A pox upon me.

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I like to make stuff. Probably too much. I can sit at my tiny desk in the corner of Jack’s old room, oblivious to the workmen ripping our kitchen apart, wiener dogs napping on my feet, frittering away hours on an edit or a paragraph until Jenny pounds on the door and tells me I absolutely have to take a break or I will be crippled by sciatica. Sitting, she yells through the door crack, is the new smoking.

I’m not always efficient. I can piss away time looking for a new plugin for an app or watching YouTube how-to videos or reading a whole book which I just wanted to consult for a quote. But I like to think that all this meandering is filling my well and making sure that the lion that brings me great ideas will eventually yawn, stretch, see me with my head down and drop some inspiration in my lap. Usually works.

ABBW cover proof Over the last month and a half though I have felt distracted. Still about 80% productive, but distracted. We got married and that took up some time. We are doing our kitchen which requite a ridiculous number of decisions and visits to Home Depot. We are just about to launch a new kourse at SBS which takes a lot more work than you probably think it does. Shut Your Monkey is out and about. And I just got the cover proof for my next book which will be coming out before you know it.

But this number of balls in the air  is pretty normal for me. The only problem is that one of those balls is on fire (which sounds like an ad for Cruex).

It all began half way through my visit to Vietnam when I began to feel a tenderness in my ribs. I thought it came from leaning too hard against the edge of my desk but it persevered. Then, on one of the last days I was there, I woke up with a Braille-like rash splayed across my chest. We were having a sketchcrawl that morning and one of the sketchers was the school nurse. She looked at the rash and diagnosed it immediately: shingles. She got me some ointment at the pharmacy, and we went off to draw.

The next day the rash was worse and the ointment didn’t seem to being helping. To make things more interesting, I had to spend 24 hours at the back of a plane flying home to New York. I saw my NY doctor first thing the next day but he said it was too late to do much about it. The antiviral pill I should have taken when I got the first symptoms wouldn’t help at this point and I’d just have to ride it out.

It’s been a long ride. Tomorrow it’ll be five weeks since that day in Hanoi. I spent a few days in bed because if I am run down the symptoms are worse. My rash turned into blisters that eventually drained and left me without a few layers of skin and my nerves in a jangle. On my wedding day, my heart was full but my chest was sizzling. Each day it gets better but there have been a lot of days and there are probably a few score to go.

Shingles do lots of things. Sometimes they feel like someone has belted a bunch of Brillo pads to my chest. Other times they ache or tickle or go numb. I can have sensation in one place that moves to another. It’s totally unpredictable.  Basically they get on my nerves which are like a bunch of rogue electrical cables flailing and sending sparks through my rib cage. Oddly, when I just lay my hand on my skin, it reorients them and they simmer down, at least for a while.

I’ve had acupuncture, taken Vitamin B complex, rubbed on tubs of cocoa butter — but it seems that time is the best medicine. And I have to use my time wisely, not overdoing things, and being patient.  Of course, taking it easy isn’t me, but Jenny’s at the door. I gotta take a break.

I have refrained from sharing this with you for a while because I think there’s nothing more boring than talking about your health. But I did want you to know that I have lots of ideas for what I want to write about here, more than just ads for books and kourses — but for now, they’ll have to just keep simmering in the old brain pan.

P.S. Happy BD, PL!

 

Take three.

dannygregory7 Comments

What with this, that, and lots of the other, I haven’t gotten around to telling you about a brand new klass I am teaching in the new Kourse at Sketchbook Skool. So I shall. But first, let me show you a little film about the kourse and its fakulty.

I also wanted to tell you what I was thinking in putting it together. This has actually been harder to do than I thought (the telling, not the putting together). In fact, this is the third film I’ve made on the subject this week and I hated the first two. So this time I shall just turn on the camera and see what comes out. If it’s boring, don’t worry. Polishing, I assure you, is not.

I hope to see you in klass. It begins on April 15th and you can learn more about it here.

School: Hanoi Pt.5

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The reason for my recent trip to Vietnam was an invitation from the art teachers of the UN school in Hanoi. UNIS is a lovely place with 2,000 students from preschool to 12th grade — and I worked with and spoke to them all.

Here’s a little film I made about my trip and my work with the students.

A really nice chat

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You may have missed the broadcast of my interview with Paula Granquist on her amazing show, Art Zany. Don’t Despair! Just click here to listen to the tape.

I just got even luckier.

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On Tuesday, the 88th* day of the year, my best friend and love and the prettiest and most brilliant woman in the world, Jennifer James — became my wife.

When I proposed, JJ said she wanted to get married on some random Tuesday in the spring and to take the subway to City Hall and have a sundae. So we did.

Jack, my best man, was the only non-stranger and non-clerk in attendance. Then we went to our favorite restaurant, had lunch, and got drunk with thirty of our favorite people. What a perfect, perfect day.

In case you missed it, here’re some pages from the wedding album:

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*Well, 89th actually, ’cause its a leap year. But it’ll make it easier to remember this unforgettable day.

Come and see me talk 

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I’ll be giving a talk about my work at the Library in Ridgewood, New Jersey on Friday night, just a few miles from Manhattan.  I’ll show lots of pictures, tell lots of stories, and sign lots of books. It would be wonderful to see you there!  Here are the details. 

Wandering: Hanoi pt. 4

dannygregory5 Comments

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Each night, I’d wander out in search of noodles and adventure.

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Hanoi has a sprawling War Museum, like an auto junk yard full of the remains of captured tanks, planes and choppers. A great place to draw, despite the rain.
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The French used to think they owned this country. Ha!IMG_4186

 

Banyan.net: Hanoi, Pt. 3

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In Hanoi, you pay your real estate taxes based on the frontage of your home. Thus arose the convention of the ‘tube’ house, a narrow looking building with a small doorway that accordions out on the inside to include all sorts of added-on rooms, balconies, staircases, ladders, water tanks, a hodge-podge of a home that sprouts features over time.
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Much of the  city has this higgledy-piggeldy vibe. Old and new stuff converge everywhere, ancient banyan trees sprout ethernet cables,  ancient Confucian temples fly Communist flags, crooked old ladies in conical hats stagger down the road, one hand steadying a bamboo stick hung with wicker baskets, the other poking an iPhone 6.

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(To be continued, maybe tomorrow)

 

Street food: Hanoi – Pt. 2

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On my first morning in Hanoi, I took a jet-lagged stroll through my new ‘hood and came upon a spider’s nest of electric and phone cables on the pole at the corner.

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The wires do more than carry messages. Many are decorated with twittering bird cages.IMG_4175

America fought and lost a war with these people and Vietnam is a Communist country. But it’s hard to say what that means any more.

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Simple pleasures abound. A lake-side plastic chair, a glass of joe, a drawing as the sun goes down.

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(To be continued, probably tomorrow)

To Hanoi – Pt.1

dannygregory4 Comments

IMG_6532The flight to Hanoi is fairly tough, especially back in economy class. You read your magazine, then your read your book, then you watch the good movies, then you nap, then you watch the bad movies, then you eat some kind of chicken, then you watch the Korean TV shows, then you read the inflight catalog, then you land in Hong Kong.

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It’s a whole other day, you want breakfast but it’s dinner time, you shop for gold Rolexes and look at perfume displays and then you get back on the plane again. It’s a different plane supposedly, but whatever.

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IMG_6662Hanoi isn’t quite like any other place I’ve been. It’s crazy like Bangkok, but more down-to-earth. It’s vibrant like Beijing, but less ambitious. It’s dusty like Kuala Lumpur, but without face veils. It’s warm like Doha, but no Maserati showrooms.

Most days seem foggy but that’s actually motor fumes and wood smoke. The Air Quality Index is 45 in New York. In Hanoi, it’s 360.

Scooters mosquito past all night and day, vast swarms of them stacked high with egg cartons, toolboxes, slim dogs, kettles of fish, and toddlers. If people wear helmets at all, they look to be made of plastic, covered with flowers, or manga characters, like inverted kindergarten lunch pails.

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(To be continued, probably tomorrow)