VETERANS DAY REPOST: In Honor of Lieutenant Colonel "Wild Bill" [USAF]

originally posted 3 July 2012

HIGH FLIGHT

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds, — and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of — wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there,
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air. . . .

Up, up the long, delirious burning blue
I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or ever eagle flew —
And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

— John Gillespie Magee, Jr

[reposted from July 3, 2012]

My father died last night, apparently, and all I can think of, at the moment is the first line of Camus' L'Etranger, one of his greatest, but beyond absurd in my situation.  And so, of course.

I cannot get hold of an actual obituary but I assume that my blood relatives wouldn't lie to me about a thing like that.  But I've been wrong before, and it's a crazy bunch.

So -- for him, the pilot, I offer "High Flight," which I believe was posted here just recently, for some eerie reason.

What's eerier?  A few nights back, I dreamt that the man gave me his watch.  It was not a Rolex.  Not even a Timex.  Just bulky and silver, with lots of do-dads on it.  That was it.  The extent of my dream profundity.

I had to go to the Infectious Disease doc's place in spite of the colonel's death, and it turned out my temp was a bit over 101 and that my blood work from last week sucked.  They drew blood cultures, stared at my staring eyes, and sent me home.  I'm screwed -- normally, I don't answer the phone.  Now, because of the colonel and the ensuing phone-yappers, I will also have to deal with the medicos who love to telecommunicate.  In short, the infection seems to be beating the crap out of the antibiotic.  "The one antibiotic we have left," El Infectious Disease Doodaloo reminded me.  He's a sweet guy.  One day, I'd like to sit out at a café, and I know the one I want, very Tuileries, very Café Renard, and have a beer with him.

One night, my father picked me up from a late baby-sitting job. I was in high school.  We lived sort of out in the boonies, on a lake, and he was an avid amateur astronomer.  There was a meteor shower.

We set up lawn chairs and watched the shooting stars.

When men walked on the moon, he and my brother-unit Grader Boob successfully convinced me that I could see the men through our backyard telescope.  They had me giving excited descriptions of all their lunar activity.  Have we discussed my gullibility much here on the blog?

I hope for him -- the after-death is flying, flying, flying... occasionally flipping his plane to smoothly bisect the space between silos and chimneys... a claim of his I always believed, mostly because I saw some other Fly Boys laugh and nod, ascots never askew.  Fighter pilots are grace-blessed nuts.

My thoughts are with his beloved wife, Margaret, his daughter Kathryn, and her son, his grandson, Brian. His sister Nancy, too, and brother Jim. Mostly, though, I am thinking of Tumbleweed and Grader Boob, his Good Sons.  

He's to be buried, I guess, tomorrow, Sunday, at 3 PM, with military honors.  I  guess that means an honor guard, a presented flag, salutes.  Were I there, I'd raise a scotch, and remember stars like bullets, his caring for his own aging mother and father, his love for a certain cock-a-poo, and the bevy of air evac nursing personnel who loved to scream out "Heyyyy, Wild Bill," whenever they scooted by in a jeep.  He flew many a mission, low over Cambodia, no lights, to rescue the wounded and bring them to Clark for medical treatment.  He also dropped a lot of bombs, and deforested with Agent Orange.  He lost, I was told, two barracks of men in a bizarrely successful nighttime shelling at Phan Rang.  He liked the album Sounds of Silence by Simon and Garfunkel.

But then, too, he adored Herb Alpert.

Memorial Day 2013

The first of three Memorial Day reposts, this one from just last year.  Have a great weekend, Dear Readers!

Memorial Day.  I feel obliged.  Guilty.  I'm a military brat;  I'm grateful to the men and women who have done... duty.  

My dad was a career military man, in the Air Force for 29 years.  He loved it, believed in it, hated it, distrusted it, gave it his all.  Believed ridiculous things that had pure truth in his world of absolute values -- like his explanation for having to row the boat across the Delaware for General Washington... that was what he thought I needed to understand about Vietnam. 

Talk about a rift.

I am an ungrateful military brat, confused by the world, confused by the military, confused by random violence, confused by organized violence, by terrorism, by conventional and unconventional warfare, by the deaths of men in the name of women, by the abuse of women by men frustrated unto violence, but not conscious of where their resentment originates, by the hypocrisy of all of us. Confused by drones, torture, international law ignored, domestic law ignored, nature's laws ignored. Confused by myself, angered at being compartmentalized, angered that the compartments fit, so cozily.

I merge Memorial Day and Veteran's Day in my head.  I'd rather we just have Veteran's Day, as there are so many veterans who return to us dead, and alive, at the same time.  They gave their all, too.  We're too at ease with the beating of their hearts and the spikes and waves obtained from electroencephalograms as proof enough of their living.  

Eleven years ago today -- though not exactly -- so let me restate that.  On Memorial Day in 2002, I fell in the St. Joseph's Hospital of Atlanta Intensive Care Unit, and one of the results of that fall was CRPS, which showed up within two hours of the fall and the injuries sustained.  The story is told elsewhere on this blog, and if you've been a reader here for even a brief time, you know that my case of CRPS is one of the more severe sort -- a life-ender, in all the ways that matter.

So every Memorial Day since that one in 2002, I have a strange day.  All is odd, all is out of sync.  I wake with grand plans for celebration, odd, in that I don't celebrate most holidays. So, I wake with odd menus going round the brain, mostly fresh, spicy, creative food dishes, and time set aside to think of those who serve. My mouth moves, larynx and pharynx function, but sound is late or skewed. Thoughts jumble and I'm out of joint, and not just in the usual literal sense.  Until it hits me -- Oh yes, I've something else to commemorate.   

At least I know enough now to look at each person I see, write to, think of, and know that they, too, have their own private commemorations going on, that they allot time, heart, neurons, photons, and blank eyes to theirs, as I do to mine.  I imagine other people are better behaved.  You see, until I remember what's wrong, that I am having some kind of minor anniversary-driven PTSD bit of a tantrum, I just feel raw and mean.  While I was slaving away in the kitchen, Fred was collapsed under the weight of an undeniable nap attack, and that pissed me off.  I did not need him;  He wasn't neglecting to do a darned thing, in fact, he was likely worn out from a recent attack on vines.  Evil vines. 

I put hard-boiled eggs and pickles in the potato salad for him.  It's his fault that I am feeling raw, odd, out of sync, and joint, and whatever else I've complained of thus far.  No mention of pain, or how hard it was to cut a cooked potato. Definitely not a word about pouring boiling water on my thigh (the same thigh I marinated in salmonella just a few days ago, ginger and soy sauce, chopped chicken parts, a good massage, and spuh-lurt, salmonella lap!).  My thighs, recipients of incomplete dishes.  At least today's immersion was just hot pepper, highly salinated, starchy water, with some of my oldest brother's last green peppers artistically strewn about.  

Better than dropping something heavy and sharp, like a blade, some sort of chopping device, tip down on the second toe of an already amputation-envied right foot.  Just joshing!  I missed this time!  (I'm sorry, that was mean.)

A beautiful dressing was prepared -- of yogurt, fresh garlic, Thai chili and fish sauces, an unbelievable amount of pepper and dill, with oft-adjusted grains of kosher salt. Three mustards.  I know it sounds overwhelming, but it wasn't.  It was perfect.

Fred "served" in the military, in war time, but drew a map-making mission in Africa. He left much behind but not his life, and gained much as well, and not just in beautiful love-making with beautiful Ethiopian women, not just in falling in love with baboons, and a certain aridity. He discovered aimless freedom.  Drank a lot, drove fast in the desert.

Last July, after the Father-Unit just laid down and died, I wrote this:

A scattering of his ashes is planned for Atlantic waters, and there don't seem to be a bunch of laws standing in the way.  Not like over at the western end of that state, where some weenies decided to regulate drifting cinders.  That was my first choice, somewhere (actually, "somewhere" very specific) along the Blue Ridge.  Then a California friend, a busy mother, ceramic artist, perpetual redesigner of kitchens -- but reportedly, by kin, even, a god-awful baker -- someone who eventually went to med school and, I'm willing to wager all my investment income -- income so piled high upon itself that it is seeping out of my Gringotts Wizarding Bank magical money jail cell -- solves more medical mysteries over coffee in her torn-to-pieces kitchen than in some speckled formica-ed San Franciscan examination cubicle... 

Anyway, Margaret, this California friend, began sending me a local artist's series of Point Reyes note cards, a national park, a "national seashore." A shore, headlands, grasslands, beaches, a forest, even.  [I am notoriously challenged directionally... A trip up the Pacific Coast Highway meant the Pacific was on the left, the forests on the right.  The return trip required the PCH to be on the right, the woods to my left.  The weeping driver asking for directions, thank God, was *always* to my left, as The Great American Writer Wannabe refused to allow me to drive his Mustang.

Margaret wasn't campaigning that I scatter my ashes anywhere in our nationally shared Point Reyes park.  It just came to bright me, it came as a longing, as a fulfillment.  And it turned out to be a pain in the caboose:

• A permit is required for all areas. • Remains to be scattered must have been cremated and pulverized. • Scattering by persons on the ground is to be performed at least 100 yards from any trail, road, developed facility or body of water, and 440 yards seaward from the shoreline on the Pacific Ocean. • Scattering from the air will not be performed over developed areas, facilities or bodies of water and will be performed at a minimum altitude of 2000 feet above the ground. 

Just at that point in your After-Existence when you're looking for the few people left who love you to have a freeing moment, a laugh in the wind?  Bullet points.  And I gotta say, "pulverized" kinda kills the good mood. Of course, I suppose that if my already cindered remains were not put through some huge spice grinder, I'd shift from a figurative to a literal portion of the Giant Floating Garbage Patch.

I do appreciate, though, the posting of allowable driving speeds.  It reads like a marvelous poem:

15 MPH: • The unpaved section of Mesa Road • Oyster Farm Access Road • Mount Vision Road • Estero Trail Access Road • Marshall Beach Road • Sacramento Landing Road • Chimney Rock Road  

The following sections of trails open for administrative vehicle use: • Sky Trail (from Limantour Road to Sky Camp) • Bear Valley Trail (Bear Valley Trailhead to Glen Junction) • Coast Trail (Limantour Road to Coast Camp) • Drivable sections of the Inverness Ridge Trail (Limantour Road to the Mt. Vision Road) • Marshall Beach Trail • Stewart Trail (including Glen Camp Spur Trail from Stewart Trail to Glen Camp)  • Lighthouse Road from the parking lot to the Lighthouse Visitor Center • Bolinas Ridge Trail • Randall Trail 

25 MPH: • Limantour Road (Sky Trail to Limantour Parking Lot, including the road to the southern parking lot) 

Yeah, so now?  Just put me in a cardboard box, mix with some perlite -- me and some Home Depot volcanic glass -- and plant something that you don't think I'd kill.

Ayer como hoy.

I remember, not just today, but every day -- too much memorializing, too much memory.  Not enough now, not enough sloughing it off, saying:  "Who knows? I sure don't."  Saying, yes, I know, a woman soldier has just been blown sky high by an IED;  a young man has lost his life in jihad.  A child has curled up like a sea shell, dead of simple starvation, food withheld by a brilliant blockade.  A shaman dies in the wilderness, or trips, and tumbles down a crevasse, smiling.  Cheney and other war mongers count their money, and regret getting a human heart.

I've always wanted to understand, as a Jew must understand, the meaning of mitzvah/mitzvot

Literally: commandment. Any of the 613 commandments that Jews are obligated to observe. It can also refer to any Jewish religious obligation, or more generally to any good deed.

Not having anything left to accomplish on my Memorial Day 2013 list, I thought I would actually read the 613 commandments, as sorted out for my lame brain by a website called Judaism 101.  Numbers 598 through the end of the list, at 613, deal with... war.  I knew the random firings of my neurons would come through once again, that being all that I am at the moment.

Wars

598.  That those engaged in warfare shall not fear their enemies nor be panic-stricken by them during battle (Deut. 3:22, 7:21, 20:3)
599:  To anoint a special kohein (to speak to the soldiers) in a war (Deut. 20:2)
600:  In a permissive war (as distinguished from obligatory ones), to observe the procedure prescribed in the Torah (Deut. 20:10)
601:  Not to keep alive any individual of the seven Canaanite nations (Deut. 20:16)
602:  To exterminate the seven Canaanite nations from the land of Israel (Deut. 20:17)
603:  Not to destroy fruit trees (wantonly or in warfare) (Deut. 20:19-20)
604.  To deal with a beautiful woman taken captive in war in the manner prescribed in the Torah (Deut. 21:10-14)
605:  Not to sell a beautiful woman, (taken captive in war) (Deut. 21:14)
606:  Not to degrade a beautiful woman (taken captive in war) to the condition of a bondwoman (Deut. 21:14)
607:  Not to offer peace to the Ammonites and the Moabites before waging war on them, as should be done to other nations (Deut. 23:7)
608:  That anyone who is unclean shall not enter the Camp of the Levites (Deut. 23:11)
609:  To have a place outside the camp for sanitary purposes (Deut. 23:13)
610:  To keep that place sanitary (Deut. 23:14-15)
611:  Always to remember what Amalek did (Deut. 25:17)
612:  That the evil done to us by Amalek shall not be forgotten (Deut. 25:19)
613.  To destroy the seed of Amalek (Deut. 25:19)

There.

That clears everything up.

I guess this is another post you will have to forgive me.

It doesn't fit tightly with my theme, nor follow the narrow limits of my text, but I discovered that my favorite of the 613 mitzvot is #578:

That the procedure of cleansing leprosy, whether of a man or of a house, takes place with cedar-wood, hyssop, scarlet thread, two birds, and running water (Lev. 14:1-7) 

Let's just think on that for a year, shall we?

A Rewrite: Dad laid down and went to sleep

Brother-Unit Grader Boob has returned to his own Home Land after seeing to the Father-Unit's cremation and memorial service, whose attendance was apparently mostly made up of beach locals:

"[A] waitress from their favorite eatery, the guy who does their lawn, their Mr. Fix-It, the brokerage guy from their bank, some guys he hung out with and drank coffee with down at the local BP station..." and a smattering of actual relations.  I'm betting that the waitress knew him best.  I'm betting he smoked when he dropped by at odd hours, alone, ordering some "regular" food item that she prepared just right.  He was a sucker for lemon pie -- maybe he developed a thing for the more available key lime -- the lemon pie was a specialty of his mother's.  Lemon Ice Box Pie.  Awfully graham-crackery and pucker::pucker tart.  But it was "hers" so we "loved" it, air quotes proving our citric credibility.

A scattering of his ashes is planned for Atlantic waters, and there don't seem to be a bunch of laws standing in the way.  Not like over at the western end of that state, where some weenies decided to regulate drifting cinders.  That was my first choice, somewhere (actually, "somewhere" very specific) along the Blue Ridge.  Then a California friend, a busy mother, ceramic artist, perpetual redesigner of kitchens -- but reportedly, by kin, even, a god-awful baker -- someone who eventually went to med school and, I'm willing to wager all my investment income -- income so piled high upon itself that it is seeping out of my Gringotts Wizarding Bank magical money jail cell -- solves more medical mysteries over coffee in her torn-to-pieces kitchen than in some speckled formica-ed San Franciscan examination cubicle...

My train.  That damned train of thought.  Choo!  Choo!***

Anyway, Margaret, this California friend, began sending me a local artist's series of Point Reyes note cards, a national park, a "national seashore." A shore, headlands, grasslands, beaches, a forest, even.  [I am notoriously challenged directionally... A trip up the PCH** meant the Pacific was on the left, the forests on the right.  The return trip required the PCH to be on the right, the woods to my left.  The weeping driver asking for directions, thank God, was *always* to my left, as The Great American Writer Wannabe refused to allow me to drive his Mustang.

Margaret wasn't campaigning that I scatter my ashes anywhere in our nationally shared Point Reyes park.  It just came to bright me, it came as a longing, as a fulfillment.  And it turned out to be a pain in the caboose:


• A permit is required for all areas. 
• Remains to be scattered must have been cremated and pulverized. 
• Scattering by persons on the ground is to be performed at least 100 yards from any trail, 
road, developed facility or body of water, and 440 yards seaward from the shoreline on 
the Pacific Ocean. 
• Scattering from the air will not be performed over developed areas, facilities or bodies of 
water and will be performed at a minimum altitude of 2000 feet above the ground. 


Just at that point in your After-Existence when you're looking for the few people left who love you to have a freeing moment, a laugh in the wind?  Bullet points.  And I gotta say, "pulverized" kinda kills the good mood. Of course, I suppose that if my already cindered remains were not put through some huge spice grinder, I'd shift from a figurative to a literal portion of the Giant Floating Garbage Patch.

I do appreciate, though, the posting of allowable driving speeds.  It reads like a marvelous poem:


15 MPH: 
• The unpaved section of Mesa Road 
• Oyster Farm Access Road 
• Mount Vision Road 
• Estero Trail Access Road 
• Marshall Beach Road 
• Sacramento Landing Road 
• Chimney Rock Road 
• The following sections of trails open for administrative vehicle use: 
• Sky Trail (from Limantour Road to Sky Camp) 
• Bear Valley Trail (Bear Valley Trailhead to Glen Junction) 
• Coast Trail (Limantour Road to Coast Camp) 
• Drivable sections of the Inverness Ridge Trail (Limantour Road to the Mt. Vision 
Road) 
• Marshall Beach Trail 
• Stewart Trail (including Glen Camp Spur Trail from Stewart Trail to Glen Camp)  
• Lighthouse Road from the parking lot to the Lighthouse Visitor Center 
• Bolinas Ridge Trail 
• Randall Trail 
   
25 MPH: 
• Limantour Road (Sky Trail to Limantour Parking Lot, including the road to the southern 
parking lot) 
 

Yeah, so now?  Just put me in a cardboard box, mix with some perlite -- me and some Home Depot volcanic glass -- and plant something that you don't think I'd kill.

Brother Grader Boob wrote this about the Father-Unit:  "Sometime early in the morning of July 3, he got up and went over to his spot on the couch in the living room, laid down, and went to sleep and passed away. Mom found him when she came upstairs."

Photographic evidence shows that he was skinny beyond belief.  I doubt now that he strolled much on the beach, his front lawn, because he surely would have been lifted high as a kite.

I guess Brother-Unit Grader Boob has scads of photos and such to go through -- the inevitable gift to the family photographer (They've never seen TW's work). To lighten things up, and to make me snort coffee up my nose, he sent his "current favorite" of the degrading pictures:

I actually remember that day. We'd been out shopping for carpets for the Father-Units' parents, and someone clearly thought I looked great in shades of eggplant.  I hope to goodness that that was not the carpet we chose.  The box, I believe, was a gift from a stinky cigar-smoking uncle named, quite inappropriately, "Happy," and his wife, the lovely, sweet Doris.  It was a piggy bank.  Without the piggy.  It did some sort of magic trick -- you know, like it took your money and disappeared it.

The funeral, Grader Boob said, was very much against Father-Unit's will.  I wish I knew more as to why he did not want one.

You may not remember [!], but I dreamt of Dad's watch a few nights before he died.  In the dream, it was simply heavy, silver, and nothing special.  Here is a close up of the apparently meaningful item (no matter the number of times I insist on its ordinariness):

Various peer-reviewed studies suggest these interpretations:
--To dream of a watch is a symbol that you are too caught up in structure. Control, rules, and laws rule your day. You are unable to relax and let go. 
--A generation or two ago, a gold watch was the standard gift presented to a valued employee at retirement. So in this sense, a dream of a gold watch would suggest that something was coming to a good, satisfactory conclusion. Alternatively, any watch or clock represents time and gold symbolizes great value. Together they represents the value of time.  [Please note that, in my dream, there was no allusion to "gold" or "great value";  In fact, the opposite asserted itself.]
--Being late or early (or a fear of being so), short on time, or having too much time, or the idea of adhering to a schedule.

Oh, all right.  It's not hard.  I lost my time with him, I ran out of time, but maybe, maybe, maybe -- there is something that is timeless?

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

***One day when we were on the subject of transportation and 
distribution, it came Bolenciecwz's turn to answer a question. “Name 
one means of transportation,” the professor said to him. No light came 
into the big tackle's eyes. “Just any means of transportation,” said the 
professor. Bolenciecwz sat staring at him. “That is,” pursued the 
professor, “any medium, agency, or method of going from one place to 
another.” Bolenciecwz had the look of a man who is being led into a 
trap. “You may choose among steam, horse-drawn, or electrically 
propelled vehicles,” said the instructor. “I might suggest the one which 
we commonly take in making long journeys across land.” There was a 
profound silence in which everybody stirred uneasily, including 
Bolenciecwz and Mr. Bassum. Mr. Bassum abruptly broke this silence 
in an amazing manner. “Choo-choo-choo,” he said, in a low voice, and 
turned instantly scarlet. He glanced appealingly around the room. All of 
us, of course, shared Mr. Bassum's desire that Bolenciecwz should stay 
abreast of the class in economics, for the Illinois game, one of the 
hardest and most important of the season, was only a week off. “Toot, 
toot, too-toooooootf” some student with a deep voice moaned, and we 
all looked encouragingly at Bolenciecwz. Somebody else gave a fine 
imitation of a locomotive letting off steam. Mr. Bassum himself 
rounded off the little show. “Ding, dong, ding, dong,” he said, 
hopefully. Bolenciecwz was staring at the floor now, trying to think, his 
great brow furrowed, his huge hands rubbing together, his face red.
“How did you come to college this year, Mr. Bolenciecwz?” 
asked the professor. “Chuffa chuffa, chuffa chuffa.”
“M'father sent me,” said the football player.
“What on?” asked Bassum.
“I git an allowance,” said the tackle, in a low, husky voice, 
obviously embarrassed.
“No, no,” said Bassum. “Name a means of transportation. What 
did you ride here on?”
“Train,” said Bolenciecwz.
“Quite right,” said the professor. 


-- "University Days," James Thurber


**State Route 1 (SR 1) is a major north-south state highway that runs along most of the Pacific coastline of the U.S. state of California. Highway 1 has several portions designated as either Pacific Coast Highway (PCH), Cabrillo Highway, Shoreline Highway, or Coast Highway. Its southern terminus is at Interstate 5 (I-5) near Dana Point in Orange County and its northern terminus is at U.S. Highway 101 (US 101) near Leggett in Mendocino County. Highway 1 also at times runs concurrently with US 101, most notably through a 54-mile (87 km) stretch in Ventura and Santa Barbara Counties, and across the Golden Gate Bridge.
The highway is famous for running along some of the most beautiful coastlines in the USA, leading to its designation as an All-American Road. In addition to providing a scenic route to numerous attractions along the coast, the route also serves as a major thoroughfare in the Greater Los Angeles Area, the San Francisco Bay Area, and several other coastal urban areas.


SR 1 was built piecemeal in various stages, with the first section opening in the Big Sur region in the 1930s. However, portions of the route had several names and numbers over the years as more segments opened. It was not until the 1964 state highway renumbering that the entire route was officially designated as Highway 1. Although SR 1 is a popular route for its scenic beauty, frequent landslides and erosion along the coast have caused several segments to be either closed for lengthy periods for repairs, or re-routed further inland.