I don’t dwell on the horrific beating I took the night they robbed me.  At least, I don’t think I do.  Of course the image is still crystal clear - vibrant- and hangs in my mind like a painting.  I mean, it’s there, it’s not like I need to dig it up or comb through my memories to find it.  I’m not going to pretend I don’t see it or that the image has somehow faded over time.  That would be crazy.  I’m not in denial.  It’s there.  I see it.  It’s ever present in the forefront of my mind.  Why dwell on it? 

The important thing is that mentally, I’m fine.  Stable.  But because of the responsibilities I’ve taken on, and the function I serve in the community, I feel it is incumbent upon me to monitor my mental health and make sure that I’m A-Okay.  And fortunately, so far, so good.  And to make sure that it stays that way, I’ve recently taken to reading psychological literature.  This allows me to accurately analyze myself and make sure that none of this daily carnage that has become my life, is effecting me.  I don’t pretend to know everything there is to know about psychology - but if I can make use of a helpful analogy here - it’s like my mind is a tool, for example- a knife, and psychology is like a sharpening stone. As I increase my awareness I sharpen my knife (mind).  I’ve become more attuned to my motivations, patterns of thought, and the language of my subconscious mind.

The other night I had a dream, can’t remember the main part - something about riding an elephant into battle (kind of fuzzy), but at one point in the dream my mother told me that there were bananas I could cut up for my morning cereal.  Seemed so real.  Boy was I disappointed when I woke up and realized that I’d have to have my cornflakes plain.  I knew the elephant part was a dream, I mean I’ve never even seen an elephant in person (I was afraid of going to the circus as a kid - so creepy), but for some reason I was still looking forward to the bananas. Go figure.  Anyway, to tie it in to all the psychology stuff, I like to use theses moments to evaluate my subconscious mind.  This dream was a little tricky, but it’s meaning slowly became clear to me.  My mother was kind and her gesture in the dream was of a nurturing nature.  She represents goodness.  Milk also represents nurturing and goodness.  Bananas could represent being crazy, but in this context it comes form the nurturer, which tells me that my mother (goodness) was letting me know that I’m still okay and I don’t need to doubt myself.  I’ve been hurting the right people for the right reasons.  I feel sharp and focused.  I’m still not sure what the elephant means.  This may be unrelated, but lately I’ve been thinking about the ways I could use an ordinary plastic comb to surprise and neutralize a target.  It could be incredibly effective against the soft tissues of the neck or across the eyes, or even thrust into the windpipe to stun.  I don’t think my recent musings on the comb tie into the dream, though technically, elephants do have hair…

My craziest Characters do not hold a candle to this guy.

It's the clear Face Mask he wears that really freaks me out.

Dude you need a therapist . . . a publisher and a therapist. I'm not sure which first. 




Nice character development 

Here is a photo of a young  Colbanus Quain off to  a Jr High School Dance.  He was a bit shy as  youth and wore the mask as a means to distance himself from the girls he was so terrified of.   In retrospect, a bigger deal should have been made of this incident.