Streaming

Streaming 

I will be forgotten.  It’s inevitable regardless of what vestiges I leave behind.  For those reading this, you will be forgotten too, no matter how important you think you are, how many buildings are named after you, or how much money you have.  Yes, you will be forgotten as well.  However, I begin by focusing on myself.

I was recently rummaging through old photos as many tend to do when cleaning closets, attics, and other forgotten places.  I see photos filling a shoebox in the closet. A particular photo caught my eye, maybe when I was seven or eight years old.  Black and white, where everything seemed fine. But my photo-face betrayed me.  My lips curled like a thumb and finger pressed together with no space in between, and though not readily visible, there were tears.

I don’t remember why I cried when I was young. What could be wrong? I always had food and clothes and a house to live in. What could make me cry? My mother and father were together, not a divided household, two mothers and two fathers, perhaps siblings that weren’t related, or half-related or step-related. There was discipline, hard discipline that brought fear into our hearts, but 

not into photos, black and white.

By the time the photos were in color, I had grown and there were no more visible tears. Maybe I cried myself out when I was a boy, between five and ten, when everything seemed black and white. The shades of gray came later in life, the orgasmic deluge of color followed, that could foster fear or, conversely, ecstasy.’ But I could not cry. Where did the tears go?

Do we ever get to know our parents as people?  Most of what we derive about them is through observation and superficial conversation. At least, that’s the way it was in our house.  I never really had an in-depth conversation with my mother or father like I did with my college cohorts.  You know, the late night bull sessions. Being more introverted in my younger years, it didn’t even cross my mind to learn about their lives outside of being my parents.  It wasn’t until later in my life, when I had children, that I began to comprehend what their life was before marriage and children.  World War II.  Rape. The Great Depression.  These were the forces that prevailed in their existence and shaped their personalities.  Quiet. Reserved.  Hating men.  

            Now it’s too late.  They’re gone.  Dead.  Beyond question and answer contact.  Most of what I learned came when I visited them in the nursing home even though some of the memories were likely clouded by dementia, or at least forgetfulness.  The clear-cut memories were the ones that came forth in a strong statement of what occurred in their life.  I regret not being closer to my parents.  Looking back, I marvel how much they did for us.  One wage earner, my father, who probably at his peak earning period brought home $600 per week.  That money put three of us through college, another through nursing school, and funded some escapades like my adventure in Paris that lasted several months.

            I’m seventy-five years old.  I have lived longer than I have left to live.  Most of the time, I don’t think about it.  But there are those times when I dwell on it. The Stoics say to ignore what you can’t control.  Undulating waves of memory. Scraps of sorrow called regrets, sobering an active mind that has turned sour, sputtering like a car running out of gas.  These are the days left versus those gone that led to this time that could be termed inconsequential.  How did it end up this way?  Plans?  There were few plans, at least not until any effective plan would be futile.  Another “it’s too late” scenario.

One of man’s most precious qualities is the capacity to hold a lifetime in the mind.  When the mind ceases to exist, so does everything connected to it.  Memories. Plans.  Ambitions.  Hopes.  Fears. Joys. Gone without a trace.  Granted, some of the memories will exist in stories and recollections of those who had infiltrated the mind, but the particulars will be lost forever.  A day spent in the countryside of France can be shared with those who had been a part of the excursion, but the individual thoughts and personal reactions vanish with the extinguishment of the mind.  I often lapse into minutia and ponder the myriad of days when I awoke and decided what to wear or how I decided to do some of the things I did.  Other random thoughts about my past puzzled me from a couple different vantage points.  I become paranoid, almost a sense of fear, wondering whether I had actually done everything that filled my memory.  I see photos.  I see me in the photos but cannot grasp the substance of what I see.  Did I really do that?  In one particular photo, I was standing in front of a tour bus with four of my friends, a gaping hole in the front of the bus caused by a shattered windshield.  I wrote about it, “Shattered Memories.”  There is no doubt that I was there, yet even seeing the photo did not prompt memories to surface.  

Why?

         I can’t let yesterday bother me or tomorrow influence me, but rather be present with today.  Reality is just an illusion albeit a persistent one.  There are many days behind me. My memory treats them kindly. Most of what I recall are the good times, the friendly faces and places and the interactions that made me smile and gave me pause to remember. Of course, there are the villainous moments and even years where I participated in doing what I felt was correct but see now as folly, self-indulgent acts and outcomes, and what can easily be identified as bad decisions.  It is the life I made for myself, betraying how I thought it would be and how I would end up at the tail end of my existence.  I daresay that I have had a good life overall.  I certainly didn’t sit on the fence.  I was either all in or remained on the sidelines, watching and listening, doing and learning.  

            I never got tired of learning.  I could have gone to school my entire life, though living life with all its experiences is learning whether it be working or dealing with people or merely contemplating the universe.  One of the oddities I learned about work is that no matter how menial or simple a job may seem, a person doing the job will always be better than someone learning it.  It could be sweeping a floor or painting a window frame, the incumbent will know more than another person trying his or her hand at it for the first time, even a so-called “genius.”  I remember when the CEO where I worked asked me what she should do to get employees to understand what she did within the organization.  At the time, I directed the Housekeeping, Laundry, Maintenance, Groundskeeping, Power Plant, and Security operations.  I told her that most of them will never grasp what she does.  It would be more beneficial if she tried to learn how they contributed to the organization.  At the time, I surmised that wasn’t the answer she was looking for.  However, after a few months, she instituted a “Walk in My Shoes” program that ultimately put company executives learning the jobs of what were termed “entry level” employees.

Did I mention that I’m seventy-five years old? Writing stuff down as fast as I can because I don’t have much time left, although my mother died at 97, and my father made it to 84. If I average the two, I could reach 90 or 91. About twenty more years. Not enough time for what I have to say. Why didn’t I start sooner? 

Ask my life.

Now I have to jumble everything in stream of consciousness, instead of thoughtful deliberation on meaning and context. What a shame! People will read this and think,“What a dolt!” I can’t blame them, even though I know more thought went into it than a dolt could muster. I mourn the loss of everything and anything I will never do again. People and places I won’t see, music I won’t hear, food I won’t eat. I look at my legs and can’t imagine them without flesh. Just bones.

Where does the stream end? What message should I send to others who stay to meet another end? I don’t know right now,  but I’m sure I’ll run out of years and days before I run out of things to say. When I read some of what I write, there are threads of happiness and threads of despair and it becomes difficult to balance the two or even differentiate which is which.  In my mind, I always felt I was an optimist but what has become more domininant over the last several years is a degree of cynicism.  Like I said, it’s tough to balance the two.  Add to that a belief in god that I had cast off for many years.  Well, not really since I have always believed that god is the positive energy in the universe that we must tap into in order for good things to occur and bad things to not occur.  Of course, delving more into that thought process, labeling an occurrence as good or bad is purely subjective as it relates to the invididual.

Personal destiny always looks good from a distance. However, the closer one gets to it, the more the appearance changes and it doesn’t look the same as it did from far away.  Passion gives depth to life. Without it, we live in a shallow grave. Find something you have a passion for! It will make the dark days bright and truly make each day new.

Life is what it is. It evolves on its own terms. It is totally objective. It only becomes subjective in how it affects each of us personally.

     Writing will be my contribution primarily to my family and friends who will end up being the readers of what I write. Perhaps that is a small building block to help keep me from being forgotten, though, as I mentioned at the outset, it’s inevitable despite my minor contribution to the literary world. I pray for others so that they too may find a way to establish their presence before they leave their earthly existence.

I believe I have finally come to grips with this whole “forgotten” business, a subtle understanding of what is commonly referred to as passing the torch.  It starts well before death usually at the latter part of earthly existence.  Granted, one might be still alive in the sense of breathing and most other bodily parameters indicating life. 

It came to me not as some ethereal revelation but rather as I watched TV and saw young people frollicking over the screen, dressed in the attire of the day, doing things common to the group.  Some of what I saw was extreme, at least to my taste.  What struck me was that my generation rests in the rear view mirror.  Our time is past. We had our day.  “Baby Boomers” will be in quotation marks now, not relevant on a larger scale than what remains from who we were during our heyday.  Oddly, I’m okay with it, somewhat of an acquiescence and acknowledgement that it is now others time to control life with their own form of attire, entertainment, politics, and government. If the past is any indication, there will be more of the same that marks most any generation.  There will be scientific breakthroughs, catastrophes, triumphs, and a host of incidentals that will be news at the time but have no lasting effect on the universe. I was sad at first when I recognized this sentiment, but came to realize that it has been this way since the beginning of mankind and will continue ad infinitum unless impotent fools that usually end up in government cause the annihilation of the world as we know it.  So, perhaps prematurely forgotten but forgotten nonetheless.

            I probably will add to this stream of consciousness at a later date but hesitant at this point to continue.  Thanks for your time and attention to my meanderings before I’m forgotten.