Fuel.

Yesterday Bigskeptic jumped in her rickety bucket of a Nova and attempted a short drive around the block, after which, I was going to wash and wax. She looks like hell, she really does.  The time spent in pieces, stored car-knapped from me outside in the California sun, uncovered and unloved meant that the aging paint was ruined, as were the wheels.  It really looks the part of the 70's POS these days.

Instead of a quick run around the block and pleasurable wash/wax, my nose was assaulted with fuel, and I luckily coasted into my driveway as gasoline dumped from the carb onto the intake and subsequently...everywhere below it.  A smart person would have made a trip to the store, bought a "For Sale" sign, and washed her hands of the whole damned thing.

I may not be smart after all.

Sweaty, wearing Eu Du Fume perfume, I went inside and sat down with a coffee and thought about the path of the Nova, how she got here, with me, how I got here, with her.

I have taken immense shit for that car.  While there have been the occasional blubbering males commenting on sexy women with cars, it's been more judgement than anything from even those closest to me about why the hell I hang on, with claws, to that ridiculous, dilapidated car.

The closest I can muster to logic on the matter is because all this time, that stupid Chevy quite literally fueled my passion for cars---how they work, why some matter and why some don't, why some get restored and why some get left behind, the history, the physics, the design.  She is antithetical to custom cars and hot rodding as I am antithetical  to those typically involved in this industry.  I cling to her, because somehow our plights are tied together, and where everyone else would leave her behind because she doesn't matter, I cannot.  She has to be along for the ride.

Once I met someone at a car show that looked at my Chevy and said, "who brought that??" and my response was "fuck off, that's mine."

That's exactly how I still feel today about my bucket of bolts, our outsider plights intertwined, both of us taking a moment to sit and be broken  until we figure out just exactly who we should be in this iteration of our self-revision.

Skeptically Yours,
Bigskeptic

Dirty crawlin'-around-cars-legs. My shoes smell like gas. 

Empty Shelves.

I've been flea marketing my whole life, so I know better than to attend with a set agenda or with the weight of a broken heart dragging down the process of sorting through someone else's castoff goods.  Today I made the mistake of attending under both circumstances, and I left with the rarity of emptihandedness. 

There were treasures to be had, I'm sure, but in my state mind, the biggest bits of baggage weren't in the beat up boxes and card tables surrounding Veteran's stadium, but with me.  I needed to replace a shelf that is leaving with a fresh ex, and everything I looked at reeked of my broken heart, and while some of them measured 36 inches wide, it wasn't, somehow, big enough to fill the gap.  I had subconsciously tasked the flea market and all of those vintage goods rich with the energy imprints of lives over and done with the task of answering some very big questions and filling some very big gaps.

Emerging single again means that 1300 square feet of house feels enormous, I feel immense loneliness, and the gigantic chaos of everyday life seems harder to navigate.  Those things are parts of breaking up, as are the division of property, the crying, the logistics.  Even those splits made for the better are filled with these tragedies, and I know that, but I still went searching through other people's pasts for answers today hoping to numb out or wise up.

I came out empty, no shelf, no answers, just...the same skeptic that got me into this mess in the first place.  Here's a tall, stiff drink and a Cheers to you, all of you, making a go of things.  It's harder than it looks. 

Skeptically Yours.  
Bigskeptic

Forgetting.

               Living with the voice of a WWII veteran constantly broadcasting his story to me has changed a lot about how I feel today, Memorial Day.  When I'm writing, the voice of my narrator feels very close, and real, like a radio station being picked up from 1951, a crackly station played only to me, through which I become a messenger.  My book, which I have finally finished after years of construction, is about a veteran of WWII who watched many, many of his brothers die in the European Theatre.
               Because of this narrator, I've tossed myself into several books about the war...The Forgotten 500 (buy it here The Forgotten 500 ), and The Monuments Men being two of my favorites thus far, as well as jumping into Part 2 of my own book...so the death toll of WWII has been fresh for me these past few months.  I've been in it, because that's where my Narrator is, still coping.

Circe Taurus Izaboo.  

               The story he tells is about what happens NEXT for him, and his guilt for those he left behind in Europe.  Enthrallment with the past and nonstop-fingers-are-beating-the-keyboard-writing did something peculiar for me this month:  I was writing so much that I remembered May 12th as nothing but Circe's birthday, and today I celebrated Memorial Day with a humble and thankful heart.
               In remembering only Circe's birthday, I forgot something that was once fucking huge...my Unwedding Day.
               Two things:  First, Circe was my hero and best friend, the Rottweiler that taught me everything I needed to know about life, love, dogs, myself, dignity and humor, forever and ever amen.  She was born on May 12th 1997 and died on January 14th, 2009, and those two days are hung on my heart.

Unwedding Dress.

               Second: May 12th was also the planned day for my wedding years ago, which I cancelled.  It's been, for 2+ years, a day that I remembered mostly for what it wasn't rather than what it was.  Certainly I have felt bitterness, remorse, anger, "what the hell was I thinking" and confusion, but this year I felt nothing.  It's the best nothing I have ever felt, and it's the best thing I have ever  forgotten.
               The year of my Unwedding, after the cancellation and the lost deposits, I put on my wedding dress (a cute little casual vintage lace mini dress) and went to see a movie in the graveyard at Cinespia, Hollywood Forever Cemetery, Hollywood, with my friends and family.  It was a way to "put it to rest" and move on, but it has been clearly on my mind each year until 2014, when I forgot completely that this was the day I dodged the biggest bullet in existence.
                I believe very much that if I would have gotten married on May 12th, 2012, I would be a statistic of divorce by now.  As hard as it's been to separate myself from that life, it would have been harder to negotiate a divorce.  Cancelling a wedding and breaking off an 8 year relationship was devastating, and the ensuing questions about my marriage status weren't fun and never will be, but I am thankful for the opportunity that changed my trajectory, thankful for the inspiration that I have right now to write, and thankful for a spirit that can choose to let go, and simply...forget...because it was a small moment in time that doesn't matter in the long run.

Remembering all souls that have been lost, those with 2 legs and 4.

                Memorial Day is about remembering those that perished protecting our country, and I do so with a heavy heart each year.  I also celebrate Memorial Day by forgetting the bad things that have weighed me down so that I can better appreciate the good things we have because of those people, the things that all along we tend to take for granted because we worry so much about the trivial and meaningless.   Buried in the anxious and unforgiving past is no way to live, not when so many lives have ended prematurely, brutally, and often rather anonymously.  Their legacy often lives in our ability to forget the insignificant, and focus on the chance to be alive, to do good for one another.

Here's to forgetting the things that hurt you and remembering the people that free you.

Skeptically Yours,
Bigskeptic
               
               

The Window to 1959

When I stop into a Swap Meet, I feel like I can hear a thousand voices talking at once, telling the stories of the energy imposed into the items for sale.  All of these things were left behind or unwanted by the previous owner, by death or choice or force.

Rarely does a window open so clearly into a basic piece of the past as it did for me on this past Sunday at the Long Beach Flea Market.  Drawn to a vendor selling pictures---which is almost always a bad idea---I picked for an hour through some of the most evocative pictures from the 40s and 50s I have ever seen, especially considering there were pictures of strangers.

Next, at the bottom of the last box I picked through, was an envelope addressed to one C.M. Burnett of San Diego, CA, sent from the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce.  Inside was Chamber of Commerce tourism information from 1959 and before I ever knew how much I would be charged, I knew I had to have it.

Once home, I carefully pulled the information out, and found:

• Helpful Driving Tips: a brochure alerting visitors to One Way streets, parking on hills, jaywalking, and tow away zones.
• Gray Line San Francisco Tours Advertisement: Choices for which tour.  The Burnetts have put a check mark next to Tour 1.
• Calendar of Events for all of 1959: The Burnetts have a check mark next to July 7, 11, 18, 21, 25, 28 for the Municipal Pop Concerts
• San Francisco Hotels and Restaurants List: The Cliff House Restaurant is checked, but nothing else
• Your Guide to San Francisco and its Nearby Vacationlands: The Burnetts have checked off Bus Tours, Bay Cruise, Cable Car Rides, The Embarcadero,Golden Gate Park, Presidio, Seal Rocks Playland and Zoo, Nob Hill, Maritime Museum, Russian Hill, Telegraph Hill, Chinatown, and then further out Yosemite National Park and Sequoia as well as Monterey Bay Country.  
• Avis Rental Car Ad

San Francisco Chamber of Commerce ad, plus other incredible photos I couldn't leave behind.

I love the little pen marks. 

They had a lot planned for their trip, certainly, and I don't know how much they actually saw or if they even made it, but affording a glimpse into a regular family planning a vacation in 1959 feels like I opened a private window.  I know that the little envelope from the Chamber of Commerce wasn't meant to sit around until 2014 and be purchased by a stranger, but in in the end, we are just stories, and we never know what part of our stories will live on...and which ones will be boxed and carted around swap meet to swap meet, anonymously.

Skeptically Yours,
Bigskeptic

Glory Days.

Way back when, in Englewood, my friend's mother wisely said "You don't know how awesome it is to grow up here." She went on to say it was local to cities but far enough away to be safe, that while we had to drive (or beg for a ride, or one crazy occasion...ride the ole' ten speed) to the movie theatre or mall, it was only 40 minutes away and really, what more should kids want to do than to go to the beach anyway?

Englewood comes up a lot in my thoughts these days. I always quoted Dazed and Confused while in high school, "if I ever refer to these as the best days of my life, remind me to kill myself'" but even then, I think I knew how lucky we were. I think Randall "Pink" Floyd probably changed his tune too. I mean...he drove an El Camino and went to see Aerosmith in their coked-out prime, of COURSE his high school career was awesome.

Moving forward to my adult years, one of the things I get to be proud about is that I work for a company that gives altruistically.  Between 2011-2013, we raised over $1m for local schools, and those dollars went to programs that are underfunded or worse---dying on the vine, or already dead and gone.  I remember somewhere around 1996, when my friends and I were just (legally) tasting the freedom of vehicle ownership, when Charlotte County proposed to cut arts and theatre.  So many of us stood up, drove to the City Council Meeting, and downright threatened to drop out of school if they did.  We may have been heathens, but dammit---we stood for something.

Nowadays, some of these kids don't even have the programs to begin with, which is why the company at which I work pledged to give towards those programs.  It's hard to stand for something if you don't have a wall to lean on, so to speak, and we decided that we wanted to provide a foundation.  I hear adults ALL OF THE TIME saying that kids are so lost these days...but do we seriously wonder why?  Robotics clubs, art, theatre and music...those were what we targeted, because those were the programs being systematically destroyed (and not surprisingly---the programs that teach creativity, critical thinking, and autonomy).  People thought we were nuts, because those were schools in poorer LA 'hoods, in which we rarely, if ever, sell a Lexus vehicle.

And maybe we were nuts, but...didn't I just post yesterday about embracing the madness?

Today, we are beginning the launch towards a new direction in altruism, which partners with a local animal shelter and creates a 100% dog friendly auto dealership.  We have completely lost our minds.  

I was afforded the opportunity to be a little off and a lot creative by attending a high school that didn't have metal detectors, supported a huge theatre program, and by and large...didn't have the LA problems that I have become so used to hearing about from the kids we sponsor.  It may be sad to say those were the Glory Days, and I sure as hell wouldn't go back to them, but we had it pretty damned good.

And the weirdness of theatrical collaboration back in the day, learning to stand for something...it undoubtedly made my ascent into the madness more...fun.  Madness these days means a dog friendly dealership that gave over a Million bucks to local raggedy arts high school kids.  We're weird, and luckily, weird is right up my alley.

Skeptically Yours,
Bigskeptic

Heroes for Ghosts.

The law of diminishing returns seem to be a plausible reason for things dwindling as we age as well, at least, it makes sense to me, because trading my heroes for ghosts happened over time; such a subtle incremental change that I hardly noticed it.  I'm not just talking about actual heroes, people---I mean, that's changed a little bit as well, but largely the idea of things that were once important drifting into the ether of time and being replaced by less substantial elements.

When I get into these modes---this existential "life is empti-ism"---my natural response is to seek something visceral and terrifying that will call back into existence the pertinent and meaningful guardians of my moral compass.  When these key directives dwindle, it's an almost innate draw to danger.

I have less clarity these days than I did when I was in my teen years, and to show how old I've grown I'll quote Don Henley in a blog intended to quote Pink Floyd:  "the more I know, the less I understand."  Part of growing older means getting answers for questions best left unanswered.  My life's path has been a lot different than most of my peers, and part of it was choice, part of it was by the universe's design and not my own.  I look back at things that I thought were my own decisions, and it's almost laughable.  As much as I hate the idea of predestination, some things do seem like they weren't up to me.

Without the typical elements that usually keep people grounded---kids, marriage---I have to create my own center.  And those "life is empty" moments are frightening without the bigger picture to create focus.  No matter how much meaning the other things have---job, friendships, passions, it all leads back to a paragraph that sent shivers down my spine when I was 16 and reading Keruoac for the first time around:  "My whole wretched life swam before my weary eyes, and I realized no matter what you do it's bound to be a waste of time in the end so you might as well go mad."

So MUCH of the modern life seems like a giant goddamned waste of time.  When I think back to the most wonderful moments of my life, they were spent twisting along Beach Rd, speeding on I-10, resting with sand etched into my elbows as my best friend and hero, the long gone Rottie Circe, played at the beach.  Perhaps in the trading of my heroes for the ghosts of things that once mattered, there has been an ensuing madness.  The madness lands me here, over 30, unmarried but also never divorced, finally finished with my first book, a clear reality of "who my friends are..." and although I understand less, in general, and have to watch my demons at times...I do realize one important factor:

Some of the heroes were simply false idols, and worth the trade to ghosts, who do me no harm.

Skeptically Yours,
Bigskeptic.