It’s been a whirlwind few weeks so far with the kids home on summer vacation. We’ve been adventuring through the city and taking in as much sunshine as we can get. During this time, I’ve found myself staying up late reading, writing, playing video games, or drawing. It can be harrowing since I wake up early for a workout, but either way, I need my alone time.
Here are two sketches that are currently on my desk. This is one of my dearest friends, Spikella aka Heather F., who is a lover of snakes and all things reptilian and animal. I’ve drawn her with Basil who was a good friend to her.
I call this sketch, Shooting Star. I’ll let you interpret it as you see it. There’s a meaning in it for me, but it matters little to me that viewers know what that meaning is. It’s how all of us have eyes that are shaped differently or have their own way of seeing the color blue, I can’t tell you what to see.
Worked on queries this week. Publishing houses are full and/or either busy with their Fall releases, thus it gives me a good amount of time before submitting my manuscript this year. As the trinkle of rejection letters to other kinds of submissions come in, I do have some light at the end of the tunnel in the form of a short story being published in early September. I will post up when it comes out.
The bits of validation are most refueling. I shouldn’t require or need them, however, it feels good to get them.
I’ve been reading Sheila Heti’s “How Should A Person Be?” It’s an incredible book full of the rawness that I’ve been looking for in writing. I’ll have more to say on it after I’m finished it, so there will definitely be a review post. For now, I can say that it reminds me of Tamara Faith Berger’s “Maidenhead.” I’ve purchased Chris Kraus’s “I Love Dick,” after reading Heti citing it in an interview as an influence in her work. I love that my reading and my writing has taken on a new route (or maybe it’s an old route that I just tried to avoid for some reason? This is a current meditation.). It feels like the right road right now and that’s as best I can put it.
“For so long I had been looking hard into every person I met, hoping I might discover in them all the thoughts and feelings I hoped life would give me but hadn’t. There are some people who say you have to find such things in yourself, that you cannot count on anyone to supply even the smallest crumb that your life lacks.
Although I knew this might be true, it didn’t prevent me from looking anyway. Who cares what people say? What people say has no effect on your heart.” – from “How Should A Person Be?” by Sheila Heti.
There’s great zen searching in that.
Lastly, after a run or a bike ride, my eyesight does this weird thing if I look at the sky. Clouds and sun swirl like a vortex. I think it’s the blood pumping fast in my system. Because of this, I make little sky movies on my phone to prove it’s just me. This one is yesterday’s morning’s sky at around 7am after a ride.
And as you can see, it’s just a sky, but after a run or a ride, everything within my eyesight pulses. Wish I could capture that.
jacqueline valencia 