It’s “the holidays,” and it’s been lovely, but I wouldn’t want the internet to think I’d forgotten it. So here I am, with another short-term memory-drawing of the north country. It was funny passing by the same spot the next day and realizing how different the construction of the bridge is, and how there are bigger, uglier buildings just past it. But, isn’t that the great part about memory? The relevant parts stick out. I’m really enjoying doing these landscapes in this way. I think it has a lot to do with cartooning, and with only including the pertinent details. If I ever teach a class, I’ll probably make my students do some memory sketching. First I’ll show them Laura Park, who does a lot of it.

In other news, my whirlwind tour of the New York metro-area is drawing to a close, and it makes me sad. Caitlin and I extended our Christmas stay in Connecticut, due to that big snowstorm the entire Eastern Seaboard is talking about. One of my oldest and dearest friends was staying there, with my parents, and blended right in, an extra sibling, just like he used to when we were kids. That was lovely.

The other day a bunch of us took the commuter rail down to Grand Central. It was the day after the storm, and the train was packed. My dad had to go to his bank, my sister to the French Consulate, my Chad (that’s the friend I mentioned) to Brooklyn, along with a friend of his who joined us on the train. Caitlin and I took the subway over to Penn Station, and never emerged to the light of Manhattan. We just got straight onto a New Jersey Transit double decker train and took it to her grandmother’s, where we’ve been the last two days. Upon arriving in New York, neither Caitlin or I felt the Country Mouse sensation that I’ve had when emerging from a day’s travel on Amtrak directly from Vermont. There was none of that “gorsh, there sure are a lotta pretty people…an’ boy do they move fast!” kinda thing. I don’t know if it was the buffer of some days spent in the suburbs, or the familiarity of the commuter line, or what, but it just felt comfortable and right.

I’m looking forward to our approaching weekend stint in Brooklyn. I miss the old borough, and haven’t been back since August. I’m worried that I might never live there again. I can’t stop thinking about what I’ll do, and where I’ll be, after graduating (unless I fail) from CCS this coming May. I know I’ll stick around in Vermont for a while, but I don’t know for how long, or how I’ll be paying my loans. Ah, the future! There’s nothing like the New Year to make you obsess over your plans, is there? Welp, that’s my life. Sorry to get all reflective on yas.

Recently I’ve been working day and night, then lazing about at home for hours staring at a screen, often in a state of effed-up-ness. Also eating out too much, but eating local at home, and having overnight visitors on the weekend. We go out and do touristy things and then go to a hip place and drink micro brews. That’s exactly how I lived when I lived in New York!

The difference is all the time I spend here making comics, reading comics, and talking about comics. Which isn’t to mention the time I spend analyzing movies, watching animation, or with a group of friends trying to one-up each other with crazy stories or better jokes. And also seeing magnificent vistas as frequently as when my 14th-floor dorm window looked onto the sun setting behind the Empire State Building. Here instead of stone towers I’ve got rivers, hills and trees. I can dig it, but sometimes I still long for the Big Shitty. At least here in White River I’m still surrounded by ambitious, driven and funny people.

Before our tearful goodbyes, Dan McCool and I had two days of serious brotimes. On Monday we got stoned, we walked all over the Village, we were this close to getting matching T-shirts at Uniqlo, but there was nothing good in Dan’s size, although we did get cool sunglasses on the street and we also looked at this sweet mural at Houston and the Bowery. As we were chomping down on some falafel, I got called to duty making corrections on not one, but two, illustration jobs. This was a big disappointment because it cut our broday short. We were hoping to have an afternoon Drawing Adventure, but had to go home instead. We made up for it by jammin’ on some comics, one of which is below, the other of which is on Dan’s blog. If you can’t tell (again, that probably makes you not my friend), I kicked this one off, Dan continued it, and backsy-forthsy all the way. We did the two simultaneously so we could both be drawing at once. (If you click it, you’ll enlarge it.)

I’ve been meaning to show the page below for a long time. It’s from a few months back when I was fleshing out chapter one of Petrified Girlfriend (only available in the impossible-to-read-titled Oak & Linden – I’ll make an Etsy page or something when I move to Vermont if you’re interested in a copy, Blogiverse). You may recall that Caitlin and I stomped around the Museum of Natural History taking reference pictures for it. Well, a pivotal moment occurs in the Hall of Ocean Life, which has had a wonderful lighting effect ever since it was remodeled sometime this decade. The hall’s skylights, which were painted over in the let’s-paint-over-everything 1960s, are illuminated with the blue, shifting ripples that you see on the sand under the ocean water. It’s gorgeous. And it took me a while to figure out just how to depict it, as you can see. This objet d’art features some coffee stains by me and also one of my collaborator Caitlin Martin’s inimitable lists.