Catch a Falling Star

The worry is…

…That I am not writing as much as I used to before I had Covid.

…That the Republicans will destroy the world economy just to make Biden look like a loser.

…That somewhere, somehow, a duck is watching me.

…That I won’t get to see any more Marvel movies because of the writers’ strike, Jonathan Majors’ legal troubles, and the short time I probably have left to live.

…That Mickey Mouse when he’s 100 years old won’t still be the Mickey Mouse from Steamboat Willie in 1928.

…That the Cardinals’ baseball team won’t have a winning season.

…That a tornado or a wildfire or a heatwave will kill me before diabetes or Parkinson’s or stroke can.

…That global warming and climate change will make us extinct in 20 years.

…That my books will never get a fair chance to be read by kids who need to read them.

…That Prexy 45 will get to be 47 and eventually the Undead Evil Emperor of the United States.

…That all these wonderful books are being banned in Republican States, but no Evil Republican Governor with spiders in his soul has been thoughtful enough to ban any of my books.

…That Florida is not underwater yet where it belongs.

… That Cardinals are singing this Spring, but nobody else is really listening to their songs.

I have told you before that I am blessed with the mental quirk known as synesthesia. I get sensory impressions of things that they can’t possibly have, but my brain imposes them anyway. For instance, today is a Thursday, so it is a yellow-ochre day. You can’t actually see the colors of a day or a month, but I do. I have very strong impressions with crossed-up sensory input. Mondays are teal blue, except in the month of September which is sky blue, so they become a darker blue or indigo-color day every week. And this weird mental mini-illness also applies to fiction.

For example, the character of Atticus Finch, the lawyer and father of Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird comes across to me as a beige character. He represents a hero who struggles to do what is essentially right in a difficult situation. He faces raising Scout and her older brother Gem in a time and place where racism and vindictiveness are often dominant, and fairness and a sense of equity is often lost in the face of those problems. Hence, I believe that if he was some kind of pure, saintly character, he would be pure white as a character. But he has to make compromises. He has to shoot the rabid dog. He has to accept food and other goods in lieu of fees from people who can’t otherwise pay a lawyer for legal help. He has to defend a black man from wrongful rape charges as a public defender. But he is definitely a good man. He understands and accepts the shortcomings of a damaged soul like Boo Radley. He defends Tom Robinson, the black man, as an equal, even as a friend. He has to defeat the Ewells in court, but he understands and feels sympathy for abused Mayella Ewell.

Atticus Finch is beige in color because he is a character of firm principles who is not perfect, and slightly browned by the compromises of a regular hard life.

Captain Ahab, from the novel Moby-Dick, is a very different character, though he is played here by the same actor, Gregory Peck. Ahab is a dark navy-blue character. Navy blue is a color associated with the sea and the Navy (well, duh!), but also represents the depths of the ocean, the darkness that can fill the deepest corners of the obsessive mind. It is not quite a black villainous color, but definitely darker than what is needed. Ahab is a main character in his story, but definitely not a hero. He is an obsessive-compulsive nightmare, which is also a navy-blue thing. He is a storm-cloud threatening to sink his own ship, which he eventually does, and also a navy-blue thing.

Captain Keith Mallory, the anchoring main character in the plot of Alistair Maclean’s novel The Guns of Navarone, is a Kelly green character.

Now, that, of course, is not a mere Irish association, although Mallory is probably an Irish name. The color, for me, smacks of military discipline, resilience, irrepressible life and hope, and responsibility. Captain Mallory is not the leader of the commando raid on the impossibly secure anti-ship gun site on the island of Navarone, but leadership is thrust upon him when Major Franklin is injured climbing the cliff towards the guns. He is forced to adapt and make incredibly hard choices, leaving Franklin behind to be cured of gangrene by the enemy while in possession of false information that Mallory intentionally made him believe, knowing it would be tortured out of him. He also must decide to execute the resistance girl who had been helping the commandos until it was revealed she was a plant and actually helping the Germans. He is a Kelly green character of life and hope because he finds a way to succeed in the mission and brings most of the group out of it alive, having struck a major blow to the Germans.

This essay is not about Gregory Peck, though he is in all the pictures. I am merely using him to illustrate the idea that characters in fiction have different colors for me. He is a very good actor to be able to change color so easily. But the colors represent for me the kinds and qualities of the characters. I know it is not an entirely rational thing. But like the synesthesia effects on the days of the week, the colors perceived by my irrational Mickey-brain for fictional characters mean something to me, and I am attempting to explain in the best way that an irrational Mickey can.

I have been complaining for a while now about not being able to concentrate on writing the way I was before and during the pandemic.

My father died of Parkinson’s Disease. And I have been exhibiting many of the same symptoms that he had. So, is that what it is? Am I going to become a shuffling old bearded coot, angry about everything, seeing things that aren’t really there, and slowly losing my hold on reality?

But it probably isn’t that. I probably have those symptoms because I worry about it too much. Honestly, I had Covid, the Omicron Variant, twice in 2022. Nobody knows what the long term effects of it are.

Probably Cootism.

I face being a really old and possibly crazy old coot, someone who yells at people and some dogs to get off my lawn… even though it is actually my wife’s lawn. She owns the house. And then I will probably be one of those coots who forgets to wear pants before walking the dog. And when the police bring me home, my wife will claim she doesn’t know who I am. And without my pants, I will not have my wallet and my driver’s license.

And I will probably get angrier and angrier until I am not just snorting in anger at the dog, but the postlady, the neighbors, and the policemen who bring me home with no pants on. Not much danger I will begin watching FOX News or vote for Don Cheetoh Trumpaloney (rhymes with “Full of baloney.”) And that’s because I don’t have cable. I will have to be radicalized over YouTube and Instagram. I am already practicing my coot-dancing in case I am discovered on Facebook. I can dance better than that old coot who dropped his cane and went viral with his boogying.

Yep, definitely a bad case of Cootism!