“What if we were just dreaming? What if it were all a dream we concocted, all this drama, the imagined protagonist and antagonist, each side of it, all for the sake of fun? What if one could get in on the joke as the enemies we imagine come over our horizons, and instead of dred, fear, and anger we laugh at this great mess we’ve made all for the sake of knowing who we really are at depth. Till then… we play, suffer, soften, and open as the blossoming flower of deepest humor.”
— Mediha
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Catching up
Wow! It has been such a long haul. My last blog entry was posted on the old site in August 2024! I’ve since made some changes. Honestly the past three years have been a blur, a diesel freight train speeding past, the cargo of which was a lot of change, much of it good, and much of it challenging. Life, though hard at times, losing collaborators, losing youth, hit-points of health, losing certain naive and comforting outlooks, still beautifully moves on. With majestic colors, strong contrasting hues somewhere between blue and red, She paints a pretty sweet life.
I’ve crossed the finish line of getting some first issue paperbacks completed! In December 2024, both The Master Returns and The Feminists from Outer Space finally went to print. You can buy copies of both here from the DiamondeyesPortal site. Check me out at IndyPlanet for M.R., and for Tantric Series back issues. Tantric Series may be the last as I’ve been focusing on printing single trade paperbacks for now. Dunno, we’ll see. The thought has crossed my mind to hire in a writer, but this car payment’s killing me.
Just this March, I finished up the retooling of my audiobook, “The Last Khoorlrhani Warrior,” redoing the soundtrack, that is, which previously was flagged for many copyright violations— my love of and being inspired by Tangerine Dream, and Dead Can Dance getting the best of me— and upon remembering all of that fuss, undoing it all and fixing that, I see in looking back the enormity of the commitment much of all of this has been, and how long I’ve kept my foot on the gas with it. Now, I can walk away from it. Though I cannot listen to it now– I mean that’s how deep the groove was cut in getting it done–I hope to cool my jets on it, forget it, and then one of these winters, close to Christmas, listen to it with no editorial intentions. To add to that, I revamped the site with this great new template. Yeah, so I’m a little burnt, but coming out of it.
“Painting the cottage in sweet major blues and deep reds…”
All n all, quite a creative year. Now what; painting the cottage in sweet major blues and deep reds, and visiting my guru and the others on Sundays and in passing, keeping things simple. We enjoyed several birthdays, one of which was Santosha Ma’s 73rd. She’s was and always is amazing.
Despite a lack of interest in sitting at my drawing table which became the docking station for birthday gifts to give away this spring , and did more outside of that to store old pencil eraser bits than serve as a drawing table, I actually did enjoy a few sporadic drawing sessions and even inked a few sequence pages this past winter (see vid below), impressions of what will come after “The Enemy Imagined.”
What else… oh yeah, this post’s featured imagary! It was colored by Patrick Hernandez. Pretty cool, eh!?
I’ve actually been working with Patrick Hernandez and Geoff Mosse to revamp the latest issue of the Nadthsade Dragon’s, “#7 The Enemy Imagined.” This small gem of a narrative has still got me somehow. I don’t feel it’s done. It’s great fun, but it squeaks like a tricycle that needs some caring sprays of WD40, and all of that squeak has less to do with the actual issue (which I love), and more with what I want to surround it by, some added layers– i.e. exposition, a blog piece and maybe some other cleverly tied together pieces. So… here we are.
The Enemy Imagined
What is The Enemy Imagined about? Well firstly it’s about me. It might be about you, if you want to ask the same questions to yourself, and come to your own conclusions. Through a set of Diamond Eyes, It’s about how I am captured at times by ideas that do not serve me, (and Us) and how I am rescued by my deeper self. It’s about how peace, unity, and happiness is all on me. The difficult business, It’s all on me to be conscious and creative as possible in order to do good work, to account for myself; “Am I being a dick, Am I loving, Am I wrong,” as opposed to “Hey don’t be a dick…” directing vital peace making energy at others, to the enemies imagined who define me on the battlefield of my ego.
The Enemy Imagined, the story that is, posits that a sort of anonymous bravery, and humility is the mark of a true warrior, the one who battles to know himself/herself through and through and stands thusly, imperfect and yet divine, releasing all delusions.
I observe my world, and how I create so much of it, particularly what I imagine about myself, and what I imagine of others. This inner vibe of my assumed self is the very key and time signature of the song that serves as the soundtrack to my outlook. I’ll admit, I’ve made a lot of bad music along the way to meeting and learning from Santosha Ma, my guru.
After she’d talk me down from all the various trees that I— the cat— ran myself up in my ego tripping, my adventuring (see the Last Khoorlhani Warrior), and after regaining sanity to be free from what was once assumed, analogies of the process to gain clarity made its way to the pages of a journal or a comic.
Santosha Ma, my guru has always said;
“(People) always start from where they are separate. You write your story of yourself from where you are always triggered and go off seeking outcomes and meaning despite what is revealed– what is deeper and more satisfying– if you would just stay located, present (in the room of the Heart), here already.”
“Un-enlightenment is self hatred,” Santosha said on her anniversary in 2023.
“You’ve got to stay in the room. You’ve got to have that conviction.”
‘Self Love,’ That is how I put it, that particular day. A few of us were asked, “What do you think enlightenment is,” and when it was my turn to answer it was somewhere along the lines of, “A love of oneSelf so profound that you cannot fear (hate, covet, compete with) the other because a sense of lack no longer registers,” because you accept yourself, flaws and all and are completely in your skin, and have chosen to be happy regardless of life happening.
I had always wondered, and imagined that the deepest and most true Self-love must be enlightenment, at a good start at least, an understanding serving recognition of who really IS– which is consciousness expressing all forms. With this love so sure, the other maybe grins or not, is perhaps attracted or repelled, is loud in your face or silently reflected in your eyes, either way the present moment grounds us in the saner depths of this moment where anything can still happen, or not, but it is ok, either way and love will win because you are loving everything more than haters can handle hating you. Who is that anyway?
A true warrior
Nothing else matters, until… of course you turn on your television and you’re reminded who you really are, given a mission, a problem to solve, a banner to fly, a war to win.
Aw c’mon, There’s got to be a funner shorthand to say all of this, Neil.
There is: Read the comic. I do this, create this shorthand of my own struggle to affirm my better instincts and reinforce self awareness. It is sadhana.
I create characters that represent my guru’s wisdom and enlightenment, and I dare to represent my own in as much as it seems authentic to me. It’s a dance. Sometimes my feet are a pair of lefts.
I thought given the times, the title “The Enemy Imagined” was fitting,
“Everyone always thinks the times are so different. It’s the same with every age, people endlessly being triggered.” Santosha Ma said this over lunch, during one of our Sunday potlucks recently.
And yet that means the title, The The Enemy Imagined fits all the time, not just because of the political weather of the 2020’s. It means The Enemy Imagined is the same old disease that stems from the same idea of say ‘dad,’ glued to the televised and printed narratives, not seeing past his nose of leaning to the left or the right, that for generations gives birth to a world of unconscious reactivity to contrasting ideas, enemies, and warfare.
I thought about what Santosha Ma said as I scanned the tree filled hills and mountains further across from the vista of Santosha Ma’s beautifully tiled patio on a warm Sunday afternoon. I observed how I’ve taken up this torch from time to time, triggered in reactivity as I, now a middle aged man who more than occasionally reads the news and begins to think in knee-jerk fashion, “This country’s going down the toilet,” etc.
And even if that’s true– not just scare tactics on the left, a spoonful I’ve swallowed on the right, or whatever, the point is major socio political shifts cannot dictate Self-love. Only my preoccupation with the wrong ideas of myself distorts the perfect calm and open hearted state of Me as suggestions bend the light with fear propaganda, but only if I choose to be so preoccupied with these wrong ideas. Here’s the thing though, when disarmed by my deeper Self, do I again take up the fight? Why? How about you? Investigate for yourself?
This is how The Enemy Imagined made it to print in my creative endeavors. Click the link and if you don’t see all the comic pages, please do subscribe and the rest will unlock. I would love to hear from you. Leave a comment.
The Revamp
So.. this revamped episode#7 effort all started when I handed the coloring duties of my own art over to the wonderful Patrick Hernandez. These particular pages, will come in an issue that takes place after “The Enemy Imagined,”– no title as of yet. Patrick does tons of work for both Marvel and DC and has done great work for my own Master Returns issue one (available now) and issue two (still in the works).
Anyway something was cathartic about handing him black and whites for The Nadthsade Dragon. It was like letting go a bit more to myself via the help of another, seeing the work through their eyes, their effort and care. I’ll post a few sneak peaks of the untitled issue #8 work as I write more of these. If you’re not registered, please do so that you don’t miss out.
Geoff Mosse, my main artist for The Master Returns, also provided a new cover for this revamp issue of The Nadthsade Dragon that I’ve had in mind. Look out for future blog posts and check my Instagram account.
To be clear, color wise, I liked what I did for the issue, sure, and will still make that version available, but I wanted to try changing things up by wearing far less hats going forward, and seeing what my own artwork looked like via the collaboration.
Finally, the whims come and go. One came just this past weekend. (See below). For this next one I really want to go for some cyberpunk vibes, and stretch myself for creating sets, fleshing out environs, costumes and vehicles etc. I think of Daniel Warren Johnson’s Space Mullet often when trying to get down to brass tacks of the direction I’d like to move in visually.
So I guess the creative call still rings loudly enough. I suppose I imagine that everything takes too long and gets me nowhere instead of enjoying the process of making art on and off the pages!
Ain’t that the ole crux?
Last words on “The Enemy Imagined.” I decided I will present the newer version as comic strips posted here on my new site, every 15th of the month beginning today, bit by glorious bit as I add commentary and tidbits like the above. It’ll also be on Instagram.
“The Nadthsade Dragon is sorta a vignette, shortform…” I tried to explain to my good friend, a devotee of Santosha Ma, who just read the latest. She gave me some feedback. I was telling her I was more satisfied with The Master Returns and The Feminists from Outer Space (which you should buy a copy. Did I say that yet).
“It works though,” She said regarding #7.
“It sorta helped me get through some stuff this year” I said.
And since the site is called Diamond Eyes, one would think that it has largely to do with seeing things differently and not fighting the same ole war.
