to anyone who is still paying attention

I quit!

just for a while anyway. I figure, this will be a two to three month hiatus. Big and blustery! I'm still drawing but it's getting more and more difficult to scan... and honestly I'm not drawing that much. So! leave and come back in the fall!

I'm just afraid, I'd eat your brains. Cause I'm evil.

two important historical women.

baba yaga

mother Marry 

Fantasy Tea set

A new series? Or a clever one off. Or a regular one off? who knows. but here it is, ruff and raw. I was going to do some photoshopping to it, but it's got some irreparable flaws, and a chunk missing, so I'll skip it for now. 

Geocaching!

I've done it before, but never got quite as excited by it as a concept until this last time, when I went with an I phone wielding friend. I put this in the cache:

but now I really want to start making Geocaches. So, who's going to help me?

Beast wedding

A perfect union!
Love prevails!
and I got to wedge my way into the proceedings in a small way. constructing a ball of tinder and half conducting a beastly ceremony. here is a fuzzy photograph possibly the only documentation of that bizare event:

additionaly: the ceremonial script:

Beast pope:

I would like to welcome the beasts from all the nations here today to celebrate this union of two of our ferocious comrades

I ask all attendees to remove their human suits and mechanical human hearts to return to the purity of their beastly soul. Only in this way can we all be true witnesses and well wishers of this animalistic union.

The scents, left like presents in the woods, bring the beasts together. These chemical trails wafting among the scrub brush and saplings pave a road to love. When two roads intertwine it is a time of jubilation amongst the beasts, and today is such a day friends!

But I have heard of this union before these beasts were cubs. Rumor of it spread along the creek and on the tips of leaves for as long as I can remember. Fiends, please mark my words when I say these brutes were meant to be.

It is not our way to wait, so, would the beast lovers please clasp one another’s claws, look into another’s optic orifices and proclaim your beastly love.

Beast lover 1:

I know that our beastly way, is the right way. Though it might shock, and offend even the fearsome. Never do I want to go prowling without your paw in my paw without your horn leading the way. When we screech and growl in the night, the humans fear. Little do they know those are screeches of earnest admiration respect and love.

Beast lover 2:

I recall the blood red moon that hung above our first prowl together. I admired your shining coat and ebony claw, and will though the coat may be matted and filled with bramble, or the claws dulled by the hunt. My beast, you are the only beast for me and I will not bear another day to pass without your hide bound to mine in eternal fusion.

Beast pope:

Beast lovers forever bound. The entire beast nation wishes you the best in your feral days and thunderous nights together. Never let the hunters and trappers deter you from prowling the land bound together forever as a pair and a pack.

frog

Bicycle hiatus

(song of the day: Some Loud Thunder by Clap Your Hands and Say Yeah)

      I gave myself of reflective adventure, and voyaged to to the town in which I want to be buried. Duluth Minnesota, my elephant graveyard. Now if you know me at all, you know that I wholesale deny the possibility of death in the personal realm (I just ain't doin' it!) but I can't deny that there might be a small period where my body will lose all vitality, and I will have to go to lay in the ground like ancient egyptian gods. When and if that period of extreme ennui begins I want to be laid down by the rocks and the shore and the cold cold waves.
      Well now that the will is written; I reflectively adventured to Duluth, where I drank and smoked like I had a death wish, but was far from lacking in vitality. I climbed, I carried, I wrestled, I defended, I shook, I laffed, I tumbled. It was good to see how the world was living now, and how it bloomed and grew, and I have to say that, if I was scraping old earth, then I may have collected some young seeds in my palm.  I might for example go and bike across the nation to spend time amongst and political illustrators, and agitators.
     I stayed a few days carousing, visiting, and reflecting. Soon two vitally important people are going to join together in a new union, and I will journey back again to see them, but I had to return south to deal with money. I had many routes open to me, but the one that appealed most taxed me physically and mentally, and as a mighty surprise to myself I was up to the task physically, but not mentally. I guess it shouldn't be especially shocking, considering my total lack of street smarts, even the most basic pedestrian knowledge like: Bring a sleeping bag, or Bring sunscreen, or Bring a tarp with out mighty big holes in it. The task, if you were wondering, was peddling my bicycle southward from Distant Duluth to Savory St. Paul.
     I wrote a little on the way, but most of it was done in the early morning just after an ugly nights sleep, and it is hardly legible and uncomfortably negative. It can be hard to remember to make a record of the moments of ecstasy, like lying exhausted on the abandoned bike path, after pushing yourself too hard just to break the monotony. Or the odd scene you saw between two wild turkeys and a bloodied skunk. Or the early morning sights you saw when you couldn't sleep; five deer with in one mile, a rabbit that let you get so close you could have leapt from your bike and captured him. Or how you bedded down near the swamp and the frogs sung you to sleep. Or the mid day naps you took in hidden thickets just outside of small towns when the sun got too much to handle, and how you either dreamed the voices of children who found you in your slumber, or actually herd them talk about you as you dosed. (a vaguely remembered speculative conversation, about weather I was homeless or not, and a decision that it would be best to leave me to my nap.
     those moments slip through when you forget that the world isn't aching knees, blustering wind, and glaring sun.

Afterward: I did not make it all the way back. I ached and I burned, and the sky threatened rain, and I begrudgingly requested help from a friend who came and rescued me. I had met another bike traveler on the road that day, he had taken things a little easier than I had, and caught up to me late in the day looking in good health, his bike was breaking down on him, and his packs were disheveled and dirty. I wanted badly to offer him a ride, but I knew there wouldn't be room in the car for both bikes, so I sat stretching my muscles on a bench as he biked out of town under the dark clouds and the howling wind.