Category: memories

Reminding Me of You

A white Jeep flipped a bitch, your expression, and it came to me because that of that time you were pulling out and that Jeep did a U turn and hit you, and then tried blaming you. That’s how it was going for you, then. Your poor grey Bimmer was totaled when it flipped on 101 on the home commute after hitting a piece of wood in the lane, but the insurance company didn’t believe you. But they couldn’t explain why your car flipped, either.

‘Round and Round’ came on, and I thought of you, your face lighting up as you lunged for the boom box and cranked it up as you said, “Oh, my God, that’s my tune.” Then you played air guitar and sang.

I think of you whenever I see an Atlanta Braves uniform or hat. You’re gone and the players you cheered have retired but you bled the colors. And you’re there when the Packers play, even though Favre moved on to the other teams and the HoF.

Every time I stop to look at a new program, I think of you, because you were the first one to ever point out to me all the little things, encouraging me to not be afraid and just click on things to see what happens. You come to me in a whiff of Pall Malls and Marlboros, in a sweaty white Miller can, and in the taste of bad, burnt black coffee in small paper cups. I see you when I cut open a watermelon and gaze at the rows of black seeds in the glistening sweet flesh and when I hear a fighter jet split the overhead air. You emerge when someone speeds by, talking on their cell phone, because I can hear you spit, “Slow down, fucker, and get off your phone and drive.”

Van Halen’s ‘Jamie’s Crying’ comes on, and you pop out, because you were dating that young woman, Jamie, and ended up marrying her. We were all at the club one night and started singing it to her, and she started crying, asking us, “Why are you doing that?” She was drunk, we all were, and you and she went into the dark corner and talked and kissed. You’re in the taste of a well grilled cheeseburger because nobody made them like you, no one ever in my life, and you’re there when I think about making pancakes or get out of the car and stretch and look around at a highway rest stop. You’re there in the blue sky over the ocean and in the whispering, salty sea breeze, brushing your hair from your face and urging me to move over so you can take a picture.

You all come to me, individuals caught in the wad of bubblegum that is me, individuals contributing to my sum total, from your moments and points, trying to stretch away but always mired in the pink strain of memories.

1

Sentimentality and Nostalgia Win in a Landslide

Purging tee shirts today, and shorts. I have many of both, old and frayed and worn, that never escape the drawer. They often no longer fit, because I am no longer that size.

But there is a Pink Floyd tee shirt from the Momentary Lapse of Reason tour. What a party that was. What was it, 1988? While stationed in Germany. We partied with Germans and Czechs. Man, hard to believe it was so long ago. I was a different person then. Well, I’ll keep it, even though its collar has partially separated from the shirt’s body, the colors have lost their luster, and the underarms are holed. I’ll keep it.

Also, the tee shirt celebrating Mark Donohue and the 30th anniversary of the Porsche 917-30, which itself was over a decade ago. That’s in good shape but small, a keeper. Also a keeper is the Australian Grand Prix shirt from 2000. My boss, a good friend, bought it for me. I was supposed to accompany her to Australia. We were doing clinic trials for a new medical device for treating chronic total occlusions, but plans were changed at the last minute and I didn’t go. But she remembered how I’d been going on about racing in general, and the Formula 1 race was going on that weekend, turning the place into a carnival, so she bought the tee shirt for me. It’s never been worn. I haven’t seen Laura in ten years but I remember her brightly as one of the best people I ever worked for and a sensational friend.

Michael Schumacher in a Ferrari in the rain is kept. That was his first year with Ferrari after he won two WDC with Bennetton. A red tee shirt from an Iowa writing conference is kept, and another, from a writing conference in Portland, is kept. My LeMans tee shirt is kept. This tee, although drained of life, celebrates Mario Andretti’s final year of Indy car racing. To the keep pile. The Steeler AFC championship shirt from my brother-in-law must be kept.

The tee shirt from the race course formerly called Laguna Seca is also kept. It has the old configuration on it. We ‘won’ passes from the Marlboro people when they were doing a promotion on Moffett NAS. I phrase it as ‘won’ because they gave us the passes after enjoying our company. That was when? Well, Marlboro sponsored Penske, and Al Unser Jr, Emerson Fittipaldi, and Paul Tracy were the driving line-up. 1994, a year before I retired from the USAF, that was the weekend the late, unique Randy stole a golf cart from a track official and drove it around because he was tired of walking. Blue, the tee doesn’t fit, but it’s the thought that counts.

In the end, the thought counts for a lot. The Goodwill pile is much smaller than the pile to return to the drawers. But these shirts, with their smells and rips, shrunken and frayed, are better than photos. I’ll die someday. An estate sale will be held or my wife or relatives will come through and look at these shirts. Those who know me will know what they’re about, and why I kept them.

The rest will just have to wonder.

5

Hey Jude

What was the list? We’d written items on the blackboard. I paused by the rice to visualize the chalk scribblings and compare it to the shopping cart. Sweet pot, broc, car, ban, OM, cil. All secured. Ch. Butt. Brd. Blk b. Lem.

I’ll head for the cheese, get that done – no, the bread is closer. I’ll go through the bread to cross the store to reach the cheese. Then I’ll swing back by the rear aisle for the butter, detour to the canned goods for the black beans and lemonades, and then, off list, perhaps a bit o’ choc.

The store is easily Ashland’s most popular. Shop ‘n Kart has a vibe of peace and food. Lots of organics. Nice selections of fresh produce, cheeses, beers and wines, and green stuff made to help us reduce waste and our foot print. Good location, too, here on the town’s south side, off Ashland where it meets Tolman. Busy, busy place.

Background music plays. It’s usually rock. Sometimes it’s classical. ‘Hey Jude’ came on as I surveyed the bread and found the whole wheat offering desired. I sang along, remembering when I heard and sang along as a child. Shifting gears, I veered past other shoppers, passing as I remembered, pol – for polenta, backtracking to the pasta zone. Others softly sang with the Beatles as I went.

Exiting that aisle, I entered the perpendicular central aisle toward the  dairy cases. ‘Hey Jude’ swelled. So did the store singing. More and more people sang the song, and sang it louder and louder. I don’t know if they knew they sang aloud, or if they were conscious of others singing aloud, but hearing more singing as the French horns flared and Sir McCartney sang, I half-expected the shoppers to begin synchronized dancing.

“Na, na, nah, na-na-na-na.” Visions of ‘Basketball Jones’ surfaced from my teenage years. I heard someone say, “Now the cashiers,” and the cashiers took up ‘Hey Jude’, then they called for “just the people in the ice cream section,” and they joyfully spun in their Nikes and sandals, kicking their legs up in their jeans, skirts, cargo shorts and capris, raising their eyes and smiling toward an unseen ceiling camera, holding out their purchases as they sang, “Hey Jude, judy, judy, judy, wow.”

The song ended. The singing silenced. Dancing stopped. Shopping resumed. Most of it had been in my head, of course, unlike the shopping list, which was now gone. Where was I going?

‘Nights in White Satin’ began. I heard someone softy singing along, but realized it was only me.

References:

Hey Jude

Basketball Jones

Nights in White Satin

 

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Einstein’s Blackberries

Sheldon Cooper is struggling to penetrate some impenetrable physics issue. Leonard Hofstader reminds Sheldon that tedium will free his mind, which is why Einstein worked in the patent office. Sheldon takes a job at the Cheesecake Factory where Penny works.

This is all from The Big Bang Theory, a sitcom I enjoy. On to Einstein’s Blackberries.

1. We went blackberry picking this morning. Seventy degrees and sunny at ten AM, the perfect weather has been dialed up.

The picking is being done at a friend’s place, ten acres on a small town’s fringe. Silence is the rule. Aircraft and a few cars traveling Highway 99 are the only violators.

I worry about zombies.

This is a perfect zombie scenario. A serene scene of a couple engrossed with fruit picking activity. Then a zombie arrives.

Which zombie type is critical. If they’re the 28 Days/Weeks Later rage filled fast moving zombies, we could be in trouble, but if these zombies belong on The Walking Dead, we’ll probably get away. Unless there are a zillion, or we’re stupid about it, like stopping to get more berries as the zombies close. (“Oh, look at that big, beautiful, blackberry, I must have it, oh, no, a zombie got me.” Screaming and flesh tearing ensues (according to the captions).)

If our zombie pursuers harken from iZombie, it’s difficult to judge whether we’ll escape. They like to philosophize about their killing, life choices, and plans.

Something cracks on the brambles’ far side. Snorting and chuffing follow. It could be a zombie, or group of zombies, trying to be quiet as they stalk us. It could also be a horse pasturing in the next field. Whinnying follows. That could be a zombie pretending to be a horse. Or a horse. One never knows. It’s Schrödinger’s cat all over again.

2. Berry and fruit picking, yard work, washing and waxing the car, and walking are the tedium that frees my thinking. I work on novels, current problems (like tearing up the back yard and creating a drought tolerant space), and short stories. I probably stayed at IBM for all those years because it was so freeing. My mind was rarely required in that bureaucracy. So here I was today, picking berries, thinking, dreaming, wondering, soaking up sun and fresh air, and worrying about zombies.

The blackberries, like the blueberries, squash and peaches, are amazing. Our weather, after a fast, heated start, cooled substantially in July and August. Nights benefit from cool mountain air that drops the temp to the mid 50s on most days. Fabuliciously sweet blackberries are being quickly accrued.

3. The radio plugs songs from 1983 on the way home. It’s their thing, celebrating the music of different graduating classes.

Theme from Flashdance. Yes, “Owner of a Lonely Heart.” The Tubes. “Hungry Like a Wolf.” Toto IV.

1983 put me at Kadena Air Station, Okinawa, Japan. We were mid-tour in ’83, and living on the economy, less than 600 square feet, and no heat. It was great fun.

Kadena, with jaunts to Korea, Thailand, China, Singapore, mainland Japan, Hong Kong and Hawaii, was a memorable experience. Beautiful Pacific views. Typhoons. One earthquake. In between these matters were military issues, parties and college classes. They were ancient times, free of the Internet and computers, satellite TV, or cell phones that took photos and videos. CDs were just coming out, and VHS battled Beta Max for supremacy, but it was also a zombie-less era.

4. We were gone two hours. Seventeen pints are the result. I probably ate another pint. My wife is a faster picker than me. Perhaps I’m eating more of my pick. Or maybe my wandering mind slows me down. It could just be that she’s more focused, with quicker, more nimble fingers.

Arriving home, we check on the cats and conduct visual inspections for ticks and zombie bites (on us, not the cats). Neither are discovered (ticks and zombie bites – the cats are found, asleep).

The freezing machine (my wife) is activated. The freezer is precariously full of frozen fruits and vegetables. This year’s crops have been bountiful.

Einstein would have enjoyed the morning.

5

Computer Coming Back

My HP Envy is on the way back to my home. Although I’m happy, that’s not news, and it’s not prompting this post.

What prompts this post is how it’s coming back. Sent Fed Ex 2-Day service, picked up on 5th, it’ll reach me on the 9th. That’s a sign of our times, that 2 days = 4 days without a wince of embarrassment. It goes right along there with logic that says the answer to gun violence is to arm more people with guns. That ketchup is a vegetable. That water boarding is not torture, and that torture rewards us with the truth.

That America is the world’s greatest country. That corporations are people, my friends. That companies care about their customers above their profits, that market corrections will fix problems, that climate change can be ignored by legislating the words out of the public’s view, that charter schools run for profit will do better than public schools supported by taxes, that professional sports stadiums are good for the local economy and do much more than serve the wealthy owners, that things were better for everyone ‘in the good old days,’ and that the answer to war, is more war.

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A Beautiful Time

I had a beautiful time last night, thank you. I again attended a friend’s birthday. This friend is 90, vivacious, intelligent, artistic and fun. She is, like, another role model for when I’m 90, or better, for when I’m sixty. She enjoys life with a buoyant spirit. Her home is rich with art, especially her own. She presented me with a piece of art last year of a curled cat sleeping with the serene sweetness cats project, but with ears tilted and attuned, listening, announcing, I am asleep, and I am aware.

Also met some new folks and visited with some charming friends I’d not seen in a year, who came back for the bday celebs. In talking with one, Mo, about my science fiction writing (they should know not to ask me as a writer, what are you writing, because you’ll be informed, in depth), and how I play with concepts regarding technology granting virtual immortality through serial resurrections, she talked about how troubling she finds these ideas. Which I react with as, yea! Good. Tell me more.

“I don’t want to share my body or abilities to meet the challenge, I want to meet the challenge but nurturing, growing and developing what and who I am.” I love this humanistic point of view. I wanted to debate merits and points, but it was a birthday party.

I was also introduced to a Belgium IPA with tangerine tones that lit up my beer buds in a pleased way. Besides that, the food was delicious, all contributed by attendees. I met more of the party honoree’s family and friends and became re-acquainted with her son. We share a name but he’s so much more charming. I always enjoy our encounters.

Hope you all meet such wonderful people, and enjoy beautiful times. The world is wealthy with both.

3

Three Best

Yesterday was my 60th birthday. I lack the socialization or genes or spirit to celebrate. I just don’t do it, not for holidays, nor my birthday. I will try to celebrate with others but when my spouse asks me what I want to do for my birthday, or what I want, I’m pretty lost about my answer.

And I think it’s been so for a long time. But in thinking about what to do, I reflected on the best birthday celebrations. Three stand out in mind. So in no order, because they are the three best —

My fifteenth birthday. I’d moved in with my father and was living in an apartment by the military installation where he was assigned, in Dayton, Ohio, just him and me. I spent days by myself, which isn’t a bad life for me, as I was active as an artist and created pencil drawings, and I read books. My one friend outside of this was my Dad’s friend, Jim. Jim picked me up once a week to take me fishing. After a few weeks of that, he asked me if I wanted to go home with him for lunch. I did, and ended up meeting my future wife.

The birthday tie-in comes from spending July 4th with her and the rest of Jim’s family. Discovering it was my birthday the next day, my fourteen year old future wife ‘borrowed’ my watch and refused to give it back to me, until midnight struck. Then she presented it to me as a gift. That was a great birthday.

But another great birthday involved my Mom. She asked me what I wanted to do and we ended up going to a steak house, like I was an adult, where I had a New York strip steak. I think it was my first steak and certainly the first time I felt like I was more than a son with my mother, but also a friend. That was a great birthday.

The third came when I was stationed in Germany with the Air Force. I flew to the US to go to a writing conference in Ohio. Since I was in that region of the world, with all the time and expense associated with getting there, I also visited my Mom and sisters in Pittsburgh, PA. Going out of their way, they procured me Penn Pils beer, which was like German beer that was brewed in Pittsburgh, and made my favorite dishes. It wasn’t my birthday but it was in the same time period, and, as I’d left home long before and was rarely back, they treated my visit like a birthday celebration. That was a great birthday.

Like many things in life, I’ve been extremely fortunate. Remembering them, and having all the shout-outs from friends, acquaintances, companions, relatives and former co-workers via the Internet (and an enjoyable day with my wife, who I met forty-five years ago) has made this birthday a wonderful day.

Thanks for a great birthday.

I guess that’s four.

 

0

A History of Writing

The Atlantic provides a perspective of writing software. It fascinates me because of my personal history. I began with WordStar on a CPM 86 machine with a small green screen, and two 5 1/4 inch floppy disk drives. WordStar worked well for me but bundled software forced me to a switch to WordPro. WordPro was set up on a Zenith 150 with a 20 meg hard drive and two 5 1/4 floppy drives and an EGA 16 color screen. The colors didn’t matter but the resolution still wasn’t great. Switching to a VGA screen with 256 colors enhanced the experience. I still wrote in tablets and notebooks with a pen and then typed it all up.

Having a natural bent toward being a geek, I used to be really proficient with those programs, learning formatting, editing and saving secrets on my own. Friends and co-workers would come by or call me, asking for help about setting margins, centering, pagination, headers and other matters. People then wrote these insights up and made money off them by publishing books about these secrets, which never entered my mind to do.

Eventually, Microsoft became the Godzilla that wiped everything out, leaving me with Word. I adjusted to Word well in the early years. But modern improvements have made it less friendly. Word offer a gazillion templates when I use two. It’s odd how selecting File versus clicking on Open takes you down different paths. Adopting from version to version as the operating system changed has been a major irritant. I also eventually switched from a tower to laptops and notebooks, discarding the notebooks. I was sad to let them go. They, along with pens, were friends and companions, pets of sorts, for a struggling writer.

I honestly thought shifting to writing directly onto a computer instead of paper would be challenging. Perhaps using email and filling out computer forms over the years helped, but the change was easier than I expected. I even came to recognize the many advantages of using an electronic media to create.

I still read books in paper formats, though. Although I read and edit my own online, almost everyone else’s is printed out or purchased in a hard format. Yes, I have devices to read them, but that change is surprisingly taking me longer. I’ve seen articles about fonts and colors and the impact on reading on a computer but to me, it seems to be that I like shifting the book around for different angles, and that still doesn’t work well with the electronic devices.

Of course, it really doesn’t matter to me whether I’m reading a book online or a hard copy, as long as I’m reading. I guess that was the lesson for the transition from paper to computer, from WordStar to Word, it doesn’t matter, as long as I’m writing.

0

Be Bad

The wave came over me as I got up and walked around. I’ll have gluten free pancakes with Omega 3 butter and organic maple syrup.

The wave struck.

Have a donut.

I didn’t even hear it coming.

No, not a donut, I told myself, not thinking about a Krispy Kreme maple log. I didn’t remember the times when I was young and I would dart out to a Dunkin’ Donuts for a dozen. Being a child and reading the comics while eating a donut wasn’t thought of. Nor did I recall wolfing down a cruller or cinnamon rich glazed sinker, or walking to the bakerie down the cobblestone street in Germany and gazing at the pastries and pointing out, “That one.” Fritters never crossed my mind or walking into the office on a casual Friday morning (we could wear jeans or shorts) and discovering a big pink box full of frosted cake donuts with sprinkles, glazed and filled donuts, and cinnamon twists.

Nope, never thought of them at all. I just ate my stupid healthy pancakes.

 

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Her Lady

Five foot eight inches tall, rumored to be white with short dark hair and perpetually wearing sunglasses, the woman behind the Stellar Queen was mysterious.

She was at least eight hundred years old, well-established because she’d lived on the Stellar Queen for that long. Such a long life on one ship leads to rumors….

I lived for fifty years as a child and man on the Stellar Queen, enjoying my second childhood on the ship after I initiated my Do-over, so I was always watching out for her. I was never certain I saw her. There were rumors….

Her appearance was challenging not just because she was rarely seen but also because she practiced genetic designing to shape shift, leading her appearance to often change, even becoming an animal, such as the panther that was claimed to live on the Stellar Queen, or one of the unicorns in the forest. At least, those were were the rumors….

The Stellar Queen was her baby, along with Doctor Jharun Pollux, great-granddaughter of Doctor Jerol Pollux. Doctor Jerol Pollux was the famous discoverer of the dark elements. The elder Doctor Pollux, a funny point to write, was but twenty-four when she made her discoveries a hundred years before her great-granddaughter’s birth. Jharun Pollux and Her Lady were said to be contemporaries in their youth, and struck up a relationship from that era. ‘That era’ was when space exploration and colonization began blossoming, thanks to the dark elements of the elder doctor’s findings, but it was almost three hundred years later that the two women began collaborating on the Stellar Queen’s design and construction.

Most critically for the Stellar Queen, Doctor Pollux incorporated power generators using asteridium, chiridium, and lumenirium. Asteridium was the black element most commonly used in starships for propulsion but Pollux used it with a small lumenirium core to create the artificial sun that graced the Stellar Queen’s bio-dome, rising in the east, and setting in the west.

Chiridium was the more interesting choice for the ship’s power. Chiridium, named for chi, after the life force, is rarer, more difficult to mine and control. Myths related to its name and Doctor Jerol Pollux’s comments about it, can never be put down. As a dark element, some say it’s a dark life force. Both Doctors Pollux laughed about that, but with its AI ship overseer, many inhabitants and visitors thought the Stellar Queen was alive. Majorities of people recounted stories and gave interviews stating that something different was felt as soon as you boarded the ship.

Her Lady never made comments about it that anyone ever recorded. As odd and intriguing as her eight hundred year life aboard the Stellar Queen was, her disappearance without notice when she left was equally intriguing. She only told Rei the baker, famous for his goods from Trudy’s Valley, that she was leaving.

Being the only source, naturally, more rumors arose. One rumor was that one of her shapeshifting processes was disrupted, rendering her a monster that couldn’t be fixed, and that she still lived in secret on the Queen. Others claimed that she had never existed, that she had not created the Stellar Queen, but that it created her because the woman who had begun the project had died before it launched. More quietly, it was suggested that perhaps it wasn’t correct to think of the Stellar Queen as two separate entities, but that they were one, yet another project of the great Doctor Jerol Pollux, and her great-granddaughter.

Imagination can be a wild, untamed creature.

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