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Yes, I’d have to say I am enjoying digital art. This portrait is nominally supposed to be Jenna Ortega. Of course, I did not make it look like her, even with an AI tool trying to help.

Here’s a digital update of “The Leap.” Do you remember what it looked like in colored pencil?

Remember Shannon who danced with me?

And “Basketball Player #3?

And KlownTown’s noble Piewhacker Police Department?

“The Spirit Stag?”

And “Rianna Going Bear”

Ah, I have been having a blast!!!

As a family, when our three kids were small, we were seriously addicted to camping. National parks, commercial campgrounds, and sometimes even in the back yard next to the pool. (We had a swimming pool until changing weather conditions changed that, cracking the pool and giving the city the excuse it needed to bully us into removing the pool and declaring bankruptcy over the expenses my week in the hospital after losing the argument with the city caused.) So, in the back yard it was okay to sleep naked outdoors and go skinny dipping in the pool accidentally in the middle of the night when you have to go into the house to pee. And it was great.

And even in national parks, you can get away with a bit of naked camping if you wait until after dark. And in Texas the risk of rattlesnakes was real. Except in one place we camped. Over East near Victoria, Texas there was a park with a man-made lake that had alligators in it… and water moccasins… and eagles flying above it. So, there were no rattlesnakes. The alligators and the eagles eat them. But the alligators and eagles don’t eat water moccasins. So, no skinny dipping after dark

We spent one Thanksgiving weekend at that park in Victoria with the gators, eagles, and water moccasins.

And we went with my in-laws, grandpa and grandma, and my sister-in-law and her second husband with their three kids and their fancy, air-conditioned motor home. And my parents, one of my two sisters, and my little brother and his wife, dedicated tent campers all. (And all of them dedicated to the idea of NOT being nudists.) It was an unusual Thanksgiving because my wife’s family is Filipino. And we had a lot of fried fish and fried hot dogs and friend stuff with Filipino names. And a turkey that my brother was determined to cook in an oil cooker that sat over the campfire which he had learned how to use at his place near Houston. The Thanksgiving campfire, oil-cooked-turkey experiment got flash-cooked in a sudden whoosh of unexpected fireballs, and the blackened bird meat ended up being a favorite of all the Filipinos. Myself, I was planning to eat hot dogs all along. I don’t like turkey. But it was a very warm November in Southeast Texas that year. And it was hot way late into the night. I was not allowed to sleep nude because… well, wife’s orders. She and my three kids left our tent every night before a half hour of tossing and turning in the humid heat had passed, and ended up in the motor home with the air conditioning. Leaving me to swelter in the tent alone. Which I didn’t do.

Having learned from the alien encounter in Iowa about the possibility of naked transcendental experiences, I spent four nights that holiday walking in my sleeping robe down to a picnic table on the shore of the lake. Water moccasins hunt in the water. So do alligators. So as long as I stayed at the picnic table on the land side, I could sit naked in the coolest night air available, occasionally glancing at the water hoping to see alligators whenever I heard a splashing. And I could look up at a star-filled, cloudless sky. And I thought about nothing, but felt everything. I was connected to the heart of the universe for four straight nights, and it cleansed my soul. I eventually felt cool enough to go back and sleep in the tent, but my mind stayed connected as I slept. And it was a memorable holiday experience for more reasons than just the blackened turkey story.

And most importantly, no relatives were mooned beyond their ability to cope with Mickey’s weirdness. Nobody even asked about it… almost as if no one had seen.

It Hin

I admit it. I do wear pajamas when it is cold. But I sleep best when it is cool and I am naked.

But one of the hard parts about being a closet nudist, only naked in complete privacy, preferably in the back of the closet, sleeping naked can also be hard on the old PTSD.

More than once I awoke in the middle of the night naked and paralyzed in fear. Before I got married, it was almost a monthly thing. I would wake up, feeling a presence in the room, a presence that would terrify me. And I was in a state of completely un-armored nakedness. Naked to fangs, claws, and knives. Of course, the intruder was never real, only a phantom created by too much cortisol in the bloodstream due to stress and the horrors of the assault I endured as a child.

One night my two sisters, my wife, my oldest son, my niece and nephew were all sleeping in the farmhouse in Iowa which, on a temporary basis, was empty of everything even furniture as my grandmother lived in the retirement apartments and my parents stayed with her as they still lived in Texas. We were all there on a summer holiday visit. in the early 90s.

In the middle of the night, I got out of my sleeping bag to pee in the nearest bathroom, putting my robe on so as not to accidentally moon anybody. I went to the bathroom, and looked up at the window above the shower. There was a small, alien being staring at my berobed nakedness. I jumped out of my robe and ended up stark naked in the kitchen. I looked out the kitchen windows and saw the alien, or another one like it, walking across the yard under the yard light. It was green and as naked as I was.

Of course, I didn’t believe it was real. I was used to phantoms waking me up to paralyzed terror. Only, I wasn’t paralyzed. And I am pretty sure I wasn’t asleep.

Of course, I didn’t tell anybody, because they would tell me I was crazy, and I would believe them. So, I spent the rest of the night completely zipped up and trembling in my sleeping bag. If anybody was abducted and probed that night, their memories of it must’ve been completely erased. Mine too, probably.

The next night I had an elaborate dream. I dreamed that the aliens returned and were tapping at the windows, calling me outside to show me something. Uncharacteristically, I got up, completely naked, and went outside. In the dark, looking out above the machine shed and the eastern cornfield, the planet Jupiter completely filled the sky. I couldn’t believe it. I knew from having taught the subject in school that being that close to Jupiter’s gravity, the Earth would be mangled and turned into a volcanic mess like the moon of Jupiter called Io.

So, the third night, I took matters into my own hands. After everybody else in the empty farmhouse was asleep, I got up and put on my robe. I went out the back door of the house. And then I dropped my robe and preceded out to the hill in the yard overlooking the eastern cornfield. The same place where I saw the planet Jupiter in my dream. The star-filled sky was absolutely absorbing in its inherent beauty. In the country in Iowa, far away from city lights, and with no clouds in the sky, it was all the very substance that God is made of. I saw the twinkling stars. I saw the red-tinged light that was Jupiter, and the other one that was Mars. I saw the glittering path of the Milky Way’s spilled milk. The fear was gone. I was naked and completely connected to the universe. It is one of those moments in a life that came unexpectedly, but became a fundamental keystone to all the experiences of my life.

Yes, I am leading with a digital cartoon of my imaginary granddaughter. And I know it’s probably concerning that I have an imaginary granddaughter. She’s not a ghost. The child that didn’t carry to term was never really alive. That is the reason she didn’t happen. She’s not a ghost, rather, a pretend friend. And I only write about her now as an exercise in fiction. She’s no more real than any other character I have ever written. No more real than Valerie Clarke, or Devon Martinez, or Oliver Twist, or Atticus Finch…. I know, I know… I didn’t write those last two characters. But I am mostly ignored as an author, and I had a point to make in there somewhere.

This is her. She looks like Bollywood child star Sidra Khan because that’s whose Instagram photo I used as a model. So, what do I name this imaginary little girl? Samantha? Serendipity? Sara? But why do they have to start with S? I tend to use the first letters of real names of people I based a fictional character on, but my granddaughter never had a name. Or even a sex. Sam? Sandy? Norman Nobody?

But why am I obsessing about somebody who never came to be? Am I lonely? Am I unfulfilled? I am talking to nobody, aren’t I? Nobody reads what I write. At least, nobody I will ever know about.

Somebody is reading three of my books on Kindle Unlimited this month. Superchicken, The Baby Werewolf, and Recipes for Gingerbread Children. That somebody is reading in Canada. I know how many total pages. But I have no idea who this person is, or, since there will be no review, what they think about the stories.

Rianna didn’t ignore me. In the 1980s she was in my English class for two years. No, she didn’t fail. She was in my class as a seventh grader, and again as an eighth grader. And she loved me when she was a seventh grader. And the next year she hated me. And as soon as she left my class and moved on to high school, I was her favorite teacher again. She didn’t ignore me, anyway.

The world doesn’t ignore me if I owe taxes. It doesn’t ignore me when the pool cracks and can’t hold water anymore, and the city forces me in court to have the pool removed, and I ended up in the hospital with heart issues, and I went bankrupt. Medical bills and Bank of America certainly didn’t ignore me. Lawsuits over money are not about ignoring somebody.

But I am the author of 21 books with 3 more that may get finished before I croak. I mean, curl up my toes and go permanently bye-bye, not that I am turning into a bullfrog (though I do suspect a curse on me somewhere in the mix.)

There are numerous best-seller lists that I am not on for any of my books, even the best ones. And book promoters have increasingly been calling me. Of course, they want me to spend money on their marketing and publishing services. They are not promising to help me sell anything. They haven’t read any of my books. They are only promising to take my money. But the joke’s on them. I don’t have any money.

But let them ignore me. I wrote those books and this post. So what if everybody ignores all of it? They exist. I am a writer. And you can’t disprove it.

But no man is an island. One needs a community to survive.

Still, it never hurts to know how to take care of yourself.

Mickey was a child who suffered a secret trauma that he wouldn’t even let himself know about and remember. It was a strongly repressed memory. And it made Mickey hurt himself constantly… on purpose. He burned himself on his lower back and the back of his legs purposely to tamp down thoughts about sex and sexual urges. He refused to be seen naked by non-family members. Except that, starting in fifth grade, he had to take showers with other boys after PE classes. And he was even afraid to go into a school bathroom during class because he might be caught in there alone by a bigger and older boy… while alone and defenseless.

The coach noticed athletic skills in Mickey during PE class and talked him into going out for football in the ninth grade. This Mickey did. He learned how to hit and be hit and survive with minimal injuries. He learned how to tackle, to take and give blows. He developed some power and skill at physical confrontation. He only ever got into two fights. The one where Danny knocked him off his bike from behind, he lost, because that was before the trauma and before football. But when stupid, angry Dickie attacked him after freshman year, he won that fight, throwing Dickie to the ground without hurting him about three times. Dickie gave up from embarrassment more than injury.

So, how does a Mickey heal himself when he won’t even admit to himself what the matter really was?

Well, being physically fit doesn’t hurt. But you can’t solve every problem by throwing it to the ground. And hating yourself and hurting yourself does not go away by throwing yourself on the ground. Mickey knows this because he tried.

You have to learn to talk to real people. And it didn’t hurt that Mickey practiced a lot by talking to imaginary people. There was a faun. There was an imaginary girlfriend from Canada who communicated in dreams and by psychic messages delivered through telepathy.

But there came an incident in PE class that might’ve resulted in a Mickey meltdown. The boys were supposed to be watching a wrestling demonstration, gathered around the champion lightweight wrestler and a hapless sacrificial opponent in the center of the circle on the wrestling mat. The girls were sitting in the bleachers listening to the girls coach talk about girls’ stuff.

You know what happened. A bully, one of many in the boys’ class, sneaked up behind Mickey, grabbed the legs of Mickey’s gym shorts, and pulled them down. It revealed all. And girls were watching. Mickey should’ve died right there and then. But he didn’t. He smiled at the girls who were giggling, gave them a little wave, and only then did he pull the shorts back on.

The coach caught the perp. And the bully was far more embarrassed than his victim.

That is when Mickey learned that humor is good medicine.

And facts are also good for healing terrible ills. Truly, the sex education Mickey got from the Methodist minister helped save his life. And later in college he learned more about sex and battling depression and overcoming trauma that helped him solve the problems of self hatred, self harm, and guilt. And what his friend told him over the phone that Saturday when he was actually contemplating suicide, that his friend thought Mickey was a good person, not bad… That was a fact that allowed Mickey to be here now writing these words.

So, the truth is, there are things you can do to help yourself even if your illness is depression, self hatred, suicidal ideation, or PTSD.

Humor helps.

Talking about it with someone who cares helps more.

Eat something chocolate.

Eating healthy for an extended period of time helps even more.

Get a good night’s sleep without sleeping too much.

Remember that LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL and you deserve to live it. Nobody has the right to take that away from you.

If Mickey can do it… anybody can.

Today I had to return to the dermatologist to see if the skin cancer she treated three weeks ago would have to be biopsied for malignancy. It turns out that the treatment, freezing the cancerous cells, worked perfectly. The threat was completely gone.

But going to the doctor for cancer treatment got a scammer off my back. They do all sorts of things to rob you by phone, or by deceptive emails representing what seem to be real companies I deal with daily. Telling a scammer I have to go and get cancer treatment tends to shut them up quicker. And I wasn’t even lying.

I continue taking and trying to adjust to four new meds. Two for diabetes. One for cholesterol. And one for blood pressure control.

The chance for future improved health is looking good.

I have been enjoying my time playing with digital art tools. I bought a stylus to use on my Chromebook computer with the touch screen. My daughter downloaded a Krita digital art program. And my Chromebook summarily broke down. So, everything I am doing now has to be done on my HP laptop with no touch screen. The stylus works on the mouse pad, but not well. And I found another program that will take a drawing that I have done and photographed or scanned and turn that into digital art, refining the lines, color blending, and detail work. I like it, but it is like rolling the dice to get the percentages right for the danged AI painter in the program to accurately recognize anything in my picture.

But the computer art thing is a good thing. There are more than enough bad things this week to fill my baggage. I am alone with the dog at home while the rest of the family is in San Antonio. Grandma (my mother-in-law) was very ill, almost went into hospice care, and then recovered well enough to return home, out of the hospital. They are all visiting her. But I’m not in good enough health to make that trip.

Arthritis, diabetes, and my doctor’s appointment tomorrow for potential skin cancer made it impossible for me to ride in a car in which five people were already travelling. And no room for the dog who loves grandma too, but is not welcome in a car travelling that far.

I have had time to write too, which has been difficult to do with hot weather and arthritis pain in the way. But that hasn’t helped my readership. Viewing of WordPress posts is way down this summer. I have had an uptick in selling e-books, but I am still earning less than ten dollars a month in royalties.

And I have been sleeping poorly at night due to pain and heat. Imaginary granddaughters playing guitar music is not enough to help since it is entirely imaginary.

Does this one look like Shirley Temple? I tried. But not quite.

I am impressed by digital art programs. I had my Chromebook set up for making digital pictures. I learned how much easier it is to lay out light and shadow patterns on your original drawing. Blending colors is so much easier with a stylus on a touch screen. And a stylus is easier to maneuver with arthritic fingers than a colored pencil is. And no amount of eraser curds flying in the air fixes a mistake better than a simple back-up click and redo. But of course, before I could make the process start to fly, my Chromebook decided for whatever reason to commit ritual computer suicide, apparently shorting out during a long walk with the dog.

So, I bought an AI-assistant program to help me convert my colored-pencil drawings into digital pictures. But you don’t have control over details to the degree that you would if you were drawing the whole thing with a stylus. The AI has to interpret everything it sees and render it with properly lit and blended colors trying to mimic the patterns you have presented it with. Of course, the AI is stupid and has to be trained. You can’t just edit the details like the finger damage you see above. You have to adjust the amount of control it has to interpret things the way it thinks is stupidly correct. You adjust from 1% to 90%. O% is the same picture you gave it. 91% and above looks nothing like your drawing. And then you re-create the entire picture again with the new percentage and whatever the AI has learned from your picture.

This one looks more like my version of Valerie, but the AI still has work to do on the background, the box of quilt pieces, and making the girl less anime-cartoony.

This is better. Still not there. But better.

I really like the face and hair on this one. Colored rocks in the box? And I would have to remove the writing on the box with a paint program from HP. In other words, a pixel edit.

This one is the best one so far. That almost looks like quilt blocks in the box. The expression on Val’s face is right for the Snow Babies story.

So, I almost think I need to rush out and buy a new Chromebook with touch screen. I can’t wait to have more control over this whole process. Still, I enjoy noodling with this stupid AI.

I have busily been using an AI program to help me turn some of my drawings and photos into digital art. It is called AI Mirror.

A digital picture of Sasha.

Hamfast Aero Jr. Nebulon boy and Psionic Ninja in training.

My imaginary granddaughter Sienna Beyer.

A self portrait that looks nothing like me. Sorry, I tried three times.

Bedtime for Sienna.

Prinz Flute and the lion man Anghar Khan. The second try.

I am learning, but the program helps more than necessary.

Skinny dipping, taking a shower outside in the summer rain, water fights with the garden hose,

These are things that allow the child to get naked, run free and unencumbered.

Who knows who may be lurking, watching, possibly thinking dark and dangerous things?

But, innocent child, you don’t think about it for a moment.

Not when there is water to play in, dancing in the rain…

Never thinking about consequences… What if Mother sees? Or Aunt Annabel sees and tells her?

Being too old to spank is not excuse. There will be hot words to endure.

But is it worth it?

Could they possibly understand?

Tracy went to the art museum. A huge painting on the wall, an oil on canvas, showed naked boys jumping and playing in a river. Some had penises clearly visible.

Are art museums evil?

Or is being naked in the sun and rain really about being human? And alive?

Yes, playing in the water. Dancing in the rain.