MY JOURNAL


CLEANING MY ROOM
(Part One)

Written: 25 September, 2000

I live like a pig. (That was the alternate title for this post. It makes an okay opening line, though.) This week is my paid vacation week. I got the whole week off work, and so I don't want to waste my free time. I don't want to walk into work next Monday and think, "Shucks, how come my vacation time went by so quick and I didn't do anything constructive with my time off?" Which is the kind of question that comes to mind when you don't have as much free time as you want. The problem with having too much free time, though, is that it can fade into one big blur with nothing being accomplished day after day.

Anyway, I set a goal for myself, so that I can feel like I accomplished something with my time off. I'm cleaning up my room. I hate to admit it, but I've been a bit of a slob ever since my teenage years. And I never really got into the habit of throwing stuff away. I've had to consciously try to throw away receipts lately, for example. I used to put receipts in my pocket after buying something; now I've taken to putting the receipt in the bag so that I'll throw the receipt away when I throw the bag away, which I usually do as soon as I get home. But I still have litle receipts from years ago floating around my room.

I first "got rid" of some of the stuff I'd had for years around 1994. I'd moved into a house with my two sisters and they convinced me that I ought to put some of the stuff that I didn't want to throw away, and yet didn't really need around, into boxes and could just leave it the basement of my parents. That sounded like a good idea at the time, and it prevented me from having to decide to throw something away. I have a tendency to not want to throw stuff away because I think that I might want to have them in the future. So, I boxed up some stuff (including some early writings by me and some issues of CARtoons magazine which I wish I had access to now) and wrote my name on it and took it to my parents' basement, where I'll probably never see them again or where a family member or two has already opened them up and looked through them.

In my present dwelling, an apartment I share with my sister, I have the room with the big walk-in closet. Around New Year's or so, we learned that some government agency like HUD was going to be checking out the apartments and randomly look inside an apartment. So, I felt that I better clean my room. But stirring up dust affects my allergies, so eventually I just shoved a bunch of boxes of papers, clothes I haven't worn in ages, and all sorts of random junk into the walk-in closet, and shut the door. That way my room looked okay, as long as you didn't open my Fibber McGee-ish closet. After awhile, though, when apparently our apartment wasn't selected to be looked at, I gradually got to making the room a little messy again.

So, today, I decided to start clearing out the closet again. I also had around a dozen long boxes of comics in there which I didn't have access to because of the mess. And part of me hated how it seemed like I never got a place cleaned up and organized until I moved out, where I'd wistfully say, "Gee, I wish it had looked this nice when I lived here." So now I was determined to "clean up and clear out" but still live there. This would involve throwing things away that I didn't need anymore. This involved throwing things away!

But that doesn't mean throwing away comics. I'm not that dumb (unless they were toxic). But no more saving things for posterity, I thought.

However, as I began my cleaning of the closet, I saw how my sentimentality caused me to want to keep things that theoretically I knew I should toss. For example, I would come across pens, pencils, colored pencils, and think, "Well, I can always use a pen, so I won't throw this away..." But then after awhile, I realized that this was my old stubborn sentimentality preventing me from making a clean break. I had to keep reminding myself: "You have money. Any time you want you can go spend $1.99 and start fresh on a package of brand-new pens. So just pitch these dusty ones that have been lying on the floor of the closet since who knows when!" I would come across random white socks and I'd have to think the same thing: "It's got a hole. Pitch it." And I had a trash bag right with me so I could throw it in and there'd be no more argument with myself about the item. Old ripped sweats were the easiest things to throw out, and I wondered why I'd kept them around so long, considering that I hadn't worn them for years, ever since their rips made them unwearable. Other clothes piled on the closet floor included old clothes I used to wear but could no longer fit into, even stuff from 12 years ago, once-familiar things which were kinda sad to see again now.

I actually saved an old receipt, don't know how long I'll keep it. the receipt was for a bootleg Beatles CD I bought for 10 bucks in 1994 at a record store in Cincinnati called The Wizard's Cave. Great store. The store had two parts: one was on the top, facing the main street, and the companion store was to the side, going downhill, facing a side street. During my stay in Cinci, I went to the one facing the main street, and checked out their bootlegs, but they were more expensive than I wanted to pay. Then, the very morning that I was leaving Cinci to go home, I learned of the companion Wizard's Cave facing the side street. I went in and found they had lots of good stuff at good prices -- it might have been a used records store, in fact. Anyway, I'd always wished I'd had more time to look through that store, and since then I always think of The Wizard's Cave as my favorite record store. I guess I kept the receipt as a momento of that visit. The receipt records my visit to The Wizard's Cave as occuring on 06-19-94 at 12:47pm. Not sure if the store is still there or not.

Going through some other papers, I was surprised to see some religious content in some of my writing, although I was an agnostic. For example, I found an unfinished poem written down on a piece of paper, probably from the mid-1990s. I assume it is an original, despite the archaic phrasing, and not something I copied from someplace else:

I.

T'WAS TRUE, T'WAS TRUE,
FOR THOU I LOVED
FOR YOU, DEAR ANGEL,
HANGING ON THE CROSS
DYING ON THE WOOD
T'WAS TRUE, FOR YOU
I LOVED.

II.

BUT ANON, A RAIN
HATH FALLEN, DEW
ALL ABOUT THOU, ANGEL,

That's where it ends. I admit that today the line about "hanging on the cross, dying on the wood" jumped out at me in a way that it wouldn't have done 2 years ago, because of its Christian symbolism. But of course such symbolism is common in our culture, where talk of salvation ("I want your salvation, whoa oh whoa" -- Rancid), crown of thorns, crucifying people, second coming, etc., are bandied about. Although when I used such common currency, I didn't really know what I was talking about, I think, not being really informed about religious doctrines.

Some more poetry I found today, written down on losse-leaf paper, probably from the mid-1990s. Like the other poem, it's also written down in all caps, something I've done for most of my life because of admiring comics lettering.

A SLICE OF SPEAK, BACKWARD
SPOOLING WHINE OF CLACK,
THAT PLAYS BACK MY MISTAKEN WORDS,
AND THAT'S THE END.

BUT TO CRY, NOW,
AFTER ALL THESE YEARS,
EATEN, WASTED, DONE,
OR DOING STILL BUT STILL DONE,
DONE, WITH ALL THE HALF-SICK HEART
DONE, GONE ALL MY DAYS DYING,
LOVE IS ALL LYING,
AND LIFE IS NOT LIVING, ALONE.

THE CHILD-BIRTH:

TOWARD A PAINLESS END,
WRITHE.
THAT LIFE LIES I SAY,
YOU LIE, ALL LIARS,
BUT YOU WHO MADE ME,
NAKED, HOWLING,
PUSHING LIFE THRU YOU IN EVERY CRY
ARE NOT LYING,
AND LIFE IS BRUTAL TRUTH'S REWARD,
ALL YOURS.
AND YET, NOT

THERE IS A DEVIL

AND NOW, REVOLUTION, TOO,
IS JUST ANOTHER WORD,
EVEN THAT -- A NOTHING SAID,
THE CRY OF THE OPPRESSED,
THE DEMAND OF A KING,
THE SLOGAN OF THE TV,
THE GREETING OF THE WAITTRESS
AND THE MAILMAN AT THE DOOR,
ALL REVOLUTION.

And finally, I found a frail piece of paper which dates from sometime in the mid-1980s, I'd wager...maybe 1986-87. Back then, I used to fantasize about having my own line of comics, and what original titles I'd publish. This paper contains a list of titles that I wanted my dream line to publish, and how many issues there would be -- or how many I'd be involved in anyway, before presumably handing the title over to others. Here's the list:

SUPERHEROES:
THE FREEDOM FORCE (26 ISSUES)
THE PROTECTORS (11 ISSUES)
TORGO (17 ISSUES)
DAUGHTER ETERNITY (17 ISSUES)
ATOMIC MAN (13 ISSUES)
MERMAIDEN (10 ISSUES)
DARK PHANTOM (20 ISSUES)
CAPTAIN UNIVERSE (26 ISSUES)
EVIL EYE COMICS (12 ISSUES) (MAGAZINE FORMAT)
TRIPLE-THREAT THRILLERS (14 ISSUES) (MAGAZINE) (QUARTERLY)
THE NEW DARK PHANTOM (15 ISSUES)

MONSTER/FANTASY/GHOSTS/MYSTERY:
GHOSTLY TALES (34 ISSUES) (BI-MONTHLY; MONTHLY)
SCARY TALES (26 ISSUES)
TALES TO ASTOUND (26 ISSUES)

POP-ART! PRODUCTIONS:
POP-ART! (20 ISSUES) (NO ADS) (2 ANNUALS) (11 QUARTERLYS)
COMIC ART (18 ISSUES) (NO ADS) (1 ANNUAL) (9 QUARTERLYS)
"__________" (INDIVIDUAL TITLES) -- (? ISSUES)

ONE-SHOTS:
LIL' COMIC (NO ADS)
WAITING FOR THE RAIN (ADS)
SEA ADVENTURES (ADS)

LIMITED SERIES:
HEROES AND GODS OF NORSE MYTHOLOGY (6 ISSUES?) (NO ADS) (MONTHLY)
HEROES AND GODS OF GREEK MYTHOLOGY (6 ISSUES?) (NO ADS) (MONTHLY)
THE BOOK OF EGYPTIAN DIETIES (6 ISSUES?) (NO ADS) (MONTHLY)
THE BIBLICAL HANDBOOK TO THE CHILDREN OF GOD (6 ISSUES?) (NO ADS) (MONTHLY)
THE OLD TESTAMENT (24 ISSUES) (NO ADS) (MONTHLY)
THE NEW TESTAMENT (24 ISSUES) (NO ADS) (MONTHLY)
THE POWER OF TORGO (6 ISSUES) (NO ADS) (BI-MONTHLY)
SLOP-ART! (8 ISSUES) (NO ADS) (BI-MONTHLY)
"THE SUPER HUMOUR EPIC" -- 1ST SERIES -- (6 ISSUES) (MONTHLY) (ADS)
"THE SUPER HUMOUR EPIC" -- 2ND SERIES -- (6 ISSUES) (MONTHLY) (ADS)
THE SUPERHERO WARS (12 ISSUES) (MONTHLY) (ADS)

Although I was not a buyer of super-epics like Secret Wars and Crisis initially, by 1986 I'd warmed up to them a bit, and it seemed like any real company would have to have a big ol' "superhero war" of its own, where all of the company's superheroes would fight some big cosmic battle. "The super humour epic" would be a big epic involving the company's humor characters. (I don't have any humor titles listed here, so maybe there was originally a second page to this list containing that.) I think that "The Book of Egyptian Deities" and so on were supposed to be like "The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe" comics (is OHOTMU actually a "comic"?) although providing entries for mythological figures instead of superheroes. I think the "Old Testament" and "New Testament" were supposed to be adaptations of them. I probably had little idea what was in them, otherwise I would have provided more issues for telling the story of the Old Testament than the New Testament, since the former is much, much longer than the latter. Anyway, I don't know how you'd tell some of them in comics form.

Well, that's all I wanted to share. I threw out two garbage bags full of stuff so far. I was able to pull out a box of comics that were at the far end of the closet. That box contained a bunch of stuff I'd gotten last year at the most recent con I'd attended, all of it unread. I may want to drag that box into the living room and read some of 'em at last, like this 1965 issue of "The Sea Devils"...or Mighty Marvel Western #4....or that Kirby issue of Mister Miracle....


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