I try to work on my comic these days, but I’ve had to accept that what happened to me was very traumatizing. That’s part of the interruption: the thing that holds you back from the skies, from the spirits I once kissed passionately and danced with. Tonight, I am working on the model for the very character the bastard (Fairy Hitler) used to get his in. The model stares at me from the monitor. I stare back. I have to say out loud, “He’s dead.” Just to hear it.

The old tales, especially with Ireland, talk a little bit about what happens to the bard that makes it back. They’re filled with longing for the green place. Their music is never the same – either it becomes hauntingly gorgeous but unbearably sad, or they can only speak the truth so that their songs become lays of prophecy. Touch the earth, they may age but a hundred years. They’re never the same again, and so for all they walk among former friends, family and lovers they’re still apart inside. Forever.

What part is the worst from what happened to me? I can’t say. But losing my stories was one of the worst. I struggle with them now. The things that come from my pen are intellectual. Oh, they’re filled with wit. They have humor. They’re sarcastic. I enjoy insights I know I once had, but as my spirit spouse said “were returned” to me. The dance of words flow from my fingers and to the virtual page in delightful choreographic patterns.

But my comics, my stories, the thing I wanted to tell the world most suffers for me.

This is what happens to the bard that is taken away, the minstrel that is minced, the skald that is forsaken.

You want to go to those far away lands? Even if you have memories of that place from another time, I recommend you don’t. If you do, you’ll be forever changed. The fare may be a price higher than you want to pay. Read a book, enjoy the silly stories we tell ourselves here. Don’t go there.