Update to CathyBoy.com! Click here to view!
New drawings and comics added. This includes my new project The Summer I Forgot My Middle Name Was Grace. This project is on-going, and will be a new form of novel, synchronizing image with prose. For periodic updates on its status, please keep an eye on Don’t let the Sun go down (this blog!). I’m very excited to be able to share this project with you! I hope you will enjoy the process as much as I will.
I just finished Island by Jane Rogers.
I haven’t quite processed the novel yet because I read it in a fervor. I’ve always taken a stand as a slow reader, but this book took me four days. It’s a psychological story taking place on a small island off the coast of Scotland. I suppose it could be argued that I ended up consuming it far more experientially than most books I read; I have a habit of reading exceedingly slow, taking vast amounts of notes and mentally logging information. This novel was a thunder of emotion. Fantastic. Really fantastic.
I noticed this bit of text in the back a few days into owning the book. I ordered it, and I suppose they must have specially printed it for me and sent it out. This 238-page book has only existed in the world for one week, and I’ve finished it.
I am processing graduation and the real world by taking up writing long emails to my friends. Lots of long emails to friends. I feel like I’m going to start swooning, and proclaiming “Alas!,” like the heroine of Mary Shelley’s novella Mathilda.
That story had a strange impact on me when I read it last year. It’s a nervously long account of a woman’s sadness and mourning, with little actually taking place after the first few chapters. I felt drawn to it at the time, and drawn to it now, because although we seem to enjoy making fun of the concept of “emo” as a culture, we don’t seem to actually account what takes place during a mourning, lonely period.
The story begins with Mathilda on her death bed, explaining her current depressed state. The story goes on to explain how she got there, and then meanders into her dwelling in that state, unable to return, until she dies. It’s incredibly Romantic.
You can read Mathilda for free, online here: click. (I myself bought my copy in Paris, which is funny to think, now.)
I don’t feel so emotionally and mentally distraught as Mathilda does, but it’s interesting to have read something so intensely dramatic, all from a person’s interior state. It helps you understand yourself. There are purposes to all sorts of stories: escapism, humor. This is a story that explains grief to you.
…Wow, I went impressively off-topic with this one. I was honestly just going to talk about writing letters to my friends. It’s fascinating, the different layers of writing we all participate in. Personal journals just for ourselves, holding our secrets. Letters to friends, which are meant for one person only. Then there’s the internet, which is for everyone.
And then I suppose there’s art, which is for anyone who is willing to look at it.
Here’s a collection of much-belated watercolors from my personal journal. These are from 2010 to early 2011.
As always, click images to view them larger, and click the link below to view more.
