My Type

Castle Rock

If it weren't for the marine layer, the ocean would be visible behind me!

Blue boy Bachelor Button Cornflowers

I planted these all over the hillside behind my cousin's house (the photographer). It took them nearly three months to show up! I had given up on them, but recently I went over for dinner, and saw a view much like this photo. These are one of my favorite flowers. If I ever marry, they're likely to be in my bouquet. :)

Garden Project Continued

 This cantaloupe hardly seemed like it would make it back in May. It was started indoors, and put directly into the ground one sunny afternoon without any acclimation time to ease the shift. It withered initially, but after a week or two it decided to make it. So it did.

 The watermelons were seeded directly into the soil. They're doing quite well! This one is a bit larger than a baseball. For such a late start, everything is producing enormously!

 This is Kittties. She kills bunnies and birdies for kicks.

Finally, here are the first of the green tomatoes. I am SO excited about these! I can't tell you how much I long to sink my teeth into a fleshy mater!

Sonoma Lads Inked

Check out how much better they look with ink!

Santa Barbara

What does this look like to you?

Sonoma Lads

 These pictures are cropped as the scanner could not fit the entire piece of paper. I could patch them, but hey, I'm lazy, ok?

This one up top here is a fellow who shall remain nameless. He has sun-streaked autumn hair and eyes that sparkle like a moon on fire.

I never did finish the drawing, if you can't tell. All those evergreens were taking up all my spare time! I'll never finish now.

On our right is the handsome younger brother of he who shall remain nameless. Handsome, but not so much that he'd tempt my starry gaze from the elder brother. No sir.

So that is that. Two farmer boys who have captured my imagination. Yep.

Forest girl

Dope

I am a tag fanatic. Each locale in which I've spent significant time has a slew of tags I love. I'll list a few examples for you.

San Francisco - Lurk, Falling, Paeday, Astro, Cancer Carl, 189., Aesop, Duet

Santa Barbara - Goon, rope, Lady Monster

Sonoma county - Mogly, um., irate lords

I recently moved again. This photo is my new favorite tag. It had good timing is all. I'd just been talking about how "dope" ought to take place of "cool" in slang-land, then about an hour later I found this tag.





I am aware that most people don't consider tagging an art. Generally it isn't. However, there are certainly exceptions. It depends on both the moniker and the placement. Finding "lurk" scrawled all over the avenues was meaningful to me when I was in my "lurk all over the avenues after dark" phase in San Francisco. Also, there is something magical about finding remote urban ruins scrawled all over with recognizable tags. Just means the taggers play like I play.

Contrary to what the photo hints, I am not in San Francisco.

Playing in the Woods

Untitled

Another old tidbit. A boy once thought I wrote this about him. This isn't about a boy:

Shingles.
Stockings caught on the rough squares.
A run here, a run there.

I hear you.

Rested on the crest of the shingled wave.
Sighed and smiled to those watching.
Silvery and silent, they smiled back.

I hear you.
I always hear you.

Red and heady.
We sipped delicately.
Sloshed sweetly.
Wild as the vines.

I see you.
Right through you.

A third journey, then the sand.
Dancing feet demanding their love.
The grains filled my shoes.
Overflowed.
Spilled across the floor when I kicked them off.

I feel you.
Every inch.

Lo-fi.
Hum diddy dum.
Lo-fi.
We danced. Barefoot and unapologetically.
Let me show you how hips feel about lo-fi.

Dive in.
I flow right down to the sea.

Two days gone

Found this in another folder. I know who I wrote it for, but I won't tell you:

The house is quiet now, but your presence lingers. A taste of laughter still flavors the air. Music hangs delicate as smoke where you left it; reverberations of an evening past. I feel it as these fingertips explore the frets. The soft vibrations of nylon strings meets the ghost of your melodies. They rain upon a saturated room, flooding the atmosphere with glorious sound. I mute the string and listen.

Silence fills the space again.

When I close my eyes, I feel you. Your eyes grin from across the room. Your form rests upon the crush of the cushions. I hear you. A gentle morning mist is the memory of your voice. It descends lightly among the evergreens, filling the canyons with the lyric of your thoughts. I breathe you in. You are an echo in my lungs. You rebound and recoil, then escape in a whistle. A specter present in my song.

Apparitional pupils blaze from the hollow your figure left upon the room. The light shifts and flickers. My fingers pluck lightly beneath a wistful gaze. The sound rises gracefully toward the emptiness that once held you. Tendrils of melody cling to the memory. Blending with my sighs, they dissipate into the stillness of this lonely room.

You have gone.
You are two days gone

Main Street

I found this in my draft box. It has been there since 2008. I am sure this is about Guerneville. Seems unfinished to me:

there's a street...
just an ordinary street...
broken sidewalks..
and old concrete.
In the summertime so many faces swim by
always busy, scurring 'neath the periwinkle sky
Some are strangers, most are friends
The former to the latter by the end.
The Autumn comes, but can't turn the leaves
the forests are all evergreen.
Redwood giants towering.
There's never snow, oh but the rains, how they come and go.
And that street...

Original Photo

Three Friends

 

This is based on the photo above. Not a particularly realistic reproduction, but it was fun to draw. I made up Stuart's horrible sweater. As you can see, he is much more stylish in real life. 

Letter to Nobody

Glitter surfer

I found a tube of glitter glue a few years ago. I wish I still had everything that got a glitter treatment.

This sketch looks pretty sweet in the light. The effect is an ever changing ocean surface. I dig it.

That girl is me. The me from my fondest daydreams.
I still don't surf. Sigh.

Faces

Big Basin Falls

I wanted to climb that wall so badly.

















Photos by Jospeh Walling

Garden project

Photo by Joseph Walling

Big Basin

Autumn halo

An ode to the photograph of a boy I never knew:

Blue boys sprout and waft in the same breeze brushing your loose strands. Bare shoulders freckle as sunlight wraps you, lights you, burns you. Blossoming cornflowers recall mornings spent beneath stained glass. Mornings spent beneath your passing glance.
I fear I will never know you.
Autumn halo so golden in the summertime, you play my muse. I am your idolizing sculptor. I reach for freckled skin and my touch finds stone. Oh, naught but trembling daydreams and stone.
What pen can write you? What ink can give rise to your unfathomable self? I know naught of you. How might this pen then tell of what I know not?
Bare shouldered farm boy betwixt a bed of blue boys. Dirt stained fingers wrap around long stems as you gather. Your eyes alight upon your chosen blossom and in perfect stillness you reach.
Were I but a wavering cornflower in your grip! I would happily fade amongst the bouquet if only it gave you pleasure. Were I but the sunlight caught in your summer lightened hair! Ah even to be soil beneath your fingernails, for then inside myself you would have reached. Oh but to touch you as the breeze so freely caresses.
What thoughts wander behind the serenity of your expression? Your lips part slightly. Your brow softens. What love but that of a cornflower?

Empty Vessel

Stephen woke alone in his bed. This was a rare occurrence as he could barely stand an hour without company. However, that morning he had not planned adequately. His most recent lover had been chased off before he'd bothered to find another. Several women had caught his attention, but he was tired. Ruby had left him drained. They were inseparable for months and yet she had never managed to catch him. She did not even try. He had sat in frustration beside her for months waiting for something, anything, besides her beauty to catch his interest. Despite this effort she gave nothing. Her dark eyes flickered from unknown point to point, rarely catching his. They were fluid and deep, insinuating a heavy current of thought, but she never spoke. Not of her own accord anyway. She would answer questions with a word, two if she were feeling verbose. He wanted to be entertained. He wanted to laugh and listen, but she offered nothing. What began so sweetly in June ended bitterly in November when, fed up, he exorcised her from his narrative. She called and called, but he ignored the persistent ring.
December had come and he woke alone.
The feeling was foreign and uncomfortable. He missed her touch- nothing more. Her very presence had become a vexation he could no longer stomach. What a fool she was. Her empty head drained her of allure and left her a hollow pretty thing unworthy of his affection.
He pulled the comforter over his head. Still- he missed her touch.

Sunlight spilled from the kitchen window. It would be past eleven if the sun had crested the redwoods. He filled his mug, screwed the lid on, and glared at the sun. Clothing and instruments were strewn about the sparsely furnished room, which irked him. He liked things in their place. However, he was already late.
Outside crows were calling from the wires above his already running car. It was an orange beast of a Mercedes teetering on the edge of its mortality. Each morning that it sputtered awake was a genuine relief. He could not do without it, though he resented it as much as anything else.
His fingers expertly rolled a joint. The phone was ringing again. "Ruby" flashed across the screen. He silenced it. The lighter sputtered uselessly, so he pitched it across the room. The resounding crack satisfied him. He struck a match and lit the joint. Inhaling deeply, he locked the door and walked down the staircase. A dead cornflower still occupied the vase on the picnic table. He picked it up and crushed it between his thumb and index. She had left it there. She'd had a strange obsession with cornflowers. Another unexplained idiosyncrasy which irritated him to no end. He hated guessing.
He hated her.

----

Anne woke alone in her bed. Fog hung low overhead, creeping between the pines outside her window. She stretched and rolled onto her stomach, burying her head between pillows. Stephen was first to visit her thoughts. She pictured him waking without her, perhaps with another. Stephen was never alone. He had asked her to dinner two weeks after leaving his live in girlfriend. She knew too much about it, having worked for a year with the girl's former roommate. That town was too small.

She had moved to San Francisco two months prior to that particular morning, and one month before the break up. They were never a good fit, but somehow it still affected her deeply. He had taken to ignoring her. It could be that. She sat up and reached for her phone. Dialing him was a sort of irrepressible tic. It rang.
"Hi, you've reached Ste.."
She hung up.
Her behavior was irrational and she knew it. What was there to say? In all those months she'd had him, she found nothing to say. They lived in different worlds.
Now they lived in different counties. She woke each morning to a thriving metropolis and he to ancient redwood groves. She missed the trees more than his company. Even so, she was drawn to him. Or perhaps she was simply drawn to his nonchalance. Whatever it was, she wanted to forget and let go.
Somehow, right then, it felt impossible.
Anne dropped the phone after staring blankly at it for several minutes. Tossing aside the blankets she rose from bed and took three long strides to the southern window. Below nothing moved. No sound rose. Another still morning in the alley. Much to her vexation, all activity came between 2 and 4 am. However, it was a rare morning off and she had managed to sleep past ten.

He had never allowed her to be herself. That was it. She swore she would punch him if he called her Ruby one more time. She had no idea where he'd come up with that one. By the end of the summer even his friends called her by Ruby. She would grimace when she heard the name, but she answered to it nonetheless. Stephen would often tell her that Anne was a tired old name, so he christianed her anew and left it at that. These days she regretted not following suit and dubbing him "Brock" or some other such nonsense.
Outside a beam broke the fog cover. She smiled at the distraction. Several gulls passed low overhead. She followed their path with her eyes. In the distance a crow swept between dissipating fog. Her superstitions began to rise, but another crow landed on the wire above her alley. She smiled to herself and turned from the window.
Another lonely day in San Francisco. She dressed in her usual layers, picked up her bag, and left the apartment. She had no direction, no plans, and hardly a thought to occupy her. As was usual on such days, she turned right on Vicente avenue and began the long trek to Ocean Beach. A crow called from somewhere beyond the rooftops. She smiled to herself again.

Coexist

Coexist

Overload

I drew the image on the right in November of 08, then colored it pink sometime in 09, then took a highlighter to it last month. It got to be too much, so I flipped it over and traced the original sketch through the page.

Aptly titled "Overload".

Oh- the mug belongs to my younger brother Michael. Part of an ink series I drew of my family watching TV.

Muriel

While in Santa Barbara I took to writing a page a day- mostly disconnected tidbits. Here is one such tidbit that I happened to like:

Muriel thought of stilletos.

Her own calloused heels were housed in heavy clogs. She stamped said clogs on stained floorboards while staring intently at bricks.
All fashionable cafes have at least one crumbling brick wall hung heavily with local art. Her eyes meandered from one over-priced painting to another, but her thoughts did not falter.
A woman sat opposite Muriel, just below her line of vision. It was this particular woman who had inspired Muriel's current stream of conscience. She was sitting along, spreading butter over a sliced bagel.
Her tiny brown feet were, of course, encased in murderously steep stilletos. Muriel wanted to stare, but the other woman had caught her doing so twice. Not wanting to risk awkwardness, Muriel had taken to staring at art.
She began tapping briskly, trying not to focus on anything. She felt her tic coming on. Her eyes had already filled and begun their steady leak. She bit her lower lip, holding it tightly between incisors.
Moisture built beneath her nostrils, creating an irritating itch. She scratched at it with obvious desperation. The woman was looking at her.
Muriel broke into a coughing fit. Everyone stared.
"WHAT!?"
The word burst from her lower abdomen into the now silent shop. She shoved herself from her chair and stood unsteadily. Her tea spilled, but she did not notice.
Blood rushed her face, deepening her pale cheeks to a vivid crimson. She began to shake. Tension permeated from all present. Muriel clutched the corner of her table and screamed.
The woman stood and briskly left.

A barista approached Muriel gently. He placed his hand on her elbow and guided her back to a seated position. She had ceased her outburst and wept quietly to herself.
"Muriel? Can I get you some water?"
She hung her wet face and shook silently.
"Muriel, you're fine. Breathe honey, you're fine."
She inhaled sharply, then broke into a fresh fit of coughing. She mumbled feebly, incoherently.
"She didn't know honey. She didn't know. Just breathe."

Ruby

2008 Surfer Ink Series

You'd have to hear the song...

I'm working on three separate pages for the previous story, so I thought I'd take a break and make something even more ridiculous.

Behold.

Comic book art...

I have been reading a lot of R. Crumb and A.K. Crumb lately. I thought I'd try the whole comic book thing, and this is what I came up with. I found a photo of Matt Costa online, printed it, drew up a story, then redid the entire thing six times. It isn't much of a story, but it was fun!!!

-R.

Creek

Goat Rock

First edited piece.

To Rototill

The uncut version.

Summertime in Los Gatos

I made blueberry cornmeal pancakes this morning. Unfortunately I did not beat the egg separately, and thus they did not cook properly. Ah well. They were still delicious.
I french pressed espresso to serve alongside said corncakes, and that came out perfectly.

This simple meal was in memory of simpler times, when all seemed clear and right. Four summers back, long before the hard times, where daydreams lingered and linger still.

La la la.