Making Your Future Happen, the selfish version

I can be rather preachy. I am a psychologist, after all, so talking things over and making my point clearly is something I am comfortable doing. Sometimes I can do it rather well, and I frequently make my children stop everything and listen as I expound dramatically on a life lesson that MUST be taught then and there. I think it is important to tell my children when I am being serious, because it doesn't happen every day. I also take perverse fun in making a spectacle of myself while I tell them something of utmost seriousness and, hopefully, profound parental wisdom. You know, stuff kids like me ignored and only learned waaaaaay too late.

Along these lines I was recently on the pulpit in my living room preaching to, if not the choir, then the captive. This captive was my daughter, M age 12, who had mere moments before been watching one of her shows before being loudly and rudely interrupted in the face of my fervor at needing to point out how I had once again conjured the secrets of the universe whilst sitting in my basement at the computer. Today's lesson, and listen now, because this is serious...YOU MAKE YOUR DESTINY HAPPEN. I should stop right there, because that is the message of this post. Sure, this post may be about comic art (really most of my life is about comic art believe me) and yes I know it isn't remotely about comic art yet but just you wait and see but the idea that you make your life happen is about the most important thing I could ever teach my children. If you don't make your life happen, your life happens TO you. Many of the people I grew up with, friends and family alike, let their lives happen. I quickly made my life happen. I went to college, that was unknown in my family before my generation but expected of mine, but then went on to graduate school and then married and moved 700 miles to get a Ph.D. People I knew, friends and family, were perplexed at my decisions but then, and now, I know my life is my life and no one else's. Don't let people live your life. There are many corollaries to this statement and chief among them is you damn well better put yourself in position to accept the consequences of your actions if you live as you alone see fit. But I digress. The point is, again, that you have to form your own future. You can make life happen as you want if you truly want to do it.

Now, the reason I was so eager to pass along this particular nugget of fatherly sagacity was the recent exhibition and sale of art by Frank Miller. From Galerie 9 in Paris France http://www.galerie9art.fr/index.php?expo=173 25 pieces were shown  and offered for sale from Sin City - Hell and Back; Family Values, and The Big Fat Kill. Most of the pieces sold in a few hours. This follows the first multiple piece offerings of prime Frank Miller comic art that I am aware of ever, recently made available by Frank himself through Graphic Collectibles. Now, I collect comic art. I spend a few hundred dollars on things, and have on occasion spent slightly more than than. I must admit than on occasion I have considered selling every piece I own to buy ONE magic Steve Ditko Dr. Strange page. But even as I think those thoughts, and I think them every so often, I realize I would never do such a thing even if I could. It would be too much in every way. But I looked at that gallery exhibit and I recalled those pages Mitch was selling and I decided then and there that I would one day own a sweet sweet Frank Miller page. And I decided as well that I would own this page sometime in the next 4 years. Five is too long and 2 is too soon, but I can see being able to go all out and pay what it takes in 4 years.

Now the reason this becomes noteworthy is that I immediately made this forecast public in a post on a comic art collector's message board. And as I looked at the published post, a boast of bravado and bluster now made public for all to see, I liked what I saw. I knew I was right, that I would own this page eventually, that it is out there right now in someone's closet or desk or even Frank's portfolios. It will make a journey from there to here, whether it comes from a gallery like Galerie 9, a dealer like Mitch at GC, or even from Frank Miller himself who I met at the Chicago Comic Con in 1995 or so where he signed my Elektra Lives Again hardcover and then had a drink next to, but not with, him at the bar in the Sofitel later that night. If I met him socially once hey, it could happen for sure. But it will happen. So I looked at the post and it was good.

Almost immediately I received a response from someone nice who could maybe eventually assist in possibly making this a reality. Equivocations mine, he could definitely make it happen today. But anyway. Nothing concrete at that time, just a note that my vow was heard. And that my friends is karma. The Good Lord looking over my shoulder. Destiny. Free Will. All of those and more. It is a Frank Miller page displayed prominently in every home I own until the day I die. As long as I live four more years of course.