Wednesday, October 30, 2013

Books!

I'm making books, man.  And it's about time, I tell you what.  Not writing books mind you.  Just making the physical things that house the words and whatnot.  Here's my first attempt, and will be the cover.  The inside will feature a faded version of this whistle man in the corner dancing and fluting when you flip the pages.  FUN!


After that I have the plan of making a 3D page of one of the graphic novels I've done, layering matte board to add depth.   Then making a graphic novel from a story I once wrote in what I call a "waking state fever dream".  Here it is!

So here, we begin, in a world with two moons.  And you ask, "How can a world be so different, a world with two moons?".  
Imagine, my friends.  Imagine.  Take in all the newly invented colours you've never seen, from a different rainbow prism of light.  Blue, red, and yellow are obsolete in this old world order.  Right in your own back yard, you could have a sterling banquet, if you'd just show the grass some affection.  There are no consequences for stopping to smell the roses, because when you do, they'll give you a hot meal, and a place to stay for the night.  They're hospitable, but they aren't called roses.  They're called conquistadors.  And they've been around since long before you were born.  But they loved you immensely.  
When you were born, you grew on a tree, and I was the tree.  How magnificently you grew on that tree.  And you were the colours in the new colour spectrum.  Jape, and rainteen, and billowpaxton, and ga.  You wore them well, and the conquistadors agreed.  And the tree was proud, and I was the tree. 
So now that you live in the world with two moons, I think you'll concur that we have more time to commit to the beginning, not the end of our lives, 'cause we have no linear path.  I've lived your life, and I know you've lived mine.  
Yesterday I was the plank in a pirate ship, and the man who attempted to mop tumbled over.  He was just remembering the day before when he was a blade of grass, when a small boy looked at him and decided on a whim that he was perfect enough, as far as blades of grass go, and wove him into a net, what caught a bird.  That bird had a conversation with the woven blade of grass about how significant we are under the light in the evening when we all live in the world with two moons.  I know this, because two days ago I was that bird.  What's mine is yours, and when we take care of each other, we take care of ourselves.
I couldn't believe it, the day you took a trek to confabulate with the moon, the far left moon, to ask him why he chose not to revolve around us, as the other moon did, the one on the right.  We all knew it was because he was stubborn.  
No one talks to the far left moon and doesn't end up spending time with the badgers.  The pachydermatous, too cruel, too-far-behind-with-the-times-and-the fashions-and-every-other-snazzy-thing-you-could-imagine badgers, flying high above the surface of the moon on the left by means of hot air balloons and a lonely satellite station for refueling purposes.  Though one could not spend too much time in that station, lest they lose so much bone density that back problems supervene.  
You went on though, and requested I join you, but of course I could not because I had a previous engagement to wed a rather beautiful, yet spindly knothole in a wooden fence to a grisly, pale, pitchfork in a smidgen of harmonious wedlock.  And besides, trees can't move, I've decided.  It's simply too ridiculous, even in the world with two moons.
So you sat on your feet, with your hands in tune, and flew to the left to go talk to the moon.  The moon on the right was just passing by, and you got your first glimpse of how pristine he was.  A beautiful alabaster globule, he was.  
Only the thing you must remember about the moon on the right is that he has the memory of a goldfish, but if you ever met a goldfish, you'd know its wisdom is unmatched.  Abstemious, and gathered, to battle wits would leave you bereft of any dignity you could hope to retain over a millennia.  Never fight a goldfish.
I wish just in scores that I could have seen your face when you got in place, through the atmospheric layers to the surface atop, and started to speak.  The moment in history we can all recall in an instant, if we think hard enough.  It's the same moment that argyle was invented by a scottish terrier just a mile east.  A firefly sat on a fern, clipping his toenails as he spoke his mind on the theory of evolution to a thoughtful tyrannosaurus rex, listening intently.  
Who should appear in front of you at this moment, but the man on the moon.  
"Get out of my way, the man on the moon!", you grumbled a tad, and still to this day, it's the only exposure I've had to you livid.  And you were rather fuming indeed.  I don't blame you, risking your hide and the things that you love, and those vindictive badgers who hovered just above.  And here stands a man.  Bearded, and smelly, like cheese, and not the good kind.  It can't have been pleasant.  And remember what you said after that?  Sure you do.  
You said, "Listen stinky cheese man on the moon with an ugly beard who I just don't like very much.  Even though perhaps given the chance, you may be the sort of gentleman who I'd fancy the odd game of Super Soup (Badminton) with.".
He replied, "My dear sir, I accept your duel.  Bazookas at dawn.  And would you look at that?  The perfect eclipse, and following that, the breaking of dawn up here on the moon, the one on the left.  So my good man, have at thee.  En garde!".
The moon was appalled, the one on the right, looking upon you, about to go fight.
"This can't end well, I can't even look, but I don't have a choice, here I go, out to orbit, and good luuuuuuuck!".  As he passed by again.  
"Alright, 48 paces, you dog." Said the man on the moon, cross as he could, but anyone should note that he quite clearly cared deeply for you.  How many people have come to the moon, and spoken to this man?  A seldom few, and they're with the badgers now, flitting about so terribly, terribly out of date.  Blown sky high by bazookas.  Fueling hot air balloons and speaking of less than current events.  
The badgers enjoy the sport, to be sure, but what about the moon to the left?  All full of holes and craters, how self conscious he must feel.  Especially when compared to the immaculate complexion of the one on the right.
47 paces later, the battle began.  The man on the moon had either cheated or miscounted, and turned around one step too soon.  This could be because he was a poor mathematician.  It could also be because math had not been invented just yet.  Whatever the reason, I would never presume that cheating had occurred without proper evidence.  Although the evil grimace on his face was rather menacing.  I must ask you though, how clearly can a tree read facial expressions from a million miles away?
Clearer than the clearest thing ever, it turns out.  What a cheater, that moon man.  "Make him into moon pie, out of his bones!" I managed to communicate via telekinesis, quickly enough to have you spun around and dramatically dodging out of the way just in time!  How thrilling!
So now you've given him his first fair fight, but as a result, tragedy most unquestionably had to strike.  The moon on the right, he was making his rounds, looking chipper as always.  Having forgotten this whole ordeal had occurred.  This is the bit where it is important to note his unique goldfish disorder.  He was grinning at you so sweetly when the moony man blasted you, but you were too nimble for his likes, weren't you?  You were, and you leapt like a kumquat for cover but that moon...  That moon was too innocent to see the malicious nature of bazookas and got one right in the eye!  Can you imagine?
This knocked him right off course, as it would anyone.  Led him right into the sun.  You screamed and shouted, and I telekineticized and we all blew our moon trumpets, but before we could see what happened the badgers, who may have been acrimonious and anachronistic, but they cared for that moon, and in their hasty anger, they flung him back to earth, and nearly cracked it in half!  Shifted the tectonic plates, most irrefutably.  Pangea had become history before the eyes of any who had them.  
And as you flew back, you went into a dream, and you forgot all of this.  After the stubborn moon began revolving in memorial of his brethren.  After I gave knowledge, after the prism broke.  Dinosaurs came, and mammoths grew to size.  Cave men painted, and evolved, and you woke up.  But you, man, standing up there.  You forgot your place.  Where the cacophony of humanity had once spurred poetic intangibility in your ears, and mine.
Do you remember?  The moon on the right, he's okay.  They named him Callisto, and he lodges near Jupiter.  
You saved him, in the end, made the conquistadors swoon.

Even though we now live in a world with just one moon.