You Can't Go Home

So I don't mean to transcribe the entire book in this blog but here is another excerpt from Travels with Charley that resonates with me. I have felt this, and just as much as the memory of me stands still back home as time goes on, my memory of home stands still as my life goes on... Despite what Bon Jovi says, you can't home.

"...What we know is dead, and maybe the greatest part of what we were is dead. What's out there is new and perhaps good, but its nothing we know... The place of my origin had changed, and having gone away I had not changed with it. In my memory it stood as it once did and its outward appearance confused and angered me. What I am about to tell must be the experience of very many in this nation where so many wander and come back. I called on old and valued friends. I thought their hair had receded a little more than mine. The greetings were enthusiastic. The memories flooded up. Old crimes and old triumphs were brought out and dusted. And suddenly my attention wandered, and looking at my ancient friend, I saw that his wandered also. And it was true what I had said to Johnny Garcia-- I was the ghost. My town had grown and changed and my friend along with it. Now returning, as changed to my friend as my town was to me, I distorted his picture, muddied his memory. When I went away I had died, and so became fixed and unchangeable. My return caused only confusion and uneasiness. Although they could not say it, my old friends wanted me gone so that I could take my proper place in the pattern of remembrance--and I wanted to go for the same reason. Tom Wolfe was right. You can't go home again because home has ceased to exist except in the mothballs of memory."

This song is me:

The Lesser Known Side of Ed McMahon

Photo: www.mda.org

Say It Ain't So

MDA camp has been canceled this year because of the swine flu. This is devastating news to so many campers that live for this week. The concern is that many campers have suppressed and weak immune and respiratory systems, and they don't want to take the chance of potentially infecting any campers. I guess there have already been several cases where campers have been infected at this year's camps.

My old camp was one of the remaining camps that has been canceled. What a monumental let down. I guarantee, given option to go regardless, most campers and parents would take the risk... That is how much this camp means to these kids.

MDA probably did the right thing... but... Man what a huge decision to have to make. The reality is some campers will die before next year. This is truly the most important week of the year for most of them. You can't understand it, unless you see it or experience it first hand.

Social Creatures

In 1960 John Steinbeck embarked on a journey across the country with his Poodle Charley. He said that he realized that he had been writing stories about the American life but that he hadn't really known the extent of people, cultures, or places in his great country. His journey is chronicled in what I think is his only non-fiction book Travels with Charley; in Search of America. The following is an excerpt from the book that spoke to my core. I understand exactly what he means by this and it really speaks to the human spirit; that we are social creatures and that we need each other:

"Having a companion fixes you in time and that the present, but when the quality of aloneness settles down, past, present, and future all flow together. A memory, a present event, and a forecast all equally present... A number of years ago I had some experience with being alone. For two succeeding years I was alone each winter for eight months at a stretch in the Sierra Nevada mountains on Lake Tahoe. I was a caretaker on a summer estate during the winter months when it was snowed in. And I made some observations then. As the time went on I found that my reactions thickened. Ordinarily I am a whistler. I stopped whistling. I stopped conversing with my dogs, and I believe that subtleties of feeling began to disappear until finally I was on a pleasure-pain basis. Then it occurred to me that the delicate shades of feeling, of reaction, are the result of communication, and without such communications they tend to disappear. A man with nothing to say has no words. Can its reverse be true--a man who has no one to say anything to has no words as he has no need for words? Now and then there appear accounts of babies raised by animals--wolves and such. It is usually reported that the youngster crawls on all fours, makes those sounds learned from his foster parents, and perhaps even thinks like a wolf. Only through imitation do we develop toward originality..."

And this is why I blog.

Drill Baby Drill...

Four small cavities. It has been a while so I am not too ashamed. It took four and half hours, but I am left with a solid, decay-free grill. Can't give up the sugar babies though.

Deal Breaker(s)

Seriously?! As if the Bud Light you were drinking wasn't enough... you went and dropped $20 in the jukebox to play Dierks Bentley and 50 other shitty country songs? Come on, wtf? I take it back, your cowgirl boots are no longer hot and neither are you... Check please!