Myco-comic for Mycocosmic

My spouse Chris Gavaler is a comics scholar and creative writer who does crazy things with Microsoft Paint, an old graphics editor that’s supposed to be very limited but which he keeps inventive finding ways to redeploy. He’s also on sabbatical and just finished taking a drawing class that developed his visual arts skills. One of his latest Microsoft Paint projects: creating a comic based on my poem “Rhapsodomancy,” which recently appeared in ASP Bulletin and is forthcoming in my March 2025 collection Mycocosmic. The art he developed is here, consisting of reworkings of tarot’s Major Arcana cards (the featured image above is The Empress). The full comic, incorporating my poem’s words, is drafted but not posted yet, as he’s workshopping it with friends soon.

I’ve been thinking about tarot since the pandemic, when the cards offered a desperate way for this obsessive planner to imagine what might lie ahead. Since then they’ve become, for me, less about the possibility of divination and more about the necessity for contemplation of currents operating in my life or in the lives of people who ask me for readings. My poem “Rhapsodomancy,” with numbered sections keyed to the Major Arcana, began when I learned about the practice of divination through poetry. Basically, rhapsodomancy is a version of bibliomancy: you ask a question and randomly pick a bit of a poem for the answer. What “random” means can encompass a variety of procedures, but when I originally put the poem under submission, it carried these instructions:

Add the number of times you’ve sustained a memorable burn to the current intensity of your existential doubt rated on a thirteen-point scale. The number corresponds to the advice below. If your answer is a negative number, set a match to the poem and study the scorched fragments.

I sent it out a number of times, but the version of the poem with these instructions was never accepted by a magazine; I think they made the whole thing seem too cute or flip. The poem has a flip edge without them, after all, although it reflects serious wrestling. Sometimes a bit of blunt advice with a sarcastic edge is what helps me most–in essence, stop taking yourself so seriously, Lesley. My recently retired therapist advised me to practice self-talk, little mantras about my worthiness, to counteract an inner voice that urges me to overwork (“overfunctioning for others and underfunctioning for self,” she calls it). Gotta jump, no matter how high the bar is set, if you’re still trying to outrun your parents telling you that you’re too lazy, angry, sensitive, unrealistic, fat, unattractive, and generally disappointing.

But the nice, affirming sentences I’d repeat to myself always sounded silly; it was difficult not to roll my eyes. What actually helps a little is, when somebody criticizes me for a bullshit reason, or I even suspect they’re giving me the side-eye, growling to myself another line she gave me when she was joking about something her husband used to say with great impatience. I hear it in a New Jersey accent: What’s it to you? I know intellectually that seeking approbation from damaged people is a mug’s game, but apparently I need Tony Soprano in my head to start breaking the habit.

Speaking of accents: I was going to post about my Brooklyn-born father this week, whose home territory I finally explored recently, but I wanted some old pictures of him and suddenly I can’t find them. Father-stuff is very present because of that trip and because, with a new therapist, I’m preparing for EMDR treatment by rehearsing the moments of my life during which I felt least safe, many of which involved him. I finally wrote about his violence in other poems from Mycocosmic, but that constituted an opening up of old, bad experience after long silence rather than a resolution of it. I don’t need any method of divination to tell me that this process will be hard on mind and body. I came out of my last session with a sudden backache, a weird sinus flare-up, and an edgy, upset mood that lasted for days. I’m losing photos, leaving groceries in the car, dropping dishes, forgetting words. I’m sure an unconscious part of me decided: let’s block this post for now; he doesn’t need to dominate your blog, too.

Given all this stirred-up drama, I’m in some ways actually feeling lighter. The teaching part of Fall Term is over! My university sabbatical application was accepted! An agent asked for my full novel ms! Spring gigs are coming together, with organizers saying, “You wrote at exactly the right moment!” Finally, I hope, some sticky wheels are turning.