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Meditations in an Emergency

Apologies to Frank O'Hara; I'll have to read your poetry collection at some point...in the meantime it's a damn good title, especially for a post on the melancholy of living in "interesting times".

It's Spring, or damn close, which means Mad Season is upon us - March Hares, floods, weather twitching between subzero and 60º F above...spring is a lovely time, yes, and being Orthodox Christian I have a soft spot for Easter; but there's a menacing side to the season people rarely talk about. The sap is rising, everybody's horny, rams take a sidelong look at each other and think, "I want to bury my horns in his skull" along with car doors, barn sides, and unsuspecting farmers. It's manic season. Check the statistics on incidence of psychotic break, and I'll bet you dollars to donuts they'll be significantly higher from March to May. It was actually May 20th, 2010 when I had the nervous breakdown that changed my life; now every year around that time, I get nervous and moody. I've always been squirrelly as the weather warmed up, and the south breeze whispered Away, away through the open window...and there I was trapped in my house, knowing I couldn't strip down to my undies and just out and go live in a swamp, howling at the moon and eating frogs. But then again, maybe I could...

Circumstances seem to alter, too, as buds bust out of the jail of their winter twig. Like a carefully-constructed pile of leaves, I felt like I mostly had my shit in order since Christmas; now suddenly a cyclone comes along and scatters them into random piles in the corners of the yard. My housing situation may be in danger; everybody's car is breaking down; old coworkers are leaving; lovers are on the verge of breaking up. The stool has hit the cooling turbine, and I don't mean the kind you sit on (unless you're in diapers).

One nice thing is, at least the comics business is ticking along - slowly, mind ye, but surely. With the first pages of DKIII sent off for inks, I can at least say I have a handle on the beast; THC 9 is in production, and I'm getting ready to do some short comics as well. There's a new comic manager at Everybody Reads, who seems interested in reorganizing the store and putting our comics out front. We've also got plenty of stores to track down, after the winter lull, and ply them with our delicious pies  comics. The important thing is to maintain momentum. A change to our living situation will certainly disrupt this; it's just a question of how much. Hopefully not too much.

I'm praying for myself and the people in trouble around me...God seems to listen, even if he doesn't answer my prayers in a way I'd like. That's how it goes. "Thy will be done", and all that. In the meantime, I'll keep flapping my arms, and with some luck and planning I'll fall into the nice cushy pillows instead of the iron spikes (why do we even keep those there...?), and maybe this Spring won't be as hard as the beginning of 2018 has been.

Rick Out.

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