Tag Archives: philosophy

April 20, 2015 · 2:29 am

Decompression

I got the word that my mother’s surgery went smoothly and she is fine. Hopefully she will be out of the hospital soon. I can breathe again. There are numerous moments in life that make a person’s heart quicken and the “fight-or-flight” security program in the brain kicks in, making us breathe harder… making us sweat… We wait endlessly for the threatening conditions to pass, and minutes feel like hours.

Alan Watts was a genius who took Eastern philosophies and meditation and brought them to Western culture in a way that offers light and hope and freedom from fear. I discovered him on YouTube and learned that even though he is dead, his thinking reaches out to me and gives me comfort in my inevitable face-off with Death. Do you know Death? He was that funny. yet disturbing character in some of Terry Pratchett’s funniest Discworld novels… the one that talks in ALL CAPITAL LETTERS because the weight of his words are so serious. That particular face-off in the Hockey Game of Life is one that sooner or later I am bound to lose. Everybody loses that one sometime… but only once. After all, as hockey players go, Death is a superior center.

I think that if I can get one message across to other people before I lose that face-off and the hockey game ends, it needs to be this, “All people are the same. No matter what color, what sex, what belief system… they all have equal worth. I am a part of them, and they are a part of me. As Alan Watts says, I am connected to everything.”

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Tagged as angel, drawing, insight, inspiration, paffooney, philosophy

April 1, 2015 · 11:36 am

A Collection of Sunrises

I made the horrible mistake yesterday of revealing the true nature of my hideous mental condition that leads to never-ending collecting of a long list of collections that probably will become a black hole of collecting from its own gravitas and stretch on into infinity. (Yeah. I know… you can see right through my phony over-blown exaggerations that consist mainly of stringing lots of science-y sounding adjectives together. Don’t get all smug about it.)

I did not, however, reveal the newest collection. So today I open my stupid writer mouth and another sacred secret pops out. Since retiring from teaching last June, I have been collecting sunrises.

I know it is a silly, sentimental,, goofy-sort-of self-pitying thing, and I also know that is probably not “normal” from an abnormal psychology viewpoint, but don’t call the loon-catchers just yet. Wait till I reveal my delusional quasi-religious reasons for doing it.

I am retired now from a profession I truly loved. I have a full pension now because Texans Republicans are not completely on their toes about taking benefits away from people who don’t earn them by trading stocks and bonds, running a corporation for maximum profits, or inheriting billions because Daddy did one or both of the previous things for you. They let my pension slip by unaltered on a grandfather clause because I’ve been teaching since a time when education was actually a respected, value-producing industry that rewarded those who did the actual work (This really only occurred in the middle 1990’s when the world was briefly too sane to be Republican.) I can’t do the job any more for crippling health reasons. I am lucky to have a good pension, but not lucky enough to be able to use it for very long. Hence, the interest in sunrises. Every single one is a miracle.

You may have already noticed that most of my sunrises in this collection are taken in the same park. It is where the dog walks me every morning in order to keep my heart pumping. She wants to keep me alive so the food dish keeps getting refilled, and so someone will still be able to bag and dispose of her daily poops. (I swear, that dog is a champion pooper. Three times her own weight in poops every single day.) I also can’t sleep as much as I used to. Five hours a night is about the maximum that arthritis pain, COPD, and diabetes allows me. School trained me to get up early because my last job was a thirty-mile commute one way and classes started at 7:30 a.m. I really began noticing on my morning drive how beautiful city sunrises can be thanks to the colors produced by exotic pollutants.

So, I keep adding to this collection of sunrises because each one is a reminder that a loving God is still being generous with me, and I still get at least one more day. See? I warned you there was crackpot religious sentiment in this post. Now you can call the loony-catchers. But hopefully, they won’t catch me until after sunrise.

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Filed under collecting, humor, photo paffoonies

Tagged as collecting, goofiness, humor, philosophy, photo Paffooney, self pity

March 27, 2015 · 1:54 pm

Finding Answers with the Right Questions

Yesterday I burbled purple paisley prose all over the page and, in trying to answer the question “Why do I Blog?”, only managed to come up with a lame sort of “I don’t know.” but I also referenced Douglas Adams’ answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything which turned out to be 42. You see, in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy we learn that the Earth is nothing but an alien-designed supercomputer run by highly intelligent mice to find the actual question that goes with that ultimate answer. Unfortunately, after the planet Earth is destroyed by Vogons to make way for an interstellar bypass, the question is put on hold. That’s really what I did yesterday. I put the question on hold.

But today, feeling ill and a little blue, I decided to percolate the old teapot of wisdom one more time to see if I could find an answer in the tea leaves. I am not a well sort of individual. As I have posted before, I have six incurable diseases and am a cancer survivor since 1983. Every day I wake up to a new dawn is a bit of a miracle. But the sand is running out of the hourglass. There are things I have to put right, and blogging is a way to do that.

In this photo Paffooney I am sharing one of my recent miracle sunrises. 6:55 looking East from the Greenbelt in the middle of Carrollton, Texas. The dog exercises me every morning in order to keep me alive on the off chance that I will drop some bacon on the floor one morning in the near future. She also uses me to bag up poop so she can stay out of trouble with the city.

Every morning is like that now. I am retired. That is a less-painful way of saying “waiting to drop dead”. I spend a good portion of my day now alone and able to write and think and not do very much else. So what I write and think has to be the real work that I am doing now to justify the amount of food I eat and air I breathe (and bacon I drop as the dog has just reminded me.) I have recently finished two novels. I have a novel waiting to be published, with a contract and everything at a small, but very real publisher. I have two books already in the marketplace, Catch a Falling Star and Aeroquest. You can find them and ignore them on Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble.com just like everyone else has been doing. The books are what I am technically blogging about. I am blogging by command of I-Universe publishing. But that’s not really why I am doing it. There is so much more to it than that.

Here’s the realist’s assessment of my writing… it has become a very expensive and time-consuming hobby that eats up my remaining days like a ravenous wolf. At the rate I am going, I will not live to see the day when my writing finds wide-spread acceptance. I have the word of professional editors and other writers that my work is very well-written, and there was a time in my life when I might’ve made a decent living at it like Terry Brooks or R. A. Salvatore. There was a time when good books found a publisher. Now, there is the little problem of a world teeming with books all clamoring for notice of their own. I am generally ignored by the masses. The local library didn’t even put the gift copy of my book, paid for with my own money, on their shelves. They didn’t give it back, either. My time is not yet, and my audience is probably made up of people not born yet. Maybe they simply don’t exist.

But all those mulched-up and melancholy things I have said about my writing amount to nothing in the face of the question, “why are you still bothering to blog?” Truthfully, in the past few months I have made myself laugh and made myself cry by writing and telling stories… by mangling metaphors and propagating purple paisley prose… by blogging. And I really don’t care if no one ever reads my blog full of blather and allusive alliterations. They exist. They are real. And I have offered them to the world. Why do I blog? I still don’t have any idea.

These are the very first flowers that bloomed in our neighborhood this year that didn’t die a horrible death by freezing. Sure, they are only common dandelions and many think of them as weeds… but they are also proof that for now the sun continues to shine and possibilities continue to bloom.

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Filed under humor, NOVEL WRITING, Paffooney

Tagged as artwork, blogging, dog-walking, foolishness, humor, novel writing, Paffoonies, philosophy, photo Paffooney

March 26, 2015 · 12:18 pm

The Meaning of 42

I get goofy ideas for blog posts when I am reading other blog posts, when I am reading books, and when I am letting television suck the smart out of my brain cells. I was first inspired by reading this blog post from In My Cluttered Attic. He was talking about why he chooses to blog in the face of a plethora of common-sense reasons not to. “Good idea for my own blog post!” said the insane voice that inhabits the dark space behind my mind’s own creative filing cabinet #42 in the second dungeon under my memory. I immediately filed the idea away in that cabinet because the cabinet was close at the time and I might never find it again later. Then I leaped to a post by The Off Key of Life in which I found a beautiful song beautifully sung that made me trip over another file cabinet that was behind the mechanical letter-sorting machine on the stairway landing to the sub-basement of the second dungeon.

Some old memories spilled out on the stone steps because I used to sing that song to my three babies when I rocked them to sleep twenty years ago, fifteen years ago, and thirteen years ago. That song, and “When You Wish Upon a Star” from Disney’s Pinocchio. Both of those songs are about one day finding the key to happiness… or possibly the key to understanding… but definitely about the search for the key. I always believed that those songs would give my children sweet dreams… and I prayed that the songs would never become the source of nightmares.

And then I was watching Hulu, an episode of Arrow in which Oliver Queen must decide on the reason why he was doing the whole superhero-vigilante thing and risking his life constantly. Unfortunately I didn’t find the file box that has superheroes in it that I was looking for in hallway leading to Area 51 in the upper dungeon. But I knew the topic was going to be “Why I Blog”. That settled, I began to write and paste in all sorts of random stuff.

“What is the meaning of 42?” you ask? How clever of you to ask that! In Douglas Adams’ seminal series of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy books

42 is revealed to be the answer to the ultimate question of Life, the Universe, and Everything. Practically everything that he adds to that epic trilogy of five-or-so books is basically random. And yet, it is not. He is telling us about the apparent randomness of Life, the Universe, and Everything while carefully explaining how all this random madness that is Everything actually fits together in a very random-mad way. There is a certain asymmetrical symmetry about it all that has a certain contradictory sort of beauty, if you get what I mean. (A certain ugly beauty if you don’t get what I mean.)

So why do I blog? Good question. I don’t really have an answer to it. I blog because my first publisher told me I had to do it to promote my book, Catch a Falling Star. My book has netted me $28 so far, as long as I am not fool enough to start subtracting all the money I have spent trying to advertise and promote my book. I’m not fool enough. I stay out of that corridor in the maze of my complicated little mind. I blog because I can share all the private drawings and poems and insane nonsense that fills the filing cabinets in my mind without paying a hefty psychiatrist’s fee. Your underwear drawer needs to be aired out once in a while even if you do remember to wash your underwear. And it is liberating to walk around figuratively naked in front of an audience that potentially includes little old church ladies, God, and everybody. I blog because writing is something that I do, have always done, and will continue to do until they put my smelly corpse in a pine box and bury it under the garbage pile out back. All that scribbling has to count for something sometime. And maybe that sometime is now. If you are one of those poor souls suffering from Serial-Mickey’s-Blog-Reading Disorder (a condition the CDC has taken to labeling SMBRD… not to be confused with small-bird flu), and you actually read the posts and look at all the random junk piled into those mad paragraphs, you may just accidentally stumble across that key we have all been searching for for eons… and unlike the majority of the world, you will be giggling insanely for a reason!

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Tagged as 42, blogging, Douglas Adams, humor, novel writing, philosophy, photo Paffooney, Why I blog

March 10, 2015 · 12:10 pm

Sharing

Yesterday I re-blogged a post by Daven Anderson because he was doing such an excellent job of promoting my current publisher PDMI Publiching, LLC.

Daven’s post about PDMI

I am relying on this publisher to get my work into print. I have no way of knowing how much longer I can stay alive since only six incurable diseases, financial hardship, and the cruel winds of fate are all trying to overturn my little metaphorical boat. I have found them to be like a family, concerned about all of the members and willing to go to great lengths to help. I am pinning my literary hopes on them. If my novels don’t get noticed soon and cared about by someone other than me, they may die out shortly after I do. At the rate I am going, I don’t know how many I can push into existence, and I’m fairly sure I will not see all of them in print. But I am trying. This is my legacy, my lifetime of collected wit and wisdom, and it is the most worthy thing about me. So I am trying very hard to promote everything I can to help make the publishing company as a whole to thrive and work. But it is not for this reason only that I promote the work of others.

It is my philosophy of literature and art that good work must be shared. If you haven’t seen my posts about Loish, or William Adolphe Bouguereau, Norman Rockwell, or Maxfield Parrish, you really should look them up. I mean the artists, though I won’t object if you want to find and read my posts, either. Part of my job as a writer and a cartoonist is to make others aware of the good things I have found in life. And good art, good story-telling, good music… those things are some of the very best things that humanity has to offer. It is those creations that are the true purpose of life on Earth. We may not be around as a species very much longer because we are such poor care-takers of the planet, but human culture in all its depth and richness had to exist. It is the real purpose God granted to us.

So I encourage everyone who creates art of any kind… anyone who looks at, reads, or listens to art of any kind, to please share anything and everything you find that is good. The more good there is, the less room there is for evil to exist.

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Filed under NOVEL WRITING, publishing, sharing

Tagged as artwork, being an author, novel writing, PDMI, philosophy, publishers and publishing, sharing

March 8, 2015 · 5:16 pm

We Are Not Alone

The Photo Paffooney I have provided for today is one I have been sitting on and pondering over for several months now. It isn’t the cloud formation that is troubling, it’s the light. You see, the problem is, it was early morning. The sun was in the east, not far above the horizon. This picture shows two bright lights glowing behind the clouds in the southern sky. So, what were they? Lights that merely hovered there. We are in the zone flown over both by DFW and Love field. These weren’t airplanes. I checked UFO reports continuously. Three times unidentified objects were reported in the Dallas Fort-Worth area. The reports were online, but not covered by local media, newspapers or TV. In fact, they rather swiftly disappeared from You-Tube. So, what does it all mean?

Well, you know I am a nut-case. If you’ve read any of my tinfoil hat posts, you know I think the Roswell incident revolved around at least one crashed ship from another star system. I also think the primary proof that we have that we are not the only intelligent beings in this universe is the very fact that the government has worked so hard to convince us that it is not so. Liars tend to protest too much. And there is an ever-increasing pool of whistle-blowers that have risked everything to come forward with tales of close encounters and government programs to conceal the science we have learned from back-engineered alien space-crafts. You don’t have to believe me. Look up the Disclosure Project and Dr. Steven Greer and Astronaut Edgar Mitchell. Hear it in their own words on You-Tube. I am a kook, but I’m not the only one… and some of them have impressive resumes.

Am I claiming, then, that my picture shows UFO’s from outer space? Of course it doesn’t. It is an unidentified phenomenon that would be easily explained if I just had a few more facts… like the amount of facts I have looked at that make me think that We Are Not Alone.

So, was the purpose of this post merely to remind you that I have an idiotic faith in flying saucers? Not at all. I am in the midst of week of total isolation at home. My family went to Florida for Spring Break to visit my oldest son. I stayed home with the dog (somebody has to feed her and pick up poop). Actually, I am not well enough to travel and I convinced them that it would be okay to go without me. And it is okay too. I may be full of self pity and feeling lonely and blue right now like some sort of fool, but I am not alone. By myself, sure, but not alone. I got to thinking about all the people my life has touched over the years. I have known teachers in four different school districts, people in five different communities, workers at QT where I buy my Big Q cup of Diet Coke every morning, family members by the freight-train-full, cousins, nieces, nephews, uncles, aunts, great aunts, grandparents long gone, and over 2,500 students who sat in my 31 years of classrooms. I guess I know a few people, huh? And none of them have truly left me… not even those who died. As I continue to deteriorate and die… and continue to put my wealth of life experience into silly fictional forms, I realize they are all still with me. It is the only real wealth a human being ever has. I, like you, like all of us, am never alone.

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Tagged as aliens, goofiness, humor, paffooney, philosophy, photo Paffooney, tinfoil hats

February 24, 2015 · 5:26 pm

Snow Babies Come to Dallas

We have a second day off from work and school. The ice and potential snow is far from a blizzard, but sometimes the mere presence of snow can aid the death that stalks on silent cat feet.

My novel, still in the process of publication, called Snow Babies, has a central problem that concerns a blizzard. The primary threat, or possibly antagonist, of the story is a deadly blizzard that descends on a small Iowa town. In the midst of blizzard, whether they are actually hallucinations, ghosts, or banshee-like harbingers of death, are a number of snow babies. I call them snow babies. The Japanese call them yuki onna. They are spirits of the snow that can both lure people to their demise and help to save them for brighter things in their later lives.

I can’t actually speak about who or what the real life ones stalking about the suburbs of Dallas actually are. Lives are at stake in my world right now. I have to deal with some serious depression and mental challenges right now. The foretold consequences include things worse than death. I can no more name them than the owner of a glassware factory can afford to take up throwing stones. Things will shatter that I am trying desperately to protect. One thing that will definitely help is the passing of the snowstorm. Just like in my book, people are forced together in the areas of love and warmth that they depend on to survive. The snow babies themselves are, as you can see by my paffooney illustration, naked children bleached snow At this post is not meant for you. It is done for me. It is a statement of resolve and personal refusal to accept that what comes is due to fate alone… that no one can ever change an outcome. No story-teller ever believes that is the case.

So, here is a post from the snow. I was born during a blizzard. I have always known that the snow will come for me in the end. And it is very cold now where I live. More snow is in the forecast. But I will never give up trying to be warm.

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Tagged as metaphor, Paffoonies, philosophy, poetry, trouble

February 22, 2015 · 5:32 pm

Time Marches On

My life is rather fragile at this point. I have recently been ill with a virus. For me, as a COPD sufferer, that can be fatal. My lungs will easily clog and become a serious case of pneumonia. A virus like that will probably be the death of me. I don’t have the money it takes to go to the emergency room. Medical costs have perched my finances over the edge of the chasm of bankruptcy. Caught on a couple of tree roots, my ability to pay for anything dangles over the abyss. The next emergency will be my last… a conscious decision. Man, my blog is a real hoot so far, huh?

But as cold and rainy weather moves in… I am at peace. I have been at war all my life long. I have fought the war against ignorance by being a school teacher. I have fought to make a life for my family, and though financial security is not a part of that, I can testify that my three kids are creative and wonderful people that will survive and make me proud. And my written work, novels and this very blog, are complete enough to secure my legacy of ideas, beliefs, and wisdom to be passed on.

Now, I know that this all sounds like a depressed person saying goodbye. In some ways that is what it is. But it is not something to be worried over. I am not depressed. I am on medication to prevent debilitating depression. I have helped members of my family overcome depression. I am a warrior, and I know how to strike back against the darkness. I will not take my own life. I am, in fact, very good at survival. Thirty-two years ago I beat malignant melanoma. I have six incurable diseases that I have successfully juggled and dealt with for years. There is no humiliating thing or gruesome test that doctors haven’t either inflicted upon me or allowed me to narrowly avoid. I may continue to struggle on for many years. If I am saying goodbye in this post, it is only a just-in-case goodbye. It is really more of a statement that I believe I have achieved what a person needs to achieve in life to be successful. I have completed a quest. When I was a gawky doofus of an Iowegian teenager, I made a vow to be a wizard. I wanted to learn and share wisdom. I believe I have done so. I am wise enough to know that no man lives forever, and with all the factors arrayed against me, I know what comes next. So, I apologize for no humor in this post. But the Toy Soldier Paffooney in this post inspires me. The forced march continues… and it will not end until the soldiers can no longer put one more foot forward.

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Tagged as artwork, colored pencil, no humor, paffooney, philosophy

February 19, 2015 · 2:06 pm

People All Have Worth

I know that you are probably immediately listing all the reasons that my title is totally wacky monkey-thinking in your head. And if you want to lay into me in the comments, you are more than welcome. But the reality is that teachers have to develop the mindset that all kids can learn and all people have value… no matter what. That can be hard to accept when you factor in how corrupted, warped, and badly-taught so many people have turned out to be. It honestly seems, sometimes, that when faced with the facts of how people act… being violent, or greedy, self-centered, thoughtless, un-caring, and willfully stupid… that they really don’t even have value to others if you kill them, let them rot, and try to use them as fertilizer. The plants you fertilize with that stuff will come up deformed.

But the Doctor I have pictured here, the Second Doctor played by Patrick Troughton always seemed to find Earth people delightful. Alien people too, for that matter, unless they were soulless mobile hate receptacles in robotic trash cans like the Daleks, or mindless machines powered by stolen human brains like the Cybermen. There is, indeed, music in every soul, even if some of it is a little bit discordant and awkward. And people are not born evil. The classic study done on Brazilian street kids showed that even with no resources to share and living empty, hopeless lives, the children helped one another, comforted one another, and refused to exploit one another. As a teacher you get to know every type that there is. And there are stupid kids (deprived of essential resources necessary to learning), and evil kids (lashing out at others for the pain inflicted upon them), and needy kids (who can never get enough of anything you might offer and always demand more, MORE, MORE!) Sometimes they drive you insane and make you want to resign and leave the country to go count penguins in Antarctica. But the Doctor is right. No matter what has been done to them, if you get to know them, and treat them as individual people rather than as problems… they are delightful!

So let me show you a few old drawings of people.

Cute people like Andrew here.

Or possibly stupid and goofy people who never get things right.

Or long-dead people who made their contributions long ago, and sacrificed everything to make our lives different… if not better.

Or young people who live and learn and hopefully love…

And try really hard at whatever they do… whether they have talent or not.

And hope and dream and play and laugh…

And sometimes hate… (but hopefully not too much)…

And can probably tell that I really like to draw people…

Because God made them all for a reason…

even if we will never find out what that reason is.

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Tagged as artwork, colored pencil, humor, irony, love, Paffoonies, philosophy, teaching, wish-upon-a-starring

February 14, 2015 · 5:27 pm

Allegro Non Troppo

Mussorgsky’s Night on Bald Mountain from Disney’s Fantasia

The old faun

In musical terms, Allegro Non Troppo means fast tempo, but not too fast. So, I recently discovered that Allegro Non Troppo is one of many rare and obscure old movies which I am passionate about that can be found in its entirety on YouTube. I will include the YouTube link at the end of this post, and I sincerely recommend that if you have never seen this movie, you watch the whole thing at least once. No matter how many cringes or winces or blushes it causes, this is a movie of many bizarre parts that you really need to take in as a whole. It ranges from the ridiculous to the sublime, the atrociously ugly to the lyrically beautiful, from the brilliant classical score being played by a mistreated band of old ladies with orchestral instruments to a gorilla running amok, from Debussy to Ravel, from an artist released from his cage to single-handedly draw the animation, to a satire rich with baudy humor making fun of no less a work of animation than Prisney’s… I mean Disney’s Fantasia. The dark elements are there. The light-hearted, lilting comedy is there. The fairy tale delicacy and technicolor dreaming is all there.

And why should this be important to me? Especially now that I am retired from a long and fruitful teaching career? Well, I have history with this movie. I saw it first in college. I was an English major, but I took every film as literature class I could fit into my silly schedule. As an undergrad, I was determined to be a cartoonist for a career. I took classes seriously and aced most of them, but I was at college to intellectually play around. I didn’t take the prescribed courses to be an English teacher. That had to wait for the more responsible me to come along in grad school for that. I saw both Fantasia and Allegro Non Troppo during one of the play-time years. Much as the old satyr in Claude Debussy’s Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune, I was enamored with sensory experience. I took my first girlfriend to see Disney’s Fantasia, and she later turned down the opportunity to see Allegro Non Troppo with me. Good sense on her part, but the beginning of the end of our relationship. Just as Fantasia has the part in it where Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring describes evolution from the beginning of the Earth to the end of the dinosaurs, Allegro Non Troppo uses Ravel’s Bolero to describe the evolution of life on a weird planet from germs in a discarded Coke bottle to the inevitable coming of the malevolent monkey who is ultimately us. And, of course, the satire would not be complete without some off-set for Dukas’ The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. As near as I can figure it out, the apprentice, played by Mickey Mouse, becomes the snake from the Garden of Eden in Allegro Non Troppo. When the snake is unable to get Adam and Eve to eat the apple, he makes the mistake of eating the apple himself. He learns the hard way that, no matter how clever, even diabolically clever, you think you are, you are not really in control of anything in life. Every would-be wizard in the world has to understand that he is powerless without hard experience. And what a boring world full of naked people this would be if there were never any apprentices in it foolish enough to actually become wizards. Of course, I haven’t really talked about the most heart-twisting part of Allegro Non Troppo… the sad cat wandering the ruins of his former home, or the most laugh-aloud part with the super-tidy little lady-bee trying to eat a blossom, but being interrupted by a couple of picnickers.

But the thing is, this movie is a timely subject for me. Not only did I, just yesterday, rediscover it, but it still has the same meaning for me now as it did when I first saw it. Then I was an aspiring young artist who loved this movie because it approached ideas non-consecutively, just as I approached my learning years… rambling here and there, finding first a bitter-sweet something, and then a sad beauty behind everything in life. And it is where I am again now, in a poor-health enforced retirement… divorced from teacher’s schedules and time itself. Able to do as I please, and aspiring once again to commit great acts of art.