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Last month I received a number of excellent responses to my thoughts in the newsletter about giving spoilers to readers so that they won't get anxiety about what's going to happen to the characters in the book. There was also one negative response. Maybe I'll elaborate on that in the newsletter I'm doing for this month. I had also promised to address the hollow promises of fortune cookies. You'll have to sign up for the letter to discover what I have to say about those things.

In the meantime, I recently had occasion to contemplate the tribute we pay to our dead. 

I traveled with my dad to Afton Wyoming for the funeral of his sister. She was the oldest child of his siblings. Three other siblings had preceded her in death. I've observed that the longer I'm around, the more people I know who have crossed the river into eternity.

 In fact, today I learned that one of my friends from high school died from a heart attack within the last few days. Earlier today, I participated in some on-line indexing which included entering information from death certificates. Most of the names I indexed today were born in the 1890s or early 1900s and died in 1975 in Wisconsin. Only one of them died before age 40. So I've had cause lately to contemplate the fuzzy edge of mortality.

Anyway, at my aunt's service, a nice slide show of her with her children, grandchildren, and great grand children played during the viewing. During the funeral itself, family and friends shared memories and personal experiences about her. A son-in-law and a granddaughter each sang musical numbers. It was all very touching, a fitting tribute.

Why do we do it? Why do we solemnize the passing with ceremony and remembrance? There may be many reasons, and I can't bear the burden of trying to imagine all of them. I can contemplate a few. In most cases, we have an attachment and love for our deceased friends and kin. Our love doesn't end because their physical presence has passed away. A funeral is a final formal expression of love and attachment shared with family, friends, and the deceased--a song of parting with hope that our sentiments can transcend the mortal coil to rise with our loved ones--a symbol of our sorrow with an assertion that we remain bound by the cords of the heart and soul.

We are to some extent what our forebears have made us. We honor the family ties and bonds of friendship. We especially recognize our debt to their struggles and trials. In many cases we have tasted of the sweet because they bit off the bitter. We fortify our remembrance with ceremony to honor their accomplishments, to celebrate their lives and the difficulties they have overcome, to accept the responsibility to transmit our memories of them to our posterity. 

Musical memory missives

I was pole vaulting in the Louvre, or maybe it was Versailles, and using the pole, an ornate blue and gold thing, to balance as I ran upon the walls about a circular room while making important announcements. This was after an earlier bit of slogging through a drying marsh of black mud and tall, desiccated yellow grass; I can't remember if I was chasing or being chased--I remember contemplating that the journey had not been very well planned, and I noticed a lack of insects or other wildlife. I suppose these weird dreams from last night are the product of several days at a professional conference where I logged a steady two to four hours of sleep per night, followed by a return home to a good night's rest on a pungently new pillow whose odor made a merry strange stew of the subconscious sorting system which had been thrust back online after a few days on unpaid leave. (I love those long sentences stitched together by descriptive clauses. I really have to make an effort to break ideas into short, simple sentences; however, I remain confident that anyone who reads this page regularly has probably completed the fifth grade, and can comprehend complex, albeit poorly written, sentences).

While those are fake, dream-memories, my conscious self treated me to some pleasant memories during the drive home from the conference. Music, perhaps, is second only to smell in stimulating memory. I'll mention two memory missives I received.

When the opening bars of "Who's Crying Now" by Journey started playing over the radio, I was transported back to high school days. We were gathered at Aaron's house to revel in a few hours of smart talk, chips, shared escapist adventure, and sweaty-palmed dice rolling. A D&D day. These guys weren't my usual playing partners, but we did get together a few times over the course of a month or two for a good dungeon crawl. I don't remember anything about that campaign (except this song playing on the radio), or even whether we completed it before we were no longer able to convene, drawn back into our separate spheres of life that seldom overlapped. Aaron was really the only one of the group that I knew well. He was a year or two behind me in school, but I knew him from band, wrestling, and cross-country. I think he played either trombone or trumpet--you know, the manly, brass instruments, not one of those sissy woodwinds. I played the trumpet--but I wish that I had also learned to play the flute because 1) they were easier to carry, and 2) Jethro Tull. 

Thinking of band brings back memories of trumpet and flugelhorn--with only one or two French horns in the band, Mr. Johnson, the band director, had the three lead trumpet players switch to flugelhorns for one season of marching band to create what he called a darker more mellow brass sound. I don't remember the songs we played on those horns, but I remember painstakingly transposing the music, carefully adjusting the notes and writing them on the sheets of music paper in company with David and Lyle (I think), the other trumpeters turned flugelmeisters. 

The drum line stood right behind the trumpets in the band room. I could reach behind my chair and flip the snare release on Colleen's drum when she wasn't looking--transforming it from snare to regular drum. Colleen, of course, would be unaware of the change until she started to play, reacting with anger and embarrassment. I'm not sure why she didn't bust a drum stick over my head, but I remain glad that she didn't. I think that I learned rather early in life that best results in playful insults, teasing, and friendly harassment are achieved when the target has a generally pleasant disposition, and can be depended upon not to use one's head as snare drum or one's body as a Stretch Armstrong doll. Of course, the wiser (and less hazardous) path would have been to just be a better person...and that's still an option that I'm considering...at least from time to time.

But I digress...because that's what I do. I do it well. We should all do what we do well. Memory is a crazy crumpled string of the past; following the thread may lead one down its length, or careen one in another direction where the string is crushed against another byte bight in the line, giving a simple trip down memory lane the potential to transform into an exhilarating roller coaster ride of rapid recollections. 

As for the other memories. Two songs made me think of a high school sweetheart. She was also in marching and stage bands. Among other things, she played the piano. She frequently played (and sang) Billy Joel's "Piano Man." The hotel where the conference took place had a piano in the lobby. As I walked through the lobby one night after a conference session, a talented guy tickled that tune from the ivories. Another immediate and pleasant trip down the memory tube ensued. The other song came from my own playlist after my preset radio stations disappointed me with nonstop talk and commercials. This particular playlist is heavily laden with songs from ELO and Styx. Maybe the earlier song from the hotel lobby setup this little time travel trip. When "Babe" by Styx started playing, the mental Wayback Machine launched the recollection app which opened at a dance. I was with that same sweetheart, and Wayne was asking me what song I would request for the DJ to play. I thought of two songs at the time. "Babe," and "Don't Bring Me Down." I find it interesting that although I chose the latter, the former is the one that throws the lever on the Wayback Machine for me. Sherman and Mr. Peabody might have some insight into that phenomenon. 

Do the things that make you think of someone, make them think of you? I doubt it; at least not usually--but sometimes..maybe.

Flecks

I wore a memory today. A pair of them. I hadn't worn them in weeks. I didn't think of the memory when I slipped into them. It was later that I noticed the little yellow flecks against the black leather. There were a lot of flecks...especially in the creases and seams. To what shall I compare them? Stars in the night sky? No; the flecks were too plentiful. Gold dust? Perhaps; flecks of gold glistening in dark rock, more abundant in some spots than others. In a way, that's the best comparison.

My shoes were bespeckled, stippled; in point of fact, they were bespattered. I should have cleaned and polished them right away...but I am loathe to do so. Perhaps it is too late. Will memory dim if I scrub away the specks? Will I enjoy the remembrance less if those abundant flakes are replaced with the sheen of well-buffed polish? Will I cease to remember the walk hand-in-hand with my wife in the torrential downpour which splashed the sands of France upon my loafers?

While memory may remain intact after the shoes are polished and honed to a fine gloss, I am pleased to be forced to recall that day in Versailles when I gaze upon those sandy traces.

On a different subject, my oil gauge is still strangely afflicted with the cheerleader virus. The new switch, the new sockets, the trips to town, the muttered oaths, and bruised arm were all for naught.
***
Now, back to our regularly scheduled story.

We left Chateau Gaillard. Bayeux beckoned. We hearkened. As we left the ruins, Madame Google (It could be Mademoiselle, but the tone of her voice sounds more dame than moiselle to me.) soon sent us off on a rather narrow road. Down. The road went down. We went with it. The stairs of Cirith Ungol would have been wide in comparison.

It was a curvy, windy affair. Trees and thick brush cast an impermeable, verdant canvas over both sides of the road. Jagged patches of sky showed in the broken foliage overhead. We seemed to be alone in this downward spiral of leaves and asphalt. 

Things were not as they seemed. 

At a place where the road nearly doubled back upon itself, a black car, like some nefarious beast of Mordor, thrust itself in front of our KIA. Inasmuch as the road consisted of only one lane (or less), I can't fault the driver for being in my lane. But that driver made no attempt to keep to his side of the path. 

I slammed on the brakes, consciously ignoring the clutch, knowing that the car would stall. I hoped the added resistance of the transmission would help me stop; I don't know if it did or not. I was pretty positive that the nose of the KIA was going to ram that other car like a Roman trireme...and sink us both. 

There couldn't have been more than a centimeter between the cars when the KIA skirtched (That's a quick, brief, screech of the tires on the asphalt. It's not a word, but it should be.) to a stop. The dark beast resumed its course. Dragging a trailer behind, it drove around us, up into the verdant shadow.

Unscathed (and somehow unsoiled), we continued toward Bayeux.
***
I just looked at my shoes again. The flecks have nearly all disappeared...