Nocturne 2 – Treading New Pathways
Ham and the Madonna were given separate rooms in the inn, yet, somehow, she was in his bed the next morning, head pillowed on his bare shoulder.
“No, now wait…” he muttered as he stretched awake. “I didn’t drink like poor Sinbadh. I know what didn’t happen in the night!”
The Nebulon woman stirred and opened her sapphire eyes. She smiled as she looked at Ham. She was nude under the single sheet. She was powerfully attractive.
“You and I need to talk about this,” said Ham. “I’m a single guy. You can’t be throwing temptation in my way every day like this. Do you understand me?”
“Frieda teached me your speaking. I know what you say.”
“But do you know what I mean?”
“You saved me. You own me now.”
“Trav saved you. You belong to Goofy.”
“He does not want me. I offer. He refuse. I now pick man I love and I offer me to you.”
Ham started to say no. Still, he had to admit, she was beautiful, and he was powerfully attracted to her. He had to make her understand, though. If he was going to get romantic, it wouldn’t be with a concubine. It wasn’t that he meant to reject her; just that he didn’t want her to be that. She would have to understand. Love was complicated, and he’d never felt that way before.
A knock came at the door. Ham nervously jumped into his pants and shirt, motioning for the Madonna to hide in the fresher. She didn’t move or seem to care.
“Who is it?” Ham called.
“Let me in, old Jester. I know about the girl. We just need to talk.”
Goofy! Ham didn’t care much to talk to that trouble-making clown, but he knew there wasn’t much choice. Besides, Trav had freed the Nebulon Princess. Maybe he still thought he had some say in her affairs.
“The door is open.”
Trav Dalgoda and the Duke of Coventry came in together. The Duke raised an eyebrow as he saw the Madonna in the bed.
“It’s not what it looks like,” said Ham, furiously blushing.
“It’s not our business,” said Duke Ferrari.
“Yes,” said Ham, “well… What is your business?”
“I need to pursue the alliance Tron Blastarr is promoting. Count Nefaria has removed me from Imperial politics. If I am going to help my planet and my people, I have to return there and make the government secede from the Imperium.”
“So, why are you telling me?”
Trav lifted his bogus eye-patch and stared at Ham with two brown eyes. “You’re a pilot, Ham. You have your own ship.”
“You want me to take you to Coventry?”
“And possibly beyond,” said Duke Ferrari.
“Why would I be doing this?” asked Ham.
“For the good of your planet. And because it’s the right thing to do.”
“And, also,” said Trav, “I may know where to find another ancient artifact. I read through Nefaria’s cargo manifests. He had something Ancient shipped to a warehouse he owns on Dancer. That planet is right on our way.”
“The water world?”
“Yeah. The pirate planet owned by Razor Conn and the Black Hawk Corsairs.”
“You won’t mind if I replace you with another engineer, Goofy? You’re getting kind of independent of me and Ged again.”
“Oh, I might start my own crew if I can get a hold of the right starship… and find a good pilot. I might even go back to working for old Jester Tron.”
“We have an agreement, then?” asked Duke Ferrari, offering a hand for Ham to shake.
“I’m a sucker for that it’s-the-right-thing-to-do argument. Ged taught me to be like that,” Ham admitted. “I also like a good adventure now and then. Though I have to tell you, it’ll be going the opposite direction from the one I promised Ged I would go. I hate to disappoint my brother.”
The Madonna sat up on the bed and hugged Ham around his middle. The covering fell away. Goofy and Ham both blushed. “I go too. I not want you dead. I need you.”
Ham looked at the Duke. Duke Ferrari was smiling wickedly. Ham stuttered, “So… ah… Duke, can dukes perform marriage ceremonies?”
“Yes, Mr. Aero. I will include it as a small part of the fee for your services.”
Ah, irony again! It ends up being anything but simple. You can write in simple, adjective-and-adverb-free sentences as Hemingway did, and still manage to convey deeply complicated and thoughtful ideas. One might even suggest that you can create poetic ideas in mere prose, dripping with layers of emotion, conflict, theme, and deeper implied meaning. You can also write prose in the intensely descriptive and convoluted style of a Charles Dickens with many complex sentences and pages-long paragraphs of detail, using comic juxtapositions of things, artfully revealing character development, and idiosyncratic dialogue all for comedic effect. Prose is a powerful and infinitely variable tool for creating meaning in words. Even when it is in the form of Mickian purple paisley prose that employs extra-wiggly sentence structure, pretzel-twisted ideas, and hyperbolically big words.
The worst experience I got from this summer’s food delivery came at the hands of a fellow school teacher. I had to deliver faculty lunch to an elementary school in the last week of summer school classes. It was a large lunch with two bags of burgers and a tray loaded with drinks in flimsy cardboard cups. It was a short drive from the restaurant to the school. But when I got there, it was a school with many entrances and kids playing on two different sides of the building. I went to the door I thought the Uber navigator was directing me to. I knocked. When I got no answer, I called the lady who ordered everything. I told her I was at the west door. She told me that I had to find the main door on the south side of the building. So I managed to juggle the two sacks and the easily spillable drinks to three different doors on the south side, all locked. I called again and was told I must have the wrong building, so I went to the school building across the street and found an office building with only kindergarten and daycare kids present. I called again.
Catch a Falling Star 
How Mickey’s Brain Percolates
I tend to do a lot of thinking about thinking. I pay attention to what sources of input and images I use to bring the old brain to a boil. It is entirely possible to turn into a malevolent moron in this age of Trumpalump Twitter Twit-Tweets if you pay too much attention to its anger-inducing misinformation and rage-ranting. So I have to limit how much I think about calling Trump and the other elephant-heads names. I enjoy it, true, but I really don’t want to become a malevolent moron.
The anti-moron medicine comes in the form of remembering who I used to be and how problems were solved as an educator, mentor, and advocate for young people. I remember how the times I used name-calling and anger in place of problem-solving tended to only make the problem worse. If you deliberately brainstorm solutions to the problem instead, I have found that after you test several solutions and have them spectacularly fail, your persistance eventually yields a solution that works.
So when I think about how to proceed with the daily problems of life, especially the age-old question, “What the hell am I going to write about today?” I find that I tend to leap out of the box, think all around the outside landscape, and seize on something silly in a very round-about and experimental manner.
The things I choose to write about in book form are all based on my own real experiences. But I have the unfortunate gift for having an overdose-level vivid imagination. So my books are about fairies and ghosts and aliens as well as the kids I have taught, the people who raised me, and the people who have always surrounded me. I write about ideas in some depth, but always from a sideways viewpoint that reflects my beliefs in non-violence, rationality, and love.
My mind works like a match in a firecracker factory. But I try not to use it for evil. And now that I am done revealing the secret of how Mickey’s brain percolates, feel free to tell me how stupid it all is and call me whatever bad monkey-names you can think of for me. I can take it. And when I take it, I most likely will use it to make something surprisingly good. Mickey-brain tea… now there’s a weird, wild, and wonderful metaphorical brew.
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