Comic 49 is up.

Thank you everyone for your sympathy during my family's time of mourning. My mother especially appreciates your support.

I type these posts the day before they go up. So as I write, its still Halloween. Although I am not of a magical persuasion, I think the 8 pagan holidays are a great way to celebrate the seasons. I love the story that is told by the unfolding of the year. Halloween is the last harvest and the time to honor the dead. I lit candles for my ancestors tonight and sat there "with" the dead. Its kindof fitting, seeing as my grandmother recently died. She is closest to me in that long line that stretches backwards through infinity. It was like I could share some time with her that I missed by not being able to go to her funeral.
I believe in a continued existence after death, and I believe it is a positive experience rather than a negative one. But other than that...? I wonder if the dead can see us from where they are. I wonder if they know about my candles, or if they have an opinion about them? In many Asian countries, ancestors apparently watch over the four family generations after their death. I don't think we meditate on our ancestors enough in America. Maybe that's because we are a nation of such widely varied roots. Whatever the reason, I have been trying to learn more about my family history and my extended relatives (and let me tell you, some of them are hilarious).
Maybe you should too? Cuz when your grandparents die, and then when your parents die, you'll have no link to the past anymore. Your history will be lost. Maybe your history isn't that important to you. It wasn't to me for a long time. But the little I do know is really funny. So I'm guessing there's a lot more funny in there yet to be found.

I'm jealous of everyone who gorged themselves on chocolate! Tell me how you celebrated Halloween! And tell me what your costume was!
  ¶ 21:21

Reasons comic 48 is late:
Betty died.
I'm having panic attacks.
I have to give a speech tomorrow at 8:00 a.m.
I am very tired.

I drew and scripted it all, I just can't stay up and color it tonight. I put up one of the sketches as filler until later today. It should be up soon, probably along with a huge addition to this post.

UPDATE:
Okay, comic 48 is up. Now I'm going to get all of these dark accounts out of the way in a single post.

My family just got home from Betty's funeral. I couldn't attend because of various tests and things. When everyone got back, my father and aunt described the service to me:

It was held in Satanta (pronounced Suh-tan-uh, not Satan-tah), a tiny town in Kansas that Betty grew up in. By tiny, I mean that there are about 18 streets in the whole town. And the county its in is apparently the flattest in flat Kansas. Harvest is over, so several fields are nothing but dust.
You can see the blue tent they erected from half a mile away. The cemetery is full of relatives: Deckers and Hales. Twenty relatives--aunts, uncles, and siblings--sit in folding chairs covered in crushed blue velvet. Four singers stand behind. They wait for the service to start. There is no sound but the wind blowing across the plains. The edges of the tent and people's hair streams out before them.
Half a mile away is a set of train tracks. The train blows its horn as it crosses one of the 18 roads. Only in this flatland, the sound of the horn is rendered into a kind of musical tone. The pitch is clear and trumpet-like. It resonates slowly over the open space. Four times it sounds, without hurry.
And then, they begin to sing.
There is silver ornamentation on the silver-painted casket. Three metal plates hold the bars on each side. My father looks at the casket, and then notices that those plates are reflecting the faces of Ken, Lori, and my mother. One face in each of the metal plates. Betty's three children, eerily reflected on her casket.
It was absolutely surreal. The hair stood up on the back of your neck.
Afterwards, someone showed my family a picture of Betty from right around the time she graduated highschool. She was standing next to a house, and behind that was that flat, featureless Kansas horizon. It could just has easily been Mars. And as everyone left, the singers began one last, upbeat tune. "Sing and Be Happy". It had always been one of her favorites. Anywhere else, it would have been somehow gruesomely cheerful. But here, and only here, it was wonderful.

That's how my father told it, anyway. The only personal account I can give you was the one I wrote in my scratchbook after the viewing. Warning, it doesn't make much sense. Its one of those wee hour ramblings:

"O Death, I stand before you know like a child uncomprehending. Such long years you have held this daughter without fully embracing her. So long she walked this line of wavering mind without your kiss. Lying there, my eyes deceive themselves at her stillness. So accustomed to the subtle motions of life that, as I watch her, her chest still rises, her eyes still move beneath the glued and painted lids. Such cavernous nostrils, such broad, straight lips, unbelievably frozen before me.
"How long have I anticipated this day? How long has the leaking of her essence has plagued these homes? If only all the soul that leaked for so many years could have been regathered, the strands rebraided, like a chain of memories to bind up her brain once again and remove the vacancy of her remembered gaze...
"And yet, I stand before her still, letting my eyes take in the stillness of her bones. My eyes stop playing tricks, and I can see her chest isn't really rising, her skin isn't twitching. She is dead. She is dead. She is dead and I live on.
"Funerals impress me with their scope. Those phrases float over us: "She looks really good" and "She's finally at peace". But mostly these people talk of other things, almost ANY other thing, rather than mortality. It is as if we want to look away, but cannot. We want to affirm our lives in the midst of death. And when we try to look, we do not see.
"O Death, we stand before you as your children, uncomprehending. And still you grant us mercy, even while we are still living. You take one alone, and give the rest of us the power to grieve.
"Rest peacefully, grandmother."

And, finally, a poem from The Sandman series:

Death is before me today:
Like the recovery of a sick man,
Like going forth into a garden after sickness
Death is before me today:
Like the odor of myrrh,
Like sitting under a sail in a good wind.
Death is before me today:
Like the course of a stream
Like the return of a man from the war-galley to his house.
Death is before me today:
Like the home that a man longs to see,
After years spent as a captive.

Sunday is Halloween, everyone. Take time to honor your dead. ^_^
  ¶ 20:46

Comic 47 is up, shiny and double length because I'm out of town on Monday for a wedding.

Whoa, I don't know what was with Monday's post. You guys should know by now I am prone to rambling. Not even making an argument, not really. Just rambling. Like today, in Microbiology, I was incinerating bacteria and staining slides, and I looked over to my partners and said "What if this is how God sees us?" They just kindof stared at me blankly, so I went back to work.

Hey, look up on the address bar. See my nifty icon? It'll be there beside my site if you bookmark it. The icon goes along with esunasoul.com version 4, which I have successfully built minus the comic navigation code. I expect to put up v.4 over winter break, so for now the icon is all you get.

I'm going to Houston this weekend to see Jeff's cousin get married. Jeff and I are also going to the Renaissance festival, and maybe somewhere in there I'll convince him to take me someplace that serves sushi.

Hey, fill up my comment section while I'm gone: Is there anything wrong with sometimes thinking of God in feminine terms (or maybe always thinking that way)? And I'm not just asking what Christian people think, since MOST people in America picture "God" as masculine.
  ¶ 20:43

Guess what guys? Still no Photoshop. Still no comic. I'm trying believe me. Its frustrating, since I'm so close to ending Chapter 2. Only one big scene after the current kitchen conversation and we'll be ready for a change in direction yet again.

Edit: I LIED! I LIED! THERE IS A COMIC! HA!

Lori, Ken, and Myra came to visit this last weekend (uncles and aunts). They came to talk about how they were going to handle Betty's impending death. Its odd to go into a room with someone you know is about to die, just so you can look at her body one last time. It's a real mystery to behold. If people really thought about Alzheimer's disease, they'd see it doesn't fit into the Christian theology at all. Where is her soul? Is it still in there? Did it leave a long time ago? If it did leave, was there a point she crossed where you could actually say her soul was gone, or did it leave in increments, gradually, like sand in an hourglass? And what about a similar situation: braindeath? What if your brain dies but your family keeps you plugged in for years, in denial? Did you die when your brain did, or when your body does?
So much of Christianity is focused on dying... but does it ever really consider death?
I really believe that whatever it is that made Betty who she was has departed entirely. But I think it would be silly to say that her physical death has no meaning. There is this Rite that accompanies it. This one last ceremony, where everyone gathers to say "She is dead, but we live", and the lid is closed, *click*, and the ground swallows up the shell that once held all your memories.
I guess what I mean is, it doesn't matter whether her soul is there or not. It doesn't matter what I believe, or how I make it fit my worldview. One way or the other, this is the last chapter of the book.

I had this kind of epiphany the other day. It kindof relates to this, but it kindof doesn't. My idea was this: beliefs don't mean very much. Any belief. They don't really count for very much at all. Of course, the Jesus-Book says "faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead". But this is something else than that; this isn't about "acting out" beliefs.
It is something about the fact that believing in evil sets you up to do evil. For instance (and gee, this is my favorite argument these days) people can believe that homosexuality is evil. But then, somehow, they're going to do evil to a homosexual person by denying them equal rights, or even just by labeling them and discriminating against them. I know; you can't avoid doing that at least sometimes in life, but to write off an entire group because of one characteristic? People decide that something is truth, so they act without compassion in order to live up to that truth?
It gets more complicated on things like murder. "Killing is evil". But then we go fight wars, and and we have to make exceptions to our ideals, so we say "Sometimes killing is a necessary evil". As if killing were evil "in general", except when we have to do it. Does that make sense? Every time you say something is true, there is always going to be this exception, this situation where it isn't true, and then and there your belief is proven to be wrong at least .001% of the time.
"Abortion is murder"... but sometimes its not murder, sometimes it might be a necessary evil... and you might treat a person really badly and actually do wrong when you try to do good.
Go the other way. "People should be open-minded"... but then, there are cases where you really shouldn't be open minded and should draw just the line. You might be so wrong for thinking closed-minded people are always idiots. (I am guilty of this one a lot).
Can you ever say something is universally true, and it not be false at least once? Are there any absolutes? ANY? I guess dying is one. People die. But even then, what defines living and dying? We know one state from the other, but we can't agree on when it happens, and how. Is there a soul? I think so. But does that really make a difference when I go visit Betty? Whether I believe she is "in there" or not, does it matter?
All that really matters is that I am standing there, I think. I am looking at her body. Preparing for the Rite.

I'm not saying that people shouldn't believe in things. No, that's not it. And I'm not saying that there is no evil, because I've definitely seen evil with my own eyes, and done evil myself. But maybe I'm saying that people should take things one day at a time? Act out of compassion rather than act out of principle? I guess that's more Zen than anything. I'm sure that THAT belief is wrong sometimes too. Its hard to write about. Maybe its better to say nothing at all? So many of my epiphanies end up that way. I type and type and type. Nothing is gained.

If you actually read all the way to the end of this post, wow, I'm impressed with you. Have a cookie.
  ¶ 20:32

Okay, after a lot of work my computer is alive and well again. My graphics card isn't fully functional, but I've decided I can live without the TV tuner as long as the thing doesn't crash anymore. I'm in the process of restoring and reinstalling stuff.
You'll have to wait on the comic for JUUUST a little while longer. I have drawn and scripted it, even scanned it in. But I don't have a copy of Photoshop anymore. Nor do I have a coughcrackcough to make any other copy work while I hunt for the CD. So I'll try to fix this Friday and have the comic up then. I'm sorry for the break. I really miss making them. I am thankful for your indulgence, patient readers. -_-

I'm a little stressed out these days. UH wants to charge me for the semester I dropped (apparently I dropped about 12 hours too late), and none of my appeals seem to be affecting them. So, I may shortly be emptying my bank account for a service I never received. I'm going to get a job over winter break, though I doubt I'll be able to make up all the money. I calculate it'll take about 300 hours at a minimum-wage job to rectify my loss. Needless to say, all of this is making me extremely angry. If your a pray-er, then pray for me. But if you're a UH student, would you mind very much going to the Dean's Offices for NSM, CLASS, and EDU and kicking the Associate Dean? My fee bill is pocket change for the university, but because they lack human compassion and dignity, these people are trying to take away my entire summer's work. If they succeed, I won't sweat the money, because afterall, people are only going to take money from you for the rest of your life. I can make it back somehow. But I will go find them and have a little talk with each of them about the nature of their character.
Also, Betty, my grandmother, has stopped eating. Which means, after all these years, she's dying. They're not putting in a feeding tube, which I think is smart. But it makes my mom really sad, and I'm sad for her. Lori may come see her this weekend, just in case she doesn't get another chance before she dies.
Finally, microbiology is hard. I never thought I'd make a B in a BPCC class. Ugh.
So. This isn't a pity-party. But I could use your support guys. It doesn't need to be a comment here or anything. Maybe, just, in your brain. That's as good as praying I guess. Just... be.
  ¶ 21:18

Well. There is no comic today. And there won't be a comic Monday. Not because I don't WANT to make one, but because I have no computer.

I mean, I HAVE a computer. But I'm typing this post in Safe Mode.

Here's my problem: I have been having some serious driver issues lately, and have been needing to do a format and reinstall for a while. So I've backed up all my files, reinstalled XP, gotten my updates, etc... and am now trying to get my graphics card set up. I have an old ATI 8500DV All-In-Wonder. I can't install ANYTHING else on this machine until the graphics card is working, because if you put any webcam related stuff on here it will interfere with my card's TV capabilities.

I think you would all agree with me when I say I am generally a very patient person. But I only have three words for the way this process is going. OH MY GOD. >_< ::rage:: Nothing works. NOTHING. Most of the updated software is incompatible with my card, and ATI isn't offering any support. ATI doesn't play nice with SP2. It doesn't play nice with Windows Plug and Play. It doesn't play nice when you have any two components of the ATI software package installed together at the same time! Apparently these little idisyncracies can be solved if you painstakingly install each part in a VERY specific order, but sofar the "recommended" procedures aren't working. The actual formula remains a mystery I have to discover through trial and error. I am just so furious with ATI for refusing to provide support for their products! They aren't writing code to make something that was top of the line 2 years ago compatible with today's technology!! I could trade up to a newer, more expensive card, but I've been saving so I can buy a guitar. I don't want to blow all that cash because of someone else's incompetance! Right now, I am sorely tempted to call up tech support and just scream into the ear of whoever picks up the phone. I mean, I could live with the card even if I didn't have full access to all its features. But I can't even load the driver! Its as if the card wasn't there at all!
If something doesn't work soon, I'm going to go buy an nVidia and then put a little "I HATE ATI" icon on this site. Right next to a "Christians for Equal Marriage" icon.

I bet people will start leaving more comments when they see THAT.

PS Sorry if I'm speaking too much Geek here. As for Artsy stuff, the comic will be up whenever the computer is and I can install my tools again. Sorry -_-
  ¶ 21:30

The 45th comic is up. Not colored or anything, but I guess it's better than skipping!!

I have been busy all day writing this speech on Buddhism for my DUMB speech class. I was going to talk about the different schools of Buddhism, or maybe the reasoning behind the meditations and practices, but then decided that my class probably doesn't even know anything about their OWN religion, so I made it really simple and dry and even I am getting bored listening to myself. They can just deal though.

The Revel is going on this week, so I think I'm going to head over there tonight. I always like looking at the jewelry especially. I'm not much a fan of local art, like the Louisiana mud paintings. All the paint is made of mud. Blah. Its like hanging up a canvas of your forest-camo pants.
The one thing I'm always looking for is a Saturn dial. They had them one year, but I've never seen one since. I'd really like one, so if you find one lemme know. Its cool. Also, I wish I could hear the Japanese drummers again. They were awesome, remember when we saw them together that time Sarah?

This is a test week, so everyone pray I don't have any panic attacks this week ^_^

PS Dathan, you're not replaced. You're just not very easy to collaborate with on this project, since you're way over in Texas! You are SO welcome to take a crack at figuring out this code and making it Heather-understandable-and-compatible. You can find a copy of it here, if you wanna take a look.
  ¶ 23:27