GRIZZLY PEAR

written snapshots

Category: Drawings

  • Kinky kangaroos kneaded kaleidoscopic kraken at Kevin’s knockin’ Kitty Klub.

    An outline handsketch of a hand shaping the ASL American manual letter “K”, in red ink on a yellow spiral bound steno notebook.

    My sister and I toyed with this PortaSound PSS-460 as kids.
    The kids now dance to the drum kit (max volume!)

    In between, it sat in our empty house;
    While we stayed with parents when he was born.

    A squatter took over one Thanksgiving —
    A young blond woman with a ponytail.

    She quietly left with her black backpack.
    I found the keyboard on a dresser, plugged in.

    I occasionally wonder about her,
    Plinking tunes on this toy Yamaha over a cold, dark holiday.

    ~

    This memory of everyday magic was sparked by a beautiful poem and rendition by Nadia Gerassimenko.

  • Jaunty jackalopes jumped and jitterbugged between jacarandas in June under Jupiter’s jovial judgement.

    An outline handsketch of a hand shaping the ASL American manual letter “J”, in red ink on a yellow spiral bound steno notebook.

    The kids were intrigued by the lychee shells that mama peeled for an after dinner snack. We filled up a bowl to float little pink boats. A miniature ocean for little folks.

  • Greasy grebes greedily grabbed gilded German gerbils gaudily galloping to glorious Greece.

    An outline handsketch of a hand shaping the ASL American manual letter “G”, in red ink on a yellow spiral bound steno notebook.

    Bear-Bear took a nap in a cozy bed of stuffed slippers with arctic seals and bears in overalls. They novelties came from our cousin in China when they were roped into an ill-fated retail venture. It’s not great to find shoes on your bed (I suspect the boy), but it’s impossible to get peeved over this!

  • Feathery felines followed fluffy flamingos for finding forbidden fluffy fortunes for fleecing fishy ferrets.

    An outline mural of a hand shaping the ASL American manual letter “F”, in yellow chalk on a beige concrete masonry wall, with the boy drawing his own hand on the right side.

    As she was heading to bedtime, the girl handed me Daddy Bear.
    In the morning I found him on the floor next to my bed.
    I tucked him back in bed for extra rest before starting my morning.

  • Each elephant enthusiastically eyed effulgent Easter emu eggs entering ebony Egyptian edifices.

    An outline handsketch of a hand shaping the ASL American manual letter “E”, in red ink on a yellow spiral bound steno notebook.
    A girl crouched in a wildly overgrown lawn with pink weeds all around the edges.

    A desert tigress crouching for prey in the overgrown lawn.

    “They created a wasteland and called it peace” – Calgacus

    A mown lawn with sprinklers running to partially salve the devastation.

  • Dragons dare not dawdle during devilish dances — drunken dervishes desire dramatic delicacies.

    The kids caped up and whirled to programmed songs on the keyboard. After she was dragged off to study Chinese, he ran around the house as a ghost. The beanie-veil combo is a fresh innovation in our house.

  • Blake Street Garage Apartment

    After college, I moved into a small garage apartment. At $450 per month, it was a steal to have my own place, a 168 square foot studio with a free parking spot in the driveway.

    I tried to start a container garden in that driveway. It faced north so nothing survived except onions, but it changed my life one morning by attracting a feral bunny (as I headed out to inquire about an internship at Dwell Magazine). I never saw that little guy again (and Dwell never called back), but the moment of staring deep into the eyes of another creature led to adopting two rabbits and a season of volunteering at the House Rabbit Society.

    The interior of this converted single car garage was painted light yellow to maximize the natural light. Even though the window orientations were not ideal, it still had glass in two directions with a window over the kitchenette and a big glass patio door looking into the back yard.

    I built custom bookshelves, borrowing a table saw from the Berkeley tool library to with split 2×2’s clamped around PVC pipes. I maximized every cubic inch for my books and my rabbits. It was tight, but there was just enough space to clank out fifty thousand words for a NaNoWriMo T-shirt, clean up on Monday Nights for Irish dancing at the Starry Plough, and assemble portfolios for graduate schools.

    Twenty years ago, I drew this top down, single-point perspective as one of the projects in those portfolios.

    When I left, I swore I’d return to this city that I loved so dearly.

    I’ve visited twice.

    Line drawing perspective looking down into a cluttered studio apartment.

  • Celestial carabiners clanked across charming cliffs, calling coyly, “Come climb, come climb.”

    An outline handsketch of a hand shaping the ASL American manual letter “C”, in red ink on a yellow spiral bound steno notebook.
    A series of stones on concrete, transitioning from green, through blue to violet and magenta to blood red.

    My parents dropped by our place in the morning to give the kids polished stones from a roadside stand on the way to the Grand Canyon. After they left, the girl sorted the collection before coming inside for breakfast.

  • Blonde bonobos bounced boorishly, brazenly belching behind brunette beavers belligerently bereaving burst bubbles by beige barbed birches.

    An outline handsketch of a hand shaping the ASL American manual letter “A”, in red ink on a yellow spiral bound steno notebook.
    Pink and blue yoga mats on beige tile, strewn with scrap paper and toilet paper tubes.

    Last week, our daughter designed and built a roller coaster from materials at home. Watching the girl press against her 3rd grade deadline surfaced messy memories of late night college studios.

  • Angry aardvarks advertantly abducted an airship at Akita Airport absurdly assuming acerbic albatrosses abducted an adolescent aye aye.

    An outline handsketch of a hand shaping the ASL American manual letter “A”, in red ink on a yellow spiral bound steno notebook.
    A faded pink pillow with a giant tear down the center and exposed stuffing.

    Many years ago, a BoardGameGeek user in Australia asked me to receive several shipments before his arrival in Vegas to attend a friend’s steampunk themed wedding.

    When he came to pick up the games, his wife gave me this pink handmade pillow with chibi Star Wars characters for my newborn daughter.

    Last year, I joined Post.news. The open and accepting crowd inspired me to start drawing again after years of fearful, constipated dormancy.

    I started a series of hand sketches forming the ASL manual alphabet.
    After a few letters I started adding alliterative sentences.
    A month into this exercise, I was forced back into the office.

    Reinserting a commute into my routine was so disruptive that I dropped the project before completing it.

    ~

    A couple weeks ago I also joined Substack Notes. One of the first folks I met was Charlene Storey, who started a weekly ritual to share pictures of “everyday magic”.

    Given my interest in the mundane objects that surround us (I earned my 2003 NaNoWriMo by writing about the stuff in my tiny garage apartment), it’s a perfect way to jump into the new stream.

    ~

    I should finish the alphabet series, but I also like this new weekly thing and I don’t want to wait half a year before archiving these memories.

    So for the next 26 weeks, I’ll be doing a series of unplanned diptychs. Let’s see how it goes.