Hiding in Alaska

It's been an intense few months, and my bike and I are hiding in Alaska for a month of antisocial time. We'll be back in August and will be incommunicado until then, so I will just leave you with one of my favorite paragraphs from The Wind in the Willows: 

"`I tried "stopping on" one year,' said the third swallow. `I had grown so fond of the place that when the time came I hung back and let the others go on without me. For a few weeks it was all well enough, but afterwards, O the weary length of the nights! The shivering, sunless days! The air so clammy and chill, and not an insect in an acre of it! No, it was no good; my courage broke down, and one cold, stormy night I took wing, flying well inland on account of the strong easterly gales. It was snowing hard as I beat through the passes of the great mountains, and I had a stiff fight to win through; but never shall I forget the blissful feeling of the hot sun again on my back as I sped down to the lakes that lay so blue and placid below me, and the taste of my first fat insect! The past was like a bad dream; the future was all happy holiday as I moved southwards week by week, easily, lazily, lingering as long as I dared, but always heeding the call! No, I had had my warning; never again did I think of disobedience.'"

Sneak peeks from How Goes the Battle?

Hey everyone,
I am neck deep in studio mode right now as I have a show opening at Joe Bar on April 11th. Put it on 'yer calendar, I'll update with invitation links and what not when I have 'em.

The show is called How Goes the Battle?, and it's about anger, surrender, and the failure of language. I readily admit that it's a cathartic personal therapy project: I've been sorting through the wreckage of a devastating breakup. Each piece is paired with a poem by Kay Ryan. Rather than describe more, here are some detail shots from a few of the pieces and the text of their accompanying poems:

Wooden

In the presence of supple

goodness, some people

grow less flexible,

experiencing a woodenness

they wouldn’t have thought possible.

It is as strange and paradoxical

as the combined suffering

of Pinocchio and Geppetto

if Pinocchio had turned and said,

I can’t be human after all.

Shift

Words have loyalties

to so much

we don't control.

Each word we write

rights itself

according to poles

we cant see; think of

magnetic compulsion

or an equal stringency.

Its hard for us

to imagine how small

a part we play in

holding up the tall

spires we believe

our minds erect.

Then north shifts,

buildings shear,

and we suspect.

Losses

Most losses add some­thing —

a new socket or silence,

a gap in a per­sonal

arch­i­pel­ago of islands.

We have that dif­fer­ence

to visit—itself

a going-on of sorts.

But there are other losses

so far beyond report

that they leave holes

in holes only

like the ends of the

long and lonely lives

of cast­aways

thoughts dead but not.

A Quintet of Quays this Saturday. Or: Come Hear Me Read About How Giant Sloths Are Super Hot

I am still very bad at actually telling people about things I am participating in. But in the interest of not starting every post with an apology for not posting, I'll cut right to it: for those of you who live in Seattle, I'm reading this Saturday, January 26th as part of A Quintet of Quays, AKA the third installment of the Greenwood Lit Crawl.

I go on at approximately 8:40 at Naked City Taphouse (I am super excited to be sharing the bill with the always-awesome David Lasky!), full lineup and addresses here:

I. 5:20-6:10 PM – Chocolati 8319 Greenwood Ave. N
Aaron Kokorowski, Amy Billharz, Morris Stegosaurus
II. 6:20-7:10 – Couth Buzzard 8310 Greenwood Ave. N
Aaron Kemply, Arlene Kim, Theo Dzielak
III. 7:20 -7:30 – outdoor presentation Molly Mac
IV. 7:35 -8:30 – Bherd Studios 312 N. 85th St. Suite 101 
Emily Wittenhagen, Queequeg, Doug Nufer
V. 8:40 -9:30 – Naked City Brewery 8564 Greenwood Ave. N
Tessa Hulls, Joun Burgess, David Lasky, Karen Finneyfrock

When I got asked to do this reading, I started going for long walks and photographing strange signs I came across with the intention of using their text to write place-based poems. But that didn't end up happening, and instead I got really obsessed with one sign at the Woodland Park Zoo:

I have written and illustrated a trio of short stories about just what might have happened to lead to the necessity of that sign being posted. They're about the apocalypse, space exploration, and extinct megafauna, and one of them turned into a completely NSFW piece of erotica about natural history museums. Yup. It's illustrated. Here are some sneak preview images: 

Hope to see you guys there! Here's the FB invite.