I worry that so many bad things are happening now, and life has become so hard, that no magic is left in the universe to relieve our suffering. I need to see a unicorn.
Unicorns are traditionally pure white magic. They effect the forest around them, and no winter enters in as long as they dwell there.
And unicorns can be killed, but are otherwise immortal. Their blessings last as long as we don’t kill them.
Surely a unicorn still lives somewhere… somewhen… somehow…
I need to see a unicorn.
Filed under Uncategorized
Journey back with me to the 1980’s, and hear once again the music of escape.
There was a time when I was young when I did not know where I would be when the next new dawn came. Yes, I once took the midnight train (except it was a bus) and I arrived in a teaching career in deep South Texas. I crossed borders into another culture, another way of life, another journey made of words and pictures that hasn’t reached the final station yet.
At the outset, we all take a risk. Born and raised in South Detroit (although it was really North Central Iowa) I passed through established procedures, rules, and regulations to do things that desperately needed doing for people who could only help themselves in very limited ways.
Some spoke mostly Spanish. Some lived in broken homes. One boy lived for a while under the bridge of the Nueces River, but attended school every day because he was hungry to learn, and because free school lunch was the majority of the food he got to eat. He got on a midnight train, and I never saw him or heard from him again. His sister, though, lived with a tia who treated her like a daughter, and grew up to be a school teacher. I let her teach the lesson for me during one class period, as part of an educational experiment, and it put her on her own midnight train.
It was a train going on the same track I followed. Not because of me and what I did for her. But because she came to realize it was the right journey to take for her. It was the perfect anywhere for her.
But there is danger inherent in getting on a midnight train going anywhere. You don’t know who is waiting for you down the line, or what your circumstances will be at the next station along the way. There may be strangers waiting up and down the boulevard, their shadows searching in the night. I befriended other teachers, mentored some, learned from many, even married one. I had a run in or two with people who sell drugs to kids. I had all four of my car tires slashed one night. I had a car window broken out. I had a boy once tell me he would kill me with a knife. I later had that boy tell me he had a good job and a girlfriend and he was grateful that I talked him out of it and never turned him in to the police.
And we end up paying anything to roll the dice just one more time… At one time or another we have all been there, aboard that midnight train to anywhere. There is a moment in everyone’s life when… well, some will win, and some will lose. Some were born to sing the blues. I have been there. I have done that. And it occurs to me, that song plays on in my head still. I am still on that journey. And I won’t stop believing. Because it goes on and on and on and on…
image borrowed from TVtropes.com
I firmly believe that I would never have succeeded as a teacher and never gotten my resolve wrapped around the whole nonsense package of being a published author if I hadn’t picked up a copy of Mort, the first Discworld novel by Terry Pratchett that I ever encountered. I started reading the book as a veteran dungeon-master at D&D role-playing games and also as a novice teacher having a world of difficulty trying to swim up the waterfalls of Texas education fast enough to avoid the jagged rocks of failure at the bottom. I was drinking ice tea when I started reading it. More of that iced tea shot out my nose while reading and laughing than went down my gullet. I almost put myself in the hospital with goofy guffaws over Death’s apprentice and his comic adventures on a flat world riding through space and time on the backs of four gigantic elephants standing on the back of a gigantic-er turtle swimming through the stars. Now, I know you have no earthly idea what this paragraph even means, unless you read Terry Pratchett. And believe me, if you don’t, you have to start. If you don’t die laughing, you will have discovered what may well be the best humorist to ever put quill pen to scroll and write. And if you do die laughing, well, there are worse ways to go, believe me.
Discworld novels are fantasy-satire that make fun of Tolkien and Conan the Barbarian (written by Robert E. Howard, not the barbarian himself) and the whole world of elves and dwarves and heroes and dragons and such. You don’t even have to love fantasy to like this stuff. It skewers fantasy with spears of ridiculousness (a fourth level spell from the Dungeons of Comedic Magic for those fellow dungeon masters out there who obsessively keep track of such things). The humor bleeds over into the realms of high finance, education, theater, English and American politics, and the world as we know it (but failed to see from this angle before… a stand-on-your-head-and-balance-over-a-pit-of-man-eating-goldfish sort of angle).
Terry Pratchett’s many wonderful books helped me to love what is ugly, because ugly is funny, and if you love something funny for long enough, you understand that there is a place in the world even for goblins and trolls and ogres. Believe me, that was a critical lesson for a teacher of seventh graders to learn. I became quite fond of a number of twelve and thirteen year old goblins and trolls because I was able see through the funny parts of their inherent ugliness to the hidden beauty that lies within (yes, I know that sounds like I am still talking about yesterday’s post, but that’s because I am… I never stop blithering about that sort of blather when it comes to the value hidden inside kids).
I have made it a personal goal to read every book ever written by Terry Pratchett. And that goal is now within reach because even though he is an incredibly prolific writer, he has passed on withing the last year. He now only has one novel left that hasn’t reached bookstores. Soon I will only need to read a dozen more of his books to finish his entire catalog of published works. And I am confident I will learn more lessons about life and love and laughter by reading what is left, and re-reading some of the books in my treasured Terry Pratchett paperback collection. Talk about your dog-eared tomes of magical mirth-making lore! I know I will never be the writer he was. But I can imitate and praise him and maybe extend the wonderful work that he did in life. This word-wizard is definitely worth any amount of work to acquire and internalize. Don’t take my convoluted word for it. Try it yourself.
borrowed from artistsUK.com
Filed under book review, humor, NOVEL WRITING
Yep, the action figures all seem to agree with the dolls. It’s time to think about leaving Earth orbit and head for a new home among the stars.
Of course, if I agree with them, the only way I can follow them to infinity and beyond is to expire and leave my old body behind. That will make my wife happy. She can’t wait to have me cremated. Of course, I made a deal with her that she has to wait until I am provably deceased.
The truth is, I am getting tired of this world myself. I am not anxious to die. But Canada is on fire. Trump is indicted, but not necessarily out of the running to become Prexydent again. (Yes, I know it is spelled P-r-e-s-i-d-e-n-t. but for four years he was NEVER that.) My body still works and my heart is beating well, but every step is painful, all my joints hurt, and life is full of physical impediments that keep me from running in the human race.
There are too many things complicating my life and making it frustrating to keep taking steps on my particular life path. I am limping on two feet.
But I will not simply give up. The Darkness must defeat me. It just is a coming battle that I must dread for the probability of failure.
Filed under Uncategorized
Imagination is always the place I go in times of trouble. I have a part of my silly old brain devoted to dancing the cartoon dance of the dundering doofus. It has to be there that I flee to and hide because problems and mistakes and guilt and pessimism are constantly building un-funny tiger-traps of gloom for me to rot at the bottom of. You combat the darkness with bright light. You combat hatred with love. You combat unhappiness with silly cartoonish imaginings. Well… maybe you don’t. But I do.
When reading the Sunday funnies in the newspaper on lazy Sunday afternoons, I spent years admiring Bill Watterson’s Calvin and Hobbes for its artistry and imaginative humor, believing it was about a kid who actually had a pet talking tiger. I didn’t get the notion that Hobbes was actually a toy tiger for the longest time. That’s because it was basically the story of my own boyhood. I had a stuffed tiger when I was small. He talked. He went on adventures with me. And he talked me into breaking stuff and getting into trouble with Mom and Dad. It was absolutely realistic to me.
I have always lived in my imagination. Few people see the world the way I view it. I have at least four imaginary children to go along with the three that everybody insists are real. There’s Radasha, the boy faun, my novel characters Tim Kellogg and Valerie Clarke, and the ghost dog that lurks around the house, especially at night. That plus Dorin, Henry, and the Princess (the three fake names that I use in this blog for my three real children).
Have you noticed how Watterson’s water-color backgrounds fade into white nothingness the way daydreams do? Calvin and Hobbes were always a cartoon about turning the unreal into the real, turning ideas upside down and looking at them through the filter-glasses of Spaceman Spiff.
Unique and wonderful solutions to life’s problems can come about that way. I mean, I can’t actually use a bloggular raygun to vaporize city pool inspectors, but I can put ideas together in unusual ways to overcome challenges. I almost got the pool running again by problem-solving and repairing cracks myself.
So, I am now facing the tasks of working out a chapter 13 bankruptcy and having a swimming pool removed. The Princess will need to be driven to and from school each day. I will need to help Henry find another after-school job. And the cool thing is, my imaginary friends will all be along for the ride. Thank you, Calvin. Thank you, Hobbes. You made it all possible. So, please, keep dancing the dance of the dundering doofus.
The T. S. Eliot poem “The Hollow Men” talks about the disappointing nature of human beings and ends with a dire four lines quoted more often than any poem’s end in the history of poetry.
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
Now I have revealed this particular truth more than once. I am not prescient. I am an idiot. And the only things I know for certain about the future are that I will die one day, and so will everyone else. But knowing those things is wisdom. Especially the idiot part.
And I can see how things are progressing. I know what people are like at their core. If humanity is doomed to die out in the next century, or even the next decade, it will not be because of nuclear war. It will be something sneakier, quieter, and more permanently lethal.
It will be the fact that people are capable of heartlessness and cruelty. Adolf Hitler turned the full power of government-focused hatred on those he defined as less than human; Jews, gypsies, gay people, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and the mentally handicapped. He used that focus to burn those peoples out of existence. But many forces in the human character rose up to shield the victims, saving some and avenging the others. Hitler learned the hard way that he was not the end of the world… from a bullet, in a bunker, having lost an empire.
Now, the Republican clown show in the United States is turning into Killer Klowns from Outer Space.
They show lack of concern for anything but corporate profits. They will undo Medicare and cancel the Meals on Wheels program because, according to evil leprechauns in charge of the budget, we can’t afford to feed people, or educate people, or do anything to dry up the painful ocean of poverty capitalism is creating. No, we must bury our pots of gold and any magic they have left in them.
They have changed the laws on environmental protections to allow themselves to profit by pouring pollutants into rivers and water supplies. They pull out of world-wide agreements to work towards saving the environment from climate change.
They may have found a way to focus hatred through the lens of indifference. Hitler’s mistake was in thinking most humans could be manipulated only through fear and hatred for those who were different. Trump’s troll army has added stupidity and greed to the lenses the light can be filtered through. And so, they may well succeed where Nazis failed.
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
Filed under angry rant, humor, insight, pessimism, politics, self pity, sharing from YouTube
I have no idea how much longer I have to live on this Earth. By the odds, I should have died during the pandemic with the health problems I have. But I went to the doctor today for an annual check-up, and I am surprisingly good compared to where I should probably be with my six incurable diseases and conditions, as well as being a cancer survivor since 1983.
Walking 7,000 steps a day, measured by my Samsung fitness app, combined with a 1500-calories-a-day diet, is keeping me off insulin… at least until the the bloodwork comes back with my current A1C.
I have given up nudism, at least for now, since I have very few places to be naked in, and more places that bleed and must be kept covered and out of the sun on the thing I want to be naked with. I am no longer the boy in the illustration anywhere in reality other than my imagination and nightly dreams. I have given up travel. When my family travels to Florida to spend the July 4th holiday with my son in the Air Force, the dog and I will be staying home where long hours in a car won’t further cause stress and pain in my lower back.
But despite the long, slow degradation of my health due to age, I am doing well. My house is not in order. My body is a painful mess. But there is still sunshine and life to look forward to.
Filed under Uncategorized
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.
Filed under Dungeons and Dragons, foolishness, Paffooney
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.
Filed under artwork, colored pencil, homely art, humor, oil painting, old art, Paffooney
Moonshadow by Cat Stevens
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.
