GRIZZLY PEAR

written snapshots

Category: Artifacts

  • quacking into march (five pack fourteen+The Mentor Leader+The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck)

    The Portland trip took a lot out of us. The trip was great, but planning and then recovering took a bunch of extra time before and after the actual time off. And then we followed it with a jaunt to San Diego right before school started. Travel is fun, but it eats into “free” time for sure.

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    2/25 Inktober 52 (2024), week 21

    quack quack
    sexy selfie sandwich

    How did duckface became a social media phenomenon? I guess every era needs its thing.

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    2/28 Inktober 52 (2024), week 20

    we don’t see our
    mythology

    I went light for a white on white vibe. Then reversed it.

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    3/1 Poetry Haul #8

    somewhere we assemble wonder moon
    meet rich star light award
    fall and honor sun girl

    I had some fun with extended italics as I wrapped up February.

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    3/2 Inktober 52 (2025), week 9

    lamp
    with a fresh genie

    The flat brush runs fine, but I’ve continued to have trouble with cursive with a pointed brush. The Pentel brush pen works great, but I’ve never gotten the hang of normal pointed brushes.

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    3/3

    touching
    hands
    through
    a
    loupe

    I had purchased a collage by Duane Toops and zoomed in with a jeweler’s loupe. Collage is a tactile art, I could see his hand in the cuts and ridges of paper on paper.

    The cursive looks like it has regressed, it might be time to add it back on the list as a monthly focus.

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    Again, it feels like I’m trying to just get something in before another month disappears. Things have been super busy at work. But it’s a good busy. I’m doing good work on great projects.

    I just need to slow down the pace. As much as I hate to admit it, things at the airport can wait, especially as time with the wife and kids continues to drip away.

    I didn’t get this posted in time for August, and then my body revolted to put September on hold for three weeks.

    Even worse, after returning from the hospital with my liver abscess, another family member went to the ER after dropping a bunch of weight and experiencing serious discomfort in the gut.

    The family is going through a bout of organ revolts. We’ve had a good run, so I guess we were due.

    Health shouldn’t be taken for granted, and yet, that is exactly what we do during the good times. One can’t live on permanent high alert, but I need to cultivate a practice of gratitude to savor the quiets between the storms.

    Cya next time!

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    PS—The Mentor Leader, Tony Dungy, 2010

    In 2021, I stopped reading self-help books—I got what I needed out of them.

    After starting a work-related newsletter, I tried to restart the habit to grab some professional ideas to go with my artistic interests.

    Naww, I’m past peak Self-help.

    There’s nothing wrong with this book. This book matches Tony Dungy’s public persona—a quiet dude who makes everyone around him successful.

    I blasted through the book at 2x speed. His main point is that a mentor leader should be humble. Being humble means receding into the background; success is found in elevating those around you.

    I dig it! I bet I’m less humble than I’d like to believe, but I appreciate the appeal of his message.

    Tony goes heavy on Christianity, but given my recent forays into ancient wisdom literature, that’s fine, even as an atheist.

    Worth a quick listen if you’re in the mood for a generic leadership book, though you might remember nothing from it four years hence.

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    PPS—The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, Mark Manson, 2016

    It’s kind of amazing to listen to a self help book and have nothing to say about it, even after trying to come up with an interesting take for a few days.

    Just standard tough love, self-help fare, with a lot of F-bombs. The title is perfect for this book. If you pick it up, you’ll most likely dig it.

    I didn’t disagree with Manson’s main points. There are only so many ways to approach life and his recommendations match how I see things, in spite of his crass delivery.

    • Pick your priorities (chose your f’s).
    • Control your reactions.
    • Owning your world is better constantly being the victim of your own psychodrama.
    • Avoid highs—chemical, relational, any type. They’re temporary and the crash only gets worse the longer you delay.
    • Commitment is freedom. It creates depth versus breadth.
    • Don’t pursue the results, pursue the process. Or if you don’t enjoy the process, give up on the results and chase what you enjoy doing.

    The unconvinced will not be persuaded, but the book is fine if you want another take on such riffs. Another listen for 2x speed.

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    PPPS—Practice

    2/19

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  • 8 nights and 8 days

    Night 1

    I landed in the hospital with an abscess in my liver, which revealed itself by a relentless fever with soul sucking fatigue.

    Morning 4

    The first days in the hospital continued to be a haze of fever and fatigue, though greatly relieved with the interventions by the nurses and doctors.

    Night 7

    I was initially diagnosed with an ominous “growth in the liver” at the ER. Fortunately this ambiguity was resolved in a couple of days with an MRI, it was “just” a bacterial abscess in the liver.

    Morning 7

    I felt the full force of our health care technological complex, with ultrasound, CT scan, MRI, endoscopic ultrasound, and finally draining the abscess by an interventional radiologist, who used ultrasounds and x-rays to pinpoint and pierce the mass. And that doesn’t include all the other everyday hospital technologies that the nurses utilized throughout the week.

    Night 8

    Midway, I was transferred from a single room at the fifth floor to a double room in one of the oldest remaining wards. It was fun to explore this architectural relic. The air conditioning and roommate made it feel like riding an airplane.

    Morning 8

    Golden hour never fails. This new room had a streetside view of a residential subdivision. I wonder what it’s like to live in the shadow of the city’s major medical center. I guess you stop hearing the sirens.

    Afternoon 8

    As soon as the labs on my liver goop was completed, the doctors updated my prescription and sent me home that evening. My parents, who visited every day, came back to pick me up. I was happy to come home to the kids, but it was a sudden transition back into civilian life.

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    Yeah, that was one long week. The fever started right after Labor Day, and a two days later I was in the ER digesting the news that there was a growth in my liver. Thankfully, an MRI clarified that it was “just” a golf ball sized bacterial abscess.

    As for cause. The official explanation is dumb luck—a stray bacteria snuck out of the gut and wreaked shop in the liver. Overworking might have made things worse, but other people work much harder and longer with minimal consequences. Then again I’m not other people.

    I’m on the mend, popping antibiotics, swimming in serious night sweats, and there’s still that a drain line…but I gladly take this over the specter of the C-word.

    As painful as it has been, this was a clarifying event in my mid-forties with some takeaways:

    1. My personal priority rank is Family > Health >>>> Work > Calligraphy > Reading >> Blogging >>>>>> YouTube (this last one is tough!).
    2. Due to various reasons, Work had snuck in front of Health. No more.
    3. Until I adopt a consistent health practice, I will not to pursue a promotion. I may even start going back to my old Tai Chi school, even if the kids continue to show no interest in martial arts.
    4. As much as I love my calligraphy as a meditative practice, it doesn’t pay bills and it doesn’t improve my health. I need to “pay myself first” in the morning with exercise and move the pen if I still have time. If I miss morning exercise before dropping the girl off at school, I might walk some laps around park near the office. My work is flexible and I’ll just start late.
    5. I didn’t regret anything up to this point. It would have been nice to take more trips abroad as a broke college student, but that’s an ancient regret, colored by the fact that I now have savings, which was not in my portfolio during the great recession.
    6. We’ll see how the bills line up, but if I read the documents correctly, the cost of the hospital stay may be laughably small for an American. If so, I might keep working to maintain this awesome county employee health insurance thru 65 (instead of 62 as allowed by the pension). Of course this is predicated on still enjoying the job.
    7. Moving forward, I’ll be both looser and tighter with money. I have a habit of buying books on the thought I’ll read them one day. When mortality strikes, buying “on spec” stinks of hubris. However, if I think I might enjoy something right now, I’m not gonna wait.
    8. Investment wise, no changes planned. My wife and I have always been conservative, and it was comforting to know that I wouldn’t need to make any tweaks to the portfolio, even with an extended career disruption.
    9. We have a slew of papers that need to be executed (advance directives, wills, homestead exemption). Once I’m well, those will be the top priority for our home economics. Second in priority is getting my wife fluid through the morass of retirement and investment accounts.

    Interestingly, I intuitively knew each bullet point (except #6) before this chaos in September. So nothing has changed, just the universe reminding me, emphatically, to get it done!

    Funny how things work, hopefully y’all not need such an incident to finish what you already know needs to be handled.

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  • magnets

    On vacations, we have settled upon magnets for our souvenir, usually purchased on the way out of the park after it has closed.

    Last summer, I initially settled on a nice, mid-mod, metal and enamel Disneyland magnet, only to find this quartet of Munchlings at the next store over. So the Mouse got us twice.

    We also got a 5-pack of Mickey Mouse lollipops to ostensibly alleviate the boy’s motion sickness. It did not prevent a couple of incidents on the winding road up to Big Bear.

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    I can’t believe our Disney + Big Bear1 trip was almost a year ago. As the years tick by, I’m becoming more aware of how few of these trips we will have together. That said, counting down futures vacations is a very nice problem to have.

    This year’s summer trip was a family reunion out in Portland. With the advice of a friend and my sister we hit up a bunch of cool places over five action packed days.

    • The falls. As advertised, this is the must visit. Take the Historic Columbia River Highway and hit up the falls along the way. We went on a weekday, but I suspect it’s impossible to find parking on Summer weekends. Visit the Gateway to the Gorge Visitor Center for a possible free parking permit at the famous Multnomah Falls.
    • Mount Hood Fruit Loop. We drove around and got some nice scenery, but it was late in the day so we didn’t get to see much farmy stuff. We had already eaten by the time we got to the “Gorge White House”, but this place had a great vibe.
    • Bonneville Fish Hatchery. A free must visit to say hello to Herman the Sturgeon. The kids had a blast feeding trout for a quarter.
    • Farmer’s Market at PSU. Epic vibe on a lovely Saturday morning.
    • Peninsula Park and Rose Garden. Late one evening, we ended up wandering around the Rose Garden with my sister. The warm weather and the late summer sun made for a magical moment. It was nice to offload the kids for fifteen minutes with their aunt.
    • International Rose Test Garden. Lovely as well, but nowhere as intimate or charming as the garden at Peninsula Park.
    • OMSI Museum. What you might expect from your local kid’s science museum. The highlight was a chemistry lab which the Vegas Discovery Museum does not have.
    • Portland Japanese Garden. Gorgeous garden. Not cheap, but we easily spent a good four or five hours there before heading out to the airport.

    Even though public transit in Portland is better than most suburban metropolises, I’m certain that it is vastly preferable to have a car. And if you have a car, the “Parking Kitty” phone app makes it super easy to pay at the meter. Aside from that, I guess one’s visit is at the whim of the weather gods. We hit record highs, but for folks from Vegas, that wasn’t a deal breaker.

    In all, a great visit. When we go back, I’m guessing we’ll check out some other places to mix things up, but we’ll return to the Falls, Bonneville, Farmer’s Market, and Peninsula Park.

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    1. In the post with the wolves, I forgot to mention that the kids had named them Sesame, Vanilla, and Cloud. So the full name of the stuffy from the gift shop is named “Rocky, Sesame V. Cloud”. ↩︎

  • vials

    The boy gave me three vials filled with colored water. She followed behind, shooting photos with a wide angled lens. I’m not sure what they were scheming, but they were giggling the whole time.

    I can’t believe how quickly time flies. Last year, work was grinding down my body and psyche. Fortunately I only had three weeks left before jumping out to the airport.

    I was trying to do right for the Division on the way out, but it was time to decouple.

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    We played Marco Polo at home

    Marco’s white cane was
    a roll of old drawings.

    She started next to the bed
    I walked circles around Marco
    until cornered by the bathtub.

    He cheated,
    hiding in the closet,
    standing on the toilet.

    Never said Polo!

    Finally caught,
    he grabbed Marco’s shirt
    and followed her around,
    a little red caboose.

    We finally made him Marco
    He squinted, not blind,
    swinging his cane as a baton.

    Ouch!

    —August 2023

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  • Mixing it up (five-pack twelve+Bissell Vaccum+Stainless Steel Pans)

    It’s a pain to track which goes with what…so I’m mixing up the Inktober 52 prompts with my own 5WP’s. Bon Appetit!

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    2/10 Inktober 52 (2022), week 51

    flickering
    victorians
    pacing
    gaslit
    verandas

    This was the last 5WP for an informal series on magic using Inktober prompts. I had a rough time composing this piece. When I was younger I would be disappointed the deflation that comes with the end of a project. Now I’m just used to it. On to the next!

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    2/11 Poetry Haul #3

    shoulders cry pleading
    seeking peace

    hibernation silo
    free body struggle

    frequently understatement ever
    vigilant rights

    You really can’t cross the same river twice. In early February, I had just come off of a month of pointed brush work. I don’t think I could do this right now. Even though I’m still practicing daily, I’ve lost the edge that comes with focusing on it solely every morning.

    To do this again, I’d have to relive January, like the Borges story where Pierre Menard creates a life to spontaneously re-create Don Quixote.

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    2/13 Inktober 52 (2024), week 28

    ratty
    rebels
    raided
    royal
    realms

    I save of all my scrap sheets. This was graphed on a test page for my team holiday cards. Of course, many attempts to work on such sheets also don’t turn out, so they just get blacker over time!

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    2/16 Inktober 52 (2025), week 7

    4
    triangles
    make a
    pyramid

    I love calligraphy due to its handcraft. But the final deliverable is always on a screen. So am I a digital artist?

    Maybe. Two months after the initial publication, I can’t remember the original ink color (turned out it was pink). The background was obviously an addition after the fact. And actually, this is version 2 because I had originally uploaded one where the script color opacity came out differently between the sky and sand backgrounds.

    So yes, this is absolutely a piece of digital art. But in this digital age, is everything digital art? Maybe that’s a meaningless distinction? Everything flits across a universe of flickering rectangles, while the “real” work sits inside an old cardboard Sun Chips box.

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    2/15 Poetry Haul #6

    vision notified
    no cold hope

    dismiss despair
    supply prove dream

    remarkably somewhere
    slam hot truth

    Like clockwork, I start publicly running the script of the month after two weeks of practice. After fourteen days, I’m comfortable with the muscle memory even if it hasn’t hit full smoothness.

    On the third week, it gets locks in, edging towards boredom. By week four I’m playing with variations on the script.

    By week six or seven I feel like I’ve already lost the script, or that it’s merged with the new script of that next month.

    It’s a slightly depressing cycle, but no skill is permanent.

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    If even knowledge is impermeant, I guess a cardboard box of papers ain’t a bad parting gift.

    Cya next time!

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    PS—Bissell Vacuum Cleaner

    We’ve tried a few vacuum cleaners over the years. We have a $400 Miele in the closet, and we’ve also spent similar sums on a couple of cordless Dysons.

    But our workhorse is an $18 Bissell. We’ve bought four of them. The first one died. The second for my mother-in-law and then we accidentally bought two more online when we were moving into our place. No matter, just keep one up and downstairs.

    It’s just a little handheld vacuum with a handle extension and a flat insert to let you push it along the floor.

    That’s the magic. So cheap you’re never scared to use it. Dirty kitchen. Suck it up. Laminate floors? Without brushes, this vacuum can’t ruin anything. No bags to track. Just dump it out and wash the filter.

    And no batteries! This thing runs forever. Light and nimble, well worth the hassle of occasionally swapping plugs when vacuuming a large area.

    The cheapest product came out to be the best one. At least the most regularly used everywhere, and is there a better definition of “best” for a household appliance?

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    PPS—Stainless Steel Baking Pans

    We bought an 8″x10″ baking pan, a few years ago. Small enough to fit a toaster oven. Works great. Flat plate of stainless steel with a slight rolled rim. Nice and shiny.

    And a second one last year, so we could swap back and forth, but we gave one to our in-laws.

    But I got cute with the third one. Intsead of reordering the exact same item, I got one that came with a little grill rack.

    It was so small!

    I double checked. The dimensions were super close, just off one inch in each direction: 7×9 versus 8×10.

    Do the math.

    63 square inches to 80 square inches. I bought something that was almost a quarter smaller than the original!

    What an embarrassing display of innumeracy. My mental math is great…if I use my brain.

    But the rack is nice. We’ve gotten good use out of it. No complaints.

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    PPPS—Practice

    2/12

    Around mid-February I realized that I would totally lose the straight brush if I didn’t practice it regularly. So I started filling the empty lines between the main scripts with cursive.

  • wolves

    Last summer we visited the Big Bear Zoo. It was HOT! The wolves thought so too.

    There were actually three in the exhibit and on this platform, but I needed two, so I picked this photo. It was a moment of wonder to be half an inch from these majestic animals.

    While viewing the wolves, the kids named them Sesame, Vanilla, and Cloud. So the full name of our wolf stuffy from the gift shop is “Rocky, Sesame V. Cloud”.

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    Two little fish harass the shark.

    My arms clap like a crocodile—clap! clap! clap!

    Eeeeeeee!—they jump off the boat-bed into the carpet-ocean, only to race back on deck.

    They hide under boxes—he can’t eat a turtle!

    The second they step out, this shark drags them into the deep, black bathroom.

    Clap! Clap! Clap!—I stalk the cook in the kitchen.

    Nooooo! we must rescue Mama!

    —2023

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  • Cursive, Uncial, Italics (five-pack eleven+Word by Word+Bird by Bird)

    I’m procrastinating on taxes by compiling this post. Taxes are a cost of society and a lovely spring buzzkill. On the bright side, we’re about to head out to an airshow at Nellis, so I’m getting our fair share of entertainment (and propaganda) for these taxes.

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    1/29

    daddy, you look more chinese!
    (without glasses)

    The boy is still earnestly drops lines of joy. I wonder how much longer it will last; it’s all so fleeting.

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    1/30

    fried
    onion
    topping
    my
    cereal

    I do love fried onions.

    For a week in January, I played with funky Uncials, and it’s on the list to revisit for a full month. I wonder if I will ever stumble into a particular script that “is it“. Likely not—I’m a too into variety and impatient for perfection.

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    1/31

    unruly mindless fake constitutional scholars

    unforgettable kerfuffle eggheads evaporate around

    senior space gang, andromeda chapter

    These poetry hauls can be challenging! But it’s always fun to make them work. I love the mental picture of an alien biker gang who faux-studied our founding fathers.

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    2/5

    … and the pursuit of Leisure

    This was inspired when Thomas J Bevan announced a Symposium on Leisure. I’m super happy with both of these. A couple months later, I’m not confident if I could do this today. The downside of picking up new scripts is losing old ones along the way.

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    2/9

    trauma rejection surpass interior style

    diversity through self illusion recognition

    analyze capital ammunition beyond currency

    I made a mistake on “interior” so I rewrote the poem on a single page—which I immediately recognized was the right format for these poetry haul exercises. Sometimes you gotta keep doing something until the right format arrives. Repetition is the heart of process.

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    Between commenting on two-month old 5WP’s and editing four-year old blog drafts, these newsletters have become an exercise in archeology.

    I do appreciate each of y’all who read and comment on them. Thanks for joining my delve into the past!

    Cya next time!

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    PS—Word by Word, Ann Lamott, 1996

    Bird by Bird is such a classic that the library has a long wait for the audiobook. So I started with this recorded seminar that she gave in Austin.

    I dig it—I’ll be reading Bird by Bird.

    Three key takeaways.

    1. If you’re gonna be a writer, then write. Getting published is only a result of writing.
    2. Find a writing group to work through this all together.
    3. Draw deeply from reality.

    I appreciate her suggestion for writer’s block. Give yourself permission to think. If you can’t write, then maybe force yourself to not write for a while. Sometimes your brain needs space to recharge.

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    Here are a few other exercises that sounded fun (though I haven’t tried them in the four years since I listened to that workshop).

    • List 10 favorite words.
    • Spend 300 words on someone you truly hate.
    • Describe yourself in detail five and ten years from now.
    • Where you would want to live, do it in exquisite detail.
    • Why you are here, why do you insist?

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    PPS—Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott, 1995

    Vulnerable, crass, funny. Brilliant! I see why it’s a classic writing workshop in a book. Anne explores the difficulty of the process, and exhorts the reader to do the work.

    She doesn’t shy from the benefits of the writing life, but reminds us that outside success isn’t all that special. Our personal problems don’t disappear after our shell gets polished.

    So, it’s about sitting down and writing. Work and make it happen. Taking things one “small assignment” at a time. Finding a cohort to work with.

    Don’t be disappointed when a project always ends with a whimper. (They all do.) Life keeps moving. The process stays going.

    TLDR: Sit down every day, jump in, flail around, do a bit at a time, gut yourself to examine the innards, deliver, and do it again tomorrow. It’ll add up to a good life.

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    Speaking of Process, a friend and I started a journal of student work at Berkeley that lasted for two issues. It darn near killed me both years. For the longest time I thought it was a waste (aside from meeting one of my best friends). As a middle-aged man, I’ve learned that friends are rare. A buddy is one helluva a haul for a project.

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    This book is nominally about writing, but her subtitle is perfect: “Some Instructions on Writing and Life”. Her notes on completing a book mirror too closely to the work I’ve done as an architect. Writing might be her profession, but this book transcends her medium.

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    It is refreshing to read a self-help book by a great writer. The book shines; you don’t have to trust claims of her excellence in some other field—the proof is right here, page by page. Her display of craft makes her advice all the more visceral as she bares her soul and wrestles with the difficulty of life.

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    PPPS—Happy Year of the Snake!

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  • finger

    After months of craziness at work I picked up the pen to draw my hand again. As the pen meandered across the page I was impressed with the magic of marks in 2D turning a white sheet into hint of fleshed out reality.

    At the time I was also one story from finishing Calvino’s Cosmicomics, thanks to M. E. Rothwell ’s encouragement to pick up the book.

    A few weeks later, I picked up a new badge and swiped in at the airport.

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    I forgot lunch at home.
    No matter, I keep sardines in my desk.

    Mama had a bright idea.
    She came to the park near the office.

    They played on the structure in the golden sun.
    I ate my lunch at 4.

    Homeless guys surveyed for cigarette butts.
    One coughed.

    The boy slipped off the steps and cried.
    Blamed his sister.

    We lectured about personal responsibility.
    He moped.

    They drove off to violin class.
    I worked till 8 (these four day weeks run long).

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    —2/20/2025

    Hat tip to Hazel Burgess who encouraged me to try blind contour drawing!

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  • another month of 52’s (five-pack ten+10 bits for a creative practice+self help junky)

    I’m now distant enough from these pieces they’ve become surprises to revisit. I should to accelerate the release of these five-packs, but things are about to crazy at work. If I fall further behind, that will let them age longer as old surprises to uncover.

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    2/6 Inktober 52 (2024), week 19

    world
    floating
    in
    a
    jar

    I had a rough time with the composition, and I need to take a month to practice the sign painting script to hit right. Even so, I’m happy with this final version, even if it took a little computer magic to make it work.

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    2/7 Inktober 52 (2022), week 9

    uhoh
    them
    mops
    gots
    buckets

    In retrospect, I the sign painted UH-OH would have worked better, but in the moment I pushed the cursive in the finished versions. I’m looking for a good pointed brush outside of my Pentel pens, but it will take a few tries to get right. That’s gonna be an expensive exercise since it requires buying individual brushes.

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    1/25 Inktober 52 (2025), week 4

    aquarius
    poor
    ganymede
    mixing
    nectar

    I’ve been starting my mornings by practicing the my script of the month. Pushing the finished piece with the hue function gave it a nice watery feel, by changing the colors. My main practice inks are yellow and pink because they are quite dry (so they don’t heavily on cheap paper).

    BTW the original Aquarius myth is sad, if not traumatic. Them Greeks told things real. Same for the Bible, even if we normally gloss over those parts.

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    2/1 Inktober 52 (2025), week 5

    we’re all in this zoo

    As always, there are so many little decisions that must be made after the overall concept. Again, the practice sheet came to the rescue, adding a little extra noise to give the composition presence.

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    2/8 Inktober 52 (2025), week 6

    a light in the swamp

    The top two versions are tweaks of the same scan. All versions were done as black/grey ink on white paper and then inverted in GIMP. After that, it’s about how hard to push the dials.

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    As much as I’d prefer to do it all perfectly on the page, the computer is an integral part of my process. These discussions about process are my penance for relying so much on the box.

    Similar to the writing seminar in undergrad, I suspect my most influential class in grad school was the digital photography course with Frank White. As an architectural photographer, he unapologetically embraced the computer as part of the process.

    Of course, the process is a lot harder if you don’t start with good inputs, but the final piece is the final piece. Excuses about what happened along the way don’t matter for the deliverable.

    That’s how I do it here. I’m not above the occasional process photo to flashthat I can do most of it in real life. I’m not hiding anything, whether it came from the pen or was pushed in the computer.

    It just is.

    Cya next time!

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    PS—10 Bits For a Creative Practice

    I wrote this as a response to someone’s post in early 2024, but the records have been drowned in the endless feed of content. I liked this enough to save it as a draft and it’s finally time to reshare it.

    1. Show up every day.
    2. Jump in! FFS just start.
    3. Study the greats.
    4. Celebrate your peers.
    5. Don’t freak out about bad work.
    6. Tension is the trigger to breathe. Relax.
    7. If you can’t do it slow you can’t do it fast. No rush.
    8. Pivot freely.
    9. If the crop feels wrong, the crop IS wrong. (Trust your gut)—an aphorism I learned in that photography class.The concept of trusting default triggers has served me well over the decades for many things beyond images.
    10. Do it again tomorrow!

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    PPS—Self Help Junky

    Another response to someone else (exactly who lost in the endless feed).

    As a former self-help junky, I’m a big fan of the anti-self-help movement. Of course, a moderate approach is generally best in life, but if you could only pick path I’d recommend skipping self-help.

    But I’m moderating this reactionary stance after reading Kenny Werner’s Effortless Mastery.

    I wonder if the question for judging a book is “how” versus “what”. Don’t invest in books that tell you what to do (or avoid). But there might be value in books that explore how to get somewhere that you already want to reach.

    In that spirit, here is a quartet of self help books that might be of use:

    1. Fail-Safe Investing, Harry Browne (great life-finance advice, though do your own research on portfolio composition because the specifics are dated)
    2. So Great they Can’t Ignore You, Cal Newport (good compilation of career advice for someone entering the workforce)
    3. Several Short Sentences about Writing, Veryln Klinkenborg (this book goes beyond writing to life, even if a bastardized version of his advice has infected LinkedIn with punchy shallow drivel.)
    4. Effortless Mastery, Kenny Werner (a slow approach to practice, nominally about music but it applies to anything. It’s a distant second best to Tai Chi training at a good school.)

    All that said, the Bhagavad Gita would trump all of these books, even if it’s profane to place this text next to self-help fare. May the gods forgive me.

    But always be ready to ignore anything that you read in these books. Never confuse the author’s confidence in their advice for it’s applicability to your wild and wooly reality.

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    PPPS—Black to Yellow

    For giggles I took a brush pen with black in and put in a cartridge with Lamy Mango Yellow. The first sheet shows the transition from pure black (marked with the cyan slash on the second line) to yellow.

    1/24

    Interestingly, when I went back for more practice, there was still some more black that came out of the brush.

    1/24

    The next morning I made the “aquarius” 5WP (above), which had more black sneaking out (every other line was made with that black-mango ink, the other lines were made with the former mango pen, now filled with a pinkish ink).

    Funny how these things play. The joy of the real world!

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  • zoom

    The girl grew out of her car seat onto a booster seat.

    Time goes fast!

    As soon as she was in the booster seat, she had another growth spurt, so that’s gone too.

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    Headphones and Piano Bench

    She grabbed my headphones,
    Put it on, pulled out the microphone.

    Dragged the piano bench into the study—
    A newscast.

    Two high back chairs
    And a wooden board to complete the set.

    She interviewed
    Her brother.

    Next morning,
    He filled cups with blocks.

    Juice
    (sorted by color).

    A new café
    On that piano bench.

    As I yammered on,
    Wearing those headphones.

    —2021

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