The One To Survive

The Sweet Pea has the prettiest flowers, but watch out because she really likes to climb!

So back when I was a senior in undergrad, my partner went through, like, the craziest nervous breakdown I'd ever witnessed in my life. And like, maybe it makes me a back girlfriend or whatever but I was kind of like, "I'm gonna mind my own business on this one."

So my partner gets super close to two other students in his program. He was a film student so his senior year was being capped off by him making a movie. He decides he's going to make a movie about him turning into a salmon. He gets crazy into it. He starts eating salmon for every meal. He buys a bunch of salmon-related stuff. We found a T-shirt at Goodwill with a salmon on it and he thought it was divine intervention that he was doing the right thing. He walks into the freezing-cold Puget sound fully clothed several times to "get into it." He watches videos of salmon spawning and is like, "Nothing is more poignant than this." He gets a tattoo of three salmon on his arm.

The entire time the two students he got really close to are fully enabling him. It's a folie á trois sort of situation. They're out until six in the morning doing creepy art school shit and encouraging his (possibly no longer fictional) desire to become a salmon. My partner has an answer for everything. "Salmon get eaten by bears," I say. "That's a cool as fuck way to die," he says blithely. "And Salmon are free of the yoke of capitalism."

And if I dared to say, Hey, this is....getting a little odd..., he would throw a full-scale tantrum. I'm not supporting his dream (I wasn't sure at this point if it was his dream to be a filmmaker or his dream to become a salmon). I'm basically like, okay. Be a salmon! Fuck!

We had been dating for five years at this point and this behavior was such a left turn that I just decided to ignore it. And then after all that he basically went back to normal after graduation. Sometimes he'll be like, "That was weird, huh?" and has nothing more to say on the matter.

Mama's handbag is filled with secrets.

being a writer leads to a genuinely helpful but also very stupid kind of mindfulness where you'll be having a sobbing breakdown or the worst anxiety attack of your life and think "okay, I really need to pay attention to how this feels. so I can incorporate it into my fanfiction."

everything in the whole world is erotic. except for sex. sex is too on the nose. 

Esta es una máscara de bonetero elaborada de madera para el "Carnaval de Tuzamapan", perteneciente al estado de Veracruz. Otra máscara con una historia y significado muy interesantes, ellas representan a la gente que trabaja en la agricultura cañera, volviéndose su personaje emblemático de la fiesta! Su vestimenta es formal para mofar a los antiguos patrones y capataces de las haciendas y sus grandes bonetes (sombreros decorados) llevan arreglos de flores de papel y un espejo para repeler el mal del ojo. Una celebración tan antigua mantiene la tradición de crear unas 50 máscaras al año. Qué adornos quieren que tenga su máscara?

This is a wooden bonnet mask for the "Carnaval de Tuzamapan" in the state of Veracruz. Another mask with a very interesting history and meaning, they represent the people who work in sugarcane agriculture, becoming the emblematic character of the festival! Their attire is formal to mock the old hacienda bosses and foremen, and their large bonnets (decorated hats) bear arrangements of paper flowers and a mirror to ward off the evil eye. Such an ancient celebration maintains the tradition of creating about 50 masks a year. What decorations do you want your mask to have?

Pre DP

"The Unfeebling of Anaxagoras"

Current sketch, multiple breaks because I have no motivation but being forced to do this <3