Better Friends (than ever before)...

BINKY AND I are getting on far far better than I would have imagined after our friendship-fracturing-to-the-point-of-near-termination blazing xmas day row. Which was kind of all my fault, as it was I who verbally stuck the boot in (I see in retrospect). Though at the time I believed I was merely making highly valid points that needed to be made if our dysfunctional relationship was to continue to function at all... I upset her so very much I'm deeply surprised that she wants to talk to me at all. (+ deeply touched.) 

Tomorrow we're going to the art shop for my intellectual Japanese brushpen ink and her sketching equipment. For some reason, we're both into learning to draw black-n-white illustrations. Me to illustrate my children's book. Her purely for self-improvement, I think. She knows I've completed this story that I'm calling my "intellectual book" (there's nothing intellectual about it and it's barely long enough to be considered a book by anybody's standards, but I'm kind of proud of myself over my achievement at actually finishing something, even just this one tiny thing, that I started... know what I mean? So I'm learning illustration, to be able to put this story out on my own, without reliance on an outside illustrator. I'm learning Japanese brush pen because it'll give my work a distinctive aura all of its own that will be more difficult for outsiders to copy. Did you know the cartridges for this Pentel refillable brush cost literally £4 each??!? That's $6.59!!! So I took a syringe and pumped in 6 parts Windsor and Newton's India black and another 7 parts Lamy black bottled fountain pen ink and got a product almost as good. It's just not quite as sensitive to the very finest details, where the old product sank more into the paper this floats atop it, causing different effects. Also I find it quite different attemptedly painting in shadow, whereas naturally we see by light. So in effect I'm painting a photographic negative... know what I mean?

I'm also TRYING to write another story but am nowhere near as inspired as I'd like to be. + another, far better plot has come along, for another book, but I'm trying to finish the first book first... which is wearying and very trying for me, as I know I need to be most professional about all this. Even though I'm not a professional but merely a down-&-out schizo on benefits who is lucky to be able to write at all. And when I feel really ill I can't even do that. Can't get my head around the details of even the simplest passage of children's prose, in order to compare and improve short less than 1-page passages of parallel drafts. How truly pathetic is that? 

Anyway, back to Binky's and my friendship. I think it's better than ever before, for this spring cleaning of truth-telling agony... how really weird is THAT??!?

My family say give her more benefit of the doubt, she is mentally ill and all that. Weirdly, Binky says I am mentally ill. It's true, at one point I did learn all the labels but labels are all they are ~ in the modern-day prevailing religion known as Psychiatry where the priests are the doctors and the Blessed Ones are diagnosed with Schizophrenia... Know what I mean? (Ie, I mean it's all bullshit.)

I do think I give Binky a lot of Benefit of the Doubt but was angry on xmas day because I thought she was insulting my intelligence and taking me for a ride. Now I think I was unnecessarily cruel to a person who is immensely brave and strong to have survived the cartload of shit that she has been through in life and the last thing she needs is a person like me, who should be supportive, undermining her in any way. So I've decided that I need to be much more of a friend and I'm doing the things I think friends do. So I hope I'm doing the right things...

Righty-ho I've got to go. Have a great New Years Eve everybody and NO TWERKING!!

WHERE IS IT WRITTEN?

BARBRA STREISAND singing in the film YENTL

I LOVE THIS SONG

You could say the words are totemic to my life...

I want this played at my funeral

o and here's a new year's song especially for you Akelamalu, because I know you like it

MADONNA: HANKY PANKY (BLOND AMBITION: LIVE IN YOKOHAMA)

♪♫♪♫♪♫♪♫♪♫♪♫♪♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♪♪♪♪♪♪♪♫♪♫♪♫♪♫♪♫♪♫♪♪♫♪♫♪♫♪♫♪♫♪♫♪♫♪♫♪♫♪♫

Illustrated: top ~ this is what I think I have done in principle to Binky ~ beat up somebody who didn't deserve it though very kindly she forgave me; my Pentel Japanese cartridge brushpen; Japanese liquid "sumi" ink; "The Nightmare Before Xmas" (though ours was AT xmas...); "Where is it Written?" I love this tune...