Category Archives: autobiography

January 24, 2016 · 9:39 pm

What You Should Know About Filipino Families

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Not everyone pictured in this post is actually a family member by marriage, but my wife has a big family and everyone who is even remotely related to a Filipino family… or even imagines that they are… is family.

I am about as much of a white-guy WASP-type as you can find in Middle America, having grown up in Iowa and teaching for my entire career in Texas.  But I know a thing or two… or three about other cultures.   I taught in South Texas for 23 years with students who were over 85% Spanish-speaking.  And then, in 1995, I married into the Pinoy culture of the Philippine Islands.

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Me and my Filipino-American familia… circa 2003.

There are some things I have learned about this other culture that you should probably be aware of.

#1.  The United States is being invaded and colonized by the Philippines.  They are coming here in waves, getting jobs in education and medicine that not enough of home-grown America are willing to take up.  My wife came here with a placement company as a teacher.  Three of her group of Filipino teachers landed in our little Cotulla school district.  When she got here, she was met by her cousin and her cousin’s family.  There was a Filipina woman and her young son in the Valley that also took an interest in helping her get settled in Texas.  All of these people… and all of their friends and relatives are still a part of our lives.  My wife’s sister and her family lived in California where dozens of cousins also lived.  They and my wife’s parents have since moved to Texas, along with two other sisters and their families.  You get the idea.  They are taking over.

Pictures of photogenic nieces aid my blogging popularity in a rather noticeable way.

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#2. As you can see, Filipinos love to take pictures.  Above is a picture from class where my niece goes to school back in Floridablanca in the Philippines.  People complain about pictures of food on Facebook.  My Filipino family puts the Food Network to shame.  Sometimes I can’t tell if they are eating another exotic Filipino dish with rice and meat or they’ve been putting firecrackers into fish and exploding them.  And the fish eyes are a delicacy.  Eeuw! My sisters in Iowa won’t even let me talk about the food at Filipino gatherings.  I have to be extremely careful of what I share on Facebook.

1013267_10201161984785458_2113452340_n #3.  To know about Filipino culture, you have to understand what Jollibee is all about.  Jollibee is the Filipino MacDonald’s.  Of course, it is cheaper… and better tasting.  There are a  few of them around the country here.  California has more than Texas.  They are like a giant Filipino magnet.  You go there to find the Filipino community in any American city.  But other people love the food too.  You have to sort the Filipinos from the Hispanics and white folks that are not too proud to eat cheap and delicious.

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Well, those are only about three things that you should probably know about Filipinos and Pinoy culture.  I haven’t even gotten into the thing about Matrilineal social orders or the evils of Karaoke addiction… but enough is enough for one day.  I have no idea how much trouble I am now in for revealing cultural secrets.  It could be a long cold night in the dog house.

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January 12, 2016 · 7:21 pm

Soliloquy

In college I took classes in oral reading and acting because I was nutty about drama and play-writing, even though I was much too terrified of being put on a public stage to ever try out for a part.  But in Oral Reading 101 I was given the gift of a professor who actually was the head of the ISU Drama Department.  One of the things he made us do was a soliloquy from a Shakespeare play.  I was assigned the opening soliloquy from Richard the Third.

Good God!  Is that man ever a villain and a monster!  He’s more sinister and evil than Snidely Whiplash or Dick Dastardly… and certainly no less cartoonish.  Here is the best I can still do to recreate my old college performance of “The Winter of Our Discontent” soliloquy.

To pull off this assignment (On which I received an A grade from a professor known for imperious F-giving) I had to do a lot of research on King Richard III to be able to walk around in his skin for three whole minutes.  I had to learn about him from books and articles and drama critiques.  I spent a couple of weeks in the library (There was no internet or Google in 1978).  I learned that he was a complex man involved in the deeply troubled time of the War of the Roses.  He was from the house of York, the House of the White Rose.  His elder brother, Edward, had been  victorious in both battle and royal intrigue, and, with Richard’s help had secured the throne of England that had been wrested from the hands of Richard II to begin the struggle between House Lancaster (the Red Rose) and House York… both of which had blood-relationship claims to the throne.  Once in the hands of Richard’s brother Edward IV, the crown did not really rest peacefully on Yorkish heads.  Edward became ill and died in 1483.  The crown was to then go to twelve-year-old Edward V who was placed under the care of Uncle Richard’s regency.  At the time of his coronation, the legitimacy of Edward IV’s marriage was declared null and void, making the boy no longer eligible to be king.  Richard seized the title.  Young Edward and his younger brother were taken to the Tower of London and they were never seen publicly again.  According to Shakespeare, Richard did, in fact, have them killed.  But, the crown did not stay on Richard’s head for longer than two years.  In 1485 Henry Tudor came back to England from France.  Richard was defeated at the Battle of Bosworth Field and died in battle there.

I do actually understand Richard in ways that are difficult to admit.  I know what it feels like to be convinced you are unworthy by factors beyond your control.  Richard was a hunchback, plagued with severe scoliosis of the spine.  He lived his life in pain and was ridiculed for his deformity in a time where it was believed such things were a punishment from God for sins of the parents, or even sins the child himself was born with.  I can relate.  I was always so far above the other kids in my class at school that I was treated like a Martian, unloved and unlovable because I could not speak a language they really understood.  And on top of that, I was secretly the victim of a sexual assault, a condition that I feared made me a monster.  I could so easily have become a monster.  I could’ve set my mind to it in the same way Richard did, because vengeance for his differences consumed him utterly.  Thankfully, I did not choose a path of evil.  Drawing and telling stories proved to be the pick and shovel I used to dig myself out of my own pit of despair.

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Richard III’s long-forgotten grave was rediscovered in 2013, and a DNA match with relatives proved the skeleton with scoliosis was him in 2014.

The real Richard III may not have been the monster Shakespeare portrayed him as, either.  He was demonized after his defeat and death by the Tudors to strengthen their shaky claim to the throne.  There exists some evidence that he was a progressive king and a friend to his people, but horribly betrayed by some of his own followers, and certainly made the scapegoat by succeeding generations.

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A recreation of what Richard III looked like based on the skull found and portraits from the time period.

There is also some evidence that Shakespeare wrote the play as a political diatribe against the hunchback in the royal court of his day.  Sir Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury was also a hunchback with scoliosis.   And by his sometimes sinister-seeming machinations, he rose to power as Secretary of State for both Elizabeth I, and after her, James I.  He had a part to play in making James the King after Elizabeth’s long reign, probably an instrumental part.  He also uncovered the Gunpowder Plot of Guy Fawkes and friends, and rumors persisted that he had more to do with it than merely revealing and foiling it.  Nothing was ever proven against him.  Though Elizabeth called him “my pygmy” and James referred to him as “my little beagle”, he held power throughout his lifetime and foiled the work of his many enemies against him.  In fact, it is the similarities between Shakespeare’s Richard III and Robert Cecil that first made me begin to believe that Shakespeare was actually someone other than the actor who owned the Globe Theater and never spelled his own name the same way twice.  Knowing about Cecil surely needed to be the act of an insider in the royal court.  I balked at first when it was suggested to me that Shakespeare’s plays were actually written by Francis Bacon… and I continued to doubt until I learned more about the Earl of Oxford, Edward deVere.

So what is the point of this soliloquy about the soliloquy of Richard III?  Well, the point is that at one time I had to be him for a short while.  I had to understand who he was (at least the character that Shakespeare created him to be) and think as he thought.  That is what a soliloquy truly is.  Sharing from the character’s mind to my mind… and back again if I am to perform him… or even write him in some future fiction.

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January 2, 2016 · 5:59 pm

An Autobiography of Mickey

 

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Last night I watched again Part I of Ken Burns’ Mark Twain.   I think it reminds me of who I am as a writer.  No, I am not being all big-head arrogant and full of myself.  I devoured certain writers as a youth, consumed them whole.  Charles Dickens was my first passion, followed by J.R.R. Tolkien, and then Mark Twain.  Of all of them, Samuel Clemens is the most like me.  He was from the Midwest, born and raised in Missouri along the Mississippi River.  I am from the Midwest, born and raised in Iowa along the Iowa River.  He endured hardship and tragedy as a youth, losing his little brother in a riverboat accident, and he dealt with it by humor.  I endured a sexual assault from an older boy, and dealt with it by… well, you get the picture.  We are alike, him and I.  We both draw upon the place we grew up, the people we have known, and the events of our youth to create stories.

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It is a pretty big responsibility to follow in his footsteps, and I will probably never live to see the success and the wealth that came to him.  But I have a responsibility to the people I knew and the time that gave rise to me to tell their story.  I need to build a network of stories that resonate the truth of existence that I have been witness to.  A big responsibility… and I probably will not live up to it.  But I have to try.

Being a writer is somewhat like being cursed.  The words burn inside, needing to get out, needing to be heard.   I have stories that need to be told, and they will be told, even if only to file away in the closet again.  Like Mark Twain, I am good at feeling sorry for myself.  And the Mickey part of me, the writer part of me, is just like Mark Twain, a writer persona, and not the real man himself.  I am simply the container for something that has to exist and has to tell stories.  It is not a bad thing to be.  But the more I get to know it, the more I would not wish the destiny on others.

Forgive how sad and bunglingly boorish this post is.  But sometimes there are thoughts I simply have to think.  And as a writer, I am bound to write down the silly things that I think.

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December 13, 2015 · 10:01 pm

The Devil in the Details

There tends to be a good reason behind certain expressions.  Let me take a moment to explain it to you in the vaguest sort of way meant to protect the innocent, the privacy of the sufferer, and my privacy, and yet still get at that little old devil who is making my life a living hell.

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The problem stems from factors beyond my control, and the mental health of a family member who is not me, but I am responsible for paying for, because I can clearly see what the problem is (as can doctors and licensed practitioners)  while other members of my family (mainly for religious reasons) can’t see.  And, of course, you can imagine who the insurance company, who is supposed to pay for at least part of it, wants to believe.  I am the one who sat through the day in the ER two years ago, giving the best support and care I could while footing the bill.  (The truth is, Jehovah’s Witnesses have a complicated time in the ER because they don’t accept blood transfusions, and they worry about the practice of Psychiatry leading to some kind of evil mind control.)  In the ER it was determined for the sake of safety and protection of the patient, we needed to be sent to a psychiatric hospital.  Of course, the insurance gets to tell you where and what doctors you can work with, so we were sent to University Behavioral Health Hospital in Denton, the one facility that my family has determined CANNOT perform any more services for my family on pain of religious condemnation and angry black stares that ripple through time from then to now.    A weeks’ worth of time in UBH, determined by UBH to maximize profits, led to a bill of over a thousand dollars payable by me.  That, added to my own medical bills (from six incurable diseases) and the bill from the ER that the insurance pays less than half of because of deductibles, added up to a debt that maxed out my credit cards and brought me to the brink of bankruptcy. (A thing I narrowly avoided by engaging a lawyer for debt-reduction services).   I was forced to retire from teaching at that point because the time away from my job for the family member’s illness, plus the work missed from my own illnesses, was reducing my income to the point that I might’ve owed the school money at the end of every working month otherwise.  I was fortunate to have enough years in service to have a good pension.

Now, of course you know that mental health conditions aren’t the kind of thing that goes away by taking a pill… or even a hundred different pills.  It requires constant monitoring, prescribing, and proper therapy.  UBH will not even release a patient unless you can prove that you have set up appointments with both a psychiatrist and a therapist.  We found excellent ones of each.  But, of course, along comes the insurance company to have their say.  (This insurance company shall remain nameless… but it rhymes with FAetna… and that is not a capitalization error, no matter what the spell-checker says.)  We lost the services of one of the best adolescent psychiatrists in North Texas because he refuses to take the crappy insurance.  I don’t blame him.  I blame him less now that I know so many more of the devilish details than I did then.  So, I tried to replace the good doctor.  I called the insurance provider for a list of doctors we could use.  I was given only two names.  The first doctor, a well-respected lady psychiatrist, let us make an appointment.  When I was filling out the required paperwork in the office on the day of the visit, we were informed that due to a technicality, the only way we could see that doctor would be to pay 100% 0f the bill.  The receptionist graciously let us end the appointment without charging us the late-cancellation fee.  We went to the other doctor, one that had unpleasant memories of my family from UBH, and were rejected by the doctor.  So… no psychiatrist anywhere in the State would treat my family ever again thanks to the crappy insurance.  (I tried to think of another adjective besides “crappy” to use here, but couldn’t think of any I could use that would not melt my keyboard.)

Now, recently, we have lost our only other professional help.  We had been seeing the excellent therapist weekly for over two years.  Previous insurance had no problem paying for the preventive services he provided.  I got by with a simple co-pay every week.  But when we had to transition to crappy FAetna, a stealth problem occurred.  Apparently there was a form that needed to be filled out to transfer the payment obligation from one provider to the next.  The form had an expiration date on it that absolved the crappy insurance from any payments at all once it was passed.  They, of course, did not tell the poor therapist about the existence of this critical document until long after the expiration date.  All claims during that time were recently nullified and payments denied.  We actually owe the doctor doing the therapy well over a thousand dollars. But he knows we can’t afford it, and he feels bad that it was caused by an error that was technically his.    We are still trying to dipsy-doodle through the nightmare health-care system to find needed services.  I have had my fill.  I don’t try to call Satan’s member-services department for the crappy insurance any more.  They won’t tell me the truth, and they won’t do anything helpful… only things that are harmful.

If I were to go to the main offices of FAetna Crappy Insurance Corporation, I would fully expect the front doors to be guarded by a massive three-headed dog-thingy.  The receptionists would all be red-skinned succubi with fangs and horns.  You would have to descend in an elevator to the Pit of Hell to see any of their superiors… You know, like Beelzebub, Asmodeus, and Lucifer.  Apparently all the premiums we pay to health insurance companies entitle us only to arguments with intractable employees who don’t even know what the word “approved” means.  So, the Devil is indeed using the details to rule in Hell… and he is doing a Helluvah job.

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December 7, 2015 · 7:29 pm

Framing the Picture

Framing the Picture (a poem about autobiography)

I pop out of bed and look in the mirror

And there is horror in that picture

Wrinkles, spots, and a crypt-skinned leerer,

Stare back from that ancient mixture.

It isn’t so terrible to be really old.

But you have to learn to live with the mold.

And it makes me long for when we were young,

When the sounds and feels of Spring had just sprung.

Remember how we were limber and spry?

And fully intended to write our names on the sky?

But looking back the picture will shift,

Deeds that were done shine brighter with fame,

With polish and retelling, the purpose to lift,

We remake the picture by placing the frame.

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The picture is called That Night in Saqqara I Was Taken By Surprise.  It is built on the themes of life versus death, youth versus age, fear versus courage, and probably other things that I never thought of because the interpretation is not entirely up to me.  I can indicate that the Mummy Imhotep has suddenly come back to life.  The picture on the wall behind him is supposed to suggest what he was like in life, at least in his own mind when he had it carved and painted in his tomb.  The boy Tanis is supposed to appear startled, but not afraid.  He wears the Ankh around his neck that symbolizes life and resurrection.  If the mummy kills him, as horror movie monsters once portrayed by Boris Karloff are apt to do, the mummy himself is proof that the dead live on in some way.  The god Horus on the sarcophagus is practically kissing Tanis on the lips  The hawk-headed god is also leading the procession on the side of the sarcophagus, which you may interpret as having the naked boy in line with the others following the god of resurrection and life.  But all of this drivel is me telling you what to see, and you are welcome to disagree with all of it.  Truth is our own to define.  And we define it by putting a frame around it and saying, “This is what you should look at.”  Aren’t we the silliest of creatures when we lie to ourselves and tell ourselves that we can actually do that?

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This is called Wakanhca’s Daughter.  Wakanhca in the language of the Tetonwan Dakotah Sioux means “lightning dreamer” or, loosely translated, “Magic Man”.   But the interpretation is again up to the viewer.  The brave in the foreground could be that magic fellow since the shield he carries has figures on it that represent a bolt of lightning and a man flapping his arms.  The girl, however, is white-skinned and fair.  Possibly my own daughter rather than his?  Except the Princess wasn’t born until years after this was painted.  The stag, as well as the two Native Americans, is illuminated in a way that is brighter than what you might expect from a night of thunderstorms.  Is he a warrior’s spirit animal?  He is not behaving like a real deer or elk.  And is he looking at the girl, or the warrior?  Consider too, these framings;

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So, what, in the end is all this nonsense about “framing the picture”?  We are the authors of our own stories.  We get to set the whole thing in a frame of our own making.  Does that mean anything important?  Oh, probably not.

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December 6, 2015 · 5:46 pm

The Current State of My World

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I am busy reinventing myself.  There are things that have to get done.  I have to raise my finances phoenix-like from the abyss I found myself in three years ago after five hospital trips in five years devastated my bank accounts and credit rating at the same time I was forced to retire from my teaching career by health problems.  I went through a debt-reduction program with the advice of a law firm in California that has helped me reconcile 35,000 dollars worth of credit card debt.  I am nearing the end of that painful belt-tightening process, which can be likened to putting a pumpkin in a vice and cranking the handle tighter than you ever believed was possible, and I did not pop the pumpkin.

Health matters are better too.  I am farther away from doom’s ultimate doorway than I was when I retired.  No longer teaching has kept me from getting the four cases of the flu yearly that I had become accustomed to when I was in the germ-filled giant Petri  dish commonly known as a public school classroom.  Lovely Aetna health insurance people decided they would no longer pay for my maintenance medications for diabetes, depression, blood pressure, and cholesterol, so I was forced to cut down and cut out medications.  Ironically, the less I take the meds, the better I feel.  Maybe… just maybe… I am not going to drop dead tomorrow.

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I am stuck indoors quite a lot, because COPD and not using an inhaler and sensitivity to every allergen in Texas makes for a less than wonderful outdoor experience.  So I have taken to reorganizing my library and various vast collections of junk.  I am rereading old and beloved books.  I am playing with my toys more than ever.  I am winning computer baseball games.  I just pitched another perfect game.

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I have been painting the house too, when the weather allows, making the outside of things look a little better too.  The football Cardinals have been winning.  And the Iowa Hawkeyes were perfect up until the narrow loss to Michigan State.  12-1 is still the best they have ever done.

I have recently been able to shave and look a little less Santa-like, though psoriasis is trying to peel my lower face away again, so I will probably be growing my author’s beard and Gandalf hair back again.  And I have completed collections and written up a storm.  My work is not yet complete on this Earth, and there needs to be a new Mickey in town to clean up this cowboy-infested heck-hole where I live my life.

I know this has been a rather goopy-goose of a post, but I am feeling good for a change, and it is hard to do humor about everything going too well.

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December 5, 2015 · 10:37 pm

Old Timey Stuff

Okay, here is something to look at if you are ridiculously old and out of date like me.  If you have read any of the doll collecting posts or the Pez dispenser posts I am constantly and obsessively posting, then you know I have hoarding disorder almost as bad as my Grandma Beyer, the old string-saver.  She had a collection of used Christmas wrapping paper in her basement that went back to the 1930’s.  It cost her nothing to collect and keep that hoard.  She merely had to be loony about never letting anyone tear their wrapping paper when she wrapped presents.  So, inspired by that, I have found many ways to collect and hoard many kinds of free collections.  This is one I keep on my computer, hijacked images from the internet that remind me of my past.

I’m sorry if you don’t know who or what some of these things are.  Drive-ins, Davy Crockett, The Captain and Mr. Moose, NBC in color on Grandma Beyer’s RCA color TV… these are important things from childhood in the 50’s, 60’s, and early 70’s.

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Do you know who and what they all are?  Does it matter to you like it matters to me?  This is just a glimpse of the museum inside my mind.  I can’t help it.  I am almost 60, and I have been absorbing the detritus of culture since I was four.  That’s a lot of images to collect and catalog.  Have fun making your own collection.  It doesn’t cost anything… as long as nobody sues me over copyrighted images.

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December 2, 2015 · 7:24 pm

Christmas Concert Heckfire

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I have been connected to the religion of Jehovah’s Witnesses since they baptized me in 1998.  That means I bought in, at least temporarily, into the whole notion of knocking on doors to hand out magazines touting the “Truth of God’s Word the Bible”.  I accepted that they don’t believe in celebrating birthdays… or worldly holidays… especially Christmas because it is celebrated as Jesus’ birthday.  But, here’s the thing that will eventually get me disfellowshipped;  I don’t believe that failing to accept whole the beliefs and practices of the religion deprives you of everlasting life on a paradise Earth.  A loving God does not condemn someone to oblivion simply because they say the wrong thing or think the wrong thoughts.  A murderer can be saved by repenting and accepting the “Truth”, but anyone who looks at the scientific evidence and concludes that the “Theory of Evolution” is probably correct with about 95% certainty is doomed?  That’s really no better than the Baptists who condemn you to eternal suffering in Hell for the same thing.  I have more to say about this religion thing for another day.  But never-the-less, I was the only one able to take the Princess to perform in her band’s Christmas concert because the rest of the family still believes, and the Princess’ band were planning to commit the horrible sin of playing Christmas music.

God, in his wisdom, of course, decided to punish me for my error.

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Borrowed from Dave’s Facebook page; https://www.facebook.com/davewittybanter/?fref=ts

My daughter, the Princess, plays the Tooty Leather Pole… er, the clarinet in the Long Middle School band.  She has caught the band bug from her eldest brother who pulled me kicking and screaming into the world of being a band parent five years ago.  She has the rule down where, “You must be early to band events!  Being on time is the same as being late!”  So we were at the auditorium at 6:30, fifteen minutes before the stated deadline.  I delivered her to the Newman Smith Band Hall and found a seat in the auditorium to watch the result.  I put my phone on vibrate.

Fifteen minutes later, I feel the phone vibrate in my pocket.  A new text message from the Princess.  “Sorry, tell you later,” was all it said.

Ten minutes after that, a frantic phone call.

“Dad, I think I left my band notebook in the car.  It has my music in it for the concert.  Can you get it for me and bring it to the band hall door?”

“Sure, Princess.”

I stumped my way with my trusty cane and two arthritic legs down the auditorium stairs, down the exit stairs, and finally out across the parking lot to where I parked.  I rifled through the back seat of the car, the front passenger seat, under the seat… and I had to text her.

“It isn’t in the car.”

“Oh, no!”

“Do I have to go home and get it?”

“Yes, please.”

So, I hop in the car and tear out for home and the missing notebook.  Of course, I have sinned against God and must bear with eternal heckfire.  Every one of the six traffic lights turned red just as I got to them.  And every one of them, it seemed, had a Texas Bubba in a red Chevy pickup truck gunning his engine, ready to kill me for trying to cross on a red light.

I found the notebook on her bed in her room, right where she had been practicing and totally forgot it.  I snatched it up and raced (as fast as you can race on arthritic legs) back to the car and back to the auditorium.  Sitting at the next red light listening to Bubbas rev their engines, I get another text.  “Can you get it to the band hall door by 7:00, please?”  That text arrives on my phone while I am still two red lights away at 6:59.

Wheezing and panting I arrive at the auditorium at 7:09.  The eighth graders are headed into the auditorium.  I quickly stump back up the stairs into the auditorium just in time to walk up to the stage and hand it to her as she is taking her seat on stage.  Silently she mouths a thank you.  I drag myself up the stairs to row 15, the first available seat, and throw myself down into it, having obviously sacrificed my life for the benefit of my daughter’s passion for music.  Veteran band parents all around are snickering at me.  Especially the McCauly-Martinez clan, proud band parents of at least 47 past and present school band members.  I know I deserve it, but Holy Heckfire is apparently a real thing.  No sin goes unpunished.  No good deed either.

Still, the music was worth it.  I could barely hear over the noise of my lousy lungs working like bellows at the forge to give me enough air to live.  But the rendition of Slay Ride was enthralling.  Excuse me, I mean Sleigh Ride.  Viking Christmas songs are another post idea entirely.   It is possible that condemning myself to eternal destruction by choosing to support a Christmas concert is worth it after all.

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December 1, 2015 · 7:37 pm

Dancing on the Edge

20151201_103041Life is fraught with all sorts of real dangers, and I face them all every day.  But I also suffer from acrophobia, the fear of heights.  And I can tell you for a fact that it is not a real thing.  It is a mental disorder that makes it difficult to get up on a ladder and paint the house.    It makes it difficult to walk next to the railing in any balcony.  And yet, I have proof that is a phony fear, a goofy fear, an all-in-your-head sort of thing.  Not only do I face it and overcome it (I have been able to paint the house), but I love the window seat when riding in an airplane.  Looking out the window after take-off is an adventure better than any video game.  I love to fly.  That irrational fear is a different irrational fear.

And yet, acrophobia paralyzed me once in a panic attack.  We were visiting Arches National Park in Utah.  My wife thinks it’s rather funny to watch me cringe when she can walk up to the edge of a cliff and look over.  She wanted to take a picture of the Princess when our daughter was only five, and she had her backed up near the edge to take the picture with a big deep hole behind her.  I strenuously objected, and would’ve gone out and grabbed her, but I was paralyzed with fear, and I realized I might very well pitch us both over the edge.  In spite of my objections, the picture was taken.  The Princess even jumped up and down a couple of times before she left the edge.  I was curled up in the passenger seat of the van after that with my hands over my eyes and shaking like someone was electrocuting me.  The wife got a good laugh at my expense, and my suffering was entirely too real, though no one else in the car believed it.  (Yes, that certainly made it better, didn’t it?)

My Art

But life is like that.  In so many ways we live our lives on the very edge of the metaphorical cliff.  I have six incurable diseases and I am a cancer survivor.  But I am not taking my four medicines any more because of the cost and what health insurance refuses to pay.  I can’t even afford the copay at the doctor’s office as often as I really ought to be going.  Climate talks in Paris are trying to solve the global warming crisis, but scientists report things like the methane gasses from the melting permafrost, and we realize it may already be too late.  The world may become a boiling ball of heat and acid rain like the planet Venus because so many corporations for so many years put profit margins above environmental protections.  We may succeed in snuffing out life on earth, so I am seriously not alone being on the brink of a plummet into the permanent darkness of non-existence.  But what can you really do?  Do you stop living?  Do you curl up in a fetal ball and quake with fear?

I choose to dance.  I have proven time and time again that I can overcome that irrational fear.  It does not have to rob me of joy and make me suffer.  It is all a matter of the choices we make.  I do my best to recycle and plant growing things that make oxygen out of carbon dioxide.  I do my best not to get sick.  I choose to do what I believe is the wisest thing to do in the face of the deep dark precipice.  I choose to dance.

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November 28, 2015 · 5:54 pm

Late Autumn Rains

20151128_092151It is raining again in Texas, and cold enough to make the leaves turn red and yellow and orange.  The cracked and useless swimming pool is filled with rain water.  The sky is gray. El Niño  is here for a visit.  And he is not a well-behaved little boy.

I am confined indoors again by arthritis pain and breathing difficulties.   But I don’t mind.  I can travel by the wings of my imagination.  Things in my world are soaring once again amongst the clouds… and dancing like kites in the wind.

I have not taken any depression medication in six months, and I seem to be happier for it.  We have hot chocolate to drink and… mmm… pumpkin pie.  The cool winds are a reminder of what is was like as a boy in Iowa in the 60’s and 70’s.  Thanksgiving now past… Christmas coming…  I haven’t celebrated those holidays in 20 years, my wife being a Jehovah’s Witness, and I myself still identified with the congregation… even though my faith is somewhat stumbled… not in God himself, but in how men make pronouncements about what to think and what to say and who to be… in the name of magical rewards that the universe is not capable of delivering.  No higher power will step in to rescue us from our fears and misfortune.  That is not what God is there for.  He does not ask for slavish devotion, or rituals, or the sacrifice of your firstborn son.  That is superstition.  He only offers the chance to live, and laugh, and… love.  It is the only reward I need.  I do not fear the coming winter.  The weather may erode my mountain fortress and the rains may eventually make the rivers of life to drown me, but I have lived, and loved, and laughed.  And not even God can take that away.

I am sorry if this sounds somber and depressed to you.  I hear a different music than that.  I hear a resounding joy.  And even if I die right this minute, I am happy, for all is complete.  “Whether or not it is clear to you… the universe is unfolding as it should.” (The Desiderata by Max Ehrmann)

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