Nostalgia Nov 7 2009

The three nephews came for a visit, Aloysius, Ayden, and Austin.

They had flown in on Lucky Airlines. I assume this airline originates in Vegas or some other pilgrims' sanctuary. If you recall, the last time I had dealings with the Gang of Three was subsequent to their posing as journalists in some country in which a color-coded revolution was taking place: somewhere west of Mandalay.

We had tea (courtesy The Grace Tea Co. of NY, NY.) and scones.
I told them I had just visited a Senior Housing development in Port Desespoir, looking for a place for my brother, Absalom, to live. (a lot of "A" names in this family!)
One place had large closets in the master bedroom, and to emphasize the fact, the interior designer had set up a little tableau of chairs and table set for tea, big enough for the society of any grandchild with pretensions to society. All very cozy and idyllic.
Something about the closet, though. Something...something...vaguely I was reminded of Freddie Krueger in one of his films. "Nightmare at the Plaza", or something like that.

Of course, my brother is dead set against moving. He has apparently accumulated enough kindred spirits on the Street Down by the Docks - that's its name: "The Street Down by the Docks" ! - to have set up an Algonquin Round Table of wits and good fellows, and he does not wish to leave them. Oh, he could still get public transport back, but it is the life blood of the streets - or the one street, to be exact - which draws him. He says that if he were to have to move, you may as well ring up the vicar, tip the deacon, polish up the skills of the belfry's change ringers, and mark x on May the 5th, for it would be a poison shirt upon his back, a toxic needle into the arm...a nail into his coffin, and he would soon be dead.
Having known him so long, I mentally checked my calendar, and saw the date was open...but I knew he spoke in jest. May the 5th was totally open, and would be a fabulous day for a funeral. I am sure that the people who attended would come back and regale me with long tales of the magnificence of the Church, the tear in the eye of the beadle, the flowers arrayed like the muted sobbing of clouds...

...the cortege...the drive to the cemetery...the inexplicable disappearance of the priest at the cemetery, as the mourners looked at each other with suspicion...the search for an appropriate person - whom all trusted and was, technically, neutral - to say a few words...
...perhaps our friend Linda might be imposed upon...we used her once when the rabbi disappeared at a wedding...she paints eyeballs on furniture for a living, and, by all accounts, is considered a most spiritual type of being...sort of a shaman, if you will...of course, this veering off from regular High Church rituals into what appears to be paganism will probably not be a good sign...

Back to the Senior Housing. I said to him that I thought we were cremating you and throwing the ashes under a bus. He laughed and said that if that were to happen, how could he have his motto engraved upon his tombstone? How, indeed? Then he asked whether I remembered his chosen epitaph.
I tried the one of W.C. Fields, but that was not it.
I tried Oliver Cromwell's, but - alas! - again not the correct inscripture.
By now he was becoming visibly upset, seeing as no one would get the epitaph correct, and he may end up with something as appalling as one of my poems upon his stone. He might have to endure yet a while to ensure that the motto - perhaps it was a limerick? - be properly handled.
I asked why he didn't just go out and buy a stone, have it engraved, proof it, and be done. Put it in the tub for the time being, and take one's ablutions at the bus terminal.
He did consider this for a short spell, deciding finally the floor joists where he lived would probably give way under the weight, dumping his possessions one inauspicious day into the tattoo parlor downstairs.

So, the boys A and I talked about nostalgia and the old days.
I have never been one big on the old days. I agree with Henry Ford: History is pure bunkum...but you have to be well schooled in it to catch out the other sharp fellow who's fixing to run a scam by you, even as we speak here!

I saw the movie Putney Swope for the very first time the other day. I was amazed. There is a lot that was dated; there was a lot that was stupid; but there was a lot that was totally Sorcerer's Apprentice, totally wizard, totally schoolboy amazing.

I saw an artefact from that time, and it was unalloyed with my other memories. Everything about the old days and goldie oldies is real taffy of memory, and for me hard to chew. But this was new sprung, and it blew me away.
It was something that I had ignored, not read a review about, not seen a trailer for. I had not read a book on the Sixties with heavy historical musings on the cinema of the times, the rise of black cinema, the meaning for our times, or any of that other blather we always hear...and immediately ignore.

It allowed me to see exactly what was what, reminded me exactly how I felt, how I laughed, how I cried, how I loved back then.

It was the proverbial "blast from the past".

It was the prize of innocence of our age. It showed me what we all really were; it was not a memory like furniture overlaid with eras of re-painted memories - like The Greatest Generation - until the paint becomes so thick it even obscures the outline of the furniture's wood.
It was a prize, and it was real.

Look for something similar.
Remember what we all once were, before the present age.
Look at our souls, and compare it to what we've become.

History that is stuck in the same groove, that repeats the same moral over and over, that overlays actions with an shellac integument of thoughtless words... such History is Bunk!