Category Archives: healing

December 14, 2025 · 12:47 am

Lighting Candles in the Darkness

I recently got word that my octogenarian father is in the hospital again for the third time in the last three months. I am fairly sure the end of my father’s long and epic life is near. And though I have basically come to terms with not only the coming end of his life but my own life as well, human beings, real ones, were never meant to live forever.

But I do not welcome the coming sadness, never-the-less. There will always be something in the mysteries of death and darkness that is to be feared… and avoided for as long as possible.

There are many ways to light a candle, and some require no fire.

One of the most important avoidance measures is to light a few candles. A candle holds back the darkness for a while. And of course, I mean that in only the most metaphorical of multiple senses.

There are many ways to light a candle. I have lit three in this essay. I lit them with my ink pen and my drawing skill (modest though it may be). And drawing alone is not the sum total of the ways a candle may be lit.

Each of the novels I have written is also a candle. They may be useless piles of pages that nobody ever reads, but they are the summation of my already long life and work as a writer. I may not be well known, and probably am not as talented as the better-known writers, but I really do have something to tell. And being published where someone may eventually… even accidentally read some of it, there is no telling exactly how far into the darkness my light will reach.

And the even-more-amazing fact about the reach my candlelight into the darkness has is this, my candles were only lit because my father first lit the candle that is me. As I have passed the candle-lighting responsibility on to those who read my writing, and to my children who have many more candles of their own to light.

I love you, Dad. Raymond L. Beyer. My next novel is dedicated to you. Let’s continue to hold off the darkness for as long as we can… together.

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Filed under drawing, healing, insight, inspiration, metaphor, Paffooney

Tagged as advent, faith, god, hope, jesus

November 11, 2025 · 1:53 am

Giving and Taking Stupid Advice

Let’s begin with some stupid advice. I don’t have time to write a lot today because the Princess is ill and must go see the doctor in Plano. So the advice is; Set aside time for writing and always allow plenty of time for it. You will probably notice already that I am giving you advice that I am not taking myself this morning. So don’t follow that advice. It is stupid advice. I have given it to creative writing classes for years and thought I meant it. But looking back on real life, I realize, it has never been true for me. My best ideas, my best writing, always seem to come in the middle of the pressure-cooker of daily struggle and strife. I have battled serious illness for most of my adult life. I have the luck of a man who tried to avoid letting a black cat cross his path by crashing his bicycle at the top of a hill covered in clover with only three leaves each and then rolling down the hill, under a ladder, and crashing into a doorpost which knocks the horseshoe off the top. The horseshoe lands on my stupid head with the “U” facing downward so the luck all drains out. Bad things happen to me all the time. But it makes for good writing. Tell me you didn’t at least smile at the picture I just painted in your mind. You might’ve even been unable to suppress a chuckle. I am under time pressure and misfortune pressure and the need to rearrange my entire daily schedule. So it is the perfect time to write.

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This essay, however, is about bad advice. And I am a perfect person to rely on as a resource for bad advice. I am full of it. Of course, I mean I am full of bad advice, not that other thing we think of when someone tells me I am “Full of it!” So here’s another bit of writing advice that is probably completely wrong and a bad idea to take without a grain of salt, or at least a doctor’s prescription. You should stop bird-walking in your essay and get to the damn point!

I know a lot about the subject of depression. When I was a teenager, I came very close to suicide. I experienced tidal waves of self-loathing and black-enveloping blankets of depression for reasons that I didn’t understand until I realized later in life that it all came from being a child-victim of sexual assault. Somehow I muddled through and managed to self-medicate with journal writing and fantasy-fixations, thus avoiding a potentially serious alcohol or drug problem. This is connected to my main idea, despite the fact that I am obviously not following the no bird-walking advice. You see, with depression, Bad advice can kill you. Seriously, people want to tell you to just, “Get over it! Stop moping about and get on with life. It isn’t real. You are just being lazy.”

I have been on the inside of depression and I know for a fact that not taking it seriously can be deadly. In fact, I have faced suicidal depression not only in myself, but in several former students and even my own children. I have spent time in emergency rooms, mental hospitals, and therapists offices when I wasn’t myself the depression sufferer. One of my high school classmates and one of my former students lost their battles and now are no longer among the living. (Sorry, have to take a moment for tears again.) But I learned how to help a depression sufferer. You have to talk to them and make them listen at least to the part where you say, “I have been through this myself. Don’t give in to it. You can survive if you fight back. And whatever you have to do, I will be right here for you. You can talk to me about anything. I will listen. And I won’t try to give you any advice.” Of course, after you say that to them, you do not leave them alone. You stay by them and protect them from themselves, or make sure somebody that will do the same for them stays with them. So far, that last bit of advice has worked for me. But the fight can be life-long. And it is a critical battle.

So taking advice from others is always an adventure. Red pill? Green pill? Poison pill? Which will you take? I can’t decide for you. Any advice I give you would probably just be stupid advice. You have to weigh the evidence and decide for yourself. What does this stupid essay even mean? Isn’t it just a pile of stupid advice? A concluding paragraph should tell you the answer if it can. But, I fear, there is no answer this time.

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Filed under artwork, autobiography, battling depression, commentary, compassion, Depression, empathy, healing, insight, Paffooney, sharing from YouTube, strange and wonderful ideas about life

Tagged as anxiety, depression, life, mental health, writing, writing advice

October 6, 2025 · 12:22 am

Dancing Towards the Brighter Light

Yes, this was written in 2017, but somehow, every word still applies.

In Texas a little girl who has cerebral palsy committed the crime of crossing a border patrol station near Laredo on the way to having life-saving gall bladder surgery. So the border patrol followed her to the hospital, waited until the surgery was finished, and then took her to a detention facility for deportation. Wow!

We are a heartless people. We elect heartless representatives to congress to make heartless laws to punish people for being poor, or not being white, or not being patriotic enough at football games during the playing of the national anthem. We elected an orange-faced creature with bad hair to the presidency rather than electing a human being with a beating heart. And why did we do that? Because too many people were in favor of health care laws and regulations that help people we don’t like. We elected him to send a message to all the people we don’t like. That message was, “Screw you, why don’t you just die already?” We like that message because we are a heartless people.

But while we are only thinking of ourselves and vowing to let everybody else go to hell, somewhere the music of the dance begins to play. Hear it yet?

Somewhere children are laughing.

Somewhere Santa Claus is real.

Holidays are approaching and, with indictments sealed and in the hands of prosecutors, possible impeachment looms. The happy dance is about to begin again.

Or maybe it never really went away. People did care, do care, about the crisis in Puerto Rico. After the hurricane, Dippy Donald Dimwit tossed paper towels to survivors, apparently suggesting that all he needed to do was that to symbolically get all the people cleaning up while holding on to their own bootstraps and pulling with all their might. Apparently heartless people believe you can levitate if you pull upwards on bootstraps. But Tesla gifted the city of San Juan with solar panels and batteries and started set-up of an island-based solar power grid to get Puerto Rico back online in the modern world. And Elon Musk is taking the steps towards building the future that the pumpkinhead in chief can’t even conceive in his empty pumpkin head. The music sways and builds. The dancers circle each other and first steps in ballet shoes begin.

We are a heartless people. We suffer in our cubicles alone, angry at a heartless world. “Why don’t you love me?” each one of us cries, “aren’t I worthy of love?” But crying never solved a problem. No, counting our regrets and hoarding the list of wrongs done to us never started a heart to beating. But the music builds. Try smiling at that hard-working clerk who takes your information at the DMV, and then thanking them at the end for their hard work even though they have to deny you the permit because there are more bits of paperwork that have to be found and signed. Try making a joke in line at the post office that makes the other hundred and ten people actually laugh while waiting interminably. Do your best to bring light to the darkness, not for yourself, but for other people. The music builds. Do you know the steps to the dance? No? Well, the steps won’t matter if you begin to move to the music, begin to glide… And the heart starts pumping, and we begin to feel alive again. Hallelujah! We are dancing towards the light again.

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Filed under compassion, empathy, forgiveness, healing, insight, inspiration, strange and wonderful ideas about life

Tagged as god, life, love, music, writing

August 22, 2025 · 12:09 am

Chances Are…

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.

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Filed under Depression, feeling sorry for myself, finding love, healing, humor, magic, music, Paffooney, poetry

Tagged as Chances are..., Johnny Mathis, poem, surrealism

May 8, 2025 · 12:02 am

Boyhood

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Fifty-eight years ago, when I was ten, the world was a very different place. Many people long for the time when they were young. They see it as a better, more innocent time. Not me. Childhood was both a blessing and a nightmare for me. I was creative and artistic and full of life. And my family encouraged that. But I was also a victim of a sexual assault and believed I had to keep a terrible secret even from my parents so that the world would not reject me as something horrible. We were on the way to the moon and the future looked bright. But President Kennedy had been assassinated in 1963, and Apollo 1 would end in a fiery tragedy in 1967. I look back with longing at many, many things, but I would never want to go back to that time and place without knowing everything I know now. I am grateful that I survived. But I remember the nightmares as vividly as I do the dreams.

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As a teacher, I learned that childhood and young adulthood defines the adult. And the kid who is coddled and never faces the darkness is the one who becomes a total jerk or a criminal… or Donald Trump. I almost feel that the challenges we faced and the tragedies we overcame in our lives are the very things that made us strong and good and worthy.

When you are a boy growing up, hating girls on the outside and pining to get a look in the girls’ shower room on the inside, you can’t wait to grow up and get away from the horrors of being a child. Except, there are good things too. Tang, of course, wasn’t one of them. We drank it because the astronauts drank it, but it was so sweet and artificial that it tasted bitter in that oxymoronic way that only fake stuff can achieve. Quisp is nasty-tasting stuff too… but we begged for it because, well, the cartoon commercials were cool. I only ever choked down about two boxes of the vile stuff. You went to school a little queasy on mornings when you ate Quisp in milk for breakfast. But one box had a toy inside, and the other had an alien mask on the back that you could cut out, but not actually wear.

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But when it comes down to how you end a goofy-times-ten-and-then-squared essay like this one, well, how do you tie a proper knot at the end of the thread? Maybe like this: It is a very hard thing to be a boy and then grow up to be a man. But I did it. And looking back on it, the pie was not my favorite flavor… but, hey! It was pie!

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Filed under battling depression, feeling sorry for myself, finding love, goofy thoughts, happiness, healing, humor, Paffooney, Uncategorized

Tagged as 1960's, artwork, boyhood, family, goofiness, health, humor, nostalgia, paffooney, satire, writing

March 9, 2025 · 1:48 am

The Survivor

Elf on Patrol

I am trying to bounce back. Yesterday I survived the possible end of the world. No heart attack. No asteroid hitting the Earth. But also no writing contest win. A huge delay in the publication of my novel. My writing world is in danger of expiring because my life is winding down to its finale, and I’m running out of time. I can still do it, though. I have come back from down and out before.

In 1983, I had a mole removed from my face. It wasn’t a vanity-type thing. Removing it wasn’t going to cure ugliness or anything. But it had gotten larger and had a strange color change. So, my ancient and doddering Czechoslovakian doctor removed it just to be sure. As with any such removal, the excised tissue was sent to the lab for analysis. Malignant melanoma in the very first stages. At the time, the survival rate for such a cancer in Texas was less than fifty percent. However, most cases were not discovered so early in the crisis. I went back in for more surgery. They ended up cutting a hole through my right cheek and stitching it back together again. The new tissue underwent very close scrutiny, and it was determined that all the dangerous cells had been removed during the very first surgery. No evidence anywhere of a creeping metastasizing cancer death. It was decided that chemotherapy would only do harm and would not help anything. So I got to keep my hair. It eventually meant removing two more moles and three lumps, but they were all benign. Cancer was fought off and beaten 42 years ago this month. I am a cancer survivor.

I often marvel at the fact that I am still alive and still able to write. I have had innumerable near misses. Car accidents that didn’t happen by a matter of inches. The skidding truck on the icy street in Iowa City missed the front tire of my bicycle by about three inches. Facing down irrationally angry youths with weapons intending to strike out in anger, and somehow having the right words to calm them and prevent the tragedy. One of them told me it was because he looked me in the eye and saw no fear there that he couldn’t do it, couldn’t strike me down. By rights, I should be dead. It is a supreme irony of life that an almost-atheist like me believes in guardian angels.

I don’t know what the ultimate goal is. I don’t expect to be a wealthy published novelist like Stephen King. I don’t know if it is even important that I break through the bookstore barriers and get my work on the shelves for a few paltry dollars. It is really only important that I write. This blog has become important to me because I have developed a small readership that actually reads and provides feedback. I do occasionally reach the hearts of people I don’t even know. And I have made friends and relatives a little bit misty. I have written 849 posts, posting every single day of 2015 and every single day of fifteen months in a row. I have written six complete novels and gotten two into print with an ISBN number and everything. My writing, like me myself, exists, and it will survive. I am a survivor.

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Filed under autobiography, healing, health, humor, novel plans, writing

Tagged as cancer, health, humor, life, melanoma, surviving, writing

January 21, 2025 · 1:01 am

Dancing With Alan Watts

It seems sometimes, in a Judaeo-Christian society, that we are a constantly being scrutinized by a rather harsh all-knowing God who rewards getting the faith-words accurately correct, to the letter, and the faith-based actions perfect, without a single mistake. And He punishes missteps of word or deed with pain and suffering and the potential of an eternity in Sheol or Hell. And that is a tough God to live with. He is like a teacher who uses his or her God-like powers to reward or punish to lead his students all down an exacting, narrow path to a destination that does not have room for everyone when they arrive.

It doesn’t take long in childhood for a highly intelligent person to realize before childhood is over that this cosmology is actually a load of horse pucky. It didn’t even take long for somebody as semi-stupid as me.

What I like about listening on YouTube to Alan Watts’s wisdom is that he gives us an alternative way of seeing the universe and ourselves. This he can offer through his studies of Eastern and Buddhist philosophies. Everything appealing in John Lennon’s signature song, “Imagine,” comes from Lennon’s love of listening to Alan Watts’ lectures. He is obviously a wise guy.

Alan Watts teaches us the pathways that lead to finding yourself, who you truly are, and how you fit into the universe as a whole. When Carl Sagan says that we are all made of star-stuff, he is not only telling us what is literally true, as the elements our bodies were formed from were literally made in the nuclear forges at the centers of stars that later exploded in nova bursts to scatter the elements across the skies of everywhere. He is also telling us that what Alan Watts says is metaphorically true, that everything in the universe is part of the same thing and we are all one in this way.

There is plenty to worry about in my little life. I could easily drop dead at any time from any one of my six incurable diseases or even the return of the skin cancer I beat in 1983. I suffer from the consequences of disease daily, as I have for many years now. My sins are many. I broke my promise the other day to never show you the horrors of my naked body on this blog. I constantly eat the wrong thing and continue to do things that I know are bad for the environment and the health of my body. I am prejudiced against racists, stupidity, and the actions of dedicated Trump-lovers. In many ways I deserve God’s wrath and brutal correction. I have come to truly believe that climate change is going to end life on Earth. I am horrible.

But I have learned from Alan Watts that all of those concerns mean nothing. I don’t believe in Heaven or an afterlife. But I do not fear death. I am one with the universe. And the universe goes on even if I do not. And I will always be a part of it, even after I am no longer alive. The universe has a mind and is intelligent And I take part in that because one small part of that intelligence is me, and lives in my head.

There is comfort to be found in the words of Alan Watts. And living in pain as I do, I really need that comfort most of the time. That is why I have attempted to share a bit of that comfort with you.

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Filed under artists I admire, commentary, feeling sorry for myself, finding love, foolishness, healing, health, humor, Paffooney, philosophy

Tagged as Alan Watts, meditation, mindfulness, philosophy, spirituality

January 19, 2025 · 1:16 am

A Poem Written on a Picture

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-a poem written by Mickey and pasted on a picture.

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Filed under artwork, healing, humor, insight, poem, poetry

October 14, 2024 · 12:02 am

Tricks With Lazy Goals in Mind

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As a writer, my goal is to create wisdom and new ideas and stuff that makes a reader feel happy, or sad, or angry, or even slightly insane. But thinking is hard when your head hurts and your body aches and your 68th birthday is just around the corner. (Yes, this Mickey is nearly 68, but can you believe that that Mickey is going to be 96 on the day after I turn 68?) Sometimes you just want to say, “Never mind that I wanted to post every single day for the past two years. Just curl up in a ball and go to sleep.” But there are ways to get something done even if your mind is full of the Sandman’s leavings and old, rotted dreams.

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You can always get by with posting somebody else’s wisdom… somebody else’s thinking. You don’t have to work too hard to paste things together. After all, why else did you have to look at so many cut-and-paste essays over the years in middle school and high school as an English teacher?

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And you can rely on the work you have already done collecting computer files full of colorful crap and stuff you like enough to steal to complete your cut-and-paste scrapbook post. You don’t have to feel like you erred and are about to have your head cut off by an angry Groo.

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And you know you can get a lot of cheap likes on Facebook with some of the stuff you have available to put in this post. You have been working at the “Be funny!” thing for a long time, and have gotten almost good enough at it to be funny on the fly. And when you’ve gotten more than halfway to the goal, you can rest a bit. Take a nap. Regenerate the crazy things in your head so you can do this all again another day.

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And if you can have a laugh before you are finished, even if no one else in the world gets the joke… well, at least you will feel a little bit better yourself.

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Filed under battling depression, blog posting, empathy, feeling sorry for myself, healing, humor, illness, self pity, strange and wonderful ideas about life, surrealism

Tagged as art, humor, illness, photography, scrapbook post

September 26, 2024 · 1:09 am