Comic - Update!

On page 8 of 13. I have to burn through the rest of them before the end of the month if I want to copy it for the Small Press Expo. I'll do my best!

A Bit of Love for the Ocean State Pt 1.

In a change of pace, here's some of my favorite things and places in Rhode Island:

Art Supply Warehouse in Providence. It's not called ASW anymore, it's now "Jerry's Artarama" but it's such a dumb name I call it by what I first knew it as. Big, lovely art supply store in this cool brick mill building. I love to wander the aisles and take in all the beautiful stuff.

Scarborough Beach, Narragansett. Yes, there are supposed to be even more beautiful beaches in the state, as my cousin-in-law reminds me all the time, but for me, making the 45min drive down to South County, watching the land get flatter and greener and more spacious, then making the turn to Scarborough State Beach, and the smell of the ocean and the span of the shoreline... it's my favorite beach. It really exemplifies "beach" for me, because it's so big, and all you see when you stand in the sand is ocean and more ocean.

Cinemaworld, Lincoln. My favorite movie theatre - it's new, huge, with comfy stadium seating and generally, it's not nearly as busy or obnoxious as other theatres, particularly ones set in malls. It's where M and I go for all our movies.

Kabob n Curry Restaurant, Providence. I think it's been moved to the top of the list, after going there last month for dinner with friends. Fabulous Indian food, and killer sangria, my favorite drink. Plus it's right on Thayer Street, which has some cool stores, though it's starting to go corporate.

American, Eh? The Comic

So I'm slowly, but steadily, working on my first real comic book.

This has been a dream of mine for ages. On the list has always been: do my own comic or graphic novel.

I've been putting it off for years. I never thought my art was good enough - for years, it was all about writing and poetry and school, with art as a reluctant side project. I did some painting and sketching mostly - it was only until recently that I realized my true love: black and white ink- brush drawings.

Now when I say "first comic book" that's not entirely true. About five years ago, I did make an honest attempt at a graphic novel. It was called Mobius Loop, and was a science-fiction story about what would happen if, in the future, the human race realized it only had one year left to live, due to an incoming meteorite, and how that year-long wait would drive people crazy, would heighten religious fever, and other questions like: what happens if you get pregnant during that year?

(Actually, in recounting this, it's a pretty interesting idea.)

Anyways, back then I diligently worked on pages and pages of this, without any real research into how to do it: how to arrange panels, different points of view, shadows, etc. I probably did about 60 pages of it with black pens and an old ruler. I even submitted the first part of it for a Xeric grant, which is money for new comic artists to publish their work. I did not win, of course, and eventually it all wound down and I put it away. The thing is, it was the output of that graphic novel that hindered me from doing it again. Because my art wasn't good. It really wasn't, in looking back. And there were a lot of mistakes. It was blocky and stilted and really had no depth.

In the past six months or so, I've really been back into art, into drawing, and recently into black and white ink drawing. I've been practicing with both pens and brush, and brush is hard, but produces such character in every stroke it's worth the pain. I started out just doing still lifes, a picture of my Mom in Japan.

And now I'm on page 5 of a 13 page story, with the namesake of this blog. I'm going slowly, and I really don't know if I can get it done in time to print it and bring it to the Small Press Expo, a big convention for indie comic artists at the start of October. But I think some of the art is actually pretty decent. The story is kinda cute, though kind of pathetic at the same time (if you read it, you'll get why I say that). If I could post the cover I would, but my scanner is too small; still, it's something I like alot.

This, hopefully, will be the first comic that I've actually *finished.* 13 pages mean a lot, and will even more so when I round it out to 16 (with title page, etc), and get it printed, and hold it in my hand. Crappy or not, it's a dream.

From Tomb-Like to Marginally Better

So in coming back to work at my mortgage-paying job at the community college, besides the thought of dealing with people, it was the idea of my tomb-like office, that of beige metal walls with tape marks and rust stains on them, that really put me in a funk.

I needed to make it less depressing, but who wants to spend money on decorative items? I don't have that, especially since 1) we just bought a new car! red and all mine! more expensive than we wanted, but our two beaters were just about ready to croak. 2) we have a crazy agenda for the next two months: birthdays, my brother's wedding back in Canada, my parents coming in October, M and I going to the Small Press Expo for comics down in Maryland, etc.

Solutions:

1) Postcards. It's what I did in Japan - I didn't have much money there either, but instead of buying prints of beautiful paintings, I bought postcard versions. Then framed them and hung them in my living room. They look fab. So I went to the dollar store and found some cards and postcards that were actually kind of neat - onto the walls they go.

2) Crap from the garage sale that didn't sell. Do I swoon over elegant ivory pitchers? Do I believe in angels, and thus love angel ceramic pot holders? No, but what the hell. I can throw some crazy fake flowers or leaves in the pitcher, and the angel is kinda nice.

3) Pictures. Why didn't I think of this before?? I made a whole display of pictures right behind my head at my desk, this wonderful scattering of pictures of my family, my wedding, my cats, and lovely M. It's so happy and silly and so much of me. I love it.

It also has double meaning. I feel like I have an army behind my head now, like some invisible force that's glaring at anyone who fucks around with me.

I actually have an herb charm here to ward off psychic attacks taped under my desk - laugh at the New Age if you want, but one thing I have to work on this year is not letting people manipulate me and affect my head. If anything, just the presence of the herb just reminds me to be strong and tough and take charge. Charm + family behind my head makes me feel stronger, with a lot less tolerance for people's overall bullshit.

Because really, with all the things planned for the next year, who wants to get caught up in anything that's not really important?

The Bad Neighborhood

So I was at my Friday meeting with the CEO of my non-profit workplace, all well and good this morning. The meeting goes well, I get everything done, talk to a few workers at the front desk, and leave for the day, on my way to the mall to exchange some clothes.

I'm driving down Bath Street, past a landscaping crew. Bath Street is right off of Route 44/Smith Street, and right in a pretty dicey neighborhood. Not a place that I'd normally walk around alone.

Suddenly, there is a BANG! and my driverside window shatters.

My first thought - someone is shooting at me.

I brake, and half the window falls onto my shoulders and lap. I'm freaking out. A guy runs out of a house on the street: Are you OK? One of the landscapers comes over and does the same.

Slowly, I figure out that one of the landscapers with a weed whacker must have picked up a large rock while working, and it shot out and smashed into my window. He comes over, young college kid, very apologetic. I do what I always do when I get scared, which is desperately hold back tears and try to tough it out.

I don't even know what to do. Do I call the police? How am I going to get all the glass out of my car? When I get out, shaky but trying to be an adult, the rest of my window crumbles into the car and on the street.

The guy who came out asking if I was alright took my keys, put the car in neutral, and he and the other landscapers pushed my car off the street. The guy, I think his name was Scott, kept saying, God that must have scared the shit out of you. Are you alright? The supervising landscaper comes over with phone in hand, calling his foreman at Providence Water, and says we have to wait until he comes, because the city has to pay for the damages.

So in the midst of all this, in the back of my head I'm thinking - is it safe to be just sitting here in this neighborhood? Is this Scott character trustworthy? His house is crumbling, overgrown, he makes jokes about getting high last night and how he's used to this kind of excitement around here.

The supervisor says for me to call the police, to file a report and make sure that Providence Water can't duck out of paying for the window. So I do. I'm sitting in the car, calming down, and talking occasionally to Scott and his landlady, who are sitting on their stoop, and have a vacuum in hand. They offer to vacuum up all the glass so I can drive it, but we wait for the cop to come first.

So the cop arrives. Italian, swaggering guy, very Rhode Island. Takes my information, calls me over to his car, and says "you follow me, and I'll take you to a gas station so you can clean out your car."

I say "oh, well, those neighbors said they'd help with that."

The cop makes a face. "You don't want to do that. You should go to a gas station."

I'm thinking okaayyy......

Then the cop comes to my car, and starts sweeping out all the glass from the driver's seat so I can drive. Scott and the landlady again say that they can vacuum it out. I look at them, think 'what the fuck, why am I not appreciating this offer', and tell the cop that I'm going to take them up on it. The cop shrugs and leaves.

The foreman arrives, we exchange information, etc., etc. All very apologetic. Then Scott comes over with the vacuum, and very carefully and thoroughly vacuums out all the glass from my car, the seats, and down the side. Even went under the mats.

At this point M has arrived, and it's fine from then on. I do a little retail therapy, and I'm starting to feel less rattled as I'm sitting here at home.

In thinking about it though, it's funny how there are preconceived notions of particular areas, and the people who live in them, when a hell of a lot of kindness was found in a "bad area". The cop dismissed Scott and the landlady right away, just because of where they live, I think. I found myself doing the same thing, and that sucks. Then I think about all the dicks I encounter all the time who come from "good areas."

Yes, there's more violence and crime in particular areas of the city, but overall, there's still a lot of decent people just living their lives, who want to help when they see a girl like me scared and panicking in the street.

Because it's a Journal, So Why Not

I've lived in the States now for just over eight years. I left in 2000 on a whim, dropped out of university and came here to New England to live with relative strangers, in the desire to escape a very depressing existence and be close to a guy who didn't think I was crazy.

And it's been a good life - I've had a lot of opportunities that I might not have had back in Canada: a really good relationship when I never thought I was one for marriage, the new, growing thought of children when I never thought I wanted them before, trips and ocean and resisting the awful Rhode Island accent.

Still, after eight years, I get massive bouts of homesickness. Last night was one of them. It struck when I realized no one was calling me back - my brother, my sister, my dad, my mom. After I'd left messages a few days ago, out of loneliness and wanting to connect. So there I was, sitting on my orange bed, feeling the hundreds of miles difference between my family and friends in Canada.

What do you do when you choose to live far away, and you love your loved ones so much and want to be close, but because you're so far and have been for so long, people forget about you? Because you're not right there for them to see? You are an afterthought: a loved afterthought of course, I don't doubt that, but in the midst of the daily swirl, if you're not in close proximity to be seen, you're not thought about, save for every month. Maybe.

I think about my family all the time. I kick myself sometimes. And the older I get, the less I like living far away. I'm not advocating being as physically close as some family around here, which to me feels wickedly claustrophobic, but y'know, the idea of spending a day with my parents, or my sister, just because, even once a month.... that sounds really wonderful

Forgive me, but the thought crossed my mind that if I did have a child, maybe I wouldn't get so lonely. Because I'd have my own family to take care of, and be close to. Not the sole reason for wanting children, of course, but it did occur to me, selfish thought as it might be.

I need some more fucking local friends too. *^_^*

Canadian Music - Ashley MacIssac (1997)

Been meaning to do this for a while. A weird choice, really should start with the Tragically Hip, the quintessential representation of Canadian music, or some other bands, but I've been listening to Ashley on Facebook, and so here goes.

Ashley MacIssac is from Cape Breton, which is an island off of Nova Scotia, and host to a whole lot of Scottish people and renouned for its music. In the 90's, he emerged as this young traditional fiddler who played jigs and stuff, but accompanied by contemporary influences, such as heavy drums and guitar. Which was really unusual, if you think about it. That's like heavy metal and bagpipes - not exactly common. Here's probably his most extreme punkish example from his first album, "Devil in the Kitchen", which is still pretty cool in my opinion:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=iNVTUh5yviI&feature=related

Note the 90s style grunged out lighting and frenetic editing. Ah, memories.

He's still known for being a crazy-ass talented fiddler; he just had a bit too much white up the nose at the time. Has since cleaned up somewhat - is still pretty controversial. Even back then, he wasn't exactly hugely popular, but for a friggin' fiddler, he did pretty well with his debut album Hi How Are You Today? Which of course, I owned and played out.

The most popular song was Sleepy Maggie, which was a longer song with contemporary beats and fiddle, the female vocals sung in Gaelic of all things. And it was a hit! They played this video all the time. And it was my first real attempt to learn Gaelic. I can indeed still sing all the lyrics to this.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=aoApELfgWcg&feature=related

Why did I love it so much?

Well, not many people know outside of family and close friends, but when I mention, in brief, that I used to dance, people assume it's ballet or tap or jazz, etc. Which I did all take for about four years. However, the dance style I studied for 14 years was:

So yeah. I kinda know and love the music, and choreograph in my head. Stories for other times, I promise.

Final thought: this is Ashley back in the 90's, playing a traditional number, but keep watching for something pretty cool, which makes me want to dive right back into dancing again:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=E7Q8V1F1zSQ

Who Wants to Be Cool?

I recently left the Bally's gym down the street, after being there on and off for about three years. It was good at times, but I never stopped feeling anxious, shy, and overall, like I had to work my brains out to use the membership properly.

You know what it's like. A lot of people at gyms, and a lot of women I know, have the mentality of work-out-like-a-manic-it-feels-so-good-can't-do-it-enough. So when you're me, and you like to keep it mellow, you feel like a turtle rotating on the elliptical, dumpy and slumpy as these svelte gazelles elegantly sweat at dizzying paces. And then you look at other girls, the maniacs who are not only bone skinny or have beautiful abs, but they fucking LOVE working out....man, it just makes the whole experience icky. Yeah. This ain't me.

Felt like a tool most of the time, like I'm not good enough or motivated enough or working hard enough. So the thought of "shit, I'm just not pushing myself enough" leads me to take things like intense spinning classes, which might as well be hell on a bicycle, palpatations of the heart and some seriously aching knees and hips, which are already dodgy due to years of dance.

My kind of spinning:

So I left. And I joined the local pool. And now, I'm officially an old lady! I joined Water Aerobics!

Well, and doing laps too, but it's sure funny to be in the midst of thirty middle-aged ladies doing motions in the water. I've gone from feeling old and fat at Bally's to a misplaced young'un at the pool.

Rawr!

But it's fun! It's easy on my old-lady joints, and it's like playing in the water for a half hour, which is a lot more enjoyable than burning up in a non-ventilated room, where all you can smell is the sweat of thirty women mingling whilst the mirrors fog up.

No, instead, all the sweat is in the POOL, slopping up against your body.

(Just kidding. But a hell no to the hot tub, I thank ya.)

I used to come to this pool when I first started living in the States - it was right down the street from our shitty apartment, and since I didn't have a school or work visa, and therefore had nothing to do or nothing I could do, I joined the pool and swam every day. Then I got hooked on the whole Bally's pitch (endless classes! fit and happy! every machine you could want!) and left.

Now, to remember my lifeguard training from high school and look like this underwater....

(J/K)

The Namesake

I'm watching Mira Nair's The Namesake on cable right now. It's an Indian film about a man and woman who get married and come to America. They have two children (one is Kal Penn) who are completely Americanized and separate from their parents. It's mostly from the perspective of the parents, particularly the woman, Ashima.

The woman, Ashima, longs to go back to India. She says "I don't want to raise our son in such a lonely country." But the husband is a scholar, and his position and status is in New York, not India. So they stay, her family remains back in India, and she sees them only once or twice in the rest of her life. Her parents die, and she is unable to be there. For the entire movie, I feel there is a sense of sadness about Ashima, but a resignation to go through life with strength and elegance, to be the best wife and mother she can be, despite her inability to truly assimilate into American life.

I felt for Ashima. I related to it, although my circumstances are certainly not as drastic as Ashima's, and I don't see it as such. I do see my family a few times a year, far more than she was. And I wasn't thrust into a completely foreign environment like she was.

Both my sister and I moved to different parts of North America with our husbands, with the belief that it wouldn't be permanent, that we would stay for a few years, and then go back closer to our families. But in both cases, our husbands have jobs that are either very specialized, or rely on tenure. So, we both ended up in a place that we weren't expecting to be, and we will stay there for years and years, separated from our families.

And that's hard to deal with. It's particularly difficult when you start thinking about children, and how your family won't get to see them on a regular basis. That you can only hope that when you go into labor, your mother is already in the area, or on the way, because otherwise you'll be terrified in the delivery room. How if you're panicking, you can't drive to see your mother to help. Or you can't make a playdate with your sister and her children. Particularly when you have an awesome family like I do, that I wish and wish that my children could know them so well, because they are so fun and adventurous and joyful and kind.

But it is what it is. And it's something women have been doing forever. You marry, you have a husband who works, and may be the breadwinner, so you go where he goes. My grandmother did it - she moved from Prince Edward Island, where all her family was and still is, and went to Burlington, in Southern Ontario, because my grandfather chose to go. She's still there, and goes back to PEI once a year, for part of the summer.

I am not complaining, or not meaning to. And I'm not blaming M for "dragging" me here or anything. I chose to come, to stay. M says it all the time, how much he appreciates that I choose to leave at the end of our vacations back home, though it still, after nine years, breaks me up inside. It's just something I've thought about recently, and the thought was triggered by this movie.

But there are a lot of alternatives today, which make the distance a hell of a lot easier. Blogs, email, we're looking to get Skype to have video chats.

I also recently got the news that I will be an auntie. And with that announcement, came the instant decision that I must get a better car, because I'm going to be involved in that kid's life. I will learn to drive hours by myself, so my niece or nephew knows me, and knows I love them.

It is what it is. Make the most of it. And one day, I'll be back.

Slang, Ya Know?

Found this website on "Canadiana", or Canadian culture and slang. Here's what they consider some basics:

"Pop: soda - ask for soda and you'll get soda water." Doubtful, there. You'd have to be real dimwitted to assume soda water for anything. Pop is the popular term for soda, that's true.

"Click: kilometre" - ha! My stepdad always says this, usually with a straight-shot hand gesture.

"Hoser: an insult (was popular thanks to Bob and Doug!)" - Uh, I've never heard anyone call anyone else a hoser, despite what the movie Canadian Bacon would have you Yanks believe. If anything, it's used in a joking sense referencing the movie.

"Mickey: 13 ounce bottle of booze." Yup, the old mickey. I giggled saying that in Canada last week, because people actually knew what I was talking about! Usually it's a mickey of vodka for me, though my brother bought a mickey of Triple Sec for white wine sangria (so good....)

Two-four: case of 24 beers (may also be pronounce 'two-fer')." Yeah, or not. We don't say it like that. The term "two-four" is also used for "May two-four", which is Memorial Day Weekend, aka party city.

"Double-Double: coffee with two creams and two sugars." Good for all you coffee drinkers to know when you go into a Canadian Tim Hortons - wouldn't try it in the American ones, though.

I was listening to my family and myself (because the accent comes back in full force as soon as I cross that sweet border) and though the stereotype is that the Canadian accent is all about "eh" and "aboot", that's actually not the case.

Yes, we say "eh" at the end of sentences. Example: "What'd you think of that, eh?" Kind of a "ya know?" or "hmm?" sort of emphasis.

We do NOT say "aboot", though we do not say "about" in the traditional sense. I was listening, remember? It's more like "ah-ba -oot."

Here's a boot for you.

And the traditional Canadian accent, it's basically, from what I can hear, heavy emphasis on "r" and vowels. This is not the case everywhere - obviously Montreal and Quebec have their own accents, and a lot of Ontario is pretty flat sounding. But up where I'm from, it's full force.

For example: "Maritime" is pronounced something like "MARE - i - TImes" with emphasis on the "air" sound of the first part, and emphasis on the I in "times." And words are kinda tucked in the back of the throat. Try this out and see what kind of sounds you make.

Really, the easiest reference is probably Fargo, even though it's set in North Dakota:

Just scale it back a little bit and that's basically the accent. Here's a scene:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=IJOwQJsFi9I

Oh, and other gems from that website?

TOP 10 REASONS TO LIVE IN QUEBEC

1. Everybody assumes you're an asshole