Yes, I admit it. I am a goofy old coot and an embarrassment to my children.
That’s my role in life now. Eye rolls abound when I am around.
There are several reasons why, which I intend to list here in detail in order to embarrass my children further. But it basically boils down to the fact that I am a writer, and though I write mostly fiction, another way of saying I lie a lot, a real writer tends to reveal more of the naked truth about himself than a child can stand.
Who wants to see their father naked? Especially when he is old… wrinkled, spotty, and mostly fish-belly white.
Speaking of nakedness, one of the things that my children are most embarrassed about is the fact that I know a lot about nudists and naturists, in fact, I know many real nudists, and I have been nude in at least one social situation with other naked nudists. And, even worse, I admit it in writing where my children and their friends can see it. Of course, none of them read this blog anymore for that reason.
I have written novels where there are nudist characters based on some of the real nudists I have known. The novels with nudist characters in them so far are, Recipes for Gingerbread Children, The Baby Werewolf, Superchicken, The Boy… Forever, and A Field Guide to Fauns. And these novels might not embarrass them so much if they read them to discover that the novels have something to say that really isn’t about their father being a crazy naked coot. But they won’t read them because I am embarrassing to them.
And there is the verified fact that I am something of a conspiracy theorist. I firmly believe that the actor/theater owner William Shakespeare only offered his name to the real writer of Shakespeare’s plays and poetry, the 17th Earl of Oxford, Edward DeVere. There is actual evidence that is so, though it was a secret that DeVere took to his pauper’s grave after spending away his entire family estates and fortune. A pauper’s grave that no interested scholar can find the location of to this very day, although maybe he’s buried in the same place of honor as the actor/theater owner, as there are cryptic clues to that as well.
I also believe that Dwight Eisenhower met with alien civilizations in the 1950s and the Roswell Incident was a real crash of more than one spacecraft from other star systems. There exist real deathbed confessions that confirm those details, and the government has been covering up the facts for decades.
The conspiracy-theory skills I have as a crazy, embarrassing coot have resulted in books like Catch a Falling Star, Stardusters and Space Lizards, and the Bicycle-Wheel Genius.
And lastly, I was a school teacher in middle schools and high schools for thirty-one years, which means I can create kid-characters in fiction that are very realistic and have a good-but-comic qualities that make readers generally like my stories.
So, my children are probably right to be seriously embarrassed by my very existence. Of course, I, like all old coots registered with the Crazy, Embarrassing Coots of America, the CECA, am totally immune to being embarrassed by the embarrassment of my children.
Every person who is intelligent enough to be self-aware, and that is over ninety percent of all people in spite of Fox News and various extreme religions, has a Dark Side that they are aware of.
And most people are sensible enough to show off the Light Side and keep the Dark Side hidden.
Only fools and geniuses reveal the Dark Side and play down the Light.
I consider myself a fool. Decadent poets like Charles Baudelaire and Paul Verlaine are examples of the geniuses.
Baudelaire himself believed that, “The way down is the way out.” Meaning, I suppose, that you can only be at peace with your personal demons at the bottom of the liquor bottle, the sharp end of the cocaine needle, or the grave.
I myself don’t put the demons forward in drinking or taking drugs. And I am definitely not trying to die young. Instead, I grapple with the Dark Side in fiction where I can kill it with a silver bullet, or pull it down into a pit of computer glitches where it will delete itself.
My personal darkness comes from traumatic experiences in my youth and childhood. I was sexually assaulted as a child and kept it secret for years. I grappled with suicidal thoughts and self harm as a teenager.
So, why am I now thinking about the darkness again?
Well, one of my books is in the process of being read and reviewed at this moment. It is the Baby Werewolf, a book in which I take on the darkness of feeling like I am a monster and only worthy to live in darkness. The story reaches its climax with the firing of a silver bullet.
I wish it was as easy as firing a silver bullet to deal with the Dark Side. It is not. I have fired dozens. Some monsters of the mind are purely bulletproof,
Still, some of my best work only comes about due to the Dark Side. And writing about it is the only way I can control the madness.
Yes, you heard right. (Well, you did if you read the title out loud.) Real writers are subject to madness. I decided this because I found the pattern in real writing that I actually value as good writing.
Case in Point; Ernest Hemingway
The first book of Hemingway that I read in high school was For Whom the Bell Tolls. It is a book about World War One, being an ambulance driver on the battle field, the transformations that combat experiences have on the soul, and trying to deal with the love of a woman, unsuccessfully, while the soul-sucking of recovery from battle is still taking place in your head. The story has a first-person narrator. It is told in a journalistic style that only presents the facts and doesn’t do any of the thinking and feeling for you. It makes the meaning of the story all happen in the reader’s head, as if the writer is not telling you what to think. But he actually is. And doing it masterfully. Of course, it captured me horribly because at the time I read it, the Viet Nam War was winding down, I had a draft number after turning 18 in 1974, and the Khmer Rouge attacked and took control of the SS Mayaguez in May of 1975, threatening to reignite the war and expand it into Cambodia. A wonderful book to read when you are faced with grim reality and the unfolding path to madness before you.
I also read The Sun Also Rises and The Old Man and the Sea while in college as an English Major. I defy you to read either of those books and not see the madness gnawing at the writer.
Ernest Hemingway went mad from the post traumatic struggles he underwent as a consequence of WWI. His life ended when he put a shotgun in his mouth and pulled the trigger. Deep depression is a form of madness.
Case in Point; Edgar Allen Poe
Of course, I chose the portraits of these authors on the basis of which ones are the most haunting I could find. Poe’s stare captured here reveals a pair of eyes that have seen the dark depths of his own soul, a horror you can’t compare to anyone else’s except through the words of a writer, because you can’t see into someone else’s soul in any other way. Your eyes weren’t built to do that.
And we all know the kind of stories and poems he wrote. My first encounter with Poe’s writing was either The Black Cat, The Tell-Tale Heart, or the poem, “The Bells“, all of which are deeply disturbing, and all of which I read in the Eighth Grade in Mrs. Erdman’s Class.
Poe became mad due to life-long grinding poverty brought about by foster parents who loved him and had money enough, but were too firmly devoted to the idea that helping someone out financially is a weakness not to be contemplated. His young wife died an early death from lack of funds for things like heat in the winter and food on a daily basis.
We don’t fully know why the madness caused his mysterious death. He may have had rabies when he died. Or it may have been a toxic reaction to large quantities of alcohol. Or he may have died from brain injuries due to an unexplained kidnapping and beating. But what we do know is that he loved certain people passionately and hated certain people passionately through his literary criticism of their writing. In fact, one of the authors he hated may have killed him as a murderous act of revenge.
Case in Point; Charles Dickens
When one thinks of Charles Dickens as a writer, madness is rarely the thing that comes first to mind. He wrote socially-observant comedies that emphasized engaging characters and detailed understandings of the settings and the times. There are a large number of clowns and comic villains in his stories. And his works seem a bit overbalanced against the darkness of the soul.
And yet he has his dark moments. I first read Dickens in Seventh Grade through The Christmas Carol. But Marley’s ghost and his ilk, especially the spectral Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come chilled me to the bone. I wept at the death of Tiny Tim even though it meant the other boys in my class could see me crying and would make me pay a price outside of the classroom.
On my own I went on to read more Dickens, including The Old Curiosity Shop in high school, Nicholas Nickleby, A Tale of Two Cities,David Copperfield and Great Expectations in college. I further read Oliver Twist while teaching Eighth Grade English. I also read my first author-biography of Charles Dickens, shortly after reading The Old Curiosity Shop.
I soon realized how much of his stories were autobiographical. Wilkins Micawber is a portrait of his own father and his time in the poorhouse. Wackford Squeers and other unflattering depictions of education reflected his own time in British boys’ schools where the odds of being molested by upper classmen were high. And the fact that a beloved young female relative died in his arms when he was barely out of boyhood probably caused the infamous death of the character Little Nell in the final installment of The Old Curiosity Shop.
There is madness in Dickens too. I mean, how can your writing reach the very heights of the Himalayas if it has never experienced the deepest depths of the ocean?
Case in Point; J.D. Salinger
Yes, I read The Catcher in the Rye in high school. It was a right of passage in 1974. It was one of the three books that set me on my lifelong quest to find the best book ever written. (The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy and the Little Prince by Saint-Exupéry are the other two.) It is a book that first captured me by the feelings in the brain with the central image alluded to in the title. Holden Caufield (Salinger later confessed that this narrator was really him) dreamed that he was in a field a rye where children are playing and romping with abandon. Behind Holden is a bottomless cliff. As children occasionally run towards him and the cliff behind him, heedless and not seeing the danger, he decides he must catch them and turn them back the other way. And this is what the book is, Holden’s adventures for the first time in the adult world, experiencing the possible dangers, and then turning the readers around, back into the field of rye.
I of course read Franny and Zooey and Raise High the Roof-Beam, Carpenters afterwards in college. Buddy Glass, who narrates the story of brother Seymour’s suicide, is also an admitted character-identity for Salinger himself.
Has Salinger, too, gone mad? You can ask that about a man who suddenly stopped writing at the height of his success, and then ran away to a small shed in the woods where he wrote mash notes to teenage girls for twenty years?
Final Case in Point; Mickey
And why would I ever think Mickey is mad?
Well… this list is long.
Mickey was sexually assaulted by an older boy at ten. You can see the effects of that in all of his writings, including this one.
He’s fool enough to think he might be a real writer.
When he is in his cartoonist’s head, he portrays himself as a purple mouse. When he’s in his teacher head, he’s Reluctant Rabbit.
He thinks he can recognize great writing when he reads it.
He understands the books of H.P. Lovecraft far too well.
And he seems to recognize that same madness that can be found in Ernest Hemingway, Edgar Allan Poe, Charles Dickens, JD Salinger, Mark Twain, Stephen King, Terry Pratchett, and too many more that could also be named… in himself.
Anatidaephobia (pronounced anna-tidy-phobia) is a pervasive and irrational fear that you are being watched by a duck. A person with this rare phobia fears that somehow, somewhere a duck is watching their every move.
I know, that’s pretty random, right?
But that’s how this Art Day post works. I had no idea what the first picture would be until I searched for it. This post began not with an idea, but a title; Random Art, the Art of Picking at Random.
Most of my art posts are exactly that. Pictures picked at random simply by going back through my media gallery and picking them. I usually pick up a theme along the way, sensing how the pictures are connected and deciding what that reveals about the artist and how that should be put into words.
I am aware that by relying on my library of already-used images, I am bound to be putting up something that you may have seen before. But I do have a large supply of already-downloaded pictures, and I find that I deeply love seeing some of these over and over again. However, they are all original artworks done by me. (Yes, I know I didn’t make any of the Pez dispensers or anything in the above photo. But I made the arrangement and took the photo. That makes it as much my art as Campbell Soup cans can be Andy Warhol’s work.) And I have seen them far more often than you have, and I haven’t tired of them.
Many of these pictures are actually self portraits. And that’s because an artist can only come up with whatever is actually inside him at the time.
I am not myself in this picture, but it is never-the-less very much about me and who I am inside.
You might be able to spot the connections between this picture and the last one if you are observant of small details.
Boz, the Bard, Diz, and Poe
This picture seems awfully random until you start to see them as Mr. Dickens, Mr. Shakespeare, Mr. Disney, and Mr. Poe.
So, there it is, Random Art for Saturday Art Day. Picked totally at random. And yet, at the end it seems somehow organized. That is a sort of small miracle, and probably proof that God exists… at least in some random way.
I am not Richard the Third. But I did do that soliloquy in college for my class in oral interpretation and got an “A” for it. I can channel those who think they have been wronged. I know whereof they speak… forsooth.
If you are not happy with the former President’s handling of the pandemic and economic crisis, (and if you are happy, I hope your recent lobotomy is giving you some peace and rest) you are not alone. The former Sun of York has not been the right answer. Hopefully the new ruler will do better, but only time will tell.
I am not, however, a dissembler like Richard. I have no evil plot to remedy the discontent. I can only tell the truth. I will probably die of the virus before this pandemic passes. I honestly do not fear death. I do fear for loved ones who are also at risk. But while I do not welcome death, it will not find me with any sort of burden of regret. I have been an honorable man. I have taught children, and acquitted myself well of the task. I have been a passable husband and father. I have committed serious acts of art… as well as numerous less-than-serious ones. This is not a suicide note. This is simply me declaring myself at peace with the universe.
Proof that Winter has returned to North Texas (and that I finished rebuilding my retaining wall)
And this is also me declaring that I once again am unwell. I’m pretty sure it is not the virus. I have been extremely careful. But this one stalks more successfully than the H1N1 and various bird flus that I have previously survived. It has mutated in an effort to be more virulent. And I always seem to get whatever serious virus is passing around.
Still, it is not the Coronavirus that currently has me sick and in bed. No fever. Only back pain, sinus headaches, and the blues. I also have a variety of other pains, mostly psoriasis in nature, but also some other internal ones. I could be suffering from prostate cancer, heart disease, or mini-strokes brought on by diabetes. My eyes are going bad. And I am not going to any doctors because of the risk of infection in the doctor’s office and the expenses that health insurance expects me to pay for myself. (I hope this pandemic eats all of Aetna’s lunches for the rest of the year. I have finally gotten away from them to Blue Cross and Blue Shield, but still…) There are plenty of ways that this current health crisis can do me in. I will endeavor to die at home on my own terms. And I stayed alive long enough to vote the bast***s out of office.
Proof that I’m not going anywhere by bicycle today.
I apologize that Mickey wasn’t funny today. Sometimes he needs to complain a little. Even Richard the Third was down and blue in between villainies. And he ended on one really bad day at Bosworth Field. I kinda hope that Trumpalump still has his Bosworth Field ahead of him even though he cannot be impeached no matter what he does.
In 2012 I completed and published Catch a Falling Star. That novel is about aliens who speak English because they have been watching television broadcasts and absolutely adore I Love Lucy reruns. They invade Earth via one small town in Iowa where they make the fatal mistake of being charmed by humhans. The juvenile specimen they kidnap, Dorin Dobbs, leads a tadpole mutiny aboard the Tellerons’ space ship. The tadpole they accidentally leave behind on Earth is adopted and becomes beloThe ved by a childless farm couple. And Commander Biznap falls deeply in love with a septuagenarian Sunday School teacher who aids him and he rewards with a return to her youthful twenties. The invasion gets defeated. Someone disintegrates himself, and the Tellerons leave have learned to be better people as they flee to Mars in defeat.
Of course, this novel, written while I was still teaching for the Garland School District, is ultimately the origin of my manic love of researching conspiracy theories. After publishing the novel, I had a dream about the book. I dreamed that aliens had read the book and began chasing me, wanting to know how I knew what I knew about them. I tried to tell them that I made it all up, but they didn’t believe me.
So, after I had written and published the book, I took up researching alien contact and flying saucer encounters Wow! I began to see what some really, obviously insane people believe is true as well as some very intelligent and credible people hesitantly reporting some insanely disturbing things. I do not believe any of the stories told by David Icke, the lecturer who sells books and lectures on the existence of shape-shifting lizard-people who masquerade as important government figures and celebrities. He is very easily recognizable as a grifter and con man. Of course, his grifts are all legal. If lying were completely illegal, fiction writers would be out of business, and nobody would fall in love or be able to sell real estate.
But one cannot quickly dismiss the work of journalist and physicist Stanton Friedman so easily. He had an interview experience with Major Jesse Marcel who was the intelligence officer on the New Mexico base in 1947 who told what may be the real story behind the Roswell Incident . This was a credible source telling a story as a whistle-blower years after the actual experience which was very different than the government’s version of events in spite of the fact that Marcel and other witnesses had been threatened to keep the secret.
The real trick to this fascinating search for reality in the bizarre world of alien contact, MUFON researchers, and underground alien facilities is to accept that complete knowledge of reality is unattainable.
You know that something real is being covered up based on the elaborate cover-up efforts that the authorities have gone through. Weather balloons? Really? Even Project Mogul balloons for spying on Russian atomic-bomb efforts? Well, maybe. But there are so many things that subjected to cover-up, misinformation campaigns, threatening witnesses, Men in Black, and deathbed confessions. It is real that lying is going on on both sides. And there are a lot of concerning facts brought out by people who have nothing to gain by their revelations and an awful lot to lose.
So, you have to detect lies and juggle the lies of liars to get anywhere near to reality. And I have applied the process to more than one conspiracy theory.
Here are some things that I have concluded (at least until more information surfaces.)
In the 1940’s and 50’s the U.S. government knocked down a handful of flying saucers and UFOs using high-intensity radar waves developed for World War II. Bob Lazar is probably telling the truth. Linda Moulton Howe is probably telling the truth. Travis Walton is probably also telling the truth, but is less believable than the other two. David Icke and Alex Jones are liars. The Ancient Aliens program from History Channel and now on Netflix is not solid science, but have some very interesting details to add to the mysteries. The government definitely knows about aliens, either because they made contact with other worlds in the Eisenhower Administration, or because they are producing the information themselves to cover up something far more concerning.
The important thing in this topic is not the reality of aliens visiting Earth. The important thing is how the reality of the topic is pursued. Are you going to be crazy or pursue a sensible information-gathering process where the results are tested and retested? ls it about my thinking processes. or am I deceiving myself? These questions are the reasons I do what I do/
Literary realism attempts to represent familiar things as they are.
Surrealism definition: Surrealism is a type of literature in which the author attempts to display irrational or dreamlike qualities in his or her writing. Surrealism refers to writing that goes beyond the realistic into a creative, imaginative realm that often has dreamlike qualities.
Two definitions of styles of writing that are common in today’s literary realm.
Realism is a tradition that began in the middle of the 18th Century. It includes authors like Balzac, Alexander Pushkin, Mark Twain, Sinclair Lewis, and Charles Dickens. They tend to focus on the details that shine a light on the grungy, dreary realities of the Industrial Revolution, the American Experiment in Democracy, and wars like the Civil War, World Wars I and II, and wars against Napoleon, Hitler, and Communist Russia.
Surrealism, especially as it grew legs and began galloping in the 20th Century is really a reaction to the realities that Realism ground into our souls. Science Fiction imagines the problems and the possibilities presented by applying science and industry into our future. Isaac Asimov, Theodore Sturgeon, and Aldous Huxley are all surrealists because they apply the power of their imaginations to dealing with the limits reality hangs around the neck of the race horse we call life on Earth.
Fantasy writers like JRR Tolkien, CS Lewis, Neil Gaiman, and JK Rowlings apply apples of imagination hung from a string in front of the race horse to motivate him onward. The race horse of life on Earth is a dreamlike metaphor, somewhat like a dog who smokes a pipe and solves crimes, and is the kind of literary device that defines surrealism the way that Mickey sees it.
But enough about what surrealism is. It is just realism with a “sur” pasted on the front. So, let me just show you some.
These are Snow Babies from the book of the same name. If you see one during a blizzard, it might mean you will freeze to death.
This is a sample of an illustration for a friend’s children’s book idea that never got made. Accidentally travelling by bubble-gum-chewing goldfish.
This picture shows that, in order to do surrealism, you must make the dreamlike seem very realistic.
In When the Captain Came Calling, the Captain is invisible and Valerie Clarke gets turned into a squirrel by Voodoo.
Mickey is not the only surrealist who thinks of Toys coming to Life.
So, now that you have seen the pictorial evidence that Mickey thinks surreal thoughts, you should be willing to admit… He probably really is a Surrealist. Or, possibly, he surreally is a surrealist.
A new day dawns. It leaves me wondering. Who am I today? Who will I be tomorrow?
The opportunity to have any sort of control over who and what I am is coming to a close. I don’t really know how much longer I have before pain and illness dissolve me into nothingness. But death is not the end of existence. I may be forgotten totally by the day after next Thursday, but my existence will still have become a permanent fact. Yes, I am one of those dopey-derfy-think-too-much types known as an existentialist.
I am feeling ill again. Any time that happens may be the last time. But that doesn’t worry me.
The important thing is that the dance continues. It doesn’t matter who the dancers are, or who supplies the music.
We can be clowns if we choose to be.
We can safely be fools if we really can’t help it.
An awful lot of awful things go into who and what we are. Those things make us full of awe. They make us awesome. Aw, shucks. What an awful thing to say.
But what is all this stuff and nonsense really about today?
It’s just Mickey being Mickey… Mickey for another day.
It’s not really poetry. It certainly isn’t wisdom. It’s a little bit funny, and only mildly depressing… for a change.
It’s just Mickey being Mickey. And a partially Paffooney gallery.
Into the Spring
The weather, amazingly, is more than fifty degrees Fahrenheit better than it was a week ago today in Texas.
The sun is now out.
“Shall I compare thee to a Summer’s day...?”
‘Of course not. It is not Sonnet 18 out there.
It… “art NOT more lovely and more temperate.”
And William Shakespeare is just a pen name.
But I saw a pair of Robins in the park while walking the dog.
And I don’t mean Robin Williams and Robin Hood.
I mean the red-breasted birds that herald the arrival of Spring.
Though it is not Spring. And I have trouble sitting here and writing this due to painful hemorrhoids.
Still, it seems like something new is starting.
It has now been an entire year since the start of the pandemic. 501,000+ people have died.
It is definitely time for something new, something better, to begin.
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