If you will remember, and if you will forget;

If actions live forever, will forever you regret?

The strip that we have been running at Secrets of the Universe is a secret of the Universe from when the paint and plaster were still wet. These are memories from a time when that would otherwise have been forgotten. It is like the old video games that are now in resurgence as nostalgia builds up in an aging generation about to pass the torch to its own successor. Such is the way of time.

How interested would you be in an early Monet painting? By early, I mean when he was still in his adolescent period of growth as a painter. Even the best writers did not come out of the void fully grown. We are born as children and only born-again as adults. What would the value of such rare pieces of art be worth, even though they show only the seed of talent and not the tree which grew from it?

Eightballs is not as polished a strip as the more modern panels that we run. If the story can generate a following, there may yet be more skillfully drawn panels to come in the strip. Who, apart from the maker of all things, knows the mind of Joel C. Furches? You will find many overlapping story arcs taking place on this site. Secrets of the Universe does not seem limited to a single Universe.

Joel has often mentioned that all of my writing seems to belong to a single created universe. I know many tricks, but I have only one pony. This I take as a challenge to write in other universes from time to time. You may eventually see some of this writing on my site if I can survive online. However; Joel does not have this limitation.

All of this writing is coming from a mind that doesn’t see much artistic promise in some professionally drawn cartoons. Myself, I do not see Eightballs as badly as Joel does. Maybe that is part of what makes an artist. The artist sees the flaws in his own work that nobody else will ever notice. My best fans, I actually have one or two, have not noticed some of my blunders.

With all this stated and out in the open, have you ever stepped backwards into your own life? You spend a lifetime writing a diary, but do you ever go back and read it? Can you see your own reflection in those aging pages? Do you like, on occasion, to relive the memories of less troubling days?

My recent reading list includes some theory that we are being kept in conflict by true believers who see conflict as an accelerator for evolution. So, maybe the truth is best written in the simpler text of those pages which age faster than their author does. Simpler art is the sight of simpler eyes which have not grown cloudy by the passing of dark days. May you find the truth in these older Secrets of the Universe. God bless you either way.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 1st, 2006 at 12:01 am and is filed under Eightballs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.