Ten Most Influential Books on My Life

Ten Books which most shaped who I am? In chronological order:

1. My Illustrated Children's Bible Stories
2. Frankenstein, Mary Shelley.
3.Breakfast of Champions, Kurt Vonnegut
4.Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
5. Hero With A Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell

6. Grandmaster's Book of Ninja Training by Masaaki Hatsumi
7. Invisibles by Grant Morrison
8. Don Quijote by Cervantes
9. Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Doestoyevsky.
10.Power of Intention, Wayne Dyer. Next would be The Good Earth, by Pearl S. Buck, which fits between nine and ten, and Syzygy by Tau Palamas, which came this year.

Impulsively, I wanted to list Supergods by #GrantMorrison (my present read) as it is at ground zero of my view of the present explosion of my ideas. Lucky 13.

Arguably, Ralph Denyer's Guitar Encyclopedia belongs in that list, and the vast composite of musician biographies and magazine articles cast a spell over it all. That controversial book on the Beatles back in the late '80s was massive to me.

Because it was Essays, I bumped Ralph Waldo Emerson, but reading that on my own was huge at that time in my life; Transcendentalism shaped my freshman year the way Existentialism did my California trip. I can't underestimate the value of Norton Anthology of English Literature but it isn't one single book. Steve Gerber's run of Defenders, which I discovered four years ago, dramatically shaped the way I saw writing superheroes. He was light years away from the comic books of his time, everything he wrote. If you don't read old comic books...read his. I feel that way about Starlin's Warlock, too. Cosmic. Rich with questions and tense adventure...but it was only about ten issues with a cool epilogue. Love and Rockets by the Hernandez Brothers means a lot to me: very femme-centric, funny, and sometimes fantastic and occasionally brilliantly Mexican, but never ever typical mainstream comics. Honestly, Anywhere With You by Cecil Disharoon opened my origins of my adult path in life to me in all its Romantic splendor, and I think that book would open those reflections in anyone, any age, so I recommend it.

The Illiad and Odyssey are huge to me, as are Shakespeare's plays, especially Hamlet. Sometimes a writer like Alan Watts or Poe or Twain matters in a way broader than one book. My view of life and the world was also shaped by Chinua Achebe's Things FAll Apart and The Good EArth by Pearl S. Buck, which came to my hands as I began my life as a #pedicabber surviving by the seat of my pants in #downtownSanDiego. Luigi Pirandello's Enrico Quatro and Six Characters in Search of An Author gave me philosophy-as-drama in a thoroughly modern way. Elaine Pagel's book on the Gnostic Gospels was huge for me, too. Philip K. Dick's key books nearly leap into that mix, especially Divine Invasion. I love Ray Bradbury, Martian Chronicles and Fahrenheit 451, and all those poetic short stories; I think he'll be my next science fiction kick. Dharma Bums nearly made it, as did Heinlein's Stranger and To Sail Beyond The Sunset, but they are markers of things I learned in real life from experiences with my friends in a way more influential than those books, in comparison to the above ten's actual impact, because of what the sheer choice to read those did to shape me, rather than a shared ethos already in play (i.e. I was a Beatnik before I read them; knowing Joe Day was more important than Kerouac's book; knowing Jason Megahee or Eldon Dugan was more important than C.S. Lewis's books; Jamison meant more to me than Heinlein's books). Hatsumi's book would've meant nothing without Johann Balasuriya to explore it with us, and Sensei Robert Geyer.

It's quite nearly true my high school text books mean almost as much to me as these others. Your fundamental education opens the entire world of curiosity! Human From Another Outlook (English from Farsi) is my next book read, and something from my new friends Jesse Kindred and Corella are the next stories.

I could easily write a whole blog on each of these. Maybe I should, through the course of the year. I have been meaning to assemble many of these blogs as a book or two at last, as requested by Paula Hill and others. This is a critical crossroads for my creative work; what a wonderful place to assess what brought me here.

P.S. Love Dracula and Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay.

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Fictional Girls - Integr8d Soul

“Fictional Girls” Lyrics by Lue Lyron and the Marc Kane Music by Lyron

I know a girl named Tiffany Thomas
she left me a note and made me a promise
to be a pen pal while she's far away
Got her postcard in my mail box today

She made it herself-- red shirt Star Trek dudes
it's Captain Picard –is that Dr. Who?
-from cardboard and thread, with googly eyes.
Now how could I thank her?
She loves a surprise...

I love every crazy thing that she does
I'm writing this song just becuz....

Fictional girls make the very best girl friends
Marcileen, Sailor Moon, & Leia in one
You don't have to own her, and you'll never know her
Drawn into her pictures, we have lots of fun

2.She makes her name
she makes silly faces
she makes up her self
and then switches places

Tattoo 91, she colors her hair
She cartoons a creature-is she really there?

She finds her cute glasses, her hair is bright blue
I'll make her a postcard when I have me some glue

I love all those crazy things that she does
I'm writing this song just becuz....

Fictional girls make the very best girl friends
Marcileen, Sailor Moon, & Leia in one
You don't have to own her, and you'll never know her
Drawn into her pictures, we have lots of fun!

We have lots of fun, we have lots of fun (outro)

Inspired by a real postcard and a real girl who made herself up.

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Robin Williams. My role model. Doesn't that explain things... R.I.P.

Shit. Robin Williams is gone.

Mondays already have a bad name. This isn't helping.

Oh death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?

Wouldn't it be great if I could make you laugh? You know you're going to sit here with me and read about one of the funniest people ever and his sad ending. But you know, sometimes, even as an adult, I'd think to pull out my hand in that mock Mr. Spock gesture and offer a hand shake with “Na-noo Na-noo”?

You know when I was a kid, I used to sit on my head on the sofa sometimes. If someone was watching. Maybe that explains something.

There's a certain emotional depth in all my favorite comedians. They understand pain and loss and beautiful things passed by better than many people want to admit to themselves.

If I had to tell you whether I was Spider-Man or Mork more when I was a child, it'd be hard to really say. (Fonz, then Bat Man, then Hulk, Iron Man, & Super Man were probably the runners-up. Uhm then maybe Wonder Woman.) I loved their wise cracks. I loved their weird perspectives. I was half in love with Mindy, myself. I offered to drink water with my finger. I called Orson.

When you bond with an actor like I did with Robin Williams, you smile and check out whatever they're doing. The irony today of me remembering him from What Dreams May Come is...I don't know what that is.

I was so glad to see Popeye, and I'm glad I saw it as a boy when I did. I know that was the first thing he did the critics hated, but it was so fun. This from the guy who went on to work with Walter Cronkite. Say what you will about the script, but Robin was the go-to guy to be a cartoon come to life.

My Captain, my captain! I saw Dead Poets Society in probably the most formative summer of my life, when they took the brightest kids they could find and squirreled us away on the hottest college campus in Georgia (666 of us or so I believe) and saved a few of us from a redneck mentality for life. Ah, shit, Neil commits suicide by hanging. C'mon, Robin, give us a break! I loved that movie more than nearly anything I ever saw to that point. It was a testament to different perspectives. It was a loving tribute to the difference a great teacher makes, and the power of literature to make a life thrive with poetry in one's deed and reflections. Mr. Keating rocked. I discovered post-modernist thought and truly angst-ridden poetry and Excalibur all the same summer we shot a video for "Life in the Fast Lane" as an homage to Governor's Honors. Never in my life had I even SEEN a video camera in those days, you lucky little Super 8 middle class brats. I did my first acting as a theater minor. I did this metaphysical improvised argument about "blue light!" versus "darkness!" with my friend Mark. I never had such smart and funny friends, and it was before social networking so I lost them all. I did a lot of comedy that summer. Nobody shaped that impulse more than Robin.

I had not discovered the depths of Arthurian mythos in my life when I did discover "The Fisher King." What a challenging movie! Brilliant questioning of reality and the appearance of things. Compassionate view of the homeless and mentally ill. Haven't seen it almost since it came out, but it's startling to remember his Lear-like performance.

He did many tours with the USO, at least as recently as Iraq and Afghanistan. No one could use a laugh more than those guys and gals. I loved Good Morning, Viet Nam!. I thought it was such a great reprisal of what made his stand up comedy worked. I was in love with '60's culture already, so the movie fascinated me. I've broken out singing “Viva Dnang Me, grab a rope and hang me” so many times when I was alone. Ah, dude, that's not funny anymore! This from the guy who compared functional alcoholics to parapalegic lap dancers..."yeah, you can do it, just not as well as the others!" "I went to rehab in Wine Country, to keep my options open..."


You know, Robin once said: “if you can remember the '60's, you probably weren't there.” Hahahah!

He also said:

Why do they call it rush hour when nothing moves?
If it's the Psychic Network, why do they need a phone line?
Do you think God gets stoned? I think so. Look at the platypus.
Reality is just a crutch for people who can't cope with drugs.
Reality! What a concept.
We had gay burglars the other night. They broke in and rearranged the furniture.
God gave men a brain and a penis. Unfortunately he only gave them enough blood supply to run one at a time.
You're only given one little spark of madness. You mustn't lose it.

And he said:

No matter what people tell you, words and ideas change the world.

I probably watched Mrs. Doubtfire as many multiple times as I ever watch any movie (about five times is the limit for me, kids; I'm already busy seeing imaginary things). I loved watching his face come off and fall in the street. I loved watching him play with his kids. I loved watching him give poor Pierce Brosnan the business. Who else could make Sally Fields look like a villain?

And I guess Patch Adams is about where he lost the crowd. Too sentimental, I guess. Too silly. Too many voices. Too much of a guy for whom “too much” was a brand! I'm glad he did that. His work was not always for kids.

And there's Hook, and I still need to see that and Bicentennial Man; I just don't watch as many movies as the average American. But I have seen Good Will Hunting, which was a nice surprise: him playing a different kind of genius than a comic. A little more like Robin with the amplitude turned down.

Aladdin! How could I forget that one?!? I never had a friend like him! Talk about a man suited to be a cartoon. Probably my favorite Disney cartoon ever. The only character who truly shared Robin's power to become anything.

I was working from memory. We actually saw and enjoyed "Jack" in the theater; it kinda made you think. It had that heart-tug that comedies always try to do these days and it was a bit creepy but...innocent.

It was a career so varied that I could actually forget "Jumanji" and "Night At the Museum 2" without an imbd listing handy! And those were SOMEbody's favorite movies growing up. I remember Jumanji now...very imaginative. Not unlike "The Cat in The Hat" crossed with a board game mixed up in a movie with that most energetic of stars.


But it was the Mork and Mindy reruns that REALLY did the brain damage for me.


I absolutely loved his stand up comedy shows. He was nuts even when he was older, doing GPS voices like Bob Dylan, Scottish accents, a whole Julliard repertoire of observations. And remember, “texting and driving at the same time is like jerking off and juggling at the same time. Too many balls in the air at one time!” Then he goes into Blue Tooth...oh, God. Then he talks about gymnastics as sideways pole dancing, and taking Michael Phelps off Frosted Flakes because he smoked pot "a failure of marketing"...and you can't help it. This is the saddest day you could think about Robin Williams, but I defy you not to laugh.

When I finally saw his stand-up from the Mork era, I laughed to tears. How cruel is it to ever think, “wow, he's even better on drugs.” How blithely unaware of how much that life sucks you can be when you're not living it.

I was sorry to see him checking into rehab yet again and to know his drinking problem wasn't done for. “How hard does this poor guy have to fight?” I asked. I guess the answer became “too damn hard.”

And today, there's millions of us who wish we could've returned a bit of the cheer. He made the world laugh.
Funeral For A Friend...two absolute contemporary-day titans of my creative world meet.


I've had thoughts of ending it all pop in more often than you'd quickly guess if you know me. In recent weeks, as before, I always had the lucidity to think “you mean, you are just tired as hell and need some kind of stillness. You, you'll never quit! No matter how unfair it seems, how neglected you feel your work is. How stupid you think it is for your work to be ignored. You had a good life! You are loved. You love lots of people (potentially, everyone!). You could never for a second really do that to the people who care about you. Because maybe it's hard to open up about those macabre thoughts without people treating you like a whiny bitch and being like 'suck it up, my life's blah blah blah' ---I don't care, I was just sad a minute, bite me. How dare I tell you I felt crazy.

"But you know it will get better. That's why you're not addicted to anything but lovin'. You know it will feel like Christmas Day with more love and presents than you can ever hope to unwrap, very soon. You will make it that way. You will perceive it as such. And without any action whatsoever, with a bit of mental quietude, you will find profound power from the source of life inside you.”

If you think my facile cheer is cheesy, well, tough cheese! Your cynicism grates me, too. It's an alternative to the spite necessary to hurt myself and in doing so hurt others. I'm practically driven by impulses, but “the ability to foresee consequences is the mark of a profound person..” If you think I'm naive, I assure you, I've seen the darkness, buddy, and I just gave it a seat by the stage.

I can't help but think of the shadow a suicide leaves across a life's works, great or small. We learn more and more how we ARE our brains, and how we have to take care of them. You really do live in the world of your thoughts, the one made by your impressions; what you decide is true defines objective reality for you, but it's subject to what you choose as your focus.

Reality. What a concept.

He's always going to make us laugh, though. I just turned on the stand up mentioned above and started laughing, and here it is the day he died. Maybe even the day he killed himself. Because man...what a maniac. He imitated all the accents of humanity! He pretended to be from another planet and SOLD it. Cerebral, but completely accessible. I'm sorry he's gone. I'm sorry he had to be so sad and angry and disappointed enough to go that way. He was honored and the peer to the greats. He's still the voice of a friend. And he left something a lot bigger than a sad suicide on a Monday.


eel So Alien by Integr8d Soul (for Robin Williams) (Cecil Disharoon/Lyron)

riff based on am/G/F/Amaj7 (3x)
Am/G/F G Em
Nanoo, Nanoo /Mork calling Orson, Mork calling Orson
F G F Em
Sometimes I don't get this planet/ and it's starting to show
F G Am F G Amaj7
The things these creatures do for money when it doesn't even make them happy
F G Am E
no wonder they think it's crappy and it's starting to blow

Bsus 2 G Em
Shazbot, you've got to dream / of an inner peace, of a new release
Bsus2 G Em Amaj7
You've got to meet yourself/ asking “hey what do I do?” Nanoo, Nanoo
Dmaj7 Am7 G Em
I feel so alien / who's the one who's upside down?
C G F Bflat A
Take what's good, pass it around you're all so funny you should hear your voices/ see your choices
E7 little machines of Amin 7 distraction C Where's the G inter- F action?
C Who's G sitting right F there with you? Bflat is it just too hard to say / A Nanoo-nanoo?
Bsus 2 I feel so G ali – Em en... F G Am G Em
strange things you do for fun, strange thing s you do Nanoo, nanoo

2. riff based on am/G/F/Amaj7 (3x) Am/G/F G Em
Nanoo, Nanoo /Mork calling Orson, Come in Orson
consumers trash the oceans it's starting to grow
poison food and the bees are dying Desert sky god told you before /
we don't agree, so it's off to war Differences we could let go
B sus 2 G Em
Shazbot, you've got to dream / of an inner peace, of a new release Amaj7
Why not just meet yourself / saying “hey, what do I do? Nanoo, nanoo”?
D maj7 Am7 G Em C G F Bflat
I feel so alien / who's the one who's upside down? Cruelness, so alien / when we all could live in the beautiful A sun! Bsus2 G Em G Em B flat A
Bsus 2 G Em I feel so alien / I feel so alien / when you end, you've just begun
My egg has taken me / F G Am
G Em to this Earth mystery / all these strange things you do
strange things you do, Nanoo, Nanoo _ Dmaj 7 I'm calling Or- Em -son, F come in, G come in, Am come in Orson, come in come in come in....come in, come in, come in (you've got to dream) come in, come in, come in... FGAmAmaj7come in, come in come in... (x2)
E7 I feel so ali- Amaj7 en.

-Cecil Disharoon (Lue Lyron) August 13 2 to 4 am (with music) So that's how I cope, I guess.

(Song to be performed August 21st at Schroeder's by Integr8d Soul, who you can find on Facebook and reverbnation.com as well as Bandcamp.com

I'm too young and Southern to have a great personal story like this, soooo...I got this from Batton Lash, a terrific cartoon horror comic artist in his own right that you should check out, who posted:

My Robin Williams memory: In April, 1979, I attended “An Evening With Andy Kaufman” at Carnegie Hall. At the beginning of the performance, Andy pointed to a little old lady sitting off to the side on stage. Andy said that she was his grandmother. Andy told us that when he was a little boy he promised her that if he ever played Carnegie Hall, she would have the best seat in the house. Andy beamed that he was able to keep that promise! Everyone went “awwww”, applauded, and settled in for the show, which immediately got underway. And it was some show! But all through Tony Clifton, wrestling, Elvis, manhandling an aged schoolteacher to the point of a heart attack and the cringe-worthy songs and dances of an inappropriate-for-an-Andy Kaufman-audience “up with people” family act, grandma sat quietly with a little smile on her face, watching the spectacle from the side of the stage in the “best seat in the house.”
At the end of the evening, when Andy was calling the cast members to take their bow, he turned to his grandmother, and asked her to do likewise. As grandma stood up, “she” removed a white-haired wig and some facial prosthetics, Andy announced that his grandma was played by Robin Williams! I was impressed that wild, manic, unfettered, scenery-chewing, improv comic Robin Williams could sit still all evening long and not upstage Andy Kaufman’s show. Nevertheless, the audience gasped and roared their approval . . . and in a way, Robin stole the show by really doing nothing. Good night, funny man!

Thanks, Batton.

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Rocket Raccoon in "Open Source" : a short story crossover with Homestuck

“Open Source” featuring Rocket Raccoon (Nilina created by Kay Smith)

Rocket Raccoon lands on the asteroid in a detachable pod. He gets out with a space helmet and looks around. He doesn’t want to be there; at least it’s better than the planet in orbit below, where he knows a cease-fire has just been broken by the side with the most to lose. He misses Groot. He doesn’t try to worry himself over the lack of patience or sheer malicious instigation that initiated the rocket fire into the disputed area. He suspects Nebula sold the weaponry to both sides. “Just another dollar,” he thinks, reservedly.

He spins around and sees five women in ghostly robes. He’s immediately suspicious; they feel weird, like a humming arises around seeing them, like they are not what they seem at all, but some camouflaged destructive force! But one of them tries to communicate. A voice seems to float to his thoughts, asking that they talk. He keeps his weapon at ready. “It’s your dime,” he says gruffly.

She pulls her hands slowly apart, with a nebulous light shimmering. A pocket appears, seemingly immaterial, a window to some receding inner space. Rocket remembers seeing something like this: “one of the inmates on the mental rehabilitation planet, Halfworld, tried to open something…give me a glimpse, when we were alone, of some otherly, beautiful world. But then he was sad because he could open the portal and couldn’t go through it. At least, that’s what I think. We called him Moses. I guess he was a wizard. Or a frustrated scientist who’d been changed by a discovery. Same diff? I guess I never thought much about it again because so much of what I remember was never real.”

He can see the recognition on the woman’s face.

“Hey, stop reading my thoughts,” the raccoon protests. “But I guess that’s the only way you can ‘talk’ with me. That space he opened…it’s the same phenomenon?” He recalls how the doctors debated: should Moses forget about the portal so he could go on with his life? Or was trying to access it, the hope needed, the reserve rebuilt and depleted again and again, his one thread of sanity?
Suddenly a winged girl with a petite frame and a pair of ram-like horns on her head soars by. Rocket notes she is also unaided by life support. A ghoulish trickle of blood drips precipitously from her mouth as she hovers above him; she ignores the five women in robes.

“She looks confused,” Rocket thinks. He decides not to judge a book by its cover; after all, until you really begin to know, how can you decide anything by appearance alone? “And I should know,” he chuckles.


A trio of armored soldiers suddenly teleport into their midst. Clad entirely in grey save for orange faceplates that glow, revealing no features, they take out their cannons, each about the size of their arms, and fire at the winged girl. She flaps her wings, which seem leathery and reptilian, as she evades the beams. One of them strikes one of the five women from before; she holds stock still. “Stasis beams?” Rocket observes. He cocks his own cannon, still undecided about his course of action. “They could be a peace force. They may be some kind of local police. They may be bounty hunters. But they do shoot a little carelessly,” he thinks, grimacing. The woman with the open source of light between her hands remains where she stands, her thoughts indiscernible, her expression…her expression makes Rocket feel queer. “That’s alien life forms for you,” he thinks. His seasoned bounty hunter instincts tell him not to get mixed up in what he doesn’t understand; he isn’t sure of anyone’s purpose or innocence.

The winged girl twists acrobatically out of the range of the next shots. He notices she is wearing something akin to a circus performer’s bodice. “She’s kinda creepy looking,” Rocket thinks. He debates on whether to zap her himself and put an end to the cannon fire. The fact that the blasts don’t seem overtly concussive…that they don’t seem lethal or destructive…makes him consider again that these may not be malicious marauders. Besides…none of this is what drew him here.

“It’s that crazy dream I’ve been having,” he thinks. “I was drawn to the asteroid almost by pure instinct. Mystical searches aren’t really my bag, but maybe it was something those robed chicks did that got into my head. Ahh, damnit! I don’t know what to shoot!”
The armored beings continue to ignore everyone else while chasing the winged girl across the low-gravity surface. Rocket runs over to the woman in stasis. Her phosphorescent bluish-green robe drifts in reaction to his approach; there is virtually no atmosphere, not much gravity to keep anyone nailed where they are standing. Another shot lands close to her and paralyzes another of the women. “Can’t you see where you’re shooting?” Rocket hisses, taking a shot back in reaction. His beam hits a soldier so hard he flips in the air. “Now I’ve done it, I’ll bet,” he thinks; he prepares his jet pack for evasive action, and flies upwards to be clear of the robed women.

One of the armored soldiers fires back, narrowly missing Rocket Raccoon. Rocket trains his gun on the soldier while the third one gives chase to the winged girl, and the flipping soldier rights himself shakily.

“Who the hell are you guys, anyway?” he demands.

“Lucian Weathers, Craft 9 Squadron,” the soldier says, pointing his cannon back. “Stand down or I’ll be forced to immobilize you!”

“Who is the girl? And why don’t you watch where you shoot?”

“If you’re referring to that winged thing, that’s Nilina. We were hired to retrieve her after she murdered an entire circus on a Capricorn world. This is all created world business and none of yours…whoever you are!”

“Rocket Raccoon,” he replies, “Guardian of the Galaxy.”

“What a pretentious load of baloney,” says the soldier. Rocket thinks he’s hearing a trans-galactic translation, accounting quite well for the colloquial nature of the reply. “What’s your evidence?” he retorts.

“Why don’t you ask her yourself?” replies Weathers. “If you’re not a bounty hunter yourself, you’re probably going to be a victim. What are you doing here?”

“You don’t see those women over there?”

“I don’t have time for mind games, sir.” Lucian Weathers of Craft 9 Squadron puts his hand to his head to relay a message: “teleport on my signal to this triangulation and let’s take her down!” He then vanishes.



Rocket turns back to the robed women, who remain as they were. The one with the dimensional aperture…or whatever it might be…seems to beckon Rocket to stare inside. He watches her curly hair drift gently, and sees that wherever the one door of light in her hand leads, yet another opens further inside. He tries to make out the figures he sees poised between the inner doorways. He responds to his curiosity by making the aperture larger. A woman in flames, with a serpent draped around her hand, holds up a white, shimmering disc; a long-haired man with wings raises his arms before a blue ocean at night; a man with a cocked, short-brimmed straw hat, in a white suit, laughs jovially, his eyes piercing and dancing, his skin like midnight.


Rocket senses a need for sacrifices (what kind?)…communication…a call to service to some mysterious being…wonder…an ominous sense of the smallness of his place in the material world. In the light, he reflects on the little ways he’s been damaged, his losses…his triumphs. And for all of his aimless strivings in this universe, he marvels at how some undiscovered part of himself seems to lie in those doorways. Again, beyond the furthest doorway are more doors…a sense of increasing vibrational dimension. He asks himself if he is the type of individual who can abandon all he has known with no hope possibly of returning, or if this is a source of blessings and powers?


“Look, kid,” he says, “and I hope I’m not making a big mistake here…I honestly can’t say if this is a trap or a treasure, and my curiosity is about to get the best of me either way. You see that world down there-- Zaag Trips? If you want to offer someone a wormhole vacation, maybe you should try it down there. Somebody’s got to be dying to get out of that madness.”

The woman looks longingly towards the world of Zaag Trips below. He feels a sort of sadness…then a detached reserve, which he could mistake for his own, seems to well up in its place.


“They can’t see ya, huh?” he says haltingly. He relaxes his gun at his side, realizing he’s been gesturing with it all along. “Hey, for all I know, I should blast you myself before you go alien-abducting people…but I wonder if you’re not just trying to share? And if you are bad seed…I found out a long time ago I can’t clean up the whole galaxy. When it’s black and white enough for me to do any good for sure, that’s when I’ll make my move…like with that Thanos ass. And the fact that I care one way or the other makes me a terrible mercenary but hey, I don’t mind looking at myself in the mirror, and you can’t buy that.”
She and her companions all raise their arms simultaneously, then, with eyes softly aglow, inhumanly, yet compassionately, she seems to send a pink candle light image to his thoughts before all five blink away. Only the vast distance of the stars and their ancient luminescence remains above the lonely asteroid.


Rocket Raccoon thinks about the candle as he mounts his small pod to return to the ship with Groot, Zamora, Drax and Quill…”excuse me, STAR Lord,” he thinks sarcastically. But the pink candle makes him feel softer, kinder, in a way he would be a bit abashed to express. “I never knew what became of ol’ Moses,” he thinks as the engines activate and the anti-grav equation severs his anchor with the asteroid surface. The engines suddenly boost him out into space, as he thinks about why Moses couldn’t enter the aperture he’d seemed to generate himself, or if that was only a vision, and even so, why no one on the asylum planet had ever seemed to decipher what Moses was opening. Perhaps some of them were as unable to see Moses as the soldiers had been unable to detect the robed women.
He wonders about the armored beings trying to capture the winged girl—“Nilina, that was the name!”---and if she was guilty of murdering a whole circus and why would she and why would anyone think about that, and where the hell was Capricorn, some pocket world? It seemed to Rocket a lot of convergences between realities proliferated in this sector of space. Yet, for countless parsecs…it’s just emptiness, with not a sign of life. Not in the material sense, anyway.

As Rocket Raccoon’s ship departs the nameless asteroid, the winged Nilina watches…and cautiously follows. She likes something about the furry little being and his sense of inner conflict. Perhaps she’ll find out more, if she’s shaken her teleporting pursuers. It will do for a purpose, at least, until she gets bored.


Come See Integr8d Soul at Schroeder's Deli in downtown Rome Aug. 21st!!! Here's the pre-poster sketch I'm considering...and it is pre-poster-ous. OK, I'm almost done with that joke....

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