In Heaven, Everything is Fine
Word for the day: Milky
I’d rather you not read these pages because it contains a huge spoiler, but it wouldn’t seem right not posting anything on my final day, so here it is anyway:
Ok that’s it. I’ll be spending the rest of 2008 working on this story, ‘linking’ (i.e. drawing more pages between) the pages I’ve drawn so far… I’d like to make clear that I’ve posted so far in no way represents the chronology (or the flow) of the end product in mind.
I’ll be serializing this comic in chapters, (entitled Purgatory) along with another comic called Oedipus Cookie Dough in my new mini comic series Carbon Marrow, the first issue which should be out in December. Ask me about it at manosturbo@gmail.com
Odds and Ends:
Diagram from my sketchbook:
Here’s a comic I drew when was 17, based on a recurring adolescent nightmare that I had. I’m posting this because it’s linked to Purgatory in many ways:
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I got what I wanted out of 30dayartist, thanks Chin Yew + others. No thanks to Carr Win for his lame comments (joking lah, he’s a cool person).
Looking back at the pages I did, I find them a lot less self-absorbed and solipsistic (e.g. the only problems that exist are MINE ALONE). For example, here’s a comic I drew circa 2005, a real cry for attention if there ever was one:
Hahaha, what a pussy, huh? I am a lot less narcissistic now…. or am I? Debatable I guess, but really, this is the most number of pages I’ve drawn without vomiting out the near-obligatory ‘look at me, I’m so fucking depressed’ page, and that alone instills in me a sense of accomplishment. It has become a compulsion over the years to whine about my problems on the comics page and feel a sense of resolution, rather than face my problems like a mature person.
I leave you with a story:
8
The only memories I have of my mother’s features are a collection of lines enshrouded by crisscrosses of darkness, the afterimage of microbes on the surface of the thin layer of fluid around my eyeballs dancing around her blurry contours like an aura.
My nursery was the Pink Room, where everything was plastic and smelt of disinfectant. After my mind was wired up to do what it was meant to do, I was locked up in it for 17 years.
Every morning at precisely 6.45 a.m., after untying the strap that held the mint-flavored oral placebo (on weekends it was strawberry flavored) firmly at the back of my throat, mother would go out of the room, shut the door, and the lights would go on.
Come to think of it I’m not even sure that was my mother. Could have been a very dedicated nursemaid.
“Mother” would slide a pen and pad underneath the door, and I would pick them up, go to the pink desk by the pink nightstand, and write.
I would spend exactly 8 hours writing about meat cleavers, second chances, true love, and dogs copulating in the alley outside of… whatever the hell I was confined in, were it a maze or a desert.
I was never sure if the universe outside was finite or infinite. Come to think of it, how could I even be sure if there were a universe outside? At the mean time, life goes on.
Mother fed me based on what I wrote.
I constructed my first sentence when I was 4 months old.
It was a semi-coherent blue scrawl with a faded blue sharpie:
I AM
The lights went out, and Mother came in. I heard the sound of a plate rattling against a metal tray, and Mother went out.
The lights came back on, and I saw that she had left me a slice of bread. I ate it.
Six minutes later, I wrote my second sentence:
I AM NOT
The lights went out again, and mother entered and exited just as abruptly as before. Lights on. She had brought me a plate with small lumps of peanut butter smeared all over it.
Very well:
ADAM I AM NOT
Lights out. Mother left me a slice of bread with peanut butter on both sides, which I consumed when the lights went on.
I AM NOT
Mother fed me oatmeal,
I AM A BEAR
prawns and rice,
I AM A TRAIL
- Wantan Noodles as trail.
COME FOLLOW ME
- Whipped cream as clouds.
COME PLAY WITH ME
- Popcorn
LET’S PLAY
- Play dough made from flour and bread crumbs
WITH MY SYNESTHESIA
- A plate of Baked Oysters!
Oh, how I feasted. They left me a bottle of Tabasco sauce and a bottle of vinegar. I ate greedily, teeth gnashing greedily against oyster shells radiating like exhaust fumes on puddles.
I burped, and smiled, and burped again.
And vomited across my bed sheets.
Putting my hands around my wet, enlarged belly and smiling contentedly, I reached for the pen and paper top write a new story.
7
During my first 2 years, writing was a matter of illustrating things that I had learned about from the brain jacks, simple lines such as THE QUICK BROWN FOX JUMPS OVER THE LAZY DOG. Mother left me a bowl of rice and peas for this.
I went on to experiment with descriptive writing. THE SENTENCE THE QUICK BROWN FOX JUMPS OVER THE LAZY DOG HAS ALL OF THE LETTERS OF THE ALPHABETS IN IT got me a bowl of chicken and vegetable soup.
6
When I was three I started getting bored of bread, oatmeal, rice and soups so I started cutting up the concepts I had learnt from the brain jacks and mixing them around. By doing this, I accumulated more pieces of the nutritional pyramid:
THERE IS NO DICHONOMY BETWEEN THE EXTERNAL AND THE INTERNAL.- Chicken liver.
THERE IS NO DICHONOMY BETWEEN THE INTERNAL AND THE ETERNAL. – Flavorless Gelatin cubes.
THERE IS NO DICHONOMY BETWEEN THE EXTERNAL AND THE ETERNAL. – A ham sandwich and a cup of warm milk.
MA, COULD YOU POSSIBLY GET SOME KIT KATS IN HERE. – A can of coke.
OR SOME COOKIES. – A tic-tac.
Withholding. Just ma’s way of telling me I had a lot more to learn.
5
BUFFALO BUFFALO BUFFALO BUFFALO BUFFALO BUFFALO BUFFALO BUFFALO.
- Spam and fried eggs sunny side up with Worcestershire sauce and salt.
JAMES WHILE JOHN HAD HAD HAD HAD HAD HAD HAD HAD HAD HAD HAD A BETTER EFFECT ON THE TEACHER.
- Spam and mash with tomato ketchup and salt.
石室詩士施氏，嗜獅，誓食十獅。氏時時適市視獅。十時，適十獅適市。是時，適施氏適市。
氏視是十獅，恃矢勢，使是十獅逝世。氏拾是十獅屍，適石室。石室濕，氏使侍拭石室。石室拭，氏始試食是十獅。食時，始識是十獅，實十石獅屍。試釋是事。
Brown Sugar Water
4
Somewhere along the age of 6 I decided that if I wasn’t going to see the world outside the Pink Room, I was going to taste as much of it that I could instead. So I started writing stories.
I started my journey a McDonalds across the street where we lived. To get a Big Mac and fries, I wrote short contemporary horror stories. For a side of milkshakes, I wrote them in third person. For Sprite, I wrote it in first person. I wrote erotic fiction for pasta and Science Fiction for TV Dinners. If I wanted sushi with egg rolls I wrote existential fiction disguised in western genre conventions. If I wanted fruit I wrote colloquiums. If I craved yogurt I used symbolism. If I wanted mustard and sausages I used deconstruction and metonymy.
I had analyzed all the recipes.
Writing stories based on plot structures from Chinese fables got me sponge cake.
Reinterpreting Greek mythology got me pizza with anchovies.
Dada got me gefilte fish.
Objectivism got me shellfish.
Eastern mythology got me chocolate bunnies.
And I learnt how to get Kit Kats, too. All I had to do was write teenage romance novels.
By the time I was 9, father was an agent for 42 nonexistent authors ghostwritten by me.
3
Dirty limericks usually got me a Twinkie.
“There was a young lady from Brussels
who exercised her virile corpuscles
with dynamite sticks in bed
head to ass and ashes to match head
whenever she got orgasms with fire marshalls”
I wrote this on a yellowing legal pad and put it in the dumbwaiter. 30 seconds later, I heard a motor humming, chains rattling against pulleys. 15 seconds later I opened the dumbwaiter. In it was a fork, knife, and a blue porcelain rice bowl containing a sizzling, deep fried Mars Bar, a nutritionally dubious Scottish delicacy.
Oh well. Beggars couldn’t be choosers. My limerick didn’t scan anyway.
I cut off a piece of the mars bar and bit into the oily, fried dough coating the melted chocolate.
I was instantly rendered a spluttering, coughing mess. I had scalded my tongue. I spit oil and chocolate phlegm all over the floor. The Mars Bar was soaked in oil. Hadn’t anyone used a paper napkin to absorb the gunk?
The aftertaste was overwhelming. I vomited on the pink floor boards.
It was just Ma’s way of telling me not to write shit if I didn’t want to eat it.
2
The last thing I ever wrote in the pink room was a story about a dog called Lucy.
I’d never seen one in real life but I had every detail of the animal visualized in my mind, down to its wet fur and cold nose. Lucy was a friendly bull terrier that was always wagging its tail as if it were a baton metronome. She loved to run. She loved to bark.
Every morning Lucy’s owners would set it loose in a maze filled with albino mice. The mice would scatter and Lucy would run. And bark. Not because she felt predatory, but because it felt good to bark. Woof! Woof! Her bark echoed down the passages of the maze and from the echoes she was able to tell which part of the maze she was in. She navigated her way out easily, by running and barking. She usually took around half an hour to the other side of the maze. When she did she found herself in a milking unit.
Her owners would strap her to an automated milking system. A bowl of dog food was put in front of her, and she would lactate. Everything else happened like clock work, automatic teat cleaning, milking cup application, milking, teatdipping, and Lucy would be led back to her doghouse.
One day, Lucy woke up with a strange feeling in her head. Her mouth felt unusually dry. And bitter.
Lucy looked around and saw white corridors. This happened sometimes. Lucy suffered from Sonambulism. Someone had drugged her water bowl and left her in the maze. There were no mice in sight, either.
Lucy opened her mouth to bark, but nothing came out.
There was a red dotted line drawn with chalk on the floor. Lucy followed it.
She reached the milking unit in just under 2 minutes. She was strapped to the milking system, and her dog dish was set in front of her.
Her severed tongue lay in it, covered with flies.
1
That’s it. That had to be the right combination of words and punctuation and sentence structures and themes and literary techniques. It was the right recipe.
I put the piece of paper in the dumbwaiter. 30 seconds later, I heard the familiar sound of motor humming and chains.
Two hours later the motor started again, and I opened the dumbwaiter and saw a milk bottle with strychnine in it.
BINGO.
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Other links:
My music (shitty lo-fi pop crap)
My photos (disorganized album)
My Big Mouth (amateur video)
