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Say the magic word.

I have always felt that any situation or problem can be resolved.

If only you can say the right words.

And if this is true in any real way,

I know it because I was an English teacher.

And I was made of words.

Not bullets. Not anger. Not violence. Not money. Not fear.

Only words. Good words. Honest words.

I-love-you words.

Today’s magic word is “Sunrise.”

Because if you see it tomorrow morning,

You have been given a gift that is priceless/

You have a new beginning.

Anything can happen and be accomplished. and be cherished.

So, when you have it, the magic is proof of the great Amen,

“Let it be so.”

I find myself still alive for some reason. I am in poor health, but able to stay alive relatively easily by being vigilant even though I am battling a urinary tract infection, which brought Jim Henson to his end of the creative process. But, since I am still alive, I can still create new stuff. Reason enough to celebrate.

I am currently working on a new Cissy Moonskipper novella called Cissy Moonskipper Meets the Nebulons. And I am also doing a lot of AI-assisted drawing. So, I am not completely done creating.

However, several unfinished projects need to be addressed before I die. A pair of novels, He Rose on a Golden Wing and Kingdoms Under the Earth have a lot to say about what I believe is important in the categories of Life and Love and Laughter. I also have an unfinished novella, The Education of Poppensparkle, and an almost complete novel The Haunted Toy Store. The fifth book in the AeroQuest series, It Ain’t Over Yet, still needs to be finished, and it might need to become two books. There is a lot to do, and probably very little time to do it.

I also have an idea to create Mickey’s First Book of Paffooneys. A Paffooney is an original drawing or artwork connected to a Short-Short Story or Essay. I confess it would be mostly a collection of cartoons. And yes, this Paffooney directly above is made with AI Mirror and a picture of a harlequin mask from Mardi Gras. I can’t help it. I am more creative than it is safe to be as an ordinary Earthling.

The song was a hit in 1973 when I was a high school sophomore, the time when I almost ended myself for the severe depression that the repressed memory of being assaulted at ten infected me with. And it was Jim Croce’s second number-one hit, top of the charts, released after he had already passed in a plane crash. It was a song about saving up time to spend with someone you loved more than life itself. A sad song, given the impossibility of putting time in a bottle, unfortunate considering Croce’s time ran out before the song even hit the airwaves.

We loved that song so much that it was the first choice for a Prom Theme the next year when I was a junior and in charge of the artwork for decorating the high school gym for Prom. Yes, doing all that art was one of the things that kept me from putting a knife in my own chest the previous Spring. I savored that song. I designed wall posters and backgrounds for the walls during the dance. And I did it all again when the theme was changed from “Time in a Bottle” to “The Circus.” I drew a leopard in a circus wagon life-sized. I captured a moment in time in tempura paint on a massive sheet of paper. I remember three of the girls fighting over the piece when the Prom was over. I wonder if someone still has that leopard somewhere. I don’t remember which girl won the fight.

My best friend in high school, Byron, who later went on to get a medical degree and become Dr. Bonte in Minnesota, is now gone. He died from muscular dystrophy a couple of decades ago. My mother and father are both gone now. Both of my father’s siblings, Aunt Jean and Uncle Skip, are also gone, along with their spouses. My mother’s older brother, Uncle Larry, is also long gone of cancer. In fact, my Uncle Don, and Uncle Larry’s wife are the only members of my parents’ generation in our family who are still living. They were all alive in 1973 when “Time in a Bottle” played at least five times a day on the Iowa rock and roll station on AM radio, WHO from Des Moines.

I guess all of that is in my Memory Bottle? I can’t actually spend any of the time with them. But I metaphorically can. And I have left the fruit of my experiences in 24 books so far, another Bottle Out of Time. 24 bottles metaphorically.

So, now that I am ill, almost seventy and definitely closer to the grave than the day of my birth, maybe I don’t need to despair. I can remember the song. I can open a bottle of vintage time. Somewhere it’s 1973 again. And someone is listening to a ghost voice on the radio singing,
“If I could save time in a bottle
The first thing that I’d like to do
Is to save every day till eternity passes away
Just to spend them with you“

That may be all we ever need to require of time. Once we’ve lived it, it is ours forever.

,

The planet is possibly doomed, definitely doomed if the Pumpkinhead President comes back into power. I am hoping that voters are smart enough not to give Don Cheetoh Trumpoloney a second term. But we have to face the fact that a large number of voters are conditioned by Fox News and Republican lies about how they will benefit by letting the oligarchs of American corporatocracy rob them blind laughing all the way to the poorhouse and… eventually the grave. While the lying fatcats and polluters move to Mars or underground bunkers with their ill-gotten gold.

I know that the odds have turned in our favor, the smarter folks, I mean, since Vice President Kamala Harris took over the campaign and blew up Democratic enthusiasm. Of course, the damage done since the Reagan Administration to our fragile environment may kill us all still. It still has to be reversed.

It is a time for gallows humor. I may not survive until the election. My fourth urinary tract infection this year nearly got me late Friday night. Do you realize that if you lose the ability to pee, your eyeballs fill up with yellow liquid and you will die of toxic shock, uremic poisoning, or sepsis in terrible ways they never tell you about in the cartoons where Huckleberry Hound’s eyeballs fill up with pee. I would end up de-lifed and not laughing, more like Jim Henson than Huckleberry Hound.

My sister Mary underwent chemotherapy on Wednesday. She is feeling miserable today. The doctors told her that she would be miserable until two-and-a-half weeks were up. And then when she gets to the three-week mark, she has to do it again. Every three weeks until the day before Thanksgiving. And then, when that last chemo is done taking all the laughter out of life, she will get the surgery that should rid her completely of the cancer. My sister, at least, gets the last laugh out of that one.

Truly, we have to keep laughing. We don’t give up. Every day is a fight for life. We must keep fighting and laughing, not go gentle into that good night… to paraphrase the Irish poet Dylan Thomas.

Oh, yeah, he said, “Rage! Rage against the dying of the light.” But I don’t rage. I laugh. Tragedy plus time… lots of time… equals comedy.

Flower Girl 2… Made from the same digital picture, with AI Mirror and Picsart AI Photo Editor

What will I do with this new picture? Well, prove that I can still draw well in pen and ink. A few flubs from shaky hands, but not glaringly awful. The story? That remains to be created.

Missteps are many as the dance begins,

No coins are in my pocket, but I can dance along.

Fortune rarely favors me, the stones are sharp directly underfoot.

I wonder how much longer the dance can last.

I know the tune, and it’s not overlong.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

And yet, I whirl and enjoy the swirl of color, tone, and movement.

The faun’s recorder tweets and croons a beautiful refrain.

I step and sway and feel okay as my old heart thumps along.

I will enjoy it while it lasts even though the time has quickly passed,

And, hopefully, I will still be dancing right up until the end.

I am still writing this novella as a part of my Tuesday novel-writing demonstration. But this next chapter proves a difficult lump of story to carve into shape. Partly because the younger of my two sisters has cancer and my damaged car has to get fixed and the dermatologist used her dermatologist’s cancer-spot freezer to spray both of my temples and freeze my stupid head. I have been interrupted by other things. But the plot function this next part addresses is clear in my head. I just need another week to sort it out… after my frozen head thaws out.

I was listening to the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra in Poland performing Edward Elgar’s Enigma Variations. Have you heard it? As classical music goes, it is thinking-candy. Honestly, I strongly recommend it.

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