Dispel Sequence

When stills are loaded into an animation program like LibreDraw, you can make your own short toons. The format doesn't work here, but these are the individual panels. You can also set your sequence to music. This one comes with a manic buzz suitable for a Duke Nukem game. The wizardress is called Sisra.

Forty Days

I ran from the Lord — no, it is all very vague now.
Did He turn away like my new-found friends
when the tempest churned God-fearing wrath?
All ties were broken — accusing eyes met mine
and the gray green sea lashed at me.
The storm raged downward
through camouflage and defenses
gripping jaws and jolts
to the silent depression
by the nursing slumbering pearls,
yet my soul troubled, all the roughness was mine.
Caught in the belly of the monster
I lived its breathing rhyme and reason.
One thought formed itself, then another
I remembered the darkness of youth
leagued with brutish, defiant men.
Now seized, struck down, and darkness anew,
I wait silently in a questioning world.

Electric Arch (Detail)

I got the idea for this from a spray of ivy at my cousin's house. It was draped across an archway to a small garden. Why go with green when you can have blue, purple and red? I made a shadow border to give the leaves a sense of movement. At bottom, the light blue was overlaid on orange for a vibrating effect. The full size is 16x20.

Notes on The Glass Menagerie

A brief discussion of The Glass Menagerie. 

 

In The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams there is a confluence of two events or elements, one is the stagnation of the Great Depression, the time of the play, and the other, Southern culture.

In this semi-biographical play, Laura's glass menagerie can be read as a symbol of her fragility. The movies, a symbol of Tom's desire of adventure. James, Tom tells us, is a symbol of "the long-delayed but always expected something that we live for".

Tom's father abandons the family, and in this cyclical play, so does Tom, leaving his delusional mother and helpless sister behind. He succeeds as a poet, and writes a history play of his earlier life. At the end of the play, he looks into a shop with glass crystal in the window, reminding him of his sister. He writes: "Then all at once my sister touches my shoulder.... I tried to leave you behind me, but I am more faithful than I intended to be!" He continues: "I reach for a cigarette, I cross the street, I run into the movies or a bar...." He does not say "We". Laura is nothing more than the other illuminated images in the play. He fails to keep the promise made his mother to help his sister, and rationalizes aiding her by imagining she has found him. He tells her, merrily, as though it is her birthday, "Blow out your candles—and so good-bye...." What appears to be a happy ending is actually Tom's shying away from his sister.

How the play is classified is problematic. I haven't read the critics yet.

Carolina Snow

This view of an abandoned house was inspired by a magazine photo. I added some extra touches, like the windswept effects on the roof.  The unusual sky color contrasts well with the deep tone of the wood.