Tempus Fugit

Why does every political blog cover the exact same stories? Want to hear about Obama’s speech? You have about ten thousand choices. I read the Huffington Post and Talking Points Memo daily. I don’t know why. Both carry the same material just about every day. Maybe they steal from each other, or maybe the posters are just locked into the same mindset.

Its not just those two sites. At least on the lefty side of the World o’ Blog every blogger writes about the same subjects day after day after day after day. Yes, of course there are exceptions. Andrew Sullivan’s blog the Daily Dish deals with lots of original topics and, of course, Daily Kos discusses dozen of arcane subjects, as does Yglesias, but most blogs don’t fall far from the echo tree.

Today and tomorrow absolutely everyone will be writing about the tenth anniversary of 9/11. Most of the posts will cover the obvious and will echo each other’s point. I’m sure, by the way, it will be equally true on those despicable red blogs. And yes, the Mainstream Media will do the same in the shallowest way. Most of the stories will be the same, only the interviewers and interviewees will differ.

By the way, have you noticed how canned the news has become on the networks? Take a natural disaster, for instance. The story first tells us a tornado (or maybe a flood, earthquake or hurricane) devastated  (pick a town). Then we are shown thirty seconds of video of the devastation (we are always shown cars destroyed by the event; every flood story has  footage of shiny new Toyotas floating crookedly in the muddy water). Next we see a crying woman holding her baby, puppy, cat or father’s photograph; usually she’s obese, speaks in a redneck accent, and lives in a trailer park (her tin home was blown away, flooded, or shaken into slivers). “I’m just lucky to be alive,” she wails. Then comes the old, confused man who can’t find his wife, kids, siblings or cousins. Next we hear from the mayor, governor, chief of police, or some other political figure who tells us, in his or her ten second sound bite, how bad it was but how well the town, county or state is coping with the aftermath of the (tornado, flood, earthquake or hurricane). Finally, a chipper younger woman tells our intrepid reporter the people in (some town) are resilient and tough and, by God, won’t let this natural disaster destroy their spirit;  her husband, son, daughter, sibling or neighbor then declares he/she will definitely rebuild his or her house, store, barn, church or whatever because God will be there for everyone and his neighbors.

There’s an excellent chance the story will end with the heartwarming tale of how a dog, cat, pig, cow, gerbil or other animal, was miraculously spared by the tornado, flood, earthquake or hurricane. A video clip of the reunion of weeping human and precious fauna plays while the news anchor offers up some upbeat and  banal comment. Yes, the disaster was awful; but wasn’t it wonderful the poor guy found his dog, then he segues to a two minute piece about the health risks of potato pancakes and sour cream.

So now, of course, its time for me the share my own thoughts about that beautiful Tuesday morning ten years ago. I was in my office. My secretary had a small black and white television in her office. She interrupted my meeting with a client. “A plane hit the trade center in New York,” she said. Her report stunned me. I’m one those poor souls who live in the hinterland but are desperately in love with New York city. I didn’t end my meeting, however. Then the second plane hit; this was not a tragic accident. We were under attack. We spent the next three or so hours staring at the small TV screen.

The real impact of that unbelievable morning hit with the collapse of the first tower. As that monstrous gray cloud hurtled down to the street level I was overwhelmed and disoriented. How could this happen? How could one of those proud towers, so iconic, vanish in a few seconds. Next came the sickening realization that there were still hundreds and hundreds of people in the building when it fell.

The fall of the second tower, the spread of that hideous cloud over lower Manhattan, the news of the attack on the Pentagon, the scenes of the stunned survivors covered in that dust, and the shocked tones of the reporters deepened the sadness and drove home the monumental loss our country had suffered.

Some will write this weekend of how we lost our way when we stumbled into Iraq and slashed our Constitution’s guarantee of our personal liberty and right to privacy.  They will decry the loss of the solidarity Americans had the aftermath of 9/11. They will tell us our current debt and deep recession and the insane paralysis in our political system stem from Bush’s  jingoistic, hugely expensive (in both lives and treasure) response to the collapse of those gleaming towers.

Others will defend the measures the government has adopted to protect our homeland. They will defend “enhanced interrogation” and the establishment of  the hydra headed security service that makes us remove our shoes and intercepts our electionic communications. Some of them will urge us to engage in yet more military actions against  even more Muslim countries (Syria, Iran, Yemen, Pakistan…)

Each camp will assail the other. Each will declare the other is threatening to destroy what Makes America Great. They will disagree about precisely what that is. Neither side will listen to the other. There will be no debate, just a shrill cacophony of  angry shouts. 9/11 once united us. In the twisted decade since that mournful morning the divide between us has widened into a chasm so wide we cannot even hear one another.

I have my opinions. You have yours. What I feel this weekend is not anger. Nor do I wish to pontificate, not on this day.  No, this sunny, clear first September Saturday morning is reserved for somber recollection.

This day  I feel only sadness. I sorely miss those gleaming towers. These is an ache in my heart. Whenever I see the skyline of lower Manhattan I can still sense their presence, twin ghosts, pale and translucent, haunting the city. The towers are gone, fallen to earth that September morning now ten years past. They have vanished as has our smug assurance of our invulnerability. They fell, leaving behind only that roiled, suffocating gray cloud that has now spread so far and wide it  threatens to engulf us all.

My Foolish Heart

Oh, Barrack, For a long time now I’ve been so mad at you! You broke my heart and I swore we were done; our relationship was over. Swore I’d just sit home alone election day in my pajamas and eat Ben & Jerry’s ice cream and watch Sleepless in Seattle half a dozen time.

But I miss you (even if I sometimes hate myself for that). God! How much fun we had in ’08. I was mad about you then, jus head over heels! Oh, those wonderful, inspiring speeches that sent shivers down my spine! Those heady chants of yes we can! that made me swoon. Those huge, adoring crowds! The thrill of our primary victories! You even spoke in complete sentences that made good sense! You made me believe in a presidential candidate for the first time since 1968 and rekindled my faith in America, a faith which had been killed by the assassins’ bullets that year.

OK, I knew it couldn’t last. I was aware governing would be much less passionate than the lyrical campaign. I thought I was ready to tolerate the compromises a President must make – the change from poetry to prose. Still, I wasn’t ready for the magic to end.

Then you did so much that disappointed me: the torture thing, the half assed health care thing, the willingness to cut Medicare and Medicare thing, and that killing citizens thing… Oh, Barry…I felt abused and betrayed. I tore up that signed photo of you and ripped the ’08 bumper sticker off my high milage car. I trashed you to all my friends and wrote you those harsh e-mails. Now I feel a little foolish about the nasty things I said about you; I just did it because of the heartache you caused; I wanted to hurt you back….

 And I cried. I was sure we were done.  

Then, when I though I was finally over you, you flashed me that big happy grin of yours (the one that’s so hard to resist) and talked about basketball like a regular guy… You called that poor law student Limbaugh called a slut. You gave that stemwinder speech to the UAW… You began giving it to the Republicans at last. Barry, you came back…

Can I forgive you? My unthinking heart wants to say yes. It wants to believe you are still that wonderful guy who gave that impassioned speech about race in America. Still that cool dude who came from nowhere to beat the Clinton machine and McCain. Still the harbinger of a better America and not just another lying politician. Still the leader who could make a real change in America.

Will I forgive you? Will you sing to me again of hope? Stir my soul? Speak truth and compassion? Make me believe politics is not all money and hypocrisy? My heart wants to believe you can and, now, maybe I will forgive.

I’m beginning to feel that flutter again, that old excitement. I’m beginning to hope again. Part of me knows you may break my heart again by staying timid in a second term. Right now I’m starting not to care. I’ll take the risk; I crave the feel of that magical intoxication we had four years ago. I’m growing eager to be entranced by your poetry again. I want you so much! Please take me back…

I just can’t quit you, Barry.

Photo by Ken Fager, subject to this creative commons license

USA! USA! USA!

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I’m a diehard Big Orange fan. I watch every Tennessee football, basketball, and women’s basketball game I can. When my teams win I feel great; when they lose I feel sad…

Now, I know big time college athletics is corrupt, a sacred cash cow with a thousand teats spewing money. I know most of Tennessee’s football players hale from out of state, just mercenaries here only for the chance to get the big bucks in the NFL. I know its the same with basketball. “Show me the money!” My late (first) father-in-law put it best – he was a huge North Carolina fan – “they may be sons of bitches, but they’re our sons of bitches…”

Somehow, however, once the kickoff happens, or the opening tip, I willfully forget what I know and avidly root for our brave boys in orange as they struggle against those villains in red, or blue, or gold. Go Big Orange! Go Big Orange!!

I have the same schizophrenic attitude about America. I was born and raised in the good old USA. I love our flag and our other national icons. I grew up cheering John Wayne in countless war and western flicks and reading sanitized history textbooks glorifying our very checkered past (how amazing it now seems that native Americans were portrayed in popular culture as savages who attacked us without provacation). My country right or wrong! I was your typical flag waving, toy gun toting, jingoistic America kid…

Then I went up north to college and began to learn about a different America. The catalyst was the war – the Vietnam War. I learned our troops weren’t the wholesome samaritans sacrificing to save our brave Vietnamese allies as I had been led to believe… I learned the Gulf of Tonkin incident – the justification for the massive escalation of the war – was a government lie. Later I learned about My Lai.

Then came Nixon and Watergate; we all learned our government was venal at the very highest levels. Now we know our national legislature is awash in corporate and insider cash that buys influence and more. Now we know our government still lies about the need to go to war. Now we know our nation has caused the death of tens of thousands of civilians in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Now we know our national leaders have condoned and forgiven torture, sanctioned due process free detention and execution of American citizens.

A near majority of my fellow citizens applaud torture (when we are the torturers). Despite the lessons of Iraq, my fellow Americans want war with Iran and care next to nothing for the Palestinians. Our police beat protesters and spy on Muslims. An alarmingly large slice of America believes our President is an alien (in both senses of the word).

Around the world people are repulsed by our policies: the uncritical  support for Israel, our bellicose support of tyrannical regimes, and our smug sense of entitlement on the world stage.

But I don’t care; I still love America. I love its red, white and blue flag, the White House, the Washington Monument, the Star Spangled Banner, apple pie, spacious skies, and amber waves of grain.

When we invaded Iraq I was aghast. I believed the war to be immoral and stupid – but when the war kicked off I started rooting for the troops all the same. How like a game it was! And our team was winning, really running up the score! USA! USA!

I rooted for our brave boys the same way I root for the Big Orange.

Mindlessly.

Photo by fusky, remixed by me, both images subject to this creative commons license

Change You Can Believe…

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Photo by David Lytle, remixed by me, both images subject to this creative commons license

“The United States participated actively and effectively in the negotiation of the Convention . It marks a significant step in the development during this century of international measures against torture and other inhuman treatment or punishment. Ratification of the Convention by the United States will clearly express United States opposition to torture, an abhorrent practice unfortunately still prevalent in the world today.

The core provisions of the Convention establish a regime for international cooperation in the criminal prosecution of torturers relying on so-called ‘universal jurisdiction.’ Each State Party is required either to prosecute torturers who are found in its territory or to extradite them to other countries for prosecution.”

Ronald Reagan

“Obama Releases Torture Memos, Vows Not to Prosecute”

The Genius of Rick & Newt

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You’ve got to hand it to Rick Santorum. The man’s a genius! Only he figured out prenatal testing is a devil’s plot to facilitate abortion. He’d outlaw those pernicious tests. If women don’t know their unborn child is horribly deformed or suffers some illness which doom it to a miserable, painful and short life they will carry the child to term.

But think about it, while Santorum’s plan might prevent some abortions, it doesn’t go far enough. Pregnancy tests should also be banned. After all, any woman who learns she’s pregnant may opt for abortion. Better to keep the women folk ignorant. Why we ever allowed them to learn to read is beyond me.

Rick’s also spot on about the evils of contraception. The Pill, condoms, etc. just promote sexual wickedness, threaten the American family and pollute our bodily fluids. Again, however, he hasn’t gone far enough. He should adopt the religious strictures of fundamentalist Muslims and forbid unrelated men and women to be together without chaperones and he should demand laws mandating conservative dress for women so men are not plagued with impure thoughts.

Rick’s not the only one who is a brilliant thinker. Newt, while not quite in Santorum’s class, is sharp and prescient. Just in the past few days he’s revealed Barrack Hussein Obama loves infanticide. Newt has discovered we live in the most perilous times ever our nation has faced – not the darkest days of our Revolution or the Civil War, not World War II when we faced the combined might of the Axis Powers, and not even the Cold War when the Russians had thousands of nukes aimed at our cities. No, because Obama is coddling Muslims terrorists  (imagine! Giving Osama a proper burial!) and refusing to invade Iran, Yemen, Somalia and Ubekibekibekistan we are on the precipice of Armageddon. Only Newt – or Rick – can save our nation from being overwhelmed by Sharia law and the scourge of crushingly high taxes (37.5%!) on our job creators.

Thank God for the Republican party!!

I’M MAD AS HELL…

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…AND I WON’T TAKE IT ANY MORE

Make no mistake, I am not an Obama Fanboy. I think his War on Terror policies are a disaster, not much better than Bush’s. The cobbled together health care reform was weak beer. His deference to “bi-partisanship” in the face of Republican stonewalling has been painful to watch. Somewhere in the White House (or the FBI –  CIA?) there’s a modest stack of emails from me blasting Obama’s policies.

I knew he wasn’t really a liberal. For one thing, liberals don’t get elected President. Even FDR was only pushed into liberal territory by the deepening crisis of world depression (he ran in 1932 on a pledge to balance the budget) .  Like Clinton before him, Obama is a cautious centrist who only rarely moves to the left (when he’s not running for election).

OTOH…

Obama’s the best we’ve got. Compared to the dimness of Romney, Santorum, Gingritch, et al., he’s a towering beacon of light. Faced with frightening financial chaos in the beginning, and the resulting severe recession, he’s done moderately well. His judicial nominations have been reasonable, his respect for (domestic) civil rights has been commendable. Despite its many flaws, Obamacare has improved health care.

So its a no brainer I’ll vote for him again. Sadly, as a liberal resident in an increasingly red state, my vote will count for naught.

In the past, in this religious “tea party” Republican enclave I live in, I tended to keep a low profile. I’d ignore the ridiculous comments folks made about Obama. You think he’s a socialist Muslim born in Kenya and he has a secret agenda to take away your guns and freedoms? OK, I’m not going to comment…

Not any more…

Friday I stopped into my favorite sub shop, intent on consuming a wonderfully sinful sandwhich. So, Im second in line at the cash register waiting to order when I hear the following:

Woman at Counter to man in front of me: You hear about the reason for the delay in us getting tax refunds?

Man: No. What about it?

WAC: It was just on the TV. It was Obama. He’s the reason the refunds were delayed. 

Man: Yeah?

In the past I would have just ignored this colloquy.  Not anymore. As the man in front of me moved off to wait for his food, I stepped up, gave the woman what I hoped was a withering look, and said: “let me see if I have this straight, you actually believe that Obama called up the IRS and told them to delay sending out refund checks?”  I paused, then continued, “are you really that stupid?” I flipped the small, paper menu I had been reviewing toward her, and then concluded, in perhaps a louder voice than I intended, “I’m out of here!….” I turned my back on her, then briskly strode toward the door, feeling righteously indignant, or perhaps indignantly righteous. I’m really not sure. Whichever it was, I felt great, if still rather hungry.

A day or two before the above confrontation, I was waiting patiently at my pharmacy for one of my many medications when I heard the following exchange between a pharmacy tech and a customer who had just been told he couldn’t get some medicine or other as cheaply as he had in the past. In answer to his lack of understanding, the tech told him in a matter of fact voice: “it’s Obama; that’s why you can’t do it anymore.”

I sat there seething. Finally, when the pharmacist herself handed me my medicine, I told her I didn’t think it was the tech’s place to opine on who’s fault it was. “I’m a Democrat,” I told her, “and I don’t appreciate that kind of comment. I really doubt she knows what she’s talking about.” The pharmacist, an attractive young soft spoken blonde, just looked at me and mumbled something.

I feel so much better… My new policy is to confront anyone who makes ignorant, derogatory comments about Obama in my presence. I’m going to get right up in his  face and call him on his ridiculously stupid bullshit.

I’ll really do it. I will!

Unless, of course, he’s a potential client with a fat wallet, a cop or judge or anyone else with power to affect my legal practice, or he’s considerably younger and bigger than I am….

Photo by  Barick Obama, subject to this creative commons license

Going Ga Ga

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American popular music rules the world (what ever happened to the Brits?) The latest incarnation of American dominance is Lady Gaga. Wikipedia says it better than I culd –

Her debut album, The Fame, was released on August 19, 2008. In addition to receiving generally positive reviews, it reached number-one in Canada, Austria, Germany, and Ireland and topped the Billboard Top Electronic Albums chart. Its first two singles, “Just Dance” and “Poker Face“, co-written and co-produced withRedOne, became international number-one hits, topping the Hot 100 in the United States as well as other countries. The album later earned a total of six Grammy Award nominations and won awards for Best Electronic/Dance Album and Best Dance Recording. In early 2009, after having opened for New Kids on the Block and the Pussycat Dolls, she embarked on her first headlining tour, The Fame Ball Tour. By the fourth quarter of 2009, she released her second studio album The Fame Monster, with the global chart-topping lead single “Bad Romance“, as well as having embarked on her second headlining tour of the year, The Monster Ball Tour.

I wonder, does American entertainment come to other societies value laden or value free? If Gaga is communicating an American value, what is it?

How quaint those days now seem when the American government would sponsor various approved  entertainers as “cultural ambassadors” and send them overseas to display our wholesome culture.

Once Again South Carolina Leads the Way!

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It’s become common for pundits and other elitists to sneer at state legislatures, especially southern state houses. Whether it’s bans on Sharia law, attempts to revive Creationism, bans of food containing fetuses, or draconian strictures on immigrants, many liberals condemn many of the “wacky” bills passed or proposed by Republican majorities.

But sometimes legislatures get it right. Take South Carolina, for example. In the Palmetto State Republicans have wisely proposed legislation that would forbid citizens on food stamps from using them to purchase snack food such as potato chips or Twinkies. Clearly, this bill is motivated out of the legislators compassionate concern for the welfare of the state’s poor. Frequently misguided, these unfortunates need firm guidance on what they should, and shouldn’t, eat to maintain their health.

South Carolina gives the less fortunate food aid and they should be obligated to only use this aid for necessities.  If the poor cannot control their profligate use of sugar, fat and salt, the state should step in and help them. Snacks, chips, lobster, and sugared soft drinks are obviously not required for good health. Indeed, their consumption could lead to morbid obesity, diabetes,  heart disease  and other diseases caused by poor nutrition (which would deplete the state’s Medicaid funds).  Should the law go into effect it will be only a matter of time before South Carolina’s  indigents are both proud and healthier than those in more indulgent, less caring states. Should the bill pass, it will be the state legislature’s finest moment in the last 153 years.

The only criticism I have of South Carolina’s proposed law is that it doesn’t go far enough. Food stamps recipients are not the only beneficiaries of state funds. For example South Carolina surely pays out tens of millions of dollars to pensioners. How much of that money is wasted? Surely due to advancing age, many of these idle seniors have probably lost the ability to make intelligent decisions when it comes to how they use state provided funds.

For instance, why should the state give out money that will only be wasted on bingo, subscriptions to AARP’s magazines, or trips to Las Vegas or Atlantic City? I suggest the legislature set out a list of forbidden products and services. Instead of cash, pensioners would be paid with Senior Bucks which could only be used within the state. Anyone selling disallowed products or services would not be paid and could be prosecuted. If the program worked it could easily be expanded to cover state and local employees. Of course, the state would need to deduct a modest fee from pensions and salaries to cover the costs of managing the program.

Should such a scheme prove workable it would likely be adopted by a majority of the the states. It could even spread to the federal government. Indeed, limiting Social Security payments to government approved use, and Medicare payments to reimbursements for treatment of  diseases and conditions not caused, in whole or in part, by the patient’s imprudent behavior, would quickly lead to a balanced budget and an eventual elimination of the massive deficit (even after additional tax breaks for job creators).

Some might ask why I do not propose applying the law to recipients of tax cuts. First, of course, a reduction in a person’s taxes is not government largesse. Second, citizens making more than $250,000 per year are obviously wise enough not to need guidance (as are corporations that might receive necessary assistance for government).

Frankly, I am confident my modest proposal based upon the wise actions proposed in South Carolina would, if universally adopted, vastly improve the lot of the 99% of Americans who lack the wisdom and intelligence of their betters.

Photo by Christopher Sessums, subject to this creative commons license

Where’s My Peach?

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Writers and poets have written of aging for thousands of years. Some decry life’s twilight; others embrace the dying of the light. Some of their words ares profound, others banal or saccharine . None of their prose and poetry helped them avoid age’s bitter, irreversible culmination.  They all died in the end. Some are remembered; others remain unknown.

 Now its time for my lament.

When I was fourteen or so, in September (or was it April?) , I was wandering around a nearly deserted municipal swimming pool on an overcast morning. With no girls in skimpy swimsuits to admire, I mused on my life. I felt wonderfully old. I was now Fourteen! I was a teenager! I carefully shaved every other week or so. I thought about my future. In a year and a half I could get a learner’s permit and learn to drive; In four years I’d graduate high school then be in college and, I hoped, no longer be an skinny, acne plagued virgin. When people asked how old I was I’d proudly announce fourteen and they would feign surprise. “You’re almost a man,” they would tell me with a condescending smile, “what do you want to be when you grow up?”

My speculation that sweet morning took me further into my uncertain future. It seemed utterly impossible that in the year 2000, so amazingly distant in time, I would be fifty-two years old. Fifty-two? It was unimaginable, like imagining I’d move to Jupiter or Mars. My father and mother, who were of course old, were just forty-two and thirty-eight. None of my high school teachers were that old. I knew really old people of course; my grandparents were in their early seventies; somehow they didn’t count. It was as if to my teenage mind they belonged to a separate, barely noticed, race of gray headed creatures.

In 1966, at eighteen, I graduate high school, then spent the summer working frantically to lose my virginity with last minute success. In 1969 I turned 21. Legal whisky! College graduation and admission to law school. A year away from my (first) wedding. Am I an adult now? Is that a good thing?

1974: Out of law school, married four years. I was in awe of those older attorneys who seem so – lawyerly. 1978: thirty, old enough to be a judge but still young enough to feel childish and chase, and catch, women.

In 1988 I turn forty, a sobering number. Can I really be that old? I dread some sniggering friend giving me a bunch of black balloons.I am thankful I still have a full head of brown hair with no trace of gray.

1998: I attain the impossible, chilly age of fifty. I try to tell myself its a mistake, but I can’t make the math come out right. I can no longer deny I am middle aged. At my high school reunion everyone talks of disease and grandchildren.

And then, in a blink, comes 2000 and I look back at that awkward fourteen year old boy from the other end of time’s tunnel.

Now another decade plus has slipped quietly by and I find myself answering the question, “how old are you?” with words that taste of ashes: “I’m 63.” My interrogator feigns surprise, smiles then tells me I look so much younger. I want to slug her… She thinks I’m old! I’m on the verge of telling a young client, “I’m old enough to be your father,” when I realize with bitter shock I am in fact old enough to be his grandfather. No one calls me young man anymore. I wonder if people know my teeth are made of plastic.

I am not old!  I am not old!!

My face has somehow, and I’m not quite sure just when it happened, sagged here and there and  wrinkles have crept across its once smooth and hairless flesh. My body has, when I wasn’t paying attention, grown surprisingly fat and flabby and parts of it refuse to work quite as well as they did before.

The number of my pill bottles crowd the bottom shelf in my medicine cabinet. My young doctor talks of cholesterol, liver enzymes, and my elevated blood pressure; he always listens carefully to my heart and feels my calfs for swelling. Hair sprouts from my ears and nose. I still have most of my hair but gray has spread alarmingly far above my temples. There are splotches on my wrists. I try to ignore the stiffness in my legs and the aches in my hands and shoulders. The slightest pain in my chest sends me into panic.

 But I am not old.

My father, when he was about forty, told me he had never felt old, never reached an age when he felt like an adult and put away childish thoughts. He told me at first he had been surprised by this, that he expected to reach some age when, magically, he would become an adult. He  said it would probably be the same for me. I wasn’t so sure; I wanted badly to become an adult both inside and out. But he was right.

Inside, where it really counts, I am still that underweight, half grown, pimply kid. Can I pass the math test tomorrow? Will she go to the dance with me – I wish she was better looking – will she let me touch her tits? Should I go out for football again? Will my parents discover I’m drinking beer? I wish I was more popular – I feel so invisible sometimes…. Will this year never end?  I am still insecure, still aroused by beautiful women, still able to play the fool, still so anxious to impress, and still haunted by chronic self-doubt. Behind my crinkled face my mind remains unchanged from when I was young:  still eager to play, still able to view the world with wonder.

Or at least it seems that way.

I am sixty-three; in twenty years I will be in my eighties. If I live that long (should I be cremated or buried? How many people will attend my funeral? Who will speak of me?) Will that distant me still feel the same? Who can say?

 But I am not old. At least not yet….

Photo (not of me) by Étienne Ljóni Poisson, subject to this creative commons license

Memory Mutations

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Photo by San Diego Shooter, subject to this creative commons license

I wish I had a time machine, or at least a more accurate memory. As honest recollection fades with age the easier it becomes to let the mind paste over the gaps with more flattering, if dubious, facts. The fish become longer, youthful triumphs grander, and long ago girlfriends more beautiful and smitten with your charms.

In 1959 my father took a job with General Atomics in San Diego.  My parents loaded me and my two redheaded younger brothers into Dad’s shiny green (?) Oldsmobile Rocket 88 and we trecked west from east Tennessee through the mid summer heat. My memories of that trip are fragmented: crossing the wide Mississippi, stopping in Oklahoma City to visit my paternal grandparents, talking to Clint Eastwood and  other cast members of the popular TV show Rawhide somewhere in New Mexico (or was it Arizona?). Finally, my first glimpse of San Diego:  a semicircle of twinkling city lights ringing the blacked out bay late on the night we arrived.

We spent the first few days in a motel in La Jolla, an upscale subdivision of the city. We were, I think, quite close to the shore. I swam in a small cove in restless blue water surrounded by high, richly colored rock (at least that is my memory). A boy, younger than me, pointed out a rocky promontory where, he claimed, a “woman was eaten by a shark!”.  Years later I learned his improbable tale was true; she had been attacked by a great white in shallow water shocking close to the beach.

We moved into a apartment complex: a vast array of identical, sand colored buildings. I recall playing with a balsa wood model airplane with a bright red propeller and a single brief, sexually charged, furtive encounter with a girl a year or so younger than I was (she was the aggressor).

We finally settled in Del Mar, then a small, sleepy town further up the California coast, where we remained for the rest of our time in California. My parents never bought a house; we lived in a series of rented homes. In the winter we’d take a house on, or very near, the beach; in summer, when the popular race track on the north edge of town was crowded with affluent outsiders, and rents rose precipitously, we’d have to move up into the hills.  One summer day I ended up briefly surf fishing with Jimmy Durante. As I’ve written before, I found a stash of old Playboy magazines in one hill house we rented which was owned by absent Navy flyers.

I quickly became a juvenile beach bum, especially after my parents relented and bought me a used blue surfboard. By that time most boards were light foam covered in fiber glass; mine, however, was crafted from balsa wood and was relatively heavy, especially compared to the newer models. I didn’t care. I was a surfer! I even purchase a black, zippered wet suit jacked so I would look cool and brave the colder, and rougher, winter surf.

Here, perhaps, my fifty plus years spent since those distant days may refine and enhance my recollections. Perhaps those waves have grown higher, my skills become more masterful, and those early morning rides stretched longer. Yet the memory of those countless hours I spent straddling my board, scanning the horizon in search of just the right incoming swells, and competing for those promising waves against the dozen or so other youthful surfers sharing the same patch of dancing blue water, remain vibrant and visceral: my dash across hot sand with burning feet, the clean smell of melting wax, the chill as I plunge into the green, foam laced water, the burning in my   shoulders and back as I paddle furiously out through the rumbling surf, the heat of the rising sun on my bare back when the cooling offshore breeze died in mid morning, the giddy exhilaration as the quickly gathering swell catches my board and then hurls me forward with increasing speed down, and then across, its steepening, glassy face.  And sometimes, the memory is of fear when I plunge out of control to the dark, rough sea bottom after an uncaring wave beats me, then effortlessly tosses my upside down, spinning board toward the waiting beach.

We left California and returned to east Tennessee in the summer of 1962, just before I started high school. The mostly rural western edge of Knox county was deadly dull. I wasn’t very popular. I went out for the freshman football team only to discover I was laughingly inept. My timid attempts to woo girls fared no better. I sank into teenage despair.

But I at least had those California memories to sustain me. I was a surfer! The sweet recollection of my heroic adventures on the restless water at the California shore buoyed my flagging spirits. They still do so today.

Me, trying to resurrect my surfing skills in 1985 on the Outer Banks.

San Diego Shooter’s set SURFERS

FLICKR GROUP:  Surf Photography California