A Cartoonist and a Cartoonist and a Cartoonist (Patreon)

Last year, Lucy Bellwood and I went out to West Virginia to visit Danielle Corsetto and we had such an amazing time we were like "dude we should get together every year. Like, as an annual thing." and then we all promptly forgot about it until Lucy was given the keys to housesit at this giiiiiiiiiant Ojai (California) home with a swimming pool and a million bedrooms and Danielle and I were like "WE'LL BE RIGHT OVER."

Unfortunately, Danielle got Covid so her trip was delayed :( But that's ok because Lucy and I kept her updated with obnoxious photos so she'd feel like she wasn't missing a thing. Like the pool!

AND MY FACE.

And my face WITH A HORSE.

And my ARMPIT with a DOG.

AND MY FACE AGAIN.

While waiting for a freshly-recovered Danielle to fly across the country, Lucy and I walked the Ojai Labyrinth. 

The view was lovely but tbh I found the experience lacking without a ravenous Minotaur stalking us through the twisting pathway 😤

THING I LEARNED: What we Americans (westerners in general?) think of as “labyrinths” are actually “mazes”. A maze is the thing with the dead ends and the walls and the misleading passages that keep you from finding the exit.

A ✨labyrinth✨ is this one single lane that winds you through the twisting path from entrance to exit, granting you the time and space to just move through your open air environment and maybe come to a life epiphany or two.

THIS IS NOT THE WIKIPEDIA OR DICTIONARY DEFINITION OF A LABYRINTH AND/OR MAZE. I did not actually look this up before sharing here, I am repeating and probably garbling what I was told in person several days ago. MAZE/LABYRINTH PURISTS: PLZ DON’T SEND ME ANGRY MESSAGES. Everyone else: please go Google these terms to find out what they actually mean and don’t take the misrememberings of this sun-adled fool as fact.

All I know is that I walked the labyrinth at dusk with an old friend who I love so very much and a new friend who has generously been sharing his wealth of family and magical places with this pink-haired, sunblock-soaked tourist (me).

While there is a very disappointing lack of lumbering half-man, half-bull behemoths hungering for human meat in this town, there IS a healthy number of mosquitos to whom my out-of-town, supple flesh is not accustomed, so wearing long sleeves and pants in the hot evening hours has been an annoying necessity 😤 Not just here in this beautiful valley, but, like, when I have dinner on the patios of in-town houses and such. What can I say? I’m a legit snack U_U

AND THEN DANIELLE JOINED US (via flying saucer).

Lucy cut her hair.

And then Danielle cut Lucy's hair.

We visited the ancestral Bellwood home to say hi to Lucy's mom and root around in her childhood possessions and...

...the backyard Spider House. They had to go investigate the Spider House. Sorry guys, but you lost me at "Spider House".

Spider House Chaser:

Danielle and Lucy are two of my most favorite people on the fucking earth and I love the shit out of them.

They're brilliant cartoonists and I super encourage you to check out their work. Lucy Bellwood! Danielle Corsetto! OH! They both have done comics for OJST, too!!!! Lucy's done MANY OJST comics covering a variety of subjects and Danielle did one of my favorite comics on polyamory.

ok good bye.