We make plans, God snows

Last night on the cusp of the Blizzard of 2010 here in Merrytown we walked to The Rec Room Billiards to practice pool and watch the blast unwind. It didn't seem too bad at 6:30 when we started out. Not too many people in Towson. We played on the hourly tables, daughter and I, then moved to the per game table in the front window to quaff a beer and enjoy a burger. Two bold but questionably bright young men befriended us, mostly to hit on daughter, and we had the pleasure of playing doubles. One of the guys was pretty darn good and we got some pointers and coaching. The other was pretty full of himself, I mean they did approach a girl AND HER MOTHER. Does this really work for you, she asked.

They finally headed out to HiTopps and we trudged home, snowing harder, more foot traffic than vehicle traffic. Daughter headed out to sled after that, and I headed to bed. This morning of my God. It may not officially be the storm of the century, 2003 still holds that record of 28", but we are getting close. Little dog ran out the door, jumped off the porch and disappeared. He fears the white death.

Over two feet of snow, finally the experience of living in Montana, and the nostalgia of growing up in the Midwest. A friend is making tunnels for his daughter. I remember the tunnels, the igloos, the snow forts we'd make. I put a snowball in the freezer.

Today it's still snowing, presumably till 10 p.m. I'm enjoying every one's blizzard photos. No one is going anywhere. I hope nothing essential collapses. I fear the power will go off at any time. My business is closed today, and probably tomorrow. Who knows when it will ever be open, and if we'll ever dig out. More snow coming Wed/Thurs. Little dog already has cabin fever.

The temptation is to cook, and eat. Not good after a ten pound holiday. A great time to whip the house into shape. Catch up on all those little things that usually I have the excuse "I don't have time for" just so I don't have to do them. But something meditative drifts over from the snow event and makes me feel like sitting, staring, contemplating.

Lately I've had lots of negative feedback, personal rejection, causes for self doubt and low self worth. The storm has just whirled around my motivation level pulling it down down down. It's snowing harder. Snowing and blowing. Screw all those people who don't find me as fascinating as I find me. It's snowing where they are too.

So much snow it's hard to walk outside. It is reaching dangerous levels, for driving, for the weight of the wet snow, for overburdened tree branches. The poor birds chirping to be fed. Lately between the online dating, or not dating, and the weather, and my ever nagging need for a change, I've been thinking a great deal about what I want, and why. I got a bit of good advice prior to the online dating, be specific. At first I thought, gee, perhaps that rules out some very good things I would have never have considered. But it didn't. It put in my path considerations which should have never been considerations in the first place.

I'll be doing an entire post on online dating. Back to the snow. Bigger flakes. More blowing. And it's cold outside. Time to reclaim my drishti.

Bizarre twisted reach of the Internet

A couple of blogs ago I wrote about my Father during World War II and his experiences in Graves Registration. I mentioned a Newsweek article in which he was quoted in 1954 with his last name spelled incorrectly. Someone referenced that misspelled name and hit my blog site. Odd I thought. So I googled my Dad's misspelled name, and to my amazement his crude little quote was famous!

Here's the quote in its George Romero entirety with the parts Newsweek politely removed:

"Sure, there were lots of bodies we never identified. You know what a direct hit by a shell does to a guy. Or a mine, or a solid hit with a grenade, even. Sometimes all we have is a leg or a hunk of arm. The ones that stink the worst are the guys who got internal wounds and are dead about three weeks with the blood staying inside and rotting, and when you move the body the blood comes out of the nose and mouth.

Then some of them bloat up in the sun, they bloat up so big that they bust the buttons and then they get blue and the skin peels. They don't all get blue, some of them get black. But they all stunk. There's only one stink and that's it. You never get used to it, either. As long as you live, you never get used to it. And after a while, the stink gets in your clothes and you can taste it in your mouth. You know what I think? I think maybe if every civilian in the world could smell this stink, then maybe we wouldn't have any more wars."

—Technical Sergeant Donald Haguall, 48th Quartermaster Graves Registration (quoted in Purnell's History of the Second World War)

Yes, he's quoted in Purnell's History of the Second World War, Phillip Knightley's The First Casualty, Webster's Guide to American History, "44 in Combat from Normandy to Ardennes.

From these, the little-quote-that-could spun out to an unlikely group of websites: archaeology, military strategy, battlefields, legal, grief, LOTS of antiwar sites (domestic and international,) dozens of blogsites, a New York sports fan site????, and a Corvette???? website. I have not found yet, but expect to, a horror movie website or an anatomy site.

My father was a simple man with a great imagination and vivid descriptive abilities. He might possibly have been a writer. When he did communicate it could be powerful or very funny with his own unique twist. I don't know what he would have made out of the use of his quote. There were no high concept intentions. It was his life day to day during the war and it made him cling to his family and friends, seek solace in nature, and live simply.

But most of all, my Father was honest and spoke his mind. Over and over the relatives said, "you always know where you stand with Don. He tells you exactly what he thinks." No military censor or political cover up. Be it war or natural disaster, what he meant was what he said -- scraping up dead bodies is awful business.

Happy Birthday, Mr. Zevon - Jan. 24

As novelist and screenwriter Tom McGuane recalls, “I kept wanting to say to him, ‘Take your hat off and let your brain cool down. You just need to cool it a little bit’ . . . . But that was his style, everything dialed up to ten.”

Legendary songwriter and musician Warren Zevon unsurprisingly ranks as one of Dylan's favorites. Dylan notes the songs "Lawyers, Guns and Money" and "Boom Boom Mancini" as "down hard stuff," adding, "'Join me in L.A.' sort of straddles the line between heartfelt and primeval. His musical patterns are all over the place, probably because he's classically trained. There might be three separate songs within a Zevon song, but they're all effortlessly connected. Zevon was a musician's musician, a tortured one. 'Desperado Under the Eaves.' It's all in there."

Mr. Springsteen has described Mr. Zevon as writing about ''the good, the bad and the ugly'' and called him ''a moralist in cynic's clothing.''

All this time, marriage kids & all, he has been the voice to which I always turn.

"...And if California slides into the ocean/As the mystics and statistics say it will/I predict this motel will be standing/Until I pay my bill." Best. Couplet. Ever.

He's been a Confederate soldier, a psychopathic ex-Catholic carpet salesman, and Philip Habib, President Carter's envoy to the Middle East. He's been on the run from werewolves, the Securities Exchange Commission, President Woodrow Wilson, and an assortment of overly amorous women. Warren Zevon is a Crusader, a stage magician, Joseph of Aramathea, and a sexual masochist with low self-esteem.

They were terse, action-packed, gallows-humored tales that could sketch an entire screenplay in four minutes and often had death as a punch line. But vulnerability and longing were also in Mr. Zevon's ballads...

To be blessed with humanity, mucho musical chops, AND a criminally literate mind is truly one of God's great gifts.

Warren Zevon is a poet. He has written more classics than any other musician of our time, with the possible exception of Bob Dylan. ... He is also a crack shot with a .44 magnum and an expert on lacrosse -- which we also watched while we worked. He went wild when Princeton beat Syracuse for the NCAA Championship on Sunday.

He disappeared in the middle of the night, still without sleep -- saying he was headed to Indianapolis to write a song with Colts owner James Irsay, who just returned from buying Kerouac's original manuscript of "On The Road" for $2.43 million at Christie's Auction House in New York. Irsay is another one of Warren's heroes. Warren is a profoundly mysterious man, and I have learned not to argue with him, about hockey or anything else. He is a dangerous drinker, and a whole different person when he's afraid.

-- Hunter S. Thompson

In an era of lava lamp soft rock and SoCal slickness, Zevon paraded his renegade outlaw act loaded with irony, wit and literary heft.

Behind Mr. Zevon's stoic baritone, the music changed with its central instrument. His piano songs suggested marches, hymns and the harmonies of Aaron Copland, while his guitar songs connected rock, Celtic and country music

Zevon seldom lived inside reasonable lines, but he did not blame his difficulties on others. That alone makes him highly unusual among modern men, and a singular case among rock-and-rollers. His response to that life was to write songs mixing humor with disappointment and sarcasm with gratitude, which is surely the most honest reaction to life that any man can have.

"As someone who abused the privilege for a long time, I'd like to say, it's good to be alive."

"I might have made a tactical error not going to a physician for 20 years. It was one of those phobias that didn't pay off."

Letterman comments to Rolling Stone about his meeting with Zevon at his dressing room after the show. "After the show, it was heartbreaking -he was in his dressing room, and we were talking and this and that. Here's a guy who had months to live and we're making small talk," Letterman said. "And as we're talking, he's taking his guitar strap and hooking it, wrapping it around, then he puts the guitar into the case and he flips the snaps on the case and says, "Here, I want you to have this, take good care of it."

"And I just started sobbing. He was giving me the guitar that he always used on the show. I felt like, "I can't be in this movie, I didn't get my lines." That was very tough."

"Went over to Ryan’s. Later in the evening I got stuck in the elevator — Fire Dept. had to come. Not as much fun as it sounds.”

One of the most acute and savagely satiric songwriters of his era...

"Hide the porn, son, hide the porn."

Warren Zevon was a big fan of Doctor Faustus; he thought the Thomas Mann tome was “the ultimate rock ‘n’ roll novel.” But if he himself cooked up any deals with the baddest of Mr. Bad Examples, he got sold short.

"No," he says quickly. "It's not just the karma. The Tao says, 'Old men like being old and young men like being young. And good is good, and bad is good too.' As my father used to say in his late 80s, 'It's all good.' But I don't get depressed. I don't know." He raises his teacup. "I'm insane. I'm fucked up. I have problems. But I don't get depressed and I don't get bored."

Zevon is an acquired taste, like sloe gin ... or capital punishment.

Warren Zevon has known from the start that hell is where they play rock & roll. In this, as well as in his romanticism, he resembles the great eighteenth century poet William Blake: "Good is the passive that obeys Reason. Evil is the active springing from Energy."

Warren Zevon openly defied the "muy sensitive" stereotype of the L.A. singer/songwriter. Literate, satiric, violence-obsessed, funny as hell, piano-pounding, equally capable of deranged rock-outs and beautifully sustained melodies:

"Regrets are so far from reality. Would

I like to tell someone, 'Look, if you don't

want to die at 55, you might not want to

smoke for 30 years'? Sure. I'm a living

example of that. But this is my life, these

were my choices. I lucked out big time because

I got to be the most (expletive)-up rock

star on the block, at least on my block,

and then I got to be a sober dad for 18

years. I've had two very full lives."

"I'm the rockabilly Ibsen in Norway"

I like wherever I am. That's my big secret."

"I suppose on some deep and profound

level, the evening would seem incomplete to

me without three minutes of howling."

"The moon has a face

And it smiles on the lake

And causes the ripples in Time

I'm lucky to be here, with someone I like

Who maketh my spirit to shine"

Good Bye Tallulah, Don't Leave Me

The friend I've known the longest in Baltimore is moving away after 15 years. The Bert to my Ernie, the Heckle to my Jeckle, the Natty to my Boh. My dear Tallulah, like a sister, a daughter, and if I was bi, probably another person she would have dated.

We met at work as my marriage was dissolving and I was desperately in need of a fellow marauder with razor wit, acid tongue, tough as nails, fun as monkeys, tolerated no fools unless they were drop dead gorgeous or good in the sack. Despite our age difference we seemed to have similar sensibilities and appetites.

She taught me to always check driver's licenses to make sure they were legal and hadn't lied about their height. She introduced me to the Rendezvous, the original Rendezvous, where we spent many afternoons, evenings and late late nights, dodging and deflecting tawdry advances, discussing books, or shooting the shit with the bartenders. When the trolls wouldn't leave me alone she'd pretend we were a couple. When one poor guy still didn't get it she laser leveled him with a single line. I was too nice, she said.

We cowered in awe of Captain Kangaroo together. I held her hair when she puked on Martini night, helped her move about five times. We watched each other's cats and I marveled in the older days that not one inch of her apt floor was visible. She'd call drunk from Puxatawney, Pa. where she went to celebrate her favorite holiday, Ground hog's Day.

My best New Year's Eve party was her worst New Year's Eve party yet the two strands of that night wrapped together like some comic opera. After that we would spend New Year's Eve together in the seediest, emptiest bar we could find with the nastiest bartender in the world who she still respected because he was the only one that ever cut her off.

She made great beer, was a helluva cook, a partner in crime, crocheted me stuff, watched my kids grow up, left entire soliloquies on my answering machine. Okay so she's just up the the road a couple hours, but damn Sam, it's still hard to say goodbye.

Year of Living Fearlessly

I feel a change is gonna come. People are leaving me, my son, his wife, my granddaughter, my good friend. My son is a big one because he will be in Afghanistan so I can't hop a plane and see him whenever I choose. My granddaughter will change drastically even though it may be only a few months till I see her again.

But, I found out that a former neighbor of mine, who I thoughtlessly assumed was dead because I had been out of touch with her for so long, is still alive and around 100. I will see her soon.

I talked to another friend I hadn't seen in ages and remembered how dear she was, especially considering the horrible tragedy that befell her several years ago. People come and go out of life. I must be careful not to miss any of them.

Fearless isn't necessarily performing brave and daring feats. It will be staying honest and on track with what I want to do in spite of the daily house cat humdrum. I've become very complacent the past sixth months, which oddly isn't the way my mind runs. My mind is a washing machine of thoughts, a constant churning out of, I should do this, I would like to do that, buy that, make this, write that, clean this. The thoughts never make it down to the extremities lately. Restlessness sets in. Dissatisfaction. Never wanted to be a house cat.

My resolutions I made rather tongue in cheek, even though they are real and have been compounding for a few years. The main thing I realize is how much I miss being able to have friends over without scaring them that I live in a crack house, or without them banging their head on the low hanging ceiling when they use the bathroom in the basement. I have no closets in which to hang their coats.

Long, long ago we use to have a party every couple months. A big one. Every weekend we had friends over. Friends and photos. Being married to a photographer our life was very well documented and displayed. We had themed parties. And unthemed parties. Parties where we knew everyone, and knew no one. And when we didn't have parties, we went to parties.

One friend called me Zelda. I was quite partial to the House Rules the Fitzgeralds posted at their house that I had a copy over my desk. It reads in part:

"Visitors are requested not to break down doors in search of liquor, even when authorized to do so by the host and hostess. Weekend guests are respectfully notified that the invitations to stay over Monday issued by the host and hostess during the small hours of Sunday morning must not be taken seriously."

It was a good New Year's. I saw old friends. I got to see my son's best man and former bunkie at Ft Drum who is a sweetest, nicest guy and why not, he's from Illinois. Friends of my daughters. New in laws. My dog even got to spend time with his brother, close as clams as they romped and growled and chased.

Bring it on 2010, or whatever it is you call yourself. I'm ready.

Baby It's Cold Outside

Nothing underlines cold like trying to canter in an unheated arena. I could have sworn my back and leg joints were made of ice and likely to shatter at any moment. The horse was fluid, I was granite. Today I am stiff and in need of some hot yoga.

On the subject of cold climates, i heard from a Hagvall in Sweden via FB. It was so very cool (excuse the pun.) Thank God he speaks English at least better than I speak Swedish. Hagvall, he says, is not a common name and the only ones he is aware of are his family, some cousins, and someone in Stockholm. His brother has been researching the family name back to the 17th century so I'm very excited to ask him what he's found.

Off for a couple days to hopefully visit with my family before they head back to Tennessee, and then my son to Afghanistan, and to begin setting my house in order. Dog and cats all concur it's cold outside by curling in tight balls and pretending to hibernate.

While hunkered in from the cold I have a movie to recommend if you've never seen it during one of PBS' frequent fundraisers. It's Alone in the Wilderness, about a man named Richard Proenneke, who decides to live alone in Alaska for a year in a cabin he cuts the trees for and builds himself with simple tools. Based on his journals and footage shot with an 8 mm camera, he lives a dream so many have, not to be at odds with the world but content with only one's own thoughts and company. It's an Into the Wild from the 70's only with a mature, well contemplated result.

So what have I done? Another year over and a new one begun. 2009 was better than 2008 which will go down in the sucking year hall of fame. The only true negative was the Lyme disease. I do believe my brain has been compromised. I'm having problems with short term memory more than just the regular growing old forgetfulness which has alarmed both me and my daughter. Even bigger problems with sore, aching joints in my knees and hips which come and go, but are staying longer each time. Kate graduated, Aubrey arrived, Bernie joined us. All good stuff.

"Determined" will be the watchword for 2010. And no, I'm not worried about what we will call the new year. We had a customer at the store very concerned about this and decided that President Obama should set the standard for how we refer to 2010. Poor man's got a shitload on his plate, now this. What does it matter when I'll continue to write 2009 on checks for at least four months. Checks will probably be obsolete soon anyway.

Now I have two friends who can perform my marriage. This is incentive to try online dating again. Nietzsche says something about overcoming danger by moving forward to it. I'm partial to this guy who retired and moved to Montana to raise gaited horses and cattle, something he'd dreamed of during all his years of teaching in Michigan. However in all honesty, I don't like the cold. The isolation is appealing.

The smell of burning wood...

Walking through the cold blustery nights, the smell of burning wood from nearby homes smells like life long ago, smells like old comfort, smells like walking on forever.