I’m working on a memoir, so I live much of my life in the act of looking backward. And boy is my neck tired. Bah-dah-bum. Sorry, couldn’t resist.
Seriously though, I do accumulate a bit of tension from living in this state. My childhood before grammar school was fine, a bit isolated, a bit atypical for the late 1950s and early 1960s, but basically a bucolic time. But I spend a lot of time, effort and energy going back over my school days and early adulthood previous to try to understand why one thing was successful and another thing led to personal catastrophe. Decisions, chains of events, character traits, and family patterns all figure into the analysis I am doing in order to write about a difficult topic, successful and failed methods of coping, and how reframing differs from revisionist history.
When, in a Facebook Blogging Group to which I belong, Beth announced “retrospect” as the topic for group blogging this week I immediately began comparing what it is to engage in retrospect as opposed to what it is to reminisce, or to reflect.
Retrospect is a simple looking backward, it has no judgment implicit within it. Hindsight looks back over errors, reminiscing looks back with rose-colored glasses. And any remembering changes the memory that was a perception in the first place. It really does. I am not sure reflection involving the past can really exist. Any recollection adds a current lens to the event, no perception just mirrors an event. I’ve listened to lectures by brilliant neuroscientists about how memories are made, lost, retrieved, and re-visioned. Heisenberg abounds. And in my professional training I began to understand, though I will never fully understand, that every perception is a negotiated product. Memory is a perception of the biological, electrochemical, and neurophysiological etching, folds and pathways that past experience created in our brains and central nervous system. It is recursive.
So am I remembering real events? Yes. As much as any person can. But because memories change through time, I rely on patterns more than individual events. I am also lucky in that I am very visual and remember through images. It is called eidetic memory. While I don’t have a photographic memory in the way most people think of it, I do, apparently, make use of fairly high levels of eidetic imagery. And I am also lucky that I have been a writer most of my life. I have written so many poems, journal entries, letters, essays, articles, papers and more that most of the time, if I want to double check the validity of a memory, I often have something I have written from five, ten, or twenty years ago that touches on the event, so I have some means of comparison. Written records are one of the most amazing things we humans have ever created. I think I should print out my blog posts. I have print copies of everything else.
But now I’m wondering how retrospection relates to introspection and to circumspection? Oh geesh, it never ends… because it is recursive.
Tumbleweed Tails and Gelato – The Italian Connection
In the midst of having a list of writing and platform installation tasks as long as my arm, this past weekend, my Hubby, Fang, wanted to try to track down the person who ran the kennel where we purchased our last Italian, or Neapolitan, Mastiff. Since the untimely death of Mr. Worf, our last Neo, from an Africanized bee attack, Hubby Fang has been inconsolate. He is a boy who really needs to have a puppy. We ended up with Gelato instead of a puppy. I have to highly recommend Frost for some of the best gelato ever. Really! The master gelato maker is here from Italy with a special work visa used exclusively for highly skilled specialists. If you are in Tucson you need to check it out one of their locations for some excellent, one-of-a-kind flavors, and they always have two sugar free flavors that are the best you will find anywhere. Actually, they are opening up franchises for this Tucson-based business, so you might be able to find one close, or at least closer, to you.
We have to spend time creating our new married life for the next phase of our life together. We never had any real time as just a couple. We started our family immediately upon finally getting together. I knew Fang for 15 years as a dear friend before we ever got together. Once we finally got together there was no time to waste, apparently. So here we are 23 years later, after already having grown tired of each other's annoying habits and idiosyncrasies, as most long term couples do, trying to be nice to each other in our new dynamic, and not really knowing how. Remember, remember, remember… what was it, besides sex, that I found so irresistible about him so long ago? Well, he is brilliant. But then so am I. And he loves dogs. For me that says a huge amount about a person. Good sex, good brain, and dog-lover. What more does a woman need? I need something for Fang to do to keep him from starting any more construction projects around the home. Have I told you about the kitchen cabinets he has been building for five years? That, as they say, is another story. I'm in hot pursuit of finding him a new pup to be his best friend.
In fact this weekend, today, we drove up to Phoenix from Tucson to meet some rescued Neapolitan Mastiffs. We are seriously in the market for a companion for our grouchy 8 year old mixed breed bitch. So we met the most adorable rescue male Neo. His name is Cooper and he needs a forever home. He is a year or so old, but Neos act like puppies until they are two or so. He loved me and gave me kisses almost immediately. He got on fine with our Miss Daisy too; serious butt-sniffing ensued and there was a little bit of circle play. But he was sort of indifferent with Hubby Fang. And Fang is the boy who needs a puppy.
It broke my heart not to adopt Cooper because he has a sweet, truly non-aggressive personality, and is so friendly, happy, and playful. He isn't super wrinkly at all, as most non champion Neos aren't, and he is a bit on the small side, which I think is good because that could extend the shorter lifespan tht some of the really big dogs tend to have. I think he is perfect. I wish he would have hit it off with Fang. He has a cherry eye that will be corrected with surgery, at the same time he is neutered, before being released to his forever home. I hope someone special adopts him soon. He would be perfect for a woman in need of a companion dog, and he is good with kids so a single mom with kids would be a great fit. Did I mention he has the most gorgeous soft, shiny black fur? He has a short coat so shedding wouldn't be bad. Mastiffs are the most loyal canines ever and when they bond with their forever pack, they are the best friend you will ever have. Rescue animals need your love even more than regular animals.
I hope you will consider adopting a rescued animal the next time you are searching for a pet. They need us so much. There are probably a hundred or more animals in need of homes in your city right now. You can check out rescue animals in AZ and the Southwest by going to Canine Rescue Coalition on Facebook. Pet Finder is a national website that works with many local rescue groups to connect you with animals that need homes. Don't buy, adopt. That way you are not supporting puppy mills and setting up unpurchased animals for abuse or euthenasia.
Autumnal Equinox
I love the way the words “Autumnal Equinox” roll off my tongue. It is all hummy and soft at first, and then becomes crisp at the end. The light of Autumn lengthens and there is a golden glow to the late afternoon air here in Tucson that gives me the first confirmation of seasonal change here. Unless 99 degrees Farenheit is cool, which it isn't, then the cool crisp nip of air is not a major part of the Autumn experience for those folks who live in the southwestern United States below 4000 ft. elevation. But Mabon, the celtic name for the equinox, arrives none the less though the stereotypic piles of leaves and heavy sweaters have little to do with the season I have experienced in the Old Pueblo for the last, oh my goodness, nearly 25 years.
I arrived for a visit to Tucson in October of 1988. I married here on the top of Mount Lemmon in '89. My daughter was born here at the University of Arizona Medical Center in 1990. While at times it seems like I am treading water, I seem to be moving through this time stream rather quickly. Mrs. Urquides, my next door neighbor for 20 years, lived to be 105, and described the ever quickening passing of time as “at first the days go by quickly, then the weeks and months, and then the seasons come and go in the blink of an eye, and finally the years cascade past.”
While I grew up pouring over copies of Arizona Highways Magazine, and its gorgeous imagery of fall colors that line the canyons and ridges of Northern Arizona, it was listening to Mrs. Urquides tell her stories of Arizona in the early 1900s that really gave me an appreciation of seasons in my new home. Journeys to higher elevations to collect the fruits of the season from Sedona in the north and Wilcox in the south were recounted as grand family adventures of buckboards and bushels of apples. And hidden within her stories were attitudes about the seasons that were very different from mine that formed in the geographic context of the Lower Great Lakes Basin. In the Primeria Alta, the northernmost part of the Sonoran Desert greets Autumn as respite from the extremes of Summer just as Spring is greeted as the ending of Winter extremes.
With climate change increasing weather fluctuations it is difficult to anticipate what any season may bring, decades old trees and plants died when Tucson had extreme cold for several days in a row in early February 2011 where a record low of 18 degrees was set. The growing season in Tucson averages 324 days, with first frost usually happening on December 18th and last frost occurring on January 19th. But Autumn is arriving, not Winter.
So as the days begin to top out below 100 degrees, I'm thinking about spiffing up the patio with some flowers, putting some tomato plants out and maybe some peppers, and some herbs. Sort of inverse of back east, but it is the cycle to which I have become accustomed. When I have a Fall/Winter garden I usually keep sheets handy for covering plants should a cold snap occur. So I will need to do some prep work.
But no matter what I decide to do this season, October is the most gorgeous month of the year in Tucson. It is hiking weather, perfect in that it isn't hot or cold usually during the day and a bit coolish at night. I first came to Tucson in this weather and it is absolutely perfect for exploring historic places and open to the public archaeological sites.
Framing the Shuttle
Somehow the flyover of Tucson by the Space Shuttle was a nice way to say goodbye to the old space program for me. From what I can tell the buzzing of the U of A campus was a last minute request by the last person to pilot/command the shuttle, Mark Kelly. His wife didn't get to really experience that last flight because she was recovering from an assassination attempt. They were on the top of a parking garage today for the flyover. That was neat! Local news covered it of course. Apparently since the flight path went over Tucson anyway, from Houston to Edwards Air Force Base, this little buzz was requested by Mark for Gabby yesterday. Double neato.
In the late 1970s I spent a couple summers in Berkeley, CA. My Uncle Carl had worked at Edwards Air Force Base, for a couple decades. He was in the trouble shooting engineering dept that worked on optics/camera for moon landings and he managed to get my boyfriend and I and another couple VIP passes to see the first free flight test of the shuttle. They took it up piggyback, just like today's flight, on a 747, and then it disconnected for computer testing and landing. It was amazing. It was in August, the Perseid meteor shower was at its peak the night before the launch, and we drove all night from the Bay Area to Edwards. The meteor shower was spectacular and at dawn as we got close to where my uncle and aunt lived, we had to stop for a shepherd to finish having his flock of sheep cross the road. At that time, LA had not sprawled north that far and there were still Basque shepherds in the Antelope Valley.
After introductions and a cup of coffee we piled into my uncle's old nondescript car that had been aged and naturally sand blasted to perfectly match the surrounding Mojave Desert and drove toward Edwards AFB. We went through checkpoint after checkpoint with crowds of people standing to watch the test flight outside each checkpoint. At every checkpoint there were fewer people, and finally at the last one, we went through and turned behind some hangars to park in an open air parking lot and there in the next section over in the parking lot was the Shuttle on top of the 747. We really were in the VIP section with Senators, and Military Brass all standing around outside the hangars. The roar of the crowd at the successful glide in still resounds when I remember. Pretty neato. And yes, we saw the take off, separation and landing. Those dry lake beds are amazing and perfect for landing spacecraft.
Having personal visual memories on either side of the Space Shuttle program frames an era literally and figuratively for me. It must mean I'm old. Or lucky. Yes, lucky. Pre and post program memories. Thanks Uncle Carl, you would have liked today here in Tucson.
Siblings Senesce
Being the youngest child and only daughter of parents who were in their 40s when I was born has provided me with many unique opportunities and fair share of disadvantages. The parents of some of my friends from High School were in the same High School Yearbook as my oldest brother. My brothers were 18, 16, 14, and 9 years old when I was born.
But life is never predictable. My mom lived to a respectable age of 92. My best friend during my teen years only lived to be 21 because of someone drinking and driving. We never know what life has in store for us. But even though we don't think about it, we expect that our generation will last longer than the previous generation. Understanding bacteriology and our ubiquitous use of antibiotics has altered our understanding of nature. Once, not that long ago, large families were the norm and disease and accidents often claimed lives of some family members before adulthood. The fragile nature of life was a more constant awareness.
We who were born in the 20th Century are a lucky few generations to expect to live long and full lives. But as we approach later middle age many of us will begin to measure our lives quite differently than we have up until now. Our siblings age and their aging is more apparent to us than our own. Families age.
So as Autumn kicks up leaves and whistles chilly tunes I am reminded of time passing in a new way. This summer when I tried to contact my youngest brother, who is actually nine years my senior, I couldn't. No answer on his phone, then it was filled with messages. I didn't have my nephew's number and the email I had bounced. My oldest brother, who is in his 70s, is not in good health and hadn't heard from my younger brother for ages. Two of my brothers, the two in the middle, have passed on, one in 1998 and one in 2005. Dad passed in 1986 and Mom in 2007. I live 2000 miles away from where I grew up and my midwest family of origin never really traveled much, and as we aged we grew apart.
When I passed through the old home area this summer I deviated from my typical schedule where I arrange to meet at least one friend from my youth and just drop in and visit family when I can. I drove from Northwest Indiana through Amish country to Northeastern Indiana where I grew up. I drove straight to my youngest brother's house. My nephew was there. He told me his Dad was in the VA hospital in central Indiana. He had been diagnosed with dementia. I was floored. I went to visit my oldest brother but he hasn't tracked well for years and lives in pain. I mainly talked to my sister in law, and my oldest brother would just interject every few minutes, “Now where did you say Roger was?” I ended up visiting graves that day. A week later I was able to come through the area again and look up my brother in the VA hospital.
The VA has been an unknown quantity to me for the most part, an elderly poet with whom I workshopped in 2003 to 2005 was at the VA as his health declined. It was a last stop for old men. How could my brother be there? 9 years older than me, I certainly would not expect to be in an “old folks” home in less than 10 years. But my brother was severely wounded in Vietnam, and his only real confidant, a buddy of his for the last 40 years, died last fall. He quit managing his diabetes. He cut himself off from everyone. I saw him in January just a couple weeks before the dementia set in. He seemed disconnected and angry, but I did not expect this.
Aging has become very real for me this year, not that it wasn't real before, but seemingly in the blink of an eye, over half of my family that I grew up amongst has left this world and those who are left are not doing so well. I may have been a spoiled little sister, but that rather fun position in the family has transformed to one with a much more somber outlook.
The good news is that once proper diet and exercise were re-established my brother rapidly began getting better. He is still in a wheel chair but he seems to be in charge of his faculties again and may get to come back to his own home.
Talk Like a Pirate Vs. Act Like a Pirate
Today is TALK LIKE A PIRATE DAY! Argh Matey, Shiver me timbers, it is time to swab the deck, and make some wealthy merchants walk the plank!
Seriously, it is talk like a pirate day! September 19th is the day of “Argh, Aye, and Matey!” In fact is is the 10th Anniversary of the international observation of Talk Like a Pirate Day.
I hope we can use today to add a bit of humor to the very serious business of Presidential Politics. Might I suggest we focus on the irony of needing to be Robinhood-esque or supportive of the “Dwed Piwate Woberts” in order to regain possession of the American Dream that has been stolen from us by an inhumane corporatocracy who are not people, and the very real arrogant, leisure-class families behind those corporations.
Let’s define what a real pirate is and you can be the judge as to whom may qualify.
- Steals from othes and hides that “treasure” away in secrecy on islands. This does include the Cayman Islands.
We have to distinguish piracy from privateering. And privateering has evolved from it’s origins as raiding that takes place on the sea to what George Lakoff defines in Chapter Seven of The Political Mind:
Privateering is a special blend of privatizing and profiteering. Privateering is the surreptitious destruction of the government’s capacity to carry out its critical moral missions of protection and empowerment. It is accomplished by privatizing government functions which results in the loss of public accountability and the transfer of wealth from the public coffers to corporations. Each instance of privateering damages the foundation of our American democracy.
So today whenever the opportunity presents itself, when people ask you why you are talking like a pirate, you take the chance to explain that you are considering the piracy as a viable option to ending the profiteering by the wealth-defined elite in America. Aw, c’mon, it is only for a day, and we know we are really peace-loving and constitution-respecting people… but it would be fun for a day, no?