By Any Other Name

I try to be brutally honest in most things here on the blog; but sometimes (like this morning) it seems as though I'm writing around the point, rather than getting to it. Not being deliberately misleading. Just not getting it.

There's something that I'm missing.

Does anyone else ever feel this way? As if the monster is standing right behind you, but no matter every which way you turn, you can't manage to see it?

Just like a movie, really. The audience can see the monster, but the character can't -- until it's too late.

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At work on a Sunday. Seems pointless, really. Perhaps things will pick up as the day rolls on, perhaps the upperclassmen will start to return. Even so, it seems silly to be here at eight bloody o'clock in the morning when the campus is deader than Rock Hudson.

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Ah, now. Speaking of Death. Although I sometimes personalize him (or her, depending on my mood), I dislike euphemisms for death, especially since my mother's.

"Passed Away" isn't the worst; the "away" part at least acknowledges the truth. But "Passed" or "Passing" to me smacks of Magical Thinking -- as though your loved one isn't gone. . . just, you know, moved sideways into another dimension.

To say that they are "with God now." That's the worst. Surely, if you are Of The Faith. you have to believe that all of us are with God, all of the time, all of our lives. What then is the purpose of this phrase? Does anyone really believe that our dearly departed are gleefully cavorting on the playground in the clouds with the Bearded Old Man watching over them like a benevolent parent? Does anyone really believe that our dead are busily having tea parties with Jesus in the stratosphere?

"Called Home." What does that mean? My mother's home was here with me. She wasn't called. She was taken.

"Crossed Over."  The Styx aside, death isn't a river that one ferries across, to emerge on the other side, Just the Same, only in a Different Place.

I have a hard time saying "dead" and "died," too, and have to force myself to type it, as when I had to write about my Uncle Orly earlier this week.

The word that I feel, the word that I know, is "Gone." It's the only honest word, the only word that expresses the emptiness. We like to imagine that our loved ones are "in a better place," but the reality is that they aren't where we want them to be: here, with us. How can death be a better place when what it means is the absence of life?

At their worst, euphemisms for death can even be used to justify the taking of life. I've been feeling well alone, in this past decade, with my belief that George Bush did a terrible thing when he invaded Iraq, and that President Obama has been wrong not to bring a swift end to it. Two wrongs don't make a right. All life is sacred. It's galling to know that the same people who want to outlaw abortion are perfectly OK with killing as many Muslims as possible. When Jimmy Carter declared with a smile that "Today, we are at peace," I was one of the ones who snickered -- because I believed that it was finally and for all time evident to the plainest idiot that War is never the answer. Now look at us. Carter's peace was a bigger accomplishment than I believed.

I've said good-bye so many times that it's become monotonous, a litany of goodbyes, like a string of Hail Marys assigned in penance: "Say a thousand goodbyes and call me in the morning."

Say a million goodbyes.

Say ten million goodbyes.

Keep on saying goodbye. . . until it's your turn.

In my case, there isn't going to be anyone left here to miss me. That's probably for the best. I'd hate to be responsible for anyone feeling the kind of sadness and loss that I feel on a daily basis.

-- Freder.

Restoring the Past

As I plow through the processing of approximately 175 pictures that I scanned yesterday, I'm faced with inevitable memories and emotions, and occasionally tears, although that's rare. I have the work to focus on, and these things are far enough away in the distant past to have lost some of their sting. The moments of hard sadness come when I'm at work, sneaking up on me suddenly when my mind is on other things.

The photos have yellowed with time, and restoring them to their original vibrance has an eerie effect: Some of them look like they could have been taken yesterday. Except for the cars and clothes.

I'm amazed at how much of the basic family furniture is now set up in my house. I see paintings that my mother did that are still with me, and others that are not. I wonder where they went.

I particularly like seeing the jailhouse standing beside the pool at the Edina, Minnesota house, sporting a different coat of paint, and knowing that it came all the way through all those years and four moves to where it now stands.

The picture above is an interesting one. I can't think of any better illustration of how different my sister and I have always been. Note that she has no problem encroaching on my personal space, and that her duck is agitated and scared. I would be, too, in his position.

Typically of my sister, she did not even allow me to name my own duck. She named them both, and that was that, and my parents just stood by and let her do it, they way they always let her have her way and allowed her to boss me around.

The ducks really landed my Dad in the doghouse. He just brought them home one night, without even consulting Mom. They grew up to be perfectly white. One day, they got out of their pen and disappeared into the neighborhood. We drove around and spent the whole day looking for them, but never found them. At the end of the day, they came striding back into our yard, side by side, quacking enthusiastically as if nothing had happened.

I think it was my Grandmother Mel who finally got rid of the ducks. She could not abide animals, even dogs and cats, the ducks were over the top for her. I was so sad when the car drove away with them in a cage on the roof rack.

When my mother was a little girl, my grandmother Mel just "got rid" of my mother's pet dachshund, Schnitzel, one day. I don't think Mom ever really got over that. I think that's why, at the first opportunity, Mom decided that she was going to have just as many pets as she wanted.

Oh, dear, I'm afraid this has all been a bit of a ramble. That's what old pictures do.

-- Freder.

The Interconnectedness of All Things

Oh my -- so much to write about tonight, but where to start and how to make it interesting and how to convey that it's all connected. . . (seeing connections in things is something I'm good at -- or hadn't you noticed that all of my posts strive, whether they succeed or not, at going Full Circle?).

This has been a wonderfully relaxing evening. Even having to move constantly from my deck (where I was grilling a burger) to the kitchen (where I was boiling a couple ears of corn) was somehow relaxing.

The weather was just perfect. Not too humid, not too hot, not too cold. I was cooking late enough so that the sun was just beginning to set. Although I had Topsy Turvy queued up to watch and would normally have et dinner in front of the telly, it was too nice a night. I let the TV play to an empty room while I ate out on my deck and occasionally put my feet up on another chair, and occasionally put my head back, and occasionally looked around at my yard, which is Transforming Nicely from something that somebody else did into something that is the product of MY intents.

In the midst of all this, I happened to notice that the paint on the very top of the railing is peeling a bit, and thought I might need to repaint sometime soon, and then noted that the only thing I really don't like about the deck is its bland, middle-class blue-grey color.

I thought, I could repaint this thing Red, White and Blue. I could repaint the stairs and that section of it leading up to the back door a deep midnight blue with yellow stars.

Then I thought, dagnabbit, first thing Saturday morning I am gonna go somewhere where they sell paint and get the colors that I need and a scraper and a brush and I am just gonna DO that little thing. Or start it, anyhow. It won't happen overnight. Wonder what the neighbors will think.

This is connected to the fact that I've been spending money like a drunken sailor ever since I moved into this place, money that I don't necessarily have, but, you know, it's a quality of life issue. It's also connected to my mother's love of the American Flag as a piece of graphic art, and to all the flags I retained from her house -- at least one of them made from wood -- that I don't currently know where to put or what to do with.

The reason that I was grilling a burger on the deck tonight was that I can't do it inside anymore, because after years and years of Noble Service, the Farberware Open Hearth Indoor Grill finally burned out last week.

Let me tell you about the Farberware Open Hearth Indoor Grill.

It is the greatest thing since sliced bread, and it's no longer being manufactured. I snagged a picture of it today on the web to post here, but I won't be using it because Krazy Kat is Konnected to the fact of All Things Being Konnected.

Am I boring you?

It consists of a heating coil contained by a metal framework and an open grill top, with a drip pan underneath. Most models also came with a detachable rotisserie unit. We never used that bit. It's not the same as grilling over charcoal, but it comes pretty darn close, and does it indoors.

My fraternal grandmother and grandfather Melvina and Claude, were the ones to discover this Remarkable Appliance. They liked it so much that they gave one to EVERYONE in the family.

Mom and I agreed with them. We used it all the time, for everything. We used it so much that by the mid-'80s, our unit finally burned out.

My sister, who as all of you know by now is an Evil Idiot, did not share our feelings for the Farberware Open Hearth Indoor Grill, and never used hers. Mom and I stole hers, and have been using it ever since.

Well, it outlived Mom, but it finally died. rather dramatically, I must say, with flames and all.

I've known for some time that this was going to happen and, on occasion, have scoured the internet looking for replacement heating coils. But this is a bit of culinary tech that has gone the way of T. Rex.

In the short term, I took it philosophically. I pulled out my mother's Mickey Mouse toaster for making toast, and for meats -- hey, it's summer, I bought some charcoal and have been bringing the little Hibachi into play once or twice a week.

But --

The toaster plays "It's a Small World" in really obnoxious electronic tones when it pops up the bread. It goes right down my back at a time of day when I don't need that obnoxious input. And -- what to do when the temps go down and winter begins to call? Give up eating meat? Get one of those really inferior George Foreman thingummybobs? I've looked at them several times. They're nowhere near as good as the Farberware Open Hearth Indoor Grill.

Long story short: I turned back to the internet and just as I was about to declare this problem unsolvable, there was someone selling an original unused Farberware Open Hearth Indoor Grill on eBay, minimum bid $19.99.

Did I mention I've been spending money like a drunken sailor? But this is one of those Quality of Life issues. EVERYONE should have a Farberware Open Hearth Indoor Grill and I was not about to let this one get past me. I saw, I bid, I won.

And soon I will be able to toast without "It's a Small World" riding down my spine, and soon I will not have to grill a burger outdoors (although it was lovely to do so tonight).

It was just as lovely to lie out on the couch on my porch and read once the dinner was done and the shower taken. To some extent, I felt transported. With all the screened windows open, it didn't seem to matter that there were cars going by in the street outside. Looking around me at the porch lit by paper lanterns and christmas lights, I was powerfully taken back to the summers that my family spent in the cabin on Ludlow's Island in Minnesota. The feelings were the same.

I have Home movies of those summers that, over the years, I transferred from 16mm film to VHS to DVD.

Here we are on the Elephant Rock. Here we are playing The Game of Life on the porch, with Taffy, our cousin's dog, long gone, looking on. Even my cousin Brian, who suffered what I now recognize as a severe case of Autism, and who is seen at the picnic tables with us, flapping his hands excitedly over dinner, even he has now been dead longer than he was ever alive.

And so on. One of the symbols that George Herriman used over and over and over again as a design element in his Krazy Kat Komic Strips was a Wheel of Life: a circle with an X drawn through its center and a Native American lightning bolt shooting out of its side.

You would do well to read a bit of Krazy Kat, iffn you haven't.

The Road Goes Ever on and on. . . (oh, wait, that's Tolkein. . .)

-- Freder.