Embracing the weird. Mining old sketchbooks. So many of my daydream drawings hide in closed books on shelves. Where do stories come from? There’s a potent crucible in the connection between hands and mind, where idea takes shape under the scratch of a pencil. A story becomes tactical when the scissors get involved, the magic of the repetition of copying by hand, the firm finalizing of running it all through a copy machine. It was a drawing, now it’s something else. But maybe there’s a mystery in there, a burn mark. A scar on paper that hints, but it’s nothing compared to a squirrel’s winter on the frozen shore of Lake Michigan, high in a tree, watching the patients and ambulances race to the hospital next door. Survival, and now the melt, next, the industry of summer. For now, a breath of air made of mist, the mist of ice thawing.