Here is the link to the complete Chapter 1https://catchafallingstarbook.net/2018/11/24/hidden-kingdom-chapter-1-complete/
Category Archives: humor
Hidden Kingdom… Chapter 2 Complete
Filed under comic strips, fairies, Hidden Kingdom, humor, Paffooney
The Art of the Paffooney
There was a rollerskating rink in the little town of Lake Cornelia in Iowa from the 1940’s until the 1980’s. The first time I went there as a ten-year-old learning to roller-skate for the very first time, I spent the entire time cleaning the dusty floor with the knees and seat of my pants. My parents could both skate with fantastic ease. Dad could even skate backwards. During the couples’ skate, when they turned the lights down and turned on the blinking colored lights, they didn’t merely skate, they danced in circles around the rink.
But I wanted desperately to skate like that. We went numerous times to that same rink that Summer of 1967. The second time I went there I had spent a couple of nights dreaming of myself successfully skating. And practicing in my dreams apparently worked. I could skate the complete oval of the rink, and I only fell down three times the entire couple of hours we were there. We went to the A&W drive-in for root beers to celebrate afterwards.
We kept skating and I kept improving. In 1969 the song “Sugar, Sugar” was a number one hit. It played at least five times a trip to the skating rink, often during the couples’ skate. That Cornelia skating rink was the place where I skated hand in hand with a girl during the couples’ skate for the very first time. To that song, of course.
That rink was also the site of my worst embarrassment in junior high school. I fell because of a dreaded gum-wad on the floor and split the inseam of my pants from the crotch all the way down the right leg. When I got up, the girl I had a crush on and three of her female friends got a good look at my fruit-of-the-looms. Strangely, nobody made fun of me for it afterwards. The rink manager came up with enough safety pins to hold my pants together for the remaining hour of skate time. Embarrassed within an inch of my life being over, I was still not going to miss out on skating-time,
I hadn’t thought about skating in long time. I am not able to do it anymore with arthritis in my knees and feet. But this old colored-pencil drawing of a girl I once adored on roller skates brought the memory of it back again. It is a permanent part of who I am. A core memory. A foundation-stone in the edifice of Mickey-ness.
And a picture I have made with the story that goes along with it is what a Paffooney is. If you want to see more examples of Paffoonies I have created, you can do a Google picture-search of “Beyer Paffooney” and you will see a lot of them, mostly linked directly back to this blog. It is word I invented that nobody else is using (as far as I know), and so, it functions as a sort of magic word for my silly little blog.
Filed under artwork, autobiography, humor, Paffooney
Sugar-Free Johnny
He was one of my all-time favorite students. I know I say that about an awful lot of kids. I can’t help it. Once you get to know them well enough to teach them anything, you tend to be hooked for life. They are your kid. You are their teacher. And that means almost as much as if they were born to you.
I first got to know Johnny on one frightful morning in September of 1984. He was a tiny, frail little seventh-grade boy sitting in the second seat of the second row. And as I was trying to get them to read a short story in the literature book, he kept nodding off, falling asleep. Sleeping is not an effective reading strategy. Three times I tried to wake him up and get him on task. He could have told me then, but he was painfully shy, and the only word I had heard from him was, “Here,” spoken during roll call. So, the fourth time I took him outside the classroom door to ask him what was wrong. He was deathly pale.
“What’s wrong? What do we need to do to make it better?”
He looked towards the boys’ restroom. “I gotta go…”
I told him to go, then followed him down to the restroom because I knew it was something serious. Serious enough to leave my class unattended. But they were deathly quiet, because unlike me, they knew what was wrong. I found him throwing up in the trash can. He told me he was sick in a barely audible voice.
Immediately I went to the office and told the secretary that he was ill.
“They have juice for him in the refrigerator in the ESL room,” Ms. Lawler said. “I’m sorry we haven’t gotten the nurse’s list out to teachers yet. He’s got juvenile diabetes.”
Whoa! I didn’t know much about diabetes then, but I did know it was too deadly of a thing to allow myself not to know everything I needed to know. At the time the school nurse had to take care of all four campuses in the school district, and she was only at the Junior High on Thursdays.
Thankfully, over time, not only did I learn more about handling that disease, but medical science did too. When I would later develop adult-onset diabetes in 2000, treatment for diabetics would become much more effective, rendering the disease far less destructive.
As for Johnny himself, he became a part of the small group of housing-project kids who would come to my apartment on Saturdays, and sometimes after school to hang out, use my computer, and play table-top role-playing games. I made a special effort to engage Johnny in conversations about a little of everything. He was a very bright boy when he felt well. I got to know his seriously diabetic mother too. And his older sister would later become a nurse at the local doctor’s office, so I got to know her as well. Johnny didn’t have a father at the time, which also applied to each of the other boys from the project, except for the Camacho brothers whose father was a seriously depressed Vietnam veteran. I suppose that’s why Johnny became like a son to me, one of five boys who at the time treated me like a second father. I taught him. I entertained him. And occasionally I cooked for him.
One of my two girlfriends at the time that I was mentoring Johnny liked to give him sugar-free candy. She got so accustomed to always having some available at her place that she actually got hooked on it herself.
In school Johnny opened up the way a cactus flower blooms when it gets a little rain. He began to talk to other kids a lot. He made himself into a group leader, and he even went out for high school football. Truthfully, I was amazed by him on the football field. He played defensive back. And he played like a star. I watched him intercept the ball about three times and run it back the other way. The coaches soon felt about him the same way I did. He was part of their family too.
And it turns out that being physically fit practically cures juvenile diabetes.
He got stronger and healthier with each season. He gave me the football portrait not because I had anything to do with his success, but because he loved me. I have hugged that boy three times in my lifetime, and each time is a cherished memory that I hope to carry with me to Xibalba, the Mayan Land of the Dead.
When I developed diabetes myself, Johnny’s older sister kept track of my wellness charts herself. Johnny’s family was experienced with handling diabetes, and they looked after me like a member of their family.
The last time I saw Johnny it was in the hallway at school. It was only a year before I left Cotulla for good. He had come especially to see me. I didn’t even recognize him at first because I hadn’t seen him for a decade. I wanted to talk to him and catch up. But I had to pick up my eldest son that day from second grade as he had been ill. I was not feeling well myself. So, I asked for a rain check. He still had that beautiful smile. And he didn’t tell me that that was the only chance he had to see me before leaving town again. It broke my heart when they told me that later.
But I see him again now as I tell you the story of Sugar-Free Johnny. He was probably the sweetest kid I ever taught. He will always be a part of my story. And apparently I am part of his story too.
Filed under autobiography, education, humor, kids, Paffooney, strange and wonderful ideas about life
AeroQuest 4… Canto 115
Canto 115 – Archery Practice
The students of Ged Aero Sensei were seated on the grass in the courtyard of the Palace of 1,000 Years in a large semicircle. In the middle of the circle stood the archery sensei, Jai Chang, dressed in teal-blue Iga-shozoku ninja armor. He had his elegant handmade bow with an arrow already nocked.
“Okay, bone-headed ones, this is the first thing to know when shooting a bow. You must aim with the dominant eye. To find your dominant eye, look at the target with both eyes open. Point your pointer-finger at the bullseye. Then close the right eye. Open the right eye and close the left. One eye will move your finger off the target without having moved it at all. The other eye will leave the pointer finger aimed true to the center of the bullseye. This is your dominant eye. Your aiming eye.”
“Show us how it is done, sensei,” said Phoenix, seeming somewhat bored with it all.
Jai Chang frowned at the insolent red-haired boy. Then he aimed his bow at the target 300 yards across the courtyard. He let fly an arrow which arced straight into the center of the bullseye. Three of the students gasped audibly in a way that sounded as if they were impressed. Phoenix, Alec Songh, and Mai Ling all yawned as if they were bored beyond words.
“All right, insolent children. Who among you can do better?”
Phoenix stood and walked over to the bow master. He was lightly dressed, wearing only a loin-cover and tabi boots. He took the yumi to ya, the bow and arrow, from the master’s hand, nocked another arrow, and in a single smooth motion, lifted the bow and shot, almost without looking. The arrow plunged into the center of the bullseye so tight up against the previous arrow, one had to look carefully to see that there was more than one arrow dead center in the target.
Jai Chang frowned.
Phoenix handed the bow to Alec who immediately got off the third arrow, landing within the bullseye circle less than an inch away from the other two arrows.
Alec tried to hand the bow to Mai Ling, but she took only a single arrow out of his hands. Then she stood with the arrow in her left hand and her back to the target. She threw the arrow back over the top of her head and spiraled into the center of the target, splitting the shaft of Jai Chang’s first arrow.
“I suppose it is pointless to tell you that it is wrong to use your stupid little mind powers to do this task. The purpose is to learn precision, skill and discipline. Not to use Psion witchcraft to take the easy road.”
Phoenix glared at the bowmaster.
“I learned the way of the bow from Bone Daddy in the Black Spider Palace. Hundreds of hours of practicing with a painful slap across the face for every miss as the only reward. Alec had to endure the same. And as for Mai Ling, her skills are incredible and made all the more amazing by the practice she has been doing with me late into the evenings. We do this while everyone else is doing their Tai Chi, meditation, and prayers. Some things give greater focus to the spirit force than mere words and empty sayings.”
“Well, then, bow master, perhaps you would like to be in charge of the archery lessons. You have to learn them. It is a part of Shen Ming’s program of study for all students in the Palace.”
“Yes, happily,” said Phoenix with a voice that sounded more like sarcasm than obedience.
“Ah, I do not like what I am hearing,” said Shen Ming, the frail old man seeming to appear out of nowhere at the edge of the green. “There is no honor and respect in the voices of either the master or the student. This is not the way of the White Spider.”
“Apologies, Shen-sensei. But honor and respect have to be earned, don’t they?”
“Yes, and granted when a fine display of skill earns it. And, young master Phoenix, one must always show respect to a dedicated teacher whose very existence has earned it. Is that not so?”
Phoenix and Jai Chang both nodded agreement with eyes to the ground.
“But I would like to see the three young bullseyes help Chang-sensei to teach this class. Teaching others teaches the self more thoroughly, and this is an impressive set of skills to share with students and classmates alike.”
“Yes, Shen-sensei,” said all the students together.
“And now, Jai Chang-sama, I would speak with you further. Attend me in my office. We have much to discuss.”
“Yes, Shen-sensei.”
As the old man who had a spotty face that looked eerily like the face of Alfred E. Neuman on the cover of Mad Magazine, walked away from the students, Shen Ming’s smile grew even broader and his eyes actually began to twinkle.
Filed under aliens, education, humor, novel, NOVEL WRITING, Paffooney, satire, science fiction
The First Year as a Teacher
My proudest achievement of my thirty-one year years as a public school teacher was the fact that I survived my whole first year. That doesn’t sound like much to you unless you are a teacher. But it sounds even more amazing if you knew what South Texas junior high schools were like in 1981. I mean, my school, Frank Newman Junior High had practically been destroyed the year before I started teaching there by the seventh graders I would be teaching as eighth graders.
You see some of my favorites in the painting I did during my third year as a teacher. From front to back they are Dottie, Teresa, Ruben, Fabian, and Javier. Of course, in these essays about being a teacher, I usually don’t use real names to protect the privacy of my former students, both the innocent and the guilty. So, I leave it to you to decide whether, even though I love these kids, those aren’t probably their real names. Unless… they are.
But not all Texas eighth graders are loveable people. In fact, they are hard on first-year rookie teachers. Especially the ones with a Midwestern faith that they can step in and change the world with their idealistically pure and golden teaching methods. Those teachers they will try to eat alive.
I followed the seventh grade English teacher in the same classroom with the same kids. They made her scream daily, had classroom fist fights weekly, exploded firecrackers under her chair twice during the year, and made her run away to the San Antonio airport and leave teaching behind forever. As ninth graders, they made their English I teacher leave teaching forever even though she was a three-year veteran. And believe me, they tried to do the same to me.
I foiled them constantly by being an on-your-feet-all-day teacher rather than a sit-behind-the-desk-and-yell teacher like my predecessor. After I had a chance to sit during planning period, I always had to clean thumbtacks, tape, and smeared chocolate bars off the seat of my little wooden teacher chair. Paper airplanes were the least gross things that flew through the air. Boogers, spit-wads, spit-wet pieces of chalk, and brown things you had to hope were chewed chocolate flew constantly whenever you had your back turned to them. And if there was only one kid behind you and you turned on him and asked pointedly, “Who threw that?” The kid, of course, saw nothing, has no idea, you can torture him, and he still won’t know anything because you are a lousy teacher and didn’t make him learn anything.
And lessons were mostly about talking over the malevolent tongue-wigglers. They didn’t listen. Not even to each other. One kid would be talking about monster trucks that shoot fire out of their exhaust pipes while the kid next to him was talking at the same time about whether Flipper is properly called a dolphin or a porpoise, or like his older brother says, “a giant penis-fish.” And the girls behind them are actually hearing each other, but only because they are speculating which boy in the classroom has the cutest butt.
I broke up three fights by myself that year, one of which I got slugged in the back of the head by the aggressor during, teaching me to always get between them facing the aggressor and never being wrong about who the aggressor is.
They don’t let you do much teaching at all your first year. They force you to practice discipline by keeping them all seated at the same time with their books open in front of them. “I don’t do literature,” Ernie Lozano told me. Well, to be accurate, none of them actually did literature that year. But they taught me to survive long enough to learn how to actually teach them something.
On the last day of school that year we gave them all extended time on the playground, using the outdoor basketball court to keep them occupied for long enough for a terrible school year to finally run its course. They didn’t set the school on fire that year. They didn’t break into the office that year and steal all the cash. We did well enough at keeping them under control that year that I got rehired and our principal got promoted to high school principal. I had a decision to make that year. Would I keep teaching? Or find another job? Sixty percent of all first-year teachers in Texas in 1982 quit teaching. I only earned $11,000 that year. Did I really want to continue down that dark path for another school year?
Ruben walked up to stand beside me and watch the bigger eighth graders foul each other on the basketball court. “You know, Mr. Beyer, you were my favorite teacher this year.”
“Thank you, Ruben. I needed to hear that.” I bit my lip to keep from crying.
That was when I made the decision. I stuck it out in that same school and district for the next 23 years. I became the head of the Cotulla Middle School English Department. I moved to the Dallas area for family reasons in 2004, but I would teach for eight more years in two more districts and in three more schools. But all of that is Ruben’s fault. Because that was the most important thing anyone ever said to me as a teacher. And I did hear it more than once. But he was the first.
Why Have I Grown Dumber with Age?
No, this is not a picture of me.
This is Garrison Keillor, an author, a humorist, and a Midwesterner. I have some things in common with him, but he is not me. So, why is his picture here instead of mine? Because I am growing dumber and I picked the wrong picture.
Seriously, if I do have Parkinson’s Disease like my father before me, that erodes your short-term memory. I had to go back to the grocery store today to buy the things I forgot while I was in the store yesterday. This, of course, included bread. I mean, bread!!! If you live on a peanut-butter-sandwich-based diet, bread means life. Short term memory is a pretty important thing to be losing. I know you are probably thinking, “Mickey, write it down. Make a grocery list.” I did. I forgot it at home fifteen minutes after I finished it. The three items I forgot were all on the list.
And I have found being a writer gets harder with age because years of reading student essays has left me unable to spelll and make verbs agrees with subjects and other writing stuff that you really has to know if you wanna do it good. (Why didn’t the spell-checker flag “wanna”?) I have to look up immediately, embarrassment, and noticeable every time I try to write them. (Including this time… And I find myself using incomplete sentences too now way more than I….) You know what I mean?
And I have three kids that have now all reached adulthood. I survived three very different puberties with three very different results. I have grown more liberal with age. So, naturally, my kids are all conservatives. And they all basically have me convinced that I don’t know anything about anything anymore. And they are probably right. But I reserve the right to be skeptical about their diagnoses of early-onset dementia until I see the evidence in front of my eyes… my really old eyes that have glaucoma and will probably go blind. But I remembered to vote for Joe Biden. And that is a good thing. A smart thing. Even though high school friends on Facebook are all thinking about un-friending me over not admitting the superiority of Trumpocratic thinking in the United Trump-States of Trump-America. What is it about farmers loving Trump after their farms all went bankrupt over the Chinese tariffs kerfuffle that was actually only a penis-length contest between Stormy Daniels’ magic mushroom and Chinese President Poohbear (Don’t have me killed, please, Xi. I just don’t know how to spell things in Chinese. And , hey, you could be his twin brother.) I should be smarter than to insult Chinese and Russian presidents. But I’m not.
I have only gotten dumber as I have gotten older. (Did I remember the “b” at the end of dumber? I did? Well, one for Mickey, then.) Hopefully there is still hope.
Filed under angry rant, autobiography, feeling sorry for myself, humor, satire
A Welcome Dawn
I thought around midnight that I was having a stroke. I lost about an hour’s worth of time, not with passing out or with sleep, but with unwanted time travel. I remember checking the clock and seeing 3:25 a.m. and then, after my next dizzy-stepping trip to the bathroom, my stupid, lying eyes saw 2:20 a.m. So, I doubled-checked, even resetting my phone to be sure, and all three time displays agreed that I had traveled back in time. Of course, maybe it was me misreading the earlier time. Yet, I am in the habit of double-checking every trip, once upstairs and once downstairs, and I distinctly remembered the 3:25 blinking on my phone. So, my mini-stroke may have been unwanted anomalous time-travel instead.
Never-the-less, I did not die in my sleep as per expectation. I was glad to see that Biden was ahead of Trump and only not the official winner because the Trumpalump and his terrible Trumpkins would act like trolls and break stuff if the victory in the election went to Biden only on the basis of… you know, more votes, both ballots and electoral college electors, and the math that proves it.
Anyway… I am still here. And with luck, tomorrow too.
Filed under humor, illness, Liberal ideas, politics
AeroQuest 4… Canto 114
Canto 114 – Desperate Men, Desperate Measures
Several system-defense boats, the so-called Atmospheric Police Force of the planet Coventry rose to surround the wrecked but recovering hulk of the First Half Century.
“Enemy craft! Stand down with your weapons. Prepare to be boarded by the Coventry Air Guard.”
Dana Cole turned to her beleaguered crew. “Any chance we can escape or fight our way out of this?”
“Not without using that… that THING!” said a horrified junior officer whom she didn’t know.
“Yeah, that is definitely out of the question.” She turned to the reanimated thing that was now her beloved Trav. “We have to surrender now, lover. I expect we will be facing trial.”
“Ah, a primitive justice system. That sort of illogical display will prove most enlightening in these times of our intellectual progeny.”
“I’m not talking to the mind of Trav Dalgoda am I?”
“Decidedly not. Tyrrix ManSel wishes to observe for the next decade or so.” The dead eyes were lit from behind with a yellow luminescence.
“Yep, that can’t be good.”
“There is a possibility of incarceration and even execution, isn’t there,” said Tyrrix with Trav’s mouth.
“Yes. If they don’t kill us as soon as they come aboard.”
“Well, if my database on the Xandar future is accurate, our ride should be showing up at any moment.”
“Our ride?”
Outside the viewport, two Blackhawk Corsairs, both in rather battle-worn condition popped out of jump space.
“We need the Coventry forces to back off for now. By proxy orders of the White Duke.” Dana easily recognized the voice of Razor Conn.
Through the viewport, the crew could see the system defense forces backing down.
One of the Blackhawks sent a half dozen air rafts out through its blast-blackened docking bay towards the First Half Century.
In moments, the leader of the Blackhawks, Razor Conn, stood on the bridge looking at Dana through mirrored sunglasses. He was wearing a white, wide-brimmed cowboy hat like so many veterans of the Pan Galactican Border War.
“I take it this incident was mostly the fault of the evil Tesserah thing?” Razor said simply.
“Yes. It seems to have a mind of its own. An evil mind.”
“We are going to tell the Coventry government that we have the rogue warriors in custody and we will give this starship to them as compensation.”
“So, you’re not going to hand us over to be executed?”
“No, of course not. We already know it wasn’t the fault of you or your crew. Our own ranks are a bit depleted now too, so we will be taking you aboard to work for us. We will only claim to have executed the war criminals. Once the emergency is over, any necessary investigations can happen in a few years. We have more pressing things to worry about now.”
“Oh? Like what for instance?”
“That evil Ancient thing wants to kill us all. Maybe the whole universe. We have to find a more effective way to deal with it than just doing what it tells us to do.”
Dana looked at Trav. “Are you telling them what to do?”
“Not I,” answered Tyrrix. “Your friend speaks of the evil inherent in the Tesserah. It is, after all, an ultimate Ancient doomsday sort of device.”
“Do you know how to get rid of it?” she asked Razor.
“No, but we have to figure something out. In the meantime, I would ask for everybody’s company aboard Blackhawk One. We really have a lot of work to do.”
Filed under aliens, humor, novel, NOVEL WRITING, Paffooney, satire, science fiction
After the Apocalypse
I am starting this post as I often do, with an unplanted seed of an idea that I decide to stick into a fertile place and see what grows. It is a very poor way to plan an essay, but it has yielded a very good essay by the end of it on more than one occasion. Of course, it often ends poorly too.
So, we begin to look down this dark and smelly rabbit hole where strange ideas live because the world ends on Tuesday when Trump gets re-elected with a minority of the actual vote and a majority of the dirty tricks. Because if he gets re-elected, his nightmarish deregulations of everything that needs to be regulated in order for billionaires and corporations not to continue to make profits over destroying people’s lives and the ability to eat the world will make it impossible to undo the damage in time to save the environment from collapse, and us from extinction. And I don’t want to even mention whether or not I think the Trump family deserves to be extinct or not, I am through talking about him or laying blame anywhere.
The fact is, even if Biden wins, he’s not behind implementing the Green New Deal, and his vision of reform will still cause the end of life on Earth.
Remember, I am a pessimist. I always expect the worst to happen. But the worst is BAD. We really should be trying to avoid it, not be stupid enough to deny the problem even exists just because a Senator from Oklahoma can bring a snowball into the Senate Chamber.
And remember too we still have the Covid 19 pandemic to survive as well. If, as it appears to be the case, you can get the illness again a second and third time, each round causing more internal damage if it doesn’t kill you, the virus may well stick around long enough to infect everyone enough times to drive us to extinction. I fully expect to die from the virus before that nightmare is all over. And I realize that some think that, because the virus is killing Texans and Floridians at ever higher rates with each new wave of infections, that that is merely a “good start” towards killing the real problem. But I love a lot of the people in both States. And just because Governor Abbott and Governor DeSantis and Mickey Mouse and Matt McConaughey are all probably part of the problem, it doesn’t mean I would take comfort from having them die of the virus along with me. But don’t ask me about Trump, the monkey-flinger has already declared himself immune for life and completely kissable. Augh!
You have probably realized by this point that this is a bit of bitter black humor from old Mickey. But I don’t want to leave you with a totally hopeless opinion of what I think is ultimately true. I still have hope for the future. The picture above is mostly done in black ink, using up more than one pen in the creation of it. And yet, the real subject is the light. Yes, the light of the lighthouse. The two luminous children. And the full moon. I have hope for the Green New Deal (if Trump doesn’t win.) I believe in the children I have left behind when Covid kills me, both the ones I raised and the ones I taught. And if it all fails in the end, it was still worth doing. Even when Trump wins.
Filed under angry rant, humor, insight, Paffooney
What’s the Real Reason?
What’s the real reason behind the choices I make as an artist? For instance, why didn’t I do this photo of the artwork over again when the wind warped the bottom left corner. That answer is simple. I was taking this picture with natural sunlight. And once the wind started messing up my pictures, it only got worse. This was the first and best of five attempts. And, while it doesn’t show up here, I did several photo-shop manipulations of this picture, including shrinking the girl’s head. The original was done from a couple of models I got consent from when I worked at a daycare center in Iowa City where I went to college. The boy was eight years old in the summer of 1980. The girl was six, but I used a photo of a girl I went to second grade with, so the head was also eight. They represent David Copperfield and Emily, Pegotty’s niece from the Dickens novel. I had to read the book for my Master’s Exam which I took instead of writing a thesis. The picture is about how I saw myself and my world in that timeless novel.
This picture won a blue ribbon in the art competition at the Wright County Fair in 1979. It is a colored-pencil cartoon situation right out of a Jay Ward, Dudley Do-Right cartoon. I used a picture from a Canadian travel ad for the Mountie. The Indian sidekick is a modified version of Little Beaver, Red Ryder’s sidekick. The villain and the girl were basically Snidely Whiplash and Nell from the Dudley Do-Right cartoons, but made to look slightly more realistic… but only very slightly.
Actually, I lied a bit about the blue ribbon. I got the purple Grand Champion ribbon for this picture. I had entered it solely because two years before I saw how easy it would be to win a purple ribbon looking at the pictures that won it, and I wanted to win the purple ribbon. Sorry I lied, but the real reason for this picture is that I wanted to win that ribbon.
This painting, from the 1990s, was an attempt to make sofa art to sell in my sister-in-law’s home décor store. So, the real reason for this painting’s existence is greed. But since I ended up putting so many hours into it that I couldn’t justify selling it for twenty dollars in a store that went out of business because nobody ever shopped there, I got far more value out of it by keeping it and enjoying it myself. It was inspired by numerous paintings of Native Americans done by white people on display in Love’s Travel Stops across Texas in the 1990s.
This picture, “That Night in Saqqara,” is about youth versus age, thinking about death, immortality, and being afraid of any or all of it. The model for the Mummy is Boris Karloff who was so nice to pose for a production still from his movie that I could draw him long after he was actually dead. The boy was a seventh-grader in 1983 who did not actually pose for this without a shirt on or with an actual Ankh life-symbol around his neck. The Pharaoh in the tomb-mural in the background was from National Geographic Magazine, and I think was supposed to be Tutankhamun, but I could be wrong. I am old and I mix up lots of things I once clearly knew. That’s what mummified brains have to be like, apparently.
The reason I had to create this artwork was because I was increasingly falling victim to illness, especially arthritis, and I was constantly thinking about what it would be like to die alone, entombed in a two-bedroom apartment on North Stewart Street in Cotulla, Texas. This was well before I met and married my wife, who is now my wife of 25 years.
Filed under artwork, drawing, foolishness, humor, inspiration, Paffooney
Catch a Falling Star 