I recently posted about being synesthetic and discovering how I am different from normal people. Here is the post if you are interested.. Then I discovered that Kanye West is also synesthetic as he gushed some southern-fried crappie-doo about how wonderful he is as an artist because he sees the colors of his music. Well, now I don’t want that mental affliction any more. I don’t wish to be anything like him. Of course, it has to be incurable, doesn’t it.
Now I am wasting today’s post on another metacognative thinking-about-thinking style of paragraph pile when I could be rhapsodizing about the humor of Dave Barry or the wisdom of Robert Fulghum, the author of
All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten.
I could be shamelessly promoting the work of artists whose works I love instead of examining the random filing cabinets in the back rooms of my stupid old head. But I can’t because I now need to explain myself to myself again. Self doubt and self examination are features of being an artist. We reach a point where we have to think about how we do what we do, because if you don’t know where the magic comes from, you might not be able to call on it the next time you need it.
I am a self-taught artist. I have had art classes in high school and college, but never professional art training. I know how to manipulate the rule of thirds, directional composition, movement, perspective, and lots of other artsy-craftsy techniques, but it is all a matter of trial and error and an instinct for repeating what works. I have had a good deal more professional training as a writer. But I do that mostly by instinct as well. Trained instinct. I have reached a point where my art is very complex and detailed. And I don’t mean to suggest there are no flaws. In fact, I am capable enough to see huge, glaring mistakes that really skew my original intent and make me feel hopelessly incompetent. But others who see it and don’t know the inner workings of the process can look past those mistakes and not even see them. Given enough time to look at my own work with new eyes, I am able to see at least some of what they see.
Now that I have totally wasted 500-plus words on goofy talking-to-myself, what have I really accomplished beyond boring you to death? What’s that you say? You are not dead yet? Well, that’s probably only because you looked at the pictures and didn’t read any of my sugar-noodle brain-scrapings in loosely paragraph-like form. And if you did read this awful post by a colorblind artist who doubts his own abilities, you probably didn’t learn anything from it. But that’s not the point. The point is, I care about doing this, and I need to do it right. And I managed to learn something… how to ramble and meander and make something that is either a hot mess… or something that vaguely resembles self-reflective art.
People accused of doing magical thinking are basically being accused of doing something awful. Like Republicans telling us that if we cut taxes for millionaires and billionaires, working class and middle class citizens will prosper because of it. Of course, they actually know better. So, it isn’t really magical thinking. It is really evil magical thinking.
But when I am actually guilty of magical thinking, it is more along the lines of me pinning my hopes on an intuition brought about by calculations in my overcrowded imagination that are probably horribly miscalculated but that I need to turn out to be accurate and miraculously pull me out of my current difficulty. And then, because I intuit really, really hard… it turns out all right.
Magic is after all, merely what we call science and situations where something amazing is created, but we have no idea at all how and why.
Our movies nowadays are really quite chock full of magical thinking. Wish-fulfillment, fantasy, and violence-laden revenge stories are what fill the cinema with seekers of escapism and relaxation. That is magical thinking of an epic sort. Go see the Black Panther movie and “Wakanda forever” solves racism.
So, what is the point of this little essay? What am I actually thinking about the subject of magical thinking? Well, I needed a topic today to keep my every-day-in-April posting goal alive. And magically…
In the background of several of my novels, there lurk little people with magic powers. In this modern age of science they still exist, but are reduced in size to about three inches tall for the adults. As I am now working on a book set in their world, I am therefore using today’s post to elucidate what they are and categorize them a bit.
Butterfly Children is a nickname for the winged fairies. And most fairies not only have wings, but don’t wear clothing because, not only do shirts, jackets, jerkins, and such interfere with wings, but they, like me, prefer to be nude if possible.
The Butterfly Children are not really made of flesh and blood, but rather coherent magical energy. That is the reason they rarely become spellcasters themselves, but can lend their energies to the spell-casting Sylphs; witches, wizards, sorcerers, warlocks, liches, and some Storybooks.
They refer to us as “the Slow Ones” because we are easily fooled into not seeing them for what they are. They use concealing glammers to convince us that we are seeing a bug or a bird or a glare of sunlight instead of what they actually are. They also have the ability to allow slow ones to see them if they choose to voice the necessary spells. Some rare slow ones are able to see through their glammers and view them in spite of their wishes.
Sylphs and Elves : The Man-shaped Fey
Once, long ago, the Fey Children who looked human could pass themselves off as slow ones. The Elves, of course, had pointed ears to hide. But they looked like what we would call “regular people” because they were our size. But human science developed things that stop magical energies like brass or drain magical energies like iron and copper. The Fey became smaller and smaller. Things like discarded nails and lost pennies decreased the places where they could live and build homes.
Eli Tragedy (in the middle above) is an example of both an Elf (with pointed ears) and a magic-using Sorcerer. His apprentices, Bob and Mickey, are both Sylphs. Like Butterfly Children, many Sylphs would rather not wear clothes. Magic-using Sylphs and Elves learn to wear clothes because garments can be invested with protective spells.
Mickey is different than other Sylphs in that he has been bitten by a wererat and has been infected by lycanthropy. Since he is now an uncontrolled wererat, he constantly looks like a boy with a mouse head and tail, a fur-covered boy’s body, and paws instead of feet.
Sylphs can occur in many different non-manlike forms. The Mouse from Cornucopia is a Sylph in the form of an anthropomorphic mouse. Radasha, also seen to the left, is a Faun. Pixies, Nixies, Boggarts, Gremlins, Centaurs, Minotaurs, and other magical creatures have gotten far smaller since ancient times when human beings added greatly to the magical energy loose in the world through their imaginations, faiths, fears, nightmares, and dreams.
All of those magical creatures have odd and sometimes horrific shapes. You can see that in the insect-like Pixie to the right.
Storybooks : Immortals Amongst the Fey
The other Fey Children that need a special mention are the Storybooks like Silkie pictured in the acorn beret and leaf dress to the right. These lucky Sylphs, Elves, or other Fey Children who’ve been singled out by slow ones in their slow-ones’ books and literature are made magically immortal by the power of stories told by humans, especially those preserved by print. They no longer die. They can no longer be killed or grievously wounded.
General Tuffaney Swift is another good example of a Storybook. He exists as an immortal because some of his early adventures, were overheard and written down in stories about Tom Thumb. He was instrumental in bringing Grandma Gretel and her daughter, Anneliese, into the Fey World. She is responsible through her magical baking skills for the entire races of Gingerbread Children and Cookie Monsters.
So, there’s a brief overview of the Kingdom of Tellosia and the World of the Fey Children.
The book below is free in ebook form from Friday through Tuesday starting this weekend.
It is, of course, one of the most powerful, masterful, and best-known pieces of music ever written.
Mozart completed the “little serenade” in Vienna in 1787, but it wasn’t published until 1827, long after Mozart’s untimely death.
The Serenade is incorrectly translated into English as “A Little Night Music”. But this is and always has been the way I prefer to think of it. A creation of Mozart written shortly before he hopped aboard the ferryman’s boat and rode off into the eternal night. It is the artifact that proves the art of the master who even has the word “art” as a part of his name. A little music to play on after the master is gone to prove his universal connection to the great silent symphony that is everything in the universe singing silently together.
It is basically what I myself am laboring now to do. I have been dancing along the edge of the abyss of poverty, suffering, and death since I left my teaching job in 2014. I will soon be taking my own trip into night aboard the ferryman’s dreaded boat. And I feel the need to put my own art out there in novel and cartoon form before that happens.
I am not saying that I am a master on the level of a Mozart. My name is not Mickart. But I do have a “key’ in the name Mickey. And it will hopefully unlock something worthwhile for my family and all those I loved and leave behind me. And hopefully, it will provide a little night music to help soothe the next in line behind me at the ferryman’s dock.
Yes, today is another in a long, tepid series of Art-Day posts, but it is also about metacognitive thinking. Specifically thinking about thinking using pictures to think with. (Maybe that title should say, “Free-Thought Thinker” rather than, “Thought-Free.”)
To start with, what does a person actually see when they close their eyes? My brain does not color everything on the inside of my eyelids black. Even in the dark of night with no nightlight so that nothing shines through my eyelids, my brain interprets the dark as shapes, patterns, and colors. Hence the inspiration for this picture.
But my brain is never satisfied with raw shapes, colors, and patterns. It has to interpret ideas into them. The mass of yellow and black resolves into a butterfly, or a sunflower, or an etude by J.S. Bach. The pink mass becomes a blond girl playing the music in my head…. a girl from piano-lesson days in the early 70’s. But naked. The way I always thought about her while sitting and waiting for my piano lesson and listening to hers. How else does a boy think about a pretty girl when he is fourteen?
And as the items in the picture take shape, they do also begin to tell a story. Who is this Dr. Seabreez? Is he a shaman of the Republic of Lakotah People? Is he a white man? Seabreez is not a Native American name. The naked boy by the tent flap has a crutch, and there is a mouse silhouetted nearby. Does that make him a medical doctor? A veterinarian? A professor of Native-American Studies? The mind begins to piece together a script.
But here we see that Dr. Seabreez has set up a new practice in Japan. Again the boy near the door has a crutch and there is a silhouetted mouse near him. But now the other boy has horns on his forehead. Why horns? And pointed ears? Is he a Doctor of Magic and Wizardry? Demonology perhaps? And what is an anthropomorphized panda doing in Japan? That’s clearly a Japanese castle in the distance. The collar Kanji is definitely Japanese in character.
And now there are horns again. Three of them by my count. And another naked character. But a Grecian background. The mind is here making connections between the pictures, noticing patterns. Appreciating colors. And turning every detail over in the mind’s eye, evaluating and analyzing.
Art, especially on Saturdays, totally engages the mind. That is one of the reasons we keep art around to look at again and again. It is the purpose of art to make us see something. And not just once, superfluously. We must see it in depth, looking beyond the surface.
It is, of course, one of the most powerful, masterful, and best-known pieces of music ever written.
Mozart completed the “little serenade” in Vienna in 1787, but it wasn’t published until 1827, long after Mozart’s untimely death.
The Serenade is incorrectly translated into English as “A Little Night Music”. But this is and always has been the way I prefer to think of it. A creation of Mozart written shortly before he hopped aboard the ferryman’s boat and rode off into the eternal night. It is the artifact that proves the art of the master who even has the word “art” as a part of his name. A little music to play on after the master is gone to prove his universal connection to the great silent symphony that is everything in the universe singing silently together.
It is basically what I myself am laboring now to do. I have been dancing along the edge of the abyss of poverty, suffering, and death since I left my teaching job in 2014. I will soon be taking my own trip into night aboard the ferryman’s dreaded boat. And I feel the need to put my own art out there in novel and cartoon form before that happens.
I am not saying that I am a master on the level of a Mozart. My name is not Mickart. But I do have a “key’ in the name Mickey. And it will hopefully unlock something worthwhile for my family and all those I loved and leave behind me. And hopefully, it will provide a little night music to help soothe the next in line behind me at the ferryman’s dock.
Yes, I am philosophically a pessimist. I expect always that the worst outcome is the one I will have to live with. Hence, I was not as devastated by Donald Trump’s election as some who were too confident that Hilkary would win. And the climate crisis seems to be good reason to prepare for the worst that can happen. Some of it is already happening, already here.
But you really should listen to what this career futurist has to say about it.
The near future is, as documented with evidence in the video, far worse than we think it is. “Just doom, nothing else,” as Robin Williams declares. But too much pessimism at this point is the death of us. We have to keep trying. We can’t just give up.
A cheerleader who is not me.
Don’t get me wrong, I am not the right person to be elected head cheerleader on this issue. I have given in to despair and weeping on more than one occasion already. Since the election of Trump, the conservative pillaging of the Supreme Court, the roll-back of EPA guidelines and restrictions, the erosion of fundamental voting rights (soon to be followed by other rights,) the mismanagement of the economy, the Covid crisis, wildfires in the West, the insurrection after the election of Joe Biden, and more and more things that signal doom and possible Armaggedon, we have to battle the urge to lie down and die.
Here is where the optimism of the Reverand Peale is critical.
Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, also definitely not me.
If we stop trying, our loss and subsequent death is insured. It is only by continuing to fight that we will have a chance to save ourselves. And this is beginning to happen everywhere.
In 2020 we turned out against the Evil-Clown President in record numbers. We wrested the control of the government out of the hands of the corrupt elephants and put it back in the hands of the hard-working but mostly stupid jackasses. Biden’s donkey-like devotion to following through on the work that needs to be done got us through the rest of the pandemic, getting ourselves vaccinated and acclimated to life with the reality of the new deadly virus.
We need, like the faun, to be one with our environment.
We have tried hard and kept at it to achieve much-needed climate-control legislation. The fossil-fuel industry has made it difficult, and we nearly gave up on the Build Back Better program, but it seems through perseverance that we may have finally gotten a critical piece of that over the hurdles after all.
One thing definitely indicated is that we will need to turn out to vote in the midterm elections again this year. If we don’t, the elitist elefantiasis party will take away all our gains and punish us again, playing their golden fiddles while the world burns.
We will never have the magic we need if we don’t try to conjure it.
But despair is still not warranted here. We know what we can do to solve the problems that face us. We have done similar things before, with the Cold War, World War II, and the hole in the ozone layer in the 1980s. What’s more we have the tools we need already, and what we don’t have is quickly being developed. There are plans in the works for mountain-sized storage batteries, massive solar-power arrays, and wind farms (many of which are already built and operating.) We can rebuild and upgrade the entire power grid, not just in the USA, but for the whole world. It needs, of course, to all be weather-proofed, meteor-proofed, solar-storm-proofed, and, hopefully, greedy-Republican-idiot-proofed.
We are not beaten if we don’t give up.
And as the futurist tells us in the video you didn’t watch, pessimists prepare us for disaster, but only the optimist can make us successful in living through it to a brighter future beyond.
Prince Flute’s rooster riders made a mad dash for Castle Cornucopia. They all knew that their presence was desperately needed. But more than ever was their presence required since Poppy’s new spell provided an answer to the war problem that the Fairies never had before. Bad guys could be changed into allies by magic. And once having a taste of life as a Sylph or an Elf, the Gobbuluns definitely preferred to stay in their new bodies on the side of the Fairies.
“We promise to fight hard for the Cornucopians,” said the Elf, the fastest learner of Fairy English. “There is no going back for us. And even if we have to fight and kill our former friends, they are such low and horrid creatures that we will not shed a tear over them.”
“Not ebben for me wifey!” added one of the Sylphs. “She be too uglee and stoopid for keepin’.”
They all rounded the final turn, and Castle Cornucopia was laid out before them. It was, of course, actually a Slow One’s barn with Fairy ramparts and towers added to all the wooden walls, but disguised by magical glammers that made the barn appear to be a normal functioning palace for milk cows.
But the truly unbelievable part was the fact that the entire defense force, instead of manning the fortified walls and ramparts, were out in the middle of the field to the east of the castle, surrounded by a sea of raging green Gobbuluns and enemies from the Unseely Court.
“What’s this? Why is Lancelot attacking rather than defending the castle?” Prinz Flute was shocked.
“He be mad, dat one!” called out Schtinker.
“We have to help them survive. That is the entire defense force of the castle about to be slain!” cried Tod.
“No, no, no…!” called out Glittershine.
Flute turned to Poppy and put a hand on each of her arms. “Can you polymorph a really large number of Gobbuluns into Fairies?”
“I… I don’t know. That takes an immense amount of power. It will completely exhaust me, and I doubt I can change enough of them to make a difference.”
“Can you try, please? As many as you can, on the side closest to the castle so the encircled army has a way to escape.”
“I will do the best I can…”
PoppenSparkle gathered all the energy her tired body could hold. It wasn’t enough because she hadn’t absorbed enough sunshine since she had changed the four from the abandoned barn. But it would change a few dozen completely. She crackled with the summoned charge of energy, and then carefully spied out the area of fighting Gobbuluns she meant to target.
The power left her fingertips as soon as she uttered the trigger word and formed into a lightning bolt before becoming the transformational cloud over the writhing Gobbulun bodies. They twisted and morphed as if they were made of clay and became mostly naked and poorly armed Sylphs, Elves, and Butterfly Children.
“Men of Cornucopia! Follow me back to the castle!” shouted Prinz Flute, dashing forward to toss fireballs with his wand into the crowds of green Wartoles that hadn’t been touched by the polymorphing cloud.
“No! Hold your ground men! We will be covered in glory this day, even if we all die.” Lancelot seemed outraged at Flute trying to take command.
“Look at all these new Fey Children on our side, Lord! We now have a chance to hold the castle. Why should we still go through with the plan to sacrifice ourselves? We don’t have to die now! And you will not die in any case.” The Rascal was obviously defying his master. But it was effective. The Sylphs under Lancelot’s command broke ranks, fighting only to protect their escaping brethren. The mass of Fairy warriors flooded back towards the castle, carrying Flute’s rooster riders and all the newly made Fairies with them.
At the castle gate, Lord Lancelot, King Mouse, and Prinz Flute all pulled up short of it to shout at each other.
“How dare you countermand my battle plan?” roared Lancelot.
Prinz Flute, taken aback, quickly replied, “How dare you try to get everyone killed in spite of the fact that I provided you with a means to survive the day, and possibly win the war?”
King Mouse was a Pixie, of the kind that take on the partial form of woodland creatures. His head and paws and tail were all very mouse-like, while his body was very hunman-shaped and capable of wearing a suit of Fairy armor.
“I know your status as Tellosian Hero means you outrank me, Lord Lancelot, but as King of Cornucopia, I side with Prinz Flute on the question of whether today is the day we all die or not.”
“Well, we can’t exactly reform the troops and attack again now. But I would rather take the fight to them than hole up for a siege and defensive last stand.”
Prinz Flute seemed to be actively trying to calm himself. Poppy appreciated how calm he could make himself in dire situations. “You must come in and listen to the new plans I have formulated. I have made a breakthrough in magical research that might win the day for us without fighting battles against foes that outnumber us.”
Angry as Lancelot still seemed, he nodded his assent.
The Rascal ran up to him to make a report on the retreat into the castle.
Lord Lancelot eyed him coldly. “I have no time for disobedient underlings. Rascal, you are dismissed from my service.”
Crestfallen, the boy turned and walked back into the castle without making a report.
“Now that we have more men to defend the walls with,” said King Mouse, “let’s retire to the throne room and discuss further strategy.
Flute signalled to Poppy, calling her to him. “You have saved the day yet again, PoppenSparkle.”
“I only did the magic. You made it happen.”
“You look exhausted, little one.”
She smiled. She was actually taller than Flute, but not about to contradict him. He put his arm around her to guide her.
Lord Lancelot stood in the gateway, looking at the stupidly confused horde of Gobbuluns. He finally turned and entered too so that the gate could be shut and barred.
As the group continued to ride the roosters, little Schtinker could not stop talking. Poppy talked to him as soothingly as possible, hoping to calm him and quiet him.
“We is headed to badness!” insisted Schtinker.
“You should say, We are headed for trouble,” corrected Poppy.
“We are headed for trouble. That knight don’t care bout ennybuddy but his own self.”
“You mean, That knight doesn’t care about anybody but himself.”
“See there? You know it yourself!” said the exasperated Schtinker.
“You know,” said Flute leaning over from his rooster saddle to look Schtinker squarely in the eyes, “This kid is learning to speak better almost instantly.”
“This kid can thinks bedder dan he ever does before. Troll thinking comes hard and slow. But my mind is getting faster da more I uses it.”
“Let’s make for that abandoned barn over there. We need to study this polymorphed little phenomenon a little bit closer.” Flute pointed at the huge rotting structure that had once been the kind of fortress for cows that Slow Ones called a barn.
“But it is urgent that we get to Castle Cornucopia fast,” warned Tod.
“I have an idea that we may benefit more by what Poppy has learned to do with her magic than any sword swings or fireballs we could add to the battle to come.” Flute grinned as he spurred Tannehauser towards the run-down old barn.
“You is no knowing what you is doing, Prinz-guy. Dat barn be da home of Gobbuluns!” warned Schtinker.
“Yes, I know. But tell me, Stinky, do you really want to become a Troll again? Or would rather stay a Sylph boy?”
Schtinker got suddenly wide-eyed and serious. “You mean I can be dis permanent-like?”
“He can, can’t he, Poppy?” Flute asked.
“I would have to make a difficult spell translation to turn him back into a Troll, and I like him better like this.” PoppenSparkle smiled at the wiggly former Troll.
Schtinker gave her a hug for the sheer joy she had apparently filled his little Sylph body with.
Once inside the old barn Flute made the group dismount and gather in a circle amidst the old tractor-tire ruts on the barn’s dried mud floor.
“Poppy, I need to cast a rather invasive spell on you to measure things in your mind. You will have to disrobe for me to do it,” Flute said. He was not asking for permission.
“Sure. I prefer to be naked.” Poppy had no trouble slipping off the bikini-like armor that protected her from mind spells. Her butterfly wings magically unfurled.
Flute pulled a scroll out of his pouch attached to his loincloth. “Messen Sie die Metriken in ihrem Kopf. Finschole!” Sparks flew out of his fingertips and embedded themselves in her forehead. Poppy’s field of vision turned into multicolored clouds.
“Aha! It’s just as I thought. Her polymorph spell not only reshapes the body, it boosts the intelligence in the parts of the brain of the subject that serve the principles of light. It’s a mix of changing the shape and changing darkness into light.”
“So, what does that mean?” asked Tod.
“Let me test the boy to make certain of it.” Flute cast the same spell on young Schtinker.
“Just as I thought. We can turn Gobbuluns of various sorts into Sylphs, Elves, or Brownies simply by turning their inherent darkness into light.”
“Weez doan no wut you iz talkin’, but weez tanks you for bringin’ us chickie meatz an Fairy bodeez to eats!”
Four Gobbuluns gathered together atop a rotting hay bale with mushrooms growing on it. They were armed with spears that were basically sharpened sticks.
Prinz Flute looked them over humorlessly, then broke into a huge smile. “Poppy, I think we may have just found some recruits for the upcoming battle. Can you morph them the same way you did Schtinker? Please?”
Poppy leaned into the spell and enveloped the three Wartoles and one Cyclopes in her spell cloud.
The Gobbuluns didn’t even have time to scream. The cloud dispersed leaving behind three Sylph warriors with iron-tipped spears and one Elf with an Elven bow and quiver of arrows.
When Fairies die, at least, when the good ones die, they do not leave a corpse behind. The magical energy they are made of, originating from the sun, disperses into the air, sometimes leaving tiny bones behind, but usually leaving nothing.
When the corrupted minions of the Unseely Court, the evil Fairies, die, they turn back into the mud and clay they were originally animated from.
So, a battlefield of a great Fairy battle would look exactly like the Arcanum looked as the little band of Fairies led by Flute entered into its vastness.
“The bodies of Gobbuluns are everywhere,” said Flute as he pointed out several lumps of Wartole-shaped mud and clay. There were a couple of Cyclopes-shaped mud piles as well.
“There was a huge battle here?” asked Tod.
“Obviously. First the dead Trolls, and now this.” Flute shook his head sadly.
“Did our side win?” asked Poppy.
“There’s no way to tell. If the Fey Children won, there should be living soldiers and Fairy beasts on the field. The dead have returned to the air.”
“But, Flute, perhaps the winners have already left for home. You don’t know for sure that we lost.” Tod looked extremely upset.
“We shall see. We must search the battlefield,” said Flute as he picked up a fallen banner from the Castle Cornucopia.
Glumly they continued to search the battlefield.
Suddenly, little Schtinker in Poppy’s lap became highly agitated.
“Dat killah nite!” cried the squirming boy Sylph.
“What are you talking about?”
The Sylph pointed at a silhouette on the top of a nearby knoll. It appeared to be an armored Sylph knight astride a ridinghawk. Next to him was a younger Sylph astride a pigeon.
“Hail and well met!” called the knight. “You are late to the battle, Prinz Flute.”
“Lord Lancelot! How did the battle go?”
With a short swoop, the hawk brought the famous knight near to where the roosters had stopped. To their credit, neither rooster flinched at the presence of a red-tailed hawk.
“We would’ve lost had not the yon squire known as the Rascal and I cleverly used my immortality as a Storybook to slay the remaining Gobbuluns from the air after the Legion of Cornucopia overwhelmed the Dark Lord Ebon Sneezer.”
“None other of the Cornucopians survived?” asked Tod in horror.
“The Castle Guard remains at Castle Cornucopia,” said Lord Lancelot. “All the rest are dead.”
The Rascal on his pigeon fluttered up. “Lord, we must return to the castle quickly! The Storr and Lord Toxiss will be sending a siege army there. They will be overwhelmed without us!”
The Rascal looked at Lancelot with an expression of urgency on his young, dark-eyed face. The knight looked back at him exhausted and pale.
“We go, then. Prinz Flute, we need your aid, both magical and swordical. Or our ally, King Mouse, will be lost.”
Almost immediately the hawk launched into the air.
The Rascal looked at Flute and his companions, smiled a weak, dispirited smile, and took off on the pigeon.
“We no go wid dat killah nite!” protested Schtinker. “Heem will murdah all ob us!”
“What is the urchin saying?” asked Tod.
“I think he saw Lancelot kill the other trolls and is afraid he will kill us too,” said Poppy.
“Nonsense. He’s a great knight and trusted friend.” Flute shot a disgusted glare at the child.
“Heem let alla guyz in heem armies fit furst, den heem killah alla Trollz wayne dey iz dead.”
“Is he saying that Lord Lancelot wastes the lives of his troops even though he’s immortal himself?” asked Glitter.
“Surely not. The little stinker doesn’t really know how to speak the Slow Ones’ English,” said Tod.
Poppy tried to calm Schtinker. But he was deeply agitated. And as to whether Schtinker could talk or not, she wondered at the fact that Lancelot had used the word, “swordical.”
“The situation is dire, no matter how you look at it,” said Flute. “So, we go to Castle Cornucopia immediately.”
They spurred the roosters to run to the northwest. But Poppy did not feel good about it.
Catch a Falling Star 
Eine Kleine Nachtmusik
It is, of course, one of the most powerful, masterful, and best-known pieces of music ever written.
Mozart completed the “little serenade” in Vienna in 1787, but it wasn’t published until 1827, long after Mozart’s untimely death.
The Serenade is incorrectly translated into English as “A Little Night Music”. But this is and always has been the way I prefer to think of it. A creation of Mozart written shortly before he hopped aboard the ferryman’s boat and rode off into the eternal night. It is the artifact that proves the art of the master who even has the word “art” as a part of his name. A little music to play on after the master is gone to prove his universal connection to the great silent symphony that is everything in the universe singing silently together.
It is basically what I myself am laboring now to do. I have been dancing along the edge of the abyss of poverty, suffering, and death since I left my teaching job in 2014. I will soon be taking my own trip into night aboard the ferryman’s dreaded boat. And I feel the need to put my own art out there in novel and cartoon form before that happens.
I am not saying that I am a master on the level of a Mozart. My name is not Mickart. But I do have a “key’ in the name Mickey. And it will hopefully unlock something worthwhile for my family and all those I loved and leave behind me. And hopefully, it will provide a little night music to help soothe the next in line behind me at the ferryman’s dock.
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Filed under artwork, cartoons, classical music, commentary, feeling sorry for myself, Hidden Kingdom, magic, metaphor, music, Paffooney
Tagged as Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, Mozart