SCRAPING LIFE OFF MY SHOE.

It's a set-up, a dirty trick, some one's idea of a joke. Right?

I just wrote an agent friend of mine and removed myself from
a show at Gallery Nucleus this fall, themed around H.P. Lovecraft.
The time I was down from the arm injury is strangely enough, the
exact amount of time I would have needed to complete the two things
I was planning to send.
I am shattered. I feel like a rank amateur, green, fresh from the farm.
This sort of thing reaches down into my guts and twists and pulls.
I am taking the day off to examine the whole mess and try to
figure out how and why this happened, then promise myself that it
will NOT happen again.
I suppose that is what an adult would do.
Forgive the whiff of the mercenary, but good lord we could have
used the income also.

Part of the blunt truth is that I broke my own rules on some level.
I didn't follow my first, correct instinct and instead lapsed back into
the "old Michael" way of doing things without even noticing.
Survival mode of the commercial comics artist. Fast and good by friday.
I hate the fuckers. Utterly and absolutely loath the system that makes
people like me into galley slaves dependent on a voucher and a slap
on the back, like a good boy.
They seduce you into believing and then take your beliefs away.
And I have nobody but myself to blame.

"the public gets what the public wants", and I get to spend the rest of my life
trying to tear the roots of disease from my soul.

M.Z.