Hello, drawing book readers! We are picking up right where we left off last week, with the next five pages of my old sketchbook journal series. It was 2001, and I was writing about a day that started on my layover in Germany…
Here are some links to the aforementioned music:
Madam Butterfly, Riders on the Storm, Teenage Dirtbag, and Million Dollar Bash!
Back home in Calgary, I was starting to think about getting back into the “dating scene.” I’d been single for almost a year. But thanks to my heartbreak of the year before, I was a lot more wary about jumping into a new relationship. This next page shows that I was a bit cynical about the possibility of finding a healthy, well-balanced relationship…
As you see, I wasn’t a fan of the unbalanced relationship that was portrayed in the movie Out of Africa. As for Georgia O’Keeffe’s relationship with Alfred Stieglitz: I don’t think that is quite an accurate depiction of how things were, but as I recall, it was definitely a rather unbalanced situation!
I flew to New York City to visit some friends! We went to see Lee Renaldo (too bad I didn’t draw him) and Jim Carroll. Cool! The page has a nod to Calgary’s long-gone Night Gallery, and New York’s The Cooler (which, I just learned, apparently closed about a month after we were there!) “That was New York” is a line from Leonard Cohen’s song “Chelsea Hotel #2.” Oh, and the guy I had started seeing, back in Calgary, makes an appearance on this page too.
As mentioned in a previous drawing book episode, a friend and I had been joking about trying to track down some handsome celebrities to be our new boyfriends. The imaginary boyfriend I had picked was Matt Dillon. While we were in New York, we went to Matt Dillon’s bar, at the Paramount Hotel, just for fun… but I was highly unimpressed. Here’s my unkind review of the bar, with my speculations about what that said about its owner (sorry Matt!).
(The famous people depicted on the wall were meant to be Freddie Mercury and Brian May.)
I drew the next page at my annual Air Canada flight attendant training. I always drew a lot during these training sessions - they’re mentioned a few other times in the drawing book’s pages. The drills and exams were stressful, and drawing helped me stay grounded. As well, the training happened at the Vancouver airport, and there wasn’t much to do in the neighbourhood… so there was lots of time to draw. I drew myself in the new coat (more like a long robe, actually) that I had just bought at a Tibetan store in New York. I just wore that coat yesterday, in 2025! I still love it!
I remember being highly disappointed that it was going to take eight years for my life to get sorted out. It felt like a long time to wait!
With hindsight, I can report that some of my then-problems did indeed get solved, eight years later. But, no surprise… new problems showed up! You just have to roll along with it, and keep drawing. Or doing whatever it takes to get you through. I’ve been doing something new (and fun), this summer… maybe I’ll write about that in the weeks ahead.
Thanks for reading. See you next time!