the Tower of Brahma - Beginnings & Inspiration, Isolation & Desperation

I wrote that prelude and then nothing for four months. This is the first time I felt that irresistible compulsion, that sad sickness, that overwhelms me when I don't write another chapter. It would increase in intensity and frequency over the next six-and-a-half years. This is when the changes really began. I had gone back up to New Paltz, which I had visited twice when I was seventeen as a prospective college. Instead, I stayed local and went to Nassau Community with my friends. This was always a major regret and what would ultimately determine the rest of my life.

I was stuck on Long Island. At 26 I was living down the street from my Junior High School, Packard, and so unhappy that nothing would have made a difference. My parents were separated, my girlfriend had her family and our pugs, and I had no friends, except for Chris Chua, the artist on my graphic novel LEGEND OF LIQUID FURY that we had just begun hocking at conventions, but he was down in Pennsylvania, only seeing him when I'd drive down the East Coast to some comic convention. 

In regards to my relationship I was obsessed with the idea that I had followed my dad's example to a T, and yet played it out emotionally like my mother. I was stuck and ignored, emotional and lonely, and barely able to venture outside with my crippling social anxiety, taking both negative halves of my parents. By the time I got into the car to drive upstate to check out the school, I was fiercely trying to escape the suburban prison of my own creation. 

I went up to the mountain just outside New Paltz, sat on the side of the cliff, stared out into the dead trees and skyline, stolen magic stones from a New Age shoppe in town in my hands, and begged for the life I wanted so desperately, one I imagined was so far beyond me. 

This is where Agent Fenris began working on the Tower.

THE TOWER OF BRAHMA: Chapter 1 - Escape (edit)

02/04/04