A Schoolyard in Peleosti
Not only time, but distance too, appears much extended when one is a child, and by a far greater factor than can be accounted for simply by one’s smaller size. In this view from within a schoolyard in the Peleosti neighbourhood, the play area extends over so vast a distance that the ground floor of the school building is partially hidden below the horizon.
Once again this year, I will be peddling my wares at Expozine, one of the world’s largest independent comics fairs. http://expozine.ca/en/fair/year-2013/
The fair takes place this weekend, Saturday November 16 and Sunday November 17, in the odorous crypts of the Église Saint-Enfant-Jésus-du-Mile End in Montreal. I will be there on the Saturday, from 12:00 to 6:00, with eight zines for sale: The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, Annabel Lee, La Belle Dame Sans Merci, The Drunken Boat, When You Are Old, Sweet Child O’Mine and Émile Nelligan vers l’abime du reve and La chanson de Jean Berger. Hope to see some of you there!
The first sixteen pages of my uncompleted “graphic novella” set in eighteenth-century Venice can now be viewed in a larger, much more legible form: https://julianpeterscomics.com/sweet-child-o-mine-a-graphic-novella/
The least that can be said about this work is that it is very odd. I completed it over five six years ago, and I must hasten to add the same disclaimer that Petrarch placed at the opening of his Canzoniere:
“You who hear the sound, in scattered rhymes,
of those sighs on which I fed my heart,
in my first vagrant youthfulness,
when I was partly other than I am,
I hope to find pity, and forgiveness,
for all the modes in which I talk and weep”
X – The Convent of the Holy Virgin of the Most Pure and Immaculate Heart
All foreign faiths are tolerated within the territory of the Empire, so long as they do not interfere with the ruling authorities in secular matters. Catholicism was introduced to Sensuka by Jesuit missionaries over two centuries ago, although the religion has never really caught on there. Nonetheless, the belief has taken hold among the wealthy classes that Catholic convent schools provide the ideal education for young girls. It is a common practice for the elite from all four corners of the Empire to send their daughters off to these institutions, which are thought above all to instill a desirable sense of guilt, paradoxically combined with total obliviousness as to “the ways of the world.”
The Convent of the Holy Virgin of the Most Pure and Immaculate Heart in Sensuka is the pre-eminent of these educational institutions. The sisters who run it have taken every precaution to preserve their wards from any exposure to corrupting outside influences, having gone so far as have a moat constructed around the perimeter of the very high-walled and very small-windowed convent complex. All references to romance have been redacted from the books in the convent library, as well as any images depicting excessively handsome young male saints.
And yet, and yet, for all that… there will be times when the peculiar expression on a girl’s face will give a sister pause, and set her wondering.
My Prufrock adaptation made it into Slate Magazine. Very exciting!
Vaishna Roy has written an absurdly flattering profile of my work in the pages of The Hindu, India’s third-largest (but henceforth my favourite) English-language daily: http://www.thehindu.com/features/magazine/pen-ink-passion/article5335369.ece
A Neighbourhood Beauty Remembered: Narimoa in Peleosti
It is not uncommon in the older neighbourhoods of Sensuka to come across a narimoa, a monument to a local beauty. The majority of these statues were created around a century and a half ago, when the Emperor Bulodi III decreed the formation of neighbourhood councils to oversee the day-to-day affairs of the city’s various subdivisions. This development led to a renewed sense of neighbourhood pride, which in turn led to the widespread desire in each district to erect civic monuments that would testify to this sense of local belonging. The content of these monuments was left to the district councils, which were naturally composed mainly of old men. It was therefore inevitable that one of the local deliberations on this matter should conclude with the misty-eyed recollection of a particular local beauty who had driven the council members to distraction during their youth. Continue reading
I wanted to express my thanks for all of the positive responses I have received over the last few days for my adaptation in comics of “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” All of this support has convinced me that I need to complete the remaining portion of the adaptation as soon as possible. Although I will have to balance the work with other, previously contracted drawing commitments, I plan to make rapid progress on it early in the new year. In the meantime, I will also go about looking for a publisher that would be interested in releasing the adaptation in comic book form. Failing that, I will probably try to raise the money needed to publish it independently through a crowdfunding platform such as Kickstarter. I can’t wait to get started on this! I am already working out in my mind how to depict a life measured out with coffeespoons, the butt-ends of days and ways, the sprinkled streets, and the universe, squeezed into a ball!
A Neighbourhood Best Avoided after Dark
It’s a strange thing about those old narrow streets by the river in the eastern part of the Sofluri district. By day, the area is really quite picturesque and charming, with its cobbled passageways, its ancient doorways, and its lines of hanging laundry between the high stone buildings. But after nightfall… After nightfall, it becomes the horror land, the land of sordid and irreparable crimes, of flinching memories and sickening despair, of fathomless loneliness and dangling feet.
The Stairway to Nowhere at Tanalisca
Sensuka is a city of many religious orders, and contains within its limits an incredible number of sanctuaries, convents, monasteries, and missions. The monastery of Tanalisca is among the most famous of these, owing to the bizarre structure that rises in the middle of its extensive grounds, known colloquially as “the stairway to nowhere.” This towering stone construction is indeed a staircase, albeit one with the curious peculiarity that the steps, which are quite wide at the base, get progressively narrower as they go up, to the point that the last step, which faces onto a seventy-foot drop, is barely wider than a thumbnail. Continue reading
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