DIVIDED BY INFINITY (1994; w + illo Lance Tooks)

"It's about time" 1st line, dreadlocked fem narrator's twisty hair à la infinity symbol dividing 1st panel (time a psychic continuum, divided mind forever twisting back on self + returning to same place), she regarding defensive, self-contained husband (sexes also DBI, each a holon incomplete w/o other, intercourse nexus of individual continuums where 2 finitudes create Forever); Persistence-of-Memory watch indicates it's not about time, too: other, similar mental constructs separating experience as well as sexes, final "…and running out of it" positive transcendence of same.

Unnamed hubby (archetypal Other) met in college (learning experience) shares "deep connection" w/ her (primal, essential unity behind façade of difference; cf sim setups in Splash, Lifeforce, Déjà Vu, etc); move into only house he'd known (stability vs her fluidity, she entering his mind psychic agent arising in dream: all wmn mothers to men [she ample-bodied Earth Mama, "medusa" locks own arch'l nature] + all men wmn's "regressive masculinity" [or, wmn's sense of own lost masculine pwr]), his indifference (turned to stone: men's need to separate from nurturing, providing Source + establish/maintain own i.d.) driving eventual separation, she contemplating throwing ring (à la circular clock in previous panel: continuous time never mtg, as opposed to [infinity symbol]) she had xchgd for own "gift" (yoni/hymen, rupture on marriage opening contained self to Other/world) into lake (evolutionary beginning: re-starting life an individual again).

"Gift" childhood ability to warp time (hair in girlish disarray un-discipline that comes w/ adulthood: to time + other constructs, adult watch replacing girl's bracelets) used to fix or rediscover things, ditched ring returning to "twisted" time to rediscover ("Oh my") God/Self in form of hubby-at-14 (idealized innocence, fem narr male author's anima-connection to own "misplaced" purity at nexus of boyhood + experience) living w/ his grandmother (never-seen not-the-mother: invalid, archetypal, invisible "ghost" of same) in absence of lost real-mother (separation from fem boy-self [tho still inhabiting matriarchal consciousness], father's absence as of own male adult self-img); make for house (w/drawing into house-w/i) as storm gathers (psychic upheaval on mtg othered past/Self), he leading way (guided by innocence in spite of own knowledge), where he feeds her (nourished by pure-self, her empathy w/ his loss enriching her too) + makes up mother's room for her (transferring mother-img onto lover bridging continuum, 2-pg panel of heads intertwined by her dread coming together of "sep'd" imgs).

She braids his hair (weaving "natur/al" into orderly rows: initiation rite) while rain falls outside (simultaneous cleansing + mourning [end of c'hood], washing hair purifying mind), he btwn her thighs (rebirth), spider web (trad symbol of regeneration) as clock-motif repeated in next-panel mirror (regenerating time + self, as in later similar tattoo on hip/birth-cradle, her img - as once mother's - cameo'd in new circle) as she combs out own "dread" (both losing fear + communing w/ [+ refining] lost "masc" pwr [+ his letting her] new beginning for both, "spider" transferred from her hair/img to mother-mirror); invites him into her room/womb (where he was conceived + they cd not), his "I do [need you]" remarriage at midnight (clock hands/time in alignment at bridge btwn days also phallic arousal), she guiding him thru lovemaking the Self now navigated by anima, her tongue in his mouth permitting "penetration" where prev'y impermeable.

Wakes into present (past a dream eternally w/ us) + penitent hubby's arms, his seeing her in mother's gown revelation (of continuum of fem nurturance, accepting spider-Medusa as eternal agent of both change + stasis forever w/ him), her "It's about time" pun à la Tom Waits's "It's time, time, time that you love" gently chastising evasive men + acknowledging own need to break cycle, his enlightenment freeing her ("I've got my pwr back" returning Gaia to place of pride), her serpent-locks now flowing (still not "natural").

Last panel of her hugging self in window (self/contained), bisected by pane (head sep'd from body transcendence of physical plane for archetype having served dream-purpose), divided now not by infinity (conjoined squares replacing ovals) but finitude (acceptance of revealed reality) acknowledgment that "I'd turned my man to stone" wmn's recognition that her need for stability had forced him into same box book curiously leaves her in at end.

Wd make a beautiful movie.