I have been to a nudist park and taken all my clothes off one time and one time only so far. Yesterday was supposed to be visit number two. On a Saturday there were supposed to be more visitors to meet and get to know… and I mean really get to know. But it didn’t happen because of weather and poor health. It rained. And my blood sugar was a long way from perfect. In many ways it was a relief not to go. I was nervous about being with a crowd of naked people. I was nervous about how to act and where to go, and especially, “What are the most embarrassing mistakes that beginning nudists make?”
Because I figure I will probably make them. And will it be extra embarrassing because I am walking around naked? Probably.
But I do think it is not going to be a mere one-time experience that I will never do again. I think I am committed to going back, not just because I am supposed to be writing for a nudist website, but because it benefits me health-wise, both physically and mentally.
To be specific, I have visited the Bluebonnet nudist park near Alvord, Texas. It is a beautiful campground and clubhouse facility. I borrowed pictures from their website to post on this blog and give them a bit of extra advertising.
Here’s the things that benefited me the most. I got to meet some of the most welcoming and accepting people you ever want to meet. They are polite, interesting to talk to, and just as naked and vulnerable as I am. You can’t get much more socially equal than when you are talking to naked people.
The sunshine was also a very good thing for me. The problem I have with psoriasis in old age is that the plaques and sores that result are never quite dry enough to heal when you are wearing clothes in the Texas heat. But in the nude in the midst of nature, I felt cool and dry and hadn’t even a hint of the old itch that made me want to tear my skin off.
They have a beautiful pool there, which I had all to myself during that first visit. The picture with people in it is from their website. It is one of two pools that they have there for weekly water-volleyball.
I didn’t believe it would be so relaxing and fun the first time I went, but I can safely say the feel of it, the sense of accomplishment of it, the feeling of self-acceptance it gives me, was worth all the risk of embarrassment I faced. It was a stupid thing to do. But I am not the only idiot drawn to it. There are actually thousands of nudists in the United States. There are even more in Canada too. I am actually glad I did it. And though I didn’t make it back there on Saturday as originally planned, I do think I will be doing it again.
The Be-Bop Beat of Mickey’s Brain
Truthfully, when I look back at the string of posts in the picket fence of this daily blog, I fail to see the overall map of it in any semblance of pattern or order. Honestly, I did not set out to be purposefully wacky.
I did, however, set out to be purposefully surreal. I mean it, I consciously put bizarrely dissimilar things together in an attempt to find parallels and connections in unlike things because, not only is it funny and surprising, but is a comic act that serves to keep the mind nimble and never numb. I do think quite a lot. And I try to see connections between things where others wouldn’t. For instance, the Coppertone girl with her bare butt and Bullwinkle with his unicycle are both being threatened in a way that is both comic, and taking advantage of their inherent image of innocence. Neither will lose anything by it. The girl stands to brown her pale white behind in the sun, while Bullwinkle will probably land on his head and it will make a decent cushion to preserve him because of it’s empty and rubbery qualities.
I must also admit to a bit of the old telling of stretchers, the misrepresentation of the truth, the loquacious layer-onner of lies. Not Trumpian lies that land on you like elephants dropped like bombs out of B-52’s. Instead, fictions that entertain and elucidate. It is the most likely reason I keep saying connecting words and phrases like “truthfully” and “honestly” and “I mean it”. Those are words that liars love.
Yes fiction writers like me tell little white lies.
I have now published my novel Recipes for Gingerbread Children. It is a novel based on real people I have known and loved and listened to. It is about an old German woman, a survivor of WWII concentration camps, who loves to tell stories to children and bake gingerbread cookies, especially gingerbread men. It features a pair of teenage nudist girls who believe in going completely naked whenever you are indoors, even if you are in someone else’s house. It features Nazis, both in flashback and ghostly forms. It also features fairies from the Hidden Kingdom of Tellosia, a fairy kingdom filled with little three-inch tall magical people living under our very noses. And it has a werewolf in it, though admittedly a very young one. It is a comedy with its requisite sad parts, and it is definitely an example of surrealism. It is also full of lies… err, I mean fiction.
But the real purpose of this supposedly be-bop brain fart in blog-post form is not so much to explain my blog (because how do you explain a blog that goes from Flashbacks and Foobah to telling about Madman Trump to Another novel part… #37 to Centaurs to a book and movie review, to this eccentric and eclectic thing, which probably exists more to make alliteration jokes than anything else in the most musical beat I can bang out?) but to prove that I do often think about thinking and how things fit together and what it all means… and how to write a run-on sentence that adds to the effect rather than simply annoys. And, yeah, I’m doing that. And it feels like a good thing to do.
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Tagged as goofiness, humor, justification for blogging, Metacognition