Back East

I was walking in my parent's neighborhood in Houston on Thanksgiving.  With my friend from 'up north' or maybe he's from 'back east' but definitely not from 'down east' which I understand is actually further north than 'up north.'  To be honest, here in Houston which is both 'down south' and 'out west'  (unless you're from California in which case they are definitely 'back east') they really don't  have a clear concept of either 'east' or 'north'.  They get 'west' but believe that once you get to California you're really 'back east.'  Go figure.


Now in Missouri we have a much more mature perspective on dealing with relative locations.  But it wasn't always easy for us being trapped in the middle of the nation.  For a long time we fought about whether we were in the upper south or the southwest but then when we didn't secede we succeeded in getting ourselves thrown out of the south.  Which put us in the north by default except the people back east said that they were from the north and therefore we were from the west.  Which was fine because when the seceding south didn't succeed we got to stay west which we always understood to be 'cool'.  But then one day California became west which we got but then Texas said they were west too despite being south which frankly irritated us because they're a bunch of cocky bastards who are always doing stuff like that.  So in response, we invented 'mid' as in midwest.  But then the midwest got rust on its belt and we decided that we didn't want to be rusty so we kept the mid- and swapped America for west as in Mid-America.  Which sounds a lot like Central America which is really Mexico, not to be confused with Mexico, Missouri.  So when the press started worrying about Cuba, not to be confused with Cuba, Missouri making Central America go communist, we got a bit worried about our image and finally decided to do away with the relative location hooey altogether.

So now all we ever say is that 'We're here.  You're not.  Get over it.'

Which will work until the aliens come.  So if you're on your planet and I'm on your planet which is not my planet which means that I am 'off' my planet but 'on' yours, what happens when you and I leave your planet? Do you go 'off' planet while I go 'off', 'off' planet?  And when we come back to your planet do you go 'on' planet while I go 'on-off' planet?  And where is off-Broadway in all of this?

Hmm.

On Imaginary Friends

In my post Back East I talked about my friend who is from 'up north' or 'back east'.  Actually he's from both and neither.  He's imaginary. I really think imaginary friends are a key underutilized resource in America today.  While small children and the psychotic make great of use of Imaginaries (that's what they liked to be called:  Imaginaries) the rest of us tend to struggle on without those pliable pals who can make any conversation more fun.

Take me, for example, I have an imaginary friend who we'll call 'Waldo'.  Waldo has a sartorial weakness in that he always dresses in the same damned striped turtleneck with messy hair and a stupid hat.  But he's my friend so I ask him to change and when he doesn't, I accept him because that's what friends do.  Waldo's job in life is hiding in plain sight which I tell him is really beneath his skill level.  But he enjoys it, the pay seems to be adequate to keep him in stupid hats and I get the fringe benefit in that knowing him so well I can always win the 'where's Waldo' game.  Life is good.

My imaginary friend Waldo.

But the thing that makes Waldo such a valuable addition to my imaginary life is his ability to provoke and then quickly and painlessly resolve my cognitive dissonance.  For example, from time to time I become concerned about our nation and the quality of the leadership therein.  Waldo interjects that he thinks (insert obviously incompetent and supremely silly politician's name here) is really sharp and that we should listen to what the (stupid oaf) has to say.  Like friends do, I listen quietly and respectfully as my good imaginary friend makes his case.  Then when he's done, I proceed to methodically demolish his naive, ill conceived arguments one by one.  He usually gets a couple tears in his eyes during the process but I am gentle so when at the end he acknowledges my absolute correctness and his obvious ignorance it doesn't hurt him so much.  Indeed, if we happen to be with enough of my other imaginary friends he usually persuades them to hoist me onto their virtual shoulders while singing the 'Marseillaise' or 'Davy, Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier'. It's really quite moving.

Another benefit that an imaginary friend brings to the psyche is guaranteed comparative superiority.  We all struggle with self image issues:  am I smart enough?  am I good enough?  Did I really write the entire Led Zeppelin backlist and were Jimmy Page and Robert Plant really just talentless hacks who stole my future?  I know that Waldo will never upstage me.  He will never point out my weakenesses except to acknowledge how much greater his are, he will never tell me he hates me even more than Robert Plant and Jimmy Page do.  In short, he will never let me down.  And if he ever does I will imagine such cruel and unusual punishments that I will never imagine that he will imagine ever contradicting my imagination again.  Imagination wise.

I really think that if Barack Obama had had an imaginary adviser/friend he wouldn't have had such trouble with the whole imaginary 'if like your health plan, doctor, drug, life, you can keep it' boo boo.  Because compared to his real healthcare advisers his imaginary friend would have been a member of the reality based community.  I know that I couldn't imagine a scenario that left the President completely ignorant about the pending collapse of his own signature achievement.  I mean that's just ridiculous.  Not even an imaginary friend will buy that.

Squirrel a go go

I woke up at 2am to scratching and squabbling on top of the attic fan.  Damn squirrels.  They share our house -  heck, they were here before us.  But dang-it, they rudely decided to have a Vermin Rave on a work night.  I sat there listening to them get hopped up on acorn juice or whatever.  It sounded like there was a whole mob  up there, their little grey bodies writhing to a primitive rodent beat.  The big owl who lives outside our back window started asking:  "who, who?" as if he was a stone cold hit man looking for a contract.  I told  him: " the damned squirrels, that's who - kill 'em".  But he didn't seem to understand - or maybe the squirrels are part of his posse - he just kept asking "who, who?".

It would seem to me that in a world of infinite diversity where every niche is filled and the dance of nature is finely balanced that some evolutionary process or intelligent designer would have come up with a squirrel species that doesn't like to party at 2am on Thursday mornings 8 feet above my head.

I'm going to see if I can put a contract out on 'em with the red tailed hawk that lives in the front yard - he's less sentimental.

Bloody tree rats.

Tuan

My father has been sick for a long time. More than a tenth of his life for a man of 82. Not that we kids knew he was so sick back then - all he would say for years was that he had a 'chronic' condition that he controlled with drugs...not to worry. And of course we, full of ourselves and our lives didn't because if Tuan said so and mom didn't make a face when he said it then that was that. We call him Tuan which means "Master" in Bahasa the lingua franca of Indonesia. We grew up there along with half a dozen servants and their families and their relatives who also called him Tuan - he was responsible for them too.

He wasn't an easy father - he is a very fastidious man, demanding about the details of his life. He could be acidly critical of us if we didn't measure up. I remember as a teenager trembling with rage because after I had mowed the lawn he - without saying a word - went out and mowed it again. And the things that he cared about were often trivial and he would never let them drop: like a tiny pebble you can't get out of your shoe, becoming bigger and more painful with each step. But strangely, the bigger the crisis, the greater our failures the less critical he became "Dad, I need to borrow some money" "Don't worry I had to borrow money from your Grand dad, will $20,000 do?" Never mind that by the time my father was an adult his parents had gone all but bankrupt and couldn't have lent him a dime - by jumping down in the mud with us he took some of the sting of failure away.

I'm spending a lot of time with him going to and fro to MD Anderson for treatments and meetings with his doctors. He's been at this for eight grueling years and it shows - he forgets things and struggles, searching for words. I hate to answer for him, I want so much for his doctors to see the acute, commanding man that I remember but they turn to me and I relent, I speak for Tuan, for the Master. He's thin as thin can be - "concentration camp inmate" my mother calls him. Yet he never complains about his condition - about the fact that his food isn't hot enough or the floor isn't clean - yes, but not about his pain or his exhaustion or what has to be his desire to just down tools. To stop fighting and go gladly into that good night. I've never talked with him about why he's persevered where most men would have given up but that's because I know the answer.

My father believes his life means something. That his survival, his bloody minded perseverance is a witness to how Reeves face the world and all of its slings and arrows: uncomplaining, stoic with a smile and a wisecrack for the nurses. A witness particularly for his grandchildren - they're almost grown now and he knows they have little time for him and even less time for his advice. But he believes deep in his being that his witness, his faithful perseverance unto death will tower in their minds so long as they shall live. And he knows it will make them stronger for having witnessed it.




My father is a hard man. As hard and precious as diamond.