A Larger Zombie

The Sickness…

Last month I had the most severe cold in years. I wasn’t able to do anything or focus at all. I’m usually healthy, but when I get sick, I really get sick. I was as slow as a snail with the comic this month, partly for this reason… It sucked, naturally, you can’t do what you want or enjoy what you do, you can’t even shower. But years ago, I loved getting sick, I’d take it any day to get out of going to school.

I’d get to stay in bed and watch cartoons! ^_^ Everyone would be nice to me, I’d get honey and tea and I could sleep as long as I wanted. Any blames were forgotten. Who’d even notice the illness amongst all of that? But when my health got better the treatment got worse. People would suddenly be busy again, some past incidents I caused would be remembered. I’d get asked if I had my homework finished at every possible moment.
In this case my homework would be left behind and remembered too late. Disaster!

In the beginning school was all fun, you met new people did new things and had fun, you learned amazing things about the world around you…

But just as you’re getting into it, the playing ends and information starts to come on pages instead of shapes.

Anyway, this one time when I was little I’d been unprepared for a test, which I was supposed to have made a project for but hadn’t.
There was too much to do even if I stayed up all night (and what 8 year old pulls an all nighter anyway?). So I chose to “get ill”. -)
Really, those sort of situations did make me feel pretty ill in a way.
I only needed to make up some “dirty plan” to pull it off, since I was sure that just telling my family directly wouldn’t work.

The night before, I tried to heat up my forehead with hot water and prepared my saddest face before going to my mother.

- Mom, I feel sick…
She touched my forehead.
- You need to go to bed earlier. Come on, tomorrow’s a school day.
- Don’t I have a temperature?
(Yup’ I was that obvious about it)
- No, you just look tired.
(I looked tired! That’s halfway!)

I made a cup of tea and held it against my head until it really was hot, then went to mom again.
- Mom, I’ve got a headache and don’t want to sleep.
- Come on, you need to get to bed, let’s go.

She took me to bed and ignored my forehead. I told her I’d stay up a little bit longer to read. After a few moments I crept to the kitchen which was empty, and took out the thermometer. I had a normal temperature, despite my efforts, but I reasoned that if I could show it was higher on the thermometer, there’d be no question that I was sick.

Soo, I started boiling the kettle, and feeling real smart, I held the thermometer over the spout which was pouring out steam now.

…

Yeah…

Bang! I don’t know at what temperature a thermometer explodes, but it had to be far beyond the temperature I’d need to get off school when that happened.

The odd-looking balls of mercury and glass scatter all over the table, floor and… into the kettle!
I did know that it was poisonous to the point that I shouldn’t even touch or smell it. I was terrified, I remember thinking that it would evaporate and stay in the room’s air, invisible and ready to kill me. At that point, while I was crying and panicing, my mother called “Are you in the kitchen again? Boil the kettle for me, please!”

I screamed as loud as I could:

- MOMMY! WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIIIIIE!!!

I didn’t feel as reluctant to reveal my lie after poisoning the houses water supply.

In the end, I got to take the next day off school and got that project finished, which was awesome! Nobody died too, but I got the day off! =D

By the way, today is the 10/10/10 – an awesome date!

Excuses

To be honest with you, dear reader, it’s been a while since my last Pathwalkers update. No, it usually doesn’t take me so long to draw an issue.
It’s been an unpredictable few weeks, so things were slowed down… a lot!

…Days ago I looked through the plot I had prepared for my comic and I began to make sketches in Photoshop. Each issue now begins with a simple sketch.
It took me time in the beginning to realize that I didn’t need to start by drawing it well. So now I make a light (and bad) sketch first without drawing anything well or in detail, and forget about a perfect begining. It’s true for almost anything in life really (NB. except for surgery and rocket launches).

Traditionally, I’d work late at night, when my artistic instincts peaked. I process tea and music into pixels, naturally.
I sat in the candle light.
I drank my tea.
I made a bad sketch.
Then suddenly, I noticed something behind my window but I hadn’t heard anything because of the music.

A meteor attack!
I didn’t believe my eyes. The first thing I did was to boil the kettle (an appliance as essential to Devious Mazes as the computer), to have a cup of tea, to relax and stay calm.
I took the tea any laptop, then headed for the door and tried to open it.

And failed! Panic intruded upon my inner peace.

I realized that it wasn’t safe to leave the house. Although at this point it was already half flooded and shaking. I saw things rushing by outside the window as torrents of water carried the house away.

The sky was on fire, I was zooming hopelessly towards nowhere upon the unstoppable waves.
I finished my tea.
The next thing I remember, I woke up just floating in water – only me and my wet laptop.
I needed directions, but the only people around were the stickmen.

I asked them where I was but they were totally useless. They had nothing on their faces – so their lack of speech/perception wasn’t very surprising:

Or maybe they were helpless because they were imaginary?
As you can see, I’ve had perfectly good reason for this delay, no sane person could disagree. Now, back to work!
And in the meantime, here’s what happens when I can’t draw a piano:

Evil Bug In My Head

I want to share something with you. And this time it’s not about any music and animation I find worth of sharing in my blog.

Ok.

Well, this is kind of embarrassing.

I face a bizarre problem: almost anything I say sounds way more serious than it should. Or it even sounds conceited, “holier than Thou”, for God’s sake!
I don’t intend to speak this way and don’t mean to teach or impress anyone. Or at least I don’t think so…
It’s been a while since I noticed it. And I began to wonder why I’d be heard differently than what I mean to say. It feels like there’s another person (or an evil bug) in me – which I’m not aware of – who speaks instead of me phrasing my thoughts another way:

In fact, I’m optimistic and kind in my thoughts but I can’t be sure about my words anymore. I don’t hear or see anything wrong.
And when I think I’m being this:

I may actually appear to people like this:

The same thing can be said many various ways, depending on the situation. They mean the same thing but with different caveats.
For example, about waking.

I woke – the fact of waking.
I woke up in the morning – information about time of waking.
I woke up to a sunny wonderful morning – emphasis on feelings.
God gave me a perfect morning and I felt overwhelmed to live – strong emphasis on personal feelings.

Smart and poetic speech would be found extremely stupid in a casual situation:

This is just complicated. And it’s horrible to sound this way, isn’t it?
The funniest part is that I can be easily blown away by my poetic-romantic vision of things. And I’m lost. And it’s not easy to find me or what I say.

Now is time for another revelation which might complicate the situation. Ot it may cause a big part of it.
English is not my native language. Take that!
I don’t have problems with the language itself. This is more about some cultural differences between languages. For example, there was a time I wasn’t used to the typical questions like “How are you?” or “How is it going?”. Why would anyone ask me how I am when nobody really cares?!

The weather questions is another issue. They are invisible ghosts of conversations. Once I’m asked/told about the weather I just have no right not to reply.
Trap! Nobody really cares about the weather so much. It’s like with “how are you?”.

Ok, I’m erasing whatever I’m typing right now. *erases* I become complicated again: “…apart from these “ghosts” of conversations…” What?!
“I’m going to “investigate” this further” Investigate?! O_o
“Just give me time and stay patient if you’re interested in the results.” Alright.
This is too serious.
I must do something with it.
I really hope this blog post isn’t too serious.
Is it?
Is it?!

Walking Though Clouds

Today I did something I hadn’t ever done. I got up before sunrise, prepared quickly and went to climb a mountain. Thousands of others were doing the same thing, for their own reasons as I did it for mine. The mountain is called Croagh Patrick and it’s been a place of pilgrimage in Ireland for centuries.

The first thing I noticed was how close it sits to the ocean. Bizarre ghostly islands in the mist were resting upon its surface like great sleeping seals. It was a very foggy morning but slowly the fog lifted high enough to see the foot of the green mountain, above that it was embraced by a cloud that I wanted to go though. Have you ever wondered what it’d be like inside of a cloud? I had. I began the ascent, walking up the rocky slope with a stick, balancing on slippery stones, hearing seagulls and enjoying what little view my eyes could catch.

Some people were already coming down but not as many as were going up. They were old and young, barefoot and shoed, all pressing towards the top, over 700 meters above them. After entering the cloud, just below the halfway point, I can say what it was like. It’s not the same as a fog, it quickly lost that misty romance. It’s much more wet there and freezing if you stop moving. Constant drifts of tiny droplets flow by in the breeze. But it was still an amazing experience. The only sad part is that on the top I couldn’t see anything except the cloud. I reached the top via an extremely hard but interesting way, over a sea of loose stones and pebbles which formed the steepest and highest part of the climb.

It was amazing to see people doing something together just like that, having the same goal to unite them. They greeted and understood each other easily. On the top they prayed, hoped, confessed… It was their way of “coming closer to God”, but for me it was a way of coming closer to feeling that I live now at this very moment and I may not be alive next moment; feeling everything around me so clearly for a while.

And I’m describing this to you because my camera couldn’t penetrate the fog to share any pictures, so words are all I’ve got.

Music Section

I’m opening my music section in the blog.
A piece of one of my songs named “The Awakening Song” is now online.

About 10 days ago I heard from Jam about a music-video contest she’s organized as a surprise for her fiance Trevor. The first week of the contest was for musicians to play (and record a video of them playing) “Ahead By A Century” by Tragically Hip.

Oh, I was excited to play that song, I only heard it for the first time then and already loved it so much! It wasn’t about the prizes for participants. I listened to it and could play it almost immediately, it wasn’t hard. But very weird things began to happen then: I was interrupted, I was way too busy to play and enjoy the song as much as I wanted. And when the deadline came, I just took the guitar, closed myself in bathroom (for better acoustics) and began to play. I noticed then that the guitar, no matter how much I controlled it, got out of tune each time I tried. I felt my throat was a bit sore. But I didn’t give up, I tried to play the song once. It would have been fine but the amp broke during the chorus. And nothing I tried could fix it. It was too late, I decided to try the next day in case the amp worked (it used to always be on/off time after time before).

Later things got even worse, taking all chances away from me. I just recorded myself playing with what I had…

I wondered then why would so much go against my plan to record for Jam? I didn’t even mention everything that got on my way.

Things are the way they are for a reason, whether I like it or not. But whatever, when it’s time I’ll do something better and if it’s supposed to happen, it will go well (and I’ll have a better guitar!).