Well, that's what I've been up to during this stay-at-home period.  During the final phase of the inking of issue number twenty, I worked every day except one for over a month during that stage. On the vast majority of days, I only completed two pages, and over all I averaged just a wee bit over two pages a day for the entire month-plus I spent at  that stage.   I've started the illustrations for issue number 21 as of last week.  I'm gong to try to make this pencil stage really chill and just take my time and take it easy.  I hate the idea of being stuck in my house AND grinding away on these books like there's no tomorrow. 

I'm skeptical about the Governor of Texas' efforts to reopen the economy.  I pretty much plan on continuing the same routine as far as how I'll remain at home for the most part.  I just think the lack of testing of the general population just doesn't cut it for me.  I have no desire to eat at a restaurant or go to a movie at this point in time.  I've been very stingy about takeout and delivery of food or coffee or anything like that, so I haven't budgeted much for that for the next few weeks, and I plan on home meals and home coffee for the most part.   I'm glad the printer of my books started up their business, though.  They displayed all the proper protocols for masks, social distancing, and to-go retail when i went there today.  I bet they will finish printing the book up in less than two weeks.  Yay!

I remember taking a martial arts class in the '80's, and how one time the grandmaster teacher said that I tried to come off as tough.  I deferred to him and implied that I would try to do better.  I had people criticize me for this kind of thing before that class in the '80's.  One guy I met once told Wolfgang that he thought I tried to come off as macho after we three talked in his house one afternoon.  I haven't heard that kind of criticism in a long time, though.  

I think my experience with Jenna in 1992 knocked a lot of that out of me.  I think of a story the actor Lee Marvin told in an article I read.  Lee Marvin talked about how he was a scrappy, ornery kid before he joined the Marines and went off to fight in the Pacific in World War II.  Marvin said he was part of a wave of Marines that stormed a beach and how, as he crawled in the sand, an enemy bullet struck his back.  The bullet hit a vertebra and lodged there, but came just short of permanently injuring his spinal cord.  He said that knocked a lot of the urge to come off as tough out of him from that point onward.

My experience with Jenna in 1992 involved me giving her a kind word one night at her job under adverse circumstances, and the psychotic episode that followed this gesture of letting her go.  During my breakdown episode, I concluded that "Billy Billiams," a known serial date-rapist, had been pressuring Jenna by implying somehow that he would offer her protection from me. That thought , whether true or not, really brought home to me how one often does not know what another person faces in their life at any given point in time, and I truly felt relieved that I had dropped any pretense of trying to get all tough with Jenna well before I ever walked into that movie theater that night in the Summer of 1992.  

I remember when I had that bad experience with "Julie" in 1999.  I tried to come off as surly or tough to a bartender at the Hole in the Wall some months later, as if he had anything to do with it, but I backed down the second he challenged me.  I think my failures with women would stoke a desire to be a tough guy, so that tough guy stuff would come from insecurity.  

I think I've done a lot better since I've taught myself how to deal with the worst aspects of how certain types of women in my world choose to relate to me.  To the uninitiated- anyone who reads this blog for the first time with this post- one may look at just about any entry before this to know of what I speak.  I just have to say, that when I handle the B.S. that so many women want to sling my way in the utterly professional manner that marks my behavior these days, I'm not out on Sixth Street or Red River the following Saturday night consciously or unconsciously looking for shit, and that makes me happy.  Thank you very much.

I think about all the people I get so mad at in my mind, all the time.  I've talked often about how my attempts to forgive women In the past did not really represent real attempts at forgiveness. I came to the conclusion that I wanted something material in exchange for my forgiveness, and that did not make it "real" forgiveness.   I found myself in compromised situations at times, and I never got what I wanted from these women.  The things I wanted included sex, love, acceptance, companionship, etc.

I believe that forgiveness involves a process of letting go of one's pain and moving on with one's life.  Therefore, a better concept of forgiveness might possess these key characteristics: forgive someone, but in forgiving that person, one need not feel obligated to be friends with that person, nor associate with that person in any meaningful way, nor even really like that person.  Think about it.  If people felt obliged to maintain wrecked friendships, acquaintanceships, or any other relationships with people who have committed hurtful actions against them, then no one would have much motivation to forgive anyone else.

I've carried this thought around with me for the last several days, and it makes sense.  The usual scenarios I run in my mind that involve me really going off on someone from my past just stop at the idea that I can forgive that person, yet still maintain the current status of separation from that person.  That feels more like a genuine process of letting go of my pain and moving on, rather than trying to come off like some great guy about their hurtful attitudes and behaviors towards me. 

I think that I meet a good standard on lighting, sound, and framing of the shot on the six new videos I've posted these past two and a half weeks or so on YouTube.  I fuck up the lyrics on, "I Used Your Panties for a Cumrag," though.   I accidentally say "scumbag" instead of "cumrag" in the third verse.  Little fuckups populate these first six videos, but they all are pretty consistent in the quality of lighting, sound, and framing of the shot.  It looks like I'll have a long time to craft a masterpiece of a YouTube channel, too.  If anyone gets bent out of shape about the little mistakes in any of the first of these new videos I've posted, well, that would mean someone is watching, which hasn't happened yet.

In my apartment, I craft masterpiece comic books, walk by masterpiece paintings, perform masterpiece songs from past and future masterpiece albums, and yet, when it comes down to it, I'm just a face in the crowd.  I don't know why that is really, but it doesn't look as if success will be the thing that kills my muse.  

I'm very grateful that I've managed to get a handle on the crash-and-burn outcomes of so many of my past fixations on individual women.  If I'd never learned how to manage that aspect of my life, I would never grow as an artist or as a person.  I remember back in the eighties and nineties, when those kinds of crash-and-burn breakdowns occurred on a regular basis, how utterly lost I would feel in the aftermath of those experiences.  I would want to be anything in life but a visual artist, and I saw getting an art degree as a pretty useless pursuit.

Here we are in history at a place that I feel as if I've prepared myself for since 9/11.  Back then I realized that my girlfriends from my psychotic hallucination days probably would never show up (they still haven't), and all the money that I felt I'd won somehow as Richy Vegas would never show (it hasn't), and that I might never get recognized for what I felt I might have been (I never did).  What did I have left?  So, out went the cigarettes, and later on the booze and drugs, and I now feel as if I've come to terms with my deal with the unavailable women.  So now, all I really have to do is not get sick from something I could catch pretty easily, even if I'm careful.  Well, that last thing makes me just another face in the crowd these days as well.

An oft told tale from Robert Johnson's legend concerned his early days as a performer and an artist.   Bluesmen would roll through his neck of the woods on the circuit every so often, and Robert Johnson would play for them.  At first they would give him shit for his lack of ability in playing and all of that.  But, in successive trips, as these guys would roll through his neck of the woods, Robert Johnson would begin to impress them with how good he had become since their previous trip through.  I think about that when think about all these stoner musician friends I give my new CD's to, only to realize that a lot of them didn't even bother to listen to them.  Hell hounds on your trail boys.