The Mama Series

The Mama Series

ps.
Happy Birthday Rico!

Donuts

I watched Wordplay yesterday. It made me want to play crosswords again, so I got out my New York Times Tuesday puzzle book full of half-finished puzzles. I could still only get about half done. Eh.

Anyway. No hugely exciting news today. Spent a good part of the morning making calls (auf Deutsch!) to arrange appointments and whatnot for my mom. They've finally begun tearing down the old Mensa across the street from our house. I busted out my watercolour set. That's about it.

I'm a big Tom Waits fan, and ever since I heard "9th and Hennepin," I've wanted to illustrate the first two lines of the song: "Well, it's 9th and Hennepin. All the donuts have names that sound like prostitutes..." 

This is what I imagine the Dunkin' Donuts equivalent at 9th and Hennepin to be like.

I love Tom Waits because he can really paint a picture in your mind. And because he's possibly the coolest man alive. 

My mom just refers to him as the "grumbly old man" (だみ声親父).

Weddings and Babies

Feeling much better after antibiotics and painkillers. Ah, modern medicine. I guess it will be a day of catching up on some drawing.

I had a really weird and slightly depressing dream last night. I had made an appointment with some important art professors to get feedback on my portfolio, so I had to take a taxi to Roppongi (central Tokyo). But when I got there, I found that I was on some tropical beach. I had to spread out my artwork on a beach towel. Everyone said the portfolio wasn't good enough. My friend A.Roy was there, consoling me. And then we all decided to go to a costume party by the beach. I can't remember what I was wearing, but someone was dressed up as one of the little GI Joe soldiers from Toy Story. And then a different friend A took me down to meet another artist, but the only way to get to his atelier was down a chute with wooden chairs nailed to the sides as footing. The guy was supertall and friendly. He took us to a gallery where they were selling a feather--a single, normal, possibly even pigeon feather--for 6,500 dollars. He kept saying that it was the best conceptual art piece he'd ever seen and how much he wanted to buy it. My friend and I just kind of looked at each other.

And then I woke up. Mostly, I was sad that they didn't like my stuff.

Anyway.

I've been trying to stay away from Facebook lately. I know I can't really do without it so I won't cancel my account, but I'm trying to keep myself from posting too much on it. But I do check out photos regularly and I realized that in the last year or two, the amount of wedding/engagement/baby photos have practically tripled. And I do enjoy looking at them because people generally look happy in them! And I enjoy photos of funny-looking (I mean adorable!) babies.

Hm, I apparently can't draw straight lines. Or cane chairs. It looks like I have a beaver tail. Meh.

Kitteh?

So I'm sick, but actually I'm sicker than I initially presumed. I finally went to the doctor's this morning after lying in bed with a 39C fever yesterday, and as it turns out, I have a kidney infection. Again. Ugh. At least I'm on antibiotics now and the fever has gone down significantly, but it's no fun. Boooo! It's house arrest for me this week, but at least now I can sit up and draw.

These are the times when I wish I had a cat to cuddle. Although really, I'm kind of warm and sick and sweaty and gross right now so they probably wouldn't want to cuddle with me.

Once I decide to stay put in one place, I am definitely getting a cat.

Rhabarber

I'm sick. Again. This is the third time I've been sick this year. Somehow, my immune system had gone to shits in the last couple of months; I never used to get sick! Blergh. I was actually starting to feel slightly better and helping my mom make rhubarb crumble (so delicious!) when I began feeling feverish again. So pathetic! Hence my blogging from bed. Urgh.

Anyway. This is a recap from something I mentioned in a previous entry . . . but I think this is true for a lot of people.

Gee, what's up with all the Asian joke cartoons these days? Um...yeah. Rhubarb!

Yum.

ps. Happy 5 months to Bonsai!

Priorities and Dishes

Oh crap! I have to leave the house in about 20 minutes to my art class and then to my German class, but I haven't even put on make-up yet. Blegh. I spent all morning accompanying my mom at the doctor's office and then we briefly checked out the Agathe Snow exhibition at the Deutsche Guggenheim. 20 minutes to get ready! Gah! But somehow, updating my blog takes precedence over prettying myself. Meh.

Anyway. I just wanted to say, Iris, you are totally right about this---unless it's just us. Something about not doing the dishes makes me feel guilty.

Bah. I have to be off, Internets. Bis morgen!

Soft-serve

Happy Sunday!

Another dream-related cartoon. Kind of a creepy story--on the morning of the earthquake before we even knew about the disaster, my mom told me that she wasn't feeling well and that she had a dream where she was trying to make her way out from under the rubble. I'm not a superstitious person, but it was still a bit unsettling.

I, on the other hand . . .

I have retarded dreams. I remember consciously thinking to myself in my dream, "Why the hell am I running with an ice cream cone in my hand?" I think I had to deliver it to a friend before it melted or something. It kind of reminds me of that really cute Frog and Toad story.

Or maybe I was thinking of this guy:

This is my personal favourite:

Uh. Right. Ahem.

It's Postsecret day!

Alpaca

Inspiration! Or . . . tweetspiration! (badum'ch)

I'm actually astounded by what an amazing source of information Twitter has been in this catastrophe. I'd created a twitter account a while ago but had always wondered what it was really good for (aside from reading ConanOBrien, StephenAtHome, and grantimahara tweets)---now I know. Internets, you never cease to amaze me.

Anyway. On a much less serious note, my friend Eri tweeted about having a dream about an alpaca. Not just a regular alpaca, but a furious, horned alpaca with rainbow fur. Freaking trippy. I had to draw it.

I've also learned that alpacas are very hard to draw. It took me five tries just to get it right . . . kind of.

But yes. Thanks Eri for getting me back into the swing of things. I've been doing a lot of still life drawings for my portfolio (which has been somewhat depressing and frustrating), but cartoons is what I enjoy and do best!

the case of the un-funnies

Hi friends!

Sorry for the lack of comics lately. I don't want to blame it on the earthquake, but strangely enough, I haven't been able to think of anything really funny lately. I mean, not that my cartoons are hilarious anyway . . . but still. I'll post as soon as I think of something. The world can use more silliness at a time like this.

Anyway! Better get some drawing, work, and homework done!

Lots of hugs,

Nozomi

What I can do

The only skill I have to contribute that's worth anything is translation. Here's an inspiring and empowering blog entry that I found:

Original source: 被災者の役に立ちたいと考えている優しい若者達へ


To all the kind-hearted young people who want to do something for the victims—A piece of mind from my experience as a naive youth

It was the day after the central university entrance exam in my last year of high school that the Hanshin Awaji earthquake happened. Somewhere between dream and consciousness, I heard an ominous rumbling like that of a thousand trucks coming from afar, and I woke to find the entire house was shaking. My father woke me up, opened the front door, shut off the gas nozzle, and turned on the TV. The Hanshin freeway had collapsed. I remember the fear from the tremor, the inability to understand what I was seeing on television, and the silence in the city.

I had to go to school that day for a self-assessment of the university exam and an interview for the second part of the exam. I was hesitant, but I eventually took off on my bicycle. There was water overflowing from the moat around Osaka Castle.

As school, everything was as usual. Some students hadn't showed up, but our teacher said nothing. The self-assessment and the interviews were carried out solemnly. Our friends from San'nomiya and Nishinomiya had not shown up. During our lunch break, two friends and I discussed that we should go out and volunteer after the oral exams were over.

And then at the end of the school day, our physics teacher started to speak.

"Some of our teacher and students have been affected by the earthquake and are unable to come to school. Many of you have finished your university entrance exams, and your application processes are over, and may be moved by your sense of justice to march into the affected areas. This is not wrong. But to be honest, there is nothing that you could do. If you still feel that you want to do something for the victims, listen carefully to what I'm going to tell you.

First, take your own food, and when you run out, come home. Do not touch the food that is meant for the victims.

Bring your own sleeping bags and tents. The dry floor is space for the victims to sleep on, not you.

Once you have registered as a volunteer, do not refuse any type of work that you are given, no matter what. There is no bigger hindrance than people that drop out half way when working as a group. If you are ready to abide by these rules, you may be of some help to the victims. You have no skills, but you're young, smart, and have energy.

But my honest opinion is that you should remain here and focus on your exam preparations, acquire specialized skills and knowledge in university, and become someone who can help prevent disasters in the next ten, twenty years."

I forget what was said word for word, but I remember what the gist of what our teacher wanted to tell us.

Like our physics teacher had predicted, we were of no use to the victims.

We went around handing out bread, accompanied the elderly, and cleaned the area around the evacuation shelters, and ran other small errands, but our food ran out in five days. We didn't bathe, but we were told that it was unsafe to sleep outdoors, so we slept inside the evacuation center. The fire fighters and the self-defense force were astonishingly competent in restoring the infrastructure and removing the rubble, and they efficiently dealt with any issues. Our existence was a joke—we were just a bunch of kids that were pretending to “volunteer.” There were actually some young pepole who'd brought nothing with them or were reluctant to do dirty jobs, but I couldn't really say that there was a big difference between the amount of help we and they were able to give.

What I learned from the experience was that nothing is solved with just people who need help and people who want to help. For things to actually start moving forward, we need people who can mobilize people. I was ignorant of this obvious fact.

Crushed by reality, we left the affected area, and eventually enrolled in university Kyoto. We also eventually lost our passion for the affected areas. I honestly admit and regret the fact that our sense of justice was ultimately nothing more than a facade. We couldn't even hold onto our feelings for Kobe for even a single year.

I'm sure there are many young people out there who want to do something for the affected areas and the victims of this earthquake. But I want you to stop and think. There is not a thing you can do for them there right now. Your existence at the site will only be a hindrance. All you can probably do now is donate money and blood, and that's a great contribution that I urge you to be proud of and to continue.

What I want you to do is to hold onto your passion, your feelings. If you continue to feel what you feel now, there will be opportunities for you to act. You could help out in the temporary shelters, psychological care of the victims, restoring daily life—some issues far more serious than ones directly following the earthquake. NPOs will start moving to deal with these problems, and only then will the victims start to need you, a kind-hearted person who wants to help in any way possible. Maybe it will be an experience that will change your life completely.

I ultimately became a geographic information system specialist, and though my field is different, I am now in a position to be able to contribute to disaster prevention. I think I've become someone slightly more capable of helping others than before.