This years complete issue of Tantric Series, chock full of amazing art and story work by Mike Bennett, along with some of my own, all to be given to Santosha Ma on the anniversary of her enlightenment this December 11. If you have not already registered, now is the time. Click the register link!
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That kid I always loved
Brought a stick down
with a twist and became
An old man.
You could see how he did it
The posture, the lean
The controlled tension
The silvery light just right.
He would look at you trembling
Just a glance your way
You could swear
He’s in there giggling.
I may appear strange to you.
A creature in the woods.
A satyr living outside of worldly affairs.
You don’t remember.
Damn your feeble memory.
And the garbage that’s diverted
Your attention.
But the world knows me.
And all of this is mine.
Working on this leg of Diamond Eyes has been really fun. Each night I sit at my table for at least an hour, sometimes more, and if my teeth sinks in deep into the drawing session, jaws like a pit-bull, I sit for several hours. I love the long sessions, several vinyl records played (Tangerine Dream, Swans, Keith Jarrett, Prince, Loscil) in the back ground as I plant myself on my stool and sketch, but these sessions don’t come as often lately. Sometimes I worry if it’s because I’m losing interest in the project, but usually it seems to come down to knowing that it will get done, so there is no need to pound away at it. It’s a nice feeling, trusting myself.
So the next chapter, which I’m sure will be titled, Goddess of the Sister Worlds is cooking up, many of the initial sequences plotted out this past winter as I recovered from an abysmal round of cancer related surgeries (more on that later). Looking on the bright side of a literal pain in the neck, during my time off, I penciled out the next series of movements related to the Goddesses of the Diamond Eyes universe.
Any how, yes It’s nice to trust myself a little more and to not grip the wheel, white knuckled and super possessive of it. During periods of time off, recovery periods and now from the pandemic, I have enjoyed the given space to learn to let go more, to allow for other avenues of expression to come forward.
I plan to enjoy more than just the visual comic-book-thing that the Nadthsade Dragon is, the long play the novels are, and all the tortured phrases I jam into dialog and narration balloons of comic pages. What could I write in… well… a post?! Yikes. I have to breath and let the blood drain from my face with the thought. Well Let’s see. Yeah, I’ve been a bad… ‘blogger’ really.
I white knuckle my drawing table during the months of March through October, not only because I love to draw and feel reunited with the long lost love that she is, but because I am also social media averse. Consequently, I miss the opportunity (or avoid it) to write posts. I’ve been wanting to write some for awhile. So here we go, three years later i might be able to wear another hat for this project.
Santosha Ma once said to me, “What you don’t express in (your comic) can always be expressed in other ways.”
Through Santosha Ma, I get a better sense that the medium is not so much the point, but in reality it is me– standing where I’m at — doing everything I can to express my deeper truth. The story can seem long winded, broken, cracked, and incomplete, but I’m discovering that the true depth of Self, the richest timbres of heart, is what really matters, cutting across all story lines, beginnings, endings, and blending with all mediums– The Great One Land.
So there! I’ve scrolled back, and it seems I’ve braved a few paragraphs that don’t have me hiding behind the medium of plot and characters. It’s just me, Neil, saying hello.
Until next month!?
I decided to move this out from the draft cover page for the last issue The Dreamers of the Great One land.
The Great One Land
Has no borders
of self, of world, of universe.
It holds no national identity
It holds no distinction along racial lines
The Great ONE Land
Compares to no other land,
not because it is Great,
But because no land is not of it
it, cannot be another place adjacent to it,
and only resides in the same domain of the heart
which stretches beyond any notion of patriotism
In the Great One Land,
no form of slavery can exist,
no hierarchy can hold,
for freedom’s whim is its actual foundation.
Its people recognize what freedom is,
because they have dreamed of what the
Great One Land is.
It is where
Subjugation is seen as folly,
Domination, the worst kind of art,
and where what you want to do,
in freedom is the seed
that grows its richness,
Land that is a reflection of what is true,
Land abundant with heart
a heart that gives, and lives
in accordance of sharing, rather than
of survival at the cost of another.
The Great one Land is that wisdom,
and its seeds are the dreamers of its reality.
