No Other People

Neil,

Sorry for copying but what you wrote touched me...

I haven't posted about the Virginia Tech shooting, and wasn't going to. But...

I'm in the UK right now, and it's a long way away, and I'm reading about what happened in newspapers... still managing to think of this as something that happened, tragically, to Other People. And then I see this, and my heart sinks, because this is the Michael Bishop who I met in 1999 when we were Guests of Honour at World Horror, whose son was a Sandman fan and oh god, and then I click on this, and I get my nose rubbed hard and painfully in the fact that there are no Other People. It's just us.

Did you hear that guys (and did you Mr. Bush? and did you dear politicians?)... There are no Other People, it's just us...

Neil and his magnificent oracular journal!

Cool!

Try this out: Neil and his magnificent oracular journal

It is bound to answer your life's most serious questions...

I tried a profound question especially for this post... Here it goes:

Q: What is my soul's 'mission' on planet Earth?
A: This is the orchestra that usually lives in a small red box in the Prime Minister's hat, playing a brief fanfare in the bedroom of the sleeping White Queen.

Wow! This does require several months of meditation... Enlightment might be just around the corner after that!

The Incal

I was trying to find a comic book that would be as "provocative", as "imaginative" or even as "true" as the 'Sandman'... I asked the woman behind the counter... She came up with two titles one of which was the 'Incal' by Moebius and Jodorowsky. Having known Jodorowsky from his movie "Santa Sangre", I decided to go for it! I must say I was left highly satisfied! The internal and eternal battle of light and darkness, what can be more "true" than that?

As a friend and teacher once told me - "Man is the battlefield of powers that surpass him/her"...

Searching the internet, I was later surprised to find the connection between Moebius, Jodorowsky and my favorite - Carlos Castaneda!

Being Sane...

...Richard paused beside an old woman, fast asleep in a shop doorway. She was covered with a ripped old blanket, and her few possessions - two small junk-filled cardboard boxes and a dirty, once-white umbrella - were tied together with string beside her, and the string was tied around her wrist to keep anyone from stealing them while she slept. She wore a wool hat, of no particular color.
He pulled out his wallet, found a ten-pound note, and bent down to slide the folded note into the woman's hand. Her eyes opened, and she jerked awake. She blinked at the money with old eyes. "What's this?" she said, sleepily, displeased at having been woken.
"Keep it," said Richard.
She unfolded the money, then pushed it up her sleeve. "Whatchyouwant?" she asked Richard suspiciously.
"Nothing," said Richard. "I really don't want anything. Nothing at all." And then he realized how true that was; and how dreadful a thing it had become. "Have you ever got everything you ever wanted? And then realized it wasn't what you wanted at all?"
"Can't say that I have," she said, picking the sleep from the corner of her eyes.
"I thought I wanted this," said Richard. "I thought I wanted a nice, normal life. I mean, maybe I am crazy. I mean, maybe. But if this is all there is, then I don't want to be sane. You know?"...

From NEVERWHERE by Neil Gaiman