drugs in the drizzle

It should have been a perfect day for me.

Gray skies.  45 degrees.  Drizzle.

Just right for a short-sleeve walk to Safeway to pick up my prescription.  More about that in a moment.

What made the day a bit less than perfect was my physical reaction to it.  Cool weather usually invigorates me.  But not yesterday.

Even though I have been getting adequate sleep, I felt a bit foggy.  The way I feel in hot weather.

I once dated a woman who grew up in Miami.  During winters in Oregon, she would get almost suicidal.  She was very dependent on her Florida sunshine.  I think the syndrome was called SAD.

Well, I am not a SAD guy.  But I may have become reliant on sunshine to bolster my usual "practically perfect in every way in this best of all possible worlds" attitude.

And I could have used a bit of that attitude once I was at the Safeway prescription desk.  I stopped in for a refill last Sunday.  But there were no refills left on that particular prescription.

The clerk told me she would fax a request to my doctor.  I was to return on Wednesday for a pick up.

Knowing the depths to which efficiency has sunk in American medicine, I waited an additional day.  Of course, my doctor's office had not yet responded to the fax.  When I called my doctor's office, the receptionist took my telephone number and said she would call back later in the day.  She didn't.

There is a move amongst American expatriates in Mexico to have Medicare coverage extended south of the border.  If that happens, say good-bye to the current efficiency of Mexican medicine and hello to American governmental gridlock.

In Mexico, I merely take my empty box to the drug store where I buy medication well below American prices.  No prescription.  No faxes.  No insurance bureaucracy.  Fast and simple.

I may simply wait until I get back to Mexico to refill my prescription.

But I suspect I will miss this lovely weather.

what's up, doc?

I was about to assure you this blog is not turning into a draft of my autobiography.

I could.  But it would be a lie.

Sifting through six decades worth of possessions cannot avoid at least a few nostalgic moments.  Even those that are rankly sentimental.

My brother, Darrel, was here last weekend.  He stayed the night on Sunday after spending the weekend with my niece at Oregon State's father-daughter weekend.  We do have some traditions.

Rather than eat at the house, we dined at one of our favorite burger haunts.  At  our respective ages, conversation often turns to death.  This time it was the death of the mother of his high school girl friend (who is also a frequent reader and commenter).

Their family is filled with the type of overachievers that have made America exceptional.  Darrel listed off what each of them is doing.  He reminded me that one son (Phil) headed to Hollywood and made it big as a voice actor -- now as the voice of Jiminy Cricket.  Mel Blanc was a mentor.

If you are of a certain age, the name "Mel Blanc" will undoubtedly conjure up the voices of Warner Brother cartoons -- because that is where he became famous.  The Man of a Thousand Voices.  Most famously, the voice of Bugs Bunny.

Darrel and I have a special memory of Mel Blanc.  In the late 50s, the Oak Grove Fred Meyer had its grand opening.  And one of the celebrities the company used to draw families to the new store was Mel Blanc.

But not in the front portion of the store.  For some reason, Mel, in his ridiculous Bugs Bunny get-up, was relegated to the loading dock in the back of the store.

We kids did not care.  He may as well have been Roy Rogers in a rodeo arena.

I thought that was the end of this little stroll down nostalgia lane.  Until yesterday.  Stuck in amongst some of my photographs and love letters was a faded blue sheet of paper.  With a familiar face.  A familiar name.  And an autograph nearly fifty years old.

One more piece of evidence that the 8 year old boy who moved from Powers to Milwaukie is still very much with us.

politics in the dump

Irony is a harsh handmaiden.

I started with sorting paperwork as part of Operation Sell-the-House.  And what should show up first?  A box of campaign paraphernalia from my 1988 run for the Oregon legislature.  A campaign that ended up in a narrow margin loss.

Budgets.  Newspaper articles.  Endorsements.  Buttons.  Campaign literature.

Lots of good memories.  And a reminder that I could never imagine wasting more of my life with political activity.  Especially, as a candidate.

And who is that guy in the photograph?  It is hard to believe I was ever that young.  But the 39-year old guy in the brochure is now over two decades older.

So, off goes most of the stuff to the city dump.  With a few reminders to keep me from stepping into the arena again.

The photograph at the top of the post is the cover of the campaign's first brochure.  But this is my favorite photograph.

Having no children of my own, I borrowed my brother's son, Ryan, to highlight the "schools" policy in the brochure.

Ryan is now in his 30s with a son of his own -- both of whom I should see this coming weekend at Thanksgiving dinner in Portland. 

talking trash

It is election day.  And I am in Oregon.

Usually, I get to watch American elections in the isolation of my little village.  But not this year.  I will be in the midst of the melee.  Waiting to see if voters are willing to soldier on or to take out the trash.

There will be no choice for me.  Taking out the trash is why I am in Oregon.

When I left here almost four years ago, I left one major task unfinished -- when I decided not to sell the Salem house before I headed south.

I had started dividing my possessions into piles: garbage, Salvation Army donations, things south-bound, things to be stored.  I stopped in mid-task once I realized I could simply ignore the hard choices -- a bit like our avoidance-prone politicians.

But the time for those choices is here.

The photograph at the top of this post is symbolic of my task.  It was a third bedroom I once used as an office -- and turned into a junk room on my trek south.

Almost everyone I know has a room or closet or basement or garage devoted to the memorialization of things that should be gone, but we do not have the moral courage to rid ourselves of.

This morning I will start in the office.  I already have a good idea what I am facing.  Almost everything is going to head to the dumpster.

Books are going to be the greatest burden.  Each book means something to my life.  But I seldom look at them these days.  And the Mexican coast would not be kind to them.  Even if I could get them there.

So far, I am not certain where a good home for them will be.

You will notice the lack of one category in my decision tree.  There will be no estate sale.  No lawn sale.  No garage sale.  No eBay account.

Even though I have a lot of items that have a respectable value (such as Roadway programs signed by stars), I do not have time to be an entrepreneur of collectibles.  I will leave that to the Salvation Army.
 
So, early this morning, I will start sorting and tossing.

And the voters?  They will make their own decisions.

dead reckoning

"Who am I?"

Over a year ago, I started an essay tackling that question.  The catalyst was the recently-released Autobiography of Mark Twain.  When I read the last page, I realized I knew a lot about Mark Twain, but next to nothing about his creator -- Samuel Clemens.  Clemens spent decades weaving a cocoon around his own life while creating the comfortable façade of the witty Twain. 

That may be one reason we find it so easy to believe Hal Holbrook successfully channels him.  Twain was simply another of Clemens’s fictional characters.

Of course, we all try similar legerdemain in our lives.  The role we create for ourselves is often not how the rest of the world sees us.

Last summer I received two email from long-time readers of this blog.  Both of them described me as being a social extrovert.  When I am actually a painfully shy introvert.

We see that disconnect around us every day.  Especially in the west where we invent First World Problems for ourselves.

You can hear it in the plaintive postmodern cries demanding the world to see outliers as they choose to portray themselves.  Creating fodder for the mangers of political correctness.

Modernists (especially the traditionalists in their ranks) are not so subjective.  What they think of other people is what they objectively observe.

So, what does all this have to do with the Day of the Dead?

My fellow bloggers told me I would never forget the experience.  That it was not like anything I had seen.  Part of that is true.

I will never forget the 16 hours we spent in the area around Lake Pátzcuaro observing how Purépecha (and other Mexicans) remember their loved ones who have died.

We started with a daylight visit to the cemetery at Tzintzuntzan.  The cemetery had a large police contingent for security -- and an even larger contingent of boys carrying plastic jack-o-lanterns begging for pesos (no candy, thank you very much) from well-heeled tourists.

The light gave us an opportunity to see why the graves are lovingly prepared.  Usually decorated with orange marigolds -- lots of marigolds -- and purple-hued cockscombs.

As is true in most cultures, the wealthier the family, the more elaborate the display honoring the dead.  You might not be able to take it with you.  But your survivors can spend it on the glory of your memory.

And that is what this day is all about.  Remembering.  If we are what people know of us while we are alive, we have a certain immortality as long as there are those who will remember us.

Like this display.  There appeared to be no grave.  But Miguel was either a child or an adult whose life was somehow touched by trucks -- a fitting memorial for my own father.

We then spent the rest of the afternoon in Pátzcuaro.  You have read my comments about the town’s most honored benefactor -- Don Vasco de Quiroga.  How do you honor a man you revere, but have never met?

With a stylized altar as mythical as the heroic statue of the man that rises above the display.

Or maybe it is the heritage of the dancers that still perform for tourists each weekend.

Nightfall changed everything.  After all, it is only in the night that the spirits of the dead will visit the graveyards or their former homes to communicate with the living.

That sense of reverence and memory thickened in the graveyard of Arocutin -- a village on the western side of the lake.  And the only stop where the cemetery is in the walled yard of the church.

The candle light and the marigolds created an orange light making it easy to see why village relatives were spending the night where they were.  A rite that was communal, but also exclusive to each clan.

From Arocutin, we drove over to the former island of Jaracuaro -- famous for its production of hand-made straw hats.

Even though the hat sellers -- and other vendors -- were not going to miss the opportunity for selling wares to tourists, most local people were  there for a long night of Purépecha-inspired song and dance.  And food.  Lots of food.

We then drove to the other side of the lake.  To Ihuatzio -- best known for its archaeological site.  But on that night, its graveyard was the star.  With both the young --

-- and the elderly remembering those who had taken a journey every one of us in that yard will take.  And realizing we may be next in line for our own memorial service.

On our way back to Morelia, we stopped in the small graveyard of Tzurumútaro. Where the wealthy were easily distinguished from the graves of the poor.

Or where an unusual mix of Hummel-style figures kept company with the photograph of a couple now deceased.

And where the ubiquitous march of Halloween has made a beachhead in the land of tradition.

The next morning in Morelia, I found this interesting twist on tradition in the courtyard of one of the city’s larger churches.

For those of you who are not familiar with Mexican stores, Oxxo is the equivalent of 7-11 or Plaid Pantry.

For me, the tradition of remembering the dead was not new.  Even though Memorial Day was initiated as a way to honor America’s military dead, some families -- including my own -- would use it as a day to remember all of our deceased family members.

My mother and her sisters would drive to cemeteries to decorate graves.  When we were in southern Oregon, my mother would always buy flowers to decorate the graves of both her and my father’s families.

And we would reminisce on who they were.

Do the spirits of the dead visit graveyards on certain nights?  It seems to be a universal belief among pagan tribes throughout the world.

I don’t know.  But I do know that as long as we remember those who have gone on to the undiscovered country before us will remain alive as long as we maintain their memory.

grave thoughts

My reflections on Day of the Dead are almost completed.

While watching the Purépecha remember their dead, this recent Billy Collins poem from Horoscopes for the Dead echoed through my memory.  It is appropriately titled "Grave."

Tomorrow we can discuss its underlying philosophy.

What do you think of my new glasses

I asked as I stood under a shade tree
before the joined grave of my parents,

and what followed was a long silence
that descended on the rows of the dead
and on the fields and the woods beyond,

one of the one hundred kinds of silence
according to the Chinese belief,
each one distinct from the others,

but the differences being so faint
that only a few special monks
were able to tell them apart.

They make you look very scholarly,
I heard my mother say
once I lay down on the ground

and pressed an ear into the soft grass.
Then I rolled over and pressed
my other ear to the ground,

the ear my father likes to speak into,
but he would say nothing,
and I could not find a silence

among the 100 Chinese silences
that would fit the one that he created
even though I was the one

who had just made up the business
of the 100 Chinese silences -
the Silence of the Night Boat

and the Silence of the Lotus,
cousin to the Silence of the Temple Bell
only deeper and softer, like petals, at its farthest edges.

the rest of the dead

I am going to give you all a little rest from reading this blog.  I am in the highlands for the Day/Night of the Dead celebrations -- without internet access.

I will be back on Sunday -- in Oregon.  With a few tales of the dead and living.