I told you I would do it. And then I basically did.
My daughter and I got it up in the air.
The sun, the wind, and the kite all worked together to help me overcome the blues.
We got it up so high that all the kite string was played out.
But then it finally came down.
And still… I was happier.
Filed under battling depression, happiness, Uncategorized
The sad truth is that as this world progresses in the days since the Trump election, it becomes harder and harder to stay positive and happy. It becomes easier and easier to figuratively stub your toe on the bad news each new day brings and fall into the deep dark pit of black depression.
Just after signing the paperwork for the bankruptcy, I get a couple of explanation pages from my health insurance, assuring me that I will have to pay somewhere around $4500 for my emergency room visit and 3-day hospital stay. After I earned my first $100 dollars as an Uber driver, I ran over a glass bottle and punctured a tire in its sidewall, costing me over $100 to replace it. And my bank account, in spite of scraping and saving and spending money like Scrooge McDuck, a thoroughly squeezed nickel at a time, does not contain near enough money to pay this year’s property tax. In spite of the blood, sweat, and money put into this last summer’s pool crisis, we may still lose the house. I may soon fall off of that cloud that I stand on.
The Trumpinator hasn’t been helping. He got the tax plan passed that benefits him to the tune of $12 million dollars every year, and may give me $50, or nothing, or I may even have to pay more. His tax plan removes the mandate from Obamacare that was its tentpole, probably causing its imminent collapse. $4500 may only be the first wound in that battle. And none of the terrible things he says and does get him even a hint of condemnation from the Republican Toad Army that backs him. We are headed for even greater levels of income inequality, possible revolution and civil war, and general chaos, assuming North Korea doesn’t begin nuking us first.
But the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune do not find their target completely undefended. I have ways of dealing with double-danged downers that are all but unknown to those who are basically unartistical. (Yes, I know that is not a word in English, but I am creative.)
Do you remember that little perfume-bottle figurine that I bought at Goodwill and vowed in this goofy blog to repaint to express my artistical madness and creativiticockle? (Yes, I know that isn’t a word in English either.) I broke out the enamels and the acrylics and the brushes and the other stuff, and invited my daughter the Princess to paint with me. She got out her ceramic dragon, a middle school art project that she never yet finished painting, and we both set to work.
We talked and joked and laughed at the table in the family room. We talked about art styles and painting techniques. We talked about art classes at school. We talked about many important father/daughter artists sorts of things, and the regret we both have for never seriously trying to learn to play music.
And the result was the healing of many old heart-wounds and the painting of many spots of very nice paints. You can definitely fight back against a world of darkness by creating rebellious little acts of artistry.
This post is a movie review for Thor : Ragnarok , though I don’t really plan on talking about the movie very much. It was an excellent comic book movie in the same tongue-in-cheek comedy tradition as Guardians of the Galaxy. It made me laugh and made me cheer. It was the best of that kind of movie. But it wasn’t the most important thing that happened that night.
You see, I spent the weekend in the hospital thinking I had suffered a heart attack during the Thanksgiving holiday. I thought I was facing surgery at the very least. I knew I might have had an appointment to play chess with the Grim Reaper. It is a lot to worry about and drain all the fun out of life.
Well, one of the things that happened that day, Tuesday, my first full day out of the hospital and, hopefully, out of the woods over heart attacks, was that I received my new replacement bank card because my old one had a worn out, malfunctioning chip in it. So, I took my three kids to the movie at the cheapest place we could find. I tried to run my bank card for the payment, and it was summarily declined. I had activated it previously during the day, and there was plenty of money in the account compared to the price, but it just wouldn’t take. So I had to call Wells Fargo to find out whatever the new reason was for them to hate me. It turned out that it had already been activated, but a glitch had caused it to decline the charge. While I was talking to the girl from the Wells Fargo help desk, the lady who had gotten her and her husband’s tickets right before us put four tickets to the movie in my hand.
The middle-aged black couple had lingered by the ticket stand before going in to their movie just long enough to see a sad-looking old man with raggedy author’s beard and long Gandalf hair get turned down by the cheap-cinema ticket-taking teenager because the old coot’s one and only bank card was declined. They were moved to take matters into their own hands and paid for our tickets themselves.
That, you see, was the gift from my title. Not so much that we got our movie tickets for free, but that the world still works that way. There are still good people with empathetic and golden hearts willing to step in and do things to make the world a little bit better place. The gift they gave me was the reassurance that, as bad and black as the world full of fascists that we have come to live in has become, it still has goodness and fellow feeling in it. People are still moved to pay things forward and make good on the promise to “love one another”. I did not have a chance to thank them properly. I was on the phone with Wells Fargo girl when it happened. The only thing that couple got out of their good deed was thank-yous from my children and the knowledge that they had done something wonderful. I plan to pay it forward as soon as I have the opportunity. Not out of guilt or obligation, but because I need to be able to feel that feeling too at some point.
I do have one further gift to offer the world.
After we got home from the movie, I opened an email that contained the cover proof for my novel, Magical Miss Morgan. Soon I will have that in print also if I can keep Page Publishing from messing it up at the last moments before printing. It is a novel about what a good teacher is and does. It is the second best thing I have ever written.
Sometimes the gifts that you most desperately need come in unexpected fashion.
I often go back and re-read old posts, particularly when I discover that someone else has read them. It is amazing to me how differently I perceive things from when I actually wrote the post. As you write, squeezing huge, boulder-sized portions of hot, magma-like burning ideas and passions out through writing orifices not nearly big enough to accommodate, you usually hate what you wrote and are still writhing in pain from the creation of it as you try to edit it, trim it and brush its unruly hair. (How’s that for a mixed metaphor to make you cringe?) But given time and distance, you can really appreciate what you wrote more than ever before. Things that you thought were the stupidest idea a man ever put in words suddenly have the power to make you laugh, or make you cry. You are able to feel the things the writing was intended to make you feel. You begin to think things like, “Maybe you are not the worst writer that ever lived, and maybe that’s not why nobody ever reads your books.” But then, of course, your sister reads the post and tells you that you write like a really old, really crabby, really ancient old man. And you use the word “really” too much too. I know I deserve that, Sis. Especially the “really” part.
Here’s a post that I reread and liked today about Bob Ross.
This is the thing about happiness; It is elusive and rare as a real-life blue bird. But capturing it for a moment is not impossible. And as long as you don’t try to salt its tail and keep it prisoner, you can encourage it to sing for you. (Much better metaphor this time, don’t you think?) 
When I am accused of being gloomy, old, and boring, I can happily admit it and make it into something funny. I am something of a conspiracy nut, but not so serious that I believe all my own assertions. For those people who took offense at this conspiracy theory of mine; Coca-Cola Mind Control, I would like to point out that “Hey, I was joking. I actually like clowns.” Even though there is a serious side to everything and there can’t be laughter without some tears, I am basically happy with the way things are.
I started listening to “Live Happy Radio” on Sunday mornings on KLUV in Dallas. They point out on their program of endlessly droning happy-talk that happiness is something that you can work at. Like humor writing in blogs, it takes practice and practice and time. They even asked me to share the word about their happy magazine and products, so I am doing exactly that right here. Sometimes you simply have to put your cynicism in a jar on the shelf next to the lock box where you keep depression and self-loathing. So you can find their Live-Happy folderol right here.
So I am bird-watching again with an eye out for the bluebird. You know the one. It is out there somewhere. And I need to hear that song one more time.
Filed under artwork, goofy thoughts, happiness, humor, insight, inspiration, irony, Paffooney, strange and wonderful ideas about life
I finished the picture of Dunderella and the Wolf Girl. I suppose it isn’t much of a picture, but it has inspired a story. Dunderella is the clumsiest Storybook in the fairy kingdom of Tellosia. The Wolf Girl is supposedly her friend whom she talks to when nobody else is around, but it is very possible that they are the same fairy, just two different personalities, one of which is only encountered by others during the full moon.
Finishing something in the midst of a miasma of misfortune, unfinished projects, and illness counts as a turn for the better. Doesn’t it?
And the football Cardinals, whom I have loved since they were in St. Louis when I was a kid and fledgling football fan, won yesterday. Sure, they had a 38 to 20 lead that turned into 38 to 33 by the end of the fourth quarter, but they won instead of losing like they have three times in the previous five games. And it was partly because they now have future Hall-of-Famer Adrian Petersen on their team. He scored two touchdowns in his Cardinal debut.
And it didn’t hurt that Carson Palmer, the Cardinal Quarterback, threw three touchdowns, something he hasn’t done in a while.
So things are looking better in Mickey land. I still have a great deal of back pain. I still can’t seem to get signed up properly to be an Uber driver. I still haven’t seen progress on my novel with Page Publishing. But yesterday proved good things can still happen too.
Once upon a time… I remember skies…
Yes, I do believe the Moody Blues deserve a place in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Because once I had dreams. I had dreams of great beauty. I had dreams of knowing the Truth with a capital “T”. And they played the background music to my youth. To my days of “Nights in White Satin”.
And I remember skies… I have seen the same skies that Vincent saw… all swirling passion and spirals of light into darkness.
It is all mystical… and a total mystery to those who have never opened that extra eye that makes everything clear… that chases the clouds away. The lyrics have meaning that… every time I think about them, the music playing in the background of the theater in my head… means something new, something more than it did… the last time that I listened.
The place that I was born into… the place that grew me into who I am… is represented by a color of sky… a pastel mood… a gentle blue thought. Ellipsis instead of commas because something… is left out. More could be said… should be said… and is still there… but only implied.
“Why do you paste all this music into your post, Mickey dear?”
“All the letters I’ve written… never meaning to send… mean… I love you.”
“But, Mickey, who are you talking to? And why are you crying?”
“I am talking to you, to all of you, and everything… but you won’t understand, never reaching the end. Life is music. Music is love. All of it is beautiful. And I have had so much of it… that I am drunk on its wine.”
“It almost seems poetic, when you say it like that… I like the Moody Blues… but don’t mess with the lyrics so much. They are beautiful the way they are.”
“But don’t you see? Mixing and meddling and rearranging, is what it’s all about. It’s how you make the old messages… new.”
Filed under happiness
A Mr. Holland Moment
Life is making music. We hum, we sing to ourselves, movie music plays in our head as the soundtrack to our daily life. At least, it does if we stop for a moment and dare to listen. We make music in many different ways. Some play guitar. Some are piano players. And some of us are only player pianos. Some of us make music by writing a themed paragraph like this one. Others make an engine sing in the automotive shop. Still others plant gardens and make flowers or tomatoes grow. I chose teaching kids to read and write. The music still swells in my ears four years after retiring.
The 1995 movie, Mr. Holland’s Opus, is about a musician who thinks he is going to write a magnificent classical orchestra opus while teaching music at a public high school to bring in money and allow him time to compose and be with his young wife as they start a new family.
But teaching is not, of course, what he thought it was. He has to learn the hard way that it is not an easy thing to open up the closed little clam shells that are the minds of students and put music in. You have to learn who they are as people first. You have to learn to care about what goes on in their lives, and how the world around them makes them feel… and react to what you have to teach. Mr. Holland has to learn to pull them into music appreciation using rock and roll and music they like to listen to, teaching them to understand the sparkles and beats and elements that make it up and can be found in all music throughout their lives. They can even begin to find those things in classical music, and appreciate why it has taken hold of our attention for centuries.
And teaching is not easy. You have to make sacrifices. Big dreams, such as a magnum opus called “An American Symphony”, have to be put on the shelf until later. You have children, and you find that parenting isn’t easy either. Mr. Holland’s son is deaf and can never actually hear the music that his father writes from the center of his soul. And the issue of the importance of what you have to teach becomes something you have to fight for. Budget cuts and lack of funding cripples teachers in every field, especially if you teach the arts. Principals don’t often appreciate the value of the life lessons you have to give. Being in high school band doesn’t get you a high paying job later.
But in the end, at the climax of the movie, the students all come back to honor Mr. Holland. They provide a public performance of his magnum opus, his life’s work. And the movie ends with a feeling that it was all worth it, because what he built was eternal, and will be there long after the last note of his music is completely forgotten. It is in the lives and loves and memories of his students, and they will pass it on.
But this post isn’t a movie review. This post is about my movie, my music. I was a teacher in the same way Mr. Holland was. I learned the same lessons about being a teacher as he did. I had the same struggles to learn to reach kids. And my Mr. Holland moment wasn’t anywhere near as big and as loud as Mr. Holland’s. His was performed on a stage in front of the whole school and alumni. His won Richard Dreyfus an Academy Award for Best Actor. But his was only fictional.
Mine was real. It happened in a portable building on the Naaman Forest High School campus. The students and the teacher in the classroom next door threw a surprise party for me. They made a lot of food to share, almost all of which I couldn’t eat because of diabetes. And they told me how much they would miss me, and that they would never forget me. And I had promised myself I would never cry about having to retire. But I broke my promise. In fact, I am crying now four years later. But they are not tears of sadness. My masterwork has now reached its last, bitter-sweet notes. The crescendos have all faded. But the music of our lives will still keep playing. And not even death can silence it completely.
2 Comments
Filed under artwork, autobiography, commentary, happiness, insight, kids, movie review, teaching