Category Archives: Paffooney
Wisdom from the Outsider
There is so much left to be said before my time runs out. Wisdom, whether hard won or acquired entirely through wit, bears a certain responsibility in the possession of it. We are duty-bound as wizards, the masters of wisdom, to pass it on.
Now, you certainly have every right to protest that I am not wise and I have no wisdom. You are certainly right to point out that I am a doddering old fool that sits around the house all day in the midst of his poor-health-enforced retirement doing little beyond writing silly stories and drawing pictures of mostly naked cartoon girls. I get that. But the beginning of wisdom is the realization of how big everything is and how little I really know about anything.
Take for instance the question of where we came from and what our purpose is? (And the question of why I put a question mark on that when it really wasn’t a question.)
I originally believed in the God of the Christians and in the promises of Jesus… everlasting life and an eternity of sitting on a cloud with a harp and… Okay, it didn’t take me long to see the logical holes in that line of reasoning. So much of that is fear of death and the need to believe that I am the center of all things, the most important person in existence. The truth is I am only a tiny part of a nearly-infinitely-large universe. And the universe is conscious… self aware. How do I know this? Because I am conscious and self-aware. I am an infinitely tiny piece of the whole… but there are untold trillions of others just like me. 
And when I die… when this body ceases to function, as it already has a great deal of trouble doing, the parts that make up the individual creature and thought patterns I identify as me will be scattered to the far corners of everywhere to be gathered up once again and be something new. All of mankind passes away. Human beings and the planet Earth will one day be no more. But that is not what matters. There is so much more beyond the boundaries of what my limited eyesight can behold, and what my limited mind can comprehend. I am made of star-stuff (just ask Neal DeGrasse Tyson or Carl Sagan), and I am a part of the universe as a whole. I am in no hurry to die. Life is worth fighting through the pain for… but I do not fear death. Like birth, it is only a stop along the way in a journey that, as far as I can tell, never ends.
Filed under Paffooney, philosophy, wisdom
Banned Breakfast-Table Talking
At Mother’s breakfast table we were always encouraged to talk about stuff. That was a given. It was how families operated in the 60’s and 70’s. Mom and Dad not only listened to the mindless drivel coming out of the childish mouths of me, my two sisters, and my stinky little brother, but they also tended to hold forth about things they wished to teach us. We learned Methodist-Church-flavored Christianity and Eisenhower-Republican values. Ike had been president when I was born and got most of the credit for the post-war boom in the economy. We were middle-class people with solid middle-class values.
And then I had the bad sense to grow up and start thinking for myself. Nixon had let me down big-time when I was in high school. I had defended him against my McGovern-leaning loony liberal friends. My best friend was a preacher’s kid, a Methodist preacher’s kid. His father actually believed in progressive nonsense about sex-education for children and helping to feed the poor. And then Nixon turned out to be a liar, a coverer-upper, a cheat, and a bad-word-user. I suspect, though my Dad never admitted it, that he may have voted for Carter over Ford. It was my first time voting, and it actually felt good to use my vote to strike back at the party that betrayed my trust.
Religion, too. In the late seventies a man named Carl Sagan put on a TV show called Cosmos. The man bedazzled my father and I with Science. He taught us that every molecule of us was composed of atoms that could only have been forged in the cosmic furnaces in the centers of stars. He showed us how spectroscopy of the stars could show us what they were made of. He showed us the meaning of Einstein’s special Theory of Relativity. He pulled the universe together for us in a way that could not be undone. And he did it without calling upon the name and blessings of God. But he pointed out that we are connected to everything in the universe and everything is connected to us. To me, that seemed to define God. My religion was changing from Christianity to Saganism. Of course, Mom heard that as “paganism”. Breakfast table talking changed into early morning arguments. We didn’t exactly throw chairs at each other, but some pretty heated and pretty large ideas went flying through the air. Religion and politics became the banned topics at the breakfast table.
So that brings me to the Paffooney points for today. This blog has turned into a place where a disobedient son, a horrible sort of “free-thinker” type of radical hippie pinko goofball, can talk about the loony-liberal progressive ideas that have taken over his good-little Eisenhower-Republican little-boy mind. I spent the last post talking existentially about my religious beliefs. My conservative, old-fashioned friends and family call me an atheist now, but I truly believe in God. It’s just, I recognize the factors behind Christian myths. I bow to the wisdom of Scientists like Sagan, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, and Stephen Hawking… as well as hippie psychologists like Alan Watts… and literary heroes like J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S, Lewis.
I am proud to be an Iowegian (a Mickian word for being from Iowa), yet my birth-State produces gawd-awful Tea Party politicians like Steve King and Joni Ernst. The stuff that comes out of their mouths doesn’t even make good fertilizer. But they are comedy gold. Will Rogers would have pointed out that the jokes will write themselves. All the humorist would have to do is consult the front page of the newspaper. I also live in Texas where the debate over secession from the United States still goes on with new Governor Greg Abbott, a man who is a Rick Perry clone, except that he hasn’t bothered to put on glasses as much to make him smarter. And Texans are looking forward to the next Republican president in 2016. Both Rick Perry and Ted Cruz are running. That doubles Texas’ chances, right? With Global Warming not being accepted as a real thing, the need for giving all our money to the Koch brothers and the Walton family being recognized by both parties in Congress, and looming war with foreign nations that have the bad sense to be “Muslim in nature”, the future looks kinda bleak. But it is a great time to be a humorist, and I am guessing I won’t be doing very much talking at the breakfast table for a while.
The Literate but Illogical Introvert
Yep, I did it again. Novel number 21, the very first paperback produced in the obligatory selfie.
Of course, this one is different than any of the others. This is a fantasy novel where most of the actual characters are three inches tall or shorter. The only normal human character gets shrunk down by magic to visit the fairy world.
Blueberry Bates is the human girl who met and befriended fairies in a previous book Magical Miss Morgan. She’s got the ability to actually see them, and loves to draw colored-pencil pictures of them.
Derfentwinkle is a main character and co-narrator of the story. She is a Sylph with magical ability that has been forced to be the Necromancer’s Apprentice of the title and sent on a suicide mission against the good fairies. She is captured by the good guys and given a chance to make new choices.
Bob is the Sorcerer’s apprentice to the Sorcerer Eli Tragedy (standing behind him in the red coat and hat.) He is the other co-narrator of the story, and he tries hard to help Derfentwinkle change sides. He is quiet and ccmpetent, unlike his fellow apprentice, Mickey the wererat (seen in the background.)
The whole book is set in an imaginary fairy kingdom called Tellosia that I first imagined in the 1980’s.
It all reveals the character of somebody like me who lives most of the important parts of his life entirely in his own stupid head. I have always been a quiet introvert like Bob in this story. Not loud and proud. Just quiet and capable. I am much more comfortable writing my truth in a story like this one rather than being a newsman, celebrity, or actor. Not that I couldn’t have forced myself to succeed in one of those jobs. But the front of the classroom was the closest to center stage I will ever need to be.
I draw pictures and tell stories. That works for the job of public school teacher. In fact, those abilities are useful in putting lessons across to students. But beyond that, I couldn’t go. I am like Bob, not somebody who can force his face in front of others for self-aggrandizement.
So the proof is not in the pudding like the pudding of the old saying that makes no sense to me. (Who ever found a rolled-up scroll with proof of anything on it at the bottom of their bowl of chocolate pudding? Even Jell-o pudding.) The proof is in my book.
Filed under announcement, novel, Paffooney
The Storyteller
The doctor looked at me with a pained and worried look on his pasty white face.
“Um, okay, I don’t know how to tell you this, but…”
“Well, if you don’t know how to tell it, then maybe you should look at the notes you made one more time.”
“Yes, okay, tell about your major symptoms one more time.”
“Well, Doc, I don’t seem to be able to explain anything to anybody without using complicated metaphors, similes, or timely literary allusions.”
“That’s why you began, “It was the best of times and the worst of times?” When you visited the first time, I mean.”
“Yes, with somber Dickensian overtures to the grim details of the London streets in summer. I didn’t feel like myself, since I live in Texas.”
I grinned at him and continued in a sad voice.
“And what’s worse, when I go to sleep, I dream dreams where there is a horrifying beginning, a mysterious ramble in the middle, and I can’t wake up until I have achieved a satisfactory conclusion.”
“I see.” the doctor said.
“Yes, first I see, then I take what I saw, and use the saw with hammer and nails to build a setting. And then I stir up some doughy memories and add highly conflicted seasoning, stir vigorously, and then bake it all into a plot.” I grinned as I said that sadly.
“Did you try the medicine I gave you last time?”
“Yes, I did. I read what I already red while I was writing, and the red pills helped me spot where the plot’s crankshaft was wobbling. A minor revision with the blue pills of clarity, and then a huge dose of the green pills of proofreading. After a while the engine of theme and meaning was purring.”
“Do I detect a bit of pun infecting your system?”
“No, I took the read pill while reeding.”
“Okay, I get it. A bit of dyslexia perhaps?”
“Possibly. Or perhaps pernicious practical punnery.”
“Ooh! Let’s hope it’s not that bad. Please continue.”
“It seems I have a lot of voices in my head. They are constantly telling me things about their lives. Sometimes deeply personal things. This one voice is a young girl who reminds me distinctly of a student I had back in 1994 and 1995. She was a very strong-minded young woman who definitely got her head together around the time she was thirteen and fourteen. She may have had a slight crush on me. But she had a hard time with a number of tough hands that life had dealt her in the poker game for all the marbles. It was a sort of extended poker game with the old Devil himself. And she was losing. But with a little bit of advice from me, and a whole lot of life lessons from her to me, she learned how to beat the old Devil himself. And this time the Devil was not just in the details, but also at the poker table of Life. And he cheats. But she beat him anyway. And I found I had so many things and notes and story-parts from that, that I needed to write a book about it. And when I did, it was never enough. I had to write another and another.”
“Yes, I believe I am getting the whole picture now. By the way, that’s Valerie in the picture, isn’t it?”
“It’s supposed to be, yes.”
“I see. …But leave the saw on the table, Mickey.”
“So… so, what is the matter with me, Doc?”
“Well, I hate to break it to you like this, but you want me to be completely honest with you, don’t you?”
“Yes, just give it to me straight, Doc.”
“The bad news is, Mickey, that you are an incurable novelist. You can’t help yourself at this point. You are seriously infected with storytelling.”
“Is it fatal, Doc?”
“Probably. You will definitely have this disorder until the day you die. There is no cure. There is only editing, editors, and the joy of publishing that can help you now. You just have to take it one day at a time, one story after another, from now until the final chapter ends.”
After that, I felt better. There was no cure, but at least I knew the prognosis.
Filed under humor, irony, metaphor, novel plans, novel writing, Paffooney, self pity, self portrait
Architecture for Clowns
Try not to be upset with me for drawing a naked lady. You see, she is not really a lady, she is a caryatid, a stone pillar for holding up a building. Besides, I have been recently very ill, and drawing naked ladies makes me happy, even though it is a sin and means I will probably burn in hell. I am a hopeless sinner in this regard. I got kicked off Pinterest for liking an oil painting of a naked lady. I think it was a painting by William Adolphe Bouguereau. How could I be so terrible? You should check out my post about his sinful, horrible paintings so you can see how terrible I am for yourself. (Bouguereau) 
Of course, This post is not about naked ladies at all, so why am I fuming and ranting and telling all my darkest secrets about that?
This post is about architecture, about giving structure to things, about holding things together and holding things up. Is it clever that I drew this picture of an ornate pillar and placed it in this post so it looks like it is standing on later paragraphs and holding up the introduction? I find weird surrealist things like that help me write stuff that makes a few people laugh. It helps me because I can focus on nonsensical side-stuff like that (mixed up with obscure puns and alliterations like “pillar” and “placed” that, when cooked together with goofy rhythms in over-long sentences end up sounding funnier than they really are), and then I can say stuff that is actually funny because I don’t realize how wrong, or weird, or silly some of these words I am futzing it all up with truly are. (And I am amazed that the Pinterest police haven’t come and kicked me off WordPress for using a word like “futzing”, even though they don’t know what it means. Heck, even the spell-checker didn’t object to the word!)
But someone like me who is trying to be funny needs structure more than anyone else you can think of. Why? Because the sad-clown-crying-on-the-inside is so very true. The dark dips of depression… pain, illness, and more pain… family stress from others in my family who also suffer… That’s what makes the laughing so very necessary. You need the lighter stuff to fill up the room (somewhat like a really big fart) because you depend on the sheer buoyancy of it to lift the entire house up and keep it from sinking to the very center of the earth. (And the stink of it can also help keep you awake when otherwise you might never get out of bed again)… (But please don’t light any matches around my house.)
So, in conclusion, this stuff I write does have basic structures, basic rules. It has a beginning, a middle, and an end. It has a theme, a point that needs to be made, And then it needs to end with some kind of a kicker line or punch line… because when that finally hits me square in the face (like a pie thrown by a pie-whacker clown), it helps me remember… I am still alive, and I can still laugh about it.
Filed under humor, Paffooney, surrealism
He Rose on a Golden Wing… Canto 2
Chopin – Etude Op. 10 No. 1 (Waterfall)
It was an evil plan, a wickedness the boys would never see coming. But Valerie knew it was a necessary plan. She made them go by foot. You could reach the skinny-dipping pond by foot if you followed the tracks out south of town, past Uncle Dash’s farm and past the Sumpter Park Woods where the city of Norwall maintained a shelter house with picnic tables and a manicured lawn that led to trails into the woods and eventually to the old Sumpter log cabin, what was left of it.
There was an old ox-bow pond that once had been connected to the Iowa River, but now was a separate body of water coming out of an artesian spring that brought fresh water from the shared river water table.
“Really? We’re going to the old Pirates’ skinny-dipping place?” Ricky Porter asked skeptically.
“It’s too late in the year for swimming, Val,” Billy Martin reminded her. “October is too cold in Iowa.”
“You really think I would make you come this far just for a chance to see you guys naked? Again?”
“When did you ever see me naked?” asked Billy. At eighteen he was a rather bony and skinny youth. And he was so painfully shy that Val had not even seen him in swimming trunks.
“Okay, well… I wasn’t referring to you.”
“I only go in if you do,” Ricky said to her. He had dared her like that once before, though she had seen his golden-brown, muscled form and then successfully backed out of going in herself.
“We didn’t come here for that,” she answered with a frown. “I needed to talk to you both. I had another one of those dreams again last night. I spent the whole night crying.”
“The angel dreams again?” Billy asked, wide-eyed.
“Michel Volant, yes.”
“You know we’re here for you, Val. We’re your friends and fellow Pirates,” Ricky said.
“But you also know how much it hurts to talk about Francois,” Billy said, tears already forming in his eyes.
Valerie looked him squarely in the eyes. She knew he would see exactly what she meant.
“Oh, gawd, Val, you haven’t been hurting yourself already have you?” Billy asked, his voice quavering slightly.
“Not this time. But you know those dreams usually mean another black depression is coming on. And you know what we have to do about it.”
“Yeah. We promised to always tell each other if we ever had those kinds of thoughts again.” Ricky’s eyes were tearing up again too. Val was aware he had cut himself on the ankles more than any of them had ever done themselves self-harm. He was the one who had spent a week in the hospital two years ago.
“Have you been thinking about hurting yourself, Val?” Billy asked.
“Maybe. That’s why we had to talk today and not wait any longer.”
“Is it… is it Francois again?”
“Billy, we can talk about Tommy this time. I just need to hear it again. I just know if we don’t do something about the ones we lost…”
“…To keep them alive in our hearts, yeah,” said Ricky.
“You know I can’t tell you anything about Tommy. I never met him. I spent the whole blizzard down in the cellar next to the furnace while it burned propane.” Billy looked sadly across the wind-rippled water.
“What do you want to know about Tommy? I don’t know everything, but I knew him a few years longer than you did.” Ricky’s eyes were glistening.
“You haven’t heard from him since the blizzard, have you?” She asked.
“You know I would tell you if I had. Besides, he didn’t take anybody’s phone number with him.”
“He could’ve looked us up. He knows you were taken in by Cliff Baily and his new wife. He knows I live in town with my mother.”
“Yeah, but that’s not Tommy’s style. He survived on the road because he always lived in the moment. He was focused on where he was and the people he was with… in the NOW.”
“Yeah. I remember him that way too.”
“What more do you really want to know about him, Val?”
“Why did you boys follow him all the way to Norwall?”
“Well… um, I… Yeah…”
“You can tell me. No matter how hard it may seem, Ricky. We’re Pirates, you and I. You can tell me anything.”
“Are we still Norwall Pirates?” Billy asked. “We haven’t had a club meeting in two years. And you made your little cousin, Tim Kellogg, the new Pirate leader.”
“You did? You didn’t tell me?”
“Oh, Ricky. You left the Pirates before Billy and I did. They are all younger kids now. We’re old. Almost adults.”
“Yeah, but… Once a Pirate, always a Pirate.”
“We’ll always be a part of it. The club was started by my cousin Brent Clarke, and he says he’s still a Pirate. It’s just that the Pirates belong in the control of the Norwall kids, so they learn to rely on each other, and form the team that helps us all survive the perils of the unknown.”
Ricky and Billy both smiled and laughed a little at that. They knew it was true just as surely as Valerie did.
“We’re off topic now, Rick,” Billy said. “You promised her to tell her why you followed Tommy here to Norwall.”
“Yeah… um… You know that most kids in the foster care system get abused one way or another…”
“Yeah, Tommy told me that too… during the blizzard.”
“We didn’t form the Fantastic Foursome just by getting on that Trailways bus together. Terry and I met in the group home. He had nobody to talk to him in his previous foster homes… because nobody spoke sign language.”
“Did you know sign when you met him?” Billy asked.
“Terry taught me. He needed someone to talk to desperately. And I learned fast.”
“Faster than you taught it to me?”
“Well, yeah… You’re kinda a slow learner, Billy.”
“Okay, but that don’t mean I ain’t smart.”
“Of course, not,” Valerie said.
“Well, you can see what Terry’s real father did to him if you look at his burned ears. His father was the reason he was deaf.”
“And what about Tommy and Dennis?” Val asked.
“Well, you remember Denny had those crutches. He got that way from malnourishment. His first fosters only had him to get the money the State paid. They practically starved him to death. The mom of that family went to jail for it. Denny probably would’ve died if Brikkleputti… I mean, Mom, hadn’t followed us all the way to Norwall with the medicine Denny and I both needed.”
“Is Denny still alive, you think?”
“Sure, Val. If Tommy’s alive, and I know he is, he wouldn’t have let anything happen to Denny. He loved him like a little brother.”
“He loved all three of you like that.”
“Yeah, he did. That’s why he left us here when he left for Dallas. He took Denny with him, but he left me with Cliff and Mom to be a family like I never had before. And the Dawes family wanted to adopt Terry too. He left us behind for our own good.”
“But why was Tommy running away to begin with?”
“Well… the last foster family he lived with, they… beat him. And when he finally got strong enough to fight back, the cops came and took Tommy and locked him up… not that crazy old man who beat him.”
“Yeah, Tommy told me about that too.”
“And what about you, Ricky?” Billy asked.
“Well, I… uh… maybe I ain’t ready to talk about that just yet.”
“The Teddy Bear Killer?” Val asked.
“Yeah, don’t even say his name, please.”
“I know what you mean. I… um… I can’t talk about Daddy Kyle, either.”
“But, Val, what did we even come here for, then?” Billy asked.
“We gotta talk about the hard things. All three of us,” said Ricky. “We all are hurting inside almost all of the time.”
“Yeah, and that’s why we’re here instead of trying to meet in Zoomboogadoo. This pond is touched by magic, just like the gazebo in Zoomboogadoo.”
“No, that’s not a real place. We didn’t actually meet Francois and his sister in dreams. That was all just us imagining it. And Ricky wasn’t even able to meet us in the Dreamlands… not even once.” Billy was visibly upset.
“You are never going to convince me that Zoomboogadoo wasn’t real. I remember it too vividly.”
“But dreams can be vivid sometimes, and still not real,” reminded Ricky.
“All right. But this place is magic too. I have come here more than once to talk to Clovis. You just have to be in the right state of mind.”
“Val, there is no Clovis. He’s just a story they tell in the Pirates’ meetings to explain the disappearance of Conrad Doble. You said yourself, it was old Mrs. Haire that scared him away for good. He didn’t turn into no naked kid with horns and a tail.” It was Ricky’s turn to look visibly upset.
“Yeah, well… we need to stay ahead of the depression and the suicidal thinking. We are not any of us ever going to hurt ourselves again. That doesn’t cure the problems that are causing us pain.”
“You’re right, Val,” said Billy.
“Yeah, we gotta talk it all out,” said Ricky.
“Yeah. And we’re gonna do it here, by the skinny-dipping pond. And we’re gonna do it naked. That’s the evil plan.”
“What?” Both boys were upset.
“You remember how it was in Zoomboogadoo,” said Valerie, looking straight into the eyes of Billy. “We all showed up there in our dreams with no clothes on. Like we were born into it. Innocent as babes.”
“That was just a dream,” Billy insisted.
“Yeah, and it wasn’t cold fall weather either, I bet,” said Ricky.
“That’s true. But that’s what will keep us from being seen and watched by the other Pirates. They only come here during skinny-dipping season.”
“What if we can’t do it? Get naked here… I mean,” said Billy with a stutter.
“And what if we don’t want to do it?” Ricky added.
“Well, we’ll take it slow. It is not because of sex or wanting to see each other naked. It’s about being completely honest and open. No barriers. If we don’t help each other when the darkness returns to our brains, someone else will die. And I can’t lose anybody else in my life. I need to add people, not lose them.” All three of them saw the dark clouds coming on the horizon in the mind’s eye. At least, Val was almost positive they did. And the one advantage the Pirates had over other people who get darkly depressed and suicidal was that they had each other. These three friends, at least, actually knew each other better than most friends ever do. And soon they would be inside each other’s heads in ways that Valerie simply knew would help.
Filed under Depression, empathy, novel, NOVEL WRITING, Paffooney
On a Frosty Morning
Yes, there was frost on the ground in the Dallas suburbs today. A bit of fog too. And I mean that both literally and figuratively, in a very Robert Frost-ian sort of way. The air was clean and cold and crisp for a change. I could see, hear, breathe, and think well for a change in this gawd-awful city of death and decay. It was poetically, virtually, and monumentally a moment of clarity… such clarity that only three adjectives could possibly be enough to provide the complex understanding of my Robert Frost moment.
My typical apology for living, and for writing this, and for making you read it comes in the second paragraph today. You have to forgive me for being so much of an English teacher. Do you know who Robert Frost is? Frost is a great american poet who won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry four times in the 20th Century. Does that really tell you who Frost is? Of course not. Only this does;
The Road Not Taken
a poem by Robert Frost
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,,
And that has made all the difference.
Yes, like Robert Frost, I took the road less traveled by in life. Having a gift for creative writing, drawing cartoons, and generally being seriously silly and obtuse (and claiming that meant I was funny), I chose to not be a novelist and cartoonist when I was young. I chose to be a school teacher. Of course, if you pin me down and ask me, requiring me to answer before you let me up, and threatening to spit on my nose if I don’t answer, I will tell you that God really decided I needed to be a teacher. After all, I developed arthritis that effected how often and how long I could spend drawing. I had the usual novelist’s problem of a keen awareness of how to write, and no real life experiences to write about. But even though it was a holy mission from God, it was my own decision to become a teacher.
And look what I got from it.
This is a picture of Freddy. I started this picture in 1986, drawing the portrait from a photo and from real life. Freddy was a vato loco from Cotulla. He is the sort of kid that teachers dread. He is the kind that if you let him sit in the back of the room, he will shoot spit-wads into the girls’ hair… but if you put him up front, he is constantly putting on a show, a stand-up-sit-down-again comedy routine for the entire classroom. And I had the honor of being his favorite teacher both in his seventh and eighth grade years. He made me laugh almost as much as he was laughing at me. He claimed he was a Mexican even though he was born in the U.S. and has always lived in the U.S. and if he goes to Mexico, they won’t understand his Texican version of Spanish without an interpreter. (Now, you probably already know that I never use real names of people I write about in order to protect the innocent… or in Freddy’s case the only-mildly-guilty. But I haven’t actually revealed his name in this post. Alfredo Giovanni is such a common name in Texas that you will never be able to find him through research. And Alfredo Giovanni is a name I made up anyway.) By the time I actually put the color on this picture, Freddy will no longer look even remotely like this. He’s in his late forties and Hispanic. He probably weighs at least ten times what his tiny self did back in 1986. But I was honored to know him and teach him, even though I have more than a few gray hairs on my head that he specifically caused.
And that brings me to my final movement in this classical opus. Here is the difference I have made by choosing the path I chose. Now that poor health has forced me to retire from teaching, and I have a limited time left to me to pick up the novelist/cartoonist thing again, I have done so with passion and insight that I would not otherwise have had. I have crafted a novel in The Magical Miss Morgan based entirely on my experiences as a classroom teacher. It is the best thing I have ever written in my life. And one of the main characters, the rapscallion leader of the Pirates’ Club, Timothy Kellogg… is Freddy in fictional form.
Oh, it is true that the character is the son of a high school English teacher in my story, and he does have a lot in common with my own oldest son… but he is actually Freddy. The things he does and says (translated from Texican into Iowegian) and thinks and feels, are all Freddy. And how do I know what Freddy thinks and feels? Come on! I was Freddy’s favorite teacher. There is no way I would still be alive and sane unless I could read minds.
Two roads diverge on a frosty morning pathway in the park… One over the bridge into an entirely different life that I didn’t choose… and one that leads straight on into the new dawn… whatever the consequences of following it.
Filed under humor, Paffooney, philosophy, teaching
People All Have Worth
I know that you are probably immediately listing all the reasons that my title is totally wacky monkey-thinking in your head. And if you want to lay into me in the comments, you are more than welcome. But the reality is that teachers have to develop the mindset that all kids can learn and all people have value… no matter what. That can be hard to accept when you factor in how corrupted, warped, and badly-taught so many people have turned out to be. It honestly seems, sometimes, that when faced with the facts of how people act… being violent, or greedy, self-centered, thoughtless, un-caring, and willfully stupid… that they really don’t even have value to others if you kill them, let them rot, and try to use them as fertilizer. The plants you fertilize with that stuff will come up deformed.
But the Doctor I have pictured here, the Second Doctor played by Patrick Troughton always seemed to find Earth people delightful. Alien people too, for that matter, unless they were soulless mobile hate receptacles in robotic trash cans like the Daleks, or mindless machines powered by stolen human brains like the Cybermen. There is, indeed, music in every soul, even if some of it is a little bit discordant and awkward. And people are not born evil. The classic study done on Brazilian street kids showed that even with no resources to share and living empty, hopeless lives, the children helped one another, comforted one another, and refused to exploit one another. As a teacher you get to know every type that there is. And there are stupid kids (deprived of essential resources necessary to learning), and evil kids (lashing out at others for the pain inflicted upon them), and needy kids (who can never get enough of anything you might offer and always demand more, MORE, MORE!) Sometimes they drive you insane and make you want to resign and leave the country to go count penguins in Antarctica. But the Doctor is right. No matter what has been done to them, if you get to know them, and treat them as individual people rather than as problems… they are delightful! 
So let me show you a few old drawings of people.
Cute people like Andrew here.
Or possibly stupid and goofy people who never get things right.
Or long-dead people who made their contributions long ago, and sacrificed everything to make our lives different… if not better.
Or young people who live and learn and hopefully love…
And try really hard at whatever they do… whether they have talent or not.
And hope and dream and play and laugh…
And sometimes hate… (but hopefully not too much)…
And can probably tell that I really like to draw people…
Because God made them all for a reason…
even if we will never find out what that reason is.
Filed under art my Grandpa loved, humor, Paffooney, philosophy
“Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune”
When I was a teenager and suffering from a terrible secret, I first began to see and hear invisible people. I know this is not normal. In fact, it comes under the heading of “wacko-stupid-maniac-loony”. The first one was my friend the faun. Now, for those of you who do not know, a faun is a mythological creature in the shape of a man (or possibly boy, or even little girl) with the legs and tail and horns of a goat (or possibly kid). This creature is a sensual being in the Dionysian tradition. Wine, women, and song so to speak.
When he first came to me it was a snowy winter’s night, long about December of my 17th year. At that time I was still repressing the memory of what happened to me out behind the neighbor’s house when I was ten. But I guess I knew I needed help in reaching out to others. I was lonely and convinced that for some terrible unknown reason I was a horrible creature not worthy of love. Then he came rapping at my window. He was kneeling there in the snow, outside my upstairs bedroom window, on the roof of the front porch of the house, naked except for the goat fur on his legs. But he wasn’t shivering. After all, he wasn’t real. No one but me would ever see him. He was grinning at me.
“You aren’t going to leave me out here in the snow, are you, stupid?” he said.
“Who and what are you?” I asked, as I opened the window. The snow was shining with a silvery, blue-white light that originated with the street light out in front of the house.
“I am Radasha,” he said. “I am your faun… the part of you that feels things and needs things… the part of you you have stupidly been pretending doesn’t exist.”
All right, I know it sounds crazy. But I needed him in my life. Elwood P. Dowd had an invisible white rabbit. Why couldn’t I have a faun? And it was a very, very good thing. He taught me how to laugh, and how to love… how to actually live. And I know he has always been inside me, not really separate from me. In many ways he is the real me. But crazy people have their own set of priorities. And when I was a confused teenager whose personal self-concept had been sexually violated by another, older boy… Radasha was mine. An invisible friend to talk to. One who could explain everything… make me laugh and make me happy. And there is a sound to that. Do you know the piece by Debussy that this post is titled after? It is my favorite piece of music in all the world. And it tells the sweet-sad story of Radasha and me.
Filed under classical music, Paffooney
Catch a Falling Star 