Catch a Falling Star

Sometimes you just have to write everything down that you’ve been juggling in your head. The pieces of the puzzle won’t fall together in order until long after you place them in front of you. I’m not suggesting that my mind is a literal blender, but, especially when I’m writing in a stream-of-consciousness style, I am really good at making idea milkshakes. There are several large pieces to the puzzle of life that are now on the table in front of me.

One jagged-edged puzzle piece that is going to be hard to solve into the larger picture is climate change. The latest IPCC Report states without a doubt that it is no longer within our power to keep the world temperature from rising beyond the critical 1.5 degrees threshold. The Arctic ice covering will soon be permanently gone, the Gulf Stream is breaking up and diffusing, the oceans are rising and turning to acid… dang!

But it doesn’t do any good to become a Doomer and Gloomer. If we give up we will be much deader than we need to be. There are things that can still be done to mitigate the worst of it. And Elon Musk is not going to save us by taking us all to Mars. And the politicians funded by massive fossil-fuel corporations aren’t going to solve the problems either. We as the majority of human life on Earth need to come together and insist on our right to live. We need to convert our energy use to non-fossil-fuel production schemes. We need to do for ourselves what the rich mother bookers won’t do for us to help us survive.

The recently deposed orange-faced King of America now needs to be held accountable for the things he did illegally while in office. In other countries, a corrupt leader guilty of what he is guilty of would’ve been stood up against a brick wall and shot by now. We certainly can’t let him run for Prexydint in 2024. We won’t survive another four years of the evil-clown kingdom. It will be the death of all of us. Literally.

And my son is ill again. The one who already had Covid once. And may now have the Delta variant in spite of being vaccinated. He is definitely ill with something.

All these things worry me. I have been mentally juggling these things in my head for too long. And now, screws are loose inside there. I need to puzzle it back together, not put the blender on puree.

From an Instagram photo of Emma Watson. Sorry, I am not better at portraits.

Snow Babies digitized.

Catty McCatface

Donald J Felonious’s Mugshot

I confess to tracing this one. Beautiful faces are easy. This one is the complete opposite.

**This is an update of yesterday’s post.**

If you have made it this far with me, you are very probably beginning to wonder, “Where is Mickey going with this? Why is he writing about being naked so much?”

And the answer comes in the form of a brief summary of what Mickey’s life is all about.

It took a big turn for the worse when Mickey was sexually assaulted at the age of ten.

And Mickey lost the ability to be comfortably naked, and his childhood turned dark.

But Mickey did not become a vengeful monster. With help from the Methodist Minister and a good friend who knew something was wrong and was willing to talk it through, Mickey decided it was better not to end it all, but rather to invest in doing something good with his life. He became a teacher.

He did a commendable job in a profession where good people are needed, but things are hard enough that only idiots agree to do it if they truly understand what the job entails. Luckily, Mickey is a total idiot. And he learns how to actually help kids. And his life gets better. And maybe that is something the idiot actually deserves. He ends up with a wife and three kids of his own.

But there is always a butt at the end of the spine. Mickey reached a point where he could no longer be a teacher anymore. He was too ill to stand in front of a classroom and hold the big pencil. Being ill led to healthcare expenses that eventually caused five years’ worth of Chapter 13 bankruptcy. So, he tried to be a writer. He pursued the hobby that had previously filled his closet with unpublished stories, drawings, paintings, and other artworks. He published the stuff. Even the embarrassing stuff that stripped his life story naked for the world to see, stories about naked people, pictures of naked people, and multitudes of those things literally depicting Mickey and his real life.

But the end of Mickey’s life is now closer than the beginning. He has memories of his time as a teacher, but no more teacher work to rely on. His writing is good, but not guaranteed-successful outstanding. In the time he has left, he will probably see his work mostly ignored, even by his own family. He may stir up controversy or get in trouble if he publishes Naked Thinking. That will also probably end up amounting to nothing. His terrible poetry and fuzzy philosophical thinking will also make no splashes in the Walden’s Pond of great ideas and literature. It won’t matter in the long run. The whole process is simply not finished yet.

All the artwork, poetry, and inspiring philosophical beliefs are frosting on the cake. The subject of the essay is why Mickey is a nudist. But the themes and deeper meanings in the work are more about being one with the universe. About Mickey healing himself and being courageous enough to stand naked in the face of the jungle. And he can accomplish that too. It’s all good.

If you have made it this far with me, you are very probably beginning to wonder, “Where is Mickey going with this? Why is he writing about being naked so much?”

And the answer comes in the form of a brief summary of what Mickey’s life is all about.

It took a big turn for the worse when Mickey was sexually assaulted at the age of ten.

And Mickey lost the ability to be comfortably naked, and his childhood turned dark.

But Mickey did not become a vengeful monster. With help from the Methodist Minister and a good friend who knew something was wrong and was willing to talk it through, Mickey decided it was better not to end it all, but rather to invest in doing something good with his life. He became a teacher.

And he did a commendable job in a profession where good people are needed, but things are hard enough that only idiots agree to do it if they truly understand what the job entails. But, luckily, Mickey is a total idiot. And he learns how to actually help kids. And his life gets better. And maybe that is something the idiot actually deserves. He ends up with a wife and three kids of his own.

And all the artwork and poetry and inspiring philosophical beliefs are frosting on the cake. The subject of the essay is why Mickey is a nudist. But the themes and deeper meanings in the work are more about being one with the universe. It’s all good.