Today was slow to start. I spent most of daylight hanging around the apartment while the maintenance guys dealt with putting a new chain in the one ceiling fan that was lacking that, and with fixing the faucet handle in the tub that was barely hanging on by one screw. I got the first of my two bookshelves almost filled, an important step in feeling like Home, then sat around poking at the internet way too long.

But then I went out and while I was feeling so spoilt for being able to start every trip around the city by bicycling down an oak-shaded parkway, I saw something big and black coming towards me from one side. An owl? No, a fucking grey heron flying past my path to land in an oak tree. I think there’s a few living on the parkway near me, last week I surprised one while I was biking home in the evening.

And then I went out to City Park with the intent to maybe draw.

I sat on a bench by a fountain and just didn’t have the energy to work, so I did my daily half-hour of meditation instead. It was a lot easier than usual to quiet down my mind and I suspect this may have been because the sounds of cicada screaming WHO WANTS SOME FUK at each other created a pleasant distraction. Or maybe I just finally put enough time into it that my brain’s starting to cooperate. I suspect it was the horny insects though.

Then I went to a cafe and worked on Parallax for a while. I’m starting to get back into the arting groove and make some progress on stuff every day, which is really nice after like three months of Moving. I really need to get a workspace together at home, though. Can’t work on porn commissions at a cafe or in the park, plus I have a chance of getting more done if I’m puttering around the desk at home. Eventually I will find the right components for a standing setup that I like again.

I stopped at the supermarket on the way home. On my way out I noticed a mosquito hawk sitting on a notice next to the door, and reflected on how when I left I might have been tempted to kill it, but now I’m kind of delighted to see any bug that doesn’t want to eat me or shit in my stored food, especially after thirteen years in the frozen hells of Boston and Seattle where there are a lot less different kinds of creatures out and about in general. Every critter is kind of a pleasant surprise.

Every day here kind of feels amazing. It’s good to be back down here. I hope I get to live here for a good long time, though news like “the ice caps are experiencing a summer melt much more forcefully than ever before observed” makes me fear I won’t. Enjoy it while it lasts, I guess.

A couple of blocks away from me on Jefferson Davis Parkway, there is a stepped pedestal. I am pretty sure it used to have a statue of some Confederate military figure; now it’s just an empty pedestal. I have seen people sitting atop it meditating, and think I need to try that someday.

The other day I passed by there on my bike and there was a skinny dude wearing a big grey mask that I can only describe as “the skeleton of a dead carrot”. He was dancing around up there with a friend filming him. I did what came naturally, and hollered HAIL KING CARROT! ALL HAIL THE KING OF CARROTS! as I passed by.

Today I was bicycling home from a cafe in the Quarter. The tail end of a rainstorm was still passing through. I came to the place where the bicycle trail passes under the I-10; there’s a little parking lot there with a pop-up vegan takeout joint in a repurposed shipping container. In that parking lot were a half dozen dudes with assorted drums, banging out apocalyptic rhythms that were both infectiously danceable and really sophisticated; I could hear them a good block away despite the noise of the rain and the cars overhead. Turns out the space under a highway is pretty damn good for drum practice.

I have been toying with the idea of doing a series of portraits of deities to flog at some of the galleries downtown. As I cycled home in the rain, I decided maybe I should do one of the city’s personal Storm King, as well – praying to the ghost of Nash Roberts for a little extra intervention with the weather feels like a good idea as we slide into hurricane season.

I continue to feel astonishingly spoilt to have grown up in this weird little city that no sane person would have founded in these swamps, and to be able to return to it after enough time away to realize how unique it is compared to the rest of the US. I hope it continues to not be washed away for many a decade.

So last year I was in this anthology Alex DeCampi put together called “Twisted Romance”.

It’s up for an Eisner. I get to put “Eisner-nominated” on every attempt to find a publisher for Parallax now. Maybe I’ll even get to put “Eisner-winning”. I’m not sure what the protocol is for saying “nominated for/received one thirteenth of an Eisner” but I guess I get to figure that out now.

If you make comics then you’re eligible to vote. Yes, even web comics or small press stuff. http://www.eisnervote.com has everything you need to know if you wanna vote for me and the rest of the Twisted Romance crew, anthologies are in the second page if you don’t have any opinions about the other categories.

I am also up for a fraction of a Lambda; the all-trans anthology I was in is in the running for one of those. Those don’t seem to be public voting so we’ll see how that goes. It’s been a good year for this sort of thing for me, I guess!

I just woke up to the first real thunderstorm I’ve heard in… I can’t even remember how long. Quite possibly since I left New Orleans back in 1995. After the center passed over us (as telegraphed by the time between seeing flashes of lightning through my still-closed eyes while lying in bed, and hearing the thunderclap roar across the land), I got up and went out on the porch to watch the rain come down for a bit.

I have missed that more than I knew.

And the back of my head is singing a little song from nursery school days:

It’s raining

It’s pouring

The old man is snoring

Went to bed, bumped his head

And couldn’t get up in the morning.

Once again it’s that special time of year where it becomes vitally important that people who have seen the latest installment in a never-ending big-budget movie series not “spoil” the plot by talking about how shocking it was when Thanos declared his eternal love for Bucky.

It is also that special time of year when people like me who haven’t seen any of these movies feel compelled to grumble about them dominating the discussion.

I kind of feel like the story of how serialized adventure movies went from being a series of shorts filling out a matinee to a completely archaic form to something that squashes the global box office under its titanic spandex-clad ass a few times a year has a lot of interesting things to teach us about financing and story-building but holy crap if I never hear another damn word about Star Wars or the Avengers or whatever in the rest of my life I would be pretty happy.

Anyway I should have some breakfast.