Writing for my Love

It’s been about a year since I started letting the world read my daily journals or significant parts of them.  I began writing them forty-five years ago, or more, then one day, when I was still too weak to sit up in bed, I thought, “I really should let people know I”m alive,” and started posting extensive excerpts from my journal on Facebook.  

It’s been a fascinating process.  The response has been truly overwhelming.  Having kept all this hidden for so long, I had no idea I could get anyone to read me unless I wrote about big things like dinosaurs and spaceships, like some of my idols.  

Earlier today, the question arose about what the women in my life thought of my writing.  The answer is pretty simple: they didn’t know anything about it.  Some knew I was doing it, but since I said it was my journal, and none of them knew how to find things on my computer, none were ever read.  

I’d only ever planned for there to be one woman in my life.  Instead, there were like twelve.  I think part of the problem was that I was never very honest with them, not nearly as honest as I am with the people who read my blogs.  I think that was a vital mistake.  Even if being more honest wouldn’t have kept any of them in my life, it was still the moral thing to do.  

I always tried to project that I was a counter to whatever challenges were in their life. No matter how storm-ravaged their existence, I was indomitable and immutable, and I could form an impenetrable barrier between them and whatever was hurting them. That’s a lie, of course. I could keep it up for a while, but not forever, and let’s be honest, once the storm passed, it made me obsolete.  Maybe, if I’d shown them the things I write in the hours when the sun struggles over the horizon, it would have opened up a new era of understanding.  Maybe I would have proved more valuable in the long run.

There was one woman; her name means “honey” in an ancient tongue.  She was the only woman I ever courted who knew me from work.  Not from Missco or the ABoyd Company, but from my real work, in this instance, theater and painting.  We played chess and drank coffee and discussed many things.  I don’t know that giving her access to my journals would have changed the trajectory of our lives, but I would have deeply valued her perspective on what I wrote.  I’m really a bit angry with myself, now that I think of it.  

She had the voice of an angel.  Her hands were tender, and her eyes shown brighter than the moon, but I missed having such a brilliant critic and soundboard available before the ink dried on my copy.  We were so horribly star-crossed, I don’t think anything could have made us end up together, but imagine what a difference learning that other people wanted to read my words would have made if I had trusted her to read them.

There’s another woman.  I write about her often.  She had a gigantic smile and bushels of blonde hair, and the world would have thought she was the most cheerful person in it while she was flaying the skin from her own bones in secret and doing whatever she could to numb the pain from it.

That was almost forty years ago, but even now, I feel genuine pangs of guilt for not clearing a path out of the tangled morass of rose thorns she surrounded herself in.  Saving her wasn’t my job, but it was the only thing I wanted to do, and it’s still the one thing I wish I had accomplished that I didn’t.  People tell me all the time that this wasn’t my responsibility and what happened to her wasn’t my fault, but no, that’s a scar that I’ll carry on my back until the day they close my eyes for good.

My plan was to show her that I was stronger than anything that happened to her, stronger than anything she might do to herself, and all she had to do was be calm and let me pull her out of the cutting weeds that grew around her.  That failed. It failed utterly.  

Maybe, if I’d shown her my words, maybe if I’d let her see that I saw and felt the same darkness, the same cold and isolation that she felt, that maybe we could have made a connection there, and maybe somehow knowing she wasn’t alone in what she was feeling might have made her hold on to herself long enough to climb out of the hole she was in.  

I’m aware that I’m describing a scenario where I might have found a way to succeed at something I failed at, and not a scenario where someone from my past would have wanted to stick around and be someone in my present, but it’s really hard to twist my mind to thoughts of what I need.  I don’t think that’s going to change.  At least, in this one instance, the world would have been just a little better if I’d won this battle I fought for somebody other than myself.  

Although I’ve had all these other people playing that role in my life, there’s just the one woman I ever really loved.  We met as children, young enough that we got to see each other’s body change and grow tall.  

Her hands were slender and strong.  Her eyes were the deepest brown, like staring into your coffee and seeing the world reflected in it.  She took my arm many times and escorted me whenever there was a fine thing I had to attend, but I never once tried to express to her how special she was to me.   Asking her might mean she’d reject me, and as long as I didn’t ask, I could always tell myself, “It might have.”  Fifty years later, “it might have” means nothing to anyone but me.

The funny thing is, she studied literature.  While it’s not what she ended up doing for a living, it’s something that was dear to her and important to her.  Imagine what might have happened if I had said, “Hi, these are my words.  I’d really like to know what you think of them.”  Imagine the impact of arranging a meeting between the thing I loved the most and the girl I loved the most.  It was impossible, of course.  I wasn’t willing to show my words to those who didn’t matter; showing them to someone who did matter would have been such a huge risk.  I would have fainted from the anticipation.  

Some of my former dance partners read my words here. Sometimes they ask questions and clarifications of a point. I haven’t yet gotten into trouble for revealing something I shouldn’t have. I try to be sensitive.  I have been scolded for not saying this or that twenty years ago.  That’s to be expected.  I do choose my words differently, knowing someone might read them.  That’s also to be expected, but I try to retain the candor I had when I was writing for myself.  

If I could tell a younger version of me something, I’d tell him to be honest. Trust that people want to see the truth. You can’t be strong enough to heal the world. Its enemies are stronger than your arms, no matter how strong you make them.   You hide this precious thing every day, thinking the world has no interest in it.  You’re wrong; your words are what the world made you for.  

Factor 75 Cavatappi & Italian Pork Ragu

 This is my first meal with the Factor75 program. The meals come cold but unfrozen in a box, a week's worth at a time. I chose the “calorie smart” and “protein plus” menus. I’m starting with the six-meals-per-week plan. There are several other options. With shipping, that’s $98.37 for six meals, $16.40 per meal.

Tonight's meal was cavatappi, which is a type of spiral pasta, and Italian pork ragu with steamed broccoli. The meals come in plastic trays with two wells. It’s hard to gauge the size of the portions from looking at the trays because the wells are pretty deep. The portions were generous, though, and by the time I finished eating both wells, I was pretty full.

The meal was 490 calories, with 26g of fat, 23g of protein, and 43g of total carbs. If you’re using Noom, it’s already listed in the meal options.

This is their image. I’ll start making my own as I write more of these.

Microwave pasta isn’t always great, but this was perfect. The Ragu was flavorful but not too meaty. I guess they have to do a balancing act to keep the calories at their goal. It ended up being a generous portion. I was full when I finished it.

The steamed broccoli was steamed broccoli. They had a garlic sauce with a little butter, which I would have preferred a whole bunch of butter, but they’re trying to economize calories, and so am I. Green vegetables like this cost almost nothing on Noom, so I could have eaten three times as much without going over my budget, but what they sent was more than adequate.

For $14 and two minutes in the microwave, I’d say it’s worth it. That’s less than I’d spend at a restaurant for about the same quality, and more than I’d spend at a fast food place, with much greater quality.

They made a real effort to make sure their shipping boxes were recyclable and biodegradable, so maybe the meal trays are next.

Use this link and get a $150 discount on Factor75 food.  

Lee and Agamemnon

 In Lee: The Last Years, Flood quotes one of the "KA Five" as saying of Lee that "We likened him unto Agamemnon."  I always found that strange because things didn't end well for Agamemnon.

For a white Southerner, college-educated in the nineteenth century, it's not at all surprising that they read and studied the Illiad.  Agamemnon, drawing the Greeks together for this great cultural and political, and military adventure, probably did remind him of his service under Lee, both as a soldier and as a student.  

Apparently, whoever taught Greek literature, at Washington College, after the war, didn't include the Orestian Trilogy in their lessons.  Agamemnon's life may have been the origin of the Greek State, but his death was the origin of Greek justice.  Their professor only told them half the story.

Unlike Robert E Lee, who I'm absolutely certain was real, I'm not at all convinced that Agamemnon was ever a real person.  If he was, I can't imagine his real story matching up to the myth at all.  That's not what myths are for.  

Myths create stories that explain societies.  Sometimes they build up over many years, and disparate stories are combined and remade to fit the narrative the culture builds.

Every culture needs two creation stories.  The first is a metaphysical story.  The earth was a woman, and the sky was her husband.  The gods came as horses rising from the foam of the sea.  The Greek stories of metaphysical creation are fascinating and beautiful.  

They also need a myth about their political creation.  In Judaic culture, that's Joseph and Abraham, and Moses.  These are stories about what sets our people apart from other people.  They are vital in creating a cultural identity.  For the Greeks, the Illiad serves this purpose.  The Greek culture created itself with a story about defeating Troy, fighting over their ideas about the honor of a woman.

There are other very important myths, though.  Myths about where our cultural values come from.  In the bible, you have stories about Cain and Abel sewing the seeds of ideas about justice.  That's what the death of Agamemnon and his son's quest for redemption does for the Greeks.  It creates and describes in them the idea of Justice and just redemption.

It's entirely possible that the myth about Agamamemnon's life and Agamemnon's death was originally two entirely different people that were merged together into one story.  I think that happened a lot.  

Lee's political campaign might have created the political culture of the South, even though he lost the war, but there's been a much longer struggle for justice to come out of the Civil War, one that we're still fighting today.  I can't really say that Lee was part of that battle.  His purpose after the war was to get these boys, who had been his soldiers, prepared to be productive citizens again.  The question of Justice in the South would not be answered in their generation.  I'm very much starting to doubt that it will be answered in mine.

Education is a funny thing.  You can't ever really fit a complete understanding of any subject into any one lifetime, even if what you're trying to understand happened thousands of years ago.  Whoever taught the KA five about the Illiad didn't mention what happened to Agamemnon when he got home.  That was a pretty serious omission. 

 

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Mississippi Airplanes

 For guys in my dad’s generation, for those who were also from here, there wasn’t much more impressive than an airplane.  Some, like his cousin Ben, went for sailboats instead.  Sailing has the advantage that you don’t fall to your death if the wind goes out of your sails, but you may end up shark food, so it’s a trade-off.

Part of this phenomenon might have been driven by wanting to impress people that there was something more to them than just another country boy, and a machine that can actually fly is a pretty good way to do just that.  In some cases, it was a thing that their parents had only read about.  It’s hard to imagine what that would be like today.  I guess my father never dreamed of such a thing as a submersible that went to the Titanic, so if I got one, it’d be impressive to him, although apparently ill-advised.

Bob Neblett was the first weatherman in Mississippi on the first television station in Mississippi.  He was a weatherman because he was also one of Mississippi’s first private pilots.  Besides doing the news, he was in charge of Mississippi’s only airport, Hawkin’s Field, out by the zoo.  Today, pilots check their phones for weather reports before going out.  Neblett didn’t have that available to him, and NOAH didn’t send out weather reports on the wire, so he learned basic meteorology himself.  When WJTV went on the air, Bob was the only choice.  He also sold ice cream and introduced Mississippians to Reddy Kilowatt.

Serving in the ROTC, my dad wanted very much to be a pilot.  He was in ROTC, so when he went into the service, he would be an officer.  His father insisted.  He was completely ready to fight the Nazis in World War II, but it ended before he graduated, so he served in Korea.  The airforce said he was too tall for a pilot, but he could be an engineer, so they sent him to school to learn this fancy new thing they had called “radar,” and he spent his entire military career listening for Russians flying over the border into West Berlin, and learning the specs of every aircraft on the base.

Most of Dad’s friends were as plane obsessed as he was.  When Brum Day ascended at Trustmark, Trustmark got an airplane.  My uncle Boyd loved trains.  He was part owner of a railroad in North Mississippi for a while, and Missco had a sleeper car they could attach to the City of New Orleans for trips to Chicago and beyond.  When my dad took over, the sleeper car was replaced by a Beechcraft King turboprop airplane.  The first of three, each one a seat or two bigger than the last.  His last aircraft had previously belonged to Roy Clark, the singer, who traded it for a jet.

There are scary moments with airplanes.  The Missco plane was hit by lightning twice and by geese several times.  Ben Puckett, one of his best friends, was flying out of Hilton Head when they crashed and killed six passengers, including Roger Stribling.  Ben had a broken back, and it took him months to recover.  One of Roger’s daughters was in my class.  The idea that this could have been my family was very clear to me.

Not rated to fly a craft the size of a Beechcraft King, my dad had to hire a pilot.  A retired WWII pilot named Tony Staples came highly recommended.  Tony was a square-shouldered, steel-eyed gent with shocking white hair.  

Tony was the most fastidious guy I ever knew.  He was so good at taking care of airplanes that each of our airplanes sold for more than what we paid for them.  While his voice had great power, he used a very controlled tone.  This is a trait often found among pilots whose lives depend on radio communications.

Tony, very conspicuously, wore a gold Mason’s ring.  From what I understand, he never missed a meeting.  He talked to me about it a few times but never pressured me to join.  I was interested because there were several Freemasons in my family, but never joined.

One of my favorite stories about Tony is that once, we were stopped at a small airport for fuel, and inside the fuel center were four young men wearing denim and t-shirts but with their faces painted in elaborate designs.  We assumed they were clowns and avoided them.  Tony never met a stranger and struck up a conversation with the boys and came back reporting that they were a band, and their gimmick was that they never appeared without their makeup.  He even bought one of their albums.  Showing me the album, I could see the artwork of the same four boys in makeup and the words “KISS” on top.  I always heard they did pretty well after that meeting.  

When my dad died, the man who took over his position hated flying, so it was clear the days of our airplane were numbered.  They were having a pretty terrible year and hoped this infusion of cash would improve the bottom line.  Tony had retired, but the new pilot passed me in the hall.  “They’re selling your daddy’s airplane.”  He said.  The comment was more potent coming from him because it meant he was out of a job.  “Things are changing,” I said.  Things are really changing.