Yesterday I forgot that it was Saturday. But that doesn’t matter much in a D & D campaign. You may not play at regular times… or at all, like this week. But you do what you can when you can. Just like in real life. So let me share a character gallery, in order to give me my weekly dose of fantasy sword and sorcery nonsense.
These illustrations all come out of my D & D notebook. They are done in colored pencil on colored paper. Many are copied from models in catalogs, action movie stills, comic books, and illustrated Dungeons and Dragons products, but always interpreted in my own style and costumes.
After years of being stored away, I discovered that my mother had hidden a hoard of my old artworks in the upstairs closet in Grandma Aldrich’s house (now my parents’ house).
This oil painting was done on an old saw blade at the request of my Grandpa Aldrich. He wanted a farm painting on it, like the one he’d seen in a restaurant during a fishing trip in Minnesota. I chose as the subject Sally the pig. Sally was a hairlip piglet that had to be bottle fed and raised in a box by the stove until later in life she became a favorite pet. Believe it or not, pigs are smarter than the family dog. She became a pig you could ride. And Grandma had taken a precious old photo of my mother and Uncle Larry riding the pig. I used that photo to make this painting. It was also the painting I wanted to find on this trip to Iowa. Searching for it led to finding all the others.
These two are among the earliest paintings I did. They were both done on canvases that I stretched over the frame myself in high school art class. The purple one is a scene from Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream. The blue one doesn’t have a title, but you can see what it is. It is an ancient shibboleth water monster lurking under a dock, fishing for young boys to eat.
This drawing was done on the front porch in the house in Rowan. It would be years before mom framed it. It is another example of what I could do as a high school kid. In fact, I composed it from art-class sketches I did my senior year in school.
The Boy in the Barn was painted on the remains of an old chalkboard that my sisters, brother, and I had used in grade school.
Grandma Aldrich asked for this picture to hang over the sofa in the farmhouse living room. It stayed there for many years.
Great Grandma Hinckley passed away in 1980. I created this portrait from a combination of photos and memory. It was too good. It was never hung anywhere because it always made her daughter, my Grandma Aldrich, tear up.
This pencil drawing won a blue ribbon at the Wright County Fair in the late 70’s.
This picture is called First Years are Hard Years. It was painted in 1982 after my first year of teaching at the junior high school in Cotulla, Texas. I painted mostly the good kids. The girl on the lower right would later go on to become a teacher for our school district. I can’t claim to be the one who inspired her, but she did make straight A’s in my class.
This is called Beauty. It is done in oil crayon on canvas. I did it for my mother to hang in the hallway in the house in Taylor, Texas.
So, it turns out, I unearthed art treasures by searching for the one painting.
I first heard this song as a freshman in college.It struck me that it was hauntingly beautiful… but maybe I wasn’t entirely sure what it meant.
The song is about losing body parts and being okay with that.
That can actually be kinda creepy, right?
It is probably a song about gradually dying.
But that’s not really what it’s about.
I am there now. Peeling, cracking, drying out… my life has reached the downhill run toward the finish line. But I am not worried and not afraid. Life is so much more than hands and eyes and legs and feet. I can lose those things and have no regrets. I am so much more than merely the sum of those physical things.
My spirit soars. And my life is bound up in words and meanings that are now written down, and are at least as imperishable as paper. And may, in fact, be written on a few human hearts here and there.
The circus acts of being a writer are all swiftly breaking down. The man spinning plates on spindles is dropping more and more of the cheap white circus plates. They, of course, are made of plastic so they cannot break. Arthritis keeps me from performing the simple juggling tasks of using the keyboard, erasing and retyping the mistakes, and formatting the pages and reformatting the pages when the computer fails to save those details.
And as things continue to break down, I have to notice the circus tents of being a writer have lost more than half of their population of clowns. It worries me when there is less laughter than moans and tears and heavy sighs. The ideas are still coming fast and furious. But they are not getting transformed into paragraphs and chapters.
So, I’m still trying. The words are coming slower. But they are still coming.
I am never going to be a famous writer. My family hasn’t even read my stories.
Time is running out. The elephants are starting to take down the big top tents.
Dragons in the Dungeons and Dragons role-playing games are the central monsters of the story. In our Eberron campaign they not only rule an entire mysterious continent, but they are credited with the very creation of the world and everything. Not only monsters, but also gods, is a pretty big order for a character to fill.
Skye, the Blue Dragon to the left above is a dragon who believes that human people are the most important part of fulfilling the Dragon Prophecy. Therefore the characters can rely on him as an ally, and sometimes even a patron. He is a blue chromatic dragon with lightning breath, and the Blue Dragon Aureon, his great great grandfather, is an important leader of the god-dragons worshiped as the Sovereign Host.
Phaeros, the great crested red dragon, is a servant of chaos who actively opposes all that is good. He works with orcish dictators and priests of the Dark Six to accomplish vast swaths of damage, destruction, and war.
He is a big bad villain that has to come at the end of a campaign, because dragons are not only powerful fire-breathers with monstrous monster-damage capability, they also know far more magic than even the wisest of wizards. My players have not crossed him yet, but if they start finding the missing dragon eggs, that will happen soon.
You may notice that my dragon pictures are mostly coloring-book pictures repeated with different colors, but in many ways dragons are like that. They all have the cookie-cutter qualities of a dragon, but with different-colored personalities and powers and ideas of good and evil.
Pennie is a copper dragon with divided loyalties and the soul of a clown. She never takes the adventure at hand too seriously. But if she decides to help the player characters find the missing dragon eggs, no ally will prove stronger and more helpful than her. And she knows things that the players need to learn from her to find the missing eggs.
So dragons come in many forms and personalities.
In fact, the search for the missing dragon eggs will be critically affected by the fact that the eggs have all five hatched and dragons instinctively protect themselves when young by using their polymorph self magic to become some other creature. And someone has implanted the idea of using human form as the default even though the wormlings have never actually seen a human being in real life.
This is a double portrait of Calcryx, both as a white dragon wormling and a young girl.
So, playing games with dragons is fun and archetypal story-telling, and I will continue to do it, even if it means getting burned now and again.
Every day of my life I have dealt with lies. After all, I was a public school teacher for 31 years and taught middle school for 24 of those years.
“Please excuse Mauricio from writing the essay today. He was chopping ham for me yesterday and his hand got numb.”
“I have to go to the bathroom at 8:05, Teacher! Not 8:10 or 8:00! And no girl will be waiting by the water fountain… oh, ye, vato!”
“Can’t you see I have to go home sick? I have purple spots all over my face! It is just a coincidence I was drawing hearts on my notebook with a purple marker.”
But now the classroom is quiet. I am retired.
Okay, I know, the first part of that is a lie. The classroom is not quiet. I am retired and don’t go there any more. Some other teacher (or long-term substitute after the rookie teacher ran out screaming after the first week of school) is now listening to the lies.
So, nothing but the truth now, right? Who is around during the day to tell me lies? The dog? Well, yes… when she wants to go outside and pretends the poop and pee are bursting out of her, but really only wants to sniff the street lamp and all the male dogs who have peed there.
But there is also me. Yes, me! I am working at being a writer now… so I tell myself lies… and not little ones, either. Whole episodes of my past have come pouring out in my stories… and I am not always the good guy or the main character in the tale. Sometimes I was the villain, the mistake-maker, or the fool. I’m definitely not perfect now, nor was I then, but I’m a writer now. I can change it. I tell lies. I can make it work out in ways that never happened in real life.
I put lies in this blog. For instance, I may have suggested, a few posts back, that because of psoriasis in my usually-covered region, I sit around naked all day when I type this post. Not true. I suggested that for comedy value at the time. Well, it’s mostly not true. I don’t know how much you know about severe-plaque psoriasis, but it only flares up at times. Some days, like today, a half hour in a steaming hot Sitz-bath with extra salt allows me to wear clothes for quite a while after. So I merely exaggerated because I thought making you picture plump and pasty-skinned old me sitting around nude and typing a blog was funny… but… okay, maybe that was just weird. Still, a good lie is always at least twelve cents better than the ugly truth. (I must note, the truth of this paragraph has changed since I originally wrote this post. Now I am more of a nudist and enjoy being naked while I type. But that now being a lie does not spoil the point of this essay.)
And the fact that my stories are filled with little-boy liars, giant rabbit-men who can talk and cook vegetables like people, and invading invisible alien frog-people, derives naturally from the fact that I have been a highly imaginative liar since childhood. Just ask any of my grade school classmates. I used to make them believe there was an evil clone Michael out there somewhere trying really, really hard to get me in trouble. I told them that I was in contact with a race of blue-colored people that lived in an underground world deep beneath our little Iowa town. I even showed them the knotty old stump that was the doorway to the tunnel that led to the Blue World. Of course, the key was never available when I showed them. And my friends were not completely gullible. In fact, I suspect that once in a while, they knew I was… lying.
Stanley was determined to get both hands around Eule Gheist’s stupid neck, and squeeze until he gave up a solution to saving Maria’s life. He bulled his way into Aunt Philia’s Toy Store.
Before he could shout out the first threat and demand, he was stopped dead in his tracks by the other man standing beside the Owl Man’s check-out counter.
“Hello, Stanley. We’ve been waiting for your return,” said the mysterious stranger with the ice-blue eyes.
“You know I want my daughter back? You are going to give me a way to go where she is and bring her back home?”
“Oh, no. Our offer is far more complicated than that.”
“What kind of a place is this? You trap and kill your customers.”
“You have it all wrong, Mr. Mensch. We always give our customers exactly what they pay us for.”
“Maria never paid you to kidnap her and put her life at risk.”
“Oh, you are confused about who our customers are.”
“What do you mean? You never actually sell any of these toys.”
“We have never harmed a customer. We couldn’t possibly kill them since they are already dead.”
“And you sell them these toys?” Stan’s arm swept around in a circle indicating the whole collection of dust-covered antique toys.
“We sold Maria to Esperanza for five years’ worth of spirit life. We don’t sell these toys from the store.”
“Maria is a toy?”
“Basically. We provide the other side with humans to play with.”
“So, how do I get to where Maria is?”
“You don’t. No member of the story she is playing in will want you to be a part of it. You don’t fit the story.”
“So, what’s to prevent me from throwing a fit and wrecking this store?”
“Pick up a toy and destroy it.”
Stanley picked up a wooden rocking horse and slammed it into the floor with the full force of his anger and frustration. Almost immediately the fractured pieces disappeared and the rocking horse rematerialized on the shelf, even wearing it’s dust covering.
Stan stopped and stared, feeling totally stunned.
“Everything is set in spirit life. It will still be here even after a nuclear missile from Russia blows Dallas into vapor.”
“I don’t… I mean… ah…”
“I know you are stressed about your family’s situation. We have a possible solution to offer for a price.”
“What do you mean?”
“I can guarantee Maria’s survival. And I can cure Bonita’s cancer.”
“How… how do you know about that?”
The Owl Man grinned. “This is the store’s owner. Mr. Mephisto.”
“The dark man from the Shandra and Mark story?”
“Exactly,” said the gimlet-eyed man.
“So, I’m making a deal with the Devil. What will it cost me? My soul?”
“We want you to become the new manager of the Toy Store. You are a very resourceful man. And you have a good heart.”
“And I am due to return to my owl form,” said Eule.
“If I refuse?”
“You have to make the choice, of course. But the job has perks. The spirit life will make you immortal. And Maria and Bonita are both saved.”
“And if I refuse to accept the job, what happens?”
“You trust to luck for the outcome you seek.”
Stanley could do nothing but stand there and try desperately to think.
The author without his make-up and after imbibing extra caffeine.
I am attempting to be a humor writer. There’s a statement that calls for more than a little rationalization. Why would anyone want to be funny? Especially why would a manic-depressive sick-old former school teacher want to be funny and write books for young people that tackle subjects like suicide, lying, nudity, sex, trans-genderism, death, suffering, religion, alien invasions, and getting old? (Well, okay, getting old is inherently funny… especially the noises you unintentionally make from orifices and joints whenever you try to sit, move, lift, eat, or breathe.) I ask myself this question only because I need to get to 500 words and stretch out the hoopti-doo to cover up the fact that I already know the answer and it is short and simple. Joking about the things that tear your life apart is the only way to handle things and not become a serial killer. (Make that cereal killer, especially Kellogg’s cereal of any and every description. I am a very loving and accepting fool at heart and could never kill even one person… probably even in self-defense.) I recently took a Who-do-you-write-like test that I found on another blog at All Things Chronic. Here is the link; https://painkills2.wordpress.com/2015/05/31/who-do-you-write-like/
That silly little analyzer took a bit of my purple paisley prose and churned out a horror-writer answer, H.P. Lovecraft. The Lord of the Old Mad Gods and Moonbeasts is a particular favorite of mine, one of several writers whose novels I have read everything I can get my hands on. I still sleep with the lights on at night because of The Dunwich Horror, and The Shadow Over Innsmouth. I am mad with admiration for his allusions to gibbering sounds and unholy terrors that taint and transfix our lives with fear to the very marrow of the bones. I have to admit, I like the idea of being compared to him, in spite of the fact that he tries to inspire fear and madness, while I aim for goofiness and gaiety. It is a delicious irony to try always to be Mark-Twain funny while writing with a horror writer’s convoluted and dictionary-intensive style.
And don’t get the idea from my mention of him in this self-reflecting ramble through jumbled ideas that I really believe I am as funny as Mark Twain. I am not deluded or mentally ill… well, not deluded, anyway. I am still learning to make people laugh with words. And I don’t mean to be mean about it. I don’t do George Carlin F**k-the-world-style humor. I don’t even do Don Rickles-style insults. I am more in favor of gentle humor. I am not looking to call anybody names or trying to make certain folks look like Biblical-word-for-donkeys. (Not even Republicans named Rick in yesterday’s post). I want to show fictional people undergoing some of the dark things that filled my life with hurt, and doing it with the grace and good humor that only comes from a heart full of self-sacrificing love. (Gee, no wonder I find comedy hard… I have chosen the most difficult and elusive kind of humor for my art. I’d do a lot better with poo-poo jokes.) (Oh, wait, I do poo-poo jokes, don’t I. This one counts too.)
I wonder if I made a mistake yesterday in portraying Senator Ted Cruz as a lizard man from outer space. Was that a mean, name-calling sort of joke? Or was I painting him in broad, humorous strokes with my colored pencils? Once again, you can be the judge. Here’s the picture again. And you get to decide if anything I have ever said is funnier than it is just plain sad.
It has taken me some time to put ideas together to tackle this terrible thing. Jon Stewart did a segment at the beginning of his show that was not funny. It was somber, thoughtful, and full of real outrage that cast lightning bolts at the heart of the dragon. And I admire Stewart for what he is… someone who truly cares about things, and fights the good fight using the best weapon he has. Humor. Mark Twain said that against it, nothing could stand. But some things are so terrible that not even a joke can put it right. Why? Because there are places in this human world where ideas are like a festering sore, spreading at an alarming rate, and daily becoming more and more poisonous. Texas is like that. It is a Red State. That means it is a hotbed of conservative ideas and nurtures Republican values… like being distrustful and fearful of them… And who are they? They are not us. They have a different religion. They have a different skin color. They are not opposed to raising taxes on the rich, even if they are rich themselves. They are not capitalists… Or not freedom-loving… Theythink it can be left up to women to decide what to do with their own bodies. They don’t see abortion as murder. They don’t think teaching evolution in schools is evil. We must fear them… and, yes, even hate them.
As a school teacher, I learned early on that if you only look for the bad in other people, then that is what you will be left with, a world in which there are only bad people. I don’t know about you, but I can’t live in a world like that. I learned to look at the world as being full of imperfect people who all have good in them, lots of good. I grew up in Iowa where the people were so white in the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s that when the winter snow fell heavy enough, we all had the super power of invisibility. I remember only one black face from my childhood that wasn’t on television. There was a little girl from Chicago who came to stay with a volunteer family so she could get out of the inner city for a while. The adults warned us that she might be prone to stealing things, so don’t do anything to tempt her. And we didn’t. And she didn’t. And damn it, I don’t know whether we did a good job of not tempting her, or that warning was just an empty prejudice. She was just like us. She laughed at things. She loved kittens. She played our games. She was just like us… but she had a better tan.
I started teaching in South Texas. I quickly learned how to deal with Hispanic kids who were mostly poor and mostly Spanish-speaking. I learned that they didn’t laugh at the same things as I did. When they called me Batman for a while, it wasn’t a compliment. I learned to laugh at the things they found funny and learned to joke the way they joked. I played their games. I learned to love pit-bulls and other dogs the way they loved dogs. I was just like them… but they couldn’t hide in the snow as easily as me.
I learned to teach black kids like they complain about on Fox News, the ones they throw to the ground and sit on at pool parties in McKinney, Texas, when I moved to the Dallas area and the town of Carrollton. I quickly learned why some teachers are so stressed out by them. They are louder than the white kids. Their nerves can be more raw and their tempers hotter than the other kids. Not all of them… just about 51 %. But you have to look close enough to see that… they laugh at most of the same things as us. Some of the brightest, widest smiles I have ever seen are on the faces of black kids when you laugh at their jokes. They play the same games as I do. They love puppies just like I do. They sometimes even have more faith in God than I do. Some of my favorite students of all time had very dark faces. I still think of them often… and i will never stop loving them… all of them. And when something happens like it happened in South Carolina… Forgive me, I have to cry again for a bit.
And how do we solve the problem of places where love is so badly needed, but is not present in large doses? How do we overcome this passion some people have to exclude illegal immigrants, and the need some people feel to move their children out of schools where there are too many of the wrong colored faces? I do not know the answer.
But you do not create love by passing laws and building walls. You have to spend time with them. You have to laugh at the same jokes. You have to play the same games. You have to love puppies and kittens. Don’t you?
It struck me that it was hauntingly beautiful… but maybe I wasn’t entirely sure what it meant.
Catch a Falling Star 