“Marta says the interesting thing about fly-fishing is that it’s two lives connected by a thin strand. Come on, Marta. Grow up.” –Jack Handy

–HERE’s THE PART THAT MAY INTEREST YOU–

Amazing documentary: Rocaterrania made by a documentarian I just discovered, Brett Ingram. Such, great, great stuff. Go exploring and run with it.

Here’s an article from the NYTimes on the subject of the documentary with great stills.

–HERE’s THE INCESSANT RAMBLING PART–

My afternoon sketch-- but I don't know the flower this is.

The above is a term Austral is found in botany– and lately there’s these intersections happening all over the place. That electric charge; the tingle of being awake and starting to feel purposeful. You may argue spring closing in, but its February First (and I will spell it out for you) in Chicago– an epoch. Now, certainly I’m a winter child and it pleases me to no end to engage in winter sports, drive my car for soup lunches in the snow and shovel the walks.

Despite my outward persona as being “social”– I crave time alone, and winter serves that purpose nicely as the sidewalks empty of pedestrian traffic and the citizens of my Northern city retreat into their down turtle shells.

But there is a snap and a current, and I feel that I am supposed to know people and things and have my hands in a million projects. Lately, I’ve been starting awake with ideas and visions. Sometimes I sit in my cold drafting room folded into a -20 sleeping bag pursuing the thing in my head. Other times, I rattle of e-mails.

Everything is flowing out of the South– my heritage is starting to make this self-defining dent. It started with an e-mail trade of a cousin I had lost touch with. Then the curriculum catalog landing on my desk with the 2010 offerings at the Botanical Gardens, and I think about my nonexistent green thumb, yet the almost crippling urgency to start pushing seeds into dirt with my thumbs. Some things are just wired into your code– I come from a long line of farmers. Appalachian farmers. Then I feel this pull to be very invested in a co-worker’s stage play, and it hits on that theme.

When my brain starts overloading, I find myself needing very much to work with my hands, typically I retreat to illustration or yard work. But when I sit down the charge is too much and its hard to concentrate, and the lawn resembles Russian tundra. No snow to shovel, no leaves to pick– brown, dead grass with sun hitting at the lowest latitudes.

This entry probably looks insane and feels aimless, but I thought if I would sit here and try to think of what ignited all of this– it would become obvious. Maybe its mania or caffeine. Or Spring. I’m going to ride it.