Bleak

Things are deteriorating faster than I thought they would.  I am in a hole that I cannot get out of, it would take longer than I have.

Out of Time

Mom keeps falling asleep tonight when I talk to her.  My time is up, I think.


Those dreams I had that I believed were psychic?  The first four I ever had that felt like "that kind" of dream were of the future.  I had them back when I was in high school, and then when Dana first arrived in LA.  These dreams were set at some indeterminate point in the future, after 2010.  I dreamt that Dana and I reunited after a long rift.

There had not been any such rift when I had those dreams.  Nor did I believe in ESP at that time, yet I woke up with this puzzling certainty that the dreams had just shown me something  that was absolutely going to happen someday.

I really believed it would.  I really believed Dana would reconcile with me.


I don't want to die, but I also don't want to live with the grief that's coming, the  terror of being homeless and penniless, and I cannot face being alone.  I have nothing to live for.   I just don't want to hurt Jesseca.

The Shape of Things

Again I looked at the ref and thought I was seeing the shapes, but they went away again as soon as I started to transfer them.  What I'm putting in is rough estimates.  The bottome line will be whether the sleeve looks like leather once I've pulled it all together.  It does not look convincing to me the way it is right now.  Mostly it's the undulating surface and the way the light plays off the crests of each wave of leather, flowing into the next - it ain't there, I'm not getting it.  I'm rushing the details to fill in space, not teasing them out as I should.  I'm anxious.

This is busywork to escape thinking about the hopelessness of my situation.  I don't see a future.

My head is not in the game.  Right now my mom is in the waiting room of a clinic.  Supposed to be one of the best endocrinologists, at least.  She seems worse every day, just a  little.  One of my brothers is out on the back porch replacing a wood structure that had rotted.  Said he might need my help with the boards in a while.  I'm dreading that like crazy, because he's going to want to have a private little talk about how the future is shaping up, which will have the effect of making want to kill myself right now.  Just get it over with, spare myself the worst of it.

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I've three photos of Lori Hamilton I wanted to draw, but all of them copyrighted.  They were taken by a photographer friend of hers.  In one of them she's a little baked, the other two are beach phots where blowing sand has her eyes squinting. 

Took a few screengrabs of Malala Yousafzai which might yield good portraits if I ever get around to them.  Could be used to promote my work, and are not especially easy to draw but not challenging either.  Not excited about the actual drawing of them.

I also have two screen grabs from Weird Science, but they have such low resolution that if I attempt to use them I'll have to fake it and guess the details.  One has Dana at a mall rocking a serious Pat Benatar look, with attitude, smoking a joint or cigarette end.  If I could just make out her eyes and  the placement of her fingers, there's potential for a really good portrait here.

Slipping Down the well.

2nd post today.  Everything I should be doing, my soul says 'don't bother, it's too late.  It's wasted effort.  there's no saving anything.'

I like the way the hair turned out on Sharon Mitchell.

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Time

We still don't have all the tests in yet, but what we have is the scariest news.  I don't know if it's going to be months, weeks, days...it feels like minutes to my can't-shut-down brain.  Mom acts like she's better off than she is.  That's avoidance, which is ingrained in me.  I have it from both parents.  An organ is shutting down, there are gallstones and a mass that may be cancer.

The doctor's are incompetent.  Something was triggered by a bad piece of pineapple that set mom's moth prickling with pins.  They laugh  and scoff and say, "oh, pineapple always does that to people.  It's acidic, you know."

I never learned how to survive.  I'm not a survivor.

I also now cannot leave the house unless there is someone else here in case of emergencies.

Someone said something about getting paid (a grant) to go back to school??  Why has no one mentioned this to me before?  One of my nieces supposedly could advise me on that, if I can just get hold of her.

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I'm having to get rid of  everything.  First the trash, soon it will be the things I treasure.  All to Goodwill or the garbage.  All the projects, all the things I hoped to someday do.  Pare it down.

TMC recently aired James Cagney's movie of William Saroyan's The Time of Your Life.  I found a photograph of myself from high school, trying on the costume I put together for our stage production of TToYL.
That's me looking at a pocketwatch on a chain.  I was Tom, a simple but sweet guy who needs looking after.  My big scene with Kitty Duval in her bedroom got cut by the school principle, censorship.  First time I ever auditioned for a play, took one of the leads.  Did a pretty good cold reading for the bad guy, a mean cop,  during a rehearsal too.

I may be one of the few people who enjoyed auditions at school.  Those damned uncomfortable wooden chairs in the auditorium, I could drape myself over them like taffy and be right at home.

Dana refused the role of Kitty.  Dana could have been anything or anyone she wanted to be with me.  Why  wouldn't she let me make peace between us while there was still time?

Obstacles

Well, this blog was supposed to be about how hard it is to get past a block, right?

I'm having a shitty night and morning. 

First, though, I'll tell you that I was on a new med for high blood pressure, some thing they push for diabetics.  Damn thing had a long list of disastrous side effects.  I spent a month pumping that shit into my system before I found out that was the problem, now I've maybe gotten it back out.  My body is still having trouble. My mom has a problem now too, which might be liver disease or may be a form of hepatitis.  We're awaiting results.   If anything happens to mom, the bank gets the house.  I have no money, no job (practically unemployable especially with my health the way it is) and no one who would take me in.  I don't have a plan for survival and I don't want to survive.  I want it over with.  Some people have told me they pray for me.  I'm not ungrateful to them but I think that if a God exists he's evil and a monster.  He keeps fucking piling it on.  He won't stop until I'm destroyed, and he's hurting other people to do it.  God has taken a shit on my family and I wish people would stop fucking telling me how kind he is.

I just awoke from a dream in which a friend told me that Dana is dead.  Since her FB page is blocked I've no way of finding out.  Would someone please tell me  she's alright?  I could ask on FB but she doesn't want the attention drawn to her.

I always believed Dana would be the one to rescue me.  Jesseca would if she could but she's got a guy, she's on the other side of the continent, and I'm not financially viable.

I asked her to marry me once.  Not that she knew or would have said yes.  It was one of those Valentine's Day personals in The Oregonian.   The point was just so she'd understand exactly how I see her and that she'd know I meant it.  Figured there was a chance at least someone who knew us might see it.

The last time I tried to draw my head wasn't in it, and I missed nearly all the details I was trying to capture - didn't even see them when I looked at the reference picture, I wasn't in the zone.  It's probably salvageable but I'm back to where I have to force myself.


Oh...wanted to add that when I sent her a friend request a year and a half ago, I didn't look at her page.  Sorta wanted to but mostly dreaded it.  Someone else did, though, later, and turned a tablet so I could see.  I did glimpse one thing that made me happy.  She had used a rainbow-covered photo of herself as an av, one of those generated pics everyone used on FB to celebrate for a few days when marriage equality finally passed.  I was proud of her.  For some reason I've always had the impression that she was fairly conservative, though I don't know what that impression is based on.

(no post title)

First, please help me/my family with the GoFundMe in the post below.  No one has been willing to do so.  We're barely holding on and I d not see a way out.  I don't see us  surviving.

Okay.  Per art: I think in this time of desperation my block is lifting.  My last client says he loves the portrait I did for him.  I'm now twenty hours into a 14x17 family portrait that may take some fifty hours.  Price is up in the air, depending on what the guy who commissioned it can work out with his brothers.  I might make minimum wage for the first time...or I might get seriously underpaid.

The first was scanned, the second was from a photograph (cleaned up by Jesseca) second one is not up to date as I have begin the next brother and added the boat that's behind them.  I will not be drawing the ground beneath them, and will add the background only with the barest, most representative lines.  There are four brothers in the image.

So...my block had lifted and it may be too late.  When I work I feel a despair that it's not worth it, that it can never add up.  People don't want to pay minimum wage, they want a flat rate.  Ten bucks an hour?  They balk. And, ya know what, In the past two weeks I've come to really value what I do on so many levels.  This is not entry-level stuff.  It ain't washing dishes.  It deserves more than ten bucks an hour.

I've trapped myself  by teaching myself to use a mechanical pencil.  I need to try to incorporate regular pencils for areas of shading.  That's a scary thought - mechanical get me a level of subtlety and clarity that I consider to be a part of my signature.  I am loathe to compromise that.  Besides...it not being my voice, I kight just suck at regular pencil work.  The quality  may suffer significantly, my voice may disappear.

I managed a full 8-hour workday drawing a week ago.  No headache either, so I know I can do it.  I've done 15 hours over the course of Monday and Tuesday (the family portrait and the Sharon Mitchell pic), even with everything else happening. - but I did manage to give myself a  headache yesterday. My nerves are shot and I pace the house.  I'm unsteady at shading until I can calm justa  little, and that's nearly impossible.  My mom and sister spend all day every day on the phone and internet trying to find anyone  in authority who will help.   I'm  becoming  dependent on Xanax, though I'm taking only a quarter pill at a time.  Last night it only afforded me 90 minutes sleep.  haven't had any more yet.  I'm fucking  terrified for my future.  Jesseca and my mom are the only reasons I'm even trying to hold out - I don't want to hurt either of them.  But I'm so fucking tired, and tired of being afraid, and tired of the depression.  I do not want to talk  to anyone about it, and I don't want to be medicated.  This is now my permanent state of existence, I've been this way for a month or more now.

Dana is gone.  She has been since 1988.  I can no longer afford to believe in her.  My dreams - well, the hopeful ones anyway - were hollow self-delusion. 

I feel like I'm in a jungle, alone, in quicksand.  My arm is stretched out and every now and then  someone comes along and stretches their own out to me...and instead of grasping my wrist and pulling, they pat me on the head and wish me encouragement, then go along their way.  There have  only been two or three exceptions, and one I know genuinely couldn't help who would have if he wasn't also sinking.

 To those who have shared my posts, who have expressed a genuine concern, and especially those three or four who have helped my family financially inside and outside GoFundMe... to them I cannot express my gratitude strongly enough. I am in your debt bigtime.