my skin has never looked better but my mind is rotting

who are you? i think there are still some of you out there. you could send me an email if you want. that would mean a lot to me. god knows i could use the encouragement

Q: In one interview, one of your editors said “In the scene in Akira with the Neo Tokyo explosion, he used a massive amount of crosshatching to depict the volume of the sphere and the way the light hit it. I suggested that painting it straight black, then drawing in white lines would be quicker and easier, but he got angry at me and said he couldn’t do that; not with the millions of people dying inside the sphere.” I think that really shows the relationship you have with your art.

OTOMO: I spent an entire evening gradually blackening that sphere with really thin lines. The editor was pretty alarmed when he saw it, what with all the time it took. But—while you can’t see it since it’s a full-view depiction of the blast—there are millions of lives being lost in this panel. If I wanted readers to sense realism in the scene and feel just how significant this event was, that work spent covering it up in detailed black lines was indispensable.

dang. yeah. otomo is such a cool dude

I tell you what: when California opens back up, however long from now that may be, I’m gonna head over to Piedmont Springs and hang out in a big tub of hot water for a long long time. Last year I was going every other week . . . it was the one true luxury in my life. I would submerge myself for an hour round about 6:30 pm, and flop out onto Piedmont Avenue afterwards, the sun having just set, and I would be all warm and gooey, and my hair still damp, and so on. And I would walk down to Gaylords and get a cup of coffee and flirt with the girl behind the counter, and then hop in the Datsun and rip down the street and Feel All Right for a little while. It ruled. Hah!

Though yeah: I will have this again, if nothing else. Lord knows I love being in hot water. On the short list of simple personal gestures I perform and rely on to maintain some semblance of sanity, and to keep me from throwing myself upon the sword, so to speak, bathing is right near the top. That I can do it beneath trees and an ice-cold blue California sky is the cherry on top!!!

man i’m about to go to sleep and i was just thinking how scary the idea of an imposter is

laura and i are obsessed with doppelgängers / doubles so i think about that stuff all the time

gives me the f*ckin creeps!!

i think, with the help of some edibles i’ve taken over the last six weeks (lol), i have been able to completely strip all sentimentality out of a few years from the past that were still hurting me

and by “a few years” i mean like almost half my life lol

at any rate: they have become useless to me, at least for now, and there’s a victory in that

that’s what i tell myself anyway!!

far out

ok good-night 🌝

. . . The young woman smiled dreamily as she went on about the storm, and he looked at her in amazement and something akin to shame: she had experienced something beautiful, and he had failed to experience it with her. The two ways in which their memories reacted to the evening storm sharply delimit love and nonlove.

By the word “nonlove” I do not wish to imply that he took a cynical attitude to the young woman, that, as present-day parlance has it, he looked upon her as a sex object; on the contrary, he was quite fond of her, valued her character and intelligence, and was willing to come to her aid if she ever needed him. He was not the one who behaved shamefully towards her; it was his memory, for it was his memory that, unbeknown to him, had excluded her from the sphere of love.

my father

“I love you Ron call me”

(my good friend molly in portland pointed out that i’m dressed like dante (!))