Fun Facts About Doctor Orient and Doctor Strange

	Doctor Strange	Doctor Orient
Magical Powers	Sorcerer in command of cosmic forces	Telepathy, invokes angels, tantric & kundalini yoga
Cool Mystic Mansion	Sanctum Sanctorum	Converted family brownstone into groovy psychic yoga lab
Hot Girlfriend	Clea	Lady Sativa
Grey Streaks	Easily recognized by grey hair at temples	Easily recognized by single streak of grey hair
Sarcastic Manservant	Wong	Sardi

Groovy Marvel Mystics: Damien Helstorm

As I mentioned in my Ghost Rider post, Damien Hellstorm, aka The Son of Satan, got into some pretty groovy adventures back in the 1970's when he spun off into his own story.  He's been in and out of the Marvel spotlight for years, and even got his own (very brief) Hulu series before Disney start consolidating everything.  The craziest entry into the wide range of characterizations is without a doubt the world of Marvel Mystics spun out by Warren Ellis.

Hellstorm: Prince of Lies & Druid- Warren Ellis, one of the biggest innovators in comics, got into mainstream comics with a deeply dark take on the Son of Satan story, starting in issue 12.  The series didn’t last long, but he did get a short follow up run called Druid that plays with how dark and nasty the old Druids must have been.  Ellis also writes the Castlevania cartoon on Netflix (which I haven’t seen yet), but he’s one of several comics creators who has been in a “me too” scandal in the last year so I’m not sure where his career is going.

Modern

Ellis Era

Dealing with Heart Surgery

 Wrote this for a colleague a few years ago.  Perhaps you'll find it useful.

Mental Health

·        You are going to be fine, but the hard part is convincing yourself of that

·        You may feel crappy during your initial recovery, but don’t sweat it since you will forget most of it anyway

·        You’ll notice the people asking questions and wishing you well are really annoying, because they are freaked out and see their own mortality in your face for a while; find other people with weird surgeries or medical conditions to talk to for a while, they are much less annoying

·        If they go mechanical and the noise bothers you try using a white noise app or machine when you go to sleep, and you can layer a couple t-shirts on during the day

·        You can develop depression or become emotionally distant for a while after the surgery; find a psychiatrist or psychologist and don’t be afraid to call if you need

·        Yoga, breath, meditation

 

Family

·        Look for friends or family to wait with your spouse in the waiting room, it is a long day and it helps to have a friend along

·        My wife and I slept with a body pillow between us for a month or so to keep her from accidentally flopping her arm onto my chest

·        Ignore most of the advice you’ll hear about intimacy- by the time you want to you’ll be healthy enough

 

Physical Health

·        Your scar will go from cool looking to barely noticeable over a year or so; it may itch but pain management doctor can help with that

·        Follow the lifting restrictions, seriously

·        Cardiac rehab is a good way to feel safe as you start to exercise more, but it is filled with people who had heart attacks and need counselling on weight and diet; use the parts that you need and tune out the rest

·        Walk every day, even if it is just five minutes at a time for the first week or so

·        The muscles in your back can get tight for the first few months as your chest knits back together; Bath & Body Works has a peppermint massage oil that works great at loosening the muscles

·        You can try Vitamin E lotion to reduce and ease scarring; maybe it works, maybe it doesn’t, can’t hurt to try

 

Doctors, Pain, Medications

·        Get a 7 day, AM/PM pill box, it makes life much easier

·        Pain medications are good and important, but try to get off of it as fast as possible

·        Coumadin is a pain in the backside, but it is manageable and you shouldn’t stress over it

·        Two side effects of Coumadin- you should probably stop drinking alcohol and you should probably grow a beard

·        Feel free to question medications and their side effects, if you don’t get answers feel free to change doctors

“Just a guy getting old”

I started writing this blog many years ago when I was just kicking off a concerted effort at mental and physical recovery from open heart surgery, and a good portion of the early posts were on that topic.  Components of the yoga practice, including breath, meditation, yoga nidra, and slowly developing asana were a huge part of that, in addition to therapy and a highly supportive spouse.  None the less, there was a lot of years where I thought it impossible that there would be a day where the depression heightened by the surgery wouldn’t be the focus of every hour of my life.

Then, around six years after surgery, I was in one of the those esoteric “anatomy is philosophy, philosophy is anatomy” workshops that often filled my weekends.  We were discussing prana or nadis or shushumna or something similar, and I asked if this kind of energy flows less efficiently where there are repeated injuries. 

The room filled with lots of knowing nods and concerned looks, and everyone assumed that I was thinking about the mass of knitted bones, scar tissue, and metal in my chest.  I had actually forgotten about it for a bit; I was thinking more of my absurdly and repeatedly injured right foot (multiple breaks, sprains, planar fasciitis, gout, Achilles tendonitis, and other assorted injuries).  That was the day I realized that I may have moved past the surgery.

I still take a mountain of pills every day, have to tweak my diet around medications, have weird bleeding issues, have strange aches around the incision, and have “Blood Test” on my work calendar every 2-4 weeks.  However, it has all just settled into a simple rhythm of my life, not a stressor.  I do have plenty of stress- I eventually moved on to an SSRI (select serotonin reuptake inhibitor) to manage depression and anxiety, one of the top five decisions of my life.  I also learned that mental health is indeed largely genetic and chemical; you can see a clear line in my family of who has inherited what, and what medications we take to stay on the straight and narrow.  (And for those people who say “what’s with all the drugged-up pill poppers?  Get over it!” please throw away your glasses and we’ll see how well you do.)

It’s now eleven years post-surgery, and this year’s “valve-iversary” went by with relatively little fanfare (also, pandemic).  I didn’t even qualify as medically compromised to jump ahead in the vax line.  “You’re not a cardiac patient anymore, just a guy getting old”, a doctor told me after the five year mark, “you should worry more about cholesterol and blood pressure”.

I’m just a guy getting old.  Namaste.

Groovy Marvel Mystics: Ghost Rider

Earlier this year a friendly neighborhood tarot reader / hedge witch asked for some recommendations on Ghost Rider reads, based on her love of the Nick Cage films.  There are some AMAZING Ghost Rider books, and I sent her the guide below.

And away we go, Flameheads!

Way back in the 1970’s Marvel was a groovy comics publisher that pushed boundaries right after the Comics Code started cracking.  They jumped in with Ghost Rider, a chopper-riding stunt biker possessed by a demon, and pivoted quickly to Son of Satan, about a parapsychologist and occultist who may be the literal son of Satan.  The letter columns in Son of Satan are awesome.  It’s got Christians, Satanists, Wiccans, Witches, all sorts of devotions and philosophies arguing about what they see and educating fellow readers.

Here are some modern favorites:

Ghost Rider: Heaven’s On Fire- Two Ghost Riders, the Son of Satan, and a bunch of angels go to war to keep a group of occultists from recruiting the teenaged anti-Christ.  It’s big and nuts and one of my favorite series.  

Ghost Rider: Danny Ketch- Danny Ketch, the brother of the original Ghost Rider, is trying to kick the “spirit of vengeance” habit but keeps on turning into a flaming skullhead.  Not sure about this one yet, I’m actually planning on reading this one tonight.  

Damnation & Ghost Rider: King of Hell- After the Devil merges Vegas and Hell, a bunch of Marvel magicians go to sort things out, and everything goes wrong.  By the end ***spoiler alert*** Johnny Blaze becomes King of Hell, and tries to keep sane while fighting devils below and heroes above. 

"Stop Touching My Ass"; or, My First Baptiste Class

Baron Baptiste Photo by Anja Schlein

(It seems that I wrote this draft in November '16 and forgot to post it)

I just took my first Baptiste yoga class today, and I don't know what to think of it. 

I have been practicing a style of yoga rooted in Tantra for the last six years, so I am used to classes stepping pretty far from the norms of classical yoga. However, I found myself frequently saying "wouldn't it be nice to hear something in Sanskrit? Or maybe to have someone explain what were doing, instead of just bouncing around to all the really, really, really loud music?"

As class started, there were two young, half dressed, yoga chicks (sorry, that's the best way to describe them) bouncing around like they were on ecstasy. They stopped periodically mid-posture to take selfies.  The music was so loud that I couldn't hear what passed for instructions despite the instructor being micced, and frequently "helpers" came around to give adjustments. At one point, while in pigeon, a "helper" placed one hand on my sacrum, another of my back, and then gave me a overly sensual back massage.

Was that yoga? 

On a positive note, I'm pretty sure my third eye crossed some sort of dimensional barrier in savasana.