Where we now stand, if you are going by the picture, is out in the Texas sunshine and heat. We should be standing, if we were smart, under the shade of the mushrooms that grew up quickly as a result of so much unseasonable rain. Of course, that would be assuming that Mickey is currently a pixie with dragonfly wings, which he probably is not… at least, not right at this moment. Climate change is turning Texas into a giant pressure-cooker with enough leftover hurricane moisture in it to reach an explosive boil by the end of July.
We are being manipulated now by the crafty, vile servants of the deposed idiot-king, treating the righteously-installed successor as an illegitimate usurper.
We are hearing now the testimony of the castle guards as they detail the failed assault of orcs and other monstrosities as they tried to dethrone the legitimate ruler. And one wonders why there are not more beheadings going on in the currently secure castle courtyard. The villains apparently have gained more rights than they deserve.
Still, in a kingdom beset by many ill omens and partisan Republicans, there are good things happening too in the sunshine.
Mickey’s latest free-book promotion only gave away two e-book copies of The Boy… Forever. But one of those resulted in a positive review.
And my mother, still in the hospital, is stabilized and getting the treatments she needs for her old heart.
So, we stand together tentatively now, worried about what tomorrow and the next election may bring. But holding the high ground, a good defensive position.
I have long identified with Popeye. Let me review that notion by re-posting a bit of an old post in which I explain while talking like Popeye;
I am Popeye, I sez, because I just am… Yeah, that’s right, I yam what I yam.
First of all, I looks like Popeye. I has that cleft in me chin, very little hair left on me ol’ head, and I gots the same squinky eye (what squinky eye?). I has had that same squinky eye since I wuz a teenager and got kicked in the eye doin’ sandlot football (bettern’ sandlot high divin’, fer sure!). I also has them same bulgy arms, the ones that bulge in the forearm and is incredibobble thin on the upper arms.
Second of all, I has Popeye Spinach-strength. I look weak and scrawny, but I is a lot tuffer than I looks. I go into classrooms full of wild, crazed middle schoolers, and grabs their attention, tells ’em what’s what, and makes ’em woik. (Woik is a voib, and that means I is woikin’ when I makes ’em do it.) I kin stands ridicule and kids what will remarks on the hair in me ears and me squinky eye. I tells ’em that the scar on me face was did by a bloke with a knife (which it were, cause I had skin cancer and the doctor used a knife to get it off). I has taken all kinds of nasty punches from life (diabetes, blood-pressure problems, prostatitis, arthritis) and I still keeps comin’ back fer more. In fact, I can winds up me arm and give that ol’ Devil a good Twisker Sock right in the kisser.
Third of all, I has a typical Popeye Sweet Patootie. My Island Girl Wife is like Olive Oyl in very many ways. She is always tellin’ me what to do. She compares me to ol’ Bluto. She panics and flails her arms when there’s a crisis. And she expects me to always save the day and never says “thank you” after.
So, I mean it when I sez “I am Popeye”. I yam what I yam and that’s all what I yam!
See? I kin talk like Popeye because in many ways I AM him… He of the mangled-mouth vocabubobulary created by Elzie Crisler Segar on January 17th, 1929 for his comic strip Thimble Theater for King Features Syndicate. He doesn’t talk right because his brain is so full of goodness and spinach that he has no room left for spelling and pronunskiation. Ak-ak-ak-ak-ak-ak…. Popeye is just a simple sailor, and has been for 94 years. He expresses himself horribly, but only in the very best of ways. So when I mangle a word on purpose… or by happy accident… it is just me honoring that old one-eyed sailor. It is not me just being a stupid addle-pated blarney goon who don’t knows how to talk right.
“He’s actually daring to come into the barn again,” reported the turncoat barn cat, Greeneyes.
“Has he got that stupid boy with him? That Bobby fella?” asked Whitewhiskers Billy, the number-three rat in the gang.
“Not just him, but the two fantastical friends, too.”
“You mean the baseball-bat boy that killed ChickenKiller?” asked Stupidrat, the number-last rat now that ChickenKiller was nothing but bones in the gravel by the pump house.
“Not just him. Also, the beautiful princess that always wears blue clothing and always looks so gorgeous that I almost fall over dead.”
“Horatio T. Dogg is so brazen and conceited, Boss, that he thinks he can dare to come sniffing about your kingdom without so much as asking Greeneyes for permission,” said Darktail Ralph, the number-two rat.
“You must be patient, my anxious minions,” said Professor Rattiarty in an oily voice from the darkest shadows in the stack of haybales. All you could see of Rattiarty’s hideous face were the two glowing red eyes staring out at everybody from the darkness. “Sooner or later Horatio will make a mistake. We will have him fatally outnumbered and make an end to him. Remember, the old Dogg is getting old.”
“Right, right, Boss. We’ll be patient.”
“Greeneyes, get up on the highest hay bale so the humans can see you. They will see a barn cat and think that no rats could possibly be around,” ordered Rattiarty.
“Right away, Boss.”
*****
“Look, there’s a barn cat up there,” said Mike. “There’s no way there are any rats around in here, or the cat would get ‘em.”
“That is a fine-looking cat,” said Blueberry. “He looks fat enough to have eaten several rats.”
“That’s Greeneyes. He’s in with the rats. Rattiarty gives him chicken parts and other food so the corrupt cat will be the lookout for the evil gang of horrible rats. They are probably up there right behind him, giving him orders, and using him to spy on us.”
“Bobby, you are mentally insane sometimes,” said Mike. “Rattiarty? I bet you have all of the rats named already, don’t you?”
“Well… yeah. Horatio sniffs them out and tells me everything.”
“What are their names?” asked Blueberry.
“Well, there’s Darktail Ralph, Rattiarty’s right-hand rat. And then there’s Whitewhiskers Billy, and Stupidrat, and ChickenKiller… but he’s dead. Mike, remember the rat you killed with the bat when you and the Pirates were out here doing batting practice?
“Oh, yeah. So, that rat had a name, did he?” said Mike.
“Of course, he did. Rats are people too, aren’t they?”
“NO. Just no.”
“Bobby, I appreciate your wonderful imagination even if Mike doesn’t,” Blueberry said sweetly.
Bobby grinned at her. If only…
*****
“The dog is coming right NOW!” screeched Greeneyes, just before he disappeared from the top of the stack of hay bales.
Horatio T. Dogg, with his green hat on his head and Meerschaum pipe in his mouth, appeared in his place, cooly looking down into Rattiarty’s lair in the hollows between the hay bales.
“So, Professor, we meet again,” said Horatio.
“But not by accident this time. It was all part of my plan,” said the voice behind the glowing red eyes in the darkness.
“Oh? How so?”
“I lured you here to show you I survived our last encounter after all. And my rat forces are growing again. Did you really think we would be satisfied with just turkens this time? They are no challenge. I killed Little Bob with a mere thought.”
“Oh? It was you that convinced him he was a penguin and could swim underwater in the horse tank?”
“No, I… er, um, I mean… Yes! I killed him with mind control.”
“I don’t see how. Little Bob only had a tiny chicken mind.”
“But I have already worked my magic on the Niland family. Do you know why Grandma Niland passed away?”
“Lung cancer.”
“Ah, but who caused that cancer?”
“Not you?”
“How did she get infected with cancer?”
“Cigarettes in the 50’s when teenagers thought it was cool to smoke?”
“No. My talents as a carrier for disease. I did that. And I am warning you, you don’t know how to stop me before the next one dies.”
“What next one?”
“Um, probably the Grandpa.”
“I can stop you by killing you all right here, right now with my teeth and claws.”
“Stupidrat! Attack!”
“Yeah, let’s attack now guys!” screamed Stupidrat as he stupidly leaped at Horatio’s growling mouth.
The other rats all quickly withdrew into the shadows.
*****
“That’s just one dead rat. And your dog probably grabbed it before the cat could. We saw him scare the cat away.” Mike was frowning darkly.
“Really, Mike! Horatio says they were all up there, plotting to kill my Grandpa. This one sacrificed himself so the others could get away.”
“That’s not exactly what I said,” said Horatio.
“Oh, sure! An evil rat professor with glowing red eyes. And they are going to take down Butch Niland, your wise old grandfather!”
“Well, it’s true. Horatio told me. Sorta.”
“You and Blue and your imaginations! I don’t believe you two!”
“I believe you, Bobby.” Blueberry always believed Bobby, no matter how strange a thing it was that Bobby claimed.
“You both better learn what imagination really is before bad things happen to you both. You can’t make your way through life by juxst making up stories about it.”
Bobby nodded silently. Mike was right. He needed to know what imagination really was, and how God meant for him to use it.
Lately I have been having problems with passing out during low blood-sugar moments in the middle morning, early afternoon, and shortly after supper, usually when I have already had a snack and my sugars haven’t balanced yet. When I pass out, perchance… I dream. Vivid dreams. So, for art day, I will post images I have made based on dreams I have had.
This one has shadows on everything. I exhausted three pens drawing shadows. Yet, there are no shadows on the child-figures. In the dream, they were glowing white ghosts.
Snowboy is one of the main villains in The Bicycle-wheel Genius. But the boy-robot made entirely of snow, ice, and circuitry first appeared in a 1978 dream that happened while I had a fever from the flu.
This dream is a mental-disturber caused again by fever. Here the two gigantic toys play with the little girl. I was not actually in this dream. I was an observer floating above. I think the bear was inspired by a Care-Bear.
This picture has all the elements of the actual dream, the candle, the line of glowing pixies, the sleeping princess, and Prince Charming. But nothing here looks like it did in the dream. The prince and the princess were both young teens that I did not know in real life. The fairies were larger and a lot more obviously nude.
I actually passed out while writing this post. It happened right here, before I could post this dream of living colors. All the colors were in motion in the dream, something I couldn’t really represent here.
I knew when I dreamed this dream that the Bambi-kin in this dream were members of my family, but at the time I dreamt it I had not met my wife yet, let alone had three kids of my own. Yet I knew that it was not my family at the time of the dream because one of my sisters was not there.
This is from a dream I had in college at Iowa City. I made an entire cartoon out of it called Babysitters Hate My House, It is about a babysitter having a horrible time with my two sons as she loses control when they show her the man in the basement that, “Daddy built out of a kit.”
And, finally, this dream featured not only the spirit stag and the medicine man, but the bolt of lightning in the background. The Dakotah people say having a dream with lightning in it makes you a “lightning dreamer”, a magic man, or a shaman. So, I guess that qualifies me to be one.
Today I have a low-grade fever. A slight cough. No sign of Covid yet, and I am fully vaccinated. But I have been to Walmart without a mask and get regular flu regularly. And it could also be a sinus infection again due to high pollen counts and neighborhood grass-cutting.
But the truly frustrating thing is that I had planned to go tomorrow to Bluebonnet Nudist Park, give them a copy of my nudist novel, and meet some of the members of that establishment that I didn’t meet in 2017.
The frustrating thing is that this marks the fifth time that I had planned to go back to Bluebonnet for a second visit. And now the plans are canceled yet again by illness.
As ever, I remain mostly a closet nudist. Me being a nudist now in the twilight years of my life is mostly a joke I tell, only loosely based on reality.
Part of the problem is the fact that I simply waited too long in my life to give in to the urge to be a nudist. I was one from childhood onward, but always too afraid of the unknown to try it openly. Especially after being assaulted at the ripe old age of ten.
My real opportunity came when I had a girlfriend in the 1980’s whose sister lived with her husband and children in a clothing-optional apartment complex in Austin. I met nudists there fully committed to the lifestyle and who encouraged me to join the movement, even after I broke up with that girlfriend. There were limited opportunities to become a nudist then. A park near Houston, a park near San Antonio, a nude beach on Lake Travis (Hippie Hollow,) and clubs in the Austin area that met in members’ homes. I only ever visited those places with clothes on. I never actually tried it. And now that I am old, I regret the opportunities missed.
Now I am old and ill and unable to express my love of nudism and naturism except through art and fiction. Of course, it has always been a very visual-only experience for me. No touching was ever involved. Whatever sexual feelings there were were always sublimated and deeply buried or strictly controlled.
And, as always, I didn’t absolutely need to share these normally private sort of details, but it seems my art and writing make me far more naked to the world than walking around a nudist park ever could.
Okay, so on the synesthesia tests I didn’t score as a synesthete on the music/color test. But I was extremely synesthetic on the tests for color/months/days of the week. I was a little over the mark on letter/number/colors synesthesia too, but it was more a problem with manipulating the color-selector device when I don’t have a mouse to use on my laptop. The test for music did not test the way I see colors with music. They wanted me to respond to what color each individual note seemed to be, and that isn’t even close to the way I experience it. For me, the perfect description of how synesthesia works for me is Bach’s Tocata and Fugue in D minor as it is depicted in Fantasia.
I was shocked when I first saw it. The colors are wrong for this piece, but the visual experience is almost exactly how I experience music, especially wordless instrumental music. The only problem with this piece is that the overall color schemes are wrong. But this comes about because every synesthete sees the colors differently. And I have no doubt that at least one of the artists who created this had synesthesia. If there were more reds, yellows, and magenta in the opening and more indigo contrasted with silver later, this interpretation would be perfect.
Music synesthetically works in two directions for me. The picture above, called The Wings of Imagination, makes me think of La Mer by Claude Debussy.
If you listen to the piece, don’t look at the YouTube illustration, look at my picture if you want to see the music the way I do. The following song, Don’t Worry, Be Happy, is a multicolored song that I can best express with the colors in the picture I call Rainbow Peacock.
The full range of primary colors together in one picture, or one song, always means completeness, fullness, and happiness to me. If there is absence of one or more of the basic colors from the color wheel, the mood and emotion present in the song or picture is altered to something other than happiness. The Firebird Suite by Igor Stravinsky goes from the indigo and navy blue of fear and confusion to instances of angry red and feverish orange. It would look something like this in the theater of my imagination;
And one of my favorite instrumental pieces of all times, Prelude to the Afternoon of the Faun by Claude Debussy, is full of melancholy and sexual tension, deeply felt vibrations in the depths of my stomach, and would look like my picture Sleeping Beauty with its teal and blue melancholia juxtaposed with candle-lit yellows and wood brown mixed feelings of joy and anxiety.
Now, if you have waded through all of this goofy color-and-music analysis from a source whose sanity is questionable at best, you probably have no earthly idea what any of it has to do with anything. But if you have that aha!-moment and see it all clearly too, then I suspect you probably are a synesthete too. Poor you. It is not a treatable condition. But it is also not a burden. Learn to enjoy it. It resonates in your very soul.
Our previous President, the man whose name I will no longer use because it makes him happy to see it in print, has a hollow pumpkin for a head. Hollowed out with no remaining think-o-lating pieces, seeds of ideas, or potential candle lights to shine out of the carved eyes and fanged demon smile. Just empty. Desolate. Possibly a site for spiders to spin their cobweb houses.
And everything I said in that previous paragraph, the distortions, the metaphors, the exaggerations, are all lies.
Spiders would definitely NOT be comfortable spinning webs inside Trumpalump’s head. And I just used his name even though I distorted it. And he did have ideas. Lots and lots of EVIL ideas.
Really, journalists are writing lots and lots of books about it. They are giving him so many journalistic hotfoots, that his pants are bound to catch fire.
And that’s a lie too, unless you grant me the notion that the metaphors are accurate.
The pictures used in this post have nothing at all to do with the topic of the post. I was simply able to go all the way back in my media gallery to March 2014 to show you pictures I have not ben able to show you for a long time.
As the flames continue to lick upward around the seat of the defeated former President’s pants, brought on by an administration’s inability to deal with anything but by lying, we must all deal with the fact that most of what human beings on planet Earth actually believe and act upon are lies.
Yes, we are all necessarily liars. Not just the lying leader of what was, before his presidency, the leading nation of the free world. All of us.
And keep in mind, this article is written by a fiction author and former middle-school teacher, two jobs that necessitate telling lies to others daily.
It is entirely possible that I am even a liar as a fantasy artist. My sister never met the boy in her lap in the first picture. The Aztec girl was not really an Aztec as the background suggests. And if the red dragon is really personifying liars in the picture I call, “The Family Picnic,” that dragon will win the battle and eat the whole family.
Of course, not all lies are malicious.
That’s why it has taken this long for prosecutors and judges to start applying matches to the Trumpinator’s trousers. They have to prove how stupefyingly manipulative and harmful his monstrous lies have been.
The models for the “people” in this picture were both actually naked, but they were on horse, not a chicken. Therefore, this picture too is not a photograph.
Mostly, however, we tell lies for benign reasons. We tell ourselves that science and technology will find a way around extinction of life on Earth through Climate Change. We tell ourselves we will go to Heaven when we die. These lies comfort us in that, well, they might be true. And they give us hope against the bleakness of reality.
And there is truth to be found in the creation of fictitious worlds through books, movies, plays, and poetry. We can rewrite the world and its problems to our liking, possibly creating solutions to those problems along the way.
But basically, we all have to constantly be checking whether the smoke rising from our pants is being ignited by our dishonesty, or by the dire need to change something about our daily diet. Lying is a fact of our humanity. And it can get out of control to extreme levels where it Trumps everything else.
The next morning was a Monday morning in Summer. No school to worry about, and the beans were not tall enough yet that the boys had to worry about walking them yet. Walking beans was a summer project whereby farm kids walked up and down the rows of every family-owned beanfield with gloves and hoes and hats, to protect against sunburn, looking for evil, intolerable, low-down filthy weeds to chop or pull out by the roots.
You had to be on your toes all the time to truly combat evil. That’s why Horatio T. Dogg was always thinking about the crimes he had to solve. And that’s why Bobby was also always thinking about Horatio thinking about the crimes he had to solve. Like the murder of Little Bob the stupidest turken by the evil Professor Rattiarty.
Horatio and Bobby were both sitting on the porch as two of his classmates from Belle City Middle School came walking hand and hand down the gravel road to the Niland farm.
“Hey, Mike, I haven’t seen you since school got out,” Bobby said.
“I needed to beat somebody up today. I haven’t slugged anyone since that last day in Loomis’s class,” said Mike with a grin.
“I can smell that he’s not telling the truth,” said Horatio with a snort.
“Oh, I know. Mike is my friend. He’s only joking,” said Bobby.
“Oh, you can talk to the dog?” asked Blueberry. She was a cherub-faced girl that Bobby secretly adored, but was definitely afraid of for various reasons.
“Well, yeah. Horatio is a very special dog. Can you hear him when he talks?”
“No. But I will be trying to learn to hear him,” she answered. “There is nothing that would make me happier than having a talking dog for a friend.”
She blinked her big brown eyes at Bobby in a way that seemed to melt his knees Not enough to make him fall down, but enough to make him wobble.
“Blue, dogs don’t talk in real life,” Mike said matter-of-factly. “That’s just a weirdo Bobby-thing.”
“Oh, I know. But Bobby has a beautiful imagination. And that’s what I like about him most.”
“I like her,” said Horatio.
Bobby didn’t comment, because Blueberry would hear and that would be embarrassing.
“But that’s what made the two of you think you turned the music teacher into a swan by magic, and then turned yourselves into swans to rescue her. How dumb a thing was that?”
“But that was real. We both became swans,” insisted Blueberry.
“I remember that,” said Horatio. “You didn’t really change. I would’ve smelled the difference.”
“I know,” said Bobby.
“You are both screwy,” said Mike.
“Tell him why you came to talk to him,” said Blueberry.
“The reason we walked all the way out here from town was to ask you about walking beans. We’re putting together a crew. Danny has promised to drive us to and from the fields.”
“So, you want me to walk with your crew? Or you just came to ask my dad to work in our fields?”
“Both,” said Blueberry.
“We’re only charging three dollars an hour,” said Mike.
“Well, that’ll get you hired by Dad anyway. That’s less than I asked him to pay me and Shane. But if you get the job, and I’m working with you, he won’t pay me what we first agreed on.”
“Sorry. But we need the job. And you don’t want me to beat you up for real, do you?”
“No, of course not.” Bobby knew he would have to make the sacrifice. Dad wouldn’t hire Mike and the gang at the price he was originally going to pay Bobby and Shane to do it by themselves. And the cheaper price for more workers meant it would get done faster and would be cheaper over-all. It was a sacrifice that Bobby had to make to help both the family farm and Mike and the gang. Besides, there would be more money to make with Mike’s crew on other farms.
“You shouldn’t be so mean to him,” insisted Blueberry. She was a very thin, small, and perky girl who was never afraid to say what she thought. “If we are going to have him on our team and we’re going to work for his dad, you should be nice to him.”
“Aw, Bobby knows I don’t mean it when I say I’m gonna beat him up. You know that I’m only joking, right?”
“Actually, you beat up Steven Shanks for picking on me. And Frosty Anderson is only nice to me because you make him.”
It was true. Mike was like a protector for Bobby. Of course, that was partly because Bobby was a Norwall Pirate and Mike protected all the Pirates. The Pirates were the town’s 4-H softball team, and also the local liars’ club.
“You should tell Mike about Professor Rattiarty and the recent murders. He might be a good boy and help you defeat him,” Horatio said with a dog grin.
“I will definitely ask Dad to let us walk his beans. He’ll hire your crew,” Bobby finally said. “But I also want to talk to you about barn rats.”
“Barn rats?”
“Yeah, they been killing Mom’s favorite turkens.”
“Those silly-looking things with no feathers on their chicken necks?”
“Yeah. Let’s go in the barn with Horatio’s nose to help us and talk about the evil Professor Rattiarty.”
“Uggh! Imagination again! Too many darned Pirates have too much imagination for their own good,” said Mike.
“Now, you don’t say bad things about imagination, Michael. You know I wouldn’t be your girlfriend if it weren’t for the power of our imaginations.” Blueberry often got hot about the topic of too much imagination. She was in favor.
“Yeah. I know. But you and he wouldn’t have gotten turned into swans, and flew all the way to Belle City in the snow, or saw each other naked if you didn’t have too big of a imagination,” growled Mike. Yeah, jealousy was probably part of it. But Bobby never actually saw Blue naked, and you can’t exactly turn back into a boy from being a swan all covered in feathers without being naked at some point.
“Do you want to see the Professor’s evil lair, or not?”
“We certainly do want to see,” insisted Blue.
“Okay. We go into the damn barn.”
“You shouldn’t say damned, Mike,” scolded Blue. And so, they went into the brick-walled, white barn to look for clues with the detective, Horatio T. Dogg.
Birdwalking in an essay is when you drift off topic and begin to meander like a bird from one spot, place, or idea to another, never quite pulling everything together into one whole thing. More like a bird eyeballing the ground as it goes by, hoping against hope that a worm will simply present itself.
The first stop, spot, place in the essay, or idea is a Paffooney, one of those pictures that goes with a story of its own.
This one is a picture of Grandpa Butch Niland from the the story, Horatio T. Dogg, Super-Sleuth. a story that takes place on the farm place next to my maternal grandparents’ farm place. I drew him while in Iowa.
But instead of lingering on the story of how I drew that picture based on the face of Jazz musician Duke Ellington and the personality of my Mom’s cousin and her literal nearest living relative… He lives alone now on a farm not a quarter of a mile south of my Mom’s house… I added this picture of a little lap dog and his nudist girl in front of a giant chocolate cookie in the shape of a heart which I added red and pink frosting to just today.
Why the heck did I do that, you ask?
Because I am making plans to use my AANR membership sometime in the near future to go to a nudist park and meet some other nudists that I have never yet met before.
And of course I had to add a black-and-white version of my anime portrait of an anime-loving nerd just because I saw it among pictures I could upload when I was sorting through drawings to use for a birdwalking post.
And then there’s this picture I found of the Wizard Pippin, two of his many apprentices, and his son Prinz Flute. I will admit to drawing that one a long time ago. It is not a photograph. But you may notice that Flute is a lot younger in this picture than the more recent ones he posed for.
And there’s my recently re-scanned portrait of Dr. Wilton Dogwiggle, Chemist, and his new invention, Happiness-Plus Potion. I promise that it is not merely warmed-up dog pee, although I understand that Wilton loves that odor. At least, that’s what he promised me when he had me smell-test it. It didn’t smell like pee, but it didn’t make me very happy either.
I will end this birdwalk with a photo to the nearest thing this old bird could find to a worm. I bought myself a toy for the first time since the middle of 2019. It is a Marvin the Martian PVC doll from the movie Space Jam with LeBron James. I couldn’t resist.
So the time came to make the planned return trip to the nudist park in Alvord, Texas. I was going to finally get to make my second visit to the place for the Labor Day holiday weekend. But once again it was not to be. My daughter caught a virus during her first week of school. She gave it to me and her brother. Of course, neither of them were planning to go along, and their mother would sooner find another husband than be naked in a place where other people would see. They all think I am nuts for wanting to go spend time with other naturists gadding about naked in the hot Texas sunshine. My wife wants me to get my head examined. She thinks all the stories about aliens from outer space may have gotten my head artificially replaced by the Men in Black.
And she may be totally correct in her assessment. She is a school teacher, after all. I, probably just like you, was carefully taught to never be seen naked in public because it is probably a sin, and it is definitely against the law, and it is very likely something only crazy people do on purpose. Never-the-less, I did it once as a writing assignment for a nudist website that told me the review was wonderful and they were definitely going to publish it, and as of this writing, over a year later, they still haven’t done so (though a rival website reblogged one of my nudist posts from this blog).
I have come to the idiotic conclusion, though, that nudism isn’t sinful if practiced around like-minded people who are also comfortably nude. I met and talked to nudists last year who were .very easy to get to know. They were likable and no prettier in the buff than I am myself (and with my psoriasis pink leopard spots I am pretty horrible to look at naked.) And the nudist park is not a place for sexual goings-on and sinful behavior. It is a family environment where some people bring their naked kids.
I remember enjoying being naked as a kid even though I had been taught that Jesus is ashamed by seeing my nudity even though he is always watching over me, even when I am in the bathtub. I remember one time when I was a pre-teen that I took my bicycle to the Bingham Park woods and rode it up and down the trails there completely naked. And even though I had been carefully taught how evil that was, the cool wind on my skin felt good, and it was glorious to listen to the birds sing in a green wood almost as if it were the Garden of Eden and I was Adam, the first man. (Hence the illustration of the bare bike boy.)
It seems to me, now that I am old, retired, and probably at least a little bit senile, that nakedness is really a form of innocence. I can tell you for a fact from being a parent and having, at one point, worked in a daycare center for ages five and below, that it is actually far easier to get a kid to go completely starkers than it is to get them to put on and comfortably wear clothes. Nakedness is natural. And if God had really wanted us to be naked all the time, then we wouldn’t have been born with a full suit of clothes on… er, wait… what? Nakedness is innocent. Anything bad that comes from it happens because of the things we have been taught about it as children. A more enlightened society would probably be naked more than we are, especially inside temperature-controlled sealed environments… like houses, cars, and even spaceships. Ah, yes, back to the Men in Black and possible head-switching again. Aliens in their saucers are apparently often naked. I wonder if Jesus is ashamed by their nudity too?
Anyway, I once again have failed to manage the planned nakedness I had been looking forward to. I have to settle for the indoor, sealed-environment form of nudity as I am too sick to get to the nudist park, and would promptly be arrested if I tried to walk around the neighborhood like that. But the failed evil plan did give me something to write about that at least makes me laugh. And it is an innocent laugh, not an evil one.
Catch a Falling Star 