Tiny

Snipped out of my sketchbook.

Sic Alps and Friends

A few pictures from last week.

Things I haven't been using as bookmarks

I have a ton of stuff lying around that I need to scan or take snaps of, except some of it is at the practice space or being used as a bookmark or not 100% finished yet.

There's a miniature version of this up at the practice space:


This is very tiny. It fits on an index card. I drew this a really long time ago, and I kept changing how I wanted it to finally look like. It ended up retaining none of its original meaning. At all...


Doodles on a Chicago Red Eye during my lunch break. Cut them out and glued them together:


I also just posted some show snapshots and "Bottomless", something I wrote last week. I wrote a couple other things that I'm not quite ready to post yet, but I'll try to get around to it by this weekend.

Ronny's Bar, 6/14/08

A few snapshots from the show: Feeling of Love, Sang Des Loups, Mother of Tears, White Mystery. At Ronny's Bar in Chicago on June 14th. After the show we proceeded to party at my house, which ended up getting me kicked out of my apartment. It was worth it! Just so this qualifies as a review: all of the bands were awesome, the end.

Bottomless, 6/29/08

I'm at some kind of cafe drinking a bottomless coffee from a Beatles' Abbey Road mug. I made another mistake, another mistake, another mistake of pulling myself out of bed at seven in the morning on less than three hours of sleep to see Jonathan. I was under the pretense that we could spoon for about four hours and then get up, have lunch (greasy pizza and hamburgers and buffalo wings and fried chicken is what he was in the mood for), then have a serious meeting. A serious business meeting that we had been putting off for weeks. At least two weeks. That's enough for it to be plural.

I got to his house an hour ago, and based on previous experiences of being locked out, I didn't stand there for more than fifteen minutes. Maybe not even ten minutes. I called his phone over and over and over and over again for about five minutes and sent him a text message. I wonder how long I'll be here. Probably long.

This is the third time I've come over and he hasn't answered the door; the third time he's called me drunk in the middle of the night or early morning and fallen asleep before I got there. His windows are open- he's in the very last room on the fourth floor- and I thought about calling out to him. I stood there looking up thinking about how stupid I already looked and didn't feel like further making an ass of myself.

I walked down the street and found this place and it's nice. It's probably the type of place I'd be at a lot if I lived in the neighborhood. I'd make myself a regular, I'd have a regular drink and a regular snack and they'd eventually know me by name. I'd get comfortable to the point where if I felt like hanging out after work, I could sit at the bar. They'd ask me about my job and they'd catch me drawing and ask me about my art.

I'd eventually have a favorite barista, a friend, who maybe I'd invite to a show and he'd show up. Maybe he'd play my request over the speakers and the next time I'd come in, I'd have a mixtape for him. He'd play it while I'm having my bottomless Beatles coffee (they've figured out that it's my favorite cup) and then he'd take it home and listen to it again, listen closer since he couldn't pay full attention to it while he was working.

His name would be something like Brett or Tom or Jim or Paul. He collects records and some of his art is on the wall but it's coming down in a couple of days because he has an art show. He rides a bike, of course. He listens to punk rock but pop music just as well. He doesn't go to a lot of shows anymore; he could care less, so he instead spends all of his money on records. He likes coffee. One morning I have some time before work and I sit at the bar and order a croissant and he makes me a special drink, some sweet and strange concoction that he claims is his favorite, his regular. He's trying to convince his boss to put it on the menu.

It's delicious and it lifts me up that morning and it carries me all day. Or maybe it's the thought; the thought of him carries me all day.

I see him that night at the show. Eventually I see him nearly every weekend, and one day I wait for him to get off work so we can grab something to eat, something that's not cafe food. There's a restaurant down the street that has perfect pierogies.

The next day, he comes to another show and I drag him to a party and we get fucked up. I don't get fucked up often anymore but I'm comfortable now. It's past being comfortable with the cafe: I'm comfortable with his face now. We're grinning through the alcohol and the drugs and we're talking non-stop and we're up, we stay up, we don't stop talking until the sun comes up. The sun comes up and we walk out into Logan Square, down the sidewalks with puddles of rain water drying up, shining bright little lights from the sun coming through the trees.

We have a little bit of drugs left in a little bag to get a little more fucked up so we head to my apartment, to my back porch. We're crazy, shaking our heads and laughing for no reason, smiling and grinning and our eyes are wide open like we're lunatics. We're happily fucked but it's just a reflection of how we're happily sober. Drugs on the porch or coffee at the bar, it's all the same.

Somehow in the last twenty minutes I managed to fall in love with someone who doesn't exist.

I'm still only going on less than three hours of sleep. I can't figure out if it feels good or not. I think it does. For a straight thirty or so minutes my brain was on and clear and racing but I'm scared it'll shut back down. I wonder when Jonathan will wake up and realize that he fucked with me again. Why does he even goddamn bother?

This entire situation isn't right. We were just talking about how we keep making the same stupid mistakes, acting like kids and being impulsive. Going over to his house at seven in the morning isn't exactly a smart decision. When I picked up the phone a couple hours ago he was angry at me and I listened to him down a tall boy. I'm scared for him. He's killing himself and I know it and he knows it but he keeps trying. I know he doesn't want to kill himself: he wants someone or something to do it for him.

And he remembered, he didn't forget, that I told him I loved him. I told him I loved him last week: it was another one of those nights where he woke me up with a phone call and told me to come over and bring alcohol. We were drunk and sloppily passionate for a little while but it wore off and when I told him I loved him, I was sober so I have absolutely no excuse.

I think this made him loathe me, hate me a little bit.

I think it's time for a cigarette. My brain and my body are shutting down. Slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly shutting down...

I can't even draw, my hands are shaking. I'm really tired. I'm really tired. Coffee isn't doing anything for me right now. I can't even think, I can barely type right.

I'm so tired now that I think I might cry about it. But how long can I stay here? I'm determined to beat out Jonathan; I'm determined to prove that I can stay awake just on coffee and pitiful determination. And he's sleeping, and maybe he's sick, but he can't stay awake for shit. Right? Right? Right? Right? Right? Right? Right? Right? Right? I'm so tired. So tired, so tired, so tired, so tired, so tired, so tired, so tired. I'm now typing things, repeating them, until my fingers know to spell them automatically, so that I don't have to think, don't have to think, don't have to think, don't have to think, don't have to think, don't have to think, don't have to think, don't have to think, don't have to think.

Is it time for a cigarette now?

I feel incredibly foolish waiting around for him. What a dumb mistake, what a silly decision to get out of bed and come here. I don't even want to see him anymore. I don't want to leave here and sleep but I don't want to see him. What stupid fool I've made of myself.