oh, mama raised me well

04/11
time-ish: morning before work

[The Hermit] ⇧

This hermit is a hermit crab of sorts. the hermit is not just alone on a journey of self-discovery, he is also guarded. Not alone by physical distance, but by social distance as well. The hermit takes this time alone to find divine truth, enlightenment, signified in his lantern even in the dark.

Even if people stress you out, and they do me, the enlightenment gained in being alone is sometimes not worth the loneliness. This can sometimes mean a temporary retreat to be alone, to learn alone, to reflect. It can other times mean being apart from the world, feeling separated and distant. If you have felt alone lately, this may be a kind reminder to think about what you learned from the experience. Isolation need not be painful.

If you do reverses, the hermit is always alone and distant for a reason that he thinks is noble, worth it. But it almost never is. Self-imposed isolation, separation, but blaming it on something else.

end of day thoughts
tony's aiming to head out to st. louis this weekend (after a couple delayed trips) so i'm def gonna be flying solo for a little bit, but i'm kind of looking forward to it. maybe this one is literal lol

so since i finished the original sandman run last week, i decided to finally delve into the expanded universe stuff that's been being put out over the last couple year

i'd read the two death tpb's, which i both adore, quite some time ago. i'll probably revist them, but some stuff in them hits close to home (tho tbf there's a lot of little things in sandman that hit close to home in different ways). i haven't read dream hunters or the thessaly books or the lucifer series, tho. so i'm kind of skipping around

(i also feel like i should go back and start locke and key over again b/c i DID read the first couple gn's but not much past that and i know there's a sandman crossover, sooooo)

(tony also bought me, for my birthday, the key to hell from the pin collection that got put out for locke and key, so i feel obligated now lolol)

i think back when i originally finished sandman i wasn't too keen about a new dream - which feels typical when you spend ten volumes with a character over their development arc and then they are simply gone. but i am interested in daniel as dream and how he interacts with things - a being the same as morpheus but also not

re-reading sandman felt like an intimate experience, none of my other friends have read it, so it very much feels like it's one of those special things that's just mine, which is fine. but reading the new stuff is all unknown to me! completely new! it feels less restrained, in a way? the introduction of dora, daniel's disappearance (different than dream's disappearance that opens the original book) and the feeling that something is not quite right.