Match to Flame 219

It was another one of those road to Damascus–double down–who’s your daddy moments. I was sitting on a couch in my room in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, doing some writing when this ephemeral thought passed through my brain like some sort of cosmic ray. It was less of a thought and more of a feeling, a peaceful-happy feeling that came wrapped in a warm diaphanous glow. I’ve learned to pay attention to ideas that come packaged that way. As I mentioned in a prior introduction, for whatever reason, my ideas for the strips generally come with some sort of color-coded rating attached. Let’s say, if the idea is a Crankshaft malapropism for example, and I forget to write it down and can’t recall it later, I know it’s no big deal because the idea wasn’t color rated that highly to begin with. It’s a goofy system, but useful. When those rare one-off neural connections come gift wrapped with that aforementioned glow, you fail to write it down at your own peril unless you want to find yourself living with eternal regret.* {*For a soul-scarring example, check out the introduction to The Complete Funky Winkerbean, Volume 12.} The glowing ideas are rarely something specific, but more of an open-ended invitation to make a leap of consciousness into another state of development that will be new, creatively vital, and fulfilling.

Before I get too far ahead of myself, let me step away from the opening long enough to explain how I came to be on that couch and the circumstances that had brought me to Chapel Hill. In the spring of 2012, Funky Winkerbean celebrated its 40th anniversary just as Cathy and I had celebrated our 40th wedding anniversary the previous year.

From The Complete Funky Winkerbean Volume 14