Month: May 2014

Living with the voice of a WWII veteran constantly broadcasting his story to me has changed a lot about how I feel today, Memorial Day.  When I’m writing, the voice of my narrator feels very close and real, like a radio station being picked up from 1951, a crackly station played only to me, through which I become a messenger.  My book, which I have finally finished after years of construction, is about a veteran of WWII who watched many, many of his brothers die in the European Theatre.

Because of this narrator, I’ve tossed myself into several books about the war…The Forgotten 500 (buy it here The Forgotten 500 ), and The Monuments Men are two of my favorites thus far, as well as jumping into Part 2 of my own book…so the death toll of WWII has been fresh for me these past few months.  I’ve been in it because that’s where my Narrator is, still coping.

Circe Taurus Izaboo.

The story he tells is about what happens NEXT for him and his guilt for those he left behind in Europe.  Enthrallment with the past and nonstop-fingers-are-beating-the-keyboard-writing did something peculiar for me this month:  I was writing so much that I remembered May 12th as nothing but Circe’s birthday, and today I celebrated Memorial Day with a humble and thankful heart.

In remembering only Circe’s birthday, I forgot something that was once fucking huge…my Unwedding Day.

Two things:  First, Circe was my hero and best friend, the Rottweiler that taught me everything I needed to know about life, love, dogs, myself, dignity, and humor, forever and ever amen.  She was born on May 12th, 1997, and died on January 14th, 2009, and those two days are hung in my heart.

Unwedding Dress.

Second: May 12th was also the planned day for my wedding years ago, which I canceled.  It’s been, for 2+ years, a day that I remembered mostly for what it wasn’t rather than what it was.  Certainly, I have felt bitterness, remorse, anger, “what the hell was I thinking” and confusion, but this year I felt nothing.  It’s the best nothing I have ever felt, and it’s the best thing I have ever forgotten.

The year of my Unwedding, after the cancellation and the lost deposits, I put on my wedding dress (a cute little casual vintage lace mini dress) and went to see a movie in the graveyard at Cinespia, Hollywood Forever Cemetery, Hollywood, with my friends and family.  It was a way to “put it to rest” and move on, but it was clear on my mind each year until 2014 when I completely forgot that this was the day I dodged the biggest bullet in existence.

I believe very much that if I had gotten married on May 12th, 2012, I would be a statistic of divorce by now.  As hard as it’s been to separate myself from that life, it would have been harder to negotiate a divorce.  Canceling a wedding and breaking off an 8-year relationship was devastating, and the ensuing questions about my marriage status weren’t fun and never will be, but I am thankful for the opportunity that changed my trajectory, thankful for the inspiration that I have right now to write, and thankful for a spirit that can choose to let go, and simply…forget…because it was a small moment in time that doesn’t matter in the long run.

Remembering all souls that have been lost, those with 2 legs and 4.

Memorial Day is about remembering those that perished protecting our country, and I do so with a heavy heart each year.  I also celebrate Memorial Day by forgetting the bad things that have weighed me down so that I can better appreciate the good things we have because of those people, the things that all along we tend to take for granted because we worry so much about the trivial and meaningless.   Buried in the anxious and unforgiving past is no way to live, not when so many lives have ended prematurely, brutally, and often rather anonymously.  Their legacy often lives in our ability to forget the insignificant and focus on the chance to be alive, to do good for one another.

Here’s to forgetting the things that hurt you and remembering the people that free you.

Skeptically Yours,
Bigskeptic

When I stop at a Swap Meet, I feel like I can hear a thousand voices talking at once, telling the stories of the energy imposed on the items for sale.  All of these things were left behind or unwanted by the previous owner, by death or choice, or force.

Rarely does a window open so clearly into a basic piece of the past as it did for me this past Sunday at the Long Beach Flea Market.  Drawn to a vendor selling pictures—which is almost always a bad idea—I picked for an hour through some of the most evocative pictures from the 40s and 50s I have ever seen, especially considering there were pictures of strangers.

Next, at the bottom of the last box I picked through was an envelope addressed to one C.M. Burnett of San Diego, CA, sent from the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce.  Inside was Chamber of Commerce tourism information from 1959, and before I ever knew how much I would be charged, I knew I had to have it.

Once home, I carefully pulled the information out and found:

• Helpful Driving Tips: a brochure alerting visitors to One Way streets, parking on hills, jaywalking, and tow away zones.
• Gray Line San Francisco Tours Advertisement: Choices for which tour.  The Burnetts have put a checkmark next to Tour 1.
• Calendar of Events for all of 1959: The Burnetts have a checkmark next to July 7, 11, 18, 21, 25, and 28 for the Municipal Pop Concerts
• San Francisco Hotels and Restaurants List: The Cliff House Restaurant is checked, but nothing else
• Your Guide to San Francisco and its Nearby Vacationlands: The Burnetts have checked off Bus Tours, Bay Cruise, Cable Car Rides, The Embarcadero, Golden Gate Park, Presidio, Seal Rocks Playland, and Zoo, Nob Hill, Maritime Museum, Russian Hill, Telegraph Hill, Chinatown, and then further out Yosemite National Park and Sequoia as well as Monterey Bay Country.
• Avis Rental Car Ad

San Francisco Chamber of Commerce ad, plus other incredible photos I couldn’t leave behind.

I love the little pen marks.

They had a lot planned for their trip, certainly, and I don’t know how much they actually saw or if they even made it, but affording a glimpse into a regular family planning a vacation in 1959 feels like I opened a private window.  I know that the little envelope from the Chamber of Commerce wasn’t meant to sit around until 2014 and be purchased by a stranger, but in the end, we are just stories, and we never know what part of our stories will live on…and which ones will be boxed and carted around swap meet to swap meet, anonymously.

Skeptically Yours,
Bigskeptic

The law of diminishing returns seems to be a plausible reason for things dwindling as we age as well; at least, it makes sense to me because trading my heroes for ghosts happened over time, such a subtle, incremental change that I hardly noticed it.  I’m not just talking about actual heroes, people—I mean, that’s changed a little bit as well, but largely the idea of things that were once important drifting into the ether of time and being replaced by less substantial elements.

When I get into these modes—this existential “life is empty-ism”—my natural response is to seek something visceral and terrifying that will call back into existence the pertinent and meaningful guardians of my moral compass.  When these key directives dwindle, it’s an almost innate draw to danger.

I have less clarity these days than I did when I was in my teen years, and to show how old I’ve grown, I’ll quote Don Henley in a blog intended to quote Pink Floyd:  “the more I know, the less I understand.”  Part of growing older means getting answers for questions best left unanswered.  My life’s path has been a lot different than most of my peers; and part of it was choice, part of it was by the universe’s design and not my own.  I look back at things that I thought were my own decisions, and it’s almost laughable.  As much as I hate the idea of predestination, some things do seem like they weren’t up to me.

Without the typical elements that usually keep people grounded—kids, marriage—I have to create my own center.  And those “life is empty” moments are frightening without the bigger picture to create focus.  No matter how much meaning the other things have—job, friendships, passions, it all leads back to a paragraph that sent shivers down my spine when I was 16 and reading Kerouac for the first time around:  “My whole wretched life swam before my weary eyes, and I realized no matter what you do it’s bound to be a waste of time in the end so you might as well go mad.”

So MUCH of modern life seems like a giant goddamned waste of time.  When I think back to the most wonderful moments of my life, they were spent twisting along Beach Rd, speeding on I-10, resting with sand etched into my elbows as my best friend and hero, the long-gone Rottie Circe, played at the beach.  Perhaps in the trading of my heroes for the ghosts of things that once mattered, there has been an ensuing madness.  The madness lands me here, over 30, unmarried but also never divorced, finally finished with my first book, the clear reality of “who my friends are…” and although I understand less, in general, and have to watch my demons at times…I do realize one important factor:

Some of the heroes were simply false idols and worth the trade to ghosts, who do me no harm.

Skeptically Yours,
Bigskeptic.