Mei asked me if I was doing anything special this week. Like everything I do, I don't know how special this is, but today I will tell a tale I've told before, but haven't in awhile.
I am a Believer. This is my Nature. I've believed in God all my life, and even now, when I feel the Bible I was raised on was largely false, I still believe in some form of the Almighty. I believe in Psychic Powers. Not the fancy kind you see on the TeeVee or in Sci-Fi. I don't mean fancy voodoo hoodoo or telemarketing nonsense, or any of that. I believe that there are things going on in our brain, or maybe our souls that we don't understand. I get De Ja Vu from time to time. A serious understanding that I have experienced a situation before, a literal moment in time I have already lived. I don't know what this is. Do I have prophetic dreams that I can only remember when I have arrived at that moment? Or am I already dead, and this life is just the memories of the life I lived, and occasionally I awaken to that? Or are we all just moving through time in ways we all just don't fully understand. I dunno. Why do I sometimes have a song stuck in my head, a song I almost never normally have stuck in my head, and then when I hop in the car and turn it on, the exact song is playing on the radio, at the exact spot I left off in my head? How do you explain that?
Empathy I understand. That's just imagination. But there's more to it than that, isn't there? Have you ever been watching a movie, and you see a person get their ankle broken, and you FEEL the break in your own ankle? Just for a moment you can feel your own bones snap, your own tendons rip. It's not real, and what's on screen isn't real, but you can feel it anyway, just for a moment. And you wince and grind your teeth. Now, how is that just imagination?
I sometimes think we're all connected on a psychic level. Just a little bit, some of us more than others. I think some of us aren't connected at all, and I think those are the people you've gotta watch out for. The people that don't feel the terror at being held against their will. The people that don't feel the bullet rip into their flesh and their heartbeat stop and the cold blackness descend. You have to watch out for those people, because they don't feel what the rest of us do. They don't understand what's it's like to be cold and broke on the street, and so they've got no sympathy for those that do. They don't hesitate to pull the trigger, because they don't feel the bullet they fire penetrating their own body.
I believe in Free Will, but I also feel like the Universe or God or the Gods or Whatever gives us moments. Moments where everything stacks up just right, where all the puzzle pieces are in place, and all you have to do is snap that last piece into place and voila. Puzzle solved. Stealing blatantly from Eastern Philosophy, I call these Zen Moments. Those little moments of absolute perfection.
For example, I am a terrible bowler. Seriously, I may be the worst bowler who ever lived. I have a very bizarre underhanded bowling style. There is no rhythm, rhyme, method, or accuracy to the way I bowl. And yet sometimes, I know from the very second my fingers slip loose of the ball that I have bowled a strike, and 9 times out of 10 I am right. BOOM! 10 Pins. Zen.
Me and Mei shouldn't be together. There are literally a string of reasons that occurred that prevented her from saying "No Thanks" before we even met. She didn't read my profile close enough, and didn't notice I lived 2 hours away. I showed up for dinner early. She liked my voice. Little puzzle pieces that all came together just right to make us who we are. Zen.
Whew. That was a really long, really bizarre intro.
Anyway, it was October of 1999, and I was a loser. I had an Associates in General Studies, I was working at the Mill, and living with my parents. No girlfriend and no prospect thereof. All I wanted to do was make comics, but I had no idea how. Internet access was hard to get back then, and I didn't know much about Art Supplies stores. All I had was want and desire, with no idea how to pursue my dream. I had read as many books as I could find, but still had no idea where to start. I was young, dumb, listless, and horribly depressed.
At this time in October 1999, there was a Comic Book Shop in Effingham, IL, about an hour from me. It's not there now, and, in fact, it would be out of business a few months later. Anyway, one day, when I went into the shop in early October, they just happened to have a Create-Your-Own-Comics Kit for sale.
What's weird is, I hesitated. I actually stared at the Box for a little bit. There it was, my Destiny, and I almost turned my back on it. But I didn't. I bought the Kit, and I made Pulp Horrorshow #1, and I printed it up, and TORC Press was born. Any number of things would have prevented this. If I didn't know about the store. If the store had went out of business earlier. If someone had bought the Kit before I found it. If I hadn't decided to go all the way to Effingham to get comics. The Universe put the Kit in front of me, all I had to do was seize it. So, yeah, Zen.
(That was a really long lead up to a really short story. Sorry folks.)
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