How did we get here?

Just doing my job.

When is enough, enough? I designed the above for a card of congratulations on the new job. Maybe it is too opaque but I find it hilarious--must me my warped sense of humor. I must admit that at times I find it hard to keep chugging along. In my work and my writing. I cannot think of the publishing thing, because I imagine publishing a book is like giving birth. It is terribly difficult to get the thing out there, but that is just the beginning and then eventually you have to let go. So I focus on the joy of escaping into a new world, on walking with my characters through the story. I have a vague idea of where I want to end up, but how I get there is uncharted. Sometimes, I end up in a new place but by then it's okay. It's like reliving life over and over in different guises. I suppose it is what actors do, except that it is on the exterior and for writers it is an interior activity.

Real Perilous Places

I guess this blog is really a diary, since no one is reading it. That's okay. There is something about putting it out there that is somehow pacifying. Especially, putting my pictures somewhere other than in stacks in the basement. Each of my drawings is a piece of me (fabulous Patricia Barber song, by the way). And I know when I die, only my children for a time might have an interest, but I know, someday down the line, they will find there way into the trash. But by scanning and posting them there is a little gallery of my own.

Anyway, why this picture, why now. I often wonder why I do these drawings, what in my personality and history brings me to this creation. I came across this little picture of Switzerland from a couple of years ago. It was a view from the train from Vevey to Geneva. Done very quickly then worked over later, part reality, part fantasy. We lived in Switzerland and have family there, so it is a place I am familiar with and it is a country full of perilous places. Fascinating little villages perched on the sides of mountains and lakes. Perhaps that somehow those landscapes soaked into my brain. I have always been fascinated by the combination of nature and architecture. When I was younger one of my favorite things to do was to design houses. My houses always had a stream going through the middle. Of course now that I am a house owner and I can appreciate things like dry basements and lack of humidity and bugs, it doesn't seem so attractive. I also always wanted to live in a haunted house, instead I write. Writing is like living in a haunted house with out the cold spots.