Silly morning rains... I was sitting in a chair next to the pool in the apartment complex where I live now. Dallas, Texas. I was waiting for my laundry to finish, and it was so peaceful that I thought, "This is a perfect place to write blogs." So I went back to my bedroom and got my AlphaSmart 3000, which is a cordless typewriter with a usb plug, and I started walking back to the pool when it started sprinkling. Looks like it's stopped now...
Now, back by the pool. I was reading a book, as well, and I didn't want the pages to get wet. I've said before that reading a book is much like taking a dip in this pool in front of me. You can only stay underwater for so long, then you have to come up for air. Same thing with books. For me, I can only read for so long, then I have to come up to reality for a time, to breathe, to relaign myself with this world and place.
I think the same thing goes with television series as well. I haven't hooked up the cable or Internet yet, so I've been watching seasons of Star Trek DS9 while unpacking boxes and the like. I remember thinking, as I drifted off to sleep that night that, there was no need for my brother to send the things I had forgotten in Georgia, that he could just beam them over. Problem was, I'm not in the 24th century, nor have transporters been invented yet. A shame, it would have made moving much simpler. Of course, if that economy was here, now, I wouldn't have this job. Textbooks would be on tablets (more so than they are now... as life imitates fiction), and there would be no need to buy them. I can't help but think that the world of the Federation, with the technological breakthroughs that they would have, the whole idea of Capitalism would fall by the wayside. I know that some references are made to credits and rations when it came to Transporter usage and trade with other races... but the society would work on a service base, not one of marketing goods and materials. Only what you could make yourself through your own skills would be marketable through some kid of market. Like Cisko's father's restaraunt in New Orleans, for instance. But I've digressed. I'm sure enough theses have been written on the economy of Rodenberry's world that I have nothing to add.
Like I said, I haven't had Internet at my apartment since I moved in, and while that will change in couple of weeks, I've not had a place to work on blogs, save for the Subway next to the bookstore, which has a row of computers. It's been a pain, but, no major withdrawls, since I can access it from time to time.
Dallas' summers are dry (except for the occassional summer storms which, when it rains, forms a private lake outside my apartment. I'm sure if a Tropical system ever parks over Texas like Alberto did in Georgia in 94, I would have flooding issues. But for now, I wont worry about it. The hot summers are tempered by low humidity and a nice breeze that keeps 100 degrees not feeling so bad. It would be unbearable in the humid, muggy, Georgia climate.
***
My apt. is underneath the left chimney in front of the building on the left side.
I'm very satisfied with the apartment complex I've moved into. The Arts At Midtown right next to the Galleria Mall. Very quiet, great security, I feel at peace here. Moving into an apartment, however, teaches you certain things. Living by myself, I didn't realize that there's no reason to have 50 cups or three sets of silverware (which was too heavy for the board shelf it was on, and came crashing down inside the cupboard one afternoon). I use the dishwasher (I have a dishwasher!!) and clean the same three plates and the same two or three cups and silverware that I use every three or so days. So unless I have a large gathering (not going to happen...), all these dishes will remain stashed away. I think laundry room ettiquite is not practiced in most places. In a laundry room with 10 washers (and 4 are out of order) and 8 dryers, it's not necessary to bring 6 loads of laundry to do all at once. Do a couple a day, or whatever, and let more people clean their clothes. I only have three loads total, and so I've done two on Sunday, and I'll do the other tomorrow.
I'm in building S.
All the things I talked about several years ago about the way a town should be built is realized here in North Dallas. Apartments, houses, all right next to shopping centers, parks, colleges, and offices, all so that you never have to drive more than 10 minutes to work. Assuming that I never drove out of the area around me, I could easily fill my tank up every two or three weeks, and that would be sufficient for my needs. Or, I could walk, or tke the DART bus. But with the amount of gas I save just by being right here, I doubt it would be necessary. I could walk about 10 minutes and get to a Target, Burger King, Macdonalds, two shopping malls, quite a few other restaurants, and probably a bank, if I wanted to switch. Not to mention the parks around where I work, with miles of trails. This is the way a town was supposed to be constructed.
***
Yeah, I know, no big philosophical musings in this blog, just the act of living my life in a new place, and being on my own to do it. Perhaps just surviving is the greatest happiness we could have, and no lofty ideals should ever climb above that. I keep thinking back to Voltaire's Candide, where his answer to the best of all possible worlds is simply to live in a house and till one's gardens. I don't have any gardens to till, but I know it's a metaphoric garden. My little spot in this world is my garden, and I shall nuture it and watch it grow.
Recently I took a road trip to Dallas, Texas for a job interview. It was an amazing trip, sort of one of my hikes on the trails around here, but on a bigger scale. Now, granted, I would much rather see the scenery of this great land by foot, but since I haven't won the lottery yet (and won't, since I don't play), I saw the short, quick version. Absolutely magnificent, and the lessons I learned while doing it are well worth mentioning.
Never take "Not Exactly."
And that's not just on Rental Cars. The only thing that non-brand names are better and more
satisfying are the store brand jars of jelly. And mayonnaise. But not rental cars. I understand that there's not an option sometimes, and cheaper is the only way to go. Turns out, this time, it was definitely not cheaper. I chose SixT Auto Rental (it's a European thing) because the online quotes were much cheaper than the more recognizable brands. Turns out... that's because the other costs weren't even on the website... they added them later...
The additional fees made the rental the same price as those of the other national rentals, whose prices were clearly stated on their websites. Also, the additional $250 deposit was not stated at all at the website. Finally, the employees at the return/pick up lot were friendly, but not particularly professional, with one of the workers saying that the car they had picked out for me was one that she was going to use later. The driver that brought the cleaned car to me stepped out of the vehicle eating a bag of cheetos, with all that orange dust on his hands. Not at all what a customer wants to see. The car was fine, as was the return process itself afterwards. I still don't know how the deposit situation shook out, as the invoice said nothing about it, and the additional $100 I had to pay will have to come out of that, since the credit card I used only had what I thought I was actually paying on it. Next time, I will not go with "Not Exactly."
Then, when I got to the motel (I used Super 8), the very kind front desk person informed me that the credit card I used wouldn't work. So I pulled out my debit card.... it wouldn't work either :O (that's me making the big Macaulay Culkin shocked face!) Out of money in a big city 1000 miles away, and at Midnight. So I call my brother (1:00 AM Eastern) and woke him up and explained the problem. Fortunately, he was able to re-reserve the room and I walked into a musty, smoke-filled (it was not supposed to be smoked in) room which I cleared out by turning the AC on. Unfortunately, the AC went into the curtain which blew out when I turned the air on. And there was no way of keeping the curtain from doing that. So I used, for once in my life, the Gideon's Bible to trap the curtain against the window (I'm going to Hell, I know). I went to sleep using my internal alarm clock (which always works) knowing that I'd probably have danishes and maybe even eggs in the breakfast room that was right next door to my room. Next morning, I find cold cereal, pancake batter, and packaged cinnamon rolls. I just took a pastry and went back to my room.
AudioBooks Rock!!!
By the time I reached Birmingham (after a wonderful breakfast buffet at the Shoney's in Anniston (everyone stop there on the way out on 20, keep the place in business!), my music had failed me, and I was feeling my eyes unfocus and me getting droopy. So, I decided, that wasn't going to work, and I popped in the 1st CD of David Weber's Off Armageddon Reef I stayed awake throughout the rest of my trip, all the rest of the 1,721 miles. I never thought that Audiobooks would keep me awake more than singing at the top of my lungs to my favorite songs, but it absolutely delivers. It's a completely different part of the brain, and I could easily "read" while driving, keeping alert and focusing on the road while my inner "eye" focused on the images being formed in my head. It kept the people chained to the cave wall busy while the real person traveled topside (Plato).
Book Review: Off Armageddon Reef by David Weber
The book itself is the start of a series that takes place on a island-covered world, post human destruction by a formidable, but slow, alien race. David Weber constructs an entire sociological structure, religion, economy, everything, and while some people probably are going to criticize Weber for page after page of describing the tenets of The Church of God Awaiting, I found it fascinating. Pausing the plot to build a world makes the best books, in my mind. Some of the books I've loved, I'd rather get rid of the plot entirely. See Neal Stephenson's Ananthem where the plot basically gets in the way of amazing philosophical dialogue. When I travel back to Dallas to begin my new job, I will put the sequel into my mp3 player and will stay awake the whole time.
Everyone! Go to Braums!
It has the best everything... fries, burgers, ice cream... because it's all fresh. They only exist within a 300 mile radius of Tuttle, Oklahoma. I won't deny that being in the "Braums Zone" had some influence on taking the job in Dallas. And the food was as superb as I remember. My friend C., whose house got flattened in the Moore tornado, is the head of Public Relations for Braums, which makes me insanely jealous, and is so ironic since her main love is training and running marathons across the country. The nearest one is about 5 minutes from Brookhaven College, which is where I'll be working as the Assistant Manager of the Bookstore.
Dallas has it together!
The transportation system in Dallas is complex, and while things are constantly under construction, they have a plan to better the transportation around the city. The HOV lanes are actually on bridges above the interstates, and they have their own exits and such. The buses run everywhere throughout the city, and passes are affordable (especially if you take into account gas prices nowadays). With my apartment being next to various stores, I won't have to drive much of anywhere except 5 minutes to work, so it will save on gas, and if I want to go someplace, I can hop on the bus system and travel anywhere. Or drive out to the lakes, the parks, or to any number of places in Texas and Oklahoma where my friends and family are living. The Lakehouse my grandmother used to own is only 1.5 hours north, on the Lake of the Arbuckles.
Vicksburg, MS over the Mississippi River.
I'm so excited to be taking this new path in my life. Everybody wish me luck, and I'll blog again on from the Lone Star State. Farewell Georgia (which isn't true, it's only a 12 hour drive), and Hello Texas!!
"Emotional Attachment to Inanimate Objects." It's what I've said recently about my mom's always keeping stuff. And it's often, as I'm sorting through everything, that I'm asking myself "Why did she keep this?" It's sad, it really is, that all the material goods that she worked her whole life for, and now, I have to get rid of a lot of it because I'm moving to Dallas, Texas to an apartment and a really good job. It's taught me many things, going through everything, about the way we see the things in our lives, and how, when it all comes down to it, we really only need a microscopic amount of the things we accumulate. Also, when you think about it, the "sentimental value" that we place in some things just isn't there, no matter how strongly we think otherwise.
An example... a brown ceramic cup that sat in my dad's bathroom back in Oklahoma City. It reminds me of that bathroom, and thus, of my father in the days when his health was better and our lives were better. It reminds me of the days I talk about in the poem I published some years ago. It was, at some point, broken and put back together, and so there are mended cracks in it. We've kept it all this time, and I found it in a cabinet way up high in the kitchen, along with all the other mugs and plastic cups that we'd accumulated over the years. Did it have sentimental value to my mother? Of course it did, as she found on QVC the brown dotted Temptations line and bought a set of it because it was identical to the pattern of that cup (and other objects in the bathroom). Does it have "sentimental" value for me? Well, yes, but there's a difference. I don't have the complex emotions that my mother had, it being something that her husband owned, and let's face it, my memories of my father weren't as wonderful as her's was. Then I got to thinking... we have everything in that bathroom someplace in this house. Among them is a combination of nuts and bolts and nails, welded together by my father to resemble a man sitting on the toilet. It was also in his bathroom, and it reflected the humor and skill that he had all throughout his life. That has much more sentimental attachment to me, while the cup, broken and now useless, doesn't. So... I threw the cup away.
It reminds me of constructing a Magic: The Gathering deck. That sounds odd, I know. But there's so many great MTG cards with such great abilities when played, and there are thousands of them... so you make a deck, and if you just start putting cards in the deck, it could easily wind up to be 100 cards or more, as there's no limit on how many you can put into it. But too many cards, and it's impossible to draw any one card during the game. It makes the deck unwieldy, just as too many things kept makes a move or a house unwieldy. Thus you take the deck, spread it out across the floor, and start weeding out stuff. My friend John did this to his decks, and the editing process becomes really hard. You have to think logically about what X card does, especially with Y and Z in the deck already. The deck needs to be around 60 cards, with Land cards and everything, so only the essential cards have to be in there. While my apartment isn't going to be "that" small, the idea is the same. Without a storage unit (which we're thinking about), it will be hard to keep everything that has sentimental value, so I have to keep what is essential, and logically think about everything spread on the floor, and weed out things that are duplicates or unneeded.
So now I'm sitting on the floor, trying to sort everything out, with boxes labeled Garage Sale, Goodwill, Trash, Keep... and I realize how much work all that actually is. I say this because Letting Go should be a relaxing thing. And it is, I guess, if I had months to do it. But I don't, for various reasons, the first of which is because I'm taking that job in Dallas. So it's sometimes stressful and depressing, as I'm sure it is for most people who have to go through the belongings of the people they loved. The problem is, I have all my stuff to go through as well, and do the same thing to it. I guess it's better to do it now than to let other people do after I'm gone.
The lesson to be learned in all of this is that God, in His infinite wisdom, teaches us these lessons. It sort of answers the question about "bad things happening to good people." After my interview, I went to Houston (Orange, TX, actually) to visit my cousin there, and to spend the night. She was in a rental house because on Christmas Eve last year, while I was at the hospital with my mother, my cousin's house caught on fire, and most of her belongings were ruined. Upon talking with her two sons, they exclaimed, "Well, at least you won't have to go through all of it." It was a hidden blessing, they realized, because "Letting It Go," is a way of understanding that all those things were but physical representations of the memories inside your own mind. As another friend told me, the things that we hold on to, as "keepsake" items, won't mean anything to us when we are old and senile. When we're gone, those things may or may not mean anything to our loved ones. Then we have simply burdened them with the combined material goods amassed during our lifetime. It's not fair to them, and we should be able to pick out very specific keepsake items that remind us of any one memory or person, and keep that one thing, not hundreds of items with the same memory. Then we can travel through this world lighter.
I realize that the implications of this reach into sensitive areas. For instance, what of books that I've already read? They are but representations of the texts inside them. Shouldn't I get rid of them, too? The lesson isn't always learned that quickly, and we will always have those things we cling to. For me, they are books. For my mother, it was the clothing she wore to whatever event she had gone to. I think Letting It Go, mainly for lightening our mass on this Earth, is a very good thing to do. And in the future, whenever that "collectible" comes calling, and the "stuff" in my life drags me down, I have to understand that they are simply material representations of mental thoughts. I do not need to look at those things to see what's in my mind. I do not need to pick the daffodil in order to reflect on it in the bliss of solitude. I simply remember it. We cannot force the memory onto an object in some desperate attempt to make it eternal. The idol loses it's significance once we pass away. We should tell our memories to those we love, and leave pictures (the only keepsake with the ability to store memories), and let our own actions create memories in others. The mass of stuff will not carry that memory for us, beyond the grave.
What will the world be like when there are no more stories to tell? When the tales that are told come from Hollywood, and the windows at night are filled with the blue flickering fluorescence of the Television screens. How will we know our neighbors, or even our own families? When children ignore the memories of their elders by sticking their faces into the nearest tablet, futuristic Game Boys with touch screens and instant access to the world's entertainment, but no memories of days gone by. No, we will not know the people who live just down the hall. And it's a shame. The rocking chairs will become brittle from non-use. I know when I finally get a house of my own, it shall have a front porch and a rocking chair. In the evenings, after the hot sun has gone down, the only flickering I will see, as I sit in my rocking chair with my book, will be the bioluminescence of the Fireflies. The book will tell me stories.
But I remember when my parents would tell me memories from their childhood. I have memories of things that happened way before I was born. I remember my mother, on one cold Christmas break when she was a child, learning she had measles, and screaming out MEASLES!!, or my grandfather, having a nightmare, only half conscious, yelling out "I've got a gun! I'm gonna shoot!" repeatedly, and they lived in a duplex, so the other half of the house could hear him threatening violence. I remember my dad, not having any tact at restaurants, making a big deal over getting out his pocket knife to cut his steak. (That runs in the family... I have no bones about getting my own silverware or even a refill if I can reach the pitcher.) I was there for none of those things. They are all stories that my mother and grandmother told me, over and over, until they became my own memories. But our children will not have those memories, at least, that's what I fear.
***
I'll be honest with my recent housecleaning. Since the funeral, I've been going through the house and carrying boxes with me. Trash Box / Garage Sale Box / Keep Box. The first two have vastly outweighed the third. I cannot come right out and call my mom a hoarder, because I don't think that was quite it. The way I look at it, she saw an object and attached an emotion, a memory, to each thing. The garland on the Christmas Tree would be the decoration, but the memory would be the box it had come in, those that were barely hanging together (and I surreptitiously threw away several years ago). She kept almost all the clothing she wore throughout her entire adult life, because the memories attached were the things she did while wearing those clothes.
Ah the memories... and look
at the space it consumes.
I understand this feeling; I do the same things, to some extent. I have 7 Commodore 64's in my closet, hoping that I would get a power supply that worked (I only have one, and it barely does), and so I could actually use one. Which is silly... I have emulators on my PC with all the games I could ever think about playing on the C64. But the memories of playing those games, of beating Blue Max or Zaxxon (which my dad and his neighbor would sneak out of church, go to the corner cafe, which had Zaxxon as a coin-operated video game, and play it instead of hearing God's word.), that's what I attach to the machines themselves. I've learned, however, to look ahead at my life, or rather, to the end of it, and see where those memories go. Do I want my relatives tossing out all my junk, or selling to some stranger who may or may not have those same memories? What stories do those objects tell? Like most idols of biblical times, they say nothing. The stones are silent. We can tell a way of life, a preference of color, of sound, but that's about it. I'm not saying that we need to be like my grandmother, who felt that the more she gave/threw away, the closer she would get to heaven. There has to be a happy medium. The message should speak out through the things you keep, not buried in the things to be thrown away.
You see, to me, the objects tell stories because the memories are silent. There's no one rocking in that chair anymore, they are all watching Reality TV in the living room. Should we know our parents and grandparents only by the stuff in their dresser drawers? And nowadays, stuff is inundating us. Every time we go to the store, the kids want a toy, or a book, or a whatever-that-thing-is-next-to-the-register. And we take it home, and it sits on the bedroom floor for a while, forgotten, but if we go to pick it up and throw it away, a hissy-fit is sure to ensue. You see, the child has instilled the act of getting that thing, the attention of the parent, with the thing itself. The more stuff someone has, the more love they have received.
I knew a family in Milledgeville, where I went to college, who had to move every now and again due to lack of funds. Usually, they had to leave their stuff behind and start all over. The only things that were constant were the hand drawn pictures on the living room walls, the pictures. That was about it. And she sat in the rocking chairs in the front of her house and told stories of her life, and that of her children, endlessly, until those memories became mine because I knew them. They were poor, but they needed little in the way of "material goods," to make them happy. I'm sure that's not always the case. Everyone would like a new television or a new cell phone or the latest book. It's the perspective that I admire. Richness in perspective.
***
You know my favorite character in the world of Fraggle Rock? Jim Henson voices the wise Fraggle Cantus, the Minstrel. He is a storyteller, much like Henson himself. Of course, with everything in Fraggle Rock, it is all done with music. He goes about the rock singing songs and telling stories. I wish that was what I could do. Listen to the songs of the people here, on this Earth, and tell their stories. Because it's those memories that live on in the minds of others. The souvenirs will all rot away in the landfills, but the memories behind them will go on, if we tell the stories enough. Never in this world have we had so much ability to keep the stories of our family alive, with pictures, movies, webcams, cell phones, Youtube, the Internet... and never before have we kept those voices quiet. Why do that when we can stuff our mouths full of cinnamon and put that on Youtube? We let entertainment get in the way of memory and wisdom. So much wisdom, and we're going to let it slip away... and look where that has got us. Look at the world now... it's not pretty. Gather ye junkpiles while ye may, for one bursted bubble (economically speaking,) and we're all toast. It's a negative way of looking at things. I know. That's why it's so important to understand how to just get up and move, without the junk, and have all those memories stored away inside yourself. They can all still be passed down, just without the coffee cup found at a garage sale to illustrate it. Shrink all your belongings into one room. How important, then, is each thing. We have let material inflation catch up with us. Reduce the supply, and increase the value. And yet, each memory is priceless. The thing represents the dollar, the memories behind it are the gold bars residing in Fort Knox. And more. We should hoard the gold, the memories, not the items that represent them. When we pass those on to our children, they shall be wealthy indeed, and far better off for it.
First off, I want to thank all the people that came to support me at my mother's funeral, it really meant the world to me. It makes me realize that, while, I am a solitary figure, and would rather spend my days in the deepest forests in Georgia, I do value and appreciate friends and the people that do care about me. I also want to thank people for the kind words said about my eulogy (which I originally wrote on this blog and then transferred it), as that means a lot to me, too. Writing this blog is among the most important things in my life, leaving my thoughts and feelings on paper (or online), much like the multitude of letters I have found amongst the papers and photographs here at the house.
It is precisely that which I want to talk about. You see, I have been going through the clutter in my house, trying to decrease the mass we've collected. Thoreau was right, we do walk about this Earth with our collections tied to our backs, struggling through life like Atlas carrying the world. My outlook on collecting things has changed considerably since the funeral, and while I will always be a pack rat, I understand that the volume that we procure is only temporary, that what is not useful, nor highly sentimental, is only worth what the market says it's worth. I don't mean to think strictly along Capitalist lines, but that does help when looking at large volumes of stuff. All it takes is going to Goodwill and seeing the shelves upon shelves of World Book Encyclopedias to see that the large metal bookshelf (which I once had my Transformers in, and trying to change the shelf levels will make even the most pious of monks curse like a sailor) that supported our 1985 set, is nothing but an obstacle which made it harder to get a gurney down our hallway. The encyclopedias themselves are equally worthless, as online sources have made the cumbersome tomes good for smashing cockroaches, but little else. I hope that whatever paper products they will be made into will serve mankind more than the books did these past decades.
One thing I learned is, verily, "You Can't Take It With You." But this doesn't mean what you think it means. I have sorted through boxes upon boxes of newspapers, bills, printed articles, obituaries, photographs, and I have learned a few things.
1) Don't Make Scrapbooks!! Yes, they make wonderful gifts, and the time you spend making them, you are thinking about the person you make it for. But think for a moment about the people that will inherit these scrapbooks. They are big, and for placing two or three pictures on each page, with all the knicknacks and paddywacks you put on them, it's not helpful for preserving the memories that should be presented. My grandmother loved making scrapbooks. With permanent tape. You might as well have used rubber cement. When looking at each picture, the caption for the photo is on the paper itself, not on the back of the photo. You take the photo out (ripping the paper), you lose that information.
2) For photos, please think about people 50 years from now who will need to figure out just who that is. I wanted my mom to go through all the pictures and identify them. That was going to be a project for the next little bit, once she recovered. But that didn't happen. So while I can probably identify 75% of the people in the photos, there are some that I have no clue who they are. I do have two relatives on one side of the family who can help, and none on the other. I plan on scanning all the pictures and storing them on a digital site someplace so anyone who wants the pictures can easily take them and help me identify who they all are.
But before we even get to that point, do two things, and all of that would be unnecessary. Get as much info on the back as possible. I pick up a picture of a kid that has fallen out of a card. It says on the back, "Justin, Age 9" I can't tell how old the picture is, who "Justin" is, how he is related to me, where he is now so if I want to get in touch with him, I can...etc... So. put "Justin Mullins, 1985, age nine. Uncle Bob's child. Now I can identify him, find a Christmas Card that goes with the names, and everything's great. It might also help if the place in the photo is marked... OKC house on 59th St, or something.
Same thing with Obituaries... because I threw a lot of those away. If the person in the Obit was the mother of the co-worker of my grandmother (my mom knew everyone in Oklahoma City, and so she went through the Obits each night and usually found one or two a week she knew something about), or if it was someone who performed at the Lyric Theatre.... put that on there somehow, so I'll know how all these people related to your, and consequently, my life.
I have sorted out every Christmas Card given to my family for the past 40 years, I think. Wonderful time of year, and the letters they sent were great, and I still have those. Here's some tips on Cards... for those writing them. You want your card to languish in the family archives for years to come? Write something on them, not just "Merry Christmas, Love Bob." It doesn't tell me anything. For those receiving the letter, the date the letter was written would be good, and maybe who they are. I'll be perfectly honest, there were quite a few letters from a "Mary K." that someone wrote to my grandmother. There isn't anyone that could identify who that was, and the letters (and I read quite a few of them) gave me no real evidence except it was probably someone from church. I felt like I was trying to collect information for a court case. And actually, if you read Orson Scott Card's Speaker for the Dead, it makes sense. By going through letters, cards, photos, I started to know about my family's lives before I was even born. I kept all the letters so that, one day, I can decipher the letters (bad handwriting runs in my family) and know more about them.
Newspapers are wonderful things to sort out, just take twice the sinus medication beforehand. I kept those papers of important events (9/11, Elvis' Death, Kennedy Assassination, Atlanta getting the Olympics), and those that had family members in them (I'll scan some of them in someday, share them here). A lot of them, I did throw away, as the events meant little to me, or they meant something, but not enough to keep something concrete for years and years for me to drag around. For instance, my mom kept quite a few papers about the death of Randy Poynter. He was a seminal figure in the history of Rockdale County, especially in establishing the Water system here and pushing for the Lake (now named for him) that we use for a water supply instead of Lake Lanier like everyone else in Atlanta. He was someone to be admired and remembered, but to keep papers and articles about him for years to come.... I remember him, and people that come after me probably won't care, so it's not really all that important. Keep stuff that lets people know about the life you lived, the people you cared about, and let it go at that.
So, when I go over my own things, I'm gonna look at the same things. When I croak, when people come in to look through all my things, what will it say about my life? What can I show them, what was important to me, and would they think, "What a bunch of junk!" I hope not. I think, if I had to take it with me, and I don't mean into the Afterlife, but if I could only take what I could carry, I would take a copy of my blogs and my written and note filled copy of Henry David Thoreau's Walden. I could pick up whatever else I needed. It is our thoughts that can never be regained. Everything else is but a souvenir in this life, "that slowly fades away."
My mom and I have discussed, for the past little bit, that the word that we should hold tightly to is the word "Through." It's come up a lot lately in our conversations, and so on those long hours when I was waiting at Emory Hospital, I've been thinking that my mother's whole life has been the application of the word "Through," but I could never quite see it clearly enough until now. Through has three meanings. First... through... over with. No more pain. And that's certainly true with my mom. She's not hurting anymore. The endless bouts with headaches, backaches that lasted for days. And I know about those backaches, as I have become an expert back rubber, and sometimes it was like trying to massage a brick wall, that's how tied up her back was. All the stress, the constant balancing of checkbooks ( which she could somehow do in her head for months at a time), the regret of mistakes past. All that is through. Secondly, through. Jason Crabb sings this song, "Through the Fire Again," in which he says: Just remember when you're standing in the valley of decision and the adversary says give in, Just hold on. Our Lord will show up and He will take you through the fire again.
And it's so true. It's not going to be easy. I've told a lot of people I could write an entire book about my life, every word of it true, and no one would believe me. But every time I've looked back at the hard times that my family has had, even to this very day, I can see God taking us through the hard times, placing good people along the way, doctors, nurses, people with wisdom and compassion, even a few angels. My mom ran out of gas on I-20 in the middle of Atlanta one time, and walking down to a gas station would not have been advisable. But just then someone who looked like he was out of a biker gang pulled up behind her, offered to get her gas, and put it in the car. It's those times that you can see God taking you through the hard times. And last, and this is what came up on the night we got my mom back into the hospital. She decided, to help her headaches, to watch the Gaither Video: Together, with the GVB and Ernie Haase. The last song is set to the tune "Finlandia," and is amazing. I noticed that the word "Through" comes up three times in the song. I got to thinking, that this Through is just what my mom has lived all her life. The Word of God lived 'through' you. She stayed up many nights in a row tracking Oklahoma tornadoes because she knew her husband, kids, and the neighbors next door wouldn't wake up unless she woke them up. She always experienced the "Joy in her Christianity," and could not stand to hear some preacher yelling at her with fire and brimstone. Let people see Jesus through her own living. She rarely went to church in the last few years, and didn't tithe, and yet she gave of her own self in many ways. My mom said that if she could just get people to hear the words in "I Then Shall Live," and understand them, it would make the world a better place. Sure, it's impossible to live that life completely, but we can try, and that would make all the difference, to let God's light shine through us. [Go look up the video on Youtube, it is certainly worth it.]
I Then Shall Live Lyrics: I then shall live as one who's been forgiven. I'll walk with joy to know my debts are paid. I know my name is clear before my Father; I am His child and I am not afraid. So, greatly pardoned, I'll forgive my brother; The law of love I gladly will obey.
I then shall live as one who's learned compassion. I've been so loved, that I'll risk loving too. I know how fear builds walls instead of bridges; I'll dare to see another's point of view. And when relationships demand commitment, Then I'll be there to care and follow through.
Your Kingdom come around and through and in me; Your power and glory, let them shine through me. Your Hallowed Name, O may I bear with honor, And may Your living Kingdom come in me. The Bread of Life, O may I share with honor, And may You feed a hungry world through me.
Our stories are told over and over again, some just on the front porches where old people sit in their rocking chairs and tell of times past. People and places again and again until you remember it as if you were there, reliving the actions of your grandparents, once virile and precocious, and you can still see those twinkles in their eyes. Others have the talent of writing out their memories onto the page. Ink spills and presses and bytes and kilobytes, letters and words, sentences flow out and into the digital airways above our heads, to be read by someone in China or Europe. It's the way we preserve our lives. It's the way we gain immortality, hoping that someone will read it, remember it, store it upon bookshelves or in their "favorite bookmarks" online, to read when they have a second or two.
Then there are the truly gifted ones, that can take a brush and some color and paint their lives onto canvas. We can experience the water lilies in pixelated wonder, or Turner's English countryside. What truly moves me are those who take their lives and place them on a staff for a piano or guitar. People's lives turned into song, with the music taking the highs and lows and making them instantly accessible to everyone.
What Woodkid (the stage name for Yoann Lemoine, a French musician, director, videographer, and artist) has done is to take a semi-autographical account of his life and turn it into a book, a CD, a set of videos, concerts, and is even working with a ballet company to turn his work into a dance. It's called The Golden Age, and I have been thoroughly engrossed in the manifestations of the work. In each work of literature, or music, or artwork, the artist must understand that the work is the merging of his own life and that of the recipient. Further, it is the merging of those lives along with the works of all other artists, authors, musicians, that the artist and the recipient has ever encountered. Every one of us will hear or read or see something different, experience stimuli from within as well as without. So to review the work, I have to go into what I brought with me into the work itself, as well as those which, I think, he brought with him. It all merges, like one giant orgy, into The Golden Age, and mixes the music together into broad strokes of emotion.
***
I sat in the front seat of my stepdad's ice cream truck in the blazing hot Georgian summer sun. I was reading, for my 12th grade English class, The Sorrows of Young Werther, by Goethe. It speaks of Werther, who falls in love with a young German girl, Lotte, who is in turn in love with Albert, also a friend of Werther. It is a story of love rejected, of desires gone unheeded, and of mankind's pursuit of emotional peaks which cannot be attained. I had, sitting in this ice cream truck, one of my "Eureka" moments. You know, one of those points in your life where the way you think about things changes forever. There are always small moments like this often, but the big ones only happen a few times in someone's life. I suddenly understood everything that Mrs. Cook (my 11th grade English teacher) had been trying to convey about the Romantic movement. There are literary works that will change your life forever, and this was one of them. It's appropriate that most of my Eureka moments came from the reading and "soaking in" of books. It's what I've ultimately surrounded my life with, reading, selling, and writing about.
I say this because the feelings I got from Woodkid's The Golden Age were the same as those in Goethe's semi-autobiographic novel. Goethe had fallen in love with a poet named Charlotte Buff, but was ultimately rejected. He, nevertheless, bought the wedding rings for Buff and her fiance.
Woodkid's book deals with a love affair with, well, someone. He is never named. In fact, it is ultimately unknown whether or not the purity of the lover is not simply a Romantic reflection upon the author's own childhood. As he grows up, he becomes more separated from the boy he once was, finding in the world things far from the riversides and cherry trees he knew as a child. The fact that his lover is male is also autobiographic, as Yoann Leomine is gay himself.
The narrator's transition between child and adult is also reminiscent of William Blake's poetry in The Songs of Innocence and Experience. I have spoken many times about Blake's influence in my thinking. Blake is best known for the poems "The Lamb" and "The Tyger." Blake's philosophy is that we live in two distinct worlds, that of Innocence, and that of Experience. In childhood, Innocence is, well, bliss. It is without fault, beautiful, something that we always yearn for and regret leaving, even as we know it is inevitable that we do. The downside, and the reason why we leave, is that Innocence is always Impotent. Someone who chooses to remain in the Innocent realm can never effect the world around him. The world of Experience is much darker, filled with consequences and ulterior motives. But with it comes responsibility, power, the ability to change things, both for good and evil. It is this stage that we must take ourselves, however unwillingly, because there is a need to change things for the better, and we cannot do that if we are impotent. It was said that Blake had a third realm, that which we attain only after becoming completely enlightened, where the Innocence of the first realm returns with the power of the second. It is very rare that anyone could attain this level of understanding. Certainly not Werther, nor the narrator in Woodkid's book.
The Golden Age is almost split in half by his time in the idyllic world of his childhood and the urban, war filled, chemically enhanced world of his adult life. There is a certain obvious parallel to the lover on the ship in the first half with "The Lamb," and his acquaintance partner in the second half with "The Tyger." While reading the book (which only comes in the deluxe edition, found here), these are the books and ideas I brought with me, ones in which I could easily see floating throughout the words. The passages are lyrical, poignant, with sentences popping off of the page as revelations about life. However, the ending is more along the lines of someone trying to write while experiencing a drugged state (which would not surprise me, see Samuel Taylor Coleridge from the Romantic movement). Also in the book are the lyrics to the 12 track CD, which is very helpful, as it's a French singer trying to sing English words.
***
The music... now here's where we get to the glory of this work. Yoann merges classical music with the beats he associates with the current hip-hop music, although what is produced is certainly universal in genre. Listening to track 2 (my favorite) "Run Boy Run" in the car, coming up over the Parker Road bridge, the pounding of the Tympani drums and the snares and the violins and trumpets, a glorious resounding charge into war, I felt my lungs tightened as if raw emotions were billowing up, ready to charge over that hill. Fortunately, since Yoann is a masterful music video director, he has created music videos to the best tracks, which I will embed here. "Run Boy Run" reminds me so much of Where the Wild Things Are for very obvious reasons.
Track 5, "I Love You" has literary connotations as well. Even before I was aware of Yoann's sexuality, the lyrics of the song brought to mind Death in Venice by Thomas Mann. Aschenbach was a famous author who travels to Venice to heal from diseases gotten in the cold climates of Europe. While along the shoreline of the Italian city, he sees Tadzio, and is immediately struck by his beauty and purity. It is impossible that Yoann could not have read the book, or at least seen the movie, and had it influence his life, so closely does this track, and the following one, "The Shore," resemble the themes of the book. Ironically, Death In Venice was the novel that was assigned to us right after The Sorrows of Young Werther in that 12th grade class. The music video of this song becomes much more clear after reading the book. While the drowning of the character in the video might look like a suicide (which would work, with the evidence of the books talked about above), it was more a reference in the book about his lover drowning as well as ships sinking (which could be the Lusitania or the Titanic).
I bring up "The Shore," as interesting because the opening notes reminded me a lot of Billy Joel's "Vienna Waits for You," which, as Joel said in a recording from a box set, dealt with Vienna as a metaphor for life. He also talked about the style of piano playing at the beginning and end of the song, which he was imitating Kurt Weill, as well as the Cabaret atmosphere of Germany and Europe, something that Yoann, a gay musician growing up in Germany, would be familiar with. It also becomes clear in the later parts of the book that the bars and nightclubs he attended would have had that music in them as well. That the narrator would see this lifestyle as "war," and equate those days with the actual wars his relatives fought (WWII, no doubt), is interesting. I find that often homosexual characters in movies and books often meet tragic ends, even those stories written by someone who is gay, very few of the stories end happily. There is no balance here, as Aschenbach himself talked about, the balance between Apollo (reason) and Dionysus (emotion) is often askew, so that, in that novel, he stays in Venice even after being warned about a contagion in the city (which would be deadly to someone in his weakened condition) to watch the puerile figure playing on the beach.
I also bring up Billy Joel's song to illustrate what I have talked about before, about musician's abilities to use their own lives in song, thus preserving their memories as someone writing a story would, or the elders in the rocking chairs passing on memories to their children.
If nothing else, get the MP3s and find the lyrics online, as the book version costs around $50.00. I have thoroughly enjoyed the music, and hope that he will create similar works in the future. It is refreshing to find songs that actually mean something now, that dip into the mankind's past and combine literature and music, video motion, all the media that we use now. So far gone are the days when an artist can just put out an album and expect people to buy the album. We now drop over to itunes and pick up the single and that's it. But what Woodkid has done is create a masterpiece that, to experience the whole thing, the album must be bought, and in the deluxe edition no less, along with watching the videos, and probably going to the concerts themselves (which are mostly in Germany, not here, alas). I found myself one day imagining the songs arranged for a marching band, with the flag bearers using the crossed keys waving about on the field, with the trumpets and the percussion on fire as they marched on the field. It would work so well. I say this because the music reminds me a bunch of Steven Reineke's works, and those are easily adaptable for orchestras and concert bands. It is the kind of music we need nowadays. Something to make us feel alive, inspire us to go forth, raise our swords high upon the hilltops, and use our time on this Earth to fight the foes we have chosen. Love and War go hand in hand, life and destruction. Let's make sure we fight for the right causes.
