A Look Inside My Scrapbooks, part one

For the past decade I've been scrapbooking (as it's popularly called these days). I don't show my scrapbooks very often (they're mostly for my own amusement and inspiration), but today I thought I'd share a few pages with you.

We'll start with my first scrapbook, 200 pages in length, begun in April 1998. The cover is decorated with various stickers I found ...


In the first pages of this scrapbook I was inspired by William Burroughs, who used his scrapbooks to experiment with the cut-up method of writing. Here's a cut-up of mine, a combination of three news stories to create a news story in an alternate reality...


After a few pages I stopped doing cut-ups and began another kind of experiment, in which I pasted in pictures clipped from magazines, catalogs, and other ephemera, then free-associated a story from the images ...


Sometimes, while writing the story, I would also draw a picture. On this page you see my rendering of Popeye ...


Gradually, my scrapbook also became a sketchbook, in which I mixed drawings with collage work. Sometimes the drawings were later published. The drawing below, for instance, appears on the inside front cover of my comic book Villa of the Mysteries #3 ...


But most of the scrapbook drawings have not been published ...


On occasion, I've used published drawings in my collages. In the Manchurian Candidate collage below I used two panels from my story "This is MK-Ultra Baby" ...


I also use my scrapbooks to keep newspaper clippings that interest me. At the time of this first scrapbook, the upcoming millennium change and Y2K was much in the news, as were stories about the recent death of Princess Diana. I was particularly interested in the conspiratorial aspects and archetypal meaning of her demise ...


Roy Rogers, one of my childhood heroes, died that year ...



To be continued ...

My Journey

I’ve begun a journey—a very important journey.

It is not the most important journey of my life, but it ranks very near the most important—that one being the journey that first brought me into this world.

This journey, you see, is a journey towards wellness. This is the one that will determine how much longer I will stay in this world.

I would like to stay awhile. The next world is better, I understand. But I am still attached to this one, and to certain people in it. Also, I have a few more things I’d like to do here before I leave.

So I have embarked on this journey …

A couple of months ago, I learned I have a potentially fatal disease: hereditary hemochromatosis, a disease that causes an excessive amount of iron in the blood. It is potentially fatal because too much iron can damage the body's organs, in particular the liver.

My liver has already suffered some damage, it seems. The damage has been exacerbated by my intake of alcohol, which further increases the amount of iron.

That’s two insults to the liver, as my doctor puts it. Two very rude insults: hemochromatosis and alcohol.

I’m in trouble …

Fortunately, the results of my biopsy were encouraging. I haven’t developed cirrhosis yet. But I’m close. Close enough that I have to take action now if I want to live.

And I want to live.

So, I’ve stopped drinking (this is week five of no alcohol), and in a couple of weeks I will begin my treatment, which will consist of regular phlebotomies to reduce the iron in my blood.

It will take several months to get my iron down to a normal level. After that, I will require a phlebotomy every three months for the rest of my life to keep it normal. But that's okay, because those phlebotomies will enable me to have a normal, healthy life—and a longer one.

Also, if I continue to avoid alcohol, it is possible my liver will repair itself in a few years.

That’s not a bad prognosis, but of course it’s only a prognosis. I have to actually follow through on the treatment—and continue avoiding alcohol—before I can truly say, "I dodged a bullet!"

I have to take the journey …