what frustration feels like

In the approximately 18 months I’ve been writing this blog of…whatever it is, I’ve accumulated 31 essays or starts to essays which haven’t been published or weren’t worthy of being finished; 16 unpublished poems; three different memoirs which will never see the light of day; a rough draft of a play; the outline for a novella; a political satire; three chapters of a science fiction story blended with politics; and three dozen idea starters plus a dozen or two “snippets” to prime the writing pump. This doesn’t count some old blog entries which could be polished up and republished, journal entries which shall remain private, and older pieces of writing which predate using OneNote as a writing notebook.

Today I spent two to three hours writing what was supposedly going to be a ranging, breezy, entertaining look at my relationship to time and a look at time itself. When I stopped I had a pedantic, trivial piece of crap such as I would’ve written on deadline for the newspaper and never thought about again. “Disappointing” is when your realization is a pale copy of your dream; “abject failure” is when your beautiful idea is born as devil-spawn and requires an immediate stake through its heart.

No wonder I mostly put up photos.

blind pig finds acorn

Part of the Spokane Falls on the Spokane River, Spokane, WA. March 1993?

My father was notorious for finding a way to muck up a photograph. Favored methods:

Using a wide angle Instamatic (pause while he shudders), take a photo of an animal or bird you see in the mid-distance. Photo has a brownish dot in the center (maybe) that can be anything.
Shoot a portrait-type shot of people looking directly into the sun, squinting. Cut off only their feet. Alternately, shoot from too far away and make sure photographer’s shadow is prominently displayed in foreground.
Line up your group shot in front of a window, glass-fronted artwork, or better yet, a mirror. Shoot with a flash.

That’s just a minor list. I’ve tackled sorting through the photos I brought home in mid-2020 when we cleared out my parents’ house in late July. I’m primarily interested in photographic proof of them, their sons (me and my brother), and the relatives and friends who they encountered during their lives. Every once in a while, though, I come across a photo which makes me wonder how it ever happened, such as the one above.

The photo above is unretouched except I blurred out a few white spots in the dark sky where the cheap photo developer couldn’t be bothered with blowing off dust on the negative. This is a natural light photo and the falls are not lit. It appears to have been shot from a restaurant currently called Anthony’s at Spokane Falls. The shot is looking due east to the kind of clouds which Spokane seldom sees as the sun sets. That’s Canada Island on the left which splits the Spokane River. The cataracts on the north side of the island are approximately the same. I unfortunately mislabeled the photo, so I’m not entirely sure of the date, but I recall it was in March, and it sits between a photo from June 1992 and one from July 1993.

Some day I may try to retouch it and see if I can make it look better, but there’s not a lot you can do with the photos taken back then. I don’t have the negatives; I had to scan this from the print. I’ll likely just leave it and remember that my father could take a good photo now and then. And I can tell you for certain that he never stopped trying! I’ve four or five storage boxes full of prints to attest to that!

Washington (for B.)

One of the few blogs I follow recently commented in passing about Washington State in the USA and said, “I hear it’s breathtaking.” (You know who you are.) Although Oregon and California give it a run for the money, those states are not as geographically diverse. I moved from the state where I grew up in 1992, prior to digital photography, returned when crude digitals were just being introduced, left again in 2001, and visited selectively from that point forward. Most of these photos, therefore, are from an Introduction to Washington trip we did with our NC friends in 2017 when forest fire smoke hazed the atmosphere. Forthwith:

Smack dab in the middle of Spokane (my hometown). August 2017.

The wheat fields of the Palouse. Southeastern Washington. August 2017.

The Hoh Rainforest in Olympic National Park, Washington. March 1998. [low-res digital camera]

Beach at Kalaloch, Olympic National Park, Washington. August 2017.

Columbia River Gorge and I-90. Near Vantage, WA. August 2017.

Diablo Lake from the North Cascades Highway. North Cascades National Park. August 2017.

I could continue: the North Cascade Mountains (or the Olympics! or the volcanoes of Mounts St. Helens/Rainier/Adams/Baker); the ‘true’ Columbia Gorge from Portland, OR/Vancouver, WA east for 60-100 miles; the scablands shown here by inference in the Vantage photo; the Puget Sound inland waterway which with the Salish Sea offer a worthy challenger to Chesapeake Bay on the east coast; and…but let’s stop there. I think I need to plan another trip to Washington!

Things that drive me nuts

“We are experiencing higher than normal call volumes. Please be patient. Your call is important to us.” [geez, where do I start?]
“This page intentionally left blank.” [If I were a robot in Star Trek, this would make me melt.]
Signing into my password manager so that I can sign into my credit card account so that they will send a code via text so that I can enter that and finally get into the website…only to see that I signed into the wrong credit card website.
Getting an apparently computer-generated email about how sorry my propane company feels after I complained in the obligatory follow-up survey about waiting over two weeks for propane. (Good thing it’s not my primary source of heat!) Should I be surprised it took two months for their response to be sent?
Robocalls spoofing real numbers.
Experts who forget the difficulties beginners face.
People who say they lost an hour when switching to Daylight Saving Time. [OK, time is a construct and yes, a hour was taken out arbitrarily, but…does the sun not come up and set in the same amount of time, more or less, as it did before the switch?]
Receiving mail for my father, deceased for over nine years, at my address where he never lived!
Companies which successfully lobby for a law or regulation, then tell their customers, “I’m sorry, but it’s required by the government.”
The prevalent use of complimentary for complementary. [In fact, I just searched to see if somehow the meaning had drifted over time. No, it hasn’t, but the top search result said “Complimentary rebooking | Singapore Airlines”]
Being able to find a typo or word misusage every day in the local TV news broadcast.
Being able to find a typo or word misusage almost every day in the New York Times.
Fanatics clinging to nonsensical word usage rules. [See typos/word misusage! Not every misusage is nonsensical!]
Circular logic.
The so-called smart side mirrors on my car which never return to the same position two consecutive times.
and…that this was just off the top of my head and I’ve likely forgotten twice as many in the moment!

A follow-on about clothes

Ocean Isle Beach, North Carolina. Still there in November 2007.

A little bit ago I wrote about the longevity of clothes in my closet and how they mark the march of time in reverse. I’ve realized lately that they have staked out the future too. Today I wore a fleece top purchased when we took a Thanksgiving getaway to Ocean Isle Beach, NC, in 2007. It’s none the worse for wear (the fleece top, not Ocean Isle Beach which might very well be the worse for wear). It dawned on me today that a heavy flannel shirt/jacket, the aforementioned fleece top, the sweatshirt I wore last week which was given to me by my employer in 2003 or 2004, etcetera, etcetera, will possibly be in my closet when I die.

Recently I’ve tried to lengthen my time between Now and Death. “It’s likely twenty-plus years, you fool,” I tell myself. Retirement planning forces one to focus on ‘how long do I have’ and then hope the money lasts that long. It fosters looking toward the end instead of the path toward the end–instead of focusing on where you are right now. And lately, I’ve been successful in realizing where I am relative to my likely End. I accomplished this by looking backward the same amount of time I can expect to live. Today it means focusing on where I was twenty years ago. “Goodness, I thought things were grand back in 2003!” he thinks. It feels many years ago when looking backward. Then why not many years ahead when looking forward?

These darn clothes tell a different tale, or at least they have their own tale to tell. “We’ll still be there in your closet. This is your wardrobe for the rest of your life.” It’s weirdly depressing and freeing at the same time.

Missing from the brochures

Lurking everywhere in Florida–black vultures. March 2010.

One thing the Florida travel brochures seem to forget to mention? How you and your car will be inundated by flocks of vultures. Everglades National Park in particular has signs warning about damage to your car. (I think part of it is their fondness for the rubber on the car wipe blades.) My wife’s in Florida right now. Maybe they’re leaving her and her group alone? (And in actuality, they’re getting to be more of nuisance throughout the southeast part of the US.)

A better Valentines Day

Clearwater Beach on the Gulf of Mexico. February 13, 2013.

Sure, flowers are nice–especially the two dozen roses I handed my wife a few hours ago. But warmth, white sand, palm trees, the Gulf, and a previous visit to the Phillies Spring Training Camp? Priceless. “Bouquet” is a fluid term.

Smasho! Bango!

My beloved Subaru sedan shortly after its death. January 2007.

I have no favorite vehicles but some were certainly better than others. My special edition Subaru Outback sedan was a lifesaver when we lived in snowy New York from 2001 to the beginning of 2006. One year later, it was dead, the victim of my ill-considered decision to turn left in front of an oncoming car doing about 60mph. That’s the bumper on the left. It’s amazing how many micro-seconds are still in my mind about that day. Believe it or not, I received no ticket for this because the guy was 10-20mph over the speed limit and ran a red light (it had just turned when he entered the intersection).

I thought to have a post today on possessions, started yesterday, but no…

thinkin’ Spring

Crocus (?) along the Little Spokane River. May 1972. Photographed with Honeywell Pentax SP500. Scanned from either negative or slide.

We’ve had several days of early spring-like weather. Despite all that assails one, sunny days like today lighten the heart and fill the soul with optimism. Sure we’re falling apart like a cheap toy and every famous person we liked as children seems to be dying, but just enjoying this moment beats not enjoying it.

17 years

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about chunks of time. “How long do I have to live?” and “Where was I that many years ago?” and “At this stage of my life, a half century after graduating from high school, what did I think?” …and crap like that. The chunk that keeps coming up, though, is this one: 17 years ago we prepared to leave the snowy realms of upstate New York and head to North Carolina. A truly shit job and what should have been a wonderful company (and was for many others) had ended unceremoniously with a layoff. Less than three months later we were headed to what became the best dozen years or so of my working life, and ended with a pandemic and my retirement. Above, we’re about five minutes from leaving our home and never seeing it again. (I had to use the snow blower on the driveway that morning.)