Christopher Street

I've been thinking a lot

I致e been thinking a lot about my Grandfather lately.

I actually have 3 living grandparents, my two grandfathers and my paternal grandmother. En famille, I usually distinguish between the two grandfathers by referring to one as 田razy� and the other as 杜ean�. The story of the mean grandfather will wait for another day. Today, I want to talk about my crazy grandfather.

My crazy grandfather is married to my Nanna, also crazy. They live by themselves in a trailer in southwestern Pennsylvania. They are somewhere in the neighborhood of 85 years old. They probably shouldn稚 continue to live alone, but, as I believe I have pointed out, they are crazy.

As a child, I called him Pap-Pap but my grown-up self calls him what my dad, his son, calls him: Pap.

When I was a baby, I apparently worshipped him. My baby book claims that my first words were Pap-Pap--he was so proud of that!-- and goes on to say that he used to let me lick the foam off of his beer. That I remember--he let me do it till I was old enough to retain it (and till I was old enough to get him in trouble for it). He also took me and my brother with him to the VFW bar any time we wanted to go--they had this bowling machine there that we loved to play! It was 10 frames of duckpins for a dime! Pap kept his change in one of those plastic squeezy cases--you now the ones? In any case, he always kept it full of dimes.

He also used to sing to me, taking great pleasure in my indignation when he got the lyrics wrong. His favorite song to sing? Rudolph the Green-Nosed Bulldog. Man, I hated that song!

When we tired of the duckpin bowling--and the singing--we could play with the tire he hung from a tree in his backyard. I loved that tire. I used to swing so far out that it felt like I was flying. It was the best feeling. Except for the day that I discovered locusts on the trunk of the tree. That was a bad day. :)

When we got older, he built a swimming pool in the back yard for us. This was in response to my mean grandfather putting in a pool. He didn稚 want us to have to go to the mean grandfathers just to swim. What he didn稚 seem to grasp is that we wouldn稚 have gone to the mean grandfathers anyway. But, it was a lovely gesture.

Pap wasn稚 a church-going man but every Sunday, he would peel the potatoes for Sunday dinner and set them on to boil. He always put on a big stack of 45s to listen to while he was doing it-- Loretta Lynn and Conway Twitty, George Jones, Jerry Lee Lewis--that sort of thing. I don稚 recall ever seeing him buy a new record. He wasn稚 a man who embraced change. He liked what he liked.

There were also many things that he didn稚 like: he didn稚 like hippies or drugs or republicans or minorities very much. He was a bigot, in the truest sense of the word. He felt that there was some sort of white entitlement in this world and he was hurt and offended in later years that the world didn稚 seem to see it that way anymore. Now, mind--he was never a violent man. He didn稚 wear a sheet or drag people into the woods for lynching. His was a quiet bigotry, a calm disappointment in the way the world turned out. I don稚 kid myself that his bigotry is mitigated by his pacifism, but he was a old man long before I got my ethics all up in his face and, really, there was no changing him. And, ultimately, he was my Pap-Pap.

I find it interesting that to a young me, he was a huge, hulking beast of a man. In reality, I guess he was quite mortal in size. Maybe 5�10", 165 lbs? Today, he might go 130, wet and carrying the cat.

And now he痴 sick.

He痴 been sick, really, in one manner or another for a really long time. He has black lung from too many years in the Pennsylvania coal mines. He has a heart condition. He has diabetes. He has a bleeding ulcer. He has hydrocephalus, or water on the brain, a condition that went undiagnosed for so long that he has permanent brain damage and nerve damage in his legs. He is in pretty constant discomfort. He is still cantankerous, but his rantings lack spirit. Heck, he lacks spirit.

And now they think that they see a mass in his lung.

There was surgery last week and a biopsy will follow. If it痴 cancer, and the doctors seem to think that that痴 likely, the outlook will be grim. My grandmother, an hysterically unreasonable woman under the best of circumstances, is a bit of a basket case and has already declared that, whatever it is, he will fight it. The problem is that he won稚 really know what he痴 fighting for, not anymore. See, the brain damage from the hydrocephalus limits his ability to form new memories. He痴 kind of like that guy in Mememto--he only is in his life for about 15 minutes at a time. Then he forgets the previous 15 minutes and starts over.

Now, I won稚 lie--sometimes we have found this to be amusing. My favorite Pap story in recent years happened a few years back at Christmas. Looking down to discover an opened present on his lap, but not really knowing how it got there, he asked my Grandmother what it was. Red! Red!, he bellowed (Nanna has the Lucille Ball hair, you see). What the hell is this? Nanna asked what it looked like. The reply? Looks like some kind of damn red shirt.

Some kind of damn red shirt. :)

But, if he can稚 remember that it痴 Christmas, can稚 remember that he can稚 drive a car anymore, can稚 remember that he can稚 walk without his cane, can稚 remember what day it is or that his brothers are dead or that the cat is, I don稚 know how he can make the decision to endure the pain and suffering that cancer treatments would bring. And if he can稚 even remember why he痴 doing it, I can稚 imagine what hell it will be for him.

I don稚 want him to die. But part of me thinks that it would be selfish, of all of us, to make him trudge on. Of course, there is another side to the coin--if he can稚 remember whether he痴 wearing underwear, can he reasonably refuse treatment, either?

Mostly, I just hope that the mass is nothing, that it痴 scar tissue from the black lung, that it痴 a benign growth, that it痴 a shadow on the X-Ray.

If it is something, something bad, though the people that I will feel for the most are my Dad and his sister. Nanna would probably want to have him frozen and wheel him around in a portable cryo-unit before she壇 let the doctors give up. He痴 her whole life. No, ultimately, it will be Dad and Aunt Peggy痴 decision to make.

I'm really glad it痴 not mine.

Christopher Street? Huh?

Rene and Georgette Magritte, with their dog after the war...

I was wondering how long it would take before someone asked about the name of this journal. The answer, apparently, is 2 days. :)

First, it should be obvious that I am not hosting this myself--if I were, I'd have a better URL. No, I have chosen to use a 3rd party journaling site, diary-x.com. I chose to do this for a couple of reasons. First, I am impatient and tend to lose interest in things quickly. Using 3rd party software meant that I could begin immediately, before my interest waned. Second, there is a fair amount of work involved in setting up and hosting a journal page. I know that HTML isn't hard, but I, personally, think it's a pain in the bee-hind. So, I did a little research and found the diary-x folks. They offer free hosting of seemingly unlimited content and they have pretty easy to use software. For $12/year, you can even send your updates from your email client rather than composing them on the site.

Their software does, however, strongly encourage you to give your journal a title. This was the most difficult part. It's like asking for a title for your autobiography before you start. The default was "lori-p's diary" but that just sounded dorky. I wanted to play with the style sheets, though, and wanted to see what they would look like with a title other than the dorky default, so I chose the working title "Marigold Sky".

For those who stopped following the career of Darryl Hall and John Oates after 1984's Big Bam Boom, that was the title of one of their myriad comeback albums in the 90s. Since they were just profiled on Behind the Music last week, however, using Marigold Skyseemed a little transparent. So, I moved on.

Next, I flirted with "Think Too Much", which is the title of one of my fave Paul Simon tunes but it seemed redundant with my already chosen tagline "some things I think". So I moved on to a phrase from that song, "Elephant Dance":

Have you ever experienced a period of grace
When your brain just takes a seat behind your face
And the world begins the Elephant Dance?

In the end, a little too...trippy. Onward then. I plowed through some lines from poems I dig ("A Sunless Sea" was just too depressing. Ditto "...and despair"), and other pieces of Pop Trivia Junk ("Trolling for Olives" and "Dancing About Architecture", working titles for what would become REM's Out of Touch and the Angelina Jolie film Playing by Heart).

Finally, it dropped on me, like the satellite that is falling from space even as we speak: Christopher Street. Also a lyric from a Paul Simon tune, but one that is a little more obscure and, well, I think kind of cool-sounding:

Rene and Georgette Magritte
With their dog, after the war
Were strolling down Christopher Street
When they stopped in a Men's Store
With all of the mannequins dressed in the styles that brought
Tears to their immigrant eyes

I did go back and forth between "Christopher Street" and "Marigold Sky" for a bit longer but, in the end, "Christopher Street" it is. The idea of going down a familiar street also seemed to strengthen the whole journey through life aspect of this project.

So, Petrina, aren't you glad you asked? :D

Which brings me to the names portion of the program. This is a personal journal and I do have interaction with folks on a daily basis. Some of that interaction will likely make it into the journal. Now, while I will endeavor to never embarrass anyone or share information that is not mine to share, I will talk about y'all. Rather than use pseudonyms, which are impossible to keep track of, I am going to use just first names. To avoid confusion between folks with the same first names, I may also use nicknames. I reserve that right. :) I will use pseudonyms for those on the periphery, if I think it's appropriate. If I am going to diss someone from work, I will likely refer to them as Napolean or littlehead or Frodo rather than risk their wrath. It is a public journal after all. :)

Less substantial than goats

So, I was sitting in a meeting today and part of the presentation was a mocked-up website about Aruba. Apparently, while much of the exterior of the island is quite commercial and resort-like, the interior of the island is filled with nothing more substantial than goats.

I wonder how the goats feel about that? I also wonder if it's true, or if it's just some marketing guy being cute, but I don't seem to care enough to go look it up.

However, in solidarity with the capra aegagrus of Aruba, I present something less substantial than goats.

I was sitting in the ladies room this afternoon at work, you know, in a stall,and someone walked in. I heard the distinct sound of buttons being pressed on a cell phone. I was immediately intrigued. I wonder if they know I'm here?, I thought. I wonder if they are going to call someone to check about another job, or call to have a fight with their husband or boyfriend? It was all very titillating. However, in the end, there was no call. Nothing. Nada. I guess that she might have been checking her voicemail or I might have been hearing things.

Now, I know that this would have been a better story if something had actually happened, but then it would have been more substantial than the goats. Do you see? :) Plus, it would have been fiction, when I have billed it as fact.

This, however, is fiction, a ficlet I call it, inspired by my favorite TV love-bunnies, Brian and Justin from Queer as Folk:

I watch him sleep. He's restless, still having nightmares. I watch him sleep because I can't, can't sleep, not with him next to me reliving the night that I also relive. The difference is that I relive it awake.

He turns for the nth time and I catch a glimpse of the scar. It's remarkably small, remarkably slight. Those who didn't see the blood will probably never notice it. But I saw the blood. On his head, on my hands, on my scarf. For me, the scar will always be red, bright red against the alabaster of his skin. I reach out and touch it, gently so as not to wake him. I stroke his head, try to wipe away the blood, wipe away the memory, wipe away the pain. But I can't. These things are permanent.

He begins to stir and I slam my eyes shut, afraid of being caught. He can't know that I am afraid, can't know that I care, can't know that I lie awake at night thinking about the night that I almost lost him.

I will leave you to ponder what a 35-year old woman is doing writing fan fiction. :)

Hello, there. I'm new here.

Hello, there. I'm new here. Can you tell?

I've tried keeping traditional diaries in the past and always failed pretty miserably. I think I have a total of three paper diaries with a total of, maybe, 50 entries, covering a total of, maybe, 5 months of my 35 years of existence.

The year was 1976. I got a small, white diary for Christmas that year and resolved to write in it every day. I did write in it every day until I stopped which was about 6 days later, I think. I guess I didn't have that much to say at the tender age of 10.

Fast forward to 1984. Freshman year of college. I want to keep a record of everything--parties and boys and stupid fights with my roomate. This time, there are actual things to write about, mostly heartache over a boy but still. I wrote pretty faithfully for about 3 months and then stopped until the following spring. The reason I picked up again was that I went to Manhatten for a week with my roomate and I wanted to chronicle the trip. I actually did a pretty good job of it, from the cute boy in the greek deli who flirted with me every day to the homeless man who stomped on the pastrami sandwich I tried to give him in lieu of money. It's all in there. It really is a blessing because without those stories, I think that that trip would have melted into obscurity long ago. After I got back, though, I discovered that life seemed too painful (more boy stuff) to have to rehash it every night and so I stopped again.

Finally, in 1990 I made the major life change of leaving the real world and going back to school. I was scared and writing down the things I was feeling seemed calming at the time. Again, I lasted for about a month.

So there you have the history of my pathetic attempts at journaling. I am inspired by my friend Oscar, who started a year or so ago, to try it online for a while. We'll see how it goes.

Ah--who am I kidding? It won't last. :)