When you try to create a poem,
You find out that it is…
A cry of rage…
From your very soul…
Or a deep-bellied laugh…
From your very soul…
Or an untamable sadness and tears…
From your very soul…
And you cannot help but put it into words…
From your very soul.
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To be perfectly honest, there was a time in my life when I would’ve argued this statement. I was a victim of an older boy when I was ten. Not raped. Sexually tortured. Neither one of us had any sort of orgasm. He subjected me to a lot of pain in a very private area of my body and told me he would hurt me more… or kill me if I screamed for help. Or told anybody afterwards. It made me repress the memory totally for the next twelve years of my life. I burned myself across my lower back repeatedly because of it until I was seventeen. I couldn’t tell anybody why. Not the doctor. Not the coach. Not my own mother. I didn’t remember. When I had suicidal thoughts in high school, I couldn’t explain to the counselor why. But I am lucky that I had friends who talked me out of it, even though they didn’t know this was what they were doing.
I know that this is not a humor post. It probably can’t be made funny. But, ironically, these sad facts are the reason I turned into a nudist in later life. I had to teach myself what it was that happened to me, why it made me hate myself and hate my body, and why not just nudity but sexuality also are not inherently bad things. I had to relearn love, especially for myself.
I do look back on these things with a heavy touch of self-effacing humor. My transition from being an uptight coward about my own nudity to becoming someone comfortably nude at a nudist park (and being stared at from a distance by Charley and Lucy) was a very slow and gradual process. It is more fully explained in my non-fiction essay, Naked Thinking. But I have become someone who practices nudism in private at home (my wife and children know but don’t wish to participate.) I write fiction stories that include nudist characters. I also write blog posts like this one.
But my audience tends to be limited by a cultural fact about Americans. They are mostly afraid of and suspicious about being naked in the sight of others. Naturism is not porn. Being naked is not limited to being sexual. I like to draw naked boys and naked men because I like anatomy drawings of all kinds. I draw dogs, bears, and horses without putting pants on them. I am not a homosexual, though I have had homosexual students and friends in the past. I like drawing naked women and girls, but that does not make me a rapist or a child molester. But there are people who see my nude art who automatically register a protest. Facebook will reject this post just because it is about nudity. I don’t even have to show a bare butt, a female breast, or a penis. The words are enough to make Zuckerberg kvetch. I know this because Facebook has removed a number of my nudism essays for these same prudish reasons. WordPress stopped promising me ad revenue (which never came anyway) for these same reasons.
There are people in our society who think nudity is sinful and wrong, and they do not wish to allow me to talk about it, draw pictures about it, or even think about it (which hopefully the software doesn’t yet exist that allows them to regulate that.) The point is I have certain rights to express my thoughts in places like this that are built for it. And there are many like-minded nudists and naturists who think like I do. Learning to love my body instead of hating it helped me eventually get married and father children of my own. And I don’t throw any of my passions in the face of people who don’t want to know about them. You had to make an effort to come here and look at and read this. I didn’t force any of this on you. And in my experience, learning to let go of fears and be naked saved me from self-destruction. Forgive me for repeatedly trying to make that point in a very prudish, finger-wagging world.
Filed under art criticism, artwork, autobiography, drawing, feeling sorry for myself, nudes, philosophy
Being an artist is a matter of genetics, luck, and loads of practice. I began drawing when I was only four or five years old. I drew skulls and skeletons, crocodiles and deer on everything. My kindergarten and first grade teachers were constantly gritting their teeth over the marked-up margins of every workbook and worksheet. I drew and colored on everything. I eventually got rather good, drawing in pencil, crayon, ink, and as you see here, colored pencil. I loved to draw the people and things around me. I also drew the things of my imagination. I drew my best girl, Alicia, and I drew the half-cobra half-man that lived in the secret cavern under our house. I drew a picture of the house across the underpass from Grandma Mary’s house. I drew cardinals, and I drew Snoopy cartoons. I drew my sports heroes in football and hockey, Donny Anderson and Gordie Howe. I drew monsters with fangs and fuzzy animals with huge soulful eyes. I still draw and it’s mostly the same things that I drew when I was a child. I will post more of the drawings here in the near future to dazzle you with my talents and ridiculous sense of the absurd.
I inherited art talent from my father’s side of the family. He could always draw fairly well, though he only used the talent to draw things he meant to build or create in his workshop. He was a practical man who loved to tinker and make things work in a useful manner. He had no love or need for that which is fanciful and fantastic. I suspect, though, that he encouraged my artistical flights of fancy because it spoke to an unfulfilled portion of his own creative instinct. My Great Aunt Viola was also an artist. She loved to paint flowers on porcelain and create delicate beauty in items like plates and vases. Her art was more fanciful than my Dad’s art, but it still had a certain Midwestern practicality at its roots.
I hoped early on to be a cartoonist or comic-book artist. I loved to draw wildly imaginative things. The first cartoons I created were all about outer space. I wrote stories and drew pictures of Zebra Fleet, a Star-Trek-like space force that kept peace in an area of space inhabited by dog-headed humanoids. It was fanciful and goofy at the same time. Since then I tried my hand at a Cowboys and Indians cartoon strip, built around the massacre of Custer’s command at the Little Bighorn. I researched the Indians of the Dakotah, Crow, Shoshone, and Hidatsa Tribes for my cartoon. I learned to love drawing feathers, totems, magic men, shamans, shirt men, and lovely Indian girls. Nowadays I draw the adventures of weird little Toons from Animal Town and the various strange places in Fantastica. Teenage Panda Girls go out for cheerleading and fail, seeking to wreak revenge on Animal Town. Hairy Bear is a Grizzly with a tiny body and a huge reputation earned by fantastical hair growths and the ability to make large hair-pieces. The Four Bares are a family of bears who live at Newt’s Naturist camp and turn Animal Town upside down when they insist on their right as top-of-the-food-chain predators to go anywhere they like naked. If you are lucky, I will never be a published cartoonist. I made a serious stab at it. I came close in two different job interviews and one major submission, but I have arthritis, and it attacked my hands at just the right time to make me a school teacher instead of a cartoonist.
Drawing has become for me a hobby and a lifestyle all about the color and the symbol. I try to cram as much story and meaning into every figure or picture I do. Each drawing is precious, and I must squeeze as much as I can from each one, because drawing has become so hard to do and is such a rare thing. I lean towards the blue in my cartoons. There is a certain Blue Period about my melancholy work and life. Things turn out wrong at the end of my stories and there is no happily ever after. When the nighttime comes, I have to go to sleep with the urge to draw more. I’ll draw more in the next life, or maybe in my dreams.
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Mister R. Rabbit is a school teacher. He is not the scariest animal in the world, but he is quick and eats carrots, and for thirty-one years he started off the first week of school as the one holding the BIG pencil. He was the one that planned and carried out the lessons. He was the one with the carrot of irony in his pocket and the carrot of good humor tucked away in his desk drawer. For thirty one years he stood in front of the class just as you see him here.
But tonight, he is contemplating the end of the first week of no school. This week, this school year, Mr. Reluctant R. Rabbit has no class. He is now retired. No more F’s and no more A’s. No more students standing on desks to get a different perspective a la The Dead Poet’s Society. No more giant pencils. No more carrots of irony in the pockets.
This bit of a classroom rules poster is from 1982. The old rabbit had it on his classroom wall for most of the first five years that he taught. She didn’t know it at the time, but this girl is a colored pencil portrait of one of the quietest little mice that he ever taught. She didn’t know it was a picture of her, but many others recognized her. When he taught her son twenty two years later, the boy asked because he thought he recognized her. Mr. Rabbit lied and said it was somebody else in the picture.
Mr. R. Rabbit has stopped crying about it now. You can’t plant carrots of wisdom in your garden forever, and sooner or later the carrots of irony get chewed. But he still misses it mightily. He still wonders if he couldn’t have lasted one… more… school… year…
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I think I posted this picture once before and told you it was inspired by William Blake’s poem The Tyger! That is still true. I wasn’t telling a lie, at least, I don’t believe I was. So the poem goes like this;
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There is a place so like the place where my heart and mind were born that I feel as if I have always lived there. That place is a cartoon panel that ran in newspapers throughout the country from 1913 to 1955 (a year before I was born in Mason City, Iowa). It was called Toonerville Folks and was centered around the famous Toonerville Trolley.
Fontaine Fox was born near Louisville Kentucky in 1884. Louisville, of course is one of the two cities that claims to be the inspiration for Toonerville. Apparently the old Brook Street Line Trolley in Louisville was always run-down, operating on balls of twine and bailing wire for repair parts. The people of Pelham, New York, however, point to a trolley ride Fox took in 1909 on Pelham’s rickety little trolley car with a highly enterprising and gossip-dealing old reprobate for a conductor. No matter which it was, Fox’s cartoon mastery took over and created Toonerville, where you find the famous trolley that “meets all trains”.
I didn’t learn of the comic strip’s existence until I was in college, but once I found it (yes, I am the type of idiot who researches old comics in university libraries), I couldn’t get enough of it. Characters like the Conductor, the Powerful (physically) Katrinka, and the terrible-tempered Mr. Bang can charm the neck hair off of any Midwestern farm-town boy who is too stupid to regret being born in the boring old rural Midwest.
I fancied myself to be just like the infamous Mickey (himself) McGuire. After all, we have the same first name… and I always lick any bully or boob who wants to put up a fight (at least in my daydreams).
So, this is my tribute to the cartoonist who probably did more to warp my personality and make me funny (well, at least easy to laugh at! ) than any other influence. All of the cartoons in this post can be credited to Fontaine Fox. And all the people in them can be blamed on Toonerville, the town I used to live in, though I never really knew it until far too late.
Filed under art my Grandpa loved, artists I admire, cartoons, Toonerville
As I get older, I am entering the territory of having Parkinson’s Disease and possibly dementia related to that. Of course, that assessment is not from a doctor; it is my own conclusion based on evidence that may or may not be simple paranoia. Of course, paranoia is a symptom of both Parkinson’s and Parkinson s-related dementia.
Lately, I have made some paranoia-inspired decisions that negatively impacted my life. In February, I thought I was going to die from sepsis caused by a kidney infection I had after passing two small kidney stones and getting a urinary tract infection from the lovely experience. A few hours in the ER revealed that my urologist had completely healed the infection the week prior, and I was simply reacting to the burning sensation as I emptied my bladder, which was later cured by the urologist giving me pills that turned my pee blue and made the burning go away. Overreaction to a symptom that didn’t mean what I thought it meant.
In May, I had been routinely monitoring my blood pressure and got a reading of 40 for a heart rate. 40 beats a minute is possibly going to be fatal, according to my experience of listening to my mother, a registered nurse of 40-plus years, telling about her ER nurse experiences. I also didn’t feel very well. So, knowing I was probably overreacting again, I went to the ER again. Five days later, I was home from the hospital having had surgery to install a pacemaker. That time I got turned into a cyborg and discovered that I was right about something due to my paranoia. It probably saved my life.
But then, two weeks later I was back in the ER because of lightheadedness. a thing clearly listed on my doctor’s orders as a thing to go back to the ER for. This time is was only dehydration. So, again, not as bad as I thought it was.
Then, a week ago, I had a charge on my checking account that I couldn’t account for. It was supposedly Microsoft billing me for something. So, I called the number provided to ask them what it was for. Well, the number was not in service, and it was recently canceled. So, I called the bank’s online security number. My debit card was stopped, and a replacement was put in the mail. And he asked about lost checks. I told him about one of those that disappeared from the mailbox, and my checking account was closed and transferred to a new account number too. Perfect for end-of-the-month bill paying. I finally have access to money again since yesterday’s mail.
Having paranoia is a bad thing concerning things yet to come. Like dementia. But it isn’t all bad. It made me potentially head off worse things. There really are bad things that can happen from online scammers and identity thieves, though it turns out the charge was legitimate, the Microsoft folks just refuse to identify it through my Google Chrome email. And certain concerning symptoms often lead to worse outcomes than I managed to have, though the low heart rate really could have stopped my heart.
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Okay, what Will Eisner’s Spirit tells Moitel’s Delicatessen probably needs more explanation to be funny. But that is for another day. I have my bank account back, though the mistake was mine.
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As you get older and closer to the last page of the novel of your life, it is entirely appropriate to take stock of the treasures you have accumulated in a long and rewarding life. In fact, you will probably have heirs looking to reap their inheritance after your long-awaited passing.
My children, unlike those of certain Republican politicians, don’t have much to gain by discovering the perfect untraceable poison. In fact, if I don’t live long enough to pay off my hospital bills, they may only inherit medical debt and the rapt attention of Banko Merricka’s relentless debt-collecting agencies. (Since originally posting this essay, I have paid off my bankruptcy and inherited a third of the family farm. So, it is time to start letting the dog taste my food before eating it.)
But, as I am taking stock, what exactly do I need before I get the final handshake from Mr. G. Reaper? It turns out, I probably don’t need anything else. I have written more novels than I ever expected to. My children are grown into adulthood and take care of themselves now. And I am confident my wife, at eight years younger than me, will find somebody new to berate and explain to the myriad reasons that the new person is wrong about everything, and always will be… even if what they said was something she said was true the previous week.
Sure, if I had all the access to medical care and medicine that most other countries see as a human right, I might live longer. But my medical condition is bad enough that I would be seriously prolonging the pain and suffering. I enjoy being alive, but every day is a painful challenge, and, over time, that tends to get you down.
But what more do I want out of life?
Grandchildren would be nice. But none of mine are married yet, and only one of them seems to have found one he permanently likes. The countdown clock is ticking on that matter.
Well, recognition as a writer would also be nice. I came close to winning in a couple of novel-writing contests. A few readers have read and loved some of my books. Only one person ever hated my writing that told me about it, and he was a voice in my own head. There was also one reader who was not me that was somehow traumatized by one of my lesser books. But I have published way more books through four different publishers than I ever believed possible two decades ago.
But I was a successful teacher for three decades. I touched more than two thousand lives with my work in four different schools in three different districts and ten different classrooms… teaching four different subjects. I have no regrets about how I spent my life and what I got in return.
So, I am writing this believing this is not a maudlin topic. I don’t think I am actually going to pass away this weekend. I will probably get to finish at least one more work in progress. But nobody can say for sure that we will survive next month. Or next decade.
But pessimist that I am, things always turn out better than I think they will.
And afterthoughts?
If I had a magic lamp with a genie in it, my three wishes for the future would be;
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Catch a Falling Star 
The Real Magic in that Old Home Town
Rowan, Iowa… Not the place I was born, but the place where I got to be a stupid kid, and have the lessons of the good and god-fearing life hammered into my head hard enough to make a dent and make it stay with me for more than half a century. I got to go to grade school there. I learned to read there, especially in Miss Mennenga’s third and fourth grade class. Especially in that old copy of Treasure Island with the N.C, Wyeth illustrations in it, the one Grandma Aldrich kept in the upstairs closet in their farm house. I got to see my first naked girl there. I learned a lot of things about sex from my friends there, and none of them were true. I played 4-H softball there, and made a game-saving catch in center field… in the same game where my cousin Bob hit the game-winning home run. But those were things kids did everywhere. It didn’t make me special. There was no real magic in it.
Being a farm-kid’s kid taught me the importance of doing your chores, every day and on time. If you didn’t do them, animals could get sick, animals could die, crops could be spoiled, the chickens could get angry and petulant and peck your hands when you tried to get the eggs. Cows could get grumpy and kick the milk bucket. Cats could vow revenge if you didn’t direct a spray or two at their little faces as they lined up to watch you milk the cows. And you never knew for sure what a vengeful cat might do to you later, as cats were evil. They might jump on the keyboard during your piano recital. They might knock the turkey stuffing bowl off the top of the dryer when Mom and Grandma and several aunts were cooking Thanksgiving Dinner. And I know old black Midnight did that on purpose because he got to snatch some off the floor before it could be reached by angry aunts with brooms and dustpans. And all of it was your fault if it all led back to not doing your chores, and not doing them exactly right.
But, even though we learned responsibility and work ethic from our chores, that was not the real home-town magic either. I wasn’t technically a real farm kid. Sure, I picked up the eggs in the chicken house at Grandpa and Grandma Aldrich’s farm more than once. And I did, in fact, help with milking machines and even milking cows by hand and squirting cats in the faces at Uncle Donny’s farm. I walked beans, going up and down the rows to pull and chop weeds out of the bean fields at Uncle Larry’s farm. I drove a tractor at Great Uncle Alvin’s farm. But I didn’t have to do any of those things every single day. My mother and my father both grew up on farms. But we lived in town. So, my work ethic was probably worth only a quarter of what the work ethic of any of my friends in school was truly worth. I was a bum kid by comparison. Gary G. and Kevin K, both real farm kids and older than me, explained this to me one day behind the gymnasium with specific examples and fists.
Being a farm kid helped to forge my character. But that was really all about working hard, and nothing really to do with magic.
I truly believe the real magic to be found in Rowan, Iowa, my home town, was the fact that it was boring. It was a sleepy little town, that never had any real event… well, except maybe for a couple of monster blizzards in the 60’s and 70’s, and the Bicentennial parade and tractor pull on Main Street in 1976, and a couple of costume contests in the 1960’s held in the Fire Station where I had really worked hard on the costumes, a scarecrow one year, and an ogre the next, where I almost won a prize. But nothing that changed history or made Rowan the center of everything.
And therein lies the magic. I had to look at everything closely to find the things and strategies that would take me to the great things and places where I wanted to end up. I learned to wish upon a star from Disney movies. I learned about beauty of body and soul from the girls that I grew up with, most of them related. And I invented fantastical stories with the vivid imagination I discovered lurking in my own stupid head. I embarrassed Alicia Stewart by telling everyone that I could prove she was a Martian princess, kidnapped and brought to Earth by space pirates that only I knew how to defeat. And I learned to say funny things and make people laugh… but in ways that didn’t get me sent to the principal’s office in school. Yes, it was the magic of my own imagination. And boring Iowa farm towns made more people with magic in them than just me. John Wayne was one. Johnny Carson was one also. And have you heard of Elijah Wood? Or the painter Grant Wood? Or the actress Cloris Leachman?
Yep. We were such stuff as dreams were made on in small towns in Iowa. And that is real magic.
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Filed under autobiography, commentary, dreaming, farm boy, farming, foolishness, goofy thoughts, humor, magic, Paffooney
Tagged as animals, cows, family, farm, farming, life