means I'll be talking about aliens most of the time. This here's a picture of the next alien that I drew a picture of:
And, in case it ain't obvious, her name's Chanda.
Chanda is a Hindi name that means moon, fierce, and/or passionate. I gave all the aliens Hindi names because East Indian language and culture is about as alien to Western culture as it gets here on Earth. And the whole point of Chanda's character in the novel was to give me someone to write about that was alien from myself.
What do I mean by that? I mean that in real life my motivations have always been internal. I never did care too much for other people, so I never bothered too much to think about them. But everyone ain't like me, and Chanda definitely ain't, because her motivations are external... meaning that she cares about what other people think and feel, and about how she's seen by them.
This here's another picture:
Again, it's difficult to tell because my scanner don't pick it up too good, but the circular rainbow in the background is composed of mostly sparkling colors. And I used a sparkling ruby-red for Chanda's eyeshadow and matching lipstick. The full explanation of why is pretty long, but the short version is that I put spectra like gamma, x-ray, and ultraviolet on the circle's inside, the visible or vivid spectrum in the middle, then the infrared, microwave, and radio spectra on the outside. Outside is just another way of saying external, and since I used sparking colors to represent those external spectra, sparkling colors described on certain characters were a sign that they were externally motivated.
It ain't too complicated, but the above picture does reveal something else... did you notice that the words burnin' love and we fade to grey have little musical notes around them? That's because the book has a soundtrack.
For legal reasons, I couldn't include as many lyrics as I wanted to. But I could include the song titles, or just write what the music itself inspired. Fade To Grey is a song performed by a British synth-pop band called Visage, and Burning Love is a song performed by Elvis. Fade To Grey never made it into the book, but Chanda dances to the tune of Burning Love in one my favorite chapters. This here's a picture I drew of that dance before rewriting it, over and over, until it became epic:
And this here's another picture, inspired by another Elvis tune, that helped me write another chapter in which Chanda plays a pivotal role:
But Chanda ain't the only character I wanted to talk about in this here blog entry. When I included pictures of J.R. in the previous entry, one of them pictures included a character named Hansa. That was drawn on notes for some of the book's final chapters, but this here's one that was drawn on notes for some of the book's first:
Hansa is another Hindi name. Different resources spell it differently, so I ain't got no idea whether I spelled it right. But I liked it because it's the name of the swan ridden by the Hindu god Brahma, and because it means swan.
The Hindi meaning never had any special significance in the book, unless you think outside the box to include the story of the ugly duckling (who turned out to be a swan) from Western culture. But it's interesting to go through these old notes now that I've spent so much time blogging about other things on other platforms, because when I went looking for pictures of Hansa on my wall, I noticed that I didn't have too many. And the ones I did have were all too integral to the plot to put online. I guess that's because Hansa is internally motivated (like me), so I wasn't concerned so much with how she looked as I was with how she felt.
There are music-related notes on this picture too. I don't remember why, but I wanted to write something that was like the Lullaby scene from Shock Treatment (the sequel to The Rocky Horror Picture Show), and the song I finally chose to go with it was It's Wings That Make Birds Fly, by Jeannie C. Riley.
And this here's the only other picture of Hansa I thought it'd be safe to share:
It doesn't reveal too much. Just the fact that I can get obsessed with the tiniest detail. The square shapes that probably make no sense to you are different views of Hansa's quarters on an alien starship. It was just easier for me to describe her quarters and to return to that description if I had some visual reference.
...UPSIDE DOWN...
(As of September, 2024)
In a different blog entry, I wrote briefly about my interest in Tarot, something called The Fool's Journey, and about how although my novel began as a short story based on fantasy fulfillment, writing it turned into my own road toward personal enlightenment. I also mentioned that I'd be continuing to update this here blog while continuing to explore the novel's themes in real life. And that brings me to this:
I know my handwriting is just about impossible to read, but, just to be on the safe side, I blurred some text out of the above picture anyway. I can't get into too much detail about the monkey, but I can say that at some point in the novel, one of the characters is exposed to a similar image. And that that image is meant to be a symbol for this here:
The Hanged Man ain't got nothing to do with someone getting hanged. He ain't hanging from a gallows, and if you look close, you'll see that he ain't even hanging from his neck. I'm tempted to say that it's more like he's just hanging out, but what he's really doing is looking at the world from a different perspective.
My novel's all about perspective, because it's easy for me to see things from my own, but it's hard as hell to see things from someone else's
It wouldn't be half as hard if everyone thought the same way or held the same beliefs. But that's not how things work, and I hope it never is. Because I don't reckon everyone oughta think the same way.
So I reckon that the biggest challenge in life ain't figuring out how to get everyone to think like you or to even agree with you. In fact, the way I see it, not everyone has to like you, tolerate you, or even empathize with you. But if you can really start to see things from somebody else's point of view, then you can really start to see more things than you ever imagined.
I just spent the last few weeks writing and illustrating something that had nothing to do with my novel and nothing to do with me. I don't know if I did a good job of seeing from the perspective of the person it did have to do with, but I sure as hell tried, and the experience was so far out that it was almost spiritual.
...A Wider View, Reconsidered...
(As of October, 2024)
In a previous blog entry, I shared some pictures of the crazy-lookin' notes that are allover my apartment walls. And that set of pictures ended where them old notes ended: with a few roughly sketched-out ideas for a sequel to the novel I finished about a year ago. Much of what I've done since has been working toward that first novel's publication, but the pursuit of that goal meant taking more notes. And, since I ain't got no place else to put 'em, them new notes wound up getting taped to them same old walls:
So I was taking some more pictures, fixin' to share 'em on this here blog, when it occurred to me that I ain't done taken notes yet. And since I'm just about out of room on the wall pictured above, the only only place left to go is around the corner. And since the thought of turning a corner struck me as proverbial, I thought I'd take a picture of the corner I had to turn:
There ain't much to look at around that corner, just a pile of old shoes, some firewood, and a chair. But after thinking about it, I couldn't help but think twice about the map on the wall above the chair:
It's a map of the world.
I don't use it for much. But I like to look at it once in a while when I'm lying on the couch and checking news headlines on my phone.
I always start with a Google search: Portland Oregon news. Then I type in Seattle news, Vancouver BC news, Toronto, etc., until I've looked at all the major cities around North America. Then looking at the map sometimes helps me to remember to look at news around the globe. So I might type in, London news, or Delhi, or Melbourne, or even Antarctica (just to see if there's anything interesting going on with all them scientists poking holes in all them glaciers). But after doing that enough times, I guess I started remembering the names of cities and places, because I reckon I don't need to look at the map too much no more.
So I was fixin' to take it down, to make room for more notes, when I remembered something I wrote about in my id blog: The World card in the Tarot deck:
Funny thing is, there ain't no actual picture of the world on that card. And what's even funnier is that I never thought I'd take enough notes to get around that corner, so I never thought of that map as being a part of them. But I think differently now.
When I realized that the point of my first novel was to write about a character who achieves personal enlightenment, I also realized that I don't exactly know what enlightenment is. So, since I didn't want to just make something up, I decided that the key to the novel's main character would be that although he can see enlightenment, he couldn't quite reach it. And that's where I feel like I am now in real life., i.e., I can see where I'm going but I don't exactly know how I'll get there, or what I'll find there when I do. But I do know that I ain't the only person in this here journey of life who's had trouble seeing through other people's eyes.
I spent a few weeks last month trying to see through the eyes of a fellow author, and I'm spending six-whole weeks of the Halloween season trying to see through another's. It's been fun, but its near midnight on the 31st, and now that I'm thinking about November 1st, AKA Dia de los Muertos, AKA the Mexican Day Of The Dead, I reckon it's time I considered another card from the Tarot:
Don't worry. The Death card may mean something bad when it pops up in most horror movies, but in The Fool's Journey it just means a new beginning. I don't know what it's a beginning to, but I've decided not to take down the aforementioned map:
I just figured I'd scoot it on over a bit and see what happens.
...Happy Thanksgiving...
(As of November, 2024)
My six-week-long Halloween experiment is over. The goal was to spend the season immersing myself in perceptions other than my own, and if I thought my world was upside down before, then I can safely say that it's topsy-turvy right about now... but maybe that's a good thing?
Before blogging, I spent so much time and so much energy thinking about nothing but my novel that I reckon it just got way too easy for me to forget about everything else. All I can say after having begun blogging is that the world is a much bigger place when you're aware that there are other folks in it. And I reckon I'm going to spend more time focusing on other folks' ideas just to give my id-weary brain some other kind of mental exercise.
In the meantime, the onset of November meant dealing with a different kind of issue. And since that issue was close to home, I figured I'd share it here: IT GOT COLD!
The heat in my apartment building must work differently than in most, because I can't imagine most architects making the same mistake; i.e., although the building does have an excellent central heating system, the one thermostat that controls it is in a person's apartment, and that person has no idea that when they turn the heat off at night, or before going out for the day (or before going away for a few days), everyone else's apartment gets freezing effing cold.
To make matters worse, even though I've figured out where the thermostat is, I don't know if I can tell the person whose apartment it's in that they control everyone else's heat. Because I can imagine if I were that person and one of my neighbors came knocking at my door to tell me that, "It's not your thermostat; it's ours."
I might get pretty riled up after being confronted with the fact that what I once imagined was the privilege of turning the heat up or down every time I personally felt hot or cold was now a responsibility to a community that I never agreed to take on.
So I thought about putting the burden of informing the thermostat's controller into the hands of the community, but then I thought, "I'd go crazy if I had everyone in my building constantly knocking at my door to ask if I could fix the heat." And I reckon that's why my landlord ain't told nobody neither, because the whole situation ain't no good no matter how you slice it.
So I came up with a different solution:
The above image is a picture of the furnace's new emergency on/off switch. I installed it in my apartment after sneaking down to the building's basement one night so's I could run a length of wire from the furnace's control module into my kitchen window. The switch itself is factory spec, but it's only held onto my kitchen wall via duct tape, pushpins, and wine corks. It ain't pretty, and it sure as heck ain't up to code, but it works... or should I say, worked?
The only problem was that in order to make it work, I had to keep getting up from whatever else I was doing to turn it on. Then, when the apartment got warm, I had to get up again to turn it off, then again to turn it on when it got cold again, then again to turn it off, and so on. That got old after a few weeks. So I started thinking about buying a real thermostat, but most of them require their own electricity, and I ain't a skilled enough electrician to wire that up, so then I started thinking about other options. And, after having already stolen an old light switch and a length of wire from my building's basement, the option that made similar sense was to steal an old space heater from a box of heaters left behind by previous residents.
Why? Because stealing is a lot less expensive than buying, and space heaters come equipped with temperature-sensitive on/off switches. Take a look:
And this here's a closer look at the part in question, the white and copper-colored thing with wires coming out of it seen in the upper right-hand corner of the image below:
I ain't no physicist, but I weren't building no nuclear power plant neither. So all I needed to know about the stolen heater's on/off switch was that it works thanks to a very simple physical principle: when the copper gets warm, the metal expands and the switch turns off. When it cools down, the metal contracts and the switch turns on. It's designed to work inside a heater, so I reckoned I oughta put it as close as possible to the heating vent in my kitchen. I didn't wire anything up at first, but I did tape my wires into place while testing the sensitivity of the switch:
And when that location proved to be ineffectual, I set up something else in the cupboard across from the vent:
And this here's a closeup of that, with the switch mounted on an old wine bottle and the inclusion of curved aluminum sections from an old beer can (added as a kind of parabolic reflector) to help focus the heat onto it:
But that location weren't no good neither, because the warm air coming out of the vent don't blow straight forward. So I finally had to dig an old box out of my building's recycle bin to set the wine bottle onto it so's the copper switch could be right in the way of the heat:
It wasn't very ergonomic, but once I could see that the copper switch was turning off and on the way I wanted it to, I rewired my previous on/off switch to incorporate the new temperature-sensitive one:
Then I ran the appropriate wires along my cupboards, across the area below my kitchen sink, and over to the wine bottle atop the old box. Then it was just a question of scooting the box back and forth (i.e., closer to and further away from the vent) to figure out the optimum place to keep it:
After a few days of scooting, I finally got it to a place where I could leave it alone, i.e., when the original on/off switch is engaged, the copper switch turns the building's heat on for about 35 minutes and off for about 20. And that meant that (when the person who controls the building's up-to-code thermostat is asleep or gone) the rest of the building's residents could rest easy without freezing. And I could enjoy my Thanksgiving dinner:
It didn't look like much to start with. But it got better:
And I was real thankful for it when I sat down in front of my computer (in my nice warm bedroom) to watch the 1987 classic, Planes, Trains & Automobiles on Thanksgiving Day:
I just wish I hadn't had dinner alone.
...Alone...
(As of March, 2025)
Thanksgiving was followed by Christmas, and Christmas was followed by New Year's Eve, and New Year's Eve was followed by the inauguration of a new U.S. president. And, because I was all alone on all of them occasions, I got to thinking, "Why am I alone?"
If you've read any of my id blog, you'll know that I ain't exactly been happy with living in Portland since moving here. But I don't know if the city's the problem.
What I do know is that although the notes and doodles on my apartment walls are subject to editing and rearrangement, overall they compose a kind of timeline, and maybe even a kind of journal. So I been looking at one section in particular, the one I described in the part of this here journal that you can see in the entry entitled, A Wider View. And I wanna show you some close ups of notes taken while I worked at the pasta factory mentioned in that entry, beginning with this:
This was scribbled on one of the company's labels. And don't worry if you can't read none of my crazy handwriting, because I can't hardly read it neither, but it looks like I was drawing a picture of my novel's main character, Bernie, pushing a cart the hard way on one side, and a picture of an alien pushing a cart the easy way on the other. This here's another picture:
It was drawn several weeks (if not several months) after I quit the factory and had taken a job working in a restaurant. The restaurant was different, but just as miserable, so I started incorporating some of the restaurant experiences into what I was writing, and the fictional factory in my novel started taking shape. Just for kicks, this here's a picture of a female alien factory worker that was based on one of the female human servers in the nonfictional restaurant:
But what I really wanted to show you was this here:
It's one of several (very) rough diagrams I drew while still working at the factory. It shows a bird's-eye view of a workstation I occasionally shared with someone who always worked slow, and the whole point of drawing it was to rethink it, i.e., to re-imagine the station's layout so it'd be more efficient and the work could get done faster. It didn't matter which station I was on, I always found something wrong, and could always think up some way of making improvements. But after a while, I noticed that I was the only one of the factory's workers who ever seemed interested in improvements, and that no matter what I did to make things go easier and/or faster, the other workers all seemed to resist that change. So I stopped trying after a while, but I never stopped thinking, and never stopped doodling.
This here's another doodle, made recently in preparation for a completely different project:
All it shows is the basic formula I use for choosing what to watch on TV.
It ain't too complicated, but I managed to get the formula published in an online science-fiction magazine called Dark Worlds Quarterly, and if you wanna know more about it just follow this here link to read the first in a trilogy of articles providing lists of steampunk and atompunk-related TV and movies. But the point of mentioning it in this here blog is to make it clear that, regardless of the task, I can't seem to help but thinking about it. And I think that's why I'm so lonesome, because whatever it is that I'm thinking must be different from whatever it is that most folks is.
I reckon most creative types have the same problem.
I also reckon that what sets some creative types apart from others is whether they can A) figure that out, and B) figure out what to do about it.
Writing is an act of creativity, and an old editor of mine once made it plain that it was my way of trying to connect to other people. But what I've been figuring out lately is that connecting ain't just about sharing what's on my mind.
A successful writer has to make an effort to connect to an audience by figuring out what's on the minds of its various members, and making that effort ain't just about success in writing, it's also about having someone to eat Thanksgiving dinner with, someone to watch the inauguration with, and someone to help you with seeing things from a different perspective, because when the only perspective you got is your own, you probably ain't seeing the whole world.
Any way, I'm glad to be writing for Dark Worlds Quarterly because it feels good to be writing something that ain't got nothing to do with my novel. I'm also glad to be getting into steampunk and atompunk because it's something I can talk about and share with other people. And I'm especially glad for other people's opinions on them subjects when they share something I never knew nor even thought about. So I been watching a lot of atompunk TV and I reckon I got me some more to go:
Then I'll talk to some people about it, and then I'll write about.
And I genuinely hope that the people I get to talk to enjoy what I write.
...Not As Alone As I Thought...
(As of April, 2025)
This here is a picture of the notes around my desk, illuminated by red, green, and violet lights:
Truth is, the lights and notes change all the time. In a previous entry, I only showed two kinds of colored lights around my desk. And although them two were essential in my novel, the symbolism just ain't complete without the green. I like using the red, green, and violet lights to help put me into a specific state of mind, but this here's a close up of one of the notes, written in an alternate state of mind:
I make a lot of notes, and, for the benefit of folks who can't read them, the first part of the note pictured above goes something like, "Take pictures (at night) of lights on people's porches... on the way to The Plaid."
The Plaid is short for The Plaid Pantry... that's the name of a chain of minimarts here in Portland. I been on a crazy reverse sleeping schedule for a while now (i.e., asleep during the day and awake at night) but since The Plaid is open 24/7, that's where I been riding my bike to get beer and burritos. One night, I started noticing these here lights mounted in the trees outside someone's house along the way:
I'm usually so focused on whatever it is that I'm doing that nothing else seems to matter. So I must've passed them lights a hundred times before realizing that they were something special because the second part of the aforementioned note reads, "I'm not alone in my appreciation of weird light."
The pictures are proof. Granted, I don't know the folks inside the houses I took pictures of, but it's still nice to know that there are like-minded folks out there somewhere. This here's another picture, of another set of like-minded lights:
The light on the porch is red, but what I really like about the house is that the light on the inside is indigo. Indigo light is cool because it accentuates fluorescent colors better than some blacklights, so I imagine the folks inside the house pictured above might enjoy blacklight posters and/or other fluorescent goodies, but the next picture shows a house with a porch illuminated by just red:
Different kinds of color can have different kinds of psychological affects, and red can make some folks feel anxious, angry, or even hungry. So I don't know what the folks in this house were thinking when they decided to use it for their porch, but, since I took several pictures of red lights on porches, I know they weren't the only ones thinking it. I also know that some folks prefer orange:
And that although orange can make some folks horny, there are still some other folks who prefer yellow:
I've heard that yellow can make a person happy. So it's a wonder why I don't see more yellow lights at night. But I found plenty of green:
I like green. Some folks say that it's supposed to help them feel calm, but what I like about it is that it too can have an accentuating effect on certain colors. It don't make all the fluorescent colors stand out, but it works just fine on fluorescent-pink, red, and orange. And I actually took advantage of that knowledge when coloring a recent illustration. But this here's another special color, cyan:
I unfortunately don't have a cyan-colored light, and most psychologists seem to lump cyan in with indigo, calling them both "blue." So I don't know how it affects people, but I do know that cyan is as different from indigo as yellow is from orange. This here's a real indigo light for comparison:
And this here's a set of violet lights that I took a picture of one night when it was raining:
The alien culture I created for the novel uses the full, ultraviolet spectrum as a symbol for the inner-most self. And if you're still wondering about the rainbows at the top of this here website, that's all they are... a reference to a rainbow that includes the visible and invisible spectra. And, for the benefit of folks who don't feel like scrolling up to see it, this here's a picture of it on the laptop on my desk as it looks today:
I guess you'd have to zoom in to see it. But as stated in a previous entry, the short version of the rainbow's symbolism is that I put invisible spectra like gamma, x-ray, and ultraviolet on the circle's inside, the visible or vivid spectrum in the middle, then the infrared, microwave, and radio spectra on the outside. Again, outside is just another way of saying external, and, in an effort to get back to sanity, I been switching my sleep schedule back to something normal, as well as using colored lights like yellow, orange, and red to help to put me into a more external state of mind.
It's working.
...An Alien Myth...
(As of July, 2025)
The very first picture I shared in this here blog was a schematic showing a circle of alien statues in the yard behind J.R.'s house. And in the entry entitled "A Wider View" I mentioned that them aliens made up the cast of characters and creatures from a fictional alien myth. I then promised to post closeups of them characters at a later date, and this here's the first:
That's how the picture looks on my wall, but this here's how it looked in my head at the time I drew it:
Describing the figures from left to right (while ignoring the birds and the two African-looking fetishes at the bottom), the picture shows The Blind Ogress, a male makara-goblin soldier/flag-bearer, a female makara goblin named General M., The Idiot Son, and another female makara goblin. They ain't exactly villains, but they are obstacles for the myth's two protagonists: a brother and sister pair of baby aliens who's appearance was inspired by the Atacama Humanoid.
Other characters in the myth include The Fool, The Peerless Warrior, The Mermaid, The Old Sorcerer, The Scarecrow, and The Black And White Witch. This here's a picture of The Scarecrow dancing with The Black And White Witch:
Truth be told, I never did write the whole myth. I spent so much time writing and obsessing over every little detail in the novel that it was nice to include something bigger than me. So, although the myth's characters are mentioned in the novel several times, the myth itself was only really meant to add supportive detail for J.R.'s background story.
I've changed some of the details in my mind since these here illustrations were first drawn. And, if I ever have the opportunity, I'd love to get the whole myth down on paper as a finished picture book. In the meantime, this here's another character: a mythical alien creature that I called The Hairy Chicken:
My study of human mythology ain't nearly as in depth (or scholarly) as someone like Joseph Campbell's, but if I had to fit The Hairy Chicken into what some folks call the monomyth, I'd say she's a "loyal" or "animal companion" for the two Baby Heroes.
I reckon the best way to learn about The Baby Heroes would be to read the novel. But if you'd like to learn more about the myth, I do a better job of explaining it on my DeviantArt blog. Just follow this here link and it oughta take you straight to it.
...A New World Part 01...
(As of October, 2025)
After rereading a previous entry, I decided that I really oughta have something on my living room walls besides my own art and crazy-looking notes. So, while scrounging up a few doodads from other folks' garbage, I picked up a few paintings:
They ain't exactly da Vincis, but I love each and every one of them, and there's one in particular that got me to thinking. This here's a close-up:
It's just a bunch of stars. But the more I kept looking at them, the more I kept thinking about how many stars there were and how they all fit together. And since I ain't never been no good at math, the easiest way for me to do that kind of thinking was to do it visually. So I went out and bought me some construction paper:
Then I started cutting:
And this here's a close-up:
Then I taped them cuttings to the wall and let them sit for a spell:
My construction paper cuttings weren't much, but they were fun to make, and I was proud of them. So I decided to try making more art, and since it was the season, I went out and bought me a plain-white pumpkin intent on decorating it with some psychedelic paint:
And that was loads of fun:
Then I got to talking with the nice gal at the pot store about my artsy/psychedelic Halloween. She wasn't too excited about Halloween, but she sure as hell was excited about art and had loads of ideas about what I could do with my psychedelic paint.
Seeing her excited got me excited. I didn't want to get messy paint everywhere, but I still had a whole mess of clean construction paper, so I started fooling around with it:
All I did was make me a dodecahedron. But it's like it woke up some kind of need, because all I'd been seeing on the way to and from work was cold and wet and ugliness:
With a commute like that, it's no wonder so many folks would rather work from home. But I ain't never been to no college, so my options have always been limited. The dodecahedron weren't expensive or even that fancy, but it were something that made sense... something colorful and logical and pretty that I could have on the inside of my home to counterbalance the insanity and sadness on the outside.
I put it next to some colorful lights (that I'd picked up from someone's curb), on top of a an old nightstand (that I found next to a dumpster), and then I reckoned I oughta buy me some more art-making supplies...
...A New World Part 02...
(As of December, 2025)
The next things I bought were some fluorescent-colored labels and some sparkling-colored paper:
I mixed the colors up some, but if you remember it from this here blog's previous entries, the ancient aliens in my first novel have a religion based on color. And the circular rainbow, showing as many colors from as many different spectra as I could represent, is the symbol of that religion. I put spectra like gamma, x-ray, and ultraviolet on the circle's inside, the visible or vivid spectrum in the middle, then the infrared, microwave, and radio spectra on the outside. Outside is just another way of saying external, and since I used sparking colors to represent the external spectra, the sparkling colors I use in my art are a sign of external motivation.
In the case of the projects seen above, art that's mostly sparkling represents one of the novel's many eyeopening and externally-motivated female characters, i.e., one of my favorite characters who sees things from the perspective of the superego. The mostly fluorescent-colored art represents another of my favorite characters who sees things from the perspective of the id. And I even used some vivid food coloring I found to make Rorschach-style inkblots in honor of another of my favorite characters who sees things from the perspective of the ego in between:
The overall concept is best illustrated as a line. So I used as much paper as I had to make that line above my fireplace:
See? The fluorescent colors of the internally-motivated id are on the right, the sparkling colors of the externally-motivated superego are on the left, and the vivid (construction paper) colors of the balance-motivated ego are smack dab in the middle.
Then I made me a wall fractal:
And then another one:
Then I got real excited and started making more:
And if you can recall the first picture of the previous entry, you might be able to spot yourself some pretty big differences between it and the following:
The most significant being that, in order to make room for the new fractals, I had to take down my old map of the world.
That map had been a pretty significant symbol in my life for a pretty significant period of time. I got me another map since... it rolls up and pulls down so it don't take up any wall space:
But it ain't the new world I'm referring to in this here entry's title.
The new world I'm talking about is something else entirely. Try looking real close at this here fractal:
