Where Rivers Meet
Moving sucks.
Hemingway once said that if you’re having trouble coming up with something to write about, just write the truest sentence that you know. Well, “moving sucks” is the truest sentence I know.
My lovely wife got a job at a prestigious university in Nashville, so I’ve just completed the arduous task of slowly packing all of my belongings into boxes, paying many hundreds of dollars to two large men to load it into their also quite large box truck, and finally driving for hours with two very upset cats in the backseat to then unpack it all in a whole different state. Also, it was snowing the entire time.
It’s embarrassing how little I knew about Tennessee before I moved here. I’ve only ever been here to go to Dollywood, or visit my sister in Knoxville, or - very rarely - to see a band play. I came up here over a decade ago to see a show and afterwards we went to the fabled Hattie B’s to try their hot chicken. But now, Hattie B’s has become just another chain of restaurants. I lived right next to the one in Birmingham.
When my wife told me she was in talks with the professors and faculty here, we were on a walking trail that goes through the very center of Birmingham. I looked out at its quaint skyline of half a dozen skyscrapers and myriad scattering of 20th Century architecture and I felt a tinge in my heart. This place, despite it not being my childhood home or font of deep friendships, this was where I turned into perhaps my truest self. I became a man, I’d say if the sincerity didn’t kill me.
My first blog on this website was written in Huntsville just as I was planning my move to Birmingham. I still really like that entry, despite its freshman pretention and loftiness, because it serves as a mission statement. I was trying to express that what keeps me going isn’t knowing something or believing something, it’s just the curiosity in and of itself. The curiosity ignites my mind.
Since I found out I was moving, possibly in an attempt to self-soothe, I’ve kind of taken a step back from my usual routines and interests. Normally, I’m very plugged in, so to speak. My big boy profession isn’t writing or drawing, though I wish they were, but rather IT. My job for the last decade was to stare at four large computer monitors and solve problems on them. So I was very interested in everything online. A lot of my portals and tools were web-based, so a browser window was always open and ready for my constant cycling of the same 5 social medias, search engines, and message boards. But, once I found out I was moving, it all stopped. I did my job still just as efficiently as I always had, but now the only browser window I kept open was to a single item. After a few days, I stopped even putting on my headphones…
I had started reading Berserk.
Almost the entire thing can be found online for free if you know where to look, but I plan on eventually getting the entire deluxe hardcovers of it. If you know me at all, or have seen where I live, you know I love some deluxe hardcovers. I have one for The NeverEnding Story, Le Morte d’Arthur, Grimms’ Fairy Tales, almost every video game art book you can imagine, and soon a very detailed collage of essays and art about Elden Ring called Grace Given.
Some people collect vinyl. I prefer books.
However, Berserk is a completely different beast. I didn’t even know where to start. It’s a Japanese Manga that began in the late 80’s and you can buy individual issues or big hardcover volumes. Going into it, I didn’t even know how many volumes there were, much less if I’d like it or not. I’ve had a few false starts over the years… I’d start reading it, find it too macabre, and then forget where I was.
This time was different though. I started on Page 1, Volume 1 and stuck with it. Now I’m at the Armor chapters in Volume 26, of 42, and at page six thousand or so. It’s honestly one of the best things I’ve ever read. Dark and brooding sure - my joke is that Berserk is Game of Thrones if Game of Thrones were actually good. As bleak as it may be, it’s ultimately a story about how to hang onto the last thread of your humanity - much like my own story.
It’s strange - FLOLAS is very similar conceptually and thematically to Berserk, but I started writing FLOLAS in 2005 and revised it for 8 years until I actually started drawing it in 2013, and I had never seen a single panel of Berserk. I may not have even known what it was.
There’s a part that I just read a week or so ago where a child sorcerer explains magic to the rest of the cast. She tells them that there are three worlds: the physical, the spiritual, and the ideal. The physical world is obvious: the universe, all the planets and stars, our physical bodies that get sick and wounded, etc. The astral world is where the gods, angels, demons, and monsters exist. They’re drawn to the physical living world, but cannot interact with it unless there’s some sort of nefarious magic at work. Lastly, there’s the world of ideas. She explains this as words - like you can have the idea of a desk, but then there’s the physical desk. Ideas are the root of creativity, so this must be the realm of the creator God. In Genesis, God literally speaks the Universe into existence after all…
I’ve never seen a magic system so well articulated before, the above doesn’t really even do it justice. Video games are usually far more systematic and gameplay oriented in their descriptions, and fantasy books are generally intentionally vague or esoteric. Berserk though - a story primarily about a guy with a giant sword who’s trying to murder an “angel” - somehow ends up having the most thought provoking prose on the subject of arcane arts; and that’s after translating it from Japanese.
The child sorcerer notices how there was once an ancient holy site where the church now stands, something more arcane and pagan. A series of rocks beset by crystals that the primordial man was drawn to. As she follows the connection more deeply, she finds that it leads to one of the four cardinal deities; much like the witches in The Wizard of Oz, they are of the North, South, East, and West.
We never really consider the spiritual influences of our mundane lives.
It’s funny that I thought of this while reading a manga…
When I think of moving to Tennessee, pretty much all I see are the obstacles and challenges. Like, I’ve spent the last two weeks trying to figure out why no one is picking up our garbage. Was there a garbage bill I forgot to pay? Do I need to call the garbage people? What is their number, 1-800-GAR-BAGE? Turns out we didn’t even have the right garbage can.
I often try to quiet my mind and try to see things from some cosmic perspective, but in this case I don’t see particularly much. Nashville is much like Birmingham. It’s a big, stinky city. Nice architecture. Terrible roads. A lot of seemingly unhappy people clogging those terrible roads. But I feel nothing towards it. I’ve yet to find the soul of this place.
Thinking back though, it took me a few years before I found the soul in Birmingham too. It did have one, by the way, grand and vast…
I was looking at a map of where I live and I noticed that there’s a lot of rivers, and one of them looks remarkably like a dragon. There’s a nice city walk trail that parallels the river. You could in theory get a bicycle and within minutes of riding that trail be anywhere in Nashville. That’s a start I guess…
I always liked to tell people that Alabama was an old Creek phrase that means:
“alab:” to cut through
& “ama:” tall grass
Tennessee is derived from “Tanasi,” which means meeting place or where rivers meet in Cherokee.
I just published page 65 of FLOLAS. It’s hard to believe that I’m almost done with this thing. I have no idea what is going to happen once I finish it, if I’ll immediately start on Episode 2 or go in a completely different direction. Regardless, thank you for reading and keeping with me all these years.
Kaplum klap
Arigato Asaimas
Muchos Gracias
Thank You Very Much
