A Hooker’s work is never done

It’s kinda crazy to me that it’s going to be 2006 in two days. The last time a year had a six after it, I was graduating high school (or not, actually, but I should have been). And before that, I was in third grade. That’s a bizarre frame of reference for how time moves, but it’s one I haven’t been able to escape today. When I was eight, in 1986, the millenium seemed so far away, but then again, so did my drivers license. It is truly amazing how fast time moves these days…that bit that my parents used to give me, about how time goes by so fast the older you get, I never could conceive of what they were saying. Now I think I get it. I suppose this should teach me something like, Live in the present, or Enjoy every day as if it were my last. I still haven’t quite wrapped my head around those two, sticking instead with, Oh shit I’m almost thirty. All that aside, though, I think 2006 will be the best year yet…there is so much on the horizon, so much to be done, and I think it should be quite enjoyable. Things just keep getting better, so I’ve no reason to doubt 2006 will rock. I hope.

One thing I can’t figure out, that I’ve been pondering quite a bit these past few days, is why the holidays make me sad. What I’ve decided upon is that the holidays make me sad because they make me lonely. Why this should be, I don’t know. I’ve been surrounded by family and friends, I’m in a relationship (although I don’t know how long it’s gonna last…), I’m relaxed and calm, I got stuff that I wanted from Santa…so what gives? I’ve started wondering really strange things like what if I’m lonely because in a season that celebrates this archetypal higher power, I’ve got no faith to celebrate. I actually thought yesterday, as I was driving back from Borders, if my loneliness was the vacant spot in my heart that God is supposed to fill. Then I got freaked out, because these are not thoughts I’ve had before…I have always been comfortable in my role as a pagan/agnostic left-leaning believer of magic and miracles. I’ve never felt before that that wasn’t enough, until yesterday. It’s scary, wondering all of a sudden if I’ve been wrong all these years to place all of my faith in myself, only. And while I can’t buy into the Christian myth of Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, Let Us Rejoice, I’m left wondering if there’s not something out there that I should be exploring more.

I’ve had an almost overwhelming (and inexplicable) urge to go talk to a rabbi. I suppose that means that I should indeed go talk to a rabbi…it might clear things up for me, somewhere, somehow, but I’ve never once doubted my lack of faith…I suppose much as I feel the highly religious hide behind their mantra of putting their faith and destiny in God, I’ve remained hidden behind my intellectualized notion that organized religion was created as a means to control an ancient, unruly populus. But maybe there was something there before all of that, some premise that a few bad men a long long time ago bastardized for their own profit.

Maybe I’m just looking for a new kind of support. Maybe I’m looking for a spirituality that I don’t have to bring some new kind of peace and calm to my life. Maybe I’m just scared because I still don’t have any answers for so many questions that won’t go away, and I don’t know where else to look. Maybe, for the first time in my life, I’m realizing that even surrounded by other people, I’m alone, and that it might be nice to feel like something else is always with me. Maybe this is just one more step in the slow and steady process of acquiring my own personal genetic insanity…and I’m just waiting for God to start talking to me. Maybe ten days of stone-cold sobriety let the overly-analytical side of me out, again.

Any which way I look at it, I realize that this is probably the beginning of what alot of New Age hippies would refer to as Soul Searching. I’ve never done that before, and I’m intriguing and terrified to imagine what I might find locked up way down deep in there, or floating in the ethers out there, and I’m vaguely horrified to imagine myself sitting through religious services of any kind, as that’s something I’ve steered away from forever, and have only done five times in my whole entire life. For good reason, though…I patently disagree with the viewpoints of secular religion on a whole slew of issues pertinent to my life, and I won’t compromise what I believe in those regards for anything. So where does that leave me? Worshipping nature? Worshipping aliens? Worshipping a man that once walked the earth, and then died, never to get up again (in my opinion)?

This is a new brand of confusion for me, and I find I don’t even know where to start in looking for any clarity.

And this is what the holidays do to me…force me to look at my life in angles harsh and glaring, while maintaining an upbeat, chipper outlook and demeanor. Holidays are supposed to make people happy, for crying out loud. Though I’m not unhappy, per se, I am feeling unsettled, and sometimes I find that is worse.

I had some kind of silent, mental fit yesterday and much to my parents surprise, packed up my stuff and left Raleigh very quickly. I was going to stay until today or tomorrow, but it all proved too much and I couldn’t wait to get home and be lazy and be quiet and paint and read more comics (started the Sandman series…very good!) and knit while I watch movies on the big screen. Nine straight days with family is more than I will ever do again. Plus, I love my house and missed it and couldn’t really wait two more days to get back to it.

In the loveliest surprise of the Christmas season thus far, when I opened the door to my house last night, Daniel had done a thorough deep-clean of the entire house after I left, before he left for Asheville. It is friggin spotless. I mean, down to the incense trays have been wiped cleaned of the ashy residue that I generally let build up for approximately three years. I was impressed. Only problem is now I know he can do it to my satisfaction and will probably expect it more often. But man, it was nice! I had planned on spending all day today cleaning to get the house to where I wouldn’t freak out once school started, but it had all been done. Maybe that was his Christmas present to me…

I promptly started painting when I got unpacked…I finished three of the five renderings I have to have ready for next week, which is a big load off of my mind. And they look pretty good, so that made me happy, too. I think what I had been needing, and what triggered my silent mental episode, was just to paint. Now that it has been incorporated into my daily life, I think it has become much like writing for me…it is a stress reliever, it is something I find myself needing to do more than wanting to do, it keeps me happy and balanced through the act of creation, and its kind of like instant gratification…taking a piece of white paper and watching the colors stain and mix. Even if I’m just doing abstract washes and big chunks of color, things that will never be framed, never hang in a museum, it brings me joy to see how the colors play together. I guess my journey from nerd to ubernerd is complete. Oh well.

I remember a long time ago, my friend Sara told me that writers write because they need to, not because they want to. That resonated with me, because that’s how I feel about writing…I don’t post these blog entries because I think it’s fun to keep a blog (even though I do…), but because it is simply the easiest and quickest way for me to incorporate writing into my daily life. And that is good for me and that is healthy for me. I realized last night that the same thing has happened with painting. I used to pick up a brush because I thought it would be a fun distraction or I wanted to paint a specific picture. Now, I pick up a brush because I can’t NOT pick up a brush, and that was a revelation of sorts, that painting has become something I need in my life, no longer a hobby, no longer a cheap way out of Christmas presents, an honest to goodness need of mine for happiness and healthiness. I suppose that should be as good an indicator as any that I am doing the right thing with my education, with my life. I went to bed last night after painting for four hours feeling more pleasantly exhausted than I have in weeks, and I slept better than I have in weeks.

Also, I dreamt more than I have in weeks…the kind of dreams that seem to go on and on, rich in details and colors and interweaving plots and bizarre, whimsical story lines. Good stuff.

In a part of my dream last night, right after Steve and I went underwear shopping in a steel warehouse, I found myself sitting in the back of a customized low rider truck with a bunch of hispanic men that were really hot. They made the truck bed bounce and we all laughed as they rolled a big fat blunt, and one man kept touching my hair and telling me it was like cornsilk…which is not a description I would put to my hair…funny to wonder where things like that come from in my brain.

Boredom drove me to one of my old favorite games to play with Google.  It always makes me laugh.  You know the one…you put in "{someone’s name} looks like" and then you cut and paste the ensuing hilarity. So I put in "Suzy looks like" and now,  I can’t help but share.  Because, you know, it consumes time and Raleigh makes me feel crazy and my insomnia comes back when I’m here. 

Suzy looks like she’s getting a cramp.

Suzy looks like she’s wearing something from the Irma Vep collection.

Suzy looks like she has a hammer for a hand.

Suzy looks like she really tried to trim my beautiful nails.

Suzy looks like a lovely party.

Suzy looks like a retard.

Suzy looks like a 1950’s cheerleader pom pom girl.  (oh that this was true)

Suzy looks like she is not sure how to react.  (far too often)

Suzy looks like I thought she would.

Suzy looks like she can whip some ass. 

Suzy looks like most of us look on Saturday morning.

Suzy looks like a Barbie doll that can drink like a fish.

Suzy looks like an anteater with that big nose.

So when I tired of this phrase, I put in "Suzy wants"…

Suzy wants to be a rocket scientist.

Suzy wants a kitten named Billy.

Suzy wants to escape the situation.  (why, yes! I do.)

Suzy wants to review your teleportation idea.  (???)

Suzy wants to make an effective and ethical decision.

Suzy wants to be equal to her contemporaries.

Suzy wants to save Andre from disgrace.

Suzy wants $40,000.  (how’d they know?!?)

Suzy wants My Little Pony. 

Suzy wants to force everyone into obeying what she believes.  (wait…do they know me or something?)

Suzy wants to come?  (the question mark was there already…that’s NEVER a question)

Suzy wants her all day.  (they DO know me.)

Suzy wants you to be happy, too.  (It’s uncanny and a little bit creepy.)

I just returned to Raleigh today from spending the longest amount of time at my grandma’s house since I was roughly twelve.  Whiteville is a funny little town, that much is sure. 

There’s no bars in Whiteville, that’s Numero Uno.  When I feel like I’m going to crawl out of my skin if I sit through one more human interest story on the news or Oprah or Dr. Phil or TLC, there is no where to escape, no nectar of the gods for sale cheap to calm my mind and soothe the need I feel to say obscenities really loud or smoke joints in my grandma’s sunporch.  Don’t get me wrong, I love my grandma, I love spending time with her, I love visiting her and knowing her and having a real relationship with her, but lets be honest…who is really absolutely themselves around their aging, decent, morally upright grandparents?  I get this feeling inside like I want to shout how much I like eating pussy or something equally shocking and vulgar, just to shake things up a bit, just to break up the days.  Otherwise, they all run together, just one long amalgamation of southern food and cigarette after cigarette and geneology and other people’s health problems and TV.  Everywhere TV.  All the time.  There are five in my grandma’s house, blazing all day long.  I’m not even convinced that she likes TV that much, I think she thinks we like TV that much, or else she uses it to fill the spaces between pleasant conversation.  Those are the spaces where dirty laundry is generally aired, all the old family secrets and regrets spill out then when it gets quiet, and it’s really not the polite southern thing to do to display any sort of disgust, dislike or emotional upset about anything.  Unless it’s politics. 

So for three days, it was just me and my mom and my aunt Franny and my grandma.  These were pleasant days, if mostly mundane and supremely lazy.  Lazy in the excessive kind of way.  My mom and I built a gingerbread house from scratch.  It took us seven hours and it was more fun than I imagined it could be and it’s the first time in a long time that my mom and I have done any kind of arts and craft project together and it was great.  And also, it collapsed in the middle of the night.  Not all of it, mind you.  We had used enough royal icing in some parts to hold up under mortar fire, but the roof…it had problems.  Imagine a water damaged hillbillly lean-to shingled with Rice Chex.  The shingle job was an inspired suggestion by my aunt, and it looked stunning, but we had forgotten about this little principle of architecture called Load Bearing Structures.  I’m still learning all that drafting stuff.  And we can’t be expected to be perfect on the first try out of the gate.  I’m just proud that we created something from scratch, with our hands and our minds and our hearts and it had a moment of glory that was beautiful and pure, and I think what I would like for Christmas to be all about. 

My mom and I and Franny and Grandma and mom’s friend Phil (he grew up in Lumberton, close by, and met my mom years later through a mutual friend in Raleigh…he’s one of those guys that is full of puns and that wears thin, but I like him), we were all sitting down to dinner, around the Gingerbread Centerpiece.  Mom and I had crafted stained glass windows for the house by filling the windows with crushed hard candies before we put the bread in to the oven, and before putting the shoddy roof on, we inserted a candle, which I lit with one of those long grill lighters that I love.  The house looked incredible just then…the windows were glowing orange and red and white and purple and green, in that flickering glow that comes only from candles or fireplaces, and the lights over the table were dimmed and we all crowded around our plates of real live Homecooked Food for a good look at the windows.  The glow radiated off the little house, and it caught in each of our eyes, lighting them up and making them dance, and everyone was smiling like children pleased with the thought of Santa coming soon.  It was peaceful and lovely, and the Christmas music playing in the background was the perfect soundtrack, all old-timey and cheery.  It was a nice moment. 

Then my uncle and his family showed up and his wife The Bitch (her name is Elva.  I mean, what kind of name is THAT?) promptly made me so angry I couldn’t sleep til six in the morning last night, and pretty much sullied what had been a really nice Christmas day with her insulting lies and passive-aggressive backstabbing.  Luckily, I have been raised properly in my mostly Southern household and I realize that Christmas day is a poor time to have the fight that has been brewing between me and that heinous bitch for years now, and I bit my lip and smoked and smoked and smoked and just stayed quiet. 

Of course, now I wish I hadn’t, because a biggoted, mean-spirited, dull-witted, extreme conservative in that Sunday christian kind of way doesn’t deserve such a courtesy, but I am holding onto the fact that the courtesy was paid to my mom and my grandma, not her. 

One day, there will be one of those fights that the family will talk about in whispers for decades, when I really, truly can’t handle hearing her say faggot one more time, really truly can’t bear to see her pat her daughter on the back when the sixteen year old Baby Prostitute says adamantly, and with venom, that hispanics should learn to speak English or get out, when I really truly can’t listen to any more of her praise for what a good job this fucking awful president of ours is doing…well, then things will get really interesting.  And when I say interesting, I mean horribly nasty in a way that I will probably regret on some level, forever after. 

As such, I have decided never to spend time around her ever again.  And this thought makes me so happy that my holiday cheer has returned full force, and I am glad to be alive and surrounded by family and friends that I cherish and love, and lucky enough to get (mostly) everything I asked for, and happy with my life (mostly) to boot. 

Auld Lyne Sang and whatnot.  I totally spelled that wrong.  Don’t make fun of me for it, please. 

My friend Sabrina had me out to her and her boyfriends house in Cary tonight.  It was fantastic…she lives in the only log cabin in the city of Cary (I’m quite sure there isn’t another in that suburban vomit) and she can cook like a  muthafucka. 

When Sabrina and I met, we both lived in Asheville.  We would get together twice a week and cook huge meals for all of the boys we either lived with or hung out with or dated (I mean, she dated…).  These guys wouldn’t ever eat except for fast food, so we swung a deal where they would pay for the ingredients and we would do the shopping and cooking.  It worked out well for us all…Sabrina and I forged a close friendship through time in the kitchen that we both enjoy anyway, and we taught each other how to cook.  About a year ago, I thanked her for teaching me to cook.  She just laughed, and said, "That’s funny.  I thought it was you that taught me". 

So I arrive tonight and immediately she sets me to cooking.  We fell back into our old comfortable routine, chopping and drinking wine the whole way.  She taught me to make egg rolls tonight, and holy shit they were good.  We made about thirty of them, cuz there were other people coming over for dinner, too.  But I ate four of them.  Maybe five.  They were just so good. 

And the venison/beef burger, too.  Oh, and not to forget the two homemade pies: apple and pumpkin. 

I’m so full I feel like I can’t really fill my lungs all the way without vomiting.  The holidays must really be here now. 

Sabrina brought up the fact that I’d decided years ago, in her driveway, not to have kids, when me and her and her good friend Jeanie were sitting around the kitchen table, after all the menfolk had gone out to light something on fire (lucky they have 3 acres).  I had almost forgotten I’d ever told Sabrina that I thought it was best if my family genepool dried up, due to all the crazy in it.  We all got a good laugh out of that…but it’s true, ya know.  Sometimes I think the most responsible thing to do when living in a family that has a strong propensity towards mental illness is to just STOP.  Stop with the babymaking, stop with the genealogical line, stop the insanity (so cliche’, I know).  I’m sure my mom or grandma would beg to differ but maybe I see things a bit differently, in this era of broader acceptance of the fact that A) mental illness exists, and B) lots of people have it. 

Also, though, I feel like maybe being gay is a biological response to the overpopulation of the planet.  It makes sense to me that a species would begin to evolve in such a manner that it could save itself, and really, our biggest problem that just won’t go away is that there are too many of us.  Sure, plenty of gay people have kids, and I believe their parenting is just as valid as that of heterosexual couples that have kids the traditional way, but maybe we love people that can never give us children for a reason much broader than we generally explore. 

And this leads me to believe that if gay people want kids, they should adopt.  Who am I to say this, I know…but if you choose to make a life with someone who can’t get ya pregnant, it seems like cheating to go get knocked up by some willing friend of the opposite sex when there are so many cute lil babies waiting in an orphanage somewhere for a family. 

I won’t even get started on how ridiculous it is that gay couples can’t adopt as easily as hetero couples.  And I can’t really understand how this got me so worked up at 11:45 pm on a Wednesday night, when by all rights I should be in a Class A food coma. 

So last night, I had this really strange dream…

I was out on a walk with my cat, Cleecloe.  She was draped over my shoulder, just cruising with me.  I was walking in the general direction of school, and I knew that that’s where I was headed.  Instead of school, though, I ended up in a shopping mall with Steve and Dani.  Dani was bra shopping…she picked out five different sequined, shiny bras, and then I paid for them (for reasons I’m unclear on).  Then Cleecloe and I continued on our walk…Steve and Dani completely disappeared…and I find myself in a neighborhood that is right across the street from school, when Devin Walsh, an Asheville friend, pops out of this apartment and joins me on the walk.  Devin and I are having a grand ole chat, as we generally do, when I look up in the sky and see this streak of lightning that isn’t disappearing, just constantly cycling from earth to sky, earth to sky.  This causes the clouds to literally start boiling.  There is no rain but the wind gets intense, and we have to lean against it in order not to be pushed over.  I’m hanging onto Cleecloe for dear life, because she is struggling to get away and run under a car or something and she’s digging into my back with her claws so hard that I can feel blood running down my back.  Finally, we get back to Devin’s apt. and it’s really more like a weird lean-to, and we have to crawl to the back of the apt. where the eaves meet the wall and huddle there while this insane storm rages outside.  I’m convinced it’s the apocalypse, because who’s ever heard of a boiling sky? so I’m scared to go outside.  Finally, Devin ventures outside after the rains have stopped and reports that there are frogs everywhere.  One of the seven plagues…I’m convinced Jesus is going to rain fire down on us all, so I won’t leave Devin’s apartment until I attempt to use the bathroom and his toilet bowl is so disgusting I can’t stand the thought of putting my ass on it.  I picked Cleecloe up, slung her over my shoulder, and walked home, dodging frogs as I went.  Jesus didn’t rain fire down on me…the world didn’t end…just lots and lots of frogs and bizarre lightning. 

Anyone wanna take a crack at analyzing that?  I’m at a loss as to what that might mean…  I woke up this morning scratching my head, perplexed.  Bra shopping with Dani and a plague of frogs.  Hmmm…

So I drank too much caffeine to stay awake from the strike I worked tonight…didn’t start til 9:30 pm, with a four hour minimum, so I go and get all amped on the juice and couldn’t sleep when I got home.
Soooo, I watched the Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou once again (while knitting like crazy…), and upon this watching, I have decided that the movie is most defintely G. A. Y. The entire film is about men loving men. Of course I love this, and could probably articulate all of my reasons were it not four in the a.m., and my brain is buzzing too loud, additionally, but I firmly believe that Steve and Esteban were lovers, that the men in the hot tub are always waiting for Steve to come ‘deal with them’, and that the reason none of Steve’s marriages work is because he’s at least partly gay. What really sealed the deal for me is when Hennesy discovers his coffee maker on board Zissou’s ship (because Zissou robbed his research station, unbeknowst to Hennesy at that point), and Hennesy pulls Steve aside. The viewer could be led to assume that they are going to argue about the stolen goods, but then Hennesy (played by Jeff Goldblum, by the way, who I think I love to hate) says instead, “We’re not very good husbands, Steve. But at least I have an excuse. I’m part gay”. Then they share this tender hug, and here they’ve been rivals, nay–arch nemeses–for the entire film.

If only I could have a Q and A session with Wes Anderson…so many unanswered questions this movie has conjured…

Then I’d have a chance to wow him and be hired on immediately into my dream job.

I’m currently reading Running With Scissors. If anyone needs a good laugh over Xmas, or maybe just to feel better about your own fucked up family, I’d highly recommend this book.

The clock in my studio says “Dare Me”. No, really…

Man, I hate leaving Asheville. It’s like pulling teeth, and most often, I have to do it quick…like ripping off a band-aid. I guess since Asheville usurped Raleigh as home, it’s good to have some place to miss, to pine for. I hadn’t really realized how nice it is to be with friends my own age again. Mind you, I love the people I go to school with, but the perspective is different from 21 to 27, that’s just a fact of life. That’s a big six years for most people, one normally associated with a lot of maturing and answering of Big Life Questions for yourself. I dunno…just nice to be with people for a weekend on the same wavelength as I. I mean for the time I was conscious. My tummy is still a bit angry at me for Friday night.

Things I learned this weekend:

1. I should listen to my instincts next time, and avoid trouble…just like I knew I shoulda stayed home this weekend. Had I stayed home, I wouldn’t have had my epic journey with absinthe, nor would I have bruised my chin and sternum on a toilet bowl. Also, too, I would have missed a lot of good times.

2. Never drink absinthe.

3. There are a lot of really hot, really eligible, really single ladies in the city of Asheville right now. And I am really in a relationship… and self control is really difficult. Possible, but difficult. I passed this particular test with flying colors, thankfully.

My ear just now popped from coming down Old Fort Mountain–blessed relief! I couldn’t hear a damn thing on the drive home and had to turn the music up really loud to hear it. It sounded like someone playing music underwater… This is a very good sign that I do indeed have a sinus infection. Yum.

I have to go into Raleigh tomorrow, and so tonight officially concludes the relaxing part of my holiday season. I am truly confounded as to what it is about my family that makes me crazy. I know that this is not unique to my family alone, but it would be joyous if I could spend four days with my family without wanting to pull my hair out at the roots. Maybe this year will be different. I have started planning holiday events we can all do together, as we are devoid of holiday tradition of any sort, so there is hope that this year will be better, by virtue of the fact that it’s harder to start an argument while building a gingerbread house than, say, while sitting on the couch and drinking large volumes of wine (ulp…something I won’t be doing…)

My yearly guilt has set in that I don’t have the money to buy people what I’d actually like to give them…and instead have to make do with whatever I’ve had the time and meager money to make. Everyone always says a homemade gift is better, but I wonder if the gift is sullied if they know I had to make it for a class anyway? I suppose I will find out the answer to that question in a few short days.

Happy holidays, folks. I’m off to the land of no internet access in a very short while, and will presently be consumed with knitting like a maniac, painting like a dervish, and trying not to eat everything in sight out of sheer boredom…this school has taught me to dislike down time, and I get antsy and a little crazy after not such a long time without homework or crew. What have they done to me????

OK, so my whole life I’d wanted to try Absinthe.  And now I rue the day that I ever thought it might be fun. 

I have two words for my experience with this green liquor:  copious vomiting. 

Granted, I think I accidentall drank about ten times as much as I was supposed, by no real fault of my own, but all the same…  It hit me as if someone had sucker punched me and the vomiting begin nearly immediately…about twenty minutes after finishing my WINE GLASS full of the stuff.  Thank God for the fact that Hope and Matt are the best hosts ever…Hope promptly put me to bed in a very comfortable, cushy guest/sunroom/artist studio.  And then I spent the next hour and a half in the bathroom, making drunken promises to higher powers that if I could just be sober again, or at least stop puking, I’d never touch a drop ever again.  I actually prayed for the first time in years last night, with my face pressed against the cool tiles in the bathroom. 

One thing about the absinthe, I didn’t get the spins, per se…what happened was something much more hellish and intense, as if life was caught in freeze frame and the individual frames were flashing by, jumping around and swirling together.  I was, officially, trippin’, yo.  I haven’t vomited like that from alcohol since well before I was legal to drink, and I woke up with a feeling this morning of–I’m too old for this shit. 

Ah yes, the morning-after shame has reared it’s ugly head again.

Granted, it was great to see everyone again, but it went by so quick.  I arrived at the party, and was unconscious all within two and a half hours.  Way to go, Suz.  At least these people are good enough friends that I don’t have to be TOO embarrassed about what happened.  And I have a sneaking suspicion that I probably wasn’t the only one getting sick last night, as a few other people had wine glasses full of absinthe, too. 

Blaugh.  Just typing that word makes my stomach turn a little bit.  Live and learn, eh? 

Don’t be tempted by the Green Fairy…she’s an ugly bitch that takes pleasure in administering stern beatings that last for what feels like an eternity. 

I just saw that movie…Crash. It’s odd how much I felt affected by that movie. Saddened and heartened at the same time. I appreciate a movie that can do that. And the premise…I just really enjoyed the thought behind the movie, that people crash in and out of our lives every day and change or enrich or destroy us a little bit at a time. That there is really no control in the chaos and that any person could be the one to save you, kill you, help you, love you, hate you. That you can’t judge a book by its cover, that the contents are all that matter. That your savior can be the one you fear the most. Celeste recommended this movie to me, and that added an extra dimension to it…for she more than anyone else in the history of my life crashed into me, into my life, led me on the most intense love affair I could imagine and then broke my heart while teaching me the ever-important Life Lesson. I am quite sure it’s no mistake that she suggested this film…we collided in a most spectacular fashion and then combusted in much the same way; I know she’s just as aware of this as I am.

Here is my confession of the day: Apparently, I love comic books. I never fancied myself a comic book nerd, but I realized today while talking to a friend about books, that all I’ve read for the past three months are graphic novels. OK, so they’re comic books with really long, involved detailed stories. Still a comic book, I guess. I’ll use the excuse that I’m so taken with visual art that right now it’s all I’m interested in, while still feeling a need to read something, so these fill the void perfectly. But really, I know that that’s a poor excuse, and that I just like comic book. That was a hard sentence to type. I like comic books. There, I said it again.

Apparently, my reversion to a thirteen year old boy is complete, as I can now add comic books to my list of things I Really Like These Days, right alongside pirates and potty humor.

I was reading a great graphic novel the other night in bed with Dani, and I noticed that she was staring at me with a weird look on her face. I asked if she thought I was a nerd for reading comic books. She said yes without missing a beat, and then kissed me anyway, so I suppose I shouldn’t be too embarrassed. But part of me is…I mean, I never imagined that I’d make the leap from reading Plato to reading comics. I maintain that this is not an attempt to stay literate while shying away from anything with real content, or engaging in Lazy Reading. Truthfully, I feel better about reading comics than I do about reading Stephen King.

See, the thing about these comics is: they’re really smart. In addition, the artwork is absolutely superb. Granted, I’ve been reading out of Daniel’s collection, which has taken him years of lotsa money, lotsa bad comics and lotsa hunting through those cheesy comic stores I can’t bring myself to set foot into, before emerging with a collection of beautifully illustrated, well written, thought provoking comics. He’s made a believer out of me.

Here are some recommendations:

Rex Mundi…a quest for the Holy Grail, set in modern France, supposing that the Catholic church has ultimate power and that people frequently practice powerful magic. Excellent graphics. Reminds me of the DaVinci code, except with pictures.

The Preacher series…tells the story of a man raised in Louisiana by a religious cult. Of course he has extradordinary powers that have to do with preaching. It’s an interesting examination of what happens when religion goes very wrong.

Lucifer…a story full of archetypes. Epic battle of good vs. evil, dark vs. light. The graphics are definetly the strongest point of this book…I’d say that the illustrator has accurately captured what I’d imagine the actual house of God to look like.

Transmetropolitan…follows the exploits of a journalist through a city that closely resembles NYC in thirty years. A nice political series that details how much technology has fucked us up as a culture, and what could happen if we don’t get the right people into public office with a quickness.

Okay, now that I have exposed myself for the real nerd that I am, I’m going to bed. This Comtrex PM is starting to kick in, and I really have to find out what happens next with Spider Jerusalem, journalist extraordinaire.

PS–Don’t tell nobody. I’m an artist and scholar, after all. It just wouldn’t do to have the world at large knowing how much I enjoy the funnies.