Carded and/or otherwise and possessed of deep, animate personal meaning: the more I've added (the more curtain rods too: curtain rods + zip ties + ceiling = wonderful display unit), the more I've found a set of specific avidities: Batman (McFarlane releases of odd variants, the Black and White statues, especially – though a recent find of four carded figures from the '93 Kenner BATMAN: TAS line was a pleasant-enough surprise that it might've triggered a new seeking); SUPER POWERS (particularly my prized, unpunched original 1984 Superman – though I now have almost a complete set of the current McFarlane releases too: love the new Batwing next to my original issue '84 SP Batmobile); Dick Tracy (such a deliciously weird line – I WILL FIND CARDED BLANK); Universal Monsters (NECAs and Megos - just added Hammer's 1962 Herbert Lom Phantom - great flick); and the recent Marvel Legends 60th anniversary Spider-Man (and a yellow-suited Daredevil) figures (the Japanese Spidey variant is wonderful and I'm thrilled to have a Spidey 2099 figure) – which has added three of the 1984 SECRET WARS line to my carded seekings: red & blue Spidey (I think one of mine became a (horribly failed) attempt at a custom 2099 Spidey 30 years ago or so), symbiote Spidey, and Daredevil; an uncarded and plastic-sealed Captain America SECRET WARS figure is currently on the shelves next to a VHS copy of the 1944 CAPTAIN AMERICA serial – I like to pretend that it's "frozen in ice" Cap with immobile preservation action.

As to the origin of this particular encircling, all I can surmise – other than the labor pains of a potential midlife crisis (though there are far more deleterious things to be wasting my midlife on) – is that it's an extension of a period I've been in since my mother's death featuring, among other things, this reclamation of plastic people – not necessarily the exact same plastic people, mind you, only the aforementioned lines, some new, some old / all obtained via a "that's neat" principle having no rhyme or reason other than that – many of the pre-Boston era's having been thrown out when I moved to the land of dropped R's as part of a concerted effort on my mother and (Step-He)’s part to eliminate all traces of me from their new lives; a reversion, perhaps, to a form that once upon a time kept me happy and creative and sane here in this bucolic hellhole – though far less of one in my forties than in my teens –; a reversion to a me surrounded by comics and action figures, toiling away at things and at writings that will go nowhere amidst a (re) discovery of the zen (and the art) of bagging and boarding comics, fake plastic friends reclaimed, reorganized – a reversion to a previous iteration with the experience of the last 20 years as a way to move forward into the next whateveritmaybe or whateveritmaybenot.

All this being the current operating theory, anyhow; maybe it is, indeed, a midlife crisis – but fuck if I know, fuck if I care: I'm rather fond of my toiling away at these things no one reads back here among my plastic coterie.