this used to be MY journal!

three, at least, of four fat felines

Sun, 14 Dec 2008 11:31:55 GMT

three, at least, of four fat felines
Originally uploaded by sparrowsfall.

I want keep the house a toasty sixty degrees during the day, and cooler at night.

No one else seems to appreciate my generosity, and the thermostat seems to stay about ten degrees warmer will I or nill I. No one else seems to appreciate my gas bill, either.

Today: high of sixty one. Tonight: low of nine. Welcome to Missouri.

sparrow

Sun, 30 Mar 2008 13:50:15 GMT

sparrow
Originally uploaded by sparrowsfall.

pumpkin patch

Mon, 18 Jun 2007 21:51:36 GMT

pumpkin patch
Originally uploaded by sparrowsfall.

dozens of pumpkin blooms . . . i have high hopes for the fall.

dukakis looking cute

Mon, 19 Feb 2007 00:56:32 GMT

dukakis looking cute
Originally uploaded by sparrowsfall.

the kitchen, rearranged for psychological reasons.

xxvii: perfection

Mon, 19 Feb 2007 00:44:29 GMT

xxvii: perfection
Originally uploaded by sparrowsfall.

The perfect traveller leaves no trail to be followed;
The perfect speaker leaves no question to be answered;
The perfect accountant leaves no working to be completed;
The perfect container leaves no lock to be closed;
The perfect knot leaves no end to be ravelled.

So the sage nurtures all menAnd abandons no one.
He accepts everything
And rejects nothing.
He attends to the smallest details.

For the strong must guide the weak;
The weak are raw material to the strong.
If the guide is not respected,
Or the material is not cared for,
Confusion will result, no matter how clever one is.

This is the secret of perfection:
When raw wood is carved, it becomes a tool;
When a man is employed, he becomes a tool;
The perfect carpenter leaves no wood to be carved.

my wild and crazy valentine's day.

Thu, 15 Feb 2007 03:06:31 GMT

my wild and crazy valentine's day.
Originally uploaded by sparrowsfall.

some things have to be experienced to be believed.

so leaving working today i walked down 47th street to the MAX stop. on the bench was a girl dressed rather like an elf with stripy pants and a long purple hat and a mark funkhouser button ("Vote for FUNK"); a plastic bag; the owner of the bag, a homeless man whom i have seen around midtown, old, warmly dressed, scruffy medium length beard, otherwise unremarkable. standing a little apart by the trashcan was a black lady wearing a black veil.

i looked at the schedule and noted that the next bus would be along at half past three, in half an hour, and judged that i should simply sit down. i settled by the homeless man and contemplated the ground. a penny glittered there. the man rummaged his pockets and slowly shifted things around, eventually setting aside a used bus pass. he leaned over and scooped up the penny and put it away, murmured to himself, and fell silent. we sat there a few minutes, and then the elf-girl, whom i’ve seen on the max several times before, got up and went away quickly.

after a minute the man lit a cigarette, puffed a few times, then said to me, ‘how cold was it? how cold do you think it is today, boss?’

well,’ said i, ‘ i think it’s about 25 degrees.’ (i found, later, that i overstimated by about seven degrees, but it was an honest estimate.)

‘ah,’ said the man, satisfied.’i thought it was warmer today. ‘but last night was a bitch.’

‘yes,’ i agreed, not having any notion of how bad it probably was.

‘buddy of mine,’ said, ‘we spent the night together. we kept all right. i’ve got,’ he went on, ‘a good kit. i’ve got a korean war sleeping bag, rated to 20 below, and another sleeping bag, and a blanket. what you do is, you lay the thickest thing you’ve got down, and put your other bag on that, and lay the blanket over you: that way the concrete doesn’t bite you in the ass.’ he laughed. ‘don’t tell anyone,’ he chuckled, but i have another blanket, a baby blanket i wrap around my feet.’

i smiled.‘yeah,’ i said, nodding. ‘layers is the way to go.’

‘my buddy and me, we lay next to each other, then this old girl, she’s bipolar, crazier than hell, came, and she was freezing, so we let her in with us.’ he chuckled again. ‘i lay between the two of them and i kept pretty warm. it was a three-dog night.’

‘i’ve been thinking,’ i said. ‘it’s been cold for a while. i wondered what its been like.’

‘yeah,’ he said. ‘we’ve done okay.’ he nodded slowly. ‘i heard on a weather forecast once,’ he went on, ‘about how the earth’s pole shifts around every five thousand years, back and forth, like seventeen degrees. it was once by thule in greenland, and now its more in canada. the cold goes with it, and so kansas city’s gonna have new england winters.’

‘really?’

‘yeah, it’ll be hard living here,’ he said. ‘like detroit’

‘i hope not,’ i said, noncommittal. ‘it’s been cold too long now. i hope it’s over soon.’

‘yeah,’ he said. ‘but i guess i won’t have but a few more years before i have to check out.' he grinned and laughed. ‘i’m pretty old. after that,’ he paused. ‘well, there’s three ways i can see it going. there’s your judeo-christian way, where you stand and are judged. then there’s your asian way, where you are born and born again until you get it right.’ he smiled at me. ‘well, there’s the third way, where you just fall asleep and never wake up. not ever.’

‘yeah?’

‘yeah. i don’t like the first way. i don’t like the idea of somebody judging me. and i sure don’t want to have to be born and live this again. i like the idea of sleeping.’

‘yeah, that’s the way to go.’

‘i like to sleep. i hate waking up. i hate waking up and having to face reality.’

i said something inane in agreement, like i’d know what having to face reality meant. i thought about bonnie laying there asleep in the morning, not wanting to wake up. i thought of him sleeping, really not wanting to wake up.

‘i just want to sleep,’ he said, ‘forever. never have to wake up.’ he smiled, and i nodded and smiled back.

he nodded a moment more. ‘think i may go around to jack stack barbecue in a while. see what i can get. they’ve got a good barbecue baked beans, and mashed potatoes with garlic and cheddar cheese.’ he smiled and laughed. ‘good food. used to be fiorella’s,’ he said, and named an adress i forget but which is doubtless correct. ‘their daughter went to school with my half sister to notre dame de sion.’

i looked at him, trying to shave away and beard and peel away the clothes and put another life like a suit on him. i failed: my lack of faith, for which i feel ashamed.

‘used to go over, see the manager, the guys at the bar. got to be real good friends.’

‘yeah?’

‘yeah.’

after a moment he asked, ‘do you like donuts?’

‘as a matter of fact i do.’

‘i was just at sunfresh,’ he said. ‘they had some great donuts, shaped like valentine’s hearts.’ he picked up the plastic bag that had been sitting there. ‘here, have one.’

‘thank you, i sad, accepting the bag. it was a marsh’s sunfresh bag.

‘i just pulled that one apart,’ he said, perhaps fearing i might be squeamish. ‘i didn’t bite it off.’

‘oh, that’s all right,’ i said, opening the plastic clamshell in the bag. it was sticky, and there were printed paper towels folded neatly on top.. i selected the pastry next to the half-eaten one and began to thoughtfully eat it while he kept talking. he’d been hit by a car last summer, and ever since bad balance because of his leg. he’d had trouble walking on the ice.

‘yeah, i hate walking on this ice too,’ i said.

i lost the train of his thought for a moment, then he came to a decision. ‘need to go to work,’ he went on matter-of-factly. ‘got to make some money.’ he rummaged in his bag for a moment, then said to himself, ‘where’s my sign?’ he rummaged, then said, ‘damn, lost my sign.’ he sounded a little crestfallen.

in my pocket was a sharpie i’d walked out of work with. ‘here,’ i said. ‘i’ve got a new pen, it’s a good one. get some cardboard, and you’ll be set.’

‘why thank you, young man,’ he said. he seemed positively energized, and waved off towards the art institute. ‘i’ll go get some cardboard, and make a new sign.’ he heaved to his feet, and pulled on his bags and packs.

‘don’t forget your donuts,’ i said.

‘no, no, you keep them.’

‘thank you,’ i said.

‘thank you, ‘ he replied. ‘thanks!’

‘you’re welcome. good bye,’ i said.

he half-strode, half hobbled away. i finished the donut. by the time i had licked it off my fingers, and as i began to wonder what in the world i would do with the rest of them, another man came quickly up the sidewalk. also homeless, a little crazier looking, carrying a snow shovel and a snow shovel blade. he looked at the schedule, and then went back to the trash can, leaning his shovel and spare blade against it. he eyed me, then the black woman, seemed to make a choice, and drew a deep breath.

‘do you know about the 1260 year-cycle in the bible?’ he cried out at her.

‘i beg your pardon?’ she eeped, sounding like hooks in the police academy movies. ‘the 1260 year cycle in the bible. the hebrew calendar had 360 days,’ and he began rattling off chapter and verse.

‘you mean like in ephesians,’ she mumbled, ‘ where you shall remember ye being in past Gentiles . . . and what was will be again.’

‘i don’t kow,’ he shouted. ‘lots of good things in ephesians, one and two,’ and he raced through more verses. ‘ but the point is there’s a 1260 year cycle, 670 BC the babylonian captivity,’ race and gabble, ‘and 560 AD the catholic church contaminated primitive christianity,’ on and on like a jack chick tract now, ‘and then 1260 years later in 1830 the greek state was declared independant returning Holy Greece to the mother church,’ on and on breathlessly, ‘proving the 1260 year cycle. Praise the Lord!’

she murmured something, and made a noise. i thought at first she was laughing. ‘Praise the Lord!’ the crazy man said. now i knew she want laughing, but crying, sobbing. ‘are you all right?’ i can’t understand you,’ he said as she repeated something.

i failed to hear her either, hiding behind he rveil, but i thought she was saying, ‘why did they do it to him? why did they do it?’ i thought she was referring to the crucifixtion.

‘well, that’s the 1260 year cycle. praise the lord!’

at this time he fell silent, as a tall, thin lanky man looking not little like Lurch from the Addams Family, but far thinner. i knew him from sight too, from the bus. he loomed over us, faintly swaiyng, as the black woman wept and then shovel man looked intently 1260 years away at nothing. shortly thereafter another homeles sman, a black man now, with a bundle and an empty, heedless in thought and pace stumbled along and took his place amongst us. finally the elf-girl straggled back from what ever errand she had been on and began idly brushing melting ice from the bus shelter with a gloved finger. i wanted badly to say to her, ‘you have no idea what you’ve been missing,’ but i knew that there’d be no explaining. quickly the bus drew up, and we all of us piled on, wild-eyed shovel man, sniffling religious hysteric, duffle-man with a moon-like face, spindly giant, elf-girl, and me. the bus, of course, was packed, and had that atmosphere of tension and insanity the metro often exudes. i grabbed a rail and pondered matters while riding to brookside. by the time i had reached 62nd street i had begun to question my own sanity and got out with the homeless duffle man, still carrying my bag of hobo donuts. i had an errand at constantino’s groceries, and walked up the hill still wrapped in my own thoughts.

if i hoped to find normality i was disappointed, for i found that everything was just as insane there. the stepford wives with little girls in catholic shool outfits, grocery boys in white shirt and tie, older white men hastily choosing flowers and candy (as i myself did): all of these seemed a part of a weird world i could not penetrate or understand, as alien as the world of the homeless. i hung trapped in the center, unable to move from one or their other or to understand either. a woman pushed a cart, her little boy hanging off it. she chided him for something. i smiled at her, and passed by into the canned vegetable aisle, thinking, lady, you have no idea what i’ve seen and done in the last hour, as i still carried, brushing by her arm, a bag of food given me to a homeless man.

only after i walked out of the store and headed home, into the silence of the snow and cold sunlight, did i feel as if i had reached some point of balance and sanity.

and i said to myself, ‘what in the hell was all of that?’

in the book a canticle for leibowitz a scholar calls the men of his time brutes and asks a priest to comment on what the priest sees in them. says the priest angrily, ’i see the image of christ.’ if ever i received the Host i received it from that old man on a bus stop. i had received charity and mercy from those that i would have thought below me. i had seen the well-to-do and proud clearly, as they were. it was sobering.

i knew what to do with the donuts. i put them by the composter for the possum and the squirrels: to throw them away would have been sacrilege, and i cannot stress that enough; as far as i was concerned it was the body and blood. as charity passed to me, so it would pass on to the weaker and more helpless than myself. what else would Francis of Assisi have done?

xxvi. calm

Tue, 13 Feb 2007 23:41:23 GMT

xxvi. calm
Originally uploaded by sparrowsfall.

Gravity is the source of lightness,
Calm, the master of haste.

A lone traveller will journey all day,
watching over his belongings;
Only safe in his own bed may he lose them in sleep.

So the captain of a great vessel should not
act lightly or hastily.
Acting lightly, he loses sight of the world,
Acting hastily, he loses control of himself.

The captain can not treat his great ship as a small boat;
Rather than glitter like jade
He must stand like stone.

snow!

Tue, 13 Feb 2007 03:38:42 GMT

snow!
Originally uploaded by sparrowsfall.

february snow across the top of the japanese holly.

back~pages (march 2007)

Tue, 13 Feb 2007 02:47:32 GMT

back~pages (march 2007)
Originally uploaded by sparrowsfall.

so-so attempt.

no other fish in the sea: #45 - channels you are not allowed to watch (january 1998) [page 2]

Mon, 12 Feb 2007 22:57:45 GMT

no other fish in the sea: #45 - channels you are not allowed to watch (january 1998) [page 2]
Originally uploaded by sparrowsfall.

the second page of #45.

no other fish in the sea: #45 - suzanne vega anyway (january 1998) [page 1]

Mon, 12 Feb 2007 22:57:20 GMT

no other fish in the sea: #45 - suzanne vega anyway (january 1998) [page 1]
Originally uploaded by sparrowsfall.

ah! the fall of 1997, i remember you now. blah. no wonder i was so depressed in all of these comics.

barely over my own Hope . . . oh, who am i kidding, i wasn't over her at all . . . i fell for another girl. she had a studio at the art institute and i visited there a couple of times. this did not go well, i am afraid, and the last i heard she was teaching english in thailand.

we shall see her, eventually, as i keep posting and posting and posting . . . but this is what her studio looked like.

and wanting someone in it . . . but not her just then . . . i put in turkey (peregrine honig's ferret) and dylan (jesse small's dog). if i remember right, i was listening to a lot of suzanne vega at the time.

this is a very 'modern' looking sparrow's fall. even as my publishing schedule was growing more erratic, and as evidently my interest in the weekly aimless strip format was flagging, the quality of the art kept improving. despite the fact that this is still pretty 'rough', the layout isn't bad, the wash is almost acceptable, and the drawing makes visual sense to me. i still dostains and marks on the walls in the same way . . . and that drawing turkey is working on impresses me even now.

and a reminder--turkey isn't dead, he's just a flying ferret with a halo.

xxv. beneath abstraction

Mon, 12 Feb 2007 22:44:30 GMT

xxv. beneath abstraction
Originally uploaded by sparrowsfall.

There is a mystery,
Beneath abstraction,
Silent, depthless,
Alone, unchanging,
Ubiquitous and liquid,
The mother of nature.
It has no name, but I call it "the Way";
It has no limit, but I call it "limitless".

Being limitless, it flows away forever;
Flowing away forever, it returns to my self:
The Way is limitless,
So nature is limitless,
So the world is limitless,
And so I am limitless.

For I am abstracted from the world,
The world from nature,
Nature from the Way,
And the Way from what is beneath abstraction.

more cold, more snow, the ice goes nowhere

Thu, 01 Feb 2007 02:27:05 GMT

more cold, more snow, the ice goes nowhere
Originally uploaded by sparrowsfall.

i still love the snow. but my mother broke her arm on the ice, so she's a little tired of it.

dukakis under the chair, by the register

Wed, 31 Jan 2007 03:31:37 GMT

dukakis under the chair, by the register
Originally uploaded by sparrowsfall.

he was asleep and snoring before this.

Mexican oil? What Mexican oil?

Tue, 30 Jan 2007 00:40:47 GMT

Mexican oil? What Mexican oil?
Originally uploaded by sparrowsfall.

move along, nothing to see.

no other fish in the sea: #45 - channels you are not allowed to watch (january 1998) [page 2]

Mon, 29 Jan 2007 01:53:56 GMT

no other fish in the sea: #45 - channels you are not allowed to watch (january 1998) [page 2]
Originally uploaded by sparrowsfall.

second page of #45

xxiv: indulgence

Mon, 29 Jan 2007 01:48:38 GMT

xxiv: indulgence
Originally uploaded by sparrowsfall.

Straighten yourself and you will not stand steady;
Display yourself and you will not be clearly seen;
Justify yourself and you will not be respected;
Promote yourself and you will not be believed;
Pride yourself and you will not endure.

These behaviours are wasteful, indulgent,
And so they attract disfavour;
Harmony avoids them.

no other fish in the sea: #45 - channels you are not allowed to watch (january 1998) [page 1]

Mon, 29 Jan 2007 01:30:47 GMT

no other fish in the sea: #45 - channels you are not allowed to watch (january 1998) [page 1]
Originally uploaded by sparrowsfall.

the first sparrow's fall of 1998. prince had come to town around this time, and michael was in the news for his usual weirdness, so the two of them got me thinking. toss in the dillard's scandal (black customers treated with more than usual obnoxiousness) and i had a story. also, of course, i had to 'play' a little, and get away from christopher's tale of woe . . . but who am i kidding. when did i stick with it for more than one comic at a time? i feared perceptions of self-indulgence, but i also feared looking like a petty ass.

i hadn't read many--well, i hadn't read scarcely any independent comics at the time, and few others amongst the regular kind either. i had no idea what petty asses comics writers and artists could be. i would have been a piker.

it is peculiar to think: i was not a comics reader at the time. i don't read vast quantities of them now, either. my technique, style, goals, perceptions, desires . . . everything i knew about comics at the time was almost entirely informed by the contents of my skull. i guess it shows.

the view out the window isn't bad at all, and except for the usual vagueness, the panelling, as well as the wash, is acceptable.

a little joke . . . Zapp chips area louisisna brand available at the broadway cafe . . . zapf chancery is a font . . . so to amuse myself, we have zapf chips. ha ha! yes, a very little joke.

this is number 45. three more to go, and the collection that i eventually called No Other Fish In The Sea is complete!

memorial from the memorial-making software at the liberty memorial museum

Mon, 29 Jan 2007 01:22:24 GMT

memorial from the memorial-making software at the liberty memorial museum
Originally uploaded by sparrowsfall.

how many times can i use 'memorial'?

i recommend the museum highly.

baby shoes

Mon, 29 Jan 2007 01:19:22 GMT

baby shoes
Originally uploaded by sparrowsfall.

from robeez.

and--no. not yet.

no other fish in the sea: #44 god has a plan for your life (december 1997) [page 2]

Sun, 28 Jan 2007 13:32:10 GMT

no other fish in the sea: #44 god has a plan for your life (december 1997) [page 2]
Originally uploaded by sparrowsfall.

second page of #44.

no other fish in the sea: #44 god has a plan for your life (december 1997) [page 1]

Sun, 28 Jan 2007 13:30:50 GMT

no other fish in the sea: #44 god has a plan for your life (december 1997) [page 1]
Originally uploaded by sparrowsfall.

descartes made a lot of errors--omit cheap french joke here--but one of them was assuming that he thought. why, skinner spent his whole life proving, or 'proving', the flaw in descartes' thinking. but ambrose bierce beat him to the punch by seventy years . . . "i think that i think, therefore i think that i am."

anyway, we dip back into the 'relationship' between christopher and Hope, but as usual are too cowardly to show it. we just have to talk about it, yap yap yap. it would have been twenty times as powerful if we had actually drawn that. but we didn't. instead, we spent time drawing that jacked up second slanty page, and no, i have no idea what i was doing.

still, nips gets in about twenty good points.

that billboard? it was up for a while on 39th street. in many ways, it is the exact philosophical idea for sparrow's fall in seven short words. Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and not one of them shall fall on the ground without thy Father's will.

so those that fall, fall because they are made to fall.

that is what i thought, for the longest time.

i think i lightened the color copy settings a great deal to create this master. i was evidently still of mixed feelings about how it was turning out, or maybe i was in a big hurry that morning.

us government figures show plateau of oil production

Sun, 28 Jan 2007 12:57:55 GMT

us government figures show plateau of oil production
Originally uploaded by sparrowsfall.

note the double peak at may and december 2005. note that despite the high price of oil through this period that production has not risen, but indeed sllightly fallen.

worldwide demand is currently in excess of supply.

second half of the chart is entirely speculative, but (allegedly) based on US government projections, though they seem to disagree with other estimates i see at the eia.

could this be the source of bush's SOTU suggestion we cut use of gasoline by 20% over the next half-generation?

naw.

via peak oil community.

Sunday, January 21, 2007: Columbus Dispatch

Sun, 28 Jan 2007 12:55:26 GMT

Sunday, January 21, 2007: Columbus Dispatch
Originally uploaded by sparrowsfall.

No further comment required.

via environmental economics.

xxi. home

Sat, 27 Jan 2007 19:26:25 GMT

xxi. home
Originally uploaded by sparrowsfall.

Accept and you become whole,
Bend and you straighten,
Empty and you fill,
Decay and you renew,
Want and you acquire,
Fulfill and you become confused.

The sage accepts the world
As the world accepts the Way;
He does not display himself, so is clearly seen,
Does not justify himself, so is recognized,
Does not boast, so is credited,
Does not pride himself, so endures,
Does not contend, so none contend against him.

The ancients said, "Accept and you become whole",
Once whole, the world is as your home.

this used to be *MY* journal!

three, at least, of four fat felines

sparrow

pumpkin patch

dukakis looking cute

xxvii: perfection

my wild and crazy valentine's day.

xxvi. calm

snow!

back~pages (march 2007)

no other fish in the sea: #45 - channels you are not allowed to watch (january 1998) [page 2]

no other fish in the sea: #45 - suzanne vega anyway (january 1998) [page 1]

xxv. beneath abstraction

more cold, more snow, the ice goes nowhere

dukakis under the chair, by the register

Mexican oil? What Mexican oil?

no other fish in the sea: #45 - channels you are not allowed to watch (january 1998) [page 2]

xxiv: indulgence

no other fish in the sea: #45 - channels you are not allowed to watch (january 1998) [page 1]

memorial from the memorial-making software at the liberty memorial museum

baby shoes

no other fish in the sea: #44 god has a plan for your life (december 1997) [page 2]

no other fish in the sea: #44 god has a plan for your life (december 1997) [page 1]

us government figures show plateau of oil production

Sunday, January 21, 2007: Columbus Dispatch

xxi. home

this used to be MY journal!