Highside

(I thought this comment, left on one of my previous posts, deserved a post of its own, with my answer to the question it posed. -- PL)

"mikeandraph87 said…

I noticed this weekend marks 1 years since the TMNT property was sold. How do you feel today compared to a year ago leading up the sale? I'm sure you've progressed well."

I was aware in the back of my mind that it was in October of last year that the sale went through, but I had not remembered it was this weekend. Interesting. The short answer to your question would be something like "I feel pretty good."

Now here's the long answer.

As I recall, back in the months preceding the sale, when we were going through the very complicated process of negotiation and construction of the purchase and sale agreement, I was sort of on "pins and needles", as they say. The likelihood that the sale would actually happen had waxed and waned a few times, but now it seemed that it would in fact transpire and it was a very exciting albeit frustrating time for me, as I could not share this information with anyone outside of a small circle of people actually working on the deal. Unfortunately, that meant I couldn't tell my artist friends at Mirage, which was very hard. I really hated keeping it a secret from them. I was very stressed out, though I knew it was something I needed and wanted to do.

As I have said in previous posts on this blog, I expected a huge sense of relief when the sale was through, and there WAS some sense of that, but not as much as I'd hoped. The large-scale relief was to come later, probably eight months or so later… but it did not come all at once, or neatly. Instead, it came wrapped up in a torrent of feelings which I have been calling my "emotional highside".

A "highside" is a term from motorcycle racing, explained to me once by my friend Dale Quarterley, the great roadracer I sponsored back in the days of "Team Mirage". A highside is a crash in which the rider is thrown off and OVER the motorcycle, as opposed to a "lowside" crash, which is where the bike slides out from UNDER the rider and the rider comes down on the track behind the bike.

If I am remembering Dale's explanation adequately, it goes something like this: Imagine holding a toy motorcycle, with one hand gripping the front wheel and the other hand gripping the rear wheel. Now, while you are holding on to the wheels, you start twisting them -- not turning them on their axles -- but TWISTING them in opposite directions. This action is analogous to what happens on a real motorcycle, especially a road racing motorcycle, as cornering at high speeds -- through the phenomenon of "counter-steering", which is what you do on a two-wheeled vehicle to go around corners fast (countersteering is turning the handlebars in the opposite direction -- for example, turning the handlebars left to go right) -- puts a lot of twisting force into that motorcycle's mostly-rigid frame. As you do this, the frame of the motorcycle, which contains the engine and most of the other running components of the bike, tries to keep everything together by bending ever so slightly, like a huge spring. But the thing is this -- that frame is not really meant to bend TOO much, as rigidity is important in a motorcycle frame to keep everything going forward in a precise and controllable manner. So you develop this immense torquing force which turns the bike into a huge spring… and at a certain point, the spring MUST let go.  Most often, the energy thus built up is released gradually by slowing down, straightening out the bike on a long straightway and so forth.

But sometimes it lets go drastically, violently, due to a combination of circumstances -- a bit too much steering input, a shade too little traction on the racing surface, or just a hair too much throttle from the rider, to name a few -- and in the blink of an eye, all of that immense spring-like force is released, the motorcycle's frame straightens out, and the rider gets flung over the top of the motorcycle. I understand that it is one of the least desirable ways to crash… not least because you are being flung off in FRONT of a motorcycle which may still have great forward momentum, making YOU a potential target as it slides or bounces, riderless and out of control, down the track.

In my case, what I came to realize is that for many years, over essentially the whole course of the TMNT experience, or at least during those twenty-two years when the business side of things went crazy with the mass merchandising success of the TMNT, and I was struggling to cope with that success using not much more than whatever native intelligence and wits I had, not having had any formal training in this kind of stuff (I was just a guy who liked to draw pictures, for cryin' out loud!), I was being "torqued" by it, slowly but surely, over the years. There were a lot of things I felt during that period which I dealt with by just trying NOT to feel them, as I could not really figure out any other way to deal with them.

It wasn't ALL Turtles stuff, of course -- there were other things that factored into it. But the largest share of it came from the TMNT experience and my sense of very often -- TOO often -- being a "square peg in a round hole" during those years.

In a way, it was a "highside in slow motion", if you will, because the real release of all this pent-up energy didn't come until a long time after the sale -- really, within the last four or five months. I am not even sure if this "emotional highside" has ended yet -- I still feel like in some ways I'm like that guy sliding down the race track, leathers being ground away from friction with the track surface, body pummeled by impacts against the pavement. I know that eventually I will come to a stop, and be able to pick myself up. I think I am getting close to that. Maybe I am already starting to stand up. But the thing I keep reminding myself of is this -- the "torquing" took over twenty years, and maybe I shouldn't expect the release, and recovery FROM the release, to happen overnight. -- PL

Balance

I suspect that from time immemorial, human beings have been stacking rocks one atop the other, particularly when they are near the seashore and find an abundance of convenient stones to stack. I did this pile during the second week of our two weeks in Maine…



… and it actually stayed up for about a day until a big storm blew through and knocked half of it down.

The following day, Jeannine and I walked the Marginal Way in Ogunquit prior to having a wonderful dinner at a place called "Five-O" in that little coastal town with Emily and her friends Jenelle and Lindsay. The Marginal Way is a very cool 1.5 mile paved path which follows the coastal rocks between Perkins Cove and Ogunquit Beach. It's quite a beautiful walk, with some great vistas of the ocean and the shore rock formations. The day we did the walk, the winds were blowing quite hard and the waves were quite spectacular. Here's a shot I took of Jeannine and me along the way…



Further on down the path, we were startled and amused to find more evidence of what I postulated in the first line of this blog entry -- dozens and dozens of small piles of beach rocks stacked on some of the larger rock formations near the path. Someone (or a group of someones) had been quite busy doing a lot of balancing of stones. This photo represents about a tenth of the total number of these things that we saw that day in this area.



And balance is one theme with which I come away from this two-week vacation. It's the first time I can remember that I have really fully enjoyed a vacation, and the first time I can remember that I was sad to leave and come home. I feel as though I have made significant strides towards moving to a more balanced, healthy life, one in which worries and concerns take their true proportionate place alongside the joys and pleasures of life. I'm not completely there yet -- that's going to take a while still -- but this was a big step. -- PL

Things Change Part Five: "Festina Lente"

"Make haste slowly."

While thinking about a title for this blog entry, I remembered this English phrase, and when I Googled it, I got a number of hits, many relating to the Roman Emperor Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus, as well as the Latin version of the phrase, "Festina Lente". The meaning of the phrase is basically that things in life should be done "with a proper balance of urgency and diligence", to quote Wikipedia.

I've been giving a lot of thought to this concept recently, and trying to stick to it. With the major changes in my life begun by the realizations described in "Things Change" Part One, I have been re-evaluating many aspects of my life, and trying to keep the good ones, ditch the bad ones, and forge a new way forward that will be better for me and for my loved ones, especially my wife.

I have this great sense of urgency to do the right things, while also trying to make up for my past errors. It is a useful motivating force, and I am glad it is there, but I am finding that it is leading me to become a bit too impatient with seeing those necessary changes made, and their effects to be felt. What I am discovering is that there are things that can be changed within days (and I have done some of those), some within weeks (and I've done a few of those too), but some of these changes will take months and maybe even years. I need to relax and take things at the proper pace. It's difficult, and occasionally painful and frustrating, but I really do want -- and need -- to do this right. -- PL

"Things Change…" Part Four: Out of the woods

Change continues.

Over the last couple of days, with the helpful and timely encouragement of my wife, I have gone through my clothes closet, which -- for many years now -- has been another of my "disaster area" rooms. Jumbles of shirts on hangers… piles of used and new clothes on the floor, waiting in vain for an organizing hand… hats purchased years ago with an eye toward a more "sophisticated" look, and abandoned when I realized I didn't like the way they felt on my head… lumpy heaps of TMNT t-shirt samples from various licensees… shoes worn once, perhaps twice… and so on.

I have a lot of "spring cleaning" of this sort to do in the house and in my old studio, and Jeannine wisely suggested I start here. It made sense -- it's the smallest room, and she saw that it would be quite possibly the easiest, for at least one big reason -- anything I decided to divest myself of could simply be tossed into a bag and brought to the local Goodwill Industries drop box.

So I tore into it, with somewhat ruthless -- but practical -- abandon. About half of the stuff I put into bags for Goodwill was brand new, never been worn… some of it never even out of plastic bags or off the original hangars. For example, I have over the last ten years bought many a four-pocket shirt -- guayaberas they're called, and also known as the "Mexican wedding shirt". Jeannine bought me my first one about ten years or so ago, in Portsmouth, NH. She'd seen it in a funky little clothing shop and -- knowing my fondness for pockets -- thought I might like it.

And she was right.

Little did she know that she was starting a fashion trend for me which would last up until about a month ago. Really, with the exception of a few formal occasions, I'm pretty sure that for the last decade I have worn four-pocket shirts exclusively -- light cotton ones in the summer, heavier linen or hemp ones in the winter. And they were extremely practical, as I tend to carry around a bunch of stuff with me that conveniently fit into those four pockets. They also didn't need to be tucked in, which -- given the weight I'd put on over those years -- was another plus.

But the four-pocket shirts are now fading from my life. I'm keeping a few -- they're comfortable, and I've discovered that with a few of them at least they actually look okay when tucked in. (You can't use the lower tier of two pockets, but that's okay). However, I suspect that over the next year or so those will disappear as well. They're just not me anymore.

And that's because in so many ways, I'm not me anymore. At least, not the me from before my "epiphany". Yes, I do retain much of my previous self, my long-established personality quirks, good and bad, my basic nature… but so much has changed. I am seeing life in such a fresh way. It's not entirely easy, although I see it as being very nearly entirely good -- I'm struggling with a lot of emotions that have been bottled up, throttled down, covered in dust for a long time. I've told Jeannine a few times that I feel like some kind of animal which has molted, abandoning its old, worn, dead shell for a new one, one which is raw and new and open to lots of feelings, both good and bad.

The new shell will toughen up over time, and this phase will go away. But my goal -- and I have pledged to Jeannine that I will stick to it (I mean, yesterday I literally got down on one knee, took her hands, and made this pledge) -- is that I will never let that shell get between us again.

My therapist (who I wish I had started seeing a long time ago, as he has helped me a great deal over the last two years) cautions me that these kinds of evolutions are not linear, that they can be more of a spiral path, and that I may from time to time come close to or even temporarily enter that foggy realm from which I have escaped. I believe he's right, and I will be on the lookout for those missteps. It's possible that I will make them.

But I now have great motivation to avoid them… and that, I think, will help me a lot.

So back to the clothes closet… into more than a dozen thirteen-gallon plastic drawstring bags went piles of shirts, pants, shoes, hats, and t-shirts. I even tossed in all except one of the "Signature Series" TMNT shirts that had been produced using artwork I'd done specifically for them. I did keep a few of the old glow-in-the-dark TMNT t-shirts from the early years, though I suspect they may not stay too long.

And the sense of freedom after completing this task was wonderful. I still have a long way to go -- there's a lot more stuff to go through and get rid of. But this was a great start, and I thank Jeannine once again for gently pushing me to do it. -- PL

P.S. The "Out of the Woods" title for this blog entry comes from two sources -- one, my great sense of relief that I have somehow managed to stumble "out of the woods" of depression and unhappiness; and two, for the beautiful creature in the photo I took yesterday while Jeannine and I were bicycling on our new favorite bike path. Jeannine spotted the deer, and alerted me to its presence… and the deer was nice enough to stay in one spot while I unlimbered my camera and got a couple of shots with the zoom lens.

The bitter and the sweet

This is another comment that I thought deserved more than just a response in the "Comments" section. In a comment on my "Step Toads" post, ‪Dane E5R‬ said...

"So, Peter. This has nothing to with your current post, but I've been wondering this since I've been following this blog and seeing how much it appears you seem to be enjoying yourself these days.

Do you still believe that life is, at best, bittersweet?"

The short answer is "Yes, I do."

But I feel that deserves a little clarification. My interpretation of that quote from Jack Kirby's character Darkseid in Kirby's last issue of "Mister Miracle" is not (as some people take it) that life at its absolute best moments is bittersweet, but that life taken as a whole is. In other words, life is a sometimes ragged, sometimes smooth, blend of experiences and emotions ranging from bitter to sweet. And given the nature of human existence, that's the best we can expect.

I am discovering that perhaps the most important thing is how you deal with, how you accept with grace, the bitter parts (the sweet parts are pretty easy to deal with, after all). And even though I am finding much more joy in my life recently (and hope to continue to do so), there is still sadness. But I think I am doing better -- and hope to do better still -- at finding the right balance between the two. -- PL

"Things Change…" Part Three: Falling away

I picked up a new MacBook Pro laptop yesterday, and have spent a few hours copying old files onto it, re-installing some key programs, and generally trying to get things back to the way they were -- or at least close to it. So far, it seems to be going pretty well. AOL is working, I can get on the Internet, and I don't think I have lost anything vital (of course, that estimation could change as things progress).

I have made one big decision, though, which I was not expecting… but which I can see now is connected to the continuing series of changes going on in my life.

I have not -- and won't -- copy my "TMNT Stuff" folder to the new computer.

"TMNT Stuff" was a folder I'd maintained across several laptops -- in fact, I think it started on my G4 desktop Mac. I put just about everything and anything TMNT-related into it -- art that I'd scanned, some of which I'd colored in Photoshop; all of the art files for the 2K3 TMNT animated series that Lloyd and his crew sent me for approval; plots and notes for the stories I created for the TMNT Volume 4 comics, as well as the Quark (and later InDesign) files for the comics themselves; various interesting emails and web clippings related to TMNT; some important contracts, various drafts of movie scripts and treatments and outlines; and so on. The last time I checked (about a minute ago) this folder was slightly over ten gigabytes.

(I am not deleting this folder full of files -- I will be keeping it on a back-up external hard drive in case i ever need to refer to it again.)

Lately, I have been feeling the sense that the Turtles are "falling away" from me -- I know that is imprecise and very subjective, but it is the closest I can get to articulating how it feels. After the sale of the TMNT property to Viacom in October of 2009, I felt some immediate relief, some significant lessening of my sense of responsibility to and for the Turtles. But I didn't experience the real -- you know, I'm not even sure how to describe it, but I had this kind of anticipation of a feeling of liberation or something. And it wasn't there.

But now it is.

In the last week or two I have actually found myself breathing more easily, and feeling like my shoulders and neck aren't as tight as they once were. I find myself thinking of the Turtles as something from my past, not something of my future… which is a little freaky, given how long they'd been part of my present, but even as a freaky feeling it isn't unpleasant. It feels… relaxing.

I'm not eradicating the Turtles from my life. That would be foolish -- they are a huge part of my personal and creative history. And someday, maybe I will play with them again. But right now, that day seems very, very far away.

Those of you who were/are fans of my TMNT Volume 4 comics may wonder what this means for the continuation/conclusion of that series. I have been doing some soul-searching about that, and at the risk of disappointing some of those fans, I have to say that I don't think the series will ever be finished as I had originally intended it to be. I just don't have any desire to leap back into it, and in fact, I am a little afraid of trying to do so, given my sense of of trepidation about getting sucked back into the world of the TMNT at a time when I finally feel like I am getting free from it.

So this is my current thinking: The art, scripting and lettering for issue #31 is done, and the inking on the art for #32 is just about finished. I may finish up the final details of these two issues, and publish them not in print form but on the Web.

Following that, I will take the plots that I have written out for what would have been the concluding six or seven issues of the comic book, beef them up a little bit, and post them online, either at the Mirage Licensing site or on this blog, so as to give readers of Volume 4 a clear look at how I intended to conclude that series.

I'll have to double-check to make sure I'm within my rights to do this, but I think it will be okay. And in all honesty, at this point I think it's probably the only way this series will get anything close to its intended conclusion. I apologize in advance to anyone who will be disappointed by this approach, but I sincerely see it as the only reasonable way to go forward, all things considered. -- PL

"Things Change…" Part Two: Changing things...

Following up on my previous long personal post…

Things have changed, and continue to change.

I seem to have experienced a sort of "personal seismic shift" as regards my relationship to the "stuff" that I talked about last time. I was walking with my good friend Len last week and discussing this very issue, when I suddenly said to him something like this: "With the exception of most of the artwork I own, both by me and by others, a few objects and artifacts which hold sentimental value, my tools and a few motorcycles, and the stuff I need on a day-to-day basis (clothes, computer, etc.), I feel like I could just take the rest, heap it in a big pile, and ship it to the nearest Goodwill or recycling center."

It's pretty strange to feel this way, after so many years of feeling the exact opposite. But it is also quite liberating. I spent some time over the last few days walking around my old studio, looking at all the stuff in the storage space underneath it. A significant portion of that lump of stuff is a set of shelves of boxes of multiple copies of old Turtle comics… and as I looked at them, I started to think, "Why am I keeping all of these?" I couldn't think of a very good answer.

So beginning soon, I think I will be selling most of this collection. I will probably keep most if not all of the limited numbers of first printings of the early issues (don't have many of those anyway), and maybe five copes of each of the rest of them. But the rest will go. I plan to discuss with Katie how to sell these through the Mirage Licensing web site. Some of them will likely be offered for prices higher than the cover price, as they are legitimate collectibles now.

I am also considering offering for sale most of my collection of TMNT toys from the first big licensing/merchandising era, but I haven't reached a conclusion on that idea yet. -- PL

"Things Change…" Part One

(Note: This is a bit of a long one… and it's one I have debated with myself about posting. It's very personal, has nothing much to do with Turtles or comics or artwork, and thus will likely be of little interest to many of the readers of this blog. But… it means a lot to me, and who knows -- it might help someone else in a similar situation.)


"Close your sleepy eyes, my little buckaroo
While the light of the westerns skies
Is shining down on you
Don't you know it's time for bed
Another day is through
So go to sleep, my little buckaroo"


Back in high school, I bought my first record album (you know, one of
those big floppy vinyl things you scratched with a needle to get sound out of), and it was, I believe, the first one released by Michael Parks, then starring in the short-lived (one season) "Then Came Bronson" TV series on NBC. I loved that show, and I loved the theme song, "Long Lonesome Highway", which Parks sang. He had a nice voice, and though many repeated playings I wore out that album, and his next one as well. The songs on the albums were mostly old favorites -- a lot of country/western as I recall.


"Don't you realize, my little buckaroo
It was from a little acorn
That the oak tree grew
Just remember that your dad
Was once a kid like you
So go to sleep, my little buckaroo"

"Little Buckaroo" was, according to Wikipedia, written by M.K. Jerome and Jack Scholl. I can't recall which of Michael Parks' first two albums featured this tune, but it made a big impression on me, and even this many years later, I can still recall most of the lyrics.

Why am I mentioning this? Well, I've been searching around for a pithy phrase to sum up something that recently (about a week ago) happened to me (and in many ways is CONTINUING to happen to me), something that I believe has literally changed my life, for the better -- to say the least. And I kept coming back to those lines in the second verse:

It was from a little acorn
That the oak tree grew

Sometimes, big things spring unexpectedly from small beginnings, when you least expect them. So it was for me this past week, when I was about a month and a half into a project that I had been meaning to do for a number of years.

My wife Jeannine has, over the years since we got together (about twenty-eight so far), made some very nice photo albums covering our early years as a couple, and many from the days when our daughter was an infant, up until she was in high school. I'm glad she did, as -- at least in the pre-digital days -- I took very few photos. It's a wonderful memory archive to have, but for some time I have been thinking it would be a good idea -- and useful. to boot -- to make a digital archive of all of these photos by scanning each of them.

I'd held off for a long time, because I was reluctant to commit myself to the laborious, tedious process of scanning batches of photos at a time on my large flatbed scanner, then going through the hassle of extracting each individual photo from that group scan and saving it as an individual file. I knew it would be a great deal of boring grunt work.

About a year ago, I saw a small photo scanner in one of the many catalogs I get in the mail. It was the "Pandigital SCN02 PhotoLink One Touch Scanner". I was intrigued, because it seemed like it might provide an elegant solution to my problem -- it featured quick scanning of individual photos, each saved to an SD memory card slotted into the back of the scanner. It even purported to have software built in that would rotate the scans into perfect orientation.

However, I didn't buy it. I'm not sure why… I guess I just wasn't ready to start the project.

But a couple of months ago, I did finally buy one of those scanners -- I just really wanted to see what it could do. So I got it out of the box, hooked it up to a power source (no computer connection required), and tried it out. I was initially disappointed because it didn't work very well with most of the dozen or so photos that I had randomly selected for this test. Admittedly, the instructions DID warn that photos with lots of dark areas, especially near the edges, could confuse the scanner's software and cause errors. And that was exactly true -- the bad part being that MOST of the photos I was going to scan fell into that category.

So I started thinking. The scanner came with a sleeve with a clear front and a black background, into which you were supposed to slip the photo to be scanned. When inserted into the scanner, the sleeve would allegedly protect the photo and the black background would work with the software to allow it to rotate the finished scan into alignment. I wondered -- what would happen if the photo was set against a WHITE background instead? So I cut a piece of white index stock to the same size as that black background, set a photo on top of it, and ran it through the scanner.

The result was much better, though not perfect. The white background prevented the scanner software from rotating the scanned image into perfect alignment, so I would need to do that myself in Photoshop. BUT… practically all of the scans came out beautifully, dark areas near the edges or not. And I was very pleased with the resolution and color fidelity of the scans -- as far as I could see, they were about equal to what I could have gotten with my big scanner. And the speed was amazing -- about two or three seconds per photo.

So I'd picked a winner! Now all I needed to do was start taking all of the photos out of the old photo albums and then start running them through this cute little scanner. As I did so, I realized that the albums Jeannine had used contained what are somewhat laughingly called "magnetic" pages -- these are actually stiff paper coated with some kind of sticky waxy substance, with a clear plastic overlay on each side. This type of album page has it's advantages, chief among them being that you can orient your photos in any direction, and even overlap photos if desired. But one of the big downsides (apart from them often being a real pain to extract photos from, given the tendency of that sticky stuff to REALLY stick, especially after a long time has passed) is that they don't age well. About half of these pages had already yellowed or browned in an unsightly way.

I consulted with Jeannine and we decided to go with new, archival-quality plastic photo sleeve inserts to replace the "magnetic" pages. I found some through amazon.com which would fit nicely into the three-ring binders that Jeannine had originally used. The downside of these is that you are limited to the orientation of the individual pockets, but as it turned out, that didn't bother Jeannine (or me), so I decided to go with it.

I dove into the project, scanning on average one album per day. As I completed scanning an album, I would put the photos into the new pages, then spend some time rotating and cropping the scans in Photoshop. That takes a lot longer than the actual scanning -- in fact, I've only finished that work on about five of twelve albums.

So that's all the technical stuff. It's not really what this entry is all about.

I was expecting that I would feel some nostalgia as I looked at all these photos, and I would be looking at them a lot -- as I took them out of the old album pages, as I scanned them, as I put them into the new pages, and as I looked at them on the screen of my computer. After all, I'd be seeing scenes from the days of falling head-over-heels in love with Jeannine, the wedding photos from our back yard in Dover, scenes of friends and family, some sadly no longer with us, and many scenes of our daughter Emily as she grew up. I mean, come on -- how could I look at all that and NOT get nostalgic? I'd have to be a stone or something.

And I did get nostalgic.

But what COMPLETELY blindsided me -- what I've been calling my "epiphany" -- was the rush of feeling, of clarity, that hit me like the proverbial ton of bricks one night about two weeks into the project. I suddenly realized how emotionally blocked I had been for many years, especially the last five or six.

There are many reasons for this, as I have realized through further thinking and analysis. A great deal, perhaps the largest chunk of it, comes from the Turtle years. I have often said to Jeannine that through those years, I very often felt like a square peg in a round hole, at least as far as the business end of things. It wasn't so bad when it was just me and Kev putting together our little comics and self-publishing them out of our living rooms -- that I could handle without many problems. But when the major licensing stuff hit in 1987… that was a whole different story.

We went from being two guys having fun with our comics to those same two guys trying to hold onto the reins of a runaway licensing and merchandising success. Piles of contracts, meetings with lawyers, hiring new people to make our business work -- this was all new to us, and we were learning as we went. And in short order, we discovered the wonderful world of parasites.

It is a sad fact of life that money can make people do weird things. I will freely admit that it's made me do some not-terribly-well-advised things over the years. I think Kevin would probably say the same. That's bad enough, when YOU are doing something dumb with YOUR money. But when creeps and jerks start coming out of the woodwork wanting to do THEIR dumb things with YOUR money, the crap level goes up precipitously. From a local politician blithely saying publicly that we should just donate six million dollars to the local schools, to the total stranger asking me for two hundred and fifty thousand dollars so that he could buy a local general store… it got pretty weird and disconcerting.

It was weird and disconcerting enough that I started making moves to protect myself and my privacy. Some of the things I did were common sense -- unlisted phone numbers, not advertising Mirage's street address, things like that. And they made a difference… they helped. But the other stuff…

What was the other stuff? Well, in short, it amounted to me slowly but surely, bit by bit, tiny increment by tiny increment, starting to draw away from people close to me, and from enjoyment of life itself. It was not intentional -- or at least, if there was any intention on my part, it was instinctive and unconscious. Slowly I built up emotional walls around me, distancing myself from many of those closest to me. Now, I'm not going to say I wasn't still close to these people -- I was. But there was a thickening, protective skin coming between us. (I'm tempted, somewhat, to say "a shell", but that might be too corny… and I'm not feeling particularly corny right now.)

There was -- and still is -- a physical manifestation of this protective covering, and I name it "stuff". What is this "stuff"? It's all -- or at least most -- of the things the Turtle money allowed me to buy. Toys, books, magazines, motorcycles, Segways, gadgets, computers, and on and on. It makes no rational sense that this "stuff" would protect me from anything… but humans are not always rational beings, no matter how much we desire to be. I continued to pile up this stuff around me, often literally -- anyone who has seen the two rooms in our house which I have taken over for my use has seen the truth of this. (This must change -- in fact, IS changing… but that's getting a little ahead of myself.)

The thing that really nailed me to the floor with my "epiphany", the thing that has made me feel like a total heel, the thing that has reduced me to a sobbing wreck on more than one occasion in the last week, was the realization of just how much this walling off of myself emotionally had affected my relationship with my wife, Jeannine. It crushed me. I am starting to come to grips with it now, but… it is very difficult.
The especially aggravating, insidious aspect of this situation is that I didn't even realize it was happening… and it's been happening for at least the last five years, and probably even longer than that -- more like ten or twenty years, I'd say. In fact, if someone had asked me the day before I experienced my "epiphany" if I loved my wife, I would have said "Yes, of course!" And it would have been true -- I love my wife. I've loved her since long before she became my wife, in fact in a remarkably short time after we'd started dating. She is a beautiful, kind, generous, funny, creative person. (And she makes GREAT raspberry muffins.) Like any couple, we've had times over the course of our relationship which have not been as rosy as other times. But I can state unequivocally that I have always loved her.
The big problem is that, until this past week, I had no idea just how much of that protective barrier I had let grow between us, and how much that had dulled and reduced my ability to let her know how I felt about her. It galls me to see now exactly how much time has gone by with this barrier in place.

I have spent much of this last week talking with Jeannine and spending more time with her on a daily basis than I have in a long time, trying to let her know exactly what kind of change has occurred in me. And it is an enormous change. One sign of it -- and this is going to perhaps sound a little mundane to some of you -- is that for the last five days, we have gone to bed at the same time. Or, to be more precise, I have adjusted my sleep schedule to hers. This comes after many years of a staggered schedule, wherein Jeannine would go to bed around 9:30 or 10, and I would stay up until 2 or 3 in the morning. (For a few years, it was even more extreme -- I'd stay up until four or five AM.) Originally, it was a vital ingredient to my staying sane and getting my work done -- the quiet of that time at night helped defray the angst of those crazy Turtle days back in the late 1980's and 1990's. I could work without having to take phone calls about this deal or that.

But… for a long time, it

hasn't

been

necessary.

And yet, I stuck with it. I honestly could not, at this point, tell you exactly why I did -- except that perhaps it was a combination of ingrained habit, mixed with some of that unconscious self-protective impulse -- as if by having this time with no one around, no calls coming in, no demands on me, then nothing bad could happen. Perhaps at some time in the future I will fully comprehend why I did this and some other things.

At the moment, what matters to me is that I feel as if a great, previously- unknown (but still present and heavy) weight has been lifted off my shoulders. Just getting up at the same time as Jeannine this past week has given me a tantalizing glimpse of what I have been missing.

Things are changing.

This doesn't mean I'm going to start doing comics again, or finish Volume 4 of the TMNT series, or jump into any particular new art project any time soon. (Actually, I hope that last thing DOES happen, but I'll have to wait and see.) But the important thing to me is that -- to use the old Biblical phrase -- the scales have fallen from my eyes. I feel recommitted to my marriage, to Jeannine, in a way which I haven't consciously felt in a long time. The strength of these feelings is almost scary.

But I think I can deal with it.

Because for the first time in a long time, when I go to sleep at night, I am actually looking forward to the coming day. -- PL

Thoughts on where this blog is heading

The first comment on my last post (about the Vintage Japanese Motorcycle show) was from Gale Benning, who wrote:

"I know of some people that don't really care about updates you do on your blog that are not TMNT related, but I find great joy in those that are not and this one in particular because it gives us a glimpse into your lives outside the universe of the pen & ink realm. "

It's a pleasant coincidence that Gale wrote and posted that just as I had been contemplating making an announcement about the future of this blog which relates closely to what he mentioned.

Astute readers of PALBLOG have probably noticed that since I started doing this blog, the TMNT-related content has varied in frequency, getting somewhat less frequent in recent months. Partly this is because I have already used up most of the coolest TMNT stuff I have in my files, but it is also reflective of a desire of mine to move forward from my association with TMNT. I'm not sure where that move will take me, but it is beginning to happen, slowly but surely.

Also, since I started this blog (a little over two years ago, on May 8, 2008), I've discovered that it is at least as much fun for me to talk about stuff I like or am currently thinking about as it is to talk about (and show) old Turtle stuff. It's turned into a fun way to keep family and friends somewhat informed about what I am doing, how my life is going... and some of them find that interesting, for which I am grateful. And I don't think I'll ever really be comfortable with the chaotic mess that is Facebook, so this form -- my blog -- is probably going to be the best outlet for me for this kind of stuff. I'm also taking inspiration from my wife's blog (as I did when I started PALBLOG) -- although I doubt I'll ever reach her level of beautiful, thoughtful writing, it's definitely a great standard to aspire to.

What I have also discovered through two years of doing this blog is that, in a way, it is serving as a kind of journal or diary for me. I've never been a consistent diarist, though I have tried many time, but for some reason this blog form helps. Obviously, it's not EXACTLY a diary, but it is enough of sort of one that it encourages me to continue.

So what can readers of PALBLOG expect to see in the future? To put it simply, more of the same, with less of an emphasis on Turtle stuff and more emphasis on personal thoughts, musings, rants, critiques, and so forth. Maybe even some posts about new art projects (if I ever start any, that is.) I'll not abandon the TMNT thing altogether -- I still have some items worth posting, and you never know what I'll uncover as I go through old piles of stuff. But for those people who come to PALBLOG looking for TMNT stuff and have lately found themselves grinding their teeth in exasperation when all they seem to see are posts about motorcycles, bicycle rides, panoramic nature photographs and other such things, it might be time to move on to other pastures. That being said, if you want to stick around, you're welcome to stay. -- PL

My bicycling misadventure

This past Saturday, I had decided to go for a bicycle ride, even though the weather wasn't that great -- a slight mist in the air, overcast, but actually not too cold (about 65 degrees). I got the recumbent out and headed out toward the dirt road loop I've been doing past the bird sanctuary on Old Springfield Road. I went a little further and headed up towards the Audubon Center, taking the right hand of the fork in the road just past their entrance drive. I took that road to the end, then headed back.

I stopped to look at an old, unpaved trail that crosses the road I was on, heading north and south, the north end going into the Audubon Center. I'd wondered about this path before, but today it looked more appealing than usual to try to ride on -- like somebody had been clearing it up a little, taking out sticks and maybe chopping back some brush. I decided to take the southern route of the path. Along this path on its left side ran a line of trees. To the left of this line of trees was a small field, with what looked like a well-worn track (probably made by farm tractors or other vehicles driving through it) immediately abutting the tree line. This is an important detail, to which I will later come back.

At first, the riding was fine... a little rough, with some roots and mud, but not too bad. Then, after pedaling in a few tenths of a mile, I saw an appealing path heading off to the left into some pretty fields, and I took it.

For a while, it was fun -- beautiful trees and bushes, small meadows, and the path was more or less clear, though in places it had long grass growing in it. Then the grass and weeds started to grow taller, and the path disappeared.

I continued on, trusting in my sense of direction (which is generally pretty good, or so I thought) to lead me back out to either the original path I had taken or to that track into the field just to the left of the trailhead I had started down originally. I figured I would just make a gentle arc back in that direction, and I would in due time come out in that general vicinity. But the weeds just kept getting taller, and I couldn't see the path. Eventually I couldn't pedal through the weeds any more and I got off and started pushing my bike. That was only slightly easier, as the weeds and grass -- which by this point were easily three or four feet high and dense -- would get caught in the various parts of the bike, making pushing a real chore. Even walking through them was a chore, as they would wrap around my feet, getting me tangled up and making me stumble. I kept going, and thought I saw a way out near the edge of some woods... but although the weeds got thinner there, I was faced with a brook which I had not expected to see. I realized then that I had no real idea where I was -- I was lost. I didn't know where the original path was. I had gotten completely turned around. Looking about me, I could see no recognizable landmarks.

So I decided that the best thing to do was to head back the way I had come in, and retrace my steps back to the original path. I was not looking forward to this, as it meant fighting my way back through the high grass and weeds, and going UPHILL for the most part. I did think that at least I had already been through that stuff, so my path would be a little bit clearer than just bushwhacking through untouched growth. Well, that plan fell apart when I realized I couldn't find my previous path -- I just could not see where I had come through. So this meant I did have to bushwhack.

Around this time I started to realize that my heart rate had gone up quite a bit -- this was the kind of aerobic exercise that I don't generally get, and I could feel my heart pounding very fast. It was then that I think I started to panic. I knew that although I could not be TOO far away from either the path or the paved road -- probably no more than a mile at most -- I had no real idea which way I should head to get to either one of them most quickly. What concerned me was that if I started off in what seemed like a likely direction, I could -- given how completely off-course I was at the moment -- just start walking in circles, getting even more exhausted as I tried to force my way through the tall weeds. I started to worry that I might have a heart attack as I fought my way through the dense growth. I also started to worry that I might run into bears (I know, unlikely... but not impossible... they're pretty common around this area). I looked around and I could see no houses, no roads... just tall weeds and grass and trees. If at that moment I had been asked to point to where the paved road was, the one on which I had ridden to the trailhead, I know now that I could not have done it correctly except by sheer chance. By this time, it was almost impossible to push the bike through the grass and weeds, so dense had they become, so for the most part I had to lift it up and CARRY it, which got my heart rate going even more (it's a long, fairly heavy bike).

I was starting to freak out. No one knew I was out there. If I keeled over from a coronary, I probably wouldn't be found for weeks. The grass and weeds were so high that I don't think the bike could be seen even from a short distance. I actually yelled "Help!" a few times, but got no reply. I came about a minute or two away from calling my friend Rob, who lives in nearby Easthampton, to see if he could come and find me -- maybe park out on the road and beep his horn so I could get my bearings or something. Every couple of minutes I would stop and try to let my rapidly beating heart slow down. Of course, when I'd do that the mosquitos would start to gather.

The one manmade thing I could see about three hundred feet away were some power lines under which I had passed when I was crossing this field of tall grass and weeds previously, before I decided I had to turn around and retrace my steps. But they were an old style of power lines with wooden poles and I couldn't recognize them as something that led to the road I was looking for -- for all I knew, they went off through the surrounding woods and fields until they crossed Route 10, and that was much further than I cared to go (or, perhaps, even COULD go -- my strength might not hold out). But I figured I should try to make my way back to them, and see if there might be an old track that led alongside them. So I fought my way through the tall stuff, and there WAS kind of an almost invisible track -- like it had been cut or crushed down months ago and had almost (but not quite) grown back up as tall as the other weeds and grass. So I started following this.

In spots, I could actually pedal, so I rode a little bit. But for the most part, I got off and pushed. I had to cross a small stream along the way, but that wasn't too bad. Oh, and at some point during this, I noticed that my chain had come off the sprocket, which made me groan -- would I have to fix the bike while simultaneously trying to find my way out of this predicament? Fortunately, I was able to quickly get the chain back onto the sprocket with judicious use of the twist shifter and backpedaling.

My heart was still pounding pretty hard, so I forced myself to take it easy, stopping every so often. But I really wanted to get out of there! Eventually, I came out from behind some trees and saw a house I recognized about a quarter of a mile away. Then I realized where I was... and I was stunned to see that it wasn't anywhere near where I thought I should be. (It was actually at the intersection of the roads near the entrance to the Audubon Center, which is about half a mile back from where I picked up the trail originally.) The field I had to cross to get to the road was, thankfully, recently mowed, so the grass was only about a foot high. I was able to ride about half of the way. Finally I made it to the paved road. What a relief!

A few days later, I went back with my friend Rick to show him the site of my misadventure. I didn't want to have to struggle thorough that high, tangly stuff -- it still gave me the creeps to even think about getting back into that -- so we stuck to the edges of the fields and only went far enough so that I could point out to him where I'd screwed up. Rick had brought with him a few satellite photos he'd printed out from Google Earth, so we were able to use though to get our bearings. And it's a good thing, too, as we rapidly lost track of where we were. At one point, we were standing at the edge of the last field, the one where I had started to panic, and Rick asked me where, from our perspective, the road up to East Street in Easthampton was. I looked around and pointed over to our right. "No," Rick said, and pointed straight ahead. "It's over there." I couldn't believe it, but looking at the Google Earth photos, it was clear that he was right and I was wrong. It was a sobering moment.

Here's a panoramic view of the area in question...



So what's the point of this post? I guess it's just to say that I learned a lesson that day about the dangers of solely depending on my sense of direction, which -- prior to this -- I'd always felt was pretty accurate. It's funny -- about a month or so ago, I was listening to a piece on the radio about a study that was recently done testing people out in the woods, to see if they could find their way without compasses or other sorts of navigation aids. Almost everyone tested -- I think it might have been over ninety percent -- ended up walking in circles. Very few people could walk for any significant distance in a straight line.

And that's what made my little misadventure scary... the idea that while I was really no more than a mile or two from "civilization", I might have continued to walk in circles, all the while thinking that I was heading in a straight line... getting more and more exhausted and panicky as I went. -- PL