Memorial Day

Memorial Day isn't all about barbecues or three day weekends.  It is, first and foremost, a day of commemoration  for precious lives lost to protect our freedoms.
It is a day when mothers and fathers remember their children, before they were another statistic in a body count report.  Birthdays and soccer practice, proms and football games, Christmas mornings and Thanksgiving gatherings, diaper changes, sloppy open mouthed baby kisses:  it's all there, bittersweet memories rolling on an endless loop in a grieving parent's mind.  There is no more exquisite pain than the open, aching arms of a devastated mother longing to hold her child one last time.
It is a day of solemn remembrance for those men and women who have suffered unspeakable horrors, who have been dismembered and disabled, and who have died horrible deaths, so that our freedom may be preserved.  It is about families who have nothing left of sons and daughters but memories and photo albums.
So before you crack your first beer, or cut into your steak, stop first.  Ponder for a moment what it must be like to attend the closed casket funeral of your son or daughter.  Feel that pain for a moment.  Internalize it.  Let it wash over you.  Then put your beer down and go hug your kids.  Hold them tight and smell their hair.  Listen to them laugh.  Because this is a day not only of remembrance, but of appreciation  for the freedoms we hold dear, and for the millions of suddenly childless parents  who have given so much.
It's okay to enjoy your day, because they sacrificed for that, too.  Just take a moment of silence to thank those who have made days like this possible.

Are We Up or Down Today?

     Man, some days are just better than others.  It's a fact of life.  Getting up is a frigging chore.  You wonder, how in the hell do I keep going?  I mean, literally?  What's keeping my heart pumping, my lungs inflating?  How do I get down the stairs without my first cup of coffee?  It's Monday, I'm staring at the week ahead.  It all sucks.  None of my endorphin pumps are working.  Holy crap.

     Sometimes, it's just going to be like that.  There is absolutely nothing you can do about it.  You walk in the door at work, you don't want to talk to anybody.  Customers irritate you.  You can't find your damn cash drawer keys, your name tag fell off somewhere, and the boss is having that cranial rectal displacement problem again.  

     When I was 20 something, it was harder to work through these things.  Of course, when I was 20 something, I don't remember having days like this.  Or those nights when you can't sleep because some nameless dread is gnawing at your insides while your mind betrays you by constantly running through an endless litany of irritations and anxieties.

     Then some days you go out the door on top of the world.  You have the same bills staring you in the face.  You still have no idea how you are going to get your wife through that last semester of school and still pay the PG&E bill. The boss is still a self-serving moron.   Nothing has changed in your life.  Yet you walk out the door to face another day feeling like a kid on the first day of summer vacation.  
     I was having a conversation with one of my customers just the other day on this very subject.  We were talking about how some days it feels like your only goal is to get one foot in front of the other.  Other days, everything feels good.  My customer said "That's just life."
     And you know, it really is as simple as that.  We all go through this crap.  Why?  Because it's life, baby.  Nobody feels things just like you do, but we're all on the same emotional see-saw.  Put your head down and deal with it, because tomorrow will undoubtedly be brighter.
     And for God's sake, try not to piss too many people off on your way to the next peak.

Elvis -- Obsession or Nostalgia?

At the risk of sounding terribly dated and completely out of touch with modern life in general, I have to have a little (less) conversation with you about Elvis Presley. I know, I know, Lord Have Mercy...the guy has been dead over 30 years now. There is some argument that he was a has been even before his gargantuan colon and massive drug use combined to finish him off in his shag carpeted bathroom in Memphis in 1977.

I have some theories as to why I still think he's cool after all these years. For one thing, talent has always enthralled me. I can sit and watch an opera singer on the culture channel for a long time. I hate opera. I never understood the theater of it, or the never ending open vowels that drag on forever, or the frigging viking horns. Yet if I am mindlessly flipping channels and nobody else is around, I can stop on some opera singer. It's strange and probably a little psycho. Why torture myself like that? The fact is, I spend a lot of time watching it and wondering just what the attraction is. What draws people to this? How can a person get so emotionally involved in something like this? After 20 minutes or so, I begin to appreciate the sheer virtuosity of the artist. I could never tell you who the hell it is I am watching, but my God, how many beautiful notes can flow out of a single human throat? I begin to see what might draw somebody to this particular genre. As soon as that light begins to dawn, I quickly flip the channel to something a little more blue-collar, like Dirty Jobs or Cops. One must not stray too far from ones roots.

There is another theory I have been entertaining lately. It's been tugging at me ever since I hit 40 or so. I should stop right here and admit that it is probably a little frightening that a middle aged man such as myself should invest so much of my inner monologue hatching theories regarding the origin of my almost life-long obsession with a dead drug addicted singer. Perhaps obsession is too strong a word. I don't know. Anyway. My current theory has to do with the chaos that surrounded me and my family back in 1977. It seemed my world was falling apart. Things were happening that I felt I should be able to stop. I should have been able to protect certain members of my family. I began to see what true mental and physical abuse looked like. I was 13 years old and I had been walking on eggshells for years. Fear had been a been a part of my everyday life for a long time. During that hot summer in Sacramento in 1977, any youthful innocence I might have had left disappeared as I watched my mother, full of booze and pills that my step-father had fed to her, get pulled out of the ditch she had driven into. My step-father, the absolute idiot savant of the art of the mind fuck, had worked her into such a state that she just drove into a ditch. That wasn't the worst thing that happened that summer, not by half.

So anyway, here I was, a 13 year old kid with issues. I had no idea what was going on. Everything was shit. Things had been that way for awhile. I immersed myself in Tarzan books, Star Trek and comics. The stories were chock full of strong people who dealt with adversity by kicking the crap out of everything. And then there was Elvis Presley. I mention him in the same breath with comic books and fantasy because that's kind of where I placed him. I had grown up on his movies. They were breezy affairs, by and large, with no real danger and quick solutions...like extended versions of your average 60's sitcom. I had grown up on his music, too. I had no idea what an octave was back then, or a falsetto or a baritone for that matter. I just knew that when I listened to his singing, especially the gospel tunes, I was taken away to a comforting place where nobody could hurt me. He was larger than life: he was rich, famous beyond anything you can imagine, talented, and cool. He lived in a mansion, gave away cars to strangers, and he loved his mama. He had it good, man, he was on top of the world. And then he died on his goddamn toilet.

I cried, man. I cried like a baby. Was I crying because Elvis Presley died? Back then, I thought I was. But now, with the passing of years, I realize his death was the catalyst that released all the pent up frustrations and fears that I had bottled up over that long summer. I was crying, not for Elvis Presley, but for me. I was crying for my brothers and sisters. I was crying for my mother.

I am and always will be in awe of Elvis Presley's talent. We all know now that his life was tragic, largely because of his own crappy decisions. When times are less than perfect, we all tend to latch on to things that make us feel good. Not much made me feel good at that particular time in my life. Tarzan, Captain Kirk and Elvis Presley were guaranteed to take me away from the realities of an alcoholic and abusive step-father.

Obsession? Nostalgia? Call it what you will. I prefer to think of it as a fond remembrance of an old friend.

We're All Just Folks

You are not going to change my mind. Chances are, I'm not going to change yours either. So what's the problem? Your belief system has been a life-long work in progress. Some of your core beliefs might coincide with mine. Maybe they won't. God? Or no god? Democrat? Republican? Mayo or Miracle Whip?

With the state of politics today, it's worth it to remember that we all share a basic humanity. That seems to be forgotten in the bombast of talk radio and partisan TV hacks whose views of the world fall along sharply divided lines. Because life is not really like that, most people find themselves painted into ideological corners from which there is no escape. All white or all black, or all wrong or all right, are absolutes that leave little room for common ground. We all know what happens when we get stuck in corners. We get scared. We get angry. That's where all the problems begin, because anger and fear beget hate.

Friends are vastly more important than being the last man standing on some bloody ideological battle ground. It's far better to stand together on common ground.