Happy New Year!
January 2025 Newsletter
If you haven’t been here before, Flying Penguins started out as a zine circa 1996, the summer I went to Centauri Art Camp outside Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Flying Penguins has evolved into a monthly musing. I hope it will become even more someday— a digital collection of art, writing, and news. If you have been here, thank you for sticking with me all these years. So here goes.
The problem with gods and heroes and saints is that we read these little stories about them where they're good at one thing and they save one day when the fact is that we may be good in many ways and save many days. Then you have movies where you expect that you're going to find adventure in the great wide somewhere, even if it means being captured by a beast or a sea witch or an evil stepmother, but I've said it before, and I’ll say it again— growing up is coming to terms with the fact that life is lived in the small ways, every day.
The other day I woke up and my wife gave me a look as we were pulling the blankets and sheets over the bed and fixing the duvet. I said, “What's that look?” I didn't know it. She said, “Just here we go again another day.” So this morning, when I was arranging the duvet cover myself, I thought, Here we go again another day! It was 7 am and I had already tickled my toddler until she laughed uncontrollably because we had all been up since 5 am, first with a restless infant and then with a sleepless toddler. We were already tired! Here we go again another day! Then my wife comes in with the infant, who always smiles and waves when she sees her sister, or me, or the cat, and I remember my wife whispering to my toddler in the middle of the night to soothe her back to sleep, and I’m like, It’s another day with these people I love.
When I'm sitting at work or running around looking at people’s buttholes, I love what I do and it keeps me thinking and it keeps me young, but some days even the most unusual case feels monotonous and I wonder why I'm not on a Greek isle exploring a labyrinth or climbing up the mountains of Patagonia or in an RV driving out to a national park. I think these feelings are normal human existence— hoping and dreaming. Wondering seems to be something that humans excel at, or at least can verbalize. But it's not that it's settling for less to delight in every day. In fact, if you think about it, you're actually settling for more— more hombre trees and jewel-toned leaves, more tickles and laughter, more play-doh and yogurt, more conversations by the fireplace with a cup of hot cocoa. You're going to have more of these than trips to Patagonia or the Antarctic. Still, I think humans need a little change and a little jolt from time to time, maybe some people need it more often than others but either way — is the goal to change often or not at all?
I recently spent a crazy three days flying to Toronto to attend my cousin's baby shower for two hours, then returning home the same evening, and going to work the next morning. The day after that I flew to New York City for a radio interview, but beforehand stopped for a bit of liposuction and visited my old apartment and our realtor friend. Even though it should've been a break, instead of lying down in the hotel room for six hours, I packed my short trip full. My only downtime was sitting in the airport, waiting for a couple of hours, where I noted that there was some solace in the insanity because I wasn't the one wrangling toddlers that day. I wasn't the one trying to pack a stroller at the gate. I returned home Wednesday morning exhausted, but before even dropping my bags, my toddler ran into my arms. That moment energizes me every time—when I return from work at the end of a long day, when I return from a trip, or when I even just come back inside from taking out the trash—everything else fall away. I don’t care about an RV or Mykonos or the tortoises of Galapagos. I want to be here, now, for these precious few moments, these countable minutes, these many ways to be good and the tiny ways I save the day. I go back again and again to the unstoppable force and immovable object. I think you need to have both. Maybe one of each in a relationship to balance yourselves out so that sometimes you do stop, and sometimes you keep going because even though adventure is out there, it is also in here.
It’s all just another adventure.
Until next time, always go black tie.
Stay tuned for an upgraded www.carmenfong.com, more blog news, a new shop, and more interview and article links.
