Development artwork for a comicbook I’m working on with the talented Aya Morton.

Six weeks, a few sweet hours every day, three and four and sometimes five delicious hours, with the pages piling up and all other desires asleep. I felt like a ghost walking the earth, a lover of man and beast alike, and wonderful waves of tenderness flooded me when I talked to people and mingled with them in the streets. God Almighty, dear God, good to me, gave me a sweet tongue, and these sad and lonely folk will hear me and they shall be happy. Thus the days passed. Dreamy, luminous days, and sometimes such a quiet joy came to me that I would turn out my lights and cry, and a strange desire to die would come to me.

Thus Bandini, writing  novel.

— John Fante

How often have you been out in some lush neck of nature, in awe and peace, inspired by the beauty and— hey what’s that? A broken beer bottle? And a Kit Kat bar wrapper? And a dirty tampon too? WTF? How can people be so wantonly dumbass as to trash a place of untainted beauty? OK. A few bad apples right? The real question is maybe— when you also notice how old some of the trash is— why do people just leave it there?

If you are a fan of my last book chances are good you first found out about from reading Arthur Magazine. A very cool publication that was edited by Jay Babcock. And chances are equally good you would find the latest thing that Jay is up to pretty cool, he has founded a group called GREENFRIAR which seems to straddle the intersection of environmentalism and spirituality. Although don’t quote me on that — that’s just the impression that I get from perusing their website, which you can check out here.

www.greenfriar.org

Ever notice that the best ideas, the ones that take off and actually make a difference are usually stupidly simple? The idea behind Greenfriar is to take a weekly hike in nature and pick up trash. Followed by some meditation. The group has been posting pictures of the garbage collected on their outings which occur in Joshua Tree. It’s inspiring. I would like to see chapters of this group sprout up everywhere. And why shouldn’t they? It is a perfect marriage of taking time to appreciate nature with taking time to protect and . . .worship nature. Does that word sound weird here?

I don’t know. I think it’s cool precisely because it blurs some boundaries. I think as a culture at large we tend to compartmentalize everything. Like: you got your spirituality here, and then your politics over here, and then nature is in this square, and health over here etc. Really it’s all supposed to be a big muddy mess, right?

Hey check out this lil’ write up over at Happiness Comix of DIY Magic. Lotsa pictures for you to check out if you haven’t ordered your copy yet. Which by the way – you can now do at Buy Olympia. Yep, the store from the Portlandia “Put a Bird on it” episode. (Which I watched for the first time yesterday – along with the first episode of The Office, Arrested Development, and The Killing . . .  this point I’m so behind on TV it’s a little intimidating.)

I’m not sure how I feel about my hometown being made into a backdrop for SNL sketch comedy. Actually, that’s not true – I think it sucks. Who wants to live in a punchline? At least it’s better than the whole ghost of grunge thing that was still haunting Seattle when I lived there.