So, now I probably have skin cancer. This will be the first time since I won a battle with malignant melanoma in 1983 that a mole needed to be removed and was potentially cancerous. It is already treated. The dermatologist already used freeze spray on the site on my right temple. She froze a portion of my head to kill the cancer. Not a good thing for the thing I need most to think with. But hopefully preventing a spread of more deadly things to be discovered later. I get a biopsy on July 13th. Thank God it doesn’t happen on a Friday too.
Ouch! It hurts to get your head frozen.
But if that horrible two-part black thing makes me suffer a while before turning me into compost in an urn somewhere, I won’t be the only one punching my train ticket to Pandemonium, the capitol of Hell. Putin in Russia is not only losing a war, but he has a little civil war on the side. Talk about having a full plate of spaghetti. And the Texas heat isn’t evidence of the world ending in fire due to climate change. The Republican party refuses to let that stuff be true because 3% of all climate change scientists are still holding the matter open for debate. Joel tells me that the 3% Trumps all 97% of the rest of scientists and proves that it is all a Chinese/Democrat conspiracy to destroy our wonderful fossil fuel industry.
So, since we are all gonna die anyway, here’s a few thoughts about what we can do with our remaining pre-apocalypse months.
PLEASE BUILD MORE GODDAM SOLAR PANELS AS FAST AS YOU CAN!!!
Let’s also get used to living in very different ways. Learn to live in atmosphere-enclosed domes
There will need to be underwater city-domes where they are safer from hurricanes and tornados and raging wild fires.
We will need to learn to desalinate and deacidify seawater.
6. We will need to create and manage fish farms and sea-plant farms for food in the refined waters of the United States of Oceania.
7. We will need to learn to travel between underwater, surface water, through the air, into outer space, and onto the surfaces of the Moon and Mars.
8. And living in space like Han Solo and Captain Kirk.
Things will simply not be the same. Of course, if we all don’t learn to do these things, we will have to adjust to being dead… even extinct. Being extinct stinks.
Yes, he’s at it again. Silly old Mickey in his birthday suit is writing metaphorically about nudity, nakedness, and naturism. The gross old coot has to do something to survive the Texas heat.
You are probably thinking, and rightly so, that since the crazy old bird was a school teacher for 31 years, and a school student for 18 years before that to become one, he’d be a bit more circumspect about his teacher-honor than to be going around promoting public nudity on his silly little blog again. And you’d be right. This society we now live in doesn’t seem like it is going to approve public nudity generally anytime soon. Most places around the USA make it illegal to go outside your house in nothing but the skin you were born in. You can be arrested for public indecency. Especially if you are ugly when you are naked.
You know it didn’t used to be that way. The ancient Greeks were wild about public nudity. It was the rule for competing in the Olympics and doing business in the agora in the downtown of every Greek metropolis. In fact, the schools that ancient-Greek Mickey would have taught in required the students to be naked for half the day at the very least as they attended school. Of course, those laws only applied to boys. Nobody really wanted to see a naked girl back then. Unless she was made of marble and depicted Aphrodite. They were wild about her naked carcass.
But Mickey learned that being a teacher in the 20th and 21st Century schools of Texas was all about being metaphorically naked.
It’s true. College speech teachers would tell you that, to overcome stage fright on the first day of class, you needed to imagine your students were naked to put yourself at ease, feeling superior because you were dressed and they were not.
But Mickey looked out at those classes of 25 to 30 students, unwashed, feral, and completely hormone-fueled, and realized they really were naked… metaphorically. Even with what passed for clothing on their sweaty little monster bodies, you could still see every naked fault, attitude, indiscretion, and sometimes beauty about them, even when packed in layers with a snowsuit on top. But it never snowed in South Texas back then anyway. They were as good as naked all the time. You could literally see which ones were evil, which were shrinking violets, which were hungry predators, and which ones were imagining the teacher naked to swing the advantage over to themselves.
And teaching entire classrooms full of naked twelve-to-seventeen-year-olds, you learned to understand what their needs really were. You could see their naked shame at not being able to read as well as the smart girls in class. You could see which ones were bullied in school and probably belittled even at home. And you learned to love them… even the bad ones… in a non-inappropriate way. Teacher love. Because they were naked. Metaphorically. At least, that’s what stupid Mickey thought.
And being metaphorically naked means many things at once. In their unarmored form, naked people are vulnerable. They are also not hiding anything under disguises or costumes that make you think they are something they are not. That leather jacket on that metaphorically naked little boy doesn’t hide the fact that he’s insecure about his male peers thinking he is only acting tough because he’s trying to hide the fact that he may be gay. Or that naked little girl in the tight blue jeans and shirt two sizes too small is afraid that she will never find love amongst the male orangutans and gorillas she is most fascinated by.
And naked angels in European art in the Middle Ages symbolized metaphorically, purity and innocence. And some of the naked angels in Mickey’s classes were also metaphorically innocent, no matter how many times they may have goofed up and lost a bit of their innocence.
And they are especially metaphorically naked when they write in their journals, something Mickey made them do at least three days out of five every week. Mickey told them he would read them when he graded them, that they only had to get the two hundred words written in each entry to get an easy 100 percent. And Mickey emphasized that he would read them and not tell anybody else about what they wrote unless they volunteered to have the best stuff read out loud. And, boy howdy! When they told Mickey what they wanted him to know about their naked little lives, it was often stuff that could embarrass Marine Corps drill sergeants, longshoremen, and undercover vice cops. Extremely naked information… metaphorically.
And so, stupid Mickey thought that, just maybe… being metaphorically naked might be good for you. Cathartic and cleansing. And freeing in a way that can only be appreciated by someone who has long been repressed and imprisoned by lingering trauma and fear like Mickey secretly knew something about. Yes, the difference between being metaphorically and literally naked was not very great at all.
And you know what that meant a stupid Mickey was going to think.
The angel of writing inspiration is angry with me. It has been too long since I buckled down to writing some WIP words every day. I used to do at least 500 words a day on the work in progress at the very least. Today, there were no words added to The, Education of Poppensparkle, He Rose on a Golden Wing, or The Haunted Toy Store. Three possible WIPs unfinished and available for daily attention. All of them are well along, but all of them have not been touched in three weeks. I haven’t written anything today but this post.
Susano, the angel of writing inspiration, doesn’t accept the fact that my health issues have been getting in the way. While it’s true I may have skin cancer once again, he points out that I have often coped with health worries in the past by losing myself in a good story.
So, what do I do? He looks like a small boy that I could maybe beat in an arm-wrestling match, but he IS an angel. He has special heavenly strength that I can’t possibly compete with. So, tomorrow… Buckle down, old Mickey, buckle down!
Today I went to the dermatologist. The doctor and her assistant were both ladies. Both young enough that they could’ve been former students. And, of course, they needed to look at and survey my bare skin… all of it. Sometimes it is good to have experience as a nudist. And they gave me a cloth to drape over me in the most personal places. Of course they had to look at all of my skin. Eczema, psoriasis, and shingles don’t respect your privacy.
I have been a writer long enough that I have no secrets left anyway. Even the fiction I write reveals more of me than I would be comfortable telling the word about just five years ago. For instance, the picture above, of me naked, is not really what I looked like. My parents never let me wear my hair that long. And by the time I was eleven, I struggled to take my clothes off even at bed and bath times… after being assaulted. And the Belmond tornado. And the death of my Grandpa Beyer, And President Kennedy being shot, and the Apollo 1 astronauts burning up in the command module capsule. All of which happened around the time I was between ages seven to ten.
But as my dermatology team was surveying the various bumps and blots and warts and whatnots all over my old carcass, they found a spot on my right temple that is definitely pre-cancerous, and may be actual cancer. In three weeks I may need a biopsy. But for today, I got freeze spray sprayed on the side of my head. Yes, they froze part of my head to kill the potential cancer cells. And that kinda hurts when they freeze a chunk of the old gourd you think with all the time.
Will I die from this? It’s possible. But we live in an age when technology has made survival more probable, especially when you already have that sweet Medicare money that the Republicans and Ted Cruz are so desperate to take away from me.
But you have to understand. I am in no hurry to be dead. But I don’t fear it either.
Mark Twain pointed out that he had been dead for billions of years before he was born and was never inconvenienced by it. Not even a little bit. And I am of the same opinion. Looking back at the time before I was born, all those past lives… being a crocodile with bad teeth… living in Patagonia with a seabird and an iguana… and that time in the Great Nebula… But I’ve already told you more of my secrets than you probably want to know. So, if you want to know the truth, the chess board is ready. And if the Grim Reaper wants to play me again, I’ve thought of a few gambits he’s probably not aware of. As long as the chicken refuses to give him hints on what moves to make.
This post was originally created in 2020 when my father was dying. It gave comfort to most of my family as the pandemic was raging and my father couldn’t even remember my mother. We had a Zoom funeral that I watched in Texas while they mourned him in Iowa. A year later, my mother passed away as well. She just couldn’t last any longer without him. It still makes me cry to hear these. But it also brings them back to life for me, if only for a moment.
My father is going into hospice care. Parkinson’s disease is winning against him. I am stuck in Texas until the results of my COVID 19 test come back. Needless to say, my heart is broken. I need magic to fix it now. Where do you find that kind of power? This is where I am looking today.
These are acapella songs. No instruments. Only voice. It comes straight from the heart. Out through the mouth and into the ever-present ether. Life may come to an end, but the sound of it continues… never-ending. Even God does not make a song unsung once it has been made real.
I have been watching these videos on my laptop, lying on my sickbed, and crying at the beauty, the truth, and the depths of sadness in my soul. It hurts to lose a parent. My father was born in 1930. In October of this year, his life-song will reach 90 years of age. It hurts now. But songs are never unsung once they finish. In this I find comfort.
I hope you will actually listen to these. I add a lot of music to my posts, and I never notice any reports of someone clicking on the videos. But these musicians; Pentatonix, Home Free, Peter Hollens, and BYU Vocal Point all have that magic… the power to both lift you up towards God and to make you weep for the bittersweet tragedy that is the experience of being alive and knowing… well, that every book has a final chapter, every song has a final note, and every life…
I don’t have to finish that thought, do I? Now is a proper time for sadness, for trepidation, for listening to music like this… and for remembering love. And I am not through crying just yet.
Since I originally posted this musical essay, my father passed away on my birthday in 2020. My mother did not last a year without him, rejoining him in September of 2021. I can’t listen to any of these songs now without weeping. But it is a good cry. It fills me up with the song of life. Who knows what tomorrow will bring? But today… today I am filled with the music of lives well-lived. He was 89. She was 87.
I have been struggling to get writing done since the last time I had Covid. I have been feeling like I have lost my mojo after being sick with it twice in 2022. But I am getting better a little at a time. I got work done on two different books this last week.
Most of it was work on the book Naked Thinking. I have been wallowing in the poetry, philosophy, and obsession of being naked. It is very much a book of ideas, with naked metaphors and nudes in the artwork.
And I have reached the halfway point on The Haunted Toy Store. That goofy thing is a humorous story with ghosts in it where the people who go into the store turn out not to be the customers, but rather, the toys. It’s a hoot to write. And I should be done with it by now.
Believe it or not, I am writing again. Almost regularly.
The question arises from this most recent illustration I drew, “Are you saying, Mickey, that kids can learn better if they go to school naked?”
No! Are you crazy?
I used to teach middle school students. Can you imagine kids from this current modern culture being given license to come to school starkers if they wish to do it? In the middle school world of half-brained sub-intellectuals passing judgement on everything? Especially judgments about appearance and attractiveness… or non-attractiveness? With brains fueled by hormones and the questionable values taught by TV and movies? Chaos! Fires being lit! Real and metaphorical! Windows being broken! Derisive laughter! Tears and sobbing from the offended! And that would just be the teachers.
But the truth is, if we look at the studies of B.F. Skinner and his recommendations for child-rearing in his Utopian propositions in the book Walden Two, children not taught to be ashamed of their nakedness from early on would develop more peacefully and naturally into perceptive and intelligent learners if allowed to be openly and happily naked.
Skinner, an experimental scientist, believed everything in life should conform to findings from scientific observations and scientific experiments. How loony is that? Why would we do something that is practical, natural, and beneficial just because it might enhance your ability to learn and enjoy your experience of the world?
In my illustration, I was actually intending to convey a notion of the relationship of openness and innocence to learning. The two children sharing the big danged book on the floor are nude because they are willing to approach the material with a sensory receptivity that can only be hampered by the barriers and limits we put on ourselves, like the clothing that we shield and limit our bodies with. So, I would never suggest it was appropriate to learn things while naked. Or even that, with the right training and cultural shifts, that going to school naked would be a good thing.
Even I have nightmares about being naked in school. In my dreams I sometimes dream about forgetting to put on clothes before going in front of a hostile classroom to teach something they all find boring and awful… while I am naked and awful myself. I still have that nightmare even now that I am retired.
No, I would never suggest that. Unless, somehow, you can suggest something by not suggesting it. Surely I am not tricksy enough to try to do anything like that. And remember, I was an actual teacher in an actual classroom for many years where I merely thought of them all as naked, because kids are all transparent about their lives and motivations and can’t keep a secret even if they didn’t want me to know everything about them, even the bad kids, and even things they wanted to hide from the teacher.
Communicating with a wife is complicated. In fact, I couldn’t do the whole writer-think thing about that topic without writing a book. But I can successfully ruminate for about 500 words on the that awkward first encounter, the first time I ever was embarrassed in front of a non-sister girl.
In grade school I met my first crush in kindergarten. Alicia Stewart was a honey-sweet little brown-haired girl with a bow in her hair. I was a boy. I was not allowed to like girls. Hating them was the only thing that made sense to my friends and I. But, secretly, I didn’t hate Alicia. In fact, if I was ever to be doomed to be married when I grew up, I would’ve only accepted that horrible fate if it was with her. And in my small town school I saw her practically every school day. In fact, in Miss Malkin’s music class on Tuesdays and Thursdays I sat right next to her in Miss Malkin’s seating chart for six years.
In Miss Malkin’s music class we always did musical stuff like listening to classical records, singing songs for the yearly musical review concert (we did the songs from the musical The Music Man one year… you don’t get more musicky than that), and we did square dancing. Yeah, you heard that right. Square dancing. You had to have a girl for a partner. And one year, Miss Malkin decided it would be cute to have the boys ask the girls to be their partners. Now, as boys… in top secret boy-conversations, we had generally agreed that if such a problem would ever occur, Alicia Stewart was the only acceptable choice. We all hated girls. But we all were secretly in love with Alicia. She was girl-hating-boy approved. When I was twelve, there was another girl that was making me uncomfortable too. Marla Carter was nine when I was twelve. She had big brown eyes and dimples. Her face was somehow heart-shaped, and only Alicia could make my palms sweat any worse than she did. But in top secret boy-conversations it was ruled that she was a booger-eating little girl and totally toxic. Well, I didn’t totally agree, but I was still subject to all girl-hating directives.
“Okay,” Miss Malkin said, “the boys will now pick their partners… one at a time in alphabetical order.”
My last name began with the letter “B”, but my best friend Mark had a last name starting with “A”.
“I pick Alicia,” Mark said.
My heart sank. I had my pick of any girl besides Alicia. Marla was standing about four feet away from me, her hands folded together behind her back, looking at me with those puppy-dog eyes. My throat was too dry to speak.
“Um, ah… I can’t pick anyone…” I croaked. “You pick it, I will dance with it.”
“Now, don’t be like that, Michael. Get on with it!” Miss Malkin commanded. Everyone loved the music teacher, and so everyone obeyed her. I had to submit.
I looked at Marla, dug my toe into the floorboards, and said, “I choose my cousin Diane.”
Talking to girls has always been a matter of embarrassment. The words are always awkward and shaped not by my brain, but by my bowels. This fact has always been a hindrance to my dealings with the female species, but it has been an unending source of potential for writing humor.
Things are not so great right now. The recent doctor’s visit meant I have to start taking four new medications for diabetes, hypertension, and cholesterol. Which was actually a relief. Because I assumed when they called me to come in and talk about the blood tests in person, it meant the PSA test was showing a strong possibility of prostate cancer. And the list of possible side effects of the new drugs is half a mile long… for each one… ending with death as the last unfortunate side effect on every list.
And I was set up on my Chromebook to start learning to do digital art. I had a chance to use technology and a new touch-screen program to make up for the problems arthritic fingers are having on my artwork. But something fried my Chromebook while I was walking the dog a week ago. Nothing on the screen but a gray jumble, and the machine won’t reload or reset.
So, you can see, without the digital tools, I can’t do tennis shorts and shirts.
Damn! I have had a long life doing what I love. I am doing it wrong. Sorry, Alan.
But I sold more books this last two weeks than I have in the last three months. Six of theme. I know that’s a tiny drop in the bucket, but it’s better than two.
So, I have been complaining a lot about not being able to write much in a day. I got more done today than I have in a while. I guess learning that I am dying slowly of diabetes is better than knowing prostate cancer is going to take me out quick. Renewed writing energy! Small gifts from a large God I often don’t believe in. We take what gifts we are given.
Catch a Falling Star 