Letting It Go

"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. 

The Storyteller

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.

Every Year is a Souvenir...

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."

Something Deep Fried This Way Comes

I do highly recommend, when the chilly wind starts up in the evening, when you put away the summer shorts and pull out the blue jeans, to take a look at Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes, a veritable tribute to the month of October.  Bradbury mixed his usual lyrical writing with a chorus of nostalgia, and a verse of horror.  It's what he did best in any short story or novel, bringing alive the price of memory, nostalgia, and sorrow (Counting Crows sung a line: "The price of a memory is the memory of the sorrow it brings.").  You will not find any better book written than Dandelion Wine, a must read for anyone who longs for the more simpler times.  In SWTWC, William waxes nostalgic, and wishes to become younger, while Jim wants to grow older.  In comes Cooger & Dark's Pandemonium Shadow Show, the carnival with a merry-go-round that makes just those dreams come true, but at a cost.


For October is, amongst the chill winds and the Trick or Treating and the falling leaves, saying goodbye to Summer for the dark, dreary Winter months, the time of the local Carnival.  A last celebration, a sudden gasp of joy before it all goes away.  In Georgia, the Georgia State Fair has moved from the central-based town of Perry (near Macon) to the Atlanta Motor Speedway just south of Atlanta (in Hampton).  The hope is to draw people from the metro area to the fair (in my opinion, they probably could get rural folk to Perry easy enough, but high gas prices are hurting attendance.) In Oklahoma, the State Fair is located off Portland Ave. in the middle of Oklahoma City.  Everyone goes to the fair.  The schools have a teacher workday called "Fair Day" so that everyone could go to the fair.  Traditionally, the fair is supposed to be used for farmers bringing stock to a market to be inspected and sold (you remember Charlotte's Web? Wilbur was taken to the "fair" to be entered into a prize, and then sold for bacon).  In the meantime, the family ate, rode rides, watched rodeos, and made a day of it.


My memories of the Oklahoma State Fair begins with my grandmother, Mema, who worked counting tickets sold for the fair.  So we got in free. It's amazing I didn't get totally lost and separated from Mema walking around there, as I was my propensity every time I went anywhere (still do). I was young enough that the rides we went on were small merry-go-rounds in the shapes of cars, spaceships, etc... The goal was to get into a vehicle and have the horn work on it, or the buttons that made the lights work.  Those old machines were probably on their last leg then, but they were magical to us.  It was either that, or gaze high into the air where the grown-up rides were.  The Tilt-a-Whirl Pirate ship that went high into the air one way, then another, or the grand Ferris Wheel that stands above the fairground and can be seen for miles.  The main ride we loved going on was the tower that lifts you high above the Oklahoma soil and lets you see the whole city.  Reminds me of the Glass Elevator on Willy Wonka. You could see the Goodholm Mansion that was moved from Oklahoma City out to the fairground.  It was an old southern style house that the historical society wanted to save from Urban Renewal, and so they moved it to the fairgrounds as an exhibit. My grandmother said she lived in the house for a short while as a child. From atop the Space Tower, you could see all the way into downtown, and it was wonderful.

So, at the end of the month, it would be so worth taking a family out to the Georgia State Fair, to experience all the rides and the food and see the cows and horses and cars (it's on the Raceway), create memories that children will have for a long time.  It's a tunnel back to yesteryear, before electronic gadgets that keep kids walking head down while somehow maneuvering around poles and doors and stuff.  Get the kids to look up for once, to sights they'll never forget.

Weddings; Facebook; Crossing Threads (A Eulogy)

My brother got married this weekend. Lots of Pomp, lots of Circumstance, lots of great food. The caterers made this herb dip to put on crackers, cream cheese and all types of dill, parsley, probably rosemary... amazing stuff. As for the wedding itself... it's like finishing a hand-knitted sweater. You know, the ones that your mother put on you to play out in the snow, the one's that remind you of Christmas, fireplaces, good food, relatives. And there's a reason for that. It's in the threads itself. The metaphor is as old as weaving itself, from the ancient Greeks' Fates to modern day quantum physics, we could each count ourselves as an individual thread, created and tied to our parents, our loved ones, and then split off to join other threads in this grand sweater. Think of each point in time that we live and then join them together in the cosmos of space-time. It becomes a line of moments, beginning and ending in this great jumbled up mess of a universe.

The threads run parallel, at all angles, and intersect, all in different directions. For some, we hope that we never see that thread again, and in others, the thought of a thread being torn away is heartbreaking. There's nothing we can do about some of it, with chance, or the hand of God maneuvering the threads of our lives hither. It's the merging of those threads together to make a stronger fabric, that is what a marriage ceremony is all about. A bed sheet with a high thread count is much more sturdy than a cheaper one, where holes can easily appear with a careless use of scissors. It is best to have a high thread count in our lives, no matter what you might ask of me in person.

So the wedding is a celebration of the merging of two threads. May they never depart from one another. Weddings are a thread attractor, pulling, charging the ions of threads to come together and intersect. It's this point that most weddings are sorely missing together. We have such little time in today's life to travel, to communicate with our friends and family, and so when those chances arise, let us take advantage of them. The days before and after a wedding should be filled with the get-togethers of friends that have not seen each other in years, family chats on front porches or kitchens like in times past. Let us not join threads for an instant, only to go off in our own directions, alone. We should linger, remembering, bringing the experiences of our lives together. It's the only way we'll learn. Let's make a wedding a week long experience, a celebration of our lives to that point, a re-dedication to friendships, loved ones. Let's not put off that phone call, that letter, that drive to the next town to see an old friend. Let's make the fabric of our lives strong, so that can never be ripped asunder.
 ***

 How do you find a thread in this busy world? So many people going about their lives without knowing what's going on. I've heard that sites like Facebook and Twitter are simply a waste of time, keeping people apart even while promising more communication. And while it would better to talk to people face to face, sometimes when you only have a few minutes, checking up on people's lives online is easier. It's the magic of Facebook and Twitter. Facebook is declining because people just post silly pictures of cats and messages now, instead of using as an instrument of communication. And when a thread is cut, Facebook (especially with the new Timeline idea, which I love.) becomes a portrait of someone's life. A virtual biography that will last as long as the Internet (or at least Facebook) does. They become those crosses on the side of the road, a plaque next to a statue. May they stay there for many generations.
***

A customer came up to me in Lifeway a few weeks ago and bought some devotionals, and I instantly recognized her. Many years ago, when my stepdad drove an ice cream truck, I went with him from time to time. On one of the stops, a mother would come out with her young son and buy ice cream, and she and my stepdad would talk about life and such. It made riding in an un-airconditioned truck worth it, to bring happiness to those in the community. The son's name was Eli Simpson. And so Mrs. Simpson would come up with Eli to the grocery store where I worked and buy groceries. I went over to their house one day to invite them to a new year's eve celebration at our church, and when I went into the kitchen, I found that Mrs. Simpson had saved all of the Snapple Elements bottles and put colored water in them. I have those same bottles on the top of a bookshelf in my room. I always remember that we had the same collection going. At the celebration at the skating rink, Eli was skating and fell, hitting his head on the side of the rink. Made a nasty gash on his head, and he had to go to the hospital and get some stitches. Don't think I ever saw them again after that, as I went off to college and then to the bookstores...etc...

So, back to Lifeway, I asked her how Eli was doing. She told me that he had killed himself about a year before. Shocked, I didn't know what to say. She said she wished we could go back to those days of innocence next to the ice cream truck. It saddened me, to think that someone that young and full of life was suddenly gone. So I tried to find what happened, some record of it. There was no obit. in the Rockdale Citizen, only a record of mischief in a police blotter. I finally found a record of his death in the funeral homes records online. I did find his Myspace page, with little activity past about a year ago.

I don't know what happened to him. Why his thread was cut short. I don't know how he grew up or what his life was like past getting ice cream. What is on Myspace is normal teenage banter, so there's nothing to learn from. Further, there is no record on there of his passing. So, as a eulogy for him, I leave this blog post with metatags so that anyone that searches for his name will find it, and they can leave memories of his life. For parents out there, never let your child's "thread" get too far from your own, and hug them and let them know they are loved. I know that Mrs. Simpson loved her son very much, no matter what trouble he got into. All this for a thread that only crossed mine a couple of times, but it is worth it. Those are the memories that make up our lives, that make creation whole. Let us remember them.




I leave this with a linked song from Spotify, since I cannot find it on Youtube. It is Stan Rogers' song "Delivery Delayed," sung by Mary Travers of Peter, Paul, and Mary. It suggests that, even when we are born, our lives have many births, whether religious or otherwise. In this song, we grow up, grow apart, and only are "delivered" when we reach out for the love of our parents, only to find it had always been there. A very powerful song, and fitting for this Eulogy.

Smoking and Half Dollars

I remember once, while returning from Bethany, from my Aunt Oyita's house, that I promised my dad I would never smoke. It shouldn't be a surprise that I kept that promise, as, except for a decent addiction to Dr. Pepper, that's about all I'll allow. I want to keep my inhibitions in check, my self-control (what I have of it) in balance, so all that other stuff is out of the question. That's why I don't like hearing Milledgeville being talked about as just a whole town of bars. And I've seen the hoops that smokers have to jump through when it comes to having a cigarette. Going outside, in the rain, in the snow, the cold, down flights of stairs, through security, just to smoke. I'm too lazy to do all that.

But what I don't agree with are the laws that state legislators have passed forbidding smoking in x,y, and z areas. Public buildings, like city halls and such, I have no problem with. The government owns the buildings, and they can do whatever they want. For privately owned businesses, I feel they can do what they feel will help their profitability. They are owners of private buildings, and they have the right to govern their area however they want. To say that smoking should be outlawed in all privately owned buildings just because it is harmful to one's health, it's silly. Now, managers and owners of businesses should certainly know the health problems caused by second hand smoke, and areas should be made for smokers. Everyone has a free choice, especially when it comes to places like stores, restaurants, bars...etc. The manager has a choice whether to allow or forbid smoking, and the customer has a choice, knowing what the regulations are, whether to visit that establishment. No government regulations are needed. And if they want to endure the effects of second hand smoke, then so be it. It's their choice.

What really got me interested in this topic was the recent passing of laws in New York City by the City council which outlaws smoking in public parks (such as central park) and public beaches. There is no way that second hand smoke is going to affect anyone else in an open area like that. It is a violation of the freedoms of the citizens of New York, just because picking on smokers is an easy target and popular with the politicians to gain poll points.

It is a popular notion for Libertarians to support the legalization of drugs, prostitution...etc... and they get wildly criticized for this. The overall point is that the deregulation of such items comes from individual freedom that we all should enjoy. We should be able to regulate ourselves, using discipline to enjoy our freedom while not harming or inhibiting the freedoms of anyone else. Thus it is that smoking falls under this realm. It should be up to the individual to regulate themselves on whether smoking in an area would be appropriate.

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My mother's birthday was the other week, and I got her one of those maps that we use to keep Quarters in. The National Park Quarters are really cool looking, and especially since Oklahoma's quarter, that of the Chickishaw National Recreational Area (Platt National Park of old) will be issued at the end of the year.

While looking for all the quarters I had to put into the map, I found tons of the old coins I had from working at the grocery stores. Among them is a 1923 half-dollar, which I got one night as I finished counting my till. I guess the value of such things is different to other people. What I would consider valuable because of its old age, someone else just saw 50 cents they could use. Probably for cigarettes, which is why this blog connects with the other one.

How much treasure would one throw away just for the satisfaction of a vice? A habit? What lifestyle changes would they accept just to fulfill their addiction? I think these are rhetorical questions, as it's easy to see just what one will do. Take the recent rash of former governors who have brought their mistresses along for the ride, destroying families and creating quite the stir in the process. That list keeps growing every day. And this is something that does harm other people, so the idea of self-regulation should come into play. I guess its the power that one wields that makes them blind to the consequences of doing the wrong thing.

And it's those vices that create other afflictions to society. Madoff wasn't stealing money from thousands of people just to get money, but rather he was using it to keep himself in the height of luxury. And when the greed of those people reflect on all the honest, rich investors at Wall Street, they all look bad. Then the government steps in with regulations ad nauseum. Self-regulate, and this won't happen. But any vice that won't hurt other people, as long as you can afford it without compromising the absolute morals in which this world is based, I don't see a problem with. But there are many idiots out there that don't regulate anything, except through the absence of reason and the impulsive pursuit of one's addictions. And there are idiots out there that will pay for cigarettes with a 1923 half-dollar, which I will be more than willing to trade for.

These Dreams...or Rowing Your Boat

Decided to evoke the song lyrics by Heart. For some reason, the song evokes memories of myself sitting in the waiting room of my brother's speech therapist, Dr. Lauren Bradway, with her blocks shaped like letters and the green walls and the radio oozing out contemporary hits. I'm sure it was played during that time, because every time I hear the song, I think of that waiting room. So peaceful..

Songs will do that...just like smells or other sensations. The chemicals in the brain that make memories stay active for some time, as the memory fades back into the subconscious. A few nights back I had a dream, don't remember exactly what it was, but the odd part was that it had Betty White in it. I thought it odd when I woke up, and upon thinking about it, I realized that she had been on the $25,000 Pyramid show on GSN the day before, so the image got transported into one of my dreams.

It's also weird when I have the television on at night, for instance, on Fox News, as my subconscious hears whatever is going on in the world and uses some of it in my dreams. I remember one time I was in a college town, probably supposed to be Milledgeville, but it looked nothing like it, when missle started raining down on the neighborhood. Woke up and sure enough, the Israelis and the Palestinians were exchanging missiles at each other. Or when I have ESPN on I will more often than not be at a baseball game sometime during the night. Perhaps I should sleep with the TV off...

I say all this because my grandmother, Granny, has for years claimed that she helped my former boss's wife with car problems when Granny worked at the Landmark building in Conyers. There's no way this could have happened, as he lived in Maine at the time she worked there. But Granny can go into what type of car it was and everything. I realized that these false memories started about the time that her Macular Degeneration started getting bad. With her being blind, the only clear images she saw was those that developed in her mind.

Last Thanksgiving my grandmother broke her hip and is now in a nursing home, as her mental state has deteriorated to the point where bringing her home just isn't possible with us having to work. She keeps on telling us about different things that happen in the home that make no sense. For instance, she claims she was having soup one day, and it was good soup, but that chickens came in and ate the rest. I think that dementia, especially in her case, results from the memories of the mind's eye. In other words, dreams that are so much clearer than what she experiences every day, that the dreams become her reality. If she dreams that she got up, walked down the hallway and ordered food from the cook, then that's what she did. There's nothing, then, to keep her from thinking that she could get up the next day. Thus, she would never be able to be by herself for any length of time.

It's amazing how clear dreams and memories stay in the mind, even ones that aren't real. How people can believe in a story so vehemently that it becomes their reality. I daresay that the best criminals are ones that can actually delude themselves into thinking that whatever alibi they constructed was their reality. It would easily pass any lie detector. Just ask my grandmother about my boss's wife, and she will tell you without hesitation what happened, even though it was impossible.

It is a remarkable state of being, to live in your dreams, and have them clearer than real life. But also terrifying. That reality is only constructed by our trains of thought. It makes me think that maybe Berkley wasn't so far off in his analysis of metaphysics. Or, as the old nursery rhyme goes:

Row, Row, Row your boat
gently down the stream.
Merrily, Merrily, Merrily, Merrily,
Life is but a dream.

And maybe, for some people, dreams are but life.

Souvenirs

As I was creating Christmas displays at Borders, a song popped into my head, and it's stayed with me, cause it's message is so very fitting to what happened on Wednesday.

Billy Joel's "Souvenir"

A picture postcard, A folded stub
A program of the play.
File away your photographs
Of your holiday.

And your mementos will turn to dust
But that's the price you pay
For every year's a souvenir
That slowly fades away.

Every call I got on Wednesday was someone eagerly wanting a NYTimes or an AJC or the new edition of Time or Newsweek, all special election editions with Obama on the front cover. Anything with a picture. If Obama was on Tiger Beat, they would have bought it. Basking in the afterglow of the election victory, the Democrats turned to find something to remember it by. And, as our free market system works, we are only to happy to oblige. It makes sense, from selling pieces of Yankee Stadium, to parts of the Berlin Wall, papers and magazines of various events. My grandfather kept editions of the Daily Oklahoman where JFK was shot, Eisenhower into office, and we have them down in our basement, rotting away.

And that's just the point. The need to have a piece of history, to hold something tangible of a memory, fades as the thought does. New events come up, new layers of geologic time that stacks up in our brains, pressing it into layers soon forgotten. Yes, a momento will bring up that memory, digging it up as some precious fossil. But even those decay. Photographs fade and yellow, as do newspapers. What once was thought to be an important milestone in the history of mankind turns out to be little more than a speedbump. What happened to all the '96 Olympic pins and accessories, that were once displayed proudly in every store window? They are now in drawers, shelves, in cabinets and boxes, filed away with the rest of the souvenirs we pick up in life. What makes anyone think that the election of Obama would not be the same thing.

I would say the same thing if McCain were elected or for any other major event. Sure, I've bought mementos in my life. The death of Reagan, the last episode of Johnny Carson, the release of Star Wars, Episode 1. But I couldn't tell you where any of those things are. Even the photographs I have, as I look back at them, were just of places, and not of people. The few of people I have I've shared with them.

Perhaps that's the answer to this. The memories that we have of events in our lives will fade, and the souvenirs that we have collected, weighing us down as if a house stood on a turtle's back, will be forgotten. It's the people we love that are important. The relationships of the people that are around us that is more important than the stuff we have. And I think, to some extent, we have forgotten that. The birthday present is not as important as the love that was put into it from the person that gave it. The letter written, the photo taken, the video captured. They are important only in the sense that behind them was (or is) a person that we cared about. Everything else is just souvenirs, that will slowly fade away.