Thanksgiving Day Notes

• Don't know what it says about where I'm headed in my old age, but I've been watching a lot of kitten rescue videos lately. I initially watched one and now they keep popping up in my YT feed and I can't seem to resist.
• My local used bookstore is going to start taking appointments from people looking to purge their record collections. About damn time that they branch out into used vinyl!! This town badly needs places for searchers to seek vinyl.
• Last night's fortune cookie: "A cheerful letter or message is on its way to you."  ....... OK ETA please. Maybe it was the bookstore news above?
• Taking my, preparing-to-go-to-my-sisters-house-for-Thanksgiving-dinner shower opposed to my quickie pre-work shower ..... there sure is a lot of working and semi-working parts to clean up. Quite the process.

Senior Advisory

It's funny ..... 

With these shorter days that have arrived at this point in the season, I don't care at all for the transition from daylight to darkness, and then a few hours later, thinking that the light is coming on way too early in the morning when attempting to convince myself to get out of bed. 

Seems that just maybe, I'm becoming more conflicted and difficult to please. 

Must be a senior citizen thing.

How I Spent My Vacation (Day)

Spent part of the afternoon at the local record shop /vintage drum shop, searching mostly for new/used jazz and obscure punk rock on seven-inch vinyl. Found a couple of the latter. 

• Drone - Voice of Reason .... from 1991
• Polar Bear Club - Blood Balloon .... from 2013

I know nothing about either record. Both are blind buys. Seven-inch vinyl seems like the ideal format for the punk and post-punk genre. I enjoy it in small doses. I don't know if I could handle larger stacks of records or longer listening experiences. 

I have been accumulating a small collection of punk. I laughed at it when it exploded in the late 1970's. I'm ready to give it a chance in my golden years. But don't tell my oldest friends. They might not understand. 

It's history to me. 

Found nothing of much interest in the jazz bins. I don't think there are many jazz freaks in this town. It's rare to stumble across an out of the ordinary title to take home and I've been on this mission for the past year or two of discovering other jazz directions.

Rule Breaker

In my old age I've suddenly become a radical breaker of rules and established norms. 👴

I no longer (or rarely) write in proper paragraphs.

And I don't care any longer what my high school and college English and literature instructors would think.

I prefer to write in lines of varying length.

To hell with the wisdom of the ages, I've moved towards what appeals visually. 

The List

I had to check one last time as I was on my way out the door.

The fourth time I had looked since arrival this morning. 

I kept thinking that my name was in there somewhere, even though I didn't sign up.

Maybe I missed it in my haste to buzz through all the names?

Or perhaps they posted a revised list after enjoying a practical joke on me. 

Or maybe I've reached a level of senility where I don't recognize my name any longer.

I just knew that it had to be there.

Because it's been so long since it wasn't.

Driving home, I was tempted to go back and check once again.

Warily I accepted my fate ..... that I didn't have to work on Sunday.

It all reminded of tenth grade.

I know, ancient history.

After several days of tryouts for the sophomore basketball team, a list was posted of those chosen to return the next day.

Those who made the team.

My name wasn't there.

I thought it had to be an oversight.

I had made the junior-high team the year before.

I probably perused that list half a dozen times that day.

"Why him?" ..... "Why that guy and not me?"

I likely held up the bus home that day just so I could make sure that I didn't need to be at practice.

Maybe the coach would see me and ask why I wasn't dressed down for practice? 

Or that he had made a mistake.

Or that his typewriter had malfunctioned when he made up the list.

I eventually accepted my fate from that day as well.

November Storm

I like storms and listening to them in the quiet as much as anyone.

What I don't care for is the mid-November rain and windstorms that strip all the orange and yellow from the trees.

The official start of winter should be a floating day that is decided in the aftermath of such storms.

Winter should be judged by look and feel.

At a wildlife refuge outside of town. Was caught in a downpour as I drove to this place, the rain eventually easing up in intensity upon my arrival. Like it was all pre-arranged for me. Just another autumn day in western Oregon. I was hoping for a rainbow to appear .... a friend told me that it's a better image without.

Your Day

I saw the other day, that it was your birthday.

I hope it was a great day for you.

I should have remembered. For quite a few years I did. 

I'm sorry that eventually it became less memorable until one year it passed without notice or thought.

We celebrated a couple of those days together ..... your day. 

For quite a few years it was part of what I held onto. 

It ultimately became necessary to let it go. 

I later wondered if to do so was a sin.  

And if you felt the distant change in some shifting of the universe and truth sort of way or moment.

(As if I'm qualified to speak on such matters.)

I remembered there was a time when we thought we'd celebrate many together.

I hope there was someone this year to remember your day.

Photo on a rainy day from a rose garden in seasonal survival mode. On of the holdouts from the cycles of time and the elements.

Emotional Swings

..... The thrill and excitement of returning home and finding a delivery on your doorstep resembling the size and packaging used for vinyl records and trying to remember what you ordered that hasn't already arrived .....

                                  ...... Then the sudden realization that it's medical supplies.  

Fake News

Classmates.com keeps sending messages saying that people want to see my picture and I keep replying: "No, they don't."

Now I'm getting messages saying that I've been spotted in my high schools 1971 yearbook. Well. unless their photographers were hanging out at local middle schools, I'm pretty sure it's not me being spotted in the high school yearbook.

And they keep wanting to sell to me the yearbook from my senior year. 

Is this a lucrative business? 

Don't all people, meaning 100% of everyone graduating from a high school anywhere, hold onto their original yearbooks for life? 

Especially from the senior year?  

Am I wrong in assuming that to be the case?

Am I overly sentimental? I was accused of that once by a friend. 

Isn't that one of the ten commandments .... Thou shalt not discard thy high school yearbook?

I still have mine. I've never considered getting rid of it in any of my random moments of downsizing.  

First Heartbreak

One of my earliest teenage crushes, infatuations, loves ..... whatever you want to label it, was a girl who moved from out-of-town, to my neighborhood a year or two before.

Very pretty, engaging and funny ..... and she enjoyed playing football in the street and bowling with us and would talk late into the night.

She was complicit in planning a surprise birthday party for me.

I'd give her rides to school and slowly (or quickly?) saw her differently than others.

Of course, I was always too shy to let her know of my feelings towards her.  

It was my secret. She never knew. No one knew. 

Fast forward and high school ended and friends went different directions .... to jobs or different colleges.

I was heartbroken to hear the news one day that she had become close with another guy.

Looking back, I'm not sure of the length of time that passed .... it may have been a four or five months or it may have been two or three years.

I was at mass one Sunday evening with a childhood friend.

We reached the point in the mass where names were read of people who had passed away and who the mass was being offered for.

We heard her name and looked at each other in shock.

No way we thought that it was our friend. Had to be someone with the same name.

I raced back to my dorm room after mass ..... I may not have waited for it to end.

I called home and asked my mom if it was true.

I don't recall now if she knew or had to make a call or two.

Soon though, it was confirmed that it was my friend. 

She had died in a house fire. 

She had fallen asleep, the house caught fire and she couldn't get out. 

I heard that people outside could hear her screams but the fire was so large at that point that they couldn't get to her.

I've always hoped that wasn't true. 

I've never forgotten her and still think of her from time-to-time.

Notes on the Years

Reflecting on an old classmate and friend who passed away a few days ago. I was away from home, jotting down thoughts as they came to me. I'm not going to attempt to organize or edit. Just going to put them down here as they arrived earlier. It may sound naive not make a great amount of sense but it's just me struggling with this place where I'm finding myself and talking from. Trying to find my way through it .....

A subject that I've written about a dozen times the past few years and thought about almost daily over the last year or two ..... Aging and people I know from my youth, passing away.

When you hear of an old classmate reaching the end of their years and visualize them in their youth .... in our youth.

And it sure doesn't feel like fifty or sixty years ago.

And you see them in memories, smiling and laughing. 

And you had your own personal encounters with them. 

And it's like: "How is this possible? How did we go from that point of youth and friends and shared experiences to this point where we are slowly dying off? How is this possible? Why couldn't we stay young?"

We didn't have the technology that youth has now but that was fine and enough.

We laughed a lot and told stories and shared experiences.

Just like our parents before us ..... and their parents ..... 

We went through our youth and the years after and have history and memories unique to our generation of teens and early 20-somethings ..... Vietnam, oil shortages, the '69 world series, disco and punk rock, etc.

And now why do we have to get old and have health issues and fade away?

We seemed so invincible once and without limits and now seemingly so frail.

Visualizing what we once were, it doesn't seem possible. 

Those times sometimes feel closer than last nights dinner.

I'll be driving along in my car reminiscing and it feels like a dream that I can reach out and touch.

Or that those times can still be (or should still be) our current reality.

Young and energetic.

Or like I can turn down the street where our old schools still stand and see all those old friends again.

And you probably once stood on this corner together, or this exact spot in this parking lot ..... and laughed.

And when I think of a specific person, I see them in my thoughts as I knew them back then and not like their latest photo on facebook.

And maybe that's why it's so difficult to accept that another has passed away.

And I doubt this is the end of these notes and thoughts so, to be continued ......