Even Though There Is So Much That Binds Us Together.

“In the deep fall, the body awakes,”

— Robert Bly, from “A Home in Dark Grass,” The Light Around the Body (HarperPerennial, 1991)

have a nice day :)

It's still a few days til new years. My half ass goal for the next year will be to remain up this side of the soil. Mr. Gaiman, what the bugnuts is the Good Madness?

“May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you’re wonderful, and don’t forget to make some art – write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself.”

— Neil Gaiman (via h-o-r-n-g-r-y)

Actually, love tends to bloom between people who are not just at their best, but performing well past that level, a hyperbest. The chemicals(basically all of them) that burst into overdrive with infatuation are to ensure pair bonding, so they supe us up to be more charming than we usually are, more funny, more patient and genial, more doting and interested, more carefree, more romantic, and to feel inspired like they haven't been in ages, delerious with the mere thought of the other person. Nothing feels wrong in the world, nothing can bring the person down. This drugged out love psychosis can last six months or more.

So, what sort of person is relating to this quote about being such a mess and the mess pretending all that love walking on by must just not be real, right? Like a little baby fairy tale about unconditional love. Except unconditional is not meant to be bestowed on an adult.

Love between adults is necessarily and deservedly replete with conditions and boundaries and deal breakers. That's something the head shrinkers with all their crazy jargon would label "healthy". Compare that with the girl shopping around, who has an important condition of her own that Prince Charming be sturdy and resilient to her messes while staying unconditionally true and taking care of her.

Be very wary of girls who like this sort of accountability shirking qualification. The fantasy validating the true loved mess is everything because they are always a mess and the mess is a very big problem.

You see a similar sentiment in the spookily common meme that reads , "if you can't handle me at my worst, you don't deserve me at my best". This is an extra special red flag. Women who like this idea live in a paradoxical delusion about themselves.

These are women who spend a great deal of time at their worst, and if they have a best, it is like the fine China only for when the Queen is coming. So this girl who is a disregulated hurricane prone harpy has the sort of divergent mind that can cut a swathe of destruction and misery everywhere she goes but still have a diva level delusion of how precious and special she is and that her mythical best that perhaps no one has ever even seen is some extraordinary one-of-a-kind prize worthy of a perfect super human endurance doormat who will perpetually caretake her massive maintenance requiring hysterical mess. It's worth a shot. There are masochistic self loathing broken souls qualified for the job. She just has to nab one.

People express truths about themselves that aren't always apparent up front, but can be glimpsed with the smallest of gestures. The sorts of quotations, slogans and memes that resonates with a person are worth your attention, maybe even the fact that they are drawn to epigrams and aphorism in the first place is a flag. It perhaps suggests a hole in the person, a lost neediness seeking direction and reassurance constantly, not to mention a lazy attitude about fixes.

The ones demanding tolerance of their awfulness or conversely warning you off if you can read it, are a subset of this greater cohort who've earned a now cliché caution, that people who surround themselves with inspirationals are not the inspired or even the meagerly functional, but usually the neurotically depressed.

Those "don't give up right before the miracle arrives" vampires are worse than just an Eyeore. Eyeore is a pathetic creature mired in his mopey pessimism, but a sympathetic one, as well as being possessed of a certain self awareness and delimiting the amount of time he inflicts himself on others. The Inspirationals seeking are starving, voraciously seeking anything soothing, anything to feel momentarily better, or a facimile of whole. They're definitely not seeking personal accountability, it is anathema to them, requiring the impossible of them, like honesty, reflection, effort and acceptance. When they see you amble up, all you are is a big ol' rail of coke to them. To consume.

Heed the warnings, because they can exhude the most charismatic lures just long enough to dig their tendrils in to you. It's too late then. By then you're just a feed trough. For a while. Til you're empty.

The force is with us.

Are you?

Here are some of the images I created for Topp’s new series of trading cards, Star Wars: Chrome Perspectives. It was a blast to make them, and I’m gratified that the folks who’ve seen them seem to dig them.

Yes.

It's got cool

THE VAMPIRES - AKA MILTON DELUGG

I adore this oddball, instrumental novelty record.

Howard Chaykin’s 1979 graphic novel adaptation of Alfred Bester’s sci-fi classic, The Stars My Destination

Happy 95th birthday to Angela Lansbury, who was born Oct. 16, 1925, in London. An acting legend on stage, TV, and film, here’s some photos from her extraordinary life. Photo captions. 1. A glamorous portrait from her time as a contract player for MGM. 2. Lansbury in her first screen role as conniving maid Nancy in Gaslight (1944). Lansbury received her first Academy Award nomination for this performance. 3. Lansbury in one of her fabulous costumes for The Harvey Girls (1946). 4. Lansbury and her good friend Hurd Hatfield at Hollywood landmark Schwab’s Pharmacy. Hatfield and Lansbury appeared together in The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945). 5. Lansbury received her third Oscar nomination for playing Laurence Harvey’s fearsome mother in the political thriller The Manchurian Candidate (1962). 6. Lansbury and her fellow TV/stage legend Bea Arthur rehearsing a number for Mame.