71 degrees and forecast of 80’s this weekend! Too soon for mosquitoes, so good afternoon on the deck. And I finally figured out all the” rat-a-tat- tatting” I’ve been hearing.
Near the top of an immature White Oak are four, clean holes from Woodpeckers feeding. The tree is in trouble and will be deadfall, condemned I think, from an overzealous HoA Contractor, limbing to prevent roof hazards.
This is the instrumental “Sunny Day” theme from Sesame Street. Killer good harmonica! All that’s missing is the Barred Owl I heard today, looking for love.
President Kennedy watches a Polaris Missile launched from submerged USS Andrew Jackson, 16 Nov. 1963. He was assassinated six days later.
Submarines are Boats, not Ships. They are Ships but they aren’t. And this was eight years before I reported aboard. I spent four years aboard, two as Blue Crew and two as combined crew at Electric Boat for Overhaul & Conversion to Poseidon. New reactor core too. I swear, the yards with Port & Starboard Watch Sections were worse than Patrols.
At the beginning of a Patrol ( we sailed from Rota, Spain), you’d hear and feel the Fairwater Planes slap the surface on submerging. And knew the next 60 to 70 days were watch schedule and life suspended. You turned off the switch.
“Boomers” are still out there, indefensible. A Strategic Nuclear Deterrent. The bad guys know. The guys pushing the buttons? Skivvy Hats like me.
I found this essay in a book by Margaret Renkl “Late Migrations”. It has helped me find peace, more than I can ever explain. Printed and kept a copy in my wallet, which ended up in the hands of folks in similar pain.
I intended to write and ask her if I could share it. Found someone who already had, so:
After The Fall by Margaret Renkl:
This talk of making peace with it. Of feeling it and then finding a way through. Of closure. It’s all nonsense.
Here is what no one told me about grief: you inhabit it like a skin. Everywhere you go, you wear grief under your clothes. Everything you see, you see through it, like a film.
Grief changes people. But change is not always bad and with time those changes create a different person who can still live.
What I mean is, time offers your old self a new shape. What I mean is, you are the old, ungrieving you, and you are also the new ruined you. You are both, and you will always be both. There is nothing to fear. There is nothing at all to fear. Walk out into the springtime, and look: the birds welcome you with a chorus. The flowers turn their faces to your face. The last of last year’s leaves, still damp in the shadows, smell ripe and faintly of fall.
The forest and ravine I wrote about yesterday are, literally, my window. Today and tomorrow’s presentation are illuminated by the the cool, diffuse light of overcast and rain.
The copper colored leaves of this mature American Beech are like gems, set against a field of rich, new, green, immature versions. And provide a proscenium for a pair of Grey Squirrels, in a frantic arboreal chase.
This is a photograph made long ago. I made it, thinking of dancers.
Our Realtor described it as a “Tree House”. Built into a hill, two sides are forest and ravine. Out front, a large Holly I’ve shielded from the HoA landscape crew and an undefended, smaller one, sculpted to suit a Golf Course Community. Sort of a Mockingbird Motel.
I made this photograph long ago, with a long, fast lens I bought for rear of theater use. The Mockingbird, in song and flight, demanded my attention.
Today, nine years later, I was greeted with their song and “Intra-Holly flights”, arriving home from an attorney appointment. The purpose of which will pave my exit to a practical, old widower habitat. Later, savoring my afternoon Bourbon and watching Beech branches sway, one flashed by a window.
I believe Atticus was right, it is a sin to kill a Mockingbird. I will miss them.
Bravo Academy of Dance “Picture Days” 24 May 2016 Chapel Hill, North Carolina
Next Sunday, if I don’t screw up the DNS redirects (my I/T Architect job ended 14 years ago), I will sunset my Event Web Site.
After, surf for “BrookeMeyer.com”, “BrookeMeyer.net”, et al – you’ll end up here. Like the jazz standard so eloquently explains, “Everything Must Change”.
It was pure luck and the graciousness of Studio Owners, Dance Teachers, Dancers, Moms and Dads that I got the opportunity to try. Big medicine for an old heart. I’ll be around, here.
After my refusal to succumb to the popular culture extortion of an Online Ticket Purchase (Swifties will get it), I finally get off my indignation and went to the venue’s physical Box Office. They’re open M-F, 10 AM to 2 PM. Yeah, not real convenient. No weekend hours to avoid downtown parking demand and most folks work hours. But okay for Old Widower Curmudgeons, like Moi.
Stupidly, like a hamster on a wheel, I pulled in to the Public Parking Garage I knew from photographing events in the very same venue. $10 “Event Parking”. No idea what the Event was at Noon. And my fault for not cruising a block or two, for on street availability. Sheepishly, I handed over $10 in cash while the attendant put away the mobile device and found change for my $20.
Two ladies were ahead of me at the Box Office. I was surprised to hear one recite her name, phone and eMail address at the sales clerk’s request, while swiping her credit card. The purchased tickets were entirely digital! I knew I was about to have a new adventure.
When my turn came, I told the clerk the Event, Date and Time I wanted to buy one ticket for. She asked my name and telephone number. I recited those but explained it was a Home Phone – in my case a VoIP line on an Ooma Box with the same number I’ve had for 26 years.
“No”, I was told, “What’s your cellphone number? ” I explained I did have a mobile phone but it was: A. In my truck (remember the parking garage) and B. I didn’t know the number because C. I only use it if I need AAA to come rescue me on the highway or call Duke Power or Spectrum to report outages. Haven’t used it in probably six months. Turn it on once in awhile to make sure it works and keep it charged. About $70 for the year.
She was taken aback and settled for my landline. Realizing she couldn’t issue a Digital Ticket, she Printed one for me, with the advice “Don’t lose it!”. I thought it ironic she didn’t caution the previous customer to not lose their “Phone”.
The good news was, my Ticket was almost $20 less than my aborted Online experience. Plus I had something else to do in Raleigh. And I was very careful driving in a busy city because the folks walking around staring at their phones sure weren’t looking where they were going .
True Confession: I tuned to watch the 2014 SuperBowl for the sole reason of hearing Renee Fleming sing. Football – meh.
Today, eMail brought me the 2024/2025 Paris Opera Season Programme (once you buy Tickets online, you’re on the email list).
Ms Fleming will perform next March, in 2025. If the Boss Lady was still alive, I’d be scheming to sell her that we could afford the plane tickets plus we really should visit Paris. I’d sell her with this excursion: Chihuly At Biltmore . She was a ginormous fan!
Rue Ferdinand Duval & Rue du Roi de Sicile. A block from Rue de Rivoli.
There is a framed print of this by the only real portrait my sweetheart allowed – okay, I caught her unaware. Made this with a Sony P&S in 2007, before a Parisian pickpocket “liberated” it from my jacket, hung on the back of a bistro chair. Pretty much the only crime you need to be aware of in Paris. I sort of owe him. The camera was worth not much and it precipitated an encore career. But that’s not what this is about.
In widowerhood, eventually, the afternoons are quiet. It is, like Martha Stewart says “A good thing”. The practical necessity of daily routine, at least in my case, dictates attention to preparation of the evening meal. And eventually, you start to read the “Use By” dates on magical stuff that, if you were like me and married to the Italian Julia Child, needs to be disappeared. And for the best of reasons, let it go. But there is no easy disposal of physical reminders.
I’ve had the luxury of time to digest an overwhelming menu of hard on the heart. Salved by the memory embedded in a photograph. And I highly recommend the Ribeye & Pomme Frites at Le Bucheron. It’s a few doors left of the crosswalk in the photograph
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