Drawing for a nightmare in my novel in progress, Sad Conquistador: A Comedy. #Stunday #EastCoastKin

“Perpetual back of head that knew what it knew. Perpetual longing for that head. Perpetual disgust for that longing …“ From Sad Conquistador: A Comedy, my novel in progress.

Drawing for Sad Conquistador, my novel in progress; after a 15th C. French engraving of the letter I, the first letter of 'Jesus' in Latin. #StunDay

Drawing for Sad Conquistador: a Comedy, my novel in progress. #MacroMonday #EastCoastKin

Looking down between corn rows in Huamantla, México; for Sad Conquistador: a Comedy, my novel in progress. #scape #EastCoastKin #Mexico

“His dream presented a series of grotesques, sketched on a scrap of velum but also living creatures, who grimaced, crawled, leered, and ate. The page evoked a feeling, and the feeling was doom.” From Sad Conquistador: A Comedy, my novel in progress. #WackyWednesdayArt #EastCoastKin

”The jester commenced juggling heavy objects from the store of Moctezuma's gifts—cup, duck, skull, gourd, frog—each fist sized, each fashioned in gold. Chuckling soldiers. Swish of objects wheeling through the spark-filled air.“ From Sad Conquistador: a Comedy, my novel in progress. #MacroMonday

Drawing for Sad Conquistador: A Comedy, my novel in progress. #MacroMonday

Illustration for Sad Conquistador: a Comedy, my novel in progress. #BlueSkyArtShow

Illustration for Sad Conquistador: a Comedy, my novel in progress. #scape

“He turned and gazed down at the sea, hand twitching as his mind scratched the ripples. The ripples emanated from shore, as though to escape the afternoon sun.“ From Sad Conquistador: a Comedy, my novel in progress. #scape

“‘’His own stream of lies hath joined an entire river,’ the inked fowl added, ‘and there mendacity swirls. He swirls too, a leaf in an eddy of pure duplicity’ Thus spake the beaked creature of his dream. Thus spake the bird.” From Sad Conquistador: a Comedy, my novel in progress. #Stunday

“Cleofas sat beside his wounded friend, gazing at a battalion of cacti, which appeared to march toward him from over the next hillock.” From Sad Conquistador: a Comedy, my novel in progress. #ForestFriday

“A flock of seagulls flapped and squawked above the strand, seeking morsels, while the whitest one stared straight at him as it hovered, pitched into the wind, and seeming to smile at him. He turned and beheld his admirer.” From Sad Conquistador: a Comedy, my novel in progress. #WildlifeWednesday

“Beside Cleofas teetered one unscorched maize stalk, nearly as tall as himself, at whose apex a bean vine twirled upward, as though to escape the calamity under way.” From Sad Conquistador: A Comedy, my novel in progress. #MacroMonday

“Rodrigo nodded toward three soldiers who’d appeared before the campfire, one holding a rolled-up parchment—the legal pretext for establishing a colony. ‘Heigh, heigh, the devil rides upon a fiddlestick,’ Cleofas called, aping cheer.” From Sad Conquistador, my novel in progress. #HumansofBlueSky

“The friar flung the slave on the ground. ‘And what should I find in thy man-servant’s thieving hand?’ Now he threw down the object in question, which rolled once and landed right side up, as if the priest had learned to juggle.” From Sad Conquistador, my novel in progress. #MacroMonday

“The walls of the palace courtyard were frescoed a soft pink, like the interior of a seashell. Even the statues smiled, with outstretched arms, dozens of foot-tall clay figures nes¬tled in green nooks.” From Sad Conquistador, my novel in progress. #HumansofBlueSky

“What had been a warmth in the cheeks now fanned across Cleofas’s neck and ears. He stared at a majuscule, whose twining serpents seemed to mock him.” From Sad Conquistador, my novel in progress. #StunDay

“Enthralled by spume, Cleofas let peace overtake him, the peace, that is, of inevitability. Water could only fall, downward, ever downward, splashing again and again at the bottom. Down, down. Destiny.” From Sad Conquistador, my novel-in-progress. #WaterfallWednesday

“A line of penitents appeared. Two by two they marched, floating slowly in their long white robes and white pointed hoods, black holes for eyes. Cleofas realized it was Holy Saturday.” From Sad Conquistador, my novel in progress. Drawing is after an anonymous 16th C. engraving. #HumansofBlueSky

“The clouds slowly drifted steadily northward, reconfiguring as they went, rags falling aside, new rags collecting into new masses, all of it in some sort of slow-moving haste above the trees.” From Sad Conquistador, my novel in progress. #BlueSkyMonday

“Immediately his eyes sought refuge in the sparkling muddy ripples before him. Soldiers began half-wading, half-swimming across. Cleofas was among the last to plunge down the bank.” From Sad Conquistador, my novel in progress. #alternating

“Cleofas gazed up at a great rocky knoll descending into a black thicket. He hadn’t noticed the terrain growing steeper, only his steps getting harder. At last, he thought, a ravine to throw himself down. He’d die in a merkin of thorns.” From Sad Conquistador, my novel in progress. #scape

“He wondered if that makeshift gallows would be up to the task. His gaze was ineluctably drawn to the flat burnished clouds that had gathered as though to view the execution.” From Sad Conquistador, my novel in progress. #Stunday

“A merciless pounding in his head awakened him. He stared up at the Golden Tower as though he’d never seen it before.” From Sad Conquistador, my novel in progress. #UrbanGaze

“Cleofas traced it with his mind’s eye, in order to delight in the contours of that fanciful demigod poised to grasp who-knew-what. Then he frowned and shook his head. ‘The curve of the back is wanting,’ he declared, reaching with his pencil to demonstrate.” From my novel in progress. #sideways

“Storm clouds whisked themselves into glowing vortexes, as if vying to astonish the sun. A world beyond himself and his foolishness—was that what he looked for in the sky?” From Sad Conquistador, my novel in progress. #BlueSkyArtShow #GetOutside

“Evening was coming on. He watched a swell curl, feeling his wits slip toward blankness. ‘Full awake, half-asleep, half-dreaming, dreaming,’ he murmured, ‘dead asleep, waking, half-awake, full awake.’ He observed a wave break in a long wavy line of foam.” From my novel in progress. #TidesOutTuesday

“He gazed toward that ubiquitous white crown to the south. It looked to him like a want of ink rather than the mass of ice and rock that it surely was. Like the great pyramids of Cempoala, it appeared to levitate.” From Sad Conquistador, my novel in progress. #MountainMonday

“He heard a slight rustle in the maize field to his left. Stray breeze or fugitive Indian? He peered into the leaves, which sparkled under a moon sliced in half. Another rustle, and he plunged into the wall of maize.” From Sad Conquistador, my novel in progress. #scape

“He stared at the dusky sand between his feet. He clawed the granules with his toes. He wasn’t aware of thinking. He was caught in the thicket of himself….” From Sad Conquistador, my novel in progress. #HumansofBlueSky

“He looked up blinking at a huge cloud shaped like a fuzzy palm. “Oh-HO, ha-ha-ha-ha-hah, called some bird.” #BlueSkyMonday

“Sad, strange trees, shrouded in sad, strange mist. The air was damp yet cool. Nevertheless, the improvement failed to please him…” From Sad Conquistador, my novel in progress. Drawing is after a photograph by Fredy Gómez. #scape #ForestFriday

“… his familiar daydream … that which loathing demanded— “To destroy himself! To leap! To throw himself down from some lonely crag! That one, for example, which loomed directly ahead—“ From Sad Conquistador, my novel in progress. #RockinTuesday #México

“‘Oomph!’ they groaned, and the stone idol went tumbling down the steps. Unfortunately it landed face up and whole. ‘Mayhap we could scratch out its eyes?’ Cleofas suggested. The two of them descended to rob the god of sight.” From Sad Conquistador, my novel in progress. #Caturday #México

“The man lay there, groaning. Cleofas observed his foreshortened form, etching the moment upon his orbs.” From Sad Conquistador, my novel in progress. Image is after Dürer. #HumansofBlueSky

“They came upon a lake, but it proved to be a salt lake. This was their third day without food, their fourth without finding water. Why halt here? The men weren’t even allowed to go in, in case they were tempted to drink.” From Sad Conquistador, my novel in progress. #RockinTuesday #México

“‘Hot day!’ cried the arquebusier. “Pah!” “Cleofas screwed up his eyes in disgust, then turned his attention to a weedy lagoon. He could have baked an egg under his helmet. ‘That is, if I had an egg,’ he muttered to the grass.” From Sad Conquistador, my novel in progress #scape

“Not toward more damp jungles did the Spaniards descend but rather into a vast forbidding precinct of rocks and thorns. The few gray-green shrubs seethed with dark heat, tucked like robbers or spies between the baking boulders.” From Sad Conquistador, my novel in progress. #rockintuesday #mexico

“He was furious. He walked quickly down the strand, as clouds roiled the northern horizon. The vapors swelled and twirled.” From Sad Conquistador, my novel in progress. #stunday

“Frowning, Cleofas gazed down the beach. As scallops of foam receded, sandpipers skittered along the wet aftermath, as if they could outrun their own reflections.” From Sad Conquistador, my novel in progress. #TidesoutTuesday #Mexico

“The shadow of a limb across the flawless green was a memory, and the memory was of chasing two boys into just such a hollow … He went ahead and reclined on that unsullied carpet whose softness belied the violence he’d done. ‘My underworld,’ he mused, patting the grass.” #texture

“Behind those deep green fans, the sky was white. Had Cleofas reached clouds that so often shrouded the peaks?” From Sad Conuistador, my novel in progress. #scape #ForestFriday

“Out the hut’s doorway, Cleofas could see Big Bear and Little Pan circling above the palms. Round and round the two danced, like children taunting Time.” From Sad Conquistador, my novel in progress. #WeekTforTime

“His eyes fell on the pitcher, cunningly fashioned like a curled up dog. With a start he recognized the very breed that the other soldiers had eaten while under siege in Tlaxcala.” From Sad Conquistador, my novel in progress. #macromonday #México

“A man unaccountably leapt from the top of a tall mast, arms splayed, like one possessed by some fatal illusion—but instead of dropping, he appeared to fly, spiraling slowly downward, tethered by a rope. A second performer followed, then another, and another.” From my novel in progress. #lines

“Naked and trembling, they operated the world. They pushed and pulled and nearly collapsed, as their poses went from astonishing to impossible. For operating the world was itself impossible.” From Sad Conquistador, my novel in progress. After a 16th C. engraving by Juste de Juste. #humansOfBlueSky

Lump of mountain, blue with foliage. Peaceful vista riddled with grief and suffering. “Cuatlapanga,” his slave said. Cleofas turned. “Quantity of pain?” The slave nodded toward the peak. “Cuatlapanga. It means ‘severed head.’” From Sad Conquistador, my novel in progress. #MountainMonday #scape

“Glancing down a side road, Cleofas was taken by a peculiar feeling of premonition or even possibility. The bright sun had bleached the grass a pale silver, and the trees’ smallness made them look like oaks in a tapestry.” From Sad Conquistador, my novel in progress. #scape #ForestFriday