it’s the second day of the week again. that’s right: tuesday. that’s why they call it that, actually - it sounds like “two.” neat!
this week was supposed to be the first week everyone went back to the office. the big, beautiful new office the firm started construction on riiiight before the pandemic hit which although i’m sure financially was incredibly stressful timing, i think probably was ultimately a net positive. but of course, the delta variant is picking up speed and ripping through our communities once again and we’re about to send all our unvaccinated children back to school in person so we can make sure our adult workforce has as few excuses as possible not to return to work. in general, i mean. not my firm specifically.
i would actually like to return to the office because in a lot of ways it’s easier to focus on actually drawing things, which is the phase i’m in now on one of the projects i’m working on, but working with a mask on all day is kind of a pain in the ass. sorry scolds. it sucks. you know it, i know it. i got the shot and did what i was supposed to and i do wear it when i’m supposed to so i am allowed to be honest about the fact that it sucks.
this week has been a good week for thinking about the reasons behind things, and a good week for realizing that a lot of seemingly very complicated narratives are actually probably much simpler than maybe we think. delta variant, schools reopening, covid surging again, “ineffective” government response, those pesky anti-vaxxers! well, it turns out that it’s hard to contribute to the profitability of your company when you also have to keep an eye on your kids. and it turns out when you can’t take a day off to recover from potential side effects of the vaccine, you don’t get it because you need to keep your job in order to keep your apartment. and it turns out that if you actually used the power vested in you as an elected official to take appropriate measures to handle the pandemic — i.e. pay everyone cash to stay home for 2 months, mandate vaccines, mandate time off for vaccines — business owners get mad at you and yell at you and call you a pedophile. and also your stock portfolio might suffer, because if you are an elected official in this country, you are definitely a person that is a concern for.
and with afghanistan too. the taliban basically took back the country almost instantly, i’m sure you’ve all seen horrific photos and videos from the airport as the US pulled their last people (and dogs) (but not the afghan people who worked with those dogs or cooked food or filed papers for the americans) from the country and i’m sure you’ve been subjected to the current news talking point of “what the hell was the point, what did we even accomplish, we were there for 20 years and this is what happens? what went wrong??? who goofed?”
nothing went wrong. nobody goofed. raytheon and boeing and all the other arms manufacturers made a fuckton of money for 20 years. if anything, trump goofed by actually starting the withdrawal process instead of just making democrat noises about it, and now sadly it looks like the defense department cash spigot might finally be drying up in that particular part of the world. overall it was a massive success, though. not a mistake! not a goof! not a noble goal that was sadly undermined by poor leadership and the harsh realities of blah blah blah. nope: a few people made more money than God and all it took was two decades of causing immense misery and suffering in a country several thousand miles away. mission accomplished.
well anyway. enough of all that i guess. you all probably know it already anyway.
at the risk of this becoming a regular thing — what is this, five things?! — this week i heard a few songs by this portland band bed. that i had never heard of before maybe because their name is almost literally impossible to google. good kind of sludgy kind of shoegazy kind of pop. check it out. ‘void’ is my favorite i think.
let’s get into it.
1. painting
yeah, whatever. this one’s lazy. sue me. i was not feeling motivated at all to paint anything this week and i had a couple side projects i needed to work on. so i grabbed a photo from somewhere on the internet and painted this pretty quickly from reference.
let’s see what kind of insights we can wring out of it anyway, though.
insight number one: once again, looking back on it, this sketch is much more compelling than the final. and i think the main reason is, i did not overthink and overwork the trees. they’re stylized in this sketch, and i did not go down that route when i actually painted them. and now, looking back, things would have been much better if i had.
initial colors. they’re pretty muted but sort of the start i’m looking for. linework turned down and some of the shapes starting to get reworked. look at that big cloud right overhead. wonder where that went.
colors! textures! trees done in a lazy way that do not transcend that laziness to become interestingly stylized!
cooling down the greens towards us and brightening up that patch of grass in the distance that’s getting hit with sun.
i’m going to spare you the several dozen increasingly tortured iterations of that cloud up top and skip to the part where i just decided to ditch it. clouds are hard.
and there we have it. maybe a little better than it deserves, but still not good. but that’s okay. that’s what you can tack on to the end of any description of something you made or did that turned out badly: but that’s okay. broadly speaking, of course, it is, i guess. so there you have it.
2. poem
fall poem - summer 2021
it’s not really funny,
but it is something to say
when the sun went down,
trees settling into a colder quiettiny stillnesses evaporating between trunks
i think you knew then
we’ll have weeks ahead, still —
to freshen our drinks
and turn down our lamps
you’re smart
you know how this ends
3. fridge cleanout reuben benedict
i’m moving soon, did you know that? have i mentioned that i’m moving soon? have you picked up on the series of increasingly-less-oblique allusions to the fact that i will be leaving this apartment soon and moving into another one? if not, now you know.
part of that process (and it has been a process) is getting rid of the food in my fridge and cabinets so there’s less of it to move. or ideally none of it.
so this week i was trying to use up some perishable stuff in the fridge. i made reubens last week and still had quite a few of those elements around, and i made vegan eggs benedict this weekend (using this recipe this time — usually this guy’s stuff is great and this wasn’t bad but i preferred the other version where you basically just make a roux and it doesn’t involve cashews at all) so i had that stuff to use too.
so i thought: why not. reuben benedict.
silken tofu scraps, seitan, chao cheese, potatoes, rye, sauerkraut, some russian dressing, and some vegan hollandaise.
slice up the seitan. this will get cooked up and then you throw the chao cheese on top at the end so it melts up a bit.
shred up the potatoes (for hash browns). i rinse the potatoes afterward and dry them off, i think this helps makes things more crispy but honestly crispy potatoes are like astrology: you can kind of do whatever you want and it’s ultimately all up to the vibes.
the silken tofu was in a bunch of weird shapes so i decided a scramble was the way to go. added some nutritional yeast, salt, pepper, garlic, mustard powder, and just a tiny dash of kala namak (for egg flavor)
toasted rye, then add russian dressing and hash browns
add seitan with slightly melty chao cheese
add tofu scramble
add kraut
go nuts with the hollandaise. i added chives on top too for the look.
this was astonishingly good. halfway through i started to worry about sauerkraut and hollandaise together but the russian dressing brought a key umami element to the agglomeration. i might actually make this again on purpose.
4. a new apartment
i am moving, it’s true. not to somewhere interesting like paris, but back to the east side of the river. originally i was going to move into a nice little house with three other roommates, who were strangers before i met them but turned out to be great people (probably). i was going to have to downsize my amount of stuff, and probably keep my couch in a storage unit, but i was looking forward to living with other people again, getting to know new people, sitting on a porch shooting the shit or not shooting the shit at all and just quietly watching the street with a big ol glass of gin and tonic — and also, saving approximately seven hundred dollars a month in rent.
but that didn’t end up working out. so i’ve been apartment hunting. and let me tell you something else you already know: it sucks ass.
the biggest issue i’m repeatedly running into is that, apparently, nobody cooks anymore, or at least the people who design and build multifamily housing do not think anyone cooks anymore. kitchens are tiny, there’s no counter space, there might be a nice stove if you’re looking at apartments in a particular price point, but if you actually step back and think about how you would use the space to create a meal, well. you wouldn’t. or you’d be balancing things on other things and stashing some of your prep stuff in your cupboards and running things back and forth to your tiny dining table. and in most of these places, the “kitchen” is right across from the “bedroom” and both of those things are in quotes for a reason. so if you cook anything at all fragrant, you get to sleep in a bed that smells like curry and oil.
i’ve seen several with that galley kitchen layout. i’ve seen a couple where instead of watching tv or hanging a nice piece of art on the wall you would essentially be staring at your microwave across 6 tiny feet of living room (“living”). and today i saw one where the kitchen was actually laid out on either side of a sort of hallway and was nice and spacious and the layout actually made a lot of sense except the other end of the hallway was the bedroom. and there was no door. so, marginal improvements.
i think i found a place, though, and it sort of makes sense and there’s enough space to add an island of my own, which will help with the layout. and it doesn’t have a bedroom door but it does have a balcony.
and so it goes on and on, finding little things to love and little things to pretend you don’t hate about each situation you find yourself in, over and over, until you die.
okay well that’s it for this week. next week i’ll spend some more time on the painting. maybe! or i won’t. tune in to find out. have a good week everyone. see ya next tuesday. bye.