Infinite Jest--Time will find us

From one media to another

Times change, without a doubt.  As technology made photographs more accessible and cheap, almost every family documented big events.  Burgeoning photo albums showed the styles of the 1960s and the 1970s.  Silly hair styles and mini-skirts were part of the albums.

Just don't bend over.

Movie cameras shrank from complicated monsters with four blinding headlights to hand-held quiet 8mm cameras, capturing the silliness of my era. 

We were the hippy generation, the postwar baby boomers.  Long straight hair and ‘hot pants’ were the style; leisure suits were dressing up.  We documented our life together with photo and film. 

Hot babe

At Christmas 2012, I arranged to transfer a big box of 8 mm film to DVD, with my narration and background music. 

From our early marriage days, through our children era, and then to the mid 90s, I soon found myself smiling big and a little teary.  I don’t know what reaction I expected from our now adult kids. Oh, Mom! These are so great! Thank you so much!

Because we were diligent in recording our history and obsessive about keeping those films, we have a new position in the minds of our grown children:

                           We are their source of INFINITE JEST.

  

What we did get were peals of laughter, OMG-dad-you-were-such-a-geek, and LOL-mom-you-were-so-hot.

Our grandchildren will have hours of diversion and entertainment with our visual legacy to our progeny.  

Hours and hours of infinite jest. Yes, our legacy is digital.

Think I'm old? Just watch me.

St. Charles, Missouri

Living in a 55+ community where many of the residents were alive in the WW2 and Korean War time period, I have observed some amazing people. Some are old and frail, but they are amazing.

Many can be seen at the clubhouse playing cards (gambling!), in the exercise room, and in the pool.  Don't count these or any seniors out.

That being said, here can give you an idea what an old person can do.

I don't know about you, but I sure couldn't do those dance moves, wouldn't even attempt them. I could give that cashier a chewing out like nobody's business. Young whippersnapper.

Roll in ze hay

Another re-post, but edited.  How we loved this show, these actors....

One of the best and probably defining movies of my generation was the brilliant version of “Young Frankenstein” with Gene Wilder, Peter Boyle, Terri Garr, Madeleine Kahn, and Marty Feldman.  Even now, some almost 40 years later, my husband and I quote phrases that we remember and we chuckle.

“Roll in ze hay”  or  

“Franken-shteen!  Not Franken-shtine!”

The one that I remember today is “Oh! Sweet Mystery of Life, at last I’ve Found you!” sung by Madeleine Kahn.  I won't post it, but it is great.

Strangely, anyone of the generation before us know nothing about this gem. Nothing of Silverado, The Sting, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid...movies we of the 1960s remember and can quote line by line.

But then, we know nothing of Stranger on a Train, Dial M for Murder, 42nd Street, Broadway Melodies....

Perspective is the issue.

Passion of the Pearl: Letter P

Souce: namu project

The Letter P

Could it be perfume, pink, pandering, pancakes ...?

Strong to my traditional form, the letter P is for:
Pearl

Pearl harbored serious obsession here.

This Pearl is Great-Aunt Pearl, whom I knew only by reputation and photos. Grandmother Amy was the oldest of three sisters with the middle sister Grace and youngest sister Pearl. 

In 1911, Pearl was in high school, with all the expectations of any young woman in the early 1900s, which were basically marriage, children, and home.


But, OH, first came the tender innocent love, romance with its soft touches, shy kisses, sweet words...

In her English textbook, Pearl practiced writing her name, over and over.  Other pages were covered with doodles and sketches, dreamy sketches of young men.  
Even her perception of Hell expressed a passionate moment in her life.

This textbook must have been all over the classroom, passed from girl to girl.  Squelched giggles and hurried scribbles asked and answered questions.  Comments and questions (what did he say about me?...Certainly I know that YOU know!..Girls are made to flirt with men---But men with girls??  Oh! No!...) ***

 Pearl's dreams of romance were recorded for a great-niece to find:

The drawings and notes were found in History of English Literature by Reuben Post Halleck, M.A  (Yale), published by the American Book Company in 1900.

Pearl married shortly after graduation, at the age of eighteen or so.  The man she married was named Fred, who was rather plain and balding early, liked to fish, and was not greatly ambitious.  He was the very antithesis of the ideal heroic man of her dreams. 

On March 6, 1913, in a double wedding, Pearl married Fred Funk AND
her sister Grace married John Friend.

Whenever I asked my grandmother about her sister Pearl, she would sigh and say, "Oh, Pearl..."

I was an over-achiever.  I never did any of this.  Seriously.


Imagine what Pearl and her friends could have done with Smart Phones.

***Copied from the text book, written in pencil.

Now, what did YOU do during a high school class?  Be honest, now!

Ecce Puer by James Joyce

James Joyce's Photograph of Ireland

James Joyce was an Irish writer of great fame.  Some of his works are epic, in the truest sense of the word.

James Joyce tribute in Dublin

He also wrote small tender works, such as the poem below.  This poem talks of the birth of his grandson and the death of his father.  Joyce, being the generation in between, writes of this position.

Of the dark past

A child is born.

With joy and grief

My heart is torn.

Calm in his cradle

The living lies.

May love and mercy

Unclose his eyes.;

Young life is breathed

On the glass;

The world that was not

Comes to pass.

The child is sleeping

The old man gone.

Oh, father forsaken,

Forgive your son.

Life and death--two certain events in one's span.  

On this day, November, a baby died nine years ago.  His mother, Elisa C. Stilson, has published her journal about the struggles of his short life, and how she viewed each day.  A precious book.  A painful book.  A book that speaks of a mother's love and her fight to hold all together.

Click on the image to go to this site for an exciting event: The Golden Sky

Generations

Child of my child

Lies in my arms asleep,

There, my father’s brow

Here, my mother’s smile.

Her father’s chin and her mother’s hair…

Generations and generations

Warmly wrapped in a

Soft

Pink

Blanket.

T is for...

Time.  We all moan about not having enough of time.  I used to tell my children that they had too much time on their hands if they were getting into fights.  My husband always has big plans for projects he will do over the weekend, but on Sunday night, we look at each other and ask, “Where did the time go?”

That is the big question of the day:  Where did the time go?

It is not as though it slipped behind the bookcase, or joined the lost remote in the sofa cushions.  It certainly isn’t hiding with the iPod, which my husband has AGAIN misplaced!  Time seems to run away from us, like a small child who has just discovered he can outrun his parents.

Time is a fire in which we all burn.

In “Star Trek: Generations” with Patrick Stewart as Captain Jean Luc Picard (sighJ), he is confronted by Dr. Tolian Soran, played by Malcolm McDowell, who says, “Time is the fire in which we all burn.”  Picard has just learned that his brother and nephew have perished in a fire, and this statement hits him rather brutally. 

Is Dr. Soran correct?  Is this the view that most people accept? 

I don’t believe, or can’t believe that it is. 

Time is the ticking of some form of clock, to be sure, but it is also an accumulation of life experiences, memories, events, and closely held loved ones.  Time is a steady revolution of the earth around the sun, a myriad of glorious sunrises and sunsets, the rushing of the foamy tides.  Time is holding the hand of my husband on our wedding day, and still holding his hand when we are old. 

Jean Luc Picard, at the end of the movie when all action is said and done, concludes that time is much like an old friend who moves along slowly with us through our life time.  I really like that conclusion.  “Do not go gentle into that good night!  Rage, rage, against the dying of the light!”  as proposed by the Welsh poet, Dylan Thomas is certainly an option.  But, as for me, knowing that the closing of my eyes as a mortal being, and the opening of them to behold God for all eternity, I prefer that measurement of time.  

I sent my love a letter...

I write a letter every day to my mother, who is 83 years old and living in a care facility.   It is difficult to speak to her on a phone, although not impossible.  She has a cell phone (!) but her hands are so crippled with arthritis that it is hard for her to dial out, and hold the phone to her ear.  So I write a letter everyday.

You’d think I would run out of things to write about, but it doesn’t really matter what the topic is:  she loves getting the letter and reading anything that brings her into my life, and her life into mine.  The most important things about the letter are that I am thinking about her, that I want to share something with her, and that the postman will deliver that envelope.  All those things make the difference in her day.

I discovered last summer that Mom has kept every letter I have written since she became so crippled.  She also has kept all the letters I wrote to her when I lived in Ireland; she has kept all the letters that her sister Vada wrote to her when she and Uncle Ed lived in England.  Mom has a box of letters that Dad wrote to his mother during WWII.  Boxes and boxes of letters, all from people she loves.

I asked her why she had kept them, and she told me, “Well, Susie.  I like to open and read them every now and then.  They take me back to the day I got them, and remind me of what I was doing then.  I like to read them because I can hear (their) voices, just as if (they) were sitting right there with me.”

Now, that’s a good reason to write a letter, put it in an envelope with a stamp, and send it.

Emailing, tweeting, IM, or twittering just isn’t the same.  They are fine, in a limited way.  But those communications will never form the stuff of history.  Think about the great letter writers of our past:  Emperor Napoleon, John Adams, George Washington, Don Juan, and Thomas Jefferson— just to name a few.  Those letters were kept, and some historian put them into a book, for generations to read.  The letters humanize the legend, make us realize how important relationships are, and see the writer as a person clutching a pen and struggling over finding just the right word or phrase.

I have a few boxes of letters.  I have the letters my then fiancé wrote to me, and I to him.  They are hidden up in a closet, and would embarrass our children if they happened upon these declarations of passionate love.  There are some letters from my grandmothers, and friends from my past.  And I remember how important it was to get these letters. 

So, I write this in praise of the stamped, mailed, and posted letter, long may they be delivered by hand.