Comics take over the neighbourhood

This book is a game changer.
Read it in my youth and never
looked back. 

I am in year two of my comics world domination right now, main themes being learning and teaching. 

Last week I hammered out an application for funding for a youth-led course to explore the neighbourhood through comics and the arts in the language of their choice. A local institution had approached me, after someone passed them my neighbourhood web comic, asking if I had any ideas for partnerships. Um, after 20 years in public service, yes, I have ideas! So, they signed on to provide the  event space. 

I have been learning about how young people can steer such opportunities for their own empowerment. My neighbourhood has an alarming number of youth and children in poverty, so the funding will pay my fee so that we can make the course free for them, but all Berlin youth twelve and up are welcome. We hope kids from the co-located Queer Centre will jump in. Drop-in format for those who cannot commit to a weekly course. 

I do not feel really educated enough to offer this course, but you have to start somewhere, and when the institution approached me, I reckoned I better bury the imposter syndrome. Few foreigners are engaged in the community despite us being a huge proportion of the community. So, you know, feel the fear and do it anyway (I loved that book).

I pep talk myself by reminding myself  that I studied creative writing and I have organised lots of events, plus I make comics myself. The other piece, the teaching piece, that's scary, but I did actually teach for two years before joining the foreign service. At the embassy where I served last, I ran an education program. Now, it was my team - not me - that actually met students in an interactive way and I only got pulled in as the suit with a speech. But still, it was good experience. I've got books on teaching art and on sociocultural programming on the coffee table. I have friends who know stuff. I've mothered - as an active verb - for over 12 years. The worst that can happen is that the course sucks. But the next one would be better.

So I hope I get good news this spring once the jury meets.       

Shorn

Photo Credit © Maja Jancekova

To observers it must be laughingly obvious that last year was the ideal moment, from one perspective, to leave a career and concentrate on obligations at home. I made a great decision. The kids went into partial or full-time schooling in the spring of school year 2019-2020, were again at home due to COVID-19 in the following winter, and then spent several months more in part-time home-schooling this spring. Now, my son is once again thrust into part-time schooling at home. It is such a wonderful thing that I can devote myself to their schooling like this. My kids are lucky.

I chose the wrong time from another perspective, my own, to leave my career. Starting a small art business requires time and dedication. I could already only work part-time on it for a number of reasons, and because of home schooling my available working hours shrank even further. To make a long story short, because people refuse to vaccinate, the full burden of their education falls to me a couple of days a week. My available energy has shrunk even more, because homeschooling is taxing. 

Both of my kids have attention issues, and doing any homework, never mind homeschooling, was always a total struggle. I am yelled at, hit, objects are thrown, I am whined at endlessly, it's exhausting, with little reward, and after years of my own health suffering I walked away in 2020, as I said, from the effort of trying to satisfy the twin demands of career and mothering. I chose a tough course that is humbling, that has involved a punishing drop in prestige and wealth, but that was healthier for everyone. The big bonus is that I love working on comics.

So homeschooling was never going to be easy, but for whatever reason, my children's school has been incapable - unlike most other industries - of getting on top of distance learning. We are in the third Corona school year, and still they cannot do more than send a couple of worksheets home per school day. It is the most difficult of things to motivate children like mine to do busywork like writing out worksheets. The lack of video teaching, group work and interactive activities is destroying their education. Filling in the gaps is impossible at home, when the children are totally resistant. I hear stories of other families, where the kids are engaged via Zoom with their teachers and classes most or all day, but it is better for my mental health not to think about it. It is too frustrating and I refuse to become bitter. 

In September and October I had finally managed to find a rhythm where I reliably painted between 5 and 8 pages of my book a week. Last week I managed three. I am so exhausted from pushing children to do schoolwork and homework that, after the weekend, it is Monday and they are at school today and tomorrow - and I just need to rest.

I started this blog entry about how lucky it is that I can educate my kids, or at least try to do so, because it is not lost on me that there are millions of other families in the far-worse situation where they cannot even dream of filling in the gaps created by this pandemic, never mind working on a financially stupid effort like a graphic novel. 

Counting my blessings always helps me feel marginally better, but it does not finish books.

***

In good news, I got a haircut after two years of butchering my head myself and which I paid for by baking a carrot cake. It turns out that the "amateur hairstylist" I found via Facebook is a talented scissors-wielder AND photog. She took this photo of me, and if I ever get a book deal, I will find a way to pay her for this an an author photo. Her Instagram is _ellenoir_ and if your desire today is to bask in rich, soothing, warm orange and rust coloured glory, click over.

Freedoms

As I reflect on what is happening in Afghanistan I think about how unusual my day Sunday would seem there. It was an unusually full day. I couldn’t help but notice a few things.

It was a Sunday in an overwhelmingly Christian country but I could be active as an atheist anyway because this country has freedom of religion.

For breakfast I ate cheese that I bought while alone on holiday with my child last week. I am a woman but I can travel without my husband.

I went to a comic book bazaar after lunch and gave out a comic book that I had made in which I comment freely - exercising my freedom of opinion - about my neighbourhood, its past and present, including controversial themes. No one feels that it is not my place to do this work and everyone tried to give me money for my work, even though the book is free. A woman has the right to work. A woman has the right to earn money and to control that money. A worker should be paid for their work.

There, I met up briefly with a female friend on her way to a protest at a government building. She had no fear for her safety and was going alone with her handmade sign. Freedom to assemble, to protest.

Then I biked home - alone, across town, exercising my freedom of movement while being female - and ate the meal my husband had prepared for our family, after he had already spent the day at home with our kids without me.

Then he and I went to a dance performance in which men and women danced an interpretation of contemporary life that had not been reviewed or censored by government prior to performance. The dancers danced intimately, often dancing with different partners. (Not having seen dance in many years, it was just wow!)

The person on call to help our kids in our absence last night, in case something went wrong, is a female full-time journalist. Her husband does not “work”, though of course he does, as they are parents. But anyhow.

All of you who have read this far are exercising your freedom of information and your ability to read.

That’s all I wanted to say.

You've got a family to run

Since I last wrote - three months or, as we pandemic sufferers experience it, an eternity has passed. In that time, countless women have conceived, grown, or lost babies. I say this because for me the idea of 'three months' doesn't signal a quarter. Three months is a trimester. Perhaps it is like this for other mothers. The other measure is the school year. Once children are in school, the calendar year feels very unreal. New Year's Eve should rightly fall on whatever moment marks the end of the longest school holidays. 

There is the time of the clock, and the time of the body. I spent so much time out on the land and under the sun during my childhood that the need for a wristwatch disappeared for a while. I have not smoked since Christmas Eve 2006, and I still know when six minutes has passed - the time from flame to filter. 

Time oozes so strangely nowadays. And I have much that I would like to report from my little corner! 

           

As for any caregiver of children who faces additional stresses - in our house attention deficits are a relentless pressure - homeschooling and lockdown extract all my resources, my patience, creativity, time, everything. I stay close by phone to my friends with special needs kids, my single mom friends, to anyone in my circle dealing with serious risks. The comfort from the school guidance counsellor - "It's not just kids in difficulty, many kids are having a lot of trouble with motivation. It's really bad." - helps drown out the unintentionally cutting words of the lucky few with independent children and the physical and material resources available to keep life going relatively normally. I just cannot bear it. I am genuinely happy for them - in my case Misery does not want to increase its company - but I cannot listen right now. Casual remarks like, "I expect my son to be independent. I don't look at what homework the school has sent home." Or, "We like her to get the homework done quickly so that the rest of the day is free." As if it were a choice. When all it is, is pure fortune. Now, I know that I am mostly lucky, I have never not known how lucky I am. But the ways in which I am not lucky are a major test at the moment, which I am only just passing.

So, having been worn down by this Lockdown-coupled-with-homeschooling to the point that my every failing and few virtues are in high relief, I am glad, regardless, to have suffered January. I learned a lot about myself, but far more about my kids. I don't blog about my kids in detail much, as I worry I could invade their privacy, but these few weeks have truly increased my respect for them. I am glad that we had this time. I understand them much better, the little jerks, and I really feel for them. And I wish they were going back to school on Monday. 

I pray and pray for strength, as, I imagine, do we all! 

But the good news is that I have won a small grant for expenses for a comics project (unrelated to my book). Since I do not yet have the official paperwork, I won't say more just in case I jinx it. (I make up for my atheism with superstition.) I am just so happy about this! 

Although -- typical for me, don't roll your eyes too much, they might fall out -- I have also been VERY nervous about whether I could do justice to the project that I proposed. Some sleepless nights, over-reliance on my husband's listening skills, etc. 

Being older is nice. I've had so very many occasions over the years to think poorly of myself and to doubt myself, and yet continue to survive at least somewhat intact. It is easier to ignore my own internal nonsense and just keep going. The project involves a great deal of research, so I have just sort of gotten down to it. I have two mental states: the self-doubting, jealous state that I feel when I am not producing creatively, and the mentally healthy, humble and methodical state I feel when I am. I love state number two. I'd like to apply for citizenship to it. Nothing can touch me in state number two. (Why aren't I calling it state number one?) Not jealousy, not mistakes, not awareness of my own totally mediocre skills. I'm just doing. I love it. 

So anyway. Hopefully I can manage the project despite the duties of home-schooling. If not, I will beg the project funder to let me delay for a few weeks. If they resist I will attempt to cajole them with news articles about the disproportionate effect of lockdown measures on women. But I doubt I would need to do that. They seem like really kind folks.

Next subject. My health is a lifelong problem, as some of you know, and I hurt my knees again. I finally managed to run five kilometres, a paltry amount by most runner's standards. This was the first 5K since my insides were injured during the birth of my son in 2012. Carefully cross-training, carefully increasing my distances, I have run without injury since starting again last August. I'd tried the year before, but injured the knees early on from running without orthotics. 

This time, all I appear to have done was to make the for-me stupid mistake of doing some difficult load-bearing exercises the day after the run. My knees immediately started complaining, and I've had swelling on and off for three weeks. The irony is that these exercises were test exercises to determine weaknesses in my body (from the book Runner's Anatomy). 

I was just trying to identify problems. Like a good girl. Why I chose to do these exercises the day after my most difficult run in a decade or so probably falls into the category of stupid things humans do because they evaluate risk badly. So, back to the beginning am I.    

 This post is not wholly art-related. By way of apology, I post here the pre-final line art for Chapter Five from The Engineeress, in various states of progress. I prepared an excerpt of my book based on Chapter four and am sending it out to publications now. If no one picks it up, I might make a zine instead. 

My very first comic publication, my memoir about miscarriage, was recently accepted for publication by Driftwood Press. It comes out later this year. My blessings, like I mentioned, are many. 

But "school" opens again Monday. Please wish me luck!

Sorry, Tolstoy.

Collage of notes for a comic meet-up plus self-Portrait. Magic Cephalopod character is Lynda Barry’s

 

I read What It Is by Lynda Barry this week and was very moved. This book was one of several wonderful graphic novels I got my hands on recently, and it is reassuring how varied they are. It becomes easy to see that art is not only arranged in a scale of poor to great but perhaps more consequentially in broad and overlapping spectrums, where quality takes many forms. All unhappy artworks are unhappy in their own way. All happy artworks are happy in their own way, too.

I am being unnecessarily vague. I just mean, the variety of great artwork is comforting now, whereas it used to be overwhelming. I was afraid I would not be able to make a contribution. I felt I needed to be the best. Finally, I see that there is no such thing.

When I had little time and energy for art, my reaction to other people's good works was always envy. Now it might be admiration, intense interest for the purpose of my own learning, the desire to provide resources or other support to the artist. When I look at very good artwork now, I still have a first emotional reaction of insecurity, something like, "I could never do something that good!" I find, though, that my follow on reactions are swift, and more constructive, now that I have more time and energy for my own work, now that I am finally doing my work. My second reaction, it might be something like, "they are very good at what they do! That is not what I want to do, but I like it." Or, "I could learn a lot from this person. I wish I had mentoring opportunities."

The many beauties of Barry’s book include its countless unexpected therapeutic moments nestled within its colorful tapestry. I was able through reading her book to identify a growing wrongness I have been feeling over the last few days. When I left my job in August, I reveled in the increased time I have for my children and my artwork, and how both are benefiting, as I am. But lately I am finding myself constantly refreshing social media stats. Worrying about my shoulder pain. Fretting that I don’t know exactly what to do at every minute of the day. Just having a lot of distracting thoughts, that are clearly pretty useless. It's the sort of anxiety I feel when I don't have certainty.

But I am new to all this, and of course I don’t know very much right now, and have a great deal to learn, and this is a lovely thing – beginner's mind – when you can accept it. Frankly, at the moment I don’t need to ask myself if something I make is good or bad, or even if I am using my time exactly as I should at a given moment. I don’t know if I am doing the right things, and I shouldn’t know. You can see in the picture above a kind of squid creature. Barry calls this the magic cephalopod, and as I understand her, it seems to represent the part of ourselves, or our whole self, that we listen to when we're making our art. It is the antithesis of two questions that close an artist down and distance them from the connection they need to have to themselves. The two questions have to do with judging, is this good? Does this suck? Through my life, they have had a terrible influence on me, as they always do on everyone, I guess. The cephalopod lives in the don't-know space, and that is where I'm trying to stay.

I tried a first exercise, included at the back of this beautiful and wise part-biography, part visual guide, meant to lead artists (back) into their imagination. She asks readers to picture cars that have had significance in one's life, and eventually we are asked to call up an image related to one of these cars – an experience, a memory – and write about it.

So I thought up my ten cars. I remembered a lot of cars from my youth in the 70s and 80s, station wagons, orange Volvo, and my own cars later in life. Next, I focused in on a particular moment with one of them. Wrote about it, using her many writing prompts. I chose to write about a large pickup truck my family had when I was a teenager. It was a Dodge Ram, red, with an extended cab and extended flat.

I remember taking my drivers test in that car, and how the tester told me he'd never had someone do the test in a vehicle that long. I think it was 13 feet, something like 4 m? I couldn't perform the three-point turn in the tiny space provided. I did not find the test very challenging, because I had recently done a weekend motorcycle course with my mom that she and I pushed to finish despite a weekend-long torrential downpour. We were soaked, rain in our underwear and bras, but by Sunday night we were legal to drive the new family dirtbike. 

After completing Barry's exercise, I decided to sketch the truck, because the mental image of the lineup at the testing facility of all the cars, with my gigantic red truck in the middle, was so strong.

But when I draw the truck, I'm not the person behind the wheel. Instead, it's my dad I see. And, the lines of the truck, its color, metal, the shape of the lights, they appear under my pencil more similar to that old Volvo from my childhood. And he is not the age he was when I was a teenager. Instead, he is almost a young man, a young father with his first wrinkles on his brow. He looks afraid, again, not something that I drew on purpose.

I realized earlier this week how unhappy my parents where when I was a child. We did not have an easy time. A story for a different day. It's funny how we can take decades to recognize something so simple.

In Every Direction

With the goal of building up a modest business for myself making graphic novels and other projects, I work nowadays in many directions to learn what this venture could look like. It’s not possible to jump from obscurity to novel publication, sadly, so I have to figure out what to do beyond The Engineeress. Not that I mind. My failing has always been an inability to focus on one thing.

This process is a bit like going for a bra fitting. I have to take my clothes off, and take a look in the mirror at what I am trying to hold up to scrutiny. Then I measure my dimensions, and make a selection of possible styles. I’m more punk than frilly, but my favourites are the comfortable ones. I am trying on many different things.

Over the last two months, I’ve tried on a few that are very exciting for me - Additional comic-making in order to get some publications. Blogging. Social media presence. Web comics. Attending events. Reading a ton of other people’s works. Contributing to things, pitching into the community. Meeting influential people in the industry. Joining groups with other artists or interested folks.

A big one is figuring out where my work “fits”. And, chief among bra-choosing activities: getting advice from experts.

The next thing I would like to do is find a mentor. Not sure how to go about that yet.

I have just one page left of Eight Weeks, my comic memoir of miscarriage to complete. Above is the probably final design of text - positioning it below the artwork was the only way I could steer people through the comic before they leapt to the words. Seductive little things, words.

Took me a few tries. While the artwork is drawn and one in one step on paper, I added the text in Adobe Photoshop, my go to program after trying the cheaper and free competition. No, I am not sponsored! I wish. I make countless trials and too many errors to ever write on my comics!  

Intuit don’t script it