So Beautiful Like the Moon
Once, David and I were hiking, exploring the forested mountain above Mom’s house. Brambly and full of stick weed and fallen trees, we wore tall socks tucked over long pants and long sleeves. We held back pricker-branches for each other, slowly climbing the steep ravines, slippery with a dense cover of fallen leaves and so much underbrush.
I spotted a strange shade of green at the base of a tree. Moving closer, we realized it was a metal canister painted spring green. Sealed like a paint can but about twice the size. Brushing off dead leaves, the top had a sticker, “The Nymph.” Mystified, we guessed about where it had come from and took turns carrying it back to the house.
Mom knew immediately what it was. It’d been hidden for years and years.
When I was little, my parents would throw huge April Fools’ parties. They encouraged costumes and tricks. Someone, perhaps in a long cloak and tall hat, had hidden The Nymph up in the woods. No one ever found it. For most of my life, it’d been sitting up there waiting. Inside, miraculously unharmed, were film reels my grandfather who I called Poppy made of Mom’s family growing up.
This next image is a mash-up of an idea from Wendy Mac and this video featuring…you guessed it, Lynda Barry demonstrating a face jam. Playful drawing ideas for people of all ages. I liked moving from realistic to strange.
Eyebrows are a comic artists secret weapon. - Lynda Barry
Below are this week’s self-portraits. I use waterproof ink on a blank index card and sometimes add color later with watercolor or colored pencils.
A follow-along copy of a Gila monster
Finally, sketches for some other things I’m working on
A beautiful song by the Brooklyn-based Pakistani musician, Arooj Aftab, who describes in this NPR interview how the song, “Last Night” emerged:
In college, I started reading Rumi, and that felt really great. And I kind of liked Rumi's playfulness, you know, how he's like, you know, I'm drunk. You're insane. How are we going to get home? You know - or like, last night, my beloved was like the moon, so beautiful, even brighter than the sun, grace far beyond my grasp. The rest is silence.
And so that was just all sitting there on a page for, like, a bunch of years. And then at some point, there was…a jam with a friend of mine, and he was just playing some, like, reggae. And I just started singing that, you know? And it flew off the pages and into a melody and into my voice.
Last night my beloved was like the moon
So beautifulSo beautiful like the moon
So beautiful like the moon
So beautiful like the moon
So beautiful like the moon
Even brighter than the sunMaang le bande tu
Tu apne maula sey
Khaali gaya na koi
Oon ke dar sey
Maang le bande tu
****Grace far beyond my grasp
The rest is silence
Love all a ya’ll
through time & space
XO
Cassie
So beautiful like the moon, indeed.
You have a beautiful soul, Cassie.
Thank you for sharing.