Parallels between Minami Furukawa and Marco Stanley Fogg:

• Both somewhere around the age of twenty-something, living in a studio apartment.

• Marco is living off of two eggs a day. The contents of my refrigerator right now: three eggs, a half packet of mozzarella cheese, three half bags of frozen vegetables, juice, milk, a six pack of holiday ale, and various condiments (useless, as I have nothing to use them on). My cupboard is not any more impressive; two packets of ramen noodles, half a loaf of bread, a can of creamed corn. I do however, have a bowl full of fruit which I have been sustaining myself on when I have to eat at home (I fortunately get fed at work every shift, so that limits the amount of grocery shopping I need to do).

• Marco’s uncle was a traveling musician playing clarinet. I played clarinet for eight years, having to give it up for art school.

• (page 41, chapter 1) “I had lost the ability to think ahead, and no matter how hard I tried to imagine the future, I could not see it…the only future that had ever belonged to me was the present I was living in now, and the struggle to remain in that present had gradually overwhelmed the rest…if life was a story…and each man was the author of his own story, then I was making it up as I went along…the question was what I was supposed to do when the pen ran out of ink”.

I had been thinking about the future plenty hard before I had taken my recent job at the JW Marriott, applying to writing jobs every day and considering grad school. That is all out the window now, as I am so busy between work and sleep (because I sometimes have to wake up at 3.30am for work, not because I am a hibernating good-for-nothing) and starting up an artist business venture with a group of friends. There is no time for thoughts of having a real career, and at this rate I am on my way to becoming a 60-something with a degree, whose only job has ever been in the food industry.

• Marco is not an artist, but drawing back on Gordon Comstock, I am creating for no reason but to keep the habit. However, in vein of both he and Marco, I am in a bit of a financial decline to the point that I have had to rule out buying Christmas presents for the parents (and I am on a budget for the besties). In consolation, I have decided to give them a painting in the usual purchases’ place.

Here are some of the things I have been working on for the past month+, just for kicks.

(Though I am nothing even close to anything resembling a true painter, that giant dark blob on the left was exhilarating to paint, and it brought me closer to understanding artists like DeKooning, whom I have hated for years).

Let's hope I don't end up living in Lincoln Park like Marco does (though in the much more impressive Central Park), or if it comes to that, that my friends bail me out before it happens (I like to believe I have a few Zimmers and Kittys--Fogg's support group--in my life).