Gods and Magicians

Last night I finished reading The Magician King, the second novel in The Magician Trilogy by Lev Grossman. (My daughter turned me on to the show The Magicians, and because I could never find the time to watch it, I decided to read the books instead.)

One of the big things that stood out for me was the subplot concerning the part magic plans in Julia’s history and development.

Unlike me, Julia was a freaking genius. However what she and I did share in common was her lack of certainty in any kind of god or gods. Julia needed evidence. She needed experiencial data.

I am like that too, in a way.

While I do believe in a Universal Creative Energy that some may call “God,” I have trouble believing deities — be They Zeus, Odin, Perkūnas, or even that nameless deity which many refer to as just plain “God” —  that have been fashioned by human beings. Theirs is an anthropomorphic construct — something that’s been fashioned to include human attributes, thereby applying certain limitations to something that cannot be contained in a tidy package. After all, we love our words.

But I guess that’s a human thing. Humans are not comfortable with ambiguity. And many are not comfortable with not being able to define things. Thus, something as vast and undefinable as the Universal Creative Energy — The Source of All Things — had to be squeezed into an easily graspable concept.

The thing is, concepts have limits. And somewhere along the way people either forgot that, or they never bothered to take it into consideration in the first place. Eventually, they also forgot that they, too, were part of this Universal Creative Energy.

And that’s how gods became entities separate from ourselves.

Anyhow, because my concept of “God” is a bit different from that of the popular mainstream, I have a hard time cultivating a the type of relationship with God that most people have. (Cultivating a relationship with Jesus is even tougher for reasons I don’t want to go into now.)

Maybe if God spoke to me like He did in the Old Testament, or even like He did to Donald Neale Walsch in his Conversations With God series, it would be a different story. I have trouble relying on faith alone. That is how Julia and I am alike. If no one answers when I ask questions, or gives me a concrete sign when I ask for one, it’s hard for me to accept that there is an all-powerful higher being who takes a special interest in me.

That is not to say that I am an atheist, or even an agnostic. It’s just that my understanding of “God” does not include an imaginary friend that talks back to me, or some irate bearded dude hurling lightning bolts from Mount Olympus.

The Source of All Things is beyond words and beyond comprehension, though we can tap into it.

As for deities, I think that Lev Grossman brought up an interesting premise in that deities are not so much higher supreme beings, but that they are magicians with an incredible and mind-boggling range of power.

And as for Julia, she did finally become a believer after she had an encounter with a goddess. In fact, not only did she become a devotee of this goddess — Our Lady Underground — she also became a demigod herself, which involved having to sacrifice the part of herself that made her human. 

(That in itself is another metaphor that can be explored at another time.)

Sharpies Art — Part 5

Sharpies Art — Part 4

The portrait subjects that interest me the most are those that depict a person’s energy and dynamic character. If I don’t feel the energy, I am not inspired.

Sharpies Art — Part 3

Not all Sharpies portraits are people.

Sharpies Art — Part 2

Seeing that posting from my phone (which is the only way I can post when I am away from my laptop) is a royal pain in the arse, my post about Sharpies is going to have to be broken up into smaller, manageable posts. Safari is supposed to be a supported platform. However my iPhone did not get that memo.

When I was first starting out drawing Sharpies portraits, one of my favorite subjects was my next door neighbor Jory, as not only was he my best friend when I lived in Lubbock, he was (and still is) quite the character.

I also included Jory’s bromance buddy Gabriel, as well as my other neighbors, like Tommy the Mexican Hulk and Mr Garcia, who loved his guns.

While he was impressed with his Sharpies portrait,

Jory was not all that overly thrilled that my design decision had him with green hair. However, after he accompanied me on my move to Houston, that issue was rectified, and Jory was pleased with the results.

My hair, however, still remains green.

Sharpies Art

I never set out to be a Sharpies artist. I was something that just happened. It all started with this handbound book, with handmade pulpy pages, that I bought at The Magick Cauldron, when I visited my daughter in Houston during June 2014.

As I am a big sucker for notebooks and sketchbooks — the more fancy the better — I could not resist this beauty. But as much as I have been seduced by pretty notebooks and sketchbooks, I have also faced the fear of “contaminating” the pristine pages with a poorly executed drawing or scratched out words.

But I decided to do something different with this book — something different from the couple of pages of Zentangles and mindless doodling that had already  soiled the first couple of pages. I decided that this book was going to be filled with drawings — every single freaking page. And because the rough texture of the paper did not really support colored pencil drawing — not the way I like to draw with colored pencils — I decided to use Sharpie markers instead. (Or course, the paper wasn’t all that ideal for Sharpies either, but I would make it work.)

Little did I know that I was to embark on a new artistic journey.

The intention of my first Sharpies drawing was to create the energy in order to manifest my move to Houston when I was going through divorce 
proceedings. Basically, it was a visual spell — a
magickal working.

While this was not the among my best Sharpies drawings, it was a drawing where I totally got into the energy of creating it.

From that followed other efforts. 

For the first time ever I actually got into drawing 

portraits. Up until that point, I had never been into 

drawing portraits because I felt that I was not good at them. And I will admit that my first few efforts 

were a bit crude. But I also knew that I was on to something.

 

The interesting thing about drawing with Sharpies was that the limited color palette forced me to make some design decisions concerning skin and hair colors. Plus, since I was not using black or white (which is not part of the Sharpies palette), I also had to make design decisions concerning these two color

A Cooking Palooza — The First of Many More to Come...

...the first in this blog, that is, as I’ve been posting my cooking adventures on Facebook and Instagram for quite some time.

It was raining yesterday, but I was not going to let a little bit of rain deter me from firing up my grill for the first time this year. After all, I had two fat pieces of sirloin that were rubbed with the most awesome steak rub ever waiting to jump on the grill.

Don't those babies look good?!

I had only planned to grill those two pieces of steak, but all those live charcoals were just begging for me to slap something else on the grill. Good thing I had some mini peppers on hand.

Not only did they grill up nicely, they had a wonderfully sweet flavor to them that would go nicely with a grilled steak, had that steak been served on a plate. But like I mentioned earlier, I had other plans for this steak.

The sirloin got cut up into smaller bite-size pieces. Also, I minced some shallot, and chopped up some 

red, yellow, and orange bell peppers, along with 

some mango.

Let the mason jar salad assembly begin!

First thing into the mason jars was some homemade rosemary/garlic/shallot white wine vinaigrette. Next went in comes something which can tolerate sitting in the vinaigrette, which in this case would be the meat. (I certainly would not mind that additional marinating action.)

Next came the shallots, then the chopped peppers, and then the mango. Now that there was a sufficient barrier between the salad dressing and the leafy greens, I stuffed the rest of the jar with artisan lettuce that I picked up at Aldi. You want to make sure that the leafy greens are the last to go in the jar, because they would get really nasty from sitting in any kind of vinegary salad dressing for days.

And there you go. Voilà!