3

Since life first appeared on this earth billions of years ago, there has never once been a gap, an interruption, in the transferal of life. Organisms create new organisms before dying, animals give birth to their own kind before passing on. In this sense, every living thing today is connected to the very origin of life. From prehistoric bacteria to the tips of my fingers. There has only ever been one glowing ball of life spanning hundreds of millions of centuries, creating and expanding before it has the chance to burn out. One day it will blink out of existence of course, it's inevitable, but until then every living thing remains connected through this one entity.

Almost as if life is a huge metaphorical wave spanning through time. Everything is presently living. I guess you could imagine life as related to the ripple effect. There's the formation of life, and from there everything branches out and expands and grows. And, of course, there are millions of dead ends with every second that passes, but at the same time there are just as many organisms reproducing and creating the next generation of life which will continue the aforementioned pulse of life.

Thinking in this grandiose way always makes everything I've ever imagined as important seemingly trivial, but in a way, everything really is. Nothing matters, but in the same breath I can say that everything matters. All is relevant. Everything and everybody will disappear one day, and that will be the end of existence as we know it, but until that actually happens, we all have everything and there's not really much more to the say than that.

2

For the past year or so I've had Robert Frost's poem "Nothing Gold Can Stay" in the back of my mind. I wrote down the poem sometime last year and but often find myself returning to it. I know the poem, it's only 7 or 8 lines long, but for some reason seeing the words written on paper gives them another dimension and feel like it helps to actually see them. It's a good poem to reference simply because it makes you feel better once things you care about are gone. Not to say that I'm always losing the good things, but every now and then some thing slips away and I have to let it go with some level of understanding.

Of course sometimes that "level of understanding" is rather low, but existent nonetheless. It becomes easier to look back on things when you can say to yourself "you know what? Those things were wonderful, but they were never meant to last." It's a romantic approach, I know, but sometimes you just have to be easy on yourself. I give myself shit all the time and it's nice to let myself off the hook every once awhile and shake off the situation as an act of fate. Basically, it makes me feel better and it's good to feel better.

1

I don't want to be any kind of writer, really. When I hear "writer" you think of some great cliche, like there's this self-pride and arrogance surrounding the whole pastime. I have to believe that there are an overwhelming amount of people who enjoy writing about their lives and their experiences without labeling themselves as something they aren't. I'd like to be thought of as such: someone who likes putting thoughts and ideas down on paper without really thinking of anything else. In essence I guess that's really what a writer could be defined as, but like I said before, it' not something I take seriously enough to give myself that title.

It's difficult for me not to write down things that pass through my mind recently. This is part of the reason I started keeping journals a couple years ago, to record things I find interesting and informational. If I don't keep these logs I feel like I'm letting something pass through my fingers and pass fade into oblivion. Once you become aware of yourself and the things you think everyday it almost seems necessary to write it all down. I can't tell you how many brainchildren I've been able to put on paper over the past 24 months. Not that I'm even writing them down for any particular purpose, to have something to go back and reference when your mind is feeling rather sluggish is reason enough for me to take out a pen a couple times a days and jot down a line or two.

To those who don't write or keep some kind of journal: think of all of the great ideas and quotes and theories you've come across over the course of your lifetime that you can not recall now, simply because your brain doesn't have the capacity to remember them. It's discouraging when you realize how much you're forgotten. If you can purchase a notepad, I advise you do. If not because you want to remember that worth remembering then because life is too short to continue living in a way where everything passes by you. The more things I write down, the more I think and challenge ideas and formulate hypothesis. Every thought is a stroke of the brush to the vast white canvas you are when you're first born.

I find it funny and somewhat ironic that I started this article trying to separate myself from the writer cliche, only continuing to lecture on how writing is an important part of life. Then again, maybe that's the point. Writing is vitial to growing as a person and establishing character. Writing is thinking with permanence, a tangible script of that which runs through your mind. This is the very reason I enjoy writing; not because I want to be associated with the "writer" type, but because it's so crucial to my own development. Again, that's probably what most writers would say when asked why they write. Fuck it, I guess I'm a writer. A modest, humble, level-headed writer.

I'm thinking I'm going to start writing more and more, especially on the computer, since it's so easy and doesn't take such a physical toll on my delicate, delicate fingers. It's nice to be be able to write at great lengths. I don't usually do so, for the most part I write no more than a paragraph, but with the introduction of the computer to my life, I'm thinking it'll be real simple. I'll give the passages numbers, because numbers have this inexplicable order to them that just makes them ideal for keeping things organized.

Coney Island.



I'll be going to Michigan for new years. The first I've ever spent outside of Orlando? It'll be top of the pops, I'm excited.

It's been awhile, but a lot has been accomplished.

Moon Soup is finished and packaged. Each spiral bound copy comes with a can of "Moon Soup" (chicken and stars). Everything panned out nicely, I'm happy with how it all turned out. I only made 22 of them all together, but it's not like I planned on mass producing them anyway. I'm selling some at Park Ave, some at Loose Screws, and handing the rest out.

I have a lot of ideas for new pieces and future projects. I've made quite a few things for the sake of making things, they don't really belong anywhere or have any place to go, but they're nice to look at.

I've made some more posters for WOV and designer Thomas Scott who is coming to speak at Flagler in January.

I've been doing things. I'll try to upload recent things to design:related, they should be up sometime relatively soon.

HOKAY.

Things are still going well. I've been juggling work and school and my personal life, but I feel as though everything is still somewhat laid back and unstressful. I'm drawing a detailed picture of my house, thinking about Moon Soup a little bit, doing some other things, and doing some other other things. I'm doing very well and I feel great. Tonight I'm absconding to the tree fort hostel in Georgia, and then I'll get back into the thick of it. Hopefully I'll have something to show here soon, I feel like I've been talking everything up a lot without actually producing something. That'll change soon...

Remember: Sometimes it's better to just walk place, even if you could get there much faster by biking or riding in a car. If you speed through the world, the world will speed by you.

Things are going well in all creative facets. Moon Soup #2 is four pages away from being completed, I'm thinking it will be done sometime in the next month. Then it's time for production! I'm thinking about making 50 issues, keeping 15 or so to give to friends and giving the rest to Loose Screws to sell in their DIY rack. Everything is going well. Sorry this is starting to collect dust, I don't have internet at home and I'm spending more time doing than writing about doing. So it goes.

!!!

I've been working on the zine, I've made some adjustments and am in the process of another page. I want to have one page of text, though I have no idea what I want to put there. I spent a couple hours working on it tonight, it's looking good. I'm excited.

In other news, I'm going to develop film from Ireland/NYC in a couple days, make prints and whatnot. I'm even more excited about that.

I have a lot of energy as of late. Part of me wants to say it's my unbridled passion for the arts though another wants to say it's the hydrocodine running through my system.

Everything is on hold right now. The past 15 and future 20 days consist souly of traveling, moving, and settling in. I wouldn't say that nothing is being accomplished, but certainly not enough to warrant an update. There will be something soon.

Three things that have happened since the last post:

1. Found an amazing oriental rug, practically new, in my neighbor's trash.
2. Got featured in a real blog.

3. Finished two pages of my zine (title page and introduction page).

I got a new Moleskine about four days ago and just got around to decorating the inside cover tonight. I think it looks pretty good, one of the better ones. I found the photos in an antique shop. The only one that's dated is the one with the girl in the bottom corner, its from the 4th of July 1940. I also think it's important to note the two sets of photos with the girls in them look remarkably similar, like mother in daughter. They also looks like they were taken maybe 20/30 years apart from one another. I think it's incredible, how people in the 1940's were holding and looking at the same physical photographs I have in my hands right now. And what's even crazier is that they looked exactly the same, since the picture itself only took a few minutes to develop. I mean, how did these end up in my possession 70 years later?

Inside cover!

I started on Moon Soup tonight. It's already looking like what I has envisioned it as looking, with the focus being less on what I have to say and more about what you're looking at. It's funny, sometimes you want something to turn out very certain way and have no idea how it's going to end up actually being that way. Yet, if you take your time and form your words carefully, you can hit the nail on the head every time. It's going to be good, guys.

Some details:

- Manilla construction paper cover
- Full color pages (c/o Flagler College)
- Typewriter text (It may be overused, but in all honesty, it's the easiest way to create uniform block text. Type/cut/paste.)
- 8 pages

I've decided I'm going to use this blog as a hub for all my creative endeavors. I tend to get side-tracked with things, especially self-motivated projects. Keeping this blog open will allow for moderately consistent posting, since I'll always be working on something. I'm going to work on the zine a lot, but probably won't publish anything until I get back to school (free printing, easier distribution).

This is what God looks like (obviously, God has "God's Eyes" for eyes)

Gears are in motion.

There Will Be Zines

So the past couple weeks I've been buying and examining zines, and I've come to find that most of them are just anecdotes; short stories with pictures and flashy designs. I started thinking to myself "you know, Hiller, just about any 3 page essay could easily translate to a 14 page zine with enough pictures and gaps between blocks of text". I had even started making backgrounds for a zine back in December, but they turned into a collective piece and are now hanging on a wall in a coffee shop. Sometime this summer I want to establish a zine that will run for several issues. Not too sure what they're going to be about, but definitely something engaging and worth reading. This is just a heads up.

The zine will still be titled "Moon Soup".