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The Reason That Heat Vision Is Not Lit

The headline from my THR editor was a straightforward pun: “John Wick Gets Lit.” Because you light a wick, get it? Like a candle? But my brain went elsewhere when I first learned it, to an entirely different place altogether:

There were reasons why this wasn’t a smart idea, not least of which being I felt self-conscious for just outright swiping Olivia Jaimes’ original “Sluggo Is Lit” image/joke. (It’s also the wrong shape/size for the newsletter format, but, I mean, I could have worked with that.) The actual reason it wasn’t used, though, is something far more straightforward: My THR editor didn’t know the “Sluggo Is Lit” meme. And then, when I was appalled and went to a third party, they didn’t know it, either. So, we ended up dropping it and trying something more traditional, but I still think it’s funny.

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Try Again Later

It’s been a day.

Really, it’s been a week. Maybe more than a week? As I write this, it’s Friday afternoon and there’s been a lot happening over the past week or so, even though I couldn’t tell you what any of it has been. I’m at the point in life, I think, where things as simple as “I didn’t sleep well last night,” or, “I didn’t get that work done when I thought and it’s playing on my mind” can completely wreck my day, which feels somewhat embarrassing to admit. It’s not that I feel old, per se, as much as I just feel curiously tired in unexpected ways, not least of which emotionally and mentally.

A friend — hi Jeff! — has joked that I’m basically at the age where my body should start to fall apart. Unfortunately, as a result, I’ve spent years preparing for that mentally, noting every single twinge and ache and thinking to myself, this is it, it’s finally starting. This mental and emotional fragility is more unexpected, however, and makes me think that maybe I’ve been paying attention to the wrong stuff all along.

(I worry that describing it as fragility makes it sound more dramatic, more deep, than it actually is; really, I’m just very tired.)

I’m reminded, I realize, of my mother, who built her life around a very strict regime of scheduling that included going to bed early each night; somewhere between nine and ten o’clock, depending on whether or not there was something she was watching on TV. As a kid, I was always surprised that she’d seem to go to bed even when she wasn’t sleepy, or didn’t seem so, but know that I’m older, I feel as if I’ve realized her magic trick: She was doing that to avoid sleepiness and exhaustion. Clearly, I need to adopt this plan.

Maybe I’m old, but not too old to stop learning from my parents. On the other hand, perhaps I’m just turning into my mother. There are worse fates.

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Tomorrow I’ll Miss You

More graphics from the Heat Vision newsletter, including some we ended up not using for various reasons. Such things happen, as the newsletter comes together each week — stories slip out of contention (or fall apart entirely), even after we’ve imagined them being the big breakout for that week. It’s literally part of the process, and something that comes with so little ego that I genuinely can’t remember always which graphics we have used for sure anymore.

This one got a new headline at the last minute:

This next one required perhaps too much effort for the final result, but dammit, I really wanted to make a With The Beatles riff.

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Won’t You Ring The Alarm?

I have started to hear phantom alarms. This is not a metaphor, although it is most assuredly probably not a good thing.

It started maybe a week ago; I woke up too early in the morning, and the sun was still rising. I laid in bed, with the window open — thank God that Portland is finally getting warm after a long winter from Hell — and listened to the sound of birds chirping, and people starting early morning walks to work. It was very relaxing, until I noticed the alarm in the distance.

More than anything, it sounded like a burglar alarm or a fire alarm at a building some distance away. It wasn’t loud, just the opposite; my first thought was that it sort of faded in and out on the wind, and was almost relaxing in its insistence. It was just present, and constant in its tone when it did appear.

Over the next few days, I’d hear it again. Not always, and never loud. In the back of my head, I thought, Wow, someone needs to get their alarm fixed. It was only when I mentioned this to someone else that I realized something was up; they couldn’t hear anything.

Now, maybe they have bad hearing and I’m the one in the right. But isn’t it more likely that, instead of an alarm going off at random times during the day over and over again, always in the distance, that fades in and out that only I can hear, that I’m imagining it for some reason?

I’m sure this has some meaning, and I’m equally sure it’s not a good one. But, yes; I’ve started to hear phantom alarms, and it’s not a metaphor.

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It Must Be Morning, Again

The best mornings are the ones where I wake up and can’t quite believe that it’s so light outside just yet. I’ve accidentally developed the knack for waking up early across the years, and sometimes that’s a thing that means that I wake up too early; at a point that even I have to admit is still technically night.

I remember someone telling me, ten or so years ago, that as they got older, their sleep cycle got ruined. They woke up in the middle of the night, or they’d be unable to fall asleep in the first place, or they’d start waking up at 4 in the morning. All of this was said in the tone of, One day this horror will befall you too. I scoffed, as you do. The same person also told me that, after 50, I’d start to piss myself, so I was used to aging body horror stories from them.

I don’t know if they were right, at least in regards to sleep, but I feel like my waking up creeps ever earlier over time. It’s definitely not what was advertised; I’m still falling asleep with an ease that has irritated many, and it’s rare that I wake up in the middle of the night and can’t fall back to sleep soon enough. But still. (Thankfully, I’m not pissing myself yet, but then again, I’m not 50 yet.)

Right now, I’m waking anywhere between 5:30 and 6:30 in the morning, most days. It’s something that’s frustrating, more than anything else — I wake up too early and I get mad because, well, who wants to be awake before six? — but it’s part of whatever routine by body has created for itself. I wake up, check Twitter and email and the news, and wait for the rest of the world to start for the day.

But it’s better when the sun is out, telling me I won’t have to wait too long.

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Returning To The Scene Of The Crime

There has to be a word for something that isn’t quite nostalgia, but is nonetheless the feeling of being overwhelmed by your past.

I visited an area of Portland yesterday where I hadn’t been since a particularly emotionally turbulent time, and as soon as I started seeing familiar landmarks from that period — stores I’d walk past often, crosswalks that became signposts to certain locations — I found myself not just remembering that time, but reliving it surprisingly, uncomfortably, clearly. The emotions of the time were in my head again, the difficult and unpleasant feelings of shame, guilt and certainty that I was disappointing and upsetting people. Out of nowhere, bam: All flashed back, purely because of my physical location.

Even stranger: I was momentarily disoriented and had a second of thinking I should be somewhere else, somewhere I haven’t lived since even before that time. I knew it wasn’t true, I knew that I shouldn’t actually be there, but there was this… pull of guilt, almost, that I wasn’t there. It’s difficult to explain.

Is this PTSD? It sounds ridiculous to ask, but that was how it felt at the time, suddenly and surprisingly reliving a bad part of my past. If it’s not that, then it has to be something else. There has to be a word.

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And If It’s Morning, It Must Be Morning Again

I hadn’t realized how important my morning routine was until it changed. In recent months, I’ve taken to a schedule of purposefully not working until 9am, if I could possibly help it — this really translates to “Not writing,” because I almost always use the time before then to read and do research for future things I will write, including making notes and sending myself links and the like. But I’ve come to consider everything pre-9 as, say, research time as well as breakfast time. A quiet, understated start to the day.

And then, for multiple reasons, that went to hell for the last four days. Deadlines and other things conspired so that, as soon as I was awake, I was writing — I had to be immediately on — and it utterly wrecked me in ways that were genuinely surprising. Without the slow ramp up to it, the checking in on the world through email, Twitter and news sites, the chance for my brain to engage at its own rate, my mood was worse, my anxiety greater. I felt more short-tempered, more behind the curve and needy to catch up.

What made this such a surprise is that, until very recently, that was how I started my day for years. I’d wake up and immediately get up and consider myself in work mode and ready to go. I’d wake up and get to my office straight away. That’s not to say I’d always be writing as soon as I woke up, but I told myself I was ready. Eating happened after 9, and I’d always try to have something accomplished by that point.

It’s only now, having tried this other thing, that I realize how much expectation I was placing on myself, and how much stress I was choosing to put myself under without knowing it. It’s only now that I realize there are better ways to start the day.

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Who Knows Where I Came From

I’ve become obsessed with the idea of identifying artists being responsible for my visual sense. The idea came from a talk that Lucasfilm Creative Director Doug Chiang gave at Star Wars Celebration, in which he made an offhand reference to Ralph McQuarrie being the man singlehandedly responsible for his visual sense. It’s likely a simplification that just so happens to play into the Star Wars of it all — McQuarrie being the artist behind the iconic concept paintings that every fan of a particular generation is all-too-familiar with — but the idea has stuck with me, and left me wondering who my visual artists would be. Where does my sense of visual information come from?

I go to obvious personal touchstones, instinctively: Julian House and Rian Hughes as graphic designers (Chip Kidd, too, but I often overlook him for some reason); Dave McKean, Kent Williams, Gustav Klimt and Mark Rothko as illustrators or visual artists. Martin Parr’s photographs. Eddie Campbell’s comics.

But all of those ideas feel too late — I discovered most, if not all, of those people when I was in my 20s. Who and what was essential to me before then? The answers are almost entirely comic-based, unsurprisingly, and the answers are for the most part faintly embarrassing to me now: John Byrne was the comic artist to me through, at least, me being 14 or 15. I remember his Superman and his Legends as being as if I was seeing those characters for the first time, and although I was too young to have read his X-Men when it was coming out, Classic X-Men felt iconic and “right” when it reprinted that stuff for my generation. He has to be recognized as being a core part of my visual sense to some degree, even if I feel a level of embarrassment approaching shame to think of it now.

Other early options are more obscure, if no less fundamental. Jose Ortiz’s work appeared in all kinds of British comics that I read, and his casually grimy work felt real in a way that few other things I saw did, or even could. Slightly later, and post-Byrne, Steve Yeowell’s Zenith felt like a revelation with each new series through the third — to this day, I still thrill at the memory of his brushwork, or his seeming unerring ability to know when to use tight, controlled linework instead of something messier and more expressive.

It feels to me as if there’s a hidden component in there, but I couldn’t tell you what it is, or even where it would be. I’m sure it’s going to be something I’ll keep picking at for some time. Once you start retracing your steps like this, it becomes a preoccupation that’s hard to undo.