A lot of folks expressed excitement about the death haiku comics, too, so this is very validating for my own excitement when I first thought of the idea and bodes well for the eventual book.

The power went out early on during the festival, and we all improvised lighting to get through. There is a small flashlight that has lived in my backpack for years without ever being used. But Sunday, the moment it had been waiting for its entire life finally arrived—its time to shine.

The visitors seemed unperturbed, though! And if done intentionally with better lighting prepped, it would be awesome as a festival theme.

As a bonus, I also feel like my live sketches I did during the show of attendees standing nearby reached a new level:

Up next for my events, the comics talk at Mam’s Books on 8/3 @ 1pm—probably? I’m trying to coordinate with the store owner, who did verbally confirm that the event is happening a couple weeks ago, but he’s a busy guy. Will keep you posted.

Today’s death haiku comic is the last one for the compilation!

Up next, I’ll be writing and editing the prose for the booklet, doing a back cover illustration and possibly inside cover, depending on how the prose lays out, and I need to learn how to set it all up for print via risograph printing. This’ll be the first time I prep a riso print job, and there are some particulars about it.

I’ll also have a poll coming to get y’all’s thoughts on the title.

Ok, on to Saikaku.

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西角の辞世 Saikaku’s Death Poem

西角 Saikaku (died 1730, age 70)

月影 を

tsukikage wo

借って 今 行く

katte ima iku

十万 里

jyuuman ri

Translation:

I borrow moonlight

and go now, on a journey

of a million miles

Notes

There’s not much new to explain here in terms of the imagery in Saikaku’s poem. But I loved the idea of illustrating “borrowing moonlight” as a literal borrowing of the moon to light one’s way, so this poem was on my priority list early on.

And starry night skies are always so captivating to illustrate and to behold. As I went through the process of illustrating, my ideas evolved so that instead of simply lighting the long path Saikaku walks, the illumination would be a pathway of stars. If you imagine someone carrying the moon as they walk a starry path, it could be an allegory for the moon traveling the night sky. And to think of the moon guiding people to the next world seemed to me a beautiful and satisfying image to end the compilation with.

On the moon:

We can hearken back to Onitsura’s jisei for some of its meanings:

The moon could represent several things: on a simple level, Hoffman notes that the moon was considered an autumnal image by default unless the context indicated otherwise. Seasonal imagery has been a key convention of haikus since the 16th century in Japan.

More significant to death poetry, though, Hoffmann also observes that in a death poem by Oriku, who commit suicide to escape her cruel mother-in-law, the moon represents salvation in the world beyond our mortal realm. And in another interpretation that could be relevant to Onitsura’s poem, the full moon can symbolize enlightenment, with its circular shape echoing the ink circle paintings of enlightenment (ensou) in Japanese Buddhism.

This coming Sunday 7/20 is Seattle Zine Fest, the the Quality Flea Center in Capitol Hill. Find me at table 19!

On to today’s death haiku comic: Kyo’on didn’t take the death poem assignment so seriously as most everyone else did. This will be the second to last one I do before moving to editing the writing and creating a couple more illustrations for the print compilation.

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去音の辞世 Kyo’on’s Death Poem

去音 Kyo’on (died 1749, age 63)

夢 の 葉 か

yume no ha ka

散る 洒落臭し

chiru shyarakusashi

最後 の 屁

saigo no he

Translation:

a dream’s leaves perhaps…

scatter impertinently

like one final fart

Notes

Kyo’on had a little fun with their death poem. Besides using passing gas as a metaphor for the transience of life, they transition from the dream imagery they start the haiku with to gas via shyarakusai (meaning something like impertinent, impudent, or bold), whose latter half, kusai, means “smelly”.

And I had fun coming up with the composition for the comic, starting at the top with gingko leaves blowing beautifully in the wind and traveling down the page we come to the reveal that the wind is a bodily one.

The onomatopoeia I took inspiration from Calvin and Hobbes, whose fart onomatopoeia I and my brothers enjoyed pronouncing literally as young kids. “F-b-p-t-b-p-p-b-t…” I’m sure Watterson would be so proud!

One more summer event announcement to put on your calendar! The others were comics/zine fests, but this one is going to be a comics talk/party. The event will be on Sunday 8/3 at 1pm, at Mam’s Books in Seattle’s Chinatown/International District.

Will be nailing down the plan closer to then, but it’ll likely be a casual conversation with another local Asian-American comics creator about our comics and what drew us to making comics, followed by audience Q&A. It’ll be a fun and interesting talk, and you can ask us about our weird indie comics!

Ok, but before then, it’s just two days till Hot Off the Press this Saturday 7/12. See you there.

Speaking of weird indie comics, I have another death haiku comic for you today, below the fold. This one takes a very different tack from the others—to the extent that it kind of misses the point of the assignment? But says a lot about the author in any case.

This is the sixth in a series I’m doing of haiku comics around the death poems (jisei), farewell notes to life, of early modern Japanese poets. Learn more about this project, Japanese cultural context, and haiku, and find links to the other comics in this series here: death haiku comics.

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木道の辞世 Mokudou’s Death Poem

木道 Mokudou (died 1723, age 58)

気 に かかる

ki ni kakaru

一番 槍 の

ichiban yari no

茄子 かな

nasubi kana

Translation:

I’m always longing

for the chance to be the first

to spear the eggplant

Notes

On eggplants:

Hoffmann notes that eggplants are a seasonal image for summer, the season in which Mokudou died.1 But beyond indicating the season (which is an important part of proper haiku form), it seems that there isn’t anything connecting the eggplant with some other greater symbolism related to death, or anything for that matter.

In his book, Hoffmann also shares Mokudou’s preface to his jisei, in which he explains:

“In times of war the samurai were the first to stab their [spears]2 into their enemies. We are familiar with many stories about these bold warriors. Today peace reigns in the world and warriors no longer go forth into battle. They continue, however, with military exercises, so that in time of need they will be ready to fight zelously, till word of their courage echoes throughout Japan and the entire world.”

Based on Mokudou’s own preface, it really appears to be the case that the image of stabbing the eggplant is Mokudou’s attempt to shoehorn his samurai fighting spirit into the haiku format.3

And yet, there is something poignant about this samurai, whose life has been dedicated to perfecting his prowess as a warrior, coming to the end of his life feeling like he never got his shot.

This post is the fifth I’ve done in this series, and I think another 3-5 oughtta round out a good set for compilation, depending on what else jumps out to me from the poems in Hoffmann’s book.

Thanks for sticking with me on what struck me as a fascinating and exciting idea for a comics project, and also a totally unique one—for good reason, I guess. ;)

Today’s poet is 北斎葛飾 Hokusai Katsushika—yes, that Hokusai! Creator of the Great Wave that seemingly won’t be returning to the ocean the way Thich Nhat Hanh described we all must,1 as nearly two centuries after Hokusai first made the print, people continue to be taken by its beauty and drama.

This is the fifth in a series I’m doing of haiku comics around the death poems (jisei), farewell notes to life, of early modern Japanese poets. Learn more about this project, Japanese cultural context, and haiku, and find links to the other comics in this series here: death haiku comics.

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北斎の辞世 Hokusai’s Death Poem

北斎 Hokusai (died 1849, age 90)

人魂 で

hitodama de

行く 気散 じゃ

yuku kisan jya

夏 の 原

natsu no hara

Translation:

Now as a spirit

rambling and roving I’ll go

over summer’s fields

Notes

Speaking of negative space (last week), it is very important in Hokusai’s composition for The Great Wave Off Kanagawa. The sea and the sky take up similar amounts of space in the piece, and mirror each other in their shapes. But as is often observed, the sea in the foreground is active, violent, dangerous, while the sky and mountain in the background are sparse, steady, calm.

If it didn’t jump out to you, the third panel is an homage to Hokusai’s Wave, with a similar, but mirrored, composition.

Does Hokusai’s second line have 7 syllables?

You might have read Hokusai’s second line and been confused that it seems to have fewer than 7 syllables. Well, it turns out that Japanese haiku are actually based on what are called “mora”, the smallest linguistic unit of timing, which can be shorter than a syllable. For example, the ん (“n”) sound that comes at the end of some words in Japanese, like at the end of “kisan”, is counted as another beat in Japanese even though it may sound like one “syllable” in speech. Thus, “kisan” would actually count as 3 morae rather than 2 syllables: ki-sa-n.

This is going to get super weedsy wrestling with the ambiguities in Hoffmann’s text, so read on only if you dare!

That gets us to 6 syllables/morae? Here we have another point of my frustration with Hoffmann’s using only romaji. I believe 気散じ (“kisanji” meaning recreation, diversion, relaxation) makes the most sense among potential translations for Hoffmann’s romaji “kisan ja”. It could be that there was a contraction of “ji” and “ya” (a sentence ending copula), getting us to “ja” / “jya”.

Or maybe in Hokusai’s time the phrase was used differently, just as “kisan”, meaning the “ja” at the end is “ja” in its function as a copula. I found one other instance of “ja” in Hoffmann’s compilation, and there, too, it seemed to stand for 2 morae. Though in that other poem, if Hoffmann’s romaji is accurate (“gatten ja”), then the “ja” could only count for one, since he has a pause in the “gatten” with the double “t”. However, it appears that in most cases “gatten” is actually pronounced “gaten”, just 3 morae and not the 4 morae that “gatten” takes up. There’s only one use case of “gatten” with the “tt” pronunciation, and that’s as part of a larger phrase that isn’t used in the aforementioned poem. Which makes me think Hoffmann’s romaji is in error, and early modern Japanese considered “ja”/ “jya” to be 2 morae.2

Mark your calendars, everybody! Come see me at Hot Off the Press Book Fair on 7/12 and Seattle Zine Fest on 7/20.

I know I know, I mentioned them before, but now I know they’re really happening. I’ll follow up when I know my table details. Get stoked!

Ok, on to the comic.

This is the fourth in a series I’m doing of haiku comics around the death poems (jisei), farewell notes to life, of early modern Japanese poets. Learn more about this project, Japanese cultural context, and haiku, and find links to the other comics in this series here: death haiku comics.

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猿男の辞世 Saruo’s Death Poem

猿男 Saruo (died 1923, age 63)

食いかけた

kuikaketa

団子 に 花 の

dango ni hana no

別れ かな

wakare kana

Translation:

petals fall

on a half-eaten

dumpling

Notes

Saruo does something really cool with his poem: by evoking something half-eaten, he implies the presence of a person by their absence—like using negative space but for verbal description instead of for visuals. Why didn’t they finish eating the dango? Where did they go? In the context of a death poem, with the petals falling on the unfinished snack, this is poignant.

On dango:

Dango are rice dumplings, often grilled and glazed. As Hoffmann notes, one common occasion for eating dango is while enjoying the cherry blossoms (an activity called hanami, or flower viewing) in spring.

On flowers:

Buddhism came to Japan via China in the seventh century, and over the following centuries came to have more and more influence on Japanese culture. This included the view that life is an illusion or dream.1 During the Heian period (794-1185) of Japanese history, flowers became the principle symbol representing the ephemerality of life.2

Flowers also appear in Gozan’s poem, and in my comic of Onitsura’s poem.

Fun times with the translation:

This poem was an interesting one for creative decisions interplaying between the verbal translation and my creative choices for my comic interpretation.

I liked the choices Hoffmann made in his translation for several reasons, although I still ended up changing it a little, which I’ll get into.

Although with the other poems I’ve done so far, I felt that Hoffmann’s translation changed things more substantially, with Saruo’s, Hoffmann had a very simple translation. He cut out Saruo’s very poetic turn of phrase, “hana no wakare” (flower’s farewell), and kept it simply that the flowers were falling. I considered bringing back Saruo’s beautiful approach, but to me, the very direct depiction works well with the absence of the person who half-ate the dango.

I also considered changing the ordering back to be like Saruo’s original, where he begins with the dango before mentioning the falling petals. But for the sake of the comic that I was envisioning, the visual flow from top to bottom—looking up at the cherry trees, seeing the petals falling, following them down, and finally landing on the half-eaten dango—meant that Hoffmann’s ordering, starting with the flowers worked better for my purposes.

I almost just went with Hoffmann’s translation directly, but for one thing:

Hoffmann’s translation reads “Cherry blossoms fall / on a half-eaten / dumpling”. As discussed previously, I agree with Hoffmann’s approach of not bothering with the exact 5-7-5 cadence of haiku when translating. But here, with “cherry blossoms fall”, we end up with a 5-5-2 structure. An approach that some English haiku writers take is to more generally make the lines short-long-short. This honors to some extent the spirit of Japanese haiku while freeing English speakers from a constraint that wasn’t designed for the rhythms of our language. Hoffmann’s is in effect long-long-short. I decided to channel the short-long-short spirit in making my translation “petals fall / on a half-eaten / dumpling”, for a 3-5-2 structure.3

A quick note that Mam’s Books in Seattle’s Chinatown/International District has picked up a couple copies of Blood of My Blood to sell, too!

Have a look if you’re in the area. Ok, on to the show.

Till next time-

William

This is the third in a series I’m doing of haiku comics around the death poems (jisei), farewell notes to life, of early modern Japanese poets. Learn more about this project, Japanese cultural context, and haiku, and find links to the other comics in this series here: death haiku comics.

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千子の辞世 Chine’s Death Poem

千子 Chine (died 1688, age 28)

燃えやすく

moeyasuku

また 消えやすき

mata kieyasuki

蛍 かな

hotaru kana

Translation:

They light up, and then

they extinguish, just like that

don’t they, fireflies…

Notes

On fireflies:

Fireflies mainly come out in the summer in Japan, so in haiku they generally indicate the summer season, but sometimes they spill over into the fall.1 Chine died in early summer.2

In her poem, Chine is clearly comparing fireflies’ flickering lights, coming into and then going out of existence so lightly, so lacking in occasion, to that of our own lives. Easy come easy go.

Although Hoffmann doesn’t mention other Japanese cultural symbolism for fireflies, I wonder if there isn’t more. The tragic 1988 Japanese animated film Grave of the Fireflies also uses fireflies to symbolize fleeting lives, in this case that of the two children, Seita and Setsuko, during World War II who are the focus of the movie.

My comic for Onitsura’s death haiku comes right after the break, but first:

A Note about Death in Japanese Culture

I thought it would be helpful to say a little about death in Japanese culture to help you understand some context for how these poems don’t come from a place of fear and abhorrence the way we might expect coming from a Western culture. I am by no means an expert, but fortunately Yoel Hoffman offers a lot of history in his book before diving into the death haiku.

Hoffmann notes that:

“Many Japanese prepare for death as soon as they feel their time is near. A will is written to settle the distribution of property and keepsakes among relatives and friends. For the most part, these arrangements take place in an atmosphere of serenity, with almost pleasurable expectation of the voyage to the next world. These preparations do not merely reflect a realistic attitude toward circumstances; they also inspire calmness in the dying allowing them to settle spiritual accounts and to ask pardon for past misdeeds.”1

And although writing death poems as a salutation to life is no longer so widespread as it once was, Hoffmann says that “principally those who have cared for poetry” still do today.

It’s interesting to think about why Japan may have had and still have a much more accepting view of death as a part of life than Western cultures do. Hoffmann observes that Japan’s historical religions, and still primary ones today, first Shintoism and then Buddhism, don’t have a god judging you after death like the Abrahamic religions do.2 Furthermore, in the West death is an individual affair while in Japan death, like life, is a group (usually the family) affair, with the deceased believed to still remain connected to the daily lives of the living. Hoffmann speculates that these customs may make death less scary to Japanese people.

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鬼貫の辞世 Onitsura’s Death Poem

鬼貫 Onitsura (died 1738, age 78)

夢 返せ

yume kaese

烏 の 覚ます

karasu no samasu

霧 の 月

kiri no tsuki

Translation:

Give me my dream back!

A crow snatched me from slumber

To a misty moon

Notes

On life being a dream:

Buddhism came to Japan via China in the seventh century, and over the following centuries came to have more and more influence on Japanese culture. This included the view that life is an illusion or dream.3

On crows:

Hoffmann notes that “the ancient Japanese believed that the dead turned into birds, or perhaps that birds carried the dead to another world. To this day it is thought that ravens embody the souls of the dead [...]”4

On the moon:

The moon could represent several things: on a simple level, Hoffman notes that the moon was considered an autumnal image by default unless the context indicated otherwise.5Seasonal imagery has been a key convention of haikus since the 16^th century in Japan.6

More significant to death poetry, though, Hoffmann also observes that in a death poem by Oriku, who commit suicide to escape her cruel mother-in-law, the moon represents salvation in the world beyond our mortal realm.7 And in another interpretation that could be relevant to Onitsura’s poem, the full moon can symbolize enlightenment, with its circular shape echoing the ink circle paintings of enlightenment (ensou) in Japanese Buddhism.8

On the rabbit in the moon:

This isn’t in Onitsura’s haiku at all, but I put a rabbit on the moon because in Japanese folklore it’s a rabbit on the moon and not a “man in the moon”.

On flowers:

Onitsura’s poem doesn’t mention flowers, but I wanted to use another visual device to illustrate his use of the dream metaphor for life. It occurred to me to hark back to the flowers in Gozan’s poem last week, which evoked the ephemerality of life. These also were handy in that they could help me make the crow’s rude awakening more impactful.

A hat tip to Keezy Young, local Seattle graphic novelist, whose Eisner nominated short comic, Sunflowers (it’s good!), inspired in me the idea to use flowers to symbolize being under an illusion. In her comic, Young uses sunflowers covering her eyes to indicate being in a state of hypomania.

With this first post, I’ll start by sharing my comic and some notes about what’s going on with it. Then I’ll get into a little background on how this project came to be and my approach to translating the haikus.

Future death haiku comic posts will follow the format of comic + notes. I’ve set up a home page for the death haiku comics, too, where you’ll be able to find links to all the comics when they’re published. Swing by the page for the gorgeous cover art! I feel really good about it. But didn’t share it in this post since this one’s for Gozan’s death haiku comic and it seemed like it’d be cumbersome to have it in this post which is already sharing a lot of the background discussion about this death haiku comics series.

Here are the section links for today’s post:

• Gozan’s Death Poem

• So What’s Going On Here?

I am very curious to hear your thoughts as I launch this series, so please don’t hesitate to share with me. Hope you enjoy reading these as much as I do creating them.

Till next time-

William

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梧山の辞世 Gozan’s Death Poem

梧山 Gozan (died in 1733, age 38)

花 や 開き

ka ya hiraki

法説く 鳥 の

noritoku tori no

煌びやか

kirabiyaka

Translation:

Flowers blossoming

An owl preaches the dharma

Brilliant

Notes

Notice that Gozan’s death haiku is a palindrome! Yoel Hoffmann notes in Japanese Death Poems that this type of poem is called a kaibun poem, and was popular in the 18^th and 19^th centuries.1

But, you protest, there is a “hi” in the first line that is being matched up with a “bi” in the last line! Maybe so, but there is a sort of parity between ひ“hi”, び“bi”, and ぴ“pi” in Japanese, with “bi” and “pi” having the same base hiragana as “hi”, plus a modifier.

Also, we’ll notice that haiku writers sometimes take advantage of fudge factors to get their poems to fit the 5-7-5 syllable format, like phrases that while not ungrammatical don’t add a ton to the meaning of the poem. The の“no”that wraps up the second line in Gozan’s poem is an example of this. In related vein, Gozan uses the Chinese-derived onyomi pronunciation of the character 花, ka, meaning flower, instead of the typical Japanese kunyomi pronunciation, hana.

I could have added some words to get the last line to five syllables (e.g. “Oh, how brilliant”), but it’s already a translation, the original lacks such an exclamation, and I think the simple statement of “brilliant” suits the tone better.

On the illusory nature of life:

Buddhism came to Japan via China in the seventh century, and over the following centuries came to have more and more influence on Japanese culture. This included the view that life is an illusion or dream.2

On flowers:

During the Heian period (794-1185) of Japanese history, flowers became the principle symbol representing the ephemerality of life.3

On owls:

The Japanese onomatopoeia for the sound an owl makes, “hou”, is a pun with the Chinese-derived reading (onyomi) of the kanji 法, meaning “law”, or more relevant to this case, “dharma” or “Buddha’s law”. Gozan uses the Japanese reading (kunyomi) of the character, “nori”, in his poem.4

So What’s Going On Here?

辞世 jisei, which come from Japan, are poems written on the occasion of one’s own death. I don’t remember how I stumbled on them, but when I did, death haiku immediately struck me as a fascinating subject for interpreting and illustrating as poetry comics.

Yoel Hoffmann, who was a professor of Japanese poetry, Buddhism, and philosophy at the University of Haifa, wrote a book titled Japanese Death Poems. In it, he dives deep into the background and history of Japanese poetry, particularly haiku, historical beliefs about death in Japanese culture, and death poetry as a practice. The bulk of the book is a curated survey of hundreds of death haiku written by Zen monks and haiku poets over the pre-modern centuries.

Acknowledgement

This death haiku comics project of mine owes much to Hoffmann’s book, without which I wouldn’t have any of the poetry with which to work, nor many tidbits of context and meaning to help with my own interpretation of the poems. Heck, I wouldn’t have even known about jisei since there’s not much writing about it in English beyond Hoffmann’s book.

A Note About My Approach To Translating the Haiku

You may already be familiar with the format of Japanese haiku, as it’s had some penetration into American culture.5 They’re very short poems, with just three lines and proscribed syllable counts of 5-7-5. You have to be especially efficient with your words when writing haiku.

Translating haiku then presents an additional challenge: you’re not only making decisions around how best to convey the meaning of the original Japanese poem, but also balancing whether to stick with the 5-7-5 syllable structure.

Hoffmann didn’t bother much with the haiku syllable structure, opting to focus on translating the meaning. He notes that when translations have focused meticulously on the syllable structure, it’s often at the expense of accuracy of the translation.6 Hoffmann presents his translation alongside the romaji (romanization of Japanese language) of the original poem so you can see the syllables following the haiku form. This approach makes sense to me: communicating the meaning is what matters—getting the feeling, the atmosphere, the idea, the emotion across the chasm to the foreign language reader. And then you can combine it with seeing the original language sounds and cadence of the haiku to convey the formal aspects of the poetry.

But I noticed that Hoffmann’s translations sometimes deviate somewhat from the meaning of the original Japanese, too. Sometimes an element of the poem would be missing in his translation, or his translation expressed a different feeling than the original, to me. If one is constrained by syllables, I could see that forcing one to change the meaning of the poem to fit into the narrow mold. But with the freedom from the syllable constraint, it seems to me that it should be easier to more faithfully reflect the original.

On the other hand, there’s something to be said for the beauty of how the words read in the translation versus being a strict transliteration, too. As Hoffmann says, “While free style [not adhering to the structure] lessens the number of formal constraints on the translator, it demands greater attention to the choice and arrangement of words.” But my reaction was that his choices could go too far in changing the precise, crystallized moment being expressed with the very few syllables of the haiku.

Another thing that I missed in Hoffmann’s presentation of the poems is that he only presents the romaji of the original poems, and leaves out the kanji/hiragana. For non-Japanese speakers, this might not be much of a loss. But for me, they would have been helpful to understand the original poet’s intentions, and see the choices Hoffmann made in his translations.

The upshot of all this is that I found myself wanting to do my own translations of the poems to go with my illustrations of the poems. So to pursue this project, I am both back translating the romaji into kanji/hiragana and retranslating the poem into English, as well as illustrating the poem as a comic.

Cultural Barriers to Translating Haiku

There are so few syllables to work with in haiku that the poems rely heavily on commonly understood (to their contemporaries in Japan) symbols to deliver their meaning. This means that simply translating the words into English or even images will still miss a lot without also explaining the symbolism.

Although, in images’ favor, they can get at the goal of translation much more directly than translating into another verbal language. This is because imagery goes directly to (some of) the sensations and ideas that words point at, whereas translating from one verbal language to another means you’re trying to crosswalk from one system of abstraction to another system of abstraction, both of which are pointing at a third thing.

In any case, because of the importance of symbolism, I’m also including some short notes about the symbols to help my comics speak to the reader. But I want this series to be primarily a comics illustration project, rather than a research and writing project about Japanese history and culture.

For more about Japanese death poetry, I recommend Hoffmann’s book. He does a great job surveying their development over Japanese history and providing background on the symbols used.

I actually made this silly comic before the lunar new year (which was on January 29th this year). But I forgot to take a pic before submitting it at the January DUNE Mini-Comics Night event (no relation to that Dune), so I wasn’t able to take a pic until I got the art back last week.

The January DUNE event was on 1/28, so the timing primed me to think of a LNY themed comic.

Are you familiar with the Chinese zodiac animals?

Random fact (that I, and probably everyone, never thought about until I was ideating for this comic because why would you?): the snake is the only zodiac animal without four limbs! Or any limbs for that matter!

The DUNE events are great: community comics jams where anyone can come and create a comic or illustration and it gets included in a printed anthology with a copy for everyone who contributed. All natural (not digital) media, created that night. You get a wide variety in the end result.

This one was the first one I’ve ever attended (well, I only first heard about them last year while they were on hiatus), but the 86th DUNE to be held. It’s been running for years. I’m going to try to make it out every month.

Here’s a look at DUNE 86—one of my panels was chosen for the back cover! I was stoked.

The connection crisis caused by our hyper-individualistic society is a big concern in recent years. It’s definitely one of my preoccupations, too, and I’m someone who is very comfortable spending time by myself (but I also enjoy being with people, too).

So not just making my art in my hermitage but doing it in community is one way that I’m pushing back to rebuild our connections to each other.

Has the connection crisis touched you? What’s worked well for you to connect with others around you?

Every year there’s something new getting old, right?

It’s always funny to me watching that last little segment of donut or sliver of cake just sit and sit and sit for hours in the break room. Not just because no one wants to be the one to take the last piece, but because people gradually whittle down the last piece by taking smaller and smaller cuts.

(And in case you’re not familiar with it, something’s “half-life” is how long it takes for it to decay to half of its starting amount. Science joke!)

Shoulda just paid the freaking piper his due!

Oh fun, a puzzle! Who else loved analogies back in elementary school?

We here in Seattle use what I call “the Iceland strategy” to ward off potential in-migration.

The name by itself just makes me laugh: “Ringo McDingo”!

When the actual job doesn’t match the job description…

Every time. Except for during the May 10, 2024 storm that produced some of the brightest auroras in centuries! So awesome!

This is also Bigfoot’s origin story.