I finished a possible cover for my work in progress, A Field Guide to Fauns. It is a book about re-forming families from tragedies and divorce. It is also about suicidal thoughts and depression. And it takes place in a nudist park where the family has a permanent trailer.
This book will definitely be about some of my own experiences with these things and issues. And I hope to distill a bit of high-quality wisdom from this brewing novel. After all, when it comes to depression and battling it, I have deep scars and burned-in notions of how you overcome them. It is ironic that I know so much about fighting depression and darkness, even though it was mostly about the depression of other people, not me.
I have come to know how to stitch families together out of used and discarded parts. Hopefully not creating a new monster. And again, it is ironic that I know this mostly from other families, not ours.
The book is flowing, practically writing itself. And that is always a sign of a big idea turning itself into a great novel. I look forward to finding out what happens in each and every next chapter… or, in this case, Canto.
We have been using Walmart’s restroom for an entire week now, including late-night trips. The toilet’s shut-off valve has exploded with water twice. My daughter lost her school ID badge and missed two days of school feeling terrible. She also dropped and shattered her favorite sculpture to make herself feel worse. I had a car accident on Friday. A fender-bump that didn’t damage my car, but made me almost go into shock with a sudden blood-sugar drop. Stress may kill me yet.
It is almost the worst streak of bad luck that I have ever had. It ranks second, maybe. Or possibly third.
Chances are… I could wear a foolish grin, like a Johnny Mathis Moon in the sky…
I could waltz… all alone in a dark room, never seizing on the chances to fly…
But there’s a time… meant to let the summer in…
And love songs… all make me wonder… Why?
Silly, I know. But silly and surreal is how I go, how I deal with the time. A song in my head leads to rhythm and metaphor and rhyme. And it takes me from old winter and the waning of the moon… to the silly month of June… And my dancing shoes were never quite so spry.
Chances are… if you really read this, you will know I am depressed.
My life is all unfairly messed.
And I barely can get dressed…
To go tripping cross the floor, dancing awkwardly toward the door, ’cause I’m in need of so much more.
But in a poem I find it… the very reason that I rhymed it… like the crooning song that’s stuck in my old head…
I will catch it, and I’ll bind it, like a fool who hopes you’ll find it, and the treasure will be revealed before we’re dead…
Chances are… that you hear that silly tune, as it reels across the page in silent spread. And the song will slowly stop, as I dance a final hop, and the answer is brightly shining in my head.
“If it weren’t fer bad luck, I’d have no luck at all… Gloom! Despair! And Agony on Me!” I often think of that old Hee-Haw! song when bad luck continues to pile up on me in waves… err… waves of bad luck crest over me in piles… or some other gol’ danged mixed
Some of my tip money, artfully backlit so you might not notice they are all ones.
metaphor.
After the tax man took all my spare change and dollars I didn’t have to spare, we woke up Monday morning to the Princess still down with flu and me with no more doctor-bill money. Fortunately there are a few things I can still do about it. I mean besides eat chocolate and play with dolls.
I have been able to earn extra money by driving for Uber. I have been mostly delivering meals for restaurants who use Uber Eats, but I have also delivered folks to the airport, taken non-car-owners to work, and occasionally delivered drinkers to liquor stores. (You wouldn’t believe some of the rationalizations and excuses and made-up stories I have heard from people who regret being sober.) This last week I made $102 on 11 fares plus the cash you can see in my hand. It may not seem like a lot to you, but for someone who feels sick 95% of the time, it is miraculously helpful to have a job that won’t fire you if you are repeatedly too sick to work. And I don’t drive if there’s any hint of not being well enough. I can’t afford an accident caused for any reason. And you get to talk to people. Most of them just want to quietly ride and look at their phones. But some of them ask me questions and strike up story-telling liars’ duels. (Yes, I know I don’t have to lie to come up with a funny story about being a teacher, but lying, especially exaggerating, is a required part of a teacher’s job. And that goes for any other kind of story-teller too, so they lie to me more than I lie to them.) Three straight weeks I have made $100 or more a week. (Not a lie OR an exaggeration). And that helps.
I had some necessary yard work to do where the pool used to be. I had thistles growing that needed to be cut down. So I pitched in and got that done… in the nude. Be glad I didn’t take any pictures of me doing the actual work. Thistle cutting naked? I am not a nudist in order to offend people. It was just a way of working off stress without working up a sweat. It was a cool morning. And the yard in question is in the middle of the city, but fenced in on all sides. And no one can see in without climbing the outside of the fence or locating an un-patched hole. That would be their bad, not mine.
And of course, I have been working on my humor writing. What other excuse is there for the last paragraph? And I just published a humor novel, Superchicken, and started working on publishing another, The Bicycle-Wheel Genius.
There are many more ways to heal the mind of dark depression than you might imagine. Of course, I did also buy chocolate covered peanuts again, and played with dolls again this morning. Old nudist fools with their Cirque du Soleil clown noses rarely learn new tricks.
One of the side “benefits” of having diabetes is that it often comes with an extra helping of diabetic depression. I had the blues really bad this week. I am not the only member of my family suffering.
So, what do you do about it?
Or, rather, what does a goofy idiot like me do about it?
Especially on a windy day when the air is saturated with pollen and other lovely things that I am absolutely, toxically allergic to?
Well, for one thing, I used the word toxically in this post because it is a funny-sounding adverb that I love to use even though the spell-checker hates it, no matter how I spell or misspell it.
And I bought a kite.
Yes, it is a cheap Walmart kite that has a picture of Superman on it that looks more like Superboy after taking too much kryptonite-based cough syrup for his own super allergies.
But I used to buy or make paper diamond kites just like this one when I was a boy in Iowa to battle the blues in windy spring weather. One time I got one so high in the sky at my uncle’s east pasture that it was nothing more than a speck in the sky using two spools of string and one borrowed ball of yarn from my mother’s knitting basket. It is a way of battling blue meanies.
And I bought more chocolate-covered peanuts. The chocolate brings you up, and the peanut protein keeps you from crashing your blood sugar. I have weathered more than one Blue Meanie attack with m&m’s peanuts.
And I used the 1957 Pink and White Mercury of Imagination to bring my novel, The Baby Werewolf,home. I wrote the last chapter Monday night in the grip of dark depression, and writing something, and writing it well, makes me a little bit happier.
And I have collected a lot of naked pictures of nudists off Twitter. Who knew that you could find and communicate with such a large number of naked-in-the-sunshine nuts on social media? It is nice to find other nude-minded naturists in a place that I thought only had naked porn until I started blogging on naturist social media. Being naked in mind and body makes me happier than I ever thought it would.
And besides being bare, I also like butterflies and books and baseball and birds, (the Cardinals have started baseball season remember) and the end of winter. “I just remember of few of my favorite things, and then I don’t feel so bad!” Oh, and I like musical movies like The Sound of Music too.
The monsters of deep, dark depression are being defeated as we speak.
“Geez, Mickey,” you will say, “Why-ever would you write such a gloomy pessimist’s poem?”
“Because I prepare myself for the worst. The worst in this case is that the President of the United States says the solution to school shootings is putting guns in the hands of teachers. He wants those of us whose hands were made for using chalk on chalkboards, and hearts were made for talking to kids, learning who they are, and guiding them toward a better future, to pick up a gun and accurately take out a threat coming in with legally purchased weapons of war that can shoot more rounds faster than any weapon that the school system will be able to put in my hands. It is a terrible idea, and he is going to make it happen just because he stupidly can.”
One time at a middle school I taught at, a child did bring a gun to school. It was a handgun concealed in a back pack. He apparently meant to shoot his former girlfriend. But, as kids will, he told friends about it. They told a teacher. The principal called the police and confiscated the back pack. Not only did the target survive without being shot at, the perpetrator, after his brush with the law and time served, was able to right his boat again and sail on into adulthood, a job, a wife, and kids. He even told me later that he was grateful to have been stopped from ruining his life, even possibly ending his life. The problem was solved without a shooting because of teacher skills, being able to talk to kids, being approachable to talk to about problems and unsettling rumors, and knowing where to turn for the proper help at the proper time.
Of course, we were lucky on that one. Stopping that shooter was not 100% guaranteed. And it happened in the 90’s during the assault rifle ban. He was immature enough and excitable enough to have killed many with a more powerful weapon.
If it were up to me to become a weapon-toting defender of the innocent, I am fully aware of how little chance I have to be successful at such a thing. I am a lousy shot. If I had to face down an AR-15 with the cheap school-district pistol, I would become one more obvious target that any shooter will obviously take out in seconds. That’s the best possible outcome for the school, because my missing shot would probably hit some poor innocent bystander.
And, of course, conservative Facebook friends won’t stop insisting that teachers need to be armed. A good guy with a gun can defeat a bad guy with a gun, you know… assuming the SWAT team doesn’t shoot the good guy, mistaking him for the bad guy.
So, even though I don’t like it, I guess I have to be prepared for schools to become battlegrounds. Every day a shootout at the OK Corral. I just hope Wyatt Earp is on my side.
And it really is raining outside today. Cold, February rain… and it depresses me.
I am sometimes forgetful. You shouldn’t go for a walk on a country highway if you forgot to put on any clothes.
Cold weather makes my joints creaky and my bones ache. My head gets fuzzy, and it makes it hard to think when my blood sugar gets low. (By fuzzy, I mean on the inside like interference in your TV picture, not fuzzy on the outside. I am fuzzy on the outside because I had to give up haircuts due to psoriasis on my scalp.)
Yes, as we get older, we get crummier and crummier. I am literally crumbling now as psoriasis flakes my skin off all over.
And as we get older… and poorer… and dumber… we have to learn how to do things to get happier. My health problems lead easily to depression. Not just a little generic sad, but deep down at the bottom of a deep, dark black pit of gloomy depression. So, I have to take matters into my own hands. Yes, I act a little goofy on purpose. I draw a funny picture. Laughter produces serotonin in the brain, the chemical that is missing when you fall into debilitating depression. Scraggles is the result of major dark back in the early 80’s. I also go to Walmart and buy chocolate. Eating chocolate produces serotonin in the brain too. I ate a whole 98-cent box of M&M’s this morning. (Of course, as a diabetic, they had to be peanut M&M’s because peanuts have niacin in them at levels that boost your body’s insulin towards working more efficiently. M&M’s make me happy.
Of course, I am not out of the woods yet. The mood of your family impacts your own mood. My children have been ill for most of January and all of February so far. And that puts them in varied states of depression and needing chocolate. It is a good thing that Valentine’s Day is near and Walmart is over-stocked. And it helps that it’s cheap.
I am old. Being old is not easy. Being ill is worse. It really is heck. But I don’t give up. I don’t surrender. I have fought back for too many years to give up now.
