Wednesday night, I got to see the musical Hamilton as it was playing in Dallas at Fair Park. I am not sure how I actually got to see it. Tickets are reputedly astronomically expensive. I myself am bankrupt because of medical bills. My wife, however, is not bankrupt, a thing accomplished by separating our finances over disagreements about feeding the credit card monster. Bankruptcy court is helping me escape from the vampire powers of predatory banks. My wife, however, has apparently not heeded my advice about finances. As a Jehovah’s Witness, she is sure the Bible prophecies about the end of the world will rescue her from the credit card monster. Armageddon will happen any day now, and the credit card monster will not get to eat her. I hate to disagree with her about matters of religion. Her faith is sincere, if self-serving. But I think I know the inevitable ending.
Hamilton, the musical, ends with the inevitable death of Alexander Hamilton, firing his dueling pistol into the sky as Aaron Burr kills him.
Sorry about the spoiler, but it has been a recorded outcome for over 200 years. It was in Hamilton’s very nature that he would end his career and life in that way. It was inevitable.
I also took my two younger kids to see the Avengers Endgame yesterday after the Princess’s doctor appointment. Don’t worry. I won’t spoil anything. You already know somebody will die at the end of this movie. And I am not talking about this movie in terms of plot or outcomes. It is, rather, a pivotal point in my own endgame. A couple of years ago, when I knew my fate was sealed by poor health and even poorer affordable healthcare and health insurance, I resolved that I would somehow manage to survive at least until I had seen this movie which brings closure to Marvel Universe stories that I have been invested in practically my whole comic-book reading and movie-watching life. Now I have seen it. Technically that means that I am now free to die without regrets. I have, in fact, been at peace with the idea of my life’s inevitable ending for a long time now.
But if you are worried that I will now just give up and die, don’t be. It is not in my nature. I will continue to fight on. I am on the verge of self-publishing Fools and Their Toys, a critical novel that was one of the stories I most needed to tell before my life is over. But it is far from the last story I have within me. And the fact that nobody is reading my books is not going to deter me. They simply have to exist.
And the third movie in the newest Star Wars trilogy is due to open in December. I feel I am owed at least one more Christmas. So the battle continues. And I may win the war with my final act like you see in the movies. That would be a good and noble thing. I think I have to live longer now. There are just too many goals to be reached before time runs out.
I was born an artist. It has to be developed and nurtured and practiced over time to become what it can truly be, but artistic talent is something you are born with, and there is a genetic aspect to it. Great Aunt Viola could draw and paint. She produced impressive art during her lifetime. My father can draw. He has demonstrated ability a number of times, though he never developed it. Both my brother and I can draw and have done a lot of it. All three of my children can draw and paint. My daughter, the Princess, even wants to pursue a career in graphic design and animation.
One of the factors that weighs heavily on a career in art is the starving artist factor. To be a serious artist, you have to study art in great detail. You need lots of practice, developing not only pencil-pushing prowess, but having an artist’s eyeball, that way of seeing that twists and turns the artist’s subject to find the most novel and interesting angle. It takes a great deal of time. And if you are doing this alone, you are responsible also for building your own following and marketing your own work and creating your own brand. You need to be three people in one and do this while potentially not being able to make any money at all for it. I have taught myself to do the art part, but I paid the bills with something else I loved to do, teaching English to hormone-crazed middle-schoolers.
An important part of art is what you have to sacrifice to do it.
Many artists become alcoholics, drug users, or suicidal manic-depressives. There is an artistic sort of PTSD. Doing real art costs a lot because it alters your lifestyle, your mental geography, and your spiritual equilibrium. Depending on how much of yourself you put into it, it can use you up, leaving no “you” left within you.
I am not trying to leave you with the impression that I mean to scare you into not wanting to be an artist. For many reasons it is a great thing to be. But it is a lot like whether you are born gay or straight… or somewhere in between. The choice is not entirely up to you. You can only control what you do with the awful gift of art once it is given to you. And that is a serious choice to make. Me, I have to draw. I have to tell stories. My life and well-being depend on it. It is the only way I can be me.
Today, being ill, I resorted to doodling in bed to make myself feel better. No, I said doodling, meaning drawing things without a plan for where the pencil goes next. Get your mind on better things. I ended up with a nightmare of a school bus. And I inked it, scanned it in four pieces, puzzled it together, and posted it, cussing at the computer for every glitch that interrupted my work. And now I give you Dullwhittler’s Skool Bus. I hope it doesn’t disgust you to the point that you have to scour your eyeballs with unwashed sweat socks to get the offensiveness out of your mind’s eye. But I acknowledge that it might. Forgive me, but I have ridden on school buses with students who were very similar to these.
Mom loved to cook.
She could do wondrous things with a casserole. In fact, her Tater Tot casserole was such a
hit that it had spread to households all over the county and people from as far
away as Illinois were writing her letters to get the secret recipe. It wasn’t such a secret. Browned and loose ground beef, Campbell’s
Cream of Mushroom soup, Tater Tots from Ore-Ida, and real cheddar cheese went
into her magical casserole. But friends
of friends and family were practically rabid about wanting to get their hands
on the special secret recipe. They
didn’t realize until she told them that the recipe came from the label of a Campbell’s
soup can to begin with.
So the house smelled wonderful because Uncle Dash and
Valerie’s cousin Stacey were coming to dinner.
Stacy was college age now, and Valerie looked up to
her. She was smart and independent, and
she knew how to dress up like a fashion model whenever there was an excuse to
do it. As Val and Stacy set the table,
the two had a brief moment or two to catch up on cousin stuff.
“I hear the Pirates are re-forming,” Stacy said. “And they tell me you are going to be one of
them?”
“Well, yeah… so?”
“Don’t bring it up tonight.
Daddy will get mad. I mean, more
mad than he already is.”
“Uncle Dash is mad?” Valerie was slightly taken by surprise. Uncle Dash was the kind of guy who was always laughing, always joking. Valerie had relied on his sense of humor and mature wisdom her whole life long. She believed he was even wiser than Daddy Kyle. He was a farmer. He had the wisdom of the Earth.
“Your Uncle Dash is mad at me,” said Stacey.
“Why would he be mad at you?”
“I told him a secret today.
One I have to tell everybody sooner or later.”
“Really? Tell me.”
Stacey was obviously biting her own lower lip for some
reason. Why would she do that? It didn’t really make sense to Val. There were tears in her cousin’s eyes.
“I mean it, Stacey. I love you. You cantell me.”
“Well, I…” Before
Stacey could spill it, the adults came into the room.
“Really,” Uncle Dash said with a frown on his face, “We
could sell that sixty acres southwest of town and the big pasture along the
Iowa River. That would give us enough
money to at least bargain for more time… maybe another growing season.”
“But, Dash, that’s all your land. This is my debt. I can’t let you sacrifice from your share. It should be some of my land.” Kyle sat down at the head of the table with a defeated-seeming kerplunk. Valerie knew her dad’s basic onomatopoeias, the sound-words of his soul, and kerplunk was definitely not a good one.
“But it is some of the less-valuable land I am offering to
sell. All of your land is better, and we
should be trying to keep all of it.”
“Yeah, well… I still don’t want you to make sacrifices to
pay my debts.”
Uncle Dash took the seat next to Daddy Kyle where Valerie
would’ve sat if they didn’t have company.
Mom came in carrying a big casserole dish full of
steaming-hot tater-tot casserole. She
proudly set her work of art down in the middle of the dining room table. “Stacey, will you help me get the peas and
the mashed potatoes?” Mom said. Then she
dashed back out to the kitchen.
“You’re my brother, Kyle.
You have to let me help you. And
it is all family land. We have to work
together, even though we divided the farms when Dad died. It is all one large farm, really.”
“Well, yeah, but…”
That conversation died too as Mom and Stacey brought the
rest of the supper to the table, and Mom insisted that everybody sit down and
eat. Valerie said Grace and food was
passed all around. Everybody at the
table had a farmer’s healthy appetite, and soon mouths were too full to
talk. Conversation was suspended for the
more important thing… at least until all were stuffed and satisfied.
“It’s a shame that Patricia couldn’t come with you this
evening, Dash,” Mom said.
“She was sorry to miss it, but she really wasn’t feeling
well. She needed to take some medicine
and go to bed. Which reminds me… Stacey has some new she needs to share with
everyone in the family.”
Stacey looked at her father with a distinctly angry expression.
“Well, you may as well tell them.”
Stacey’s glare at Uncle Dash made Valerie suddenly worried for
her cousin. What could be wrong?
“I’m… not going to college anymore.”
“Oh, Stacey!” Mom said.
“Why not?”
“Well, I’m…”
The pause was unbearable.
“I’m pregnant.”
Stunned silence followed.
Uncle Dash’s face was so sad it almost made Valerie burst into tears. Stacey did cry, and that was almost worse.
“How, I mean… who?”
Daddy didn’t know what to say. He
was kinda tongue-tied, right up until the answer hit him square in the
memory. “Not the Toad! Oh, Stacey!”
“His name is Brom, not Toad.
I don’t know why everyone needs to call him that.” Stacey’s tears were replaced almost instantly
with fury.
“It’s the way he drives.
He reminds everyone of Toad in the Disney movie Wind in the Willows. You
know how recklessly he roars about in that yellow Ford Mustang of his.” Uncle Dash was very direct and
soft-spoken. It was an argument Valerie
had overheard before.
“He also has a big mouth like a frog,” said Valerie timidly.
“Oh, Val…” Stacey
shot her a wounded look. Whose side was
she supposed to be on, anyway?
“Well, I have to say, it isn’t such a big surprise. You have been in love with that boy for a
while now, haven’t you, Stacey?” Daddy Kyle said.
“Yes, I love him with all of my heart.”
“Is he going to do the right thing by you?” Mom asked.
“He’s willing to marry me… if Daddy doesn’t forbid it.”
“Dash, you can’t forbid it,” said Daddy Kyle. “That’s no way to start off a life… for
Stacey or Brom either one.”
“You would take their side, wouldn’t you,” Uncle Dash said
harshly. “You know, as my little brother,
it wouldn’t kill you to take my side once in a while.”
Daddy stared straight at his plate. His mouth was a tense and very straight
line. “Stacey would be good for
Brom. As Mrs. Brown, she’s bound to
settle him down at least a little bit.
Like the way Julie settled me down.
You remember what a wild kid I was, right?”
“We haven’t decided how it’s going to be, yet,” Dash said
calmly. “There is a lot to be decided
yet.”
“You really can’t decide for her, you know,” Daddy Kyle
said.
Uncle Dash got angry at that. “How would you feel if it were Valerie in
this situation? Maybe with somebody like
that Murphy kid… or Richard Martin’s little rag boy?”
“It’s not the same.
Valerie is still too young to be a mother.”
“And Stacey isn’t?”
“Kyle, Dash, please!” said Mom, “don’t discuss this in front
of the girls. They can hear everything,
and I don’t think it helps anybody to hear you two argue about this.”
It was quiet for a few moments, but a very tense quiet.
“Julie is right, Dash,” Daddy said. “Why don’t you and I go for a drive in your
pickup, and the girls can spend some time together here.”
“We have a lot to talk about, Kyle. But it won’t do a lick of good if you don’t
listen more than you talk.”
The two brothers glared at each other. But they were family, and too much alike not
to smash heads together like a couple of rams in springtime. So they both went out and got in Uncle Dash’s
Chevy pickup and drove on into town.
“Headed for Martin’s Bar and Grill,” said Stacey, blowing a
stray hair out of her eyes to show disgust.
Valerie wordlessly snaked her thin young arms around her
beloved cousin and gave her a distressed and tearful squeeze.
“It will all get worked out for the best,” said Mom in her
most comforting voice.
“I hope so,” Stacey said.
Then after a long pause she repeated, “I hope so.”
People are not really vegetables… even though I have seen IQ scores as a teacher that might say otherwise. But I often use the pun of calling them Human Beans.
Your basic human bean.
Western style beans
Of course, being a Texan means having a healthy appreciation for beans as a staple food. Cowboys used to live off of beans and beef jerky, and if Louis L’Amour is to be believed, they even made tea from mesquite beans. That makes your average cowboy made up of over 50 per cent beans. Of course the rest of him is mostly gas caused by the beans in his diet, whether it comes out as a fart or as a Texas tall tale… And yes, I admit it, I get a lot of my writing ideas from eating beans.
A Boston baked bean
We must also be aware that Texas has no corner on the beans market. We all know Boston baked beans by reputation. They, like the ever-hapless Cubs, had a habit of never winning the World Series. And now, in the last two decades, it has actually been difficult for the other teams to keep them from winning it all. But we shouldn’t mix up beans with baseball metaphors. Baseball is like life. Full of long and boring parts punctuated by intense moments of hitting, scoring, committing errors, and player versus player individual drama. And concession stand food! Beans, however, can taste good in chili draped over the ballpark hot dogs which cost more than a restaurant meal at most reasonable restaurants. And I promise you, you will never hit a home run over the fence by hitting it with a bean.
A Mexican style re-fried bean
And I wish to point out that this last human bean is not a racist cartoon. Beans are not part of the human race. They only have legs in cartoons and would come in last even when racing a snail. And all beans are created equal in the sight of God. Kidney beans, butter beans, navy beans, string beans… all beans are just beans, no matter what the color of their skin is, and no matter how they add flavor to a casserole. All beans are just in it to live life the best they can, and if that’s not enough… they can be planted as seeds to raise the next generation of human beans.
Some writers make tons of money for sharing their made-up fantasy worlds. Steven King, JK Rowlings, and James Patterson have made it to the limelight where few authors ever stand. Some of us get by on smaller rewards.
Me, I intend to give myself some grins by sending a copy of my book Snow Babies to a girl who was in my class in grade school, and I may have had a huge crush on her at some point in that past. And because of me being a lazy writer, this post consists mostly of the letter I am sending with the book.
Dear Valerie,
Remember me? I have
lived more of my life in Texas now than I did in Iowa, but my heart is still living
in Iowa. The part of me that turns into
fiction books has always been an Iowan.
You are probably wondering why I am sending you a copy of this
book. Well, to be honest, I owe it to
you. You are the person out of everyone
I have ever known that the main character is named after. This is not a best seller and may never make
much money. But this copy represents the
share of this book that I owe to you.
If you are worried that I am writing stories about you, don’t
be. The character of Valerie Clarke is
based on a student that I taught for two school years. She did remind me of you in some minor ways. But the girl in this book is really based on the
story of Sofia’s girlhood as I came to know about it. I would like to tell you a little bit about
her.
Sofie was, just like the character in the book, short a
parent. It was a struggle for her to be
the cheerful, aggressively positive girl that she was. She was in my largest class of seventh
graders when she was 13, a rather rowdy group of mostly Hispanic kids. She loved almost every story we read in
class. She enjoyed every group activity
and task we did in class, often leading the group she was in, and even
sometimes disciplining misbehavior that I hadn’t called the student out for,
simply because she felt they should be appreciating my class more.
By the time she was an eighth grader, she had developed a
large crush on me. The year before I
married my wife, she actually asked me to wait for her to grow up and marry her
instead. It wasn’t the kind of love that
gets a teacher fired and put in prison.
Really, she was looking at me as the father-figure she needed in her
life. Telling you that fact reveals which
character in the story actually most resembles me, if you decide you actually
want to read this book.
The book is a comedy about a blizzard. But like any good comedy, it will try to make you love characters enough that parts of it will make you cry as much it makes you laugh. It is a book I submitted to the 2014 YA Novel contest called the Rosetti Award Competition from Chaunticleer Reviews. It didn’t win, but it was a finalist. So there is some reason to believe it is not a bad book.
Of all the people I feel compelled to share this book with, your name is at the top of the list. Partly because I borrowed your name to write it with. But also, because of the fact that Valerie in the book, and in other books I have written about her, is often known as, “The most beautiful girl ever born in Norwall (Rowan), Iowa.” It was something the boys in the Rowan school said about you in 4th, 5th, and 6th grades. I don’t know if I am telling you something you didn’t already know or not, but it explains your connection to this story. And why I felt the need to give you a copy of this book.
Read it if you want.
Share it, if you want. Use it to
put a voodoo curse on me if that’s what you want. But I hope you enjoy it and understand that
you do have some part in the fact that it now exists.
I am now approaching the end of a manuscript that completes a journey that began forty years ago. The novel is built from my own experiences as a survival of childhood sexual assault. But it is not about sex. It is about communicating when speaking to others. The main character is autistic and unable to speak aloud to others. Because he does not talk, people treat him as a moron, a possessor of vast levels of stupidity. But he is really quite bright.
The narrator of the story is a zebra sock puppet that the main character uses as a ventriloquist’s dummy. Either he is miraculously able to talk when using the zebra puppet, or the puppet is magically alive and independently intelligent.
To further build on the idea of how difficult it can be to communicate, the main character has an adopted little brother who can’t hear because of ear damage from child abuse. He can read lips and use sign language, but his communication abilities are limited to a best friend who knows sign language and can hear and speak normally too. He can write messages, but he doesn’t write or spell well. And when the serial killer moves in and kidnaps the boy’s best friend, the difficulties of communicating with others hits a critical level.
I have, as of this writing, written within a hundred words of 30,000. I have passed the climax, the parts that make me cry and the parts that make me cheer. It will be done before I reach 35,000. If finishing a novel is like giving birth to a child, then the baby is nine tenths delivered already. All that is left is the sweating, the recovering, and the clean-up. Oh, yes, and the baby novel’s first squall and cry.
Suppose being grumpy was a super power, and we could, as a grumpy old brotherhood of geezers, coots, and conservative uncles, could change things just by complaining about them.
No woman would ever leave a toilet seat down again. The Dunkin’ Donuts on Frankford Road would magically reopen and never run out of donuts again. And liver spots and wrinkles would suddenly be attractive to beautiful young women whether they were linked to fortunes or not.
But what if, in order to make better use of this unexplainable super power, we start telling old coots like the fool in the picture that they have to prove they will use this super power only for good, or we will raise their taxes? Or we would forbid them from ever eating bacon again? Either of those things would definitely motivate them.
Of course, the biggest problem with geezers, old coots, and conservative uncles that no one wants to sit next to at Thanksgiving is that they don’t generally get smarter and nicer with age. It is probably not wise to give them a super power that can alter reality. Yes, they are generally quite literally mean-spirited and unqualifiably dumb. And it isn’t really a matter of whether they could ever actually have a super power like that. The real problem is that they already have it. They proved it in 2016 when they elected a gigantic orange-faced Pillsbury Doughboy with mental flatulence to lead our government. And it wasn’t the dumb part that did it. It was the literally mean part. Trump is a walking, talking old coot-complaint given to us by mean old men to tell us, “We are unhappy geezers, coots, and conservative uncles who would rather blow up the government than lift a single tax dollar (especially from a rich dude) to try and fix it”.
What we truly need to do is harness a bit of that grumpy-old-man complaining power, a truly misunderstood and misused super power, to tackle problems like making public schools better, cleaning the environment, and electing smarter leaders (not the stupid ones who actually represent the majority of us). But of course, we will first have to turn off the spigots in the brewery of prejudice and ignorance that is Fox News, and brand all the greedy and stupid people with a red letter “R” for Trumpian Republican. That way, knowing who to vote for to make things better will become easier to the point that even us geezers, old coots, and conservative uncles can do it right.
As an atheist who believes in God, paradoxes and contradictions are something I am entirely comfortable with. So, it should come as no surprise that I don’t believe in ghosts… with notable exceptions.
Cool song, right? Did you listen to it? It’s a song about ghosts. It’s a lot older than I am. And the singer here, Burl Ives, has been dead since April of 1995. Hearing it today, at random, proves that Burl Ives is a ghost I believe in.
He came back to haunt me today as I am recovering from pink-eye, reminding me of my childhood and youth when he was the snowman in Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer on TV around Christmas time.
He is also haunting me because 1995, the year he died, was the year I got married. I was married to my wife in Dallas in January. In March, we found out that we were going to have our firstborn child before the year was over. And we also found out that my grandfather was dying.
I was not able to make it from Texas to Iowa to see Grandpa Aldrich before he passed away. But he was told while he was in the hospital that we were expecting at about the same time that he got to hold my cousin’s newborn second son. Grandpa loved the music of Burl Ives. In many ways he was like Burl Ives. He even vaguely looked like Burl Ives. And we did get to attend his funeral. (My Grandpa, I mean.) And shortly after that, Burl Ives died and I saw the announcement on the news. This is one sort of ghost I believe in. He came to commune with me as I lay on my sickbed thinking about death. And on a day after finding out that my son, now in the Marines, is about to be discharged after five years and will be home next week. He is ghost of memory. A vibrant and talented spirit of the past who lives on through his work. And he brings with him the ghost of my Grandpa Aldrich, They are both no longer living, but lingering still in the echoes of memory, and still affecting life.
Dean Martin and Perry Como are also ghosts of memory.
Then, of course, there’s the whole matter of the ghost dog. Yes, I continue to see flashes and images and shadows of a brown dog in our house, larger and browner than our own dog, that disappear as soon as you look directly at them. My oldest son has said that he has seen the very same thing, so it is not merely brain damage or impending insanity on my part, unless it is something that also runs in the family. And it has been suggested to me by an elderly neighbor that two families ago, a brown family dog lived in this house and may be buried in the yard.
I believe it is possible that life and love in a family leaves its imprint in many ways on a house, a home, an inhabited place.
I know it can easily be put down to misinterpretations of things seen in peripheral vision, or even mental misinterpretations responding to subtle suggestions. I doubt that there is actually a protoplasmic or energy form that continues after death. But if there is something there, it is benevolent rather than malevolent. Ghosts, if they exist, are a good thing, not a bad one. It doesn’t scare me to live in a place that has a soul capable of absorbing and incorporating a faithful family dog.
Basically, I am insisting that the existence of ghosts is irrelevant. I do not require the artificial reassurance of belief in a life after death to make me unafraid of facing death. I am a part of everything that exists, and I will continue to be a part of it even after my body is dissolved and my consciousness is silenced. Even if life on Earth is extinguished, the fact of my existence is not erased or invalidated. The poet says, “You are a child of the universe. No less than the trees and the stars, you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, the universe is unfolding as it should.” -from Disiderata by Anonymous
So, I am ill and thinking about death, for it is not very far away now. And I do not fear it. As I do not fear ghosts. For I don’t believe in them… except for the ones I do.
Catch a Falling Star 
The Ending Inevitable
Wednesday night, I got to see the musical Hamilton as it was playing in Dallas at Fair Park. I am not sure how I actually got to see it. Tickets are reputedly astronomically expensive. I myself am bankrupt because of medical bills. My wife, however, is not bankrupt, a thing accomplished by separating our finances over disagreements about feeding the credit card monster. Bankruptcy court is helping me escape from the vampire powers of predatory banks. My wife, however, has apparently not heeded my advice about finances. As a Jehovah’s Witness, she is sure the Bible prophecies about the end of the world will rescue her from the credit card monster. Armageddon will happen any day now, and the credit card monster will not get to eat her. I hate to disagree with her about matters of religion. Her faith is sincere, if self-serving. But I think I know the inevitable ending.
Hamilton, the musical, ends with the inevitable death of Alexander Hamilton, firing his dueling pistol into the sky as Aaron Burr kills him.
Sorry about the spoiler, but it has been a recorded outcome for over 200 years. It was in Hamilton’s very nature that he would end his career and life in that way. It was inevitable.
I also took my two younger kids to see the Avengers Endgame yesterday after the Princess’s doctor appointment. Don’t worry. I won’t spoil anything. You already know somebody will die at the end of this movie. And I am not talking about this movie in terms of plot or outcomes. It is, rather, a pivotal point in my own endgame. A couple of years ago, when I knew my fate was sealed by poor health and even poorer affordable healthcare and health insurance, I resolved that I would somehow manage to survive at least until I had seen this movie which brings closure to Marvel Universe stories that I have been invested in practically my whole comic-book reading and movie-watching life. Now I have seen it. Technically that means that I am now free to die without regrets. I have, in fact, been at peace with the idea of my life’s inevitable ending for a long time now.
But if you are worried that I will now just give up and die, don’t be. It is not in my nature. I will continue to fight on. I am on the verge of self-publishing Fools and Their Toys, a critical novel that was one of the stories I most needed to tell before my life is over. But it is far from the last story I have within me. And the fact that nobody is reading my books is not going to deter me. They simply have to exist.
And the third movie in the newest Star Wars trilogy is due to open in December. I feel I am owed at least one more Christmas. So the battle continues. And I may win the war with my final act like you see in the movies. That would be a good and noble thing. I think I have to live longer now. There are just too many goals to be reached before time runs out.
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