My Comic Book Racket 25 Year Death Song Indiegogo Project Blog Post 04

My Comic Book Racket

X marks the spot in this composition.

My consuming interest in comic books as a boy, and specifically in the continuity in Marvel comic books was certainly a contributing  factor in the formation of my Shaman mind. Comic books are a truly vast, but yet finite data set that in mastering it as I grew up was so like one in a rainforest learning the flora and fauna.

                 I got to Staple! in Austin a day late this year. My pal Sam Hurt invited me to come up to hang out, but I confused the date and missed the busy Saturday. All worked out well though, I managed to sell some stuff on Sunday, talk my project up to a lot of artists, with a subset of attractive female type artists; the day passed nicely. Austin is a happy hunting ground for me because every other man in San Antonio has some magical aspects too him, but Austin just has a lot of men who remember being magical in youth but now their only power is their income.

I was delighted to meet up with Monica Gallagher once again, I have followed her comics work for years, particularly her web comic Bonnie ‘n Collide. This year I was able to afford to buy a wonderful original Bonnie strip that is now a prize possession! Displaying their work on tables in a row down from Monica’s were a trio of kind and beautiful young cartoonists; Great Hat, Great Red Wig, and Nancy Nebula. Each enchanted me so deeply that I am relieved that they were there so close together that I couldn’t focus on just one. I felt like I passed the yes/no with each of them, and I love them each differently, but that is just a distinction without meaning.  Sam agreed that it would be fun to do an oral history about his cartooning career; I can’t wait to go back to Austin!

Pat Travers is a fixture at San Antonio Festivals and a great soul of Rock and Roll.

You Don’t Get Me, Let Me Paint Your Picture? 25 Year Death Song Indiegogo Project Blog Post 03

You Don’t Get Me, Let Me Paint Your Picture?

Once I stepped onto the path of service my desire to ‘make it’ in the art world dissipate. My prime reason for creating art in the first place is so girls would take their clothes off, the picture was mostly ancillary, if we remembered to do art at all. Our lives’ intentions are constantly shifting, , and without the stability of pairing off into families we freaks and monks grow ever away from the original hopes.

On the surface I am so like my fellows, but at root my thought process feels like a chasm in my efforts to turn around. So different is interacting with interesting women with no intention of physical involvement with them from maneuvering for something more. I confess it torments me with confusion and uncertainty as I haven’t felt since I was a young man. I wonder if I owe a reckoning for the woman I confused so myself for decades past. Rationally I know this isn’t true of course, it is only the man in me that needs an explanation for everything.

Every woman I meet who seems to signal I passed the yes/no with her, takes on a dual nature in my cognitive understanding. Having nothing material to offer her, I offer nothing but my presence and attention. For instance I am quite taken by a an attractive waiter at my favored coffee shop where I write and study frequently. She’s Heather Leather’ of my desire, but also ‘Trixie’ of I don’t stand a chance. Desperately assign this duality to her because I am stricken with confusion wrought by desire and uncertainty.  

Love Needs Sex Sooner Or Later 25 Year Death Song Indiegogo Project Blog Post 02

Love Needs Sex Sooner Or Later

Learning is great joy for my tribe, because we learn what we like and share teaching with learning with one another. Nobody pretends to be, or feels that they need to be smarter than anyone else. Actively studying and learning more subjects than I can list, or perhaps than you could name; it is so clear to me now the thing that is most important to all persons is to be kind.

I came to be a Buddhist and a monk as a way of explaining or justifying my life of passion for the unknown in such a way that others can at least chew on, if without understanding it any better that I do. But my base equation of love + marriage = human reproduction by means of all the sex I have foregone but craved so emphatically each time it was offered. Fortunately or not, my monastic resolve has been fueled by my pathological resolve to support and be with any progeny at least ‘through college.’

But dig; family = reliable income by employment = an estimated 80% reduction in time available to live in search for art. I could never reduce this equation to a life I can support, so by removing sex and misunderstanding of money from my life’s equation it truly began to me useful and meaningful. So I began mentoring young women I met while wandering the night streets of Houston’s Montrose district and 4^th Ward, men too, really anyone who could articulate a problem or a need. It was a great and an awful education; and humbling to learn of the travails of other people’s lives, mostly people who did not have benefits of loving parents to keep them safe, or an education and confidence to overcome their difficulties.

Service is itself, do not insert yourself or mistake yourself as Spirit, we are only its tools.

What does 25 year death song mean? 25 Year Death Song Indiegogo Project Blog Post 01

What does 25 year death song mean?

I have to begin by stating plainly that I am not a person who has claim to treaty rights against the United States government, and my ancestry in derived of European forebears. I am a native American born in Indiana, and am an  Indian in exactly the same sense as Judy Garland is in the movies, voluntarily, and a part of the Poohawk Nation of the Hippie tribe, which has tribal roots reaching back to the time of Alexander the Great. As I have been with tribes of many nations, together as human beings I was never made to feel I did not belong, and I have adopted many aspects of Indian culture in my life and my artwork, and most importantly in my perception, and in showing respect I am held in turn with respect.

I sing my death song to gain courage when I am resolved to accomplish an act with unknown outcome. I have no wish or intention to actually die, or kill or hurt another person particularly; only to have taken the decision to keep to this path relentlessly, until  the Spirit guides me to step off, and death is with me at every step, spurring my every action as the fluid dance of impeccable action. Any distraction or deviation to wrong thought or wrong action may allow death to catch up to me, and steal my advantage.

I have lived my life just as  a Jackson Browne medley. Truly I have never really known just what I’m hoping to find, but as time passes in turns I look back at my crazy life of freelance monastic service and I reckon it has been worth living. As the only wealth I possess is whatever benefit others have received from my own decisions regarding my time and attention day to day in all these searching years. By the ability to see without thinking, one may know when people give signs of their suffering.  If a person’s suffering is acute I feel it viscerally, particularly in the nature of what dominant culture calls ‘mental health. ’The system of treating such people is harsh and often misguided. Kindness is called for, but at points at every person’s path kindness may be hard and unwanted, but still medicinal.

Thank you Jackson Brown for the compass of a thousand tears of joy.

PERKS illustrated for opening of 25 Year Death Song Indiegogo project

Read this perk here

 Read it and hear it here:

Read the whole book here

Preview this perk here

 Object constructed from a stick harvested in a group circa 1991-1993 on a friend's(who passed pre- towers) ranch in Johnson City Tejas. pained with gesso and cured in the elements nearly 20 years. Decorated with buckskin, beads, a brass sarno bell from my passed sister and many watches inherited for my Father's dresser drawer after he passed. The spirit of many who I loved and who loved me are in this piece, and they are pleased to give their spirit to my project to aid my turnaround. Includes  Comic Book Shaman’s
personally chosen  FUN GRAB-BAG  of neat comics and stuff!

Indiegogo Project Spell

Mark this page and watch for the official launch of this project and shake your head at the Shaman's attempt to convince a good, as yet not
designated woman to make a human being of him!