Jackie, the jacket

I've been calling airline security all week, ever since I left my jacket sitting on the overhang of the conveyor belt in security at the airport.  I stewed all week long in Miami over my stupid jacket.  I left them the phone number where I would be daily.  The recorded message said they will only call back if your item has been located.  I never got a call back. 

I mourned the loss of this jacket.  I can't remember when I didn't have it.  The only thing I remember is trying it on and buying it.  I don't remember what store or town I was in or why I bought it. I probably bought it because I lost the jacket I was wearing in the picture in my first blog post from the '60's.  I think I bought this jacket in the 80s.  I have had that jacket around 30 years.  Not having it in my possession felt like I lost a part of me.

The first place I went to at the airport on my return home was security.  A guard there looked it up for me.  I described it as a navy blue jacket.  He found a description in the log for a "Faded Glory coat."  "Faded Glory"?  What was that? Was there a label in that coat that I had long since ceased noticing?  "Faded Glory" sounded like a familiar label, one I had worn years ago in my faded glory days.  It was signed in at the right date and time, so I supposed that must have been it.  He gave me their address and the same phone number I had been leaving messages on all week.  Apparently, they don't return calls whether your item is located or not.

Since my manager changed my hours today, I had a couple of extra hours this morning to drive to the lost and found.  Even with my GPS I didn't realize that I had to make a left turn by making a right turn onto a loop that loops around in a circle.  I barely managed to cross 4 lanes and get on that loop when almost immediately I was to make a U-ey to get to the lost and found.  I missed that U-ey, but managed to U-turn up the road a ways.  I was finally on the correct side and my GPS announced my arrival, but all there was to be seen were tall unmarked buildings and hotels with no addresses, only entrances to very expensive parking lots.  This is in that part of town that builds up within a few block radius of major international airports, that city all its own where you can never get there from here or even figure out where you are.

I went around the block and parked in the first parking lot.  I drove around and around inside the parking lot looking for a sign to anything.  I found nothing, and began to exit, but I saw two women in medical scrubs smoking, so I parked and got out to ask them if they knew where the lost and found was?  No, they really didn't, but they tried to tell me anyway.  One said there was a lost and found sign across the street and supposed it to be what I was looking for.  She told me how to get there.

The parking attendant took my ticket at the exit and let me out after hearing my plight.  She told me lost and found was "past the hotel." I managed to get myself headed in the correct direction down the street, looking carefully at every sign.  I found myself saying, "Jaqueline, if I ever get you back again I will never lose you ever again!"  I didn't even know until then that my jacket had a name.  She was my dear friend, a real person.

I passed the hotel, based on the instructions from that lady.   No "lost and found" sign. I turned around and this time when I reached the hotel I knew there was nothing past it.  I decided to park in the hotel and see if I could get help.  There were no attendants, nobody.  I made a U-ey to the exit but was stopped by a sign informing me I would need a "prepaid ticket" to exit.  I slowly and carefully backed out of my U-ey and the tight spot I had gotten myself into, and followed the only way to anywhere, which ended up at a valet station.  I was nearly hysterical by this time.

I told the valet I was looking for the lost and found and he said, "just leave your car here, and I'll show you where it is."  I couldn't believe it.  It's in the hotel valet parking? He knew where this secret place was?  He was going to show me?  Just leave my car there?  "I won't charge you the valet fee, just leave it."  I thought I had found an angel.  He pointed down the corridor, and told me past the hotel lobby desk there is a double door.  He said "knock on that door."

I found a plain double door.  There was no sign on it, or anywhere next to it.  There was no handle, door knob, bell, knocker, nothing.  It was just a plain wood door with no visible lock or windows.  I knocked.  20 seconds later I heard a faint "click."  I pushed on the door and went into a small room with a small reception window, manned by a large African-American security guard.  I'm not talking about a security guard like in my office building, I mean a Homeland Security officer with gold seal emblems on his impeccably starched uniform, gun at the hip, ready to escort the president onto Air Force One.  There was a walkie-talkie on his desk he picked up and talked softly into a couple of times.
 
He asked for ID, and had me print and sign my name in a log, along with the date and time.  I noticed people had signed the log about every 5 minutes today.  He typed my name and address from my ID into the computer.  Then asked me what airline I had flown.  Then he grilled me about my lost item.  "What is it?"  I told him it was a navy blue jacket that was described in the log as a "'Faded Glory' coat."

He didn't look like he really wanted to return it to me.  He eyed me with professional suspicion and boredom.  "What size is it?" he asked.

"Large?" I asked back.  (I was wrong - Medium.)

"Is it a zip up or button up?"

I didn't know.  I couldn't remember.  I was so nervous!  I frowned and hesitated and finally remembered. "Both!"  I said.  "That's why it's so special," I said.  "And it has lots of pockets, all of which are double.  It's impossible to find anything like that now.  I think."

"How much is it worth?" he asked.

"To me?  It's priceless." By now the suspicion had left his eyes and was replaced with some slight amusement, thickly veiled by a military demeanor that isn't allowed to be amused.  He waited patiently for me to say something that he could actually type into the computer.  "I think I paid something like $50 for it 30 years ago."  He typed into the computer, and got up to retrieve my beloved Jackie.

I turned to a lady that had walked in and heard the whole saga and commented, "all this security over a jacket that would be $3 at Goodwill!"  She had lost a computer, and I thought wow, good luck with that one! Yes, of course that's my computer, I can identify all the porn... 

After forever had passed, he returned with my jacket, and it was indeed my faded glory.  He printed out the computer statement, had me sign and date that I was the authorized person to receive this item, and Jackie was finally placed in my arms.

Here she is saying "Yay!" She's so glad to be home with me.

I had noticed coming in that valet parking was $2.00.  The valet had told me parking was $1.20 a half hour (major hotel chain, by the airport, why so cheap???), so I figured I would just give him $5.  But when I went to the valet station my angel was nowhere to be found.  Just as I was about to give $1.20 to the attendant my angel walked up with my keys.  I gave him $5, he gave me my "prepaid ticket," I thanked him again and again and got a big smile.

*~~*~~*~~*~~*
Earlier today I had enjoyed G's tale of woe when I arrived at work.  He had been swamped with rushes he couldn't do because nobody was ready to release their documents, and of course by the time they were G was too backed up to do them all.  One lawyer/secretary pair asked G, "Can't you send our work to the regional center?"

G's response:  "We ARE the regional center."

Can't you send it to another region?

No other state does these.

Well, what about the [another city in our state]?

They don't have a document center.

What about [another city]?

They have only one operator that works Mon-Thurs.

Ok.  We're going to learn how to do these ourselves.

What?  Really?  Holy Cow, it's a day full of miracles.

To The Goddesses

Well, I'm home now, and it is such a let down after having had so much fun in Miami!

Then I saw my blog had exploded among my Mothership goddess friends and that just blissed me out!  Love you goddesses!

So, work is really slow because all the attorneys are on retreat in Miami.  In fact, last year when I went to Miami on vacation in January I ran into 20 attorneys I worked with at the Miami airport. That was bizarre.

Miami - Day 6: Still Viv!

I'm so in love with my brilliant 3rd cousin, 6 months old. She said her first word here, "hi."  She waves and says, "hi."  She will be crawling momentarily, unless she just skips crawling and goes right to walking.

I snuggled with her as much as I could today because it's my last whole day with her.  I leave tomorrow.  So, before you bore yourself any further, you should know that basically all I did today was snuggle with Viv, play with Viv and take pictures of Viv, so if you're not into baby pictures you can stop reading now.  Today I was Viv's photo journalist, so I'm not in any of the pictures.

This morning, just after Viv woke up I told her that I can't wait to have deep conversations with her and she cracked up like we shared a secret joke.  She really gets me!

Next, we got silly and dressed her up in a little tutu outfit that gramma got for her.

Mom decided that wouldn't be an appropriate outfit to go visiting in, so she changed her.  Here we are, just hanging out, getting ready to go, when Viv sits up.  I said, she looks like she just did a sit-up.  Her mom said, she did that from almost flat on her back!  I said, "omg, she just sat up by herself!!" so I grabbed my camera and caught her just after she sat up by herself:

Note her very substantial feet - this will become important later in the story.

We head off to visit the Renos. The Renos live in nature, their "yard" is not manicured or anything, it's just wild.  It's basically a nature preserve. Here's Viv at the Renos with grampa showing her a peacock feather he found on the ground.

Viv's very first swing!  Mark put it up for all his own new grandbabies.

Here's Viv having a deep conversation with a former attorney general of the USA. 

At some point Janet commented on Viv's "substantial feet," which cracked everybody up, and to which we made reference the rest of the day.

We were going to try and make it to the zoo, but we stayed too long at the Renos and it got too late, so we went to look at a high chair found on Craig's List.  On the way home Viv and I sat in the back together.  She had a rattle that lights up, which she stuck in her mouth, and I told her, "wow Viv, you are eating light!  That is so deep!" She agreed. Here's a picture of her eating light.

Mom liked the high chair and bought it, and on the way home gramma and I commented that the high chair looked like Viv was in a space station because it was so big.  After mom got it all washed and set up and Viv all strapped in (the cushions and frills were still in the washer) she said, yeah, she does look like she's ready to blast off. 

And then we ate and played half a game of cards and took a 20 minute break in which the entire household went to bed all at once, leaving me all alone with my camera and a computer.

Here she is next morning, eating cereal for the first time, in a high chair with cushions!

Miami - Day 5: Gramma, Grampa and 3rd cousin get to meet Viv!

Viv meets gramma:

Viv meets grampa:

Viv's ma, A, says to Viv, "This is MY mommy" in the hope that Viv will not mind if left alone with gramma, S.  She repeats a couple of times, "my ma."  It works.  A calls it "Gramma Magic," and runs off to shower.  As she leaves S asks, "I wonder how Viv knew I was her mother's mother?"  Gee, I dunno, it must be gramma magic.

There was a moment when mommy left Viv alone in the playpen and I was the only one in the room to see her little lower lip tremble and make pre-crying noises and do "uppy" with her little chubby arms.  I grabbed her and she was all snuggly and cuddly and huggy!!  I'm just addicted to her now!  I can't wait to hold her again.

Viv is very funny, and pretty much stole the day and everybody's attention, and yet we somehow managed to fit in 1.5 games of Canasta.

Miami - Day 4: Patti

Today was Patti day.  Patti and I took our Mothership leaps of faith around the same time.  Or as she put it, "a leap out of faith."  And as she also put it, "in free fall looking for a soft landing."  I met her in free fall, and her friendship made the landing softer.  She's the only person I ever made the "high five" sign with.

She drove down here from Palm Beach County, another very colorful county.  I didn't think anything could top Miami-Dade until Patti told me about growing up on the Loxahatchee River not caring about getting a drivers license because all the kids could get anywhere they wanted on dingies.  They went where no one else could go.  I think she and her friends were around 10 when they knew it would be up to them to find some dead body the police weren't able to find in the river, which they did.

Patti works on Palm Beach, the island where the rich and famous live, so she had quite a few colorful stories. I'm really thinking of starting a gossip blog.  Her best stories were about her own life.  She regaled us (S and P also) all day with her stories.  All day I had been telling her to write a book and all afternoon S was telling her to.  Patti gave me permission to put any of her stories in her blog, but she really needs to write them herself or make them into performance art or something.  I think she felt encouraged to do so.

After Patti left S and P and I played canasta until almost 2 am.  I'm addicted.  Now I need to play a game of canasta every day.  Their daughter, my second cousin A, is arriving tomorrow and I sure hope she likes to play.  She will be bringing my new baby third cousin, and S and P's first grandchild, who they will be meeting in person for the first time!

Miami - Day 3: Lazy Rainy Nothing Day

S and P drove me around all day but we didn't get out of the car much because it was raining.  First we went to Coral Castle. Coral Castle is a bunch of stone furniture, monuments, and totally bizarre things like sundials and telescopes that was built by a lunatic and genius on 10 acres out in the middle of Nowhere, Florida, for his young intended bride who never did come over from Latvia to marry him. He built it around the age of 25, took 20 years to build, and he lived in it until he died in 1951 at age 64. The stone beds and chairs are amazingly comfortable for all types of bodies, and there are some remarkable inventions in his stone kingdom. Everything is exactly the same as it had been when he was living in it. The only thing that is different now is the plant life, as the original plants got destroyed in Hurricane Andrew.

One of the staff seemed to have nothing better to do so I asked her for a tour. She was what S called "a true believer" in how this genius created all these things mysteriously, such as no stone shows any groove marks where any machinery was used to drag it, and scientists come from around the world to explain it and can't come up with how he did all the stuff he did. They looked at all the tools he used and thought maybe he left tools there he didn't use, just to fake people out. Pete pointed out groove marks on the rocks, and had explanations for how the guy could have built all of it with the tools he had. Who should we believe?? Regardless, the man and his creation could not help spark one's imagination.

This is where this man lived, under the sky, sleeping in his stone beds, carving masonic and planetary symbols into coral and creating amazing bells and whistles.

This is the valentine table he made for his love that never came. He made a flowerpot in the middle so there would always be fresh flowers on the table.  That is his original plant in the table - it didn't get destroyed in the hurricane.

This is the entrance that he carved into his home, where he lived in his stone castle far from anyone and anything:

As you can see, he was also a modest and humble man.  All cattiness aside, this guy truly did set one's imagination on fire.


Then we went to Biscayne Bay to see where they had had many family outings with the kids.

And we passed a few palm tree farms.  This is a really small one.

Then we came home and they taught me how to play canasta, which we played all night. Great fun! And friend Patti is driving down tomorrow!  Yay!!  I hope she likes canasta!

Miami - Day 2: I am having such a great time!!

So, upon getting picked up by cousins S and P (Cousin S's husband) from the airport (I won't go into the drama involving the loss of my beloved jacket that I've had for years) and getting comfortably settled around the kitchen table, S informs me that her life has basically become so physically painful and lonely (because their 2 beautiful daughters have moved away) and scary (no friends around to help in an emergency), and with no hope of improvement in the future that she has nothing to look forward to in life, but other than that, she's doing great! (This would be the same cousin that wrote the most hysterical email I ever read to all us cousins describing the loss of their hand-built (down to the bunk beds the kids grew up in) house to Hurricane Andrew, and all the red tape they ran into with their insurance, rendering them basically homeless. This poem their daughter wrote about it always makes me cry.)

So, I figure this might not be a good time to discuss our great dreams for the future, so I started asking her about her past. OMG, great stuff! I was never more entertained and I can't repeat any of these stories because, well, let's just say that if this was a gossip blog, it would have been sizzling. I even learned things about our own family that I never knew (my other grandfather was also a tailor). I also learned that the one and only photo she has with one of her famous life-long friends is the one I took of them.

She was raised by communists and atheists, so she was raised on "the outside." She had to work since she was 13. Her first job was one her mother found for her in a whore house (as a switchboard operator, and she had no idea who all the pretty girls were that were her new friends). A famous comedian she was friends with at one time asked her if she could hook him up with any of her girlfriends, and S told him the only single woman she knew was her mother, and he said "that might be ok," turns to S's husband and asks him, "would you fuck her mother?" Then S started telling me stories about P, her husband, while he is sitting right there. We were in gales of laughter and he didn't understand why he was so funny, and the more he didn't see how funny he was the funnier he got. You know those circular situations? These are some of the things that pop out of P's mathematical genius mind (mentioned in the above poem) that were cracking us up so much: P bemoaned the fact that they were just one house away - if they had bought the house next door their address would be a palindrome. Pete moaned, "off by just one house!" adding to the hilarity. Pete's birthday month and year are both squares, but the day was just one day off (24 instead of 25), and again P expressed his dismay at being off by one number, sending S and I into spasms. While we were making fun of him in this manner and laughing hysterically, he was having a voiceover on his laptop say big numbers just so he could hear it say all those "illions."

So, earlier today, around noon, we were discussing what tourist attraction we wanted to go to when Mark Reno drops by to borrow a table saw. P says this would be a great day to stop by and see Janet, would I rather go there than whatever tourist attraction we had been considering? If there's a choice of going to the Renos and anything else, I will pick going to the Renos (I understand S and P's kids feel the same way). Plus, I read Janet's biography and had questions. So, P drove us over there so he could discuss the new door Mark was making for the house their mother built, and I could visit with Janet.

The first thing Mark said when we got there was "this is required reading in this house" (pointing to one of several books lying around about Parkinson's), "but we don't read the ending of it. We don't like the ending." That kind of freaked me out, but everybody laughed, including Janet ("Jannie").

So, P and Mark went off to attend to the door, and I was left to ask Janet about her biography.  I told her that when I got to all the political stuff at the end I got bored and stopped reading (she laughed), but I loved the beginning about her parents and childhood, and I asked her if she felt her biography accurately represented her childhood? She said reading it didn't make her gag (or blanch or some similar word) and I confirmed, "So you thought it was accurate?" She said yes (Mark indicated he had a different opinion, which I will talk to him about later). I told her next lifetime I want to be born a Reno and she laughed, but I couldn't get an answer to my next question, because she was drifting in and out of her Parkinson's haze.

Meanwhile, Mark had set up some crazy thing where he puts you inside a rope loop and hoists you up a tree. Just then his wife came home so he gave her the "test ride." Then he pulled me up the tree in it. That was crazy fun!! And the wild peacocks all came up to the porch in a big bunch! Even Janet said that was really unusual for them all to be out together like that. I asked her if she named them all, and she said only some of them. Cousin P was disappointed that I missed the big one to the left, but I was going for the sheer number of them! I was trying to fit as many of those wild peacocks as I could in the tiny window of my camera, and only got half of them.

I asked Janet my question again later and she just said "the memories make me happy." That answered the biggest question I had. I told her the last time I saw her she just radiated happiness and I wanted to know if she was happy, and she said "I am happy. Thank you." And my eyes began tearing and she handed me her mail she had been looking at. I didn't know what that gesture may have meant. I realized her nurse had gone to the mailbox, Mark and P were outside, and it was just the two of us, sitting on her porch in her beautiful swamp. I said, "wow, this is beautiful." She said, "the sky isn't usually like this, just bla." She meant that she was agreeing that it was beautiful because usually the sun is too bright, but this bla sky was creating a rare and beautiful ambiance. As I sat there we got a sudden Florida shower that rained down on her new tin roof (the old one had been wood shingle). I went outside in the rain and swung myself nauseous on the swing. I didn't know that was even possible.

It was so lovely and peaceful on that porch in the old Reno homestead with no TVs or computers, but with generations of history that will all go when Janet goes, that I completely forgot to remind P to bring home the folding crib he was supposed to (for new granddaughter's impending first visit on Sunday) when I was rushed outta there to go home.

Miami visit - the flight

I don't know what all the airport fuss was about. I didn't notice any difference going through airport security other than it was smoother than ever.

I hated to leave Lu alone with Uncle Ted to deal with. But I told her that we'll be connected in spirit. And that I planned to have a great time even while worried about her, and told her to have a great time healing while I'm gone, and she agreed.

On the cab ride to the airport I felt so in love and wondered why? There isn't a soul in my life that I'm in love with. But all the love I ever had is still inside me. All of it. Not lost. Not dead Not gone away.

For the first time in my life, nothing is wrong with me.

I ordered my favorite drink on the plane bloody mary mix. The steward (excuse me, "flight attendant") was an adorable gray-haired gent. I asked him hesitantly (because this was a very old plane, and things were a little weird on it) if he had any bloody mary mix. He said yes. I asked if he had lime wedges? Yes. "We also have vodka," he said. I responded, "oh, I don't want to pay for it, automatically before I really thought about it. It suddenly occurred to me, hey, I'm an adult. I can order a drink on a plane. I can splurge for once! He placed the vodka next to my drink and said "Well, today you don't have to." Okie dokie, then! I would say "I'm back!" but actually, I've never been here before. I like it here!

Confessions

I was so humiliated by my own emotions! I was so jealous, so hurt, my heart so blackened, the devastation so deep over something that happened 40 years ago. How humbling, how embarrassing.

And I realized John was the deepest I ever went into my own soul. It was the deepest deep there was, as far as I could go, and I never knew who I would find there - him or me. And here I am, 40 years later and that connection comes back WHAM! And, here it is, however many days later and I have finally separated myself out.

I've been having conversations for days with John. I thought I was losing my mind. And when those conversations stopped, they left a black hole. I missed them so deeply, so badly, I worried I would never be able to climb out of this. I cried for days. I felt!! How I felt! I haven't felt such depth of emotion since... Holy Mothership, I finally got rid of another piece of you and gotten another piece of myself back! I can feel emotional depths again. Even if they're horrible, they're MINE and I want to feel them!

And it hasn't been easy for me because my best friend is depressed now too, and needs so much comfort! As you can see:

Anyway, as it always does with me, yesterday turns to dust. David used to say I "get up in a new world every morning." Today there linger brief moments of gloom and devastation left over from something I'm already forgetting. Why were those there anyway? Oh, I was just fretting over lost love. But love you had is never lost.

~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~
When I finally opened
and let you in
all the angels of heaven sang
all the light in the sky rocketed through me
every missed breath on earth breathed me -

Suddenly, it was over
and you were truly gone
The loss was unbearable for days
I had become a junkie of his love
and nowhere to get a fix

I sit here in withdrawal
shaking in the desolate silence
of a passing storm

Cloud 9

I have been in some kind of alternate universe ever since my last post about John. I'm just on Cloud 9.  I feel pretty and the world is just glowing. I can't explain it.

I've been dispensable for 32 years, and I'm kind of enjoying this job security right now. It's all part of this glow I'm in. I've worked years being treated like garbage. Maybe I'm still being treated like garbage, but I'm stuck in this alternate universe where I'm now getting everything I wished for. I always wanted to be so appreciated at my job that I was indispensable, and I never ever had that. There was always another they could, and did, hire just like me. It's not like that where I work now. People don't get replaced. They leave or get fired or die and just get missed. If I go, they really won't find another like me. They'll just go without. That feels kind of good. I joke around in emails and stuff, a little professional banter. I haven't done that for yeeeears. In fact, maybe it's time to publish the "Document Center Incident." It's all about how I got myself in a sh*tload of trouble joking around in emails.

I messed up a job for a really bitchy attorney that my co-worker, M, took 4 hours to do, resulting in much praise and thanks from Bitch Attorney to M, with copies to my manager. Bitch Attorney has never been impressed with me ever since her arrival 6 years ago, when I was the hapless operator into whose hands fell her very first table of authorities ("TOA"), which I did following strict firm guidelines. Well, she didn't care for those guidelines, complained about me, and had the guidelines changed. I was doing cartwheels. Not only had she made generating TOAs soo much easier by removing those guidelines I hated, but she also sent her TOAs to operators on other shifts than mine. Thank god, I hate those damn TOAs. So, anyway, M told me today, "hey, I supported you." I asked him what he meant? He said when our manager asked him in the lunch room what was going on with Bitch Attorney he told her, "Did you look at the log yesterday? Lydia did the entire page by herself. It took me 4 hours to do that job. There's no way she could have done it even if she wasn't fried." Manager says, "I did see the log, and that's what I'm going to tell Bitch Attorney. She bitches way too much."

Wow, was that ever good to hear! Backup. Support. Job security! So, I check the intranet for Bitch Attorney. I tell M, "I've never even seen this woman. What does she look like??" M says, "she never comes out of her office." Her picture comes up and I confirm, "I have never seen her." M says again, "she never leaves her office," as he wanders over to my computer. He looks at her picture and says, "and she's waaay heftier than that picture, too."

It's been a crazy busy week, I've been floating in the sky, I've had the support of my whole group, drama, and office gossip! Life does NOT get any better than this.

John

Caveat:

As I had mentioned a few blog entries ago, I planned to tell the story of John. Then my friend emailed me asking “to hear more about John!” I began writing down all my memories, but when I got to the dream I wondered, what the heck was that dream? I knew I had written it down years ago, so the hunt was on to find it. That took 2 or 3 days, and when I found it I found much that I had written about John many years ago when my memory was fresh, which served as a reference with which to put my memories in proper order, and add much that I had forgotten.  I had written down whole conversations! Wow is me. Impressed with myself, am I! I left myself my own personal time machine to my own personal magical mystery tour.

I became possessed. I went on an archeological dig to find every single artifact of John that existed, pry out of my brain every single John memory. I have stayed up way too late for way too many nights, and my daughter chastised me for completely disappearing for a week. I have gone through old sketchbooks, handwritten journals and poems, electronic journals and poems (god am I old!!!), etc., and tried to figure out which poems I wrote for John and when. I have been drunk all week on this creation of my own personal John museum and archives.

While abducted by this project I found myself going off in tangents about the times, and finally decided to limit this to just the bare bones story line of John.  It was better without current events references anyway, as we were outside of time, and could have happened at any time or place. I have no idea if this is well written or interesting. Frankly, this is pure self-indulgence for which I apologize.

If you still want to go ahead and delve into “The Book of John” (my obsession clocks in at 13 pages long), you must know first and foremost that everything John was about, what oozed from him, the way he lived, his legacy, his mantra, was "you gotta live in the here and now."  I had no idea what he meant by that, but he forced me to live it.  Nobody around him was getting the message, least of all me.  But he was everyone's messiah.  Also, be aware that we were only 18.  So young! 

~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~

Note: Most of this is taken directly from old journals, with parentheticals, as necessary, and with poems thrown in.

Oakland, CA, 1968

The phone rings. "Hi, this is John."  Pause while I try to figure out who he is. Was this the guy Lary meant when he was trying to get me to understand something and was having difficulty and finally stopped trying and said, "you have to meet John?" I had asked him if that was the guy I had seen taking pictures of him, and he said yes. Lary had been playing jazz piano in the college dorm lounge one afternoon and a boy was taking pictures of him from all angles, climbing on top of the piano and crawling under the piano bench as he played (nothing distracted Lary). I had seen the same guy with a camera around Lake Merritt. I was inside some bushes on campus drawing one time, and he had come and sat down next to me like he had known me all his life, and just started talking. The same guy was at Lary's the day before. People kept coming over. There had been a lot of dope going around which I refused. The reason I refused it was not because I didn't want to smoke it, but because there was never as much as I wanted at "pot parties," which this was fast becoming. I never liked being around a lot of people and parties, anyway. I was uncomfortable and wanted to go home, but Lary wasn’t willing to drive me home yet. I found a far corner out of major traffic to wait it out. This guy appeared offering me a joint. I was about to say, "no thank you," when he smiled and said, "it's ok, I've got plenty more." I stared at him and asked, "how did you know that's what I was thinking?" He just smiled, left the joint with me and was off again, appearing with a new joint whenever necessary. I was pretty sure that was John. 

I asked him how he got my number and he said, "Oh, Lary had it somewhere, how'd you get it?" At that moment he was suddenly in the room with me, laughing with me, and I fell truly madly deeply in love. Boys put me into autistic episodes, so I couldn't talk to them. You just had to plug into me like those flying dragons in "Avatar," which is pretty much what that moment felt like. ***CONNECTION.*** He asked me, "Do you have an address?" and, "Is it ok if I use it?" He was outside honking from an old, blue VW within the hour (this would be at the same house I was living in when I wrote my first blog post about People’s Park).

I was shocked to see a guy sitting cross-legged in the back seat, staring out into space with an eerie grin. John said not to let his being there bother me. I didn't. I would get used to Ralph going with us everywhere, like a pet dog. John drove us to the Edgar Allan Poe festival in Berkeley. Just as a hand was creeping out of a coffin he grabbed my knee and I screamed. The whole movie theater cracked up. John's smile at that moment was the warmest I had ever seen.  It glowed.  He glowed.

He called a couple of weeks later and asked me to come over to Lary's. Apparently he was living in that room he first saw me in and Lary's other roommates had moved out. I gradually realized that John had had so much presence that night because he was actually in his own home among his own friends. Till then I thought he was just something the wild wind blew in. I would never know where he lived, or think of him as living anywhere. Those weren't the days with cell phones. Long distance calls were prohibitively expensive, so there was a lot of wondering "Where the hell is John??" but John was always able to find me without phones. He was always plugged into me.

It was a typical day at Lary’s except for some subtle differences. Lary was still in and out of his darkroom as always, but instead of jazz belting from the speakers in every room it was the Firesign Theatre or Van Dyke Parks. Since I don’t like jazz, this was a really welcome change! Also, Lary's album covers (the photos he took of bands) leaned against the walls, probably because John had put them there. John and Ralph were talking about it being a very dry season (they meant for weed) and talking about getting some wine. When I mentioned the beach John really wanted to go.

I could see why Lary had trouble expressing some of John's views. John’s words didn’t “flow,” they were waterfalls. I often couldn’t take it for more than 10 minutes without begging him to stop because I ached so much from laughing. Lary never wanted to lend his car or be a crash pad for all of John's friends, and was always griping about it, but when John started in on him, you had to admire the genius. John not only got the car keys that night, he got Lary to smile.

The sun went down as we drove to the beach, and it got pitch black. John stopped the car. I didn’t want to leave the car, but John dragged me out. I was afraid to let go of his hand because I could not see him. I was nearly screaming in terror when I saw a bright, orange flame burst onto the black canvas the world had become. So other people were here too! Whoever had made the fire had left, with my eternal gratitude. I was so cheered by it, and relieved to have something to see in the darkness, when all of a sudden I was walking on diamonds, and the world turned into a moving, dazzling, fluorescent, light show. I didn’t know what I was seeing, and I couldn't believe what I was seeing. John whispered, "phosphorous," as I kicked diamonds in all directions and let them pour from my hands in big scoops. My world changed that night. It's where these come from...

for example, here:

Before, my drawings looked more like this.

I haven't been able to find an image on the internet of what I saw. But in trying, I came across this in a blog, which I just read the entirety of (there were only 4 pages).

http://holierthanswisscheese.blogspot.com/2009/04/puerto-escondido-where-waters-glow.html

John took me back to Lary's after the beach instead of dropping me off at my house. It was about 2 a.m. and I asked him if he was going to drive me home. He smiled to himself and said no. I started saying things like I had to feed my cat. Still smiling, in a very soft voice, he suggested I take my clothes off. I was too embarrassed to. He got undressed and crawled into bed enjoying my predicament. He finally said, "You're not getting out of this." He would toss simplicities out like that with his wry smile and it would just destroy me. I threw off my clothes and dove into his warmth. He said we’re the same distance from here (knees) to here (shoulders), which was funny, because standing I came up to his elbows.

I knew I wasn't his first, because he joked "Don't worry, I've done this before," but neither of us ever inquired of the other about whether we had been in love before (and we never told each other that we loved each other. I don’t mean just that night, I mean ever). He asked me if I had slept with Lary and I told him only when he doesn’t want to drive me home. He makes me sleep over in one of his borrowed T-shirts, and we never "do anything." John shook his head and said, "I'll have to talk to that boy." I asked him if he was a photographer like Lary, and he said no. So I asked him what about all those times I saw him with a camera and he said he had just borrowed Lary's equipment a couple of times. He remembered taking walks around Lake Merritt , but not the day he sat next to me in the bushes while I was drawing.

About a week went by before I healed enough for us to try again. I watched him as he stood at the foot of the bed and there was a golden light all around him. I looked around at all the lamps and windows but could not see light coming from anywhere. I told him he was an angel and I was seeing his halo. He didn't think I was making any sense but I never saw a light around anyone else like that. As he lay down on me I thought my heart would not hold so much love inside me without breaking. I told him I thought that nuns were missing the most holy experience of all and he smiled.

~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~

how I love nearing my head

to the beating, listening to

your golden field heart

to rest between your ivory blades

I love to nestle in the soft glade

and slip up and down your

apple jade smoothness

just to sleep in the peace of your palace

and wear you unseen in a strand

of layered silent moments

walking alone in the morning.

~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~

I didn't want to be sad watching John packing up his stuff a few weeks later to move to Colorado, and his irritability and harshness were strange and upsetting to me. He didn't have much. Everything he had rolled up into his worn, old sleeping bag and knapsack. I went downstairs and sat on the front lawn and Ralph came down and sat beside me. Later John told me Ralph had been his best friend before he flipped out. Ralph had been a mathematical genius. I had never asked any questions about Ralph, and that was the first time John talked about him. So, I was upset John was leaving, and John was upset about losing his best friend.

John (and Ralph, of course) came over to my house that night to say good by. John started drinking clumsily out of a jug of wine and making me laugh, when he suddenly put his head in his hands and closed his eyes. He was having what he had told me were called "psychomotor seizures," left over from shock treatments when he was a baby, in an attempt to cure epilepsy. He continued to get short seizures the rest of his life that would last only a few seconds but would leave him completely disoriented. He would forget where he was, and who I was. I began to warm up some milk (he liked hot chocolate after a seizure but I had no cocoa.) As he was drinking the warm milk he told me that one of Ralph’s and his discoveries they had made together was that his seizures would leave him “not knowing when he was in time," which gave me an interesting glimpse into what their relationship had been before Ralph's brain fry, and also gave me a new understanding as to why John could just be walking down the street, stop walking for a few seconds, and suddenly not know what planet he was on. John told me a little more about Ralph's history that night and then went to lie down, leaving me and Ralph alone in the kitchen.

Ralph started talking to me for the first time. He started saying things like God is in everyone, therefore we are all god, therefore it wouldn't matter if he and I were to go to bed with each other. I began to feel very uncomfortable, but not because of Ralph. He was harmless. It was because I knew John felt the same way, which depressed the hell out of me. I just assumed he slept around. I went into the bedroom to get John but he was fast asleep. I lay down next to him. Next to him was the only place on earth I ever wanted to be.  He woke up in an hour and took Ralph home.

The next day John didn't leave because Ralph had cracked up for good. He refused to put his clothes on. Some of Ralph’s relatives came to get him and put him in an institution in Florida. I don't remember much about the next few days. John eventually left for Colorado.

~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~

sunshinin’ along the raindrops

I saw you

as down the wintersides

you flew

now you put away your sails

and a new world you have found

you came home and they beg your tales

from miles all around

oh but come to me if you ever

need to hide

your ride inside

~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~

At the end of the summer Jessica (college roommate, and best college friend) and I discovered we had both met "Johns" that summer.

"John went to OUR school?" Jessica was incredulous. "CCAC?? California College of Arts and Crafts?"

I could understand her incredulity. There were only about 200 students in the whole school, and only a quarter of them could have been freshmen, so John would have been hard to miss. "John who?"

I told her his last name. "Oh him." She remained puzzled.

"Then you do know him?"

"Not exactly. I know his name. He was never in class during roll call. He was the one who never answered to his name. I think I saw him once. Tall, curly blond hair, angelic face?

"Yeah, that's him," I said. "The one that was never there."

(Note: Jessica would confess several years later that she had always been jealous of me because John looked just like Jim Morrison. I wasn’t a Doors fan, so I didn’t know that, but it did explain a few things.)

One day walking by Arts and Crafts I nearly got run over by a bike. I looked up and there was John smiling at me. He said, "I knew I'd run into you."

It was good times at Lary's house again. I'd make dinners for the guys. It was cozy. John was working for a candlemaker who lived on the beach. He made the candles using molds in the sand. In the morning he hitchhiked to work and I took the bus to the Post Office where I worked. After a few weeks he would go back to Colorado and I would miss him terribly until his return.

Jessica and I shared a cottage for about 8 months.  I remember John visiting me there, but nothing in particular about any of those visits.  I just remember when he was there I was ecstatic, and when he wasn't there I was ecstatic because he soon would be.  Jessica moved to San Francisco and I rented a room in a house in Oakland owned by a girl around my age, Patty, with whom I became good friends.


John came by shortly after I moved into Patty's house with the new Firesign Theater album.  He bounced onto the bed and asked me, "What do you know?"  The question so badly flustered me that I started dithering and John picked up the album and pointed to the name of it, "How Can You Be Two Places At Once When You're Not Anywhere At All?"  We laughed and laughed and he would say it to me often after that.
 

One day at my house John noticed something on the carpet and went crazy over it. He said, "I haven't seen one of these for ages." He picked it up and handed it to me. It looked like this:

(Note: My drawing did not survive the many conversions my journals have undergone over the years. The closest thing I could find on the internet to what it looked like is this):

He told me it was a certain kind of seed that would be carried in the air for miles before getting its point stuck in the ground. He suggested I put it in amber, and he told me how.

I had to get up before him to go to work. When I got home the bed was made and I found the first of John's famous rhyming notes on the pillow. He wrote he didn't know when he'd be back and signed it "Honest John" (because he knew it always bothered me that he never knew when he’d be back, but he refused to lie to me).

~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~

“Some people,” you said,

“suffer everything twice.”

and you laughed

but I cried out, “I DO suffer twice.

I suffer everything twice.”

but you did not cry out “I know,

I know!”

There came no sound from your lips

but the breath of sleep.

~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~

One day a girl came to the door looking for Patty. She was just a lovely creature, with long, strawberry hair, wearing a denim skirt and peasant blouse. I liked her immediately. Her name was Tori, she lived in Colorado, and she stayed for a few days.

It had been several months since John was in town, and one night I came home around 9 pm. and John was sitting in the living room. I threw myself into him, but he was tense, jumped up and herded me into the bedroom, griping that he was just about to leave. That’s when I noticed that Patty and Tory were also in the living room. I wondered what had transpired in the living room before I got home, but I didn’t ask, and he didn’t tell me.

When we were in the bedroom he asked me what I thought of Tori. I realized if I found her fascinating, so would he. I was consumed with jealousy and overcome with a sense of dread.

"She's different," I answered. "I like her. What do you think of her?"

"She's pretty."

"That's all you think of her?"

"Yeah. Just pretty."

Then John told me that he was going to ask Tori to help him drive back to Colorado with him. My world went black.

~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~

Why is it not enough

that our silences have touched

isn’t it a miracle you

silently can grow with me?

isn’t it enough

that I can love you so much

and you can hold me as I cling to you

eternal in discovery?

~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~

Tori called Patty from Colorado that evening, about 12 hours after they left. Patty knocked on my door and told me Tori wanted to talk to me. Patty saw my face and seemed surprised. "It's not like that," she said.

I got on the phone and was worried about how my voice would sound, but I needn't have worried because Tori babbled away, doing all the talking. She told me everything about the trip. John had some cocaine they kept sniffing so they could drive straight through without stopping. She told me they talked for 10 hours straight. She told me everything they talked about. Why was she telling me all this? She paused a moment, told me how lucky I was because John was such a great guy, and then fell silent. I said good by and hung up, crying with relief. She was jealous of me! Patty told me later that Tori had flirted constantly with John when I wasn’t home, but couldn't get anywhere with him.

~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~

My love, the lost, that used to sail

can only float,

My heart so weighted down

it could anchor a boat,

My memory a stone tossed so far out

it’s beyond the sea,

And my love the wild wave

that always comes back to me

~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~

I went to the plastics store John had told me about to get the amber for the seed. The seed ended up a little lopsided in it, but it came out pretty good. I bought a chain for it and wore it around my neck.

I quit working for the post office that summer and Patty and I went on a car trip across the country. We both wanted to go to Colorado so that she could visit Tori and I could visit John. I had written John and asked him if he wanted me to visit him in Colorado. I was worried he had given up on me, but he wrote back that he was really looking forward to seeing me and signed his letter "A. Pismo Clam."

We arrived in Colorado during a bad heat wave. Denver was the hottest city I had ever experienced. Patty and I stayed at a friend’s (Thalia's brother, Teddy's) house in Denver until evening. After it cooled off we went to the ranch where John was living. It was almost impossible to find. When we finally found it, it looked semi-abandoned. Plums were hanging from the ceiling on little strings (home-dried prunes?). No one was there except some guy who was on his way to Steamboat Springs. He was going to hitchhike so Patty offered him a ride - we really had nothing else to do. After we took him there we returned to Denver until I could find out where John was.

There was no phone in Ted’s apartment, so I braved the heat the next morning and walked to the corner store to call the ranch. Some girl answered who told me John wasn't there, so I left a message with her for him to call Lydia. The girl said, "Oh, you're his old lady?" I supposed I was, although I had never been called that before or since. She talked nonstop: "Yeah, John told me all about you.  I've been trying to find John myself. Let me know if you find him. Are you ok? Do you need any food? There's a lot of canned stuff here." She seemed very lonely for someone to talk to, and we talked a long time. She wouldn't let me hang up until she was sure I had a place to stay and didn't need anything. Her name was Molly.

"Do you have any idea where John went?" I asked her.

"He's staying in an apartment in Denver, but he hasn't told anybody where, except for his friend Ken, who also isn't here. John ran off when some girls he went to high school with had found out where he was living and broke the windows trying to get in."

Of course. This was about the most bizarre thing I had ever heard, but she said it happened all the time. (Years later as a married woman, after I knew John had married (he always said he wouldn't get married until he was 40, and he was right on time, I think he was 38), for reasons I can no longer remember I wanted to reach him so I started by calling his parents.  His mother, upon hearing a female she didn't know, immediately spat in a voice dripping with monotony, "He's married now, dear. He's not going to date you.")

I told Molly we'd been out to the ranch and drove some guy to Steamboat Springs. She told me it must have been her boyfriend she just broke up with, who was the father of her baby. The reason she was trying to find John was she needed a ride to the hospital because she was hemorrhaging. I freaked out, and really wanted to help her, but Patty wouldn't drive back there again, and I didn't drive myself, nor did I have a car. I couldn't believe she spent hours talking to me, worried about whether I had enough food, while she was hemorrhaging, but she didn't want me to call an ambulance.

John finally went back to the ranch, saw where someone had scribbled down my address, and hitchhiked to me in Denver. Patty drove the three of us back to the ranch. We only stayed that one night at the ranch because John and Ken were leaving the next day for someplace. We slept outside in his sleeping bag. In the morning Patty drove us back to Denver and I sat in the back of the station wagon with John and showed him the seed around my neck in the amber. He loved it so much that I asked him if he wanted to keep it. He couldn't believe I would give it to him, and I couldn't believe he wanted it. I told him I had really made it for him anyway. He thanked me, almost reverently, and put it in his pocket. I felt that I would never see him again, and that the seed would be a remembrance.

I did see him again. After returning home to Oakland John came out and stayed with me, but he wasn't into visiting me. He came for some other reason. Each morning I left for work while he slept and each night I thought I would come home and he would be gone. This went on for 4 days. Finally he told me he wasn't really my boyfriend any more. He had met some girl named Ann in Colorado.


We shared one laugh during those bleak 4 days. John told me he sent the whole series of Zap comics to Tom (his little brother who was still in highschool). His parents thought they were obscene and had them banned from school, but by that time Tom had shared them with the whole school, and all the students had memorized them and went around talking like Zap comic books, driving the school and all the parents in town crazy.

~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~

If a man came

and took away my eyes

would you not feel that a glimpse of heaven

had been stolen from your sight?

If a man came

and grabbed the handles of my heart

would you not feel a little fear?

and dragged her away, spilling,

would you not feel a little pang

when my whole world would have snapped

from the edge of its string?

~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~

On February 27th, 1970 at 5:28 in the morning I had a dream that John died. It was so real I do not remember waking up from it, as though it were a vision. I was sure he was dead.

One day, maybe a year or two later, I remembered my dream about John and the terrible sense of gloom I had had when I dreamed he had died. I wanted to know for sure, so I decided to call his parents in Ohio. I figured I would just ask to speak to him, and wait for his mother or father to hesitate and stiffly inform me that their son had passed.

When the phone rang my heart was pounding so hard I thought it would burst through my chest and I almost hung up. When I heard a young girl's voice answer I was sure I had a wrong number. "Can I talk to John?" I managed to get out.

She cheerfully asked, "the elder or the younger?" I never realized John had the same name as his father until that moment. The question startled me. I just wanted her to tell me he was dead and get it over with. I replied, "the younger."

"Just a minute."

"You mean he's there?"

"Yeah, he's here. Do you want to talk to him?"

"I was so stunned I couldn't answer her. "I was just thinking about you," John was on the line. (I hadn't told the girl who answered the phone who I was).

I told him, "I must tell you I wasn't prepared to actually talk to you. I'm so amazed I can hardly breathe. I called because I had a dream that you died and I had to find out if you were dead."

"No, I'm alive.” We both smiled (don't ask me how I knew he smiled over the phone).

"What are you doing there?" I asked.

"My parents went to Florida for a week, so I'm staying in the house while they're gone."

"That's amazing. I called during the only week you would have been there."

"That's right."

"Who's there with you?"

"A friend."

"Just a friend?"

"Yeah, she's an old friend of mine."

"How's Molly?"

"She's fine."

"Did she have her baby ok?"

"Yeah, she did."

"Are you still working at the car museum in Aspen?"

"No, I'm working at a gas station now. I'm not living with Ann any more. What are you doing?"

We chatted a while longer. That was the last conversation John and I ever had, but 10 years later, as a married woman, I would dream this:

I was at Lary's house talking to John. I asked him if he were living there now. He said yes and mumbled something.

"What?" I asked.

"Do you want to come live with me?" I put my hand on his arm and leaned my head on his shoulder feeling sad. At one time I existed just to have him ask me that. Suddenly I realized he was still talking and I broke in saying, "I can't live with you, John, I'm married now."

He smiled and nodded that beautiful nod of his. I threw my arms around him, crying "can't we still be friends?" my heart breaking. I didn't want to lose him again.

"Sure," he laughed.

My heart was filled to bursting. I was flooded with happiness. In the dream I went home and dreamed a beautiful and mysterious story about a young girl's adventures abroad during war or some sort of troubled times. As things got worse in the war I wanted to make a story out of it (in the dream) if only I could write a satisfactory ending. Suddenly I dreamed the perfect ending. In the dream I woke up (I am still dreaming in the dream, here) and immediately wrote it down, then ran to call John. He wasn't there but I left a message with Lary that I must see him immediately.

When John responded to the message I was delighted. The fact that he actually returned my call assured me that we were really friends again. We took a long walk and I told him the story I dreamed and I told it to him exactly the way it revealed itself to me. He walked along listening intently, his head bent toward me, smiling. While I shared my story with him he shared various wonders of nature with me, pointing out funny scenes that were going on around us that I would have missed, being too absorbed in the telling of my story. He would not stop listening, just silently point something out, smiling at both me and what he was pointing at.

There were many more times like that. I was never so happy. Life was never so beautiful. Jealousy did not exist. Sometimes I'd call wherever he was staying (he moved around a lot) and not be able to reach him. He'd find me in a few days and tell me what he'd been doing. He'd always have some crazy reason for moving. We'd laugh as he'd tell me about it in some new place he'd discovered in his new neighborhood, such as a very high building overlooking a community of cats, where we could see what cats actually did for miles around.

One day I called where he was staying to be told he'd gone away for several months and I asked if I could leave a message. I left the same message I usually left ("must see you immediately!"). The person taking the message said, "Don't you want to receive your message from him?"

"Oh, yes!" I exclaimed.

He asks two questions, "when is your vacation?" I was wondering if he meant my 2 weeks annual vacation, but my husband and I would be going to Detroit then. I was so long in saying anything that I heard the voice in the phone going, "hello? hello?" I finally told him I'd have a 3 day holiday at labor day (in waking life this was really true). Next question was "what is my address?" I suddenly realized he had never been to my present house. I didn't know our address and had to ask my husband for it.

A few days later the concierge at the hotel John had last been living at personally delivered this letter to me:

"By now the concierge has delivered this letter to you. I did not mail it because with the terrible service we have these days I just could not imagine my letters getting lost among all these other everyday letters:

• sarcastic ones: 'if you wrote me a letter I'd die of shock.'
• ominous ones: 'Please see me in my office at 2 pm on Friday.'
• unimportant ones: 'I must see you immediately!'
• check that anyone would like to receive: $48.17
• dull ones: '. . . and we had such a nice time at Uncle Stu's and Aunt Harriet's.'"

The letter continued in this ridiculous vein. He wished me a nice vacation and he'd see me when he got back. That was when I woke up, still giggling over the letter. Amazingly, I did not feel regret to discover it was only a dream. I felt marvelous. It all might really have happened. I've often wondered if there isn't a fourth dimension in which the things you dream about really do happen? Perhaps my counterpart and his counterpart are still playing in a never never land unbeknownst to us. Sometimes I laugh at things that seem to belong in his mind.

Epilogue:

Here’s a picture of John. God, he looks like a total doofus goofball, but this picture sends me into ecstasy anytime I look at it. With all the cameras around me, I don’t know why it never occurred to me to take a single picture. No one took one of me, either. The only reason I have that photo of me for my People’s Park blog entry is because I was in a camera store at the time, and the counter guy took a picture of me to test a Polaroid and then gave me the photo. John probably doesn’t have a single photograph of me. That never occurred to me until this moment. This is the only photo I have of him. One day John handed it to me. It had obviously been developed in Lary’s darkroom, but who had taken it, who had developed it, or why I don’t know - John didn’t say, and I didn’t ask. But it was magic for me from the moment I saw it, and still is to this day. It’s like a token to another world from that other world – the magic coin that transports me right back to it. It’s proof that he really happened. I like to think that John still keeps my seed necklace as his token to that world, in an Oh Henry - Gift of the Magi sort of way.

I spent my life wondering why wasn’t I ever enough for him when he was my everything? I had so much doubt. So much doubt, and no self-worth. I was insanely jealous all the time.  I doubted that he had ever loved me if he could leave me. His leaving was a death I never got over.  I heard something today: “You can never find what denies your own beliefs.” I could never believe John loved me. I could never find the love I never believed in. There was no other way for it to end than for him to leave. I left him no way to stay with me.  I had no belief in him.

He was the dearest, sweetest, most magical of soul mates and I weep with such sweet sorrow. His leaving me forced me to grow.  But being with him was the happiest, most sparkliest time of my life. I still feel his radar. And truthfully, he never has left me.  We have always "kept in touch."  But until just this very moment as I write this I denied it and disallowed it and refused it.  Perhaps he had denied it too, for fear of hurting me.  And now I vow through my tears to do that no more.  I'm letting John's radar in and it feels like the world just gained another sun, and I am basking in its glory.

Don’t let the title scare you!

I wrote this review on Amazon.com today, entitled"Don’t let the title scare you!" for American Veda, which also tells you what I did today, with a slight editing note that I did not include in the review:

Ok, I am writing this at the request of Cousin Phil (and hopefully not to his regret), because I had lunch with him today and said something to him that prompted him to ask me to write a review of his book on Amazon.  As you can probably already tell I'm not a scholar.  I also have never studied or been involved with anything Indian, and have done yoga only once.  The yoga teacher was very nice and lent me a spare floor matte.  The floor was freezing cold.  I did the whole class, but had no idea why I was doing anything, and it didn't make me or my body feel any different and I said, "never again."  A friend explained "chakras" to me once.  Although it seemed somewhat meaningful at the time, I've since forgotten what they are.  I have been on a quest my whole life, but my answers came from people, movies, every day life, stage shows like "Hair."  I've been telling people ever since I saw "Hair" (1968? 1969?) that the "Age of Aquarius" is upon us.  I always knew this was a time of Great Awakening.  But I had no idea someone documented its path!  That's what Phil did.  He took my life and documented its path.  It is SO fascinating.  If you are someone that has lived in the West, he has probably documented yours too. This book is like a self-indulgence.  I'm learning all about me and my culture (and since I had been on Mothership most of my adult life I need to!).  What a pleasure.  Oh, by the way, as I told the author at lunch today, I have only read the acknowledgments, intro, and first 3 pages so far, but I looove his book (honestly, I only started reading it this morning because I knew I was having lunch with him and wanted to discuss his book). But I could hardly put it down!  In fact, as soon as I finish this up I'm going back to reading it.  So, Phil told me, "My friend said the same thing.  I told him, I hope you continue to enjoy it.  After another 50 pages he called me and told me he was still enjoying it.  After more pages he called me and told me he was still enjoying it.  He did that till he got to the end."  So, I have faith that even I will actually enjoy Phil's book all the way to the end also!  If not, I will come back and change my review.  That being said, this book is relevant for anybody in the West that has ever wondered, "Hey, what's going on?  What's happenin', man?"

Ed note:  The end of the story that I didn't want to put in the review was Phil's friend emailed him that he finished the book, and Phil emailed back, "Wait til you get to the index!" and the friend asked him if he should read the index?  Phil's theory is that humor gets lost in email.

How Times Have Changed!

I knew throughout the 90s and 00s that I would always and forever need Word, or a word processing program. Even before pc’s I hadn’t lived without word processors. In the 80s they weren’t household items, so I wrote at work. I published little poem books with xerox copies of my original drawings on whatever proprietary equipment I was using at the time, so they couldn’t be transferred to any other equipment, and were all outdated within a few years, so unfortunately the stuff I wrote in the 80s never made it through the dozens of conversions technology demanded through time.

One of the most regrettable losses was my collection of Vydec (http://www.ricomputermuseum.org/Home/equipment/vydec-1800) animation. I searched the internet for Vydec and Vydec operator, but nothing comes up. It occurs to me now that I was really remiss for never taking any pictures of me and my fellow Vydec operators in our natural setting. It is lost to history.

The Vydecs I used were huge consoles.  They were NOT those cute little desk machines with a slim smiling model standing next to them, that come up on a search.  And there were big rooms of these consoles.  Oh, I've worked at small companies that had just one or two Vydecs, but the large law firms had huge rooms of them with shifts around the clock. Many times you just sat down to start your shift picking up where the previous operator left off, just sat down and threw the printer paper in for the next page, or continued revising right on the screen where he/she left off.  The machine was large and noisy and hot and surrounded your body.  None of my image searches turned up a proper Vydec.  You could see upper bodies if you were standing up, but once you sat down the other operators disappeared.  All you saw was your console, unless you did a back bend or slid your chair out to converse, which we often did. One operator I remember wore the closest to a bathing suit that appropriate work attire would allow, and always brought a change of shirt, because she sweat so much. I was always cold so the Vydec warmth suited me. Anyway, we'd get bored and create animation on those things. There was no internet in those days, my collection was painstakingly hand collected from each operator’s station. But by the 90s there was no longer any way to play a Vydec disk, so I threw them out, never suspecting they might be a useful addition to a Vydec museum some day.

Anyway, here I am today, barely conversant in Mac, happily typing straight into my blog. My fingers are constantly reaching for all my macros, and Word’s built-in keyboard bells and whistles, which is frustrating and annoying, but that’s because I use them every day keeping my finger memory alive. Once I retire and use only my Mac, that will stop. I see myself traveling really light, and no longer even owning a desktop computer. And I do have a word processing program on the Mac anyway. It’s a free office download that is perfectly adequate for my needs (I would have downloaded Word for Mac but the reviews for it were terrible).

So, these days I hardly use word processing programs.  I write directly into my blog, or I’m in email writing brilliant thoughts to somebody that get cut and paste into my blog.  Holy crap. Look at me keep up with technology!

Ship of Fools

This entry is for any Mothership friends who happen to find their way here. You know who you are.

"Mothership" is my personal euphimism for "leap of faith,"a common theme in my drawings. I lived most of my life not only on the edge, but falling off it...

... and those that offered their hand to me on those rough and ragged edges are part of my heart always, and I'm here for you too and will always care. You know who you are.

An Amazing New Battery Experience

This morning started like any other first work day of the year, except that my car wouldn't start. As inconvenient as that was, if one's car breaks down the best place to do it is in one's own parking space at home. The weather being what it is, I was informed by the towing service that the wait would be an hour. I called work to let them know I'd be late, and I had barely hung up when the tow guy arrived.

He may have been an idiot savant, I'm not sure.  Several times I wished I had a cell phone that worked at home (and I will be getting one this month!!) so I could record this guy.  I told him I was a little freaked out because this is the first time I ever had a car with a chip in the key and I was afraid the chip had gone out.  He put my key in the ignition, turned on the lights and saw they came on weakly.  That told him it was the battery.  Genius.  I will definitely remember that trick the next time my car won't start.  Then he dove under the panel inside the car, came out and told me what he did there was check the battery setting to make sure it would automatically save my settings.  Wow, was I impressed.

I told him how impressed I was with his towing service so far and he started telling me the entire local history of towing.  Apparently his shop has won awards and beat out all the local competition, and he started listing off all the local towing yards that had once existed and no longer do.  In my head I was going "oh my god, I've run into my doppleganger in the towing industry."  He started telling me he has been up since 5 am and he's really tired and this job was really better than the last job. I asked him what his last job was like and he just repeated, "this job is better."  I kind of got the image of him working on a semi in a monsoon.  I was reminded of my own complaining about the last document I just worked on.

I could relate to this guy's struggle through the underbelly of the towing world to the heights of the towing elite.  He has towed everybody.  He's impounded the stars.  He towed 4 presidents.  He could easily do this in his sleep, and pretty much did, mentioning several times how tired he was.  I have been known to wake myself up swaying at the keyboard, myself.  While he's telling me these tall tales he was also explaining why his batteries are better than anyone else's.  I tried to tell him he lost me at nickel and cadmium, but I'm sure he's right, it really makes a difference.

He recommended if I ever needed to use battery cables to turn on the lights first. This will prevent, for example a charge from a big towing truck, overloading the circuit and burning out any small components of the computer. Yeah, I'll remember that. Then he brought out some wires and started attaching them to the battery and I asked him if he was going to turn on the lights first? No, because he was only taking measurements from the engine. He said the funniest things, but he was funny the way Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man was funny - he didn't get the point of humor. But when he recommended something I told him I always follow the recommendations of competent people, and he did appreciate that.

Then he showed me the printout of the tests of my car's engine and pointed to each graph and chart and said, "this tells me your *blah blah* is like new," and enumerated various engine parts and how and why they were still "like new." Yay, my 5 year old car is like brand new and as I said before, my credit union rocks!!