10 things I've learned from women

1). Grab a damn cart! I don't know how many times I've rushed into a supermarket on a "quick mission" thinking I had no use for a cart only to end up lugging an enormous, awkward armload of items to the checkout aisle, dropping a few en route. A large package of toilet paper skidding behind me was par for the course. Every woman knows this almost from the instant she takes her first baby steps: a shopping card is standard operating equipment!

While we're on this general topic,
2). Shopping is a journey, not a destination. I know this goes full-against our hard-wired DNA, but battle your primal male urge to "Pursue & Purchase". Your reward will not only be a less-stressful shopping experience overall, but one filled with surprise and friends, in addition to unexpected side-trips, and quite possibly a fabulous lunch. Note: Brace yourself that you may not, in fact, end up purchasing anything and remember your new mantra: Any man can purchase, but only real men can shop!

3) If someone says you are "fun to talk to", it usually means you're a very good listener. Take one step back to observe any recent, good conversation with any of your female friends and more likely than not you will discover that you did most of the talking, perhaps all of it. Women have intuitively known, since we all stumbled out of our caves, that men adore talking about themselves, and especially so when listened to by women. Next time you sit down over a coffee, beer or glass of wine, try turning the tables and subtly encourage her to talk totally about herself - you may be captivated by what you hear. Important: DO NOT INTERRUPT HER at this point, even if something up on the TV monitor is really interesting.

5). As a species, Women are more socially evolved. Observe them! Frankly, you have thousands of years of conditioning to catch up to do in this category, but it's never too late to start. Lessons learned here can benefit you not only with an expanded and enhanced social environment, but can add literally years to your life! Fact: After retirement, men on average will die 5.2 years earlier than women, and by age 100 are outnumbered by women 8 to 1. One key ingredient: have lots of friends and don't hesitate in asking them for assistance. Try these unthinkable few words in a sentence and observe what magic occurs: "I have a problem - could you help me?".

4). The only people who notice guys on motorcycles are other guys (or girls who also are on motorcycles). I know this is a heart breaker, but motorcycles (with a few exceptions) are pretty much another one of those guy things. It's the male tribal community that's paying attention here, so don't kid yourself. All the black leather, the tattoos, the boots, the premium-fueled flatulence, it all goes mainly unnoticed by the majority of female-kind. In fact, in this particular department, most of the human She's and He's are in full agreement: they'll take a reliable, clean convertible over any Harley, thank you very much.

5). The cast iron "steel nutsack" - the one hanging down under your 4 x 4 - is really gross. Really. It also implies the driver (that would be you) is the type of guy who meets most of his "dates" across his table at the local strip club. Or possibly a milking barn. Which is also not to assume that you are a very popular face in either.

6). Manners still matter. No, opening a car door has not gone out of style, and likely never will. This also applies to holding a door as you both enter a restaurant (or even a dive) and also pulling out her chair when being seated. Or making sure she has water in her glass, when your waiter doesn't. While it occasionally does happen (and most women who'd protest are quite content to serve notice when it does), most females don't object to the extra attention and thoughtfulness of a polite courtesy. Example: When was the last time you objected to a woman offering to cook your favorite meal, no matter how much work may be involved? Get it?

7). Just because she's never told you, do not conclude that the woman in your life doesn't consider your mother to be a total bitch. That one's simple enough, right? Now, you may be the lucky one in fifty men to which this does not apply, but remember, those odds are 50 to 1. Is that a horse you'd bet on?

8). Three words: Laser Hair Removal. Public enlightenment on this one has begun to infiltrate the male ranks, but just in case you haven't already heard - excessive body hair is a turn-off (That's why only the creepy, fat, evil guys in the World Wrestling Federation have so much of it, right? Think about it.). Now: A new chrome cargo rack for your jeep, or a shiny new pair of hairless shoulders for you?

9). Unless it's a wedding ring, or weighs in at over 3 carets, diamonds are dumb. A brief disclaimer here: She probably won't throw those $99 earrings back in your face, but poll after poll continues to bear out that the majority of women find diamond jewelry to be a boring, unimaginative gift, and in general, another "guy thing". What's the "guy thing" part? That you've been listening more to those cheesy TV discount-diamond ads than you have to your own girlfriend, who, chances are, has hinted to you dozens of times what she'd really like you to buy her. Still don't get it? Go back and read #3, again.

Finally,

10.) You're just perfect - NOT! Sorry, but I had to break this one to you at some point, and now is just as good a time as any. No, you're not huge, not even larger than average, and your body is about in the same boat - merely average. The good news is that she still thinks you're a cool guy - in fact loves you - even loves having sex with you (most of the time), despite your newly-revealed deficiencies (which she's known about from the start). Here's a last tough one for you to swallow: she's probably had better sex with other guys, but still prefers you best of all. See how lucky you are she's not like us?

tic tock goes the clock

I wander onto the online classroom homepage of an old friend, one quite long out of touch, and smile when I see the footer quotes a mid-life observation of Albert Einstein: "The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious." How so I agree. Beautiful, but also an artwork rendered with colors human eyes cannot fully appreciate, if they are always able to identify them at all.

For people like myself, the realm of the mysterious in life appears to have to been shrinking annually, something like my tee shirts. Season after season sees it fade, grow flimsier, fainter, until it has become something impractical, something that no longer quite fits. Like the damned tee shirts.

Except.

In 1981 my son was five years old, healthy, of clear complexion and usually ready for bedtime by 8 pm. At the time we lived in a plain, single-story rental that featured a washer and dryer, a small front porch and the deluxe accommodation of a rope swing out in the front yard, which we shared with the second rental that rested further back but on the same lot.

It was the beginning of our second year in the house, Andrew had just started taking swimming lessons at the Y down the street, and I was settling into my new full-time photographer post at the Skagit Valley Herald, a local daily in Mount Vernon. After some early years with concerns for our son's health, and a spate of part-time jobs for me, life seemed to be settling down nicely.

Andrew's room was just off the living room, and without doubt was the prettiest room in the house- his mother and Nana had made sure of that, having spent days fixing it up with fresh paint and rolls of new wallpaper, a peaceful mural of clouds and kites in a blue sky that stretched from corner to corner, floor to ceiling. It was the perfect room for playing, and even more perfect for dreaming. I relished it at the time as a small corner of boyhood heaven.

Bedtime had become a predictable and playful ritual for us, one that usually included a rendition of his favorite, made-up bedtime story, "Cocoa the Clown". Following a rollicking series of events which included a ride on a steam engine, a ferris wheel and a hot air balloon, the story would always end with the same, spectacular stunt: the main character (Andrew) tumbles downward in a thousand-foot fall, down through the sky and ultimately right through our own shingled roof, finally bouncing safely down, uninjured, right into his very own own bed, which lay warm and waiting. The perfect end to any kind of day, for both of us.

After tucking him in with a hug and kiss, I would begin another part of the bedtime ritual, a secret second part, of which he was unaware and is perhaps still. While he was drifting off to sleep, I would stand outside of his pale blue room and peek back in through his door, making sure he didn't notice, until I could just barely see his face there on his pillow. My secret game was to stand in the shadows and imagine as hard as I could that I was now very, very old - many years had passed - and Andrew was all grown up. Flown the coop, and far away from his folks, living his life. With my imagination and some non-specific magic, I would then pretend that the "Old Geff" was then able to travel back into time, back through all the years, back until he was standing right there at that exact same spot. Where I/he could/would stand and watch and behold my beautiful little boy once again, safe and asleep, and for as long as I cared to gaze. And just drink it in, to my very heart's content.

It worked every time. Bedtime was magic time, that was for sure.

This went on for several months, my secret nighttime visitations known only to me, and the "Old Geff" from the future.

Then one evening, with no warning at all, the Universe decided to follow the two of us to bed. Or at the very least, its pocket watch did.

As I trailed Andrew into his room one completely ordinary night and approached his bed, I was suddenly aware - with no mistake - of a loud "ticking", apparently coming from nowhere. Pulling his blanket snugly up to his shoulders, I stopped, stood up straight and swept the room slowly with my eyes - no clocks, no toys, no watches, either, or radios. It was at that same, peculiar instant, that I also felt a string of words suddenly surge into my mind: "Time is running out." Just like that. The voice was calm and clear. It came in my own thoughts complete and with perfect diction, like a living flashcard. I felt a chill.

While I am not accustomed to messages coming by way of the supernatural, omnibus or otherwise, my ears are definitely perked at this. What the hell was that?

Time is running out. A warning - of what? And from whom? Rather than worry Linda that it may just be some kind of foreboding omen or something having to do with our son, I kept silent. And chose to pretend that I may have been just hearing things, or imagining things, or had it happen in a dream even, who knows. Either way, it's over now.

Weeks pass, quite a few actually, and slowly the everyday hum-drum does its work, performing as a force of mental gravity that eventually lowers the importance of possible "mystical" experiences (and anything else it can sink its mundane little teeth into), first to eye level, then below, and then out of your peripheral vision all together. End effect: Weird, yes? Significant, doubtful.

I had the mundane to thank, at the very least, for sleeping better.

I'm watching television, alone in the living room - this is a good 6 weeks later - when all of a suddenly, out of the blue again, the ticking. Not like from a TV, or a record player, but as if someone is holding a fine instrument, an invisible stopwatch, right up tight, next to my ear. It is precision machinery I hear, held infinitely close. And yet it is nowhere. I take a breath, look over my shoulder, ponder my options, and decide to completely ignore it. Eyes back to the TV. Tic toc tic toc tic toc tic toc tic toc tic toc.

Absolutely ridiculous, but I refuse to let it shake me - whatever "it" is.

Linda enters the room, plops down on the couch, pauses for an instant and says "Do you hear that?"

"What do you hear?"

"You can't hear that ticking?!" And she begins (and I join her) to rifle the couch, pulling away cushions, reaching the arms, searching everywhere for it, the source of this insane ticking. We turn off the TV, slide the couch away from the wall, check the space behind it, under it, and make a cursory search of the entire room, ending up again on the disheveled couch, all the while the "clock" is ticking away.

Linda shakes her head, dumbfounded, perhaps now looking even a bit frightened when she says "It's so weird, Geff... it's like time is running out!" and that exact instant the ticking stops, dead, silent.

Now I'm fucking shook. I tell Linda my bit of backstory, that I heard the ticking weeks earlier, in Andrew's room while putting him to bed, but didn't know what to make of it. Shit, I still don't know. But something is definitely going on here.

We continue to tear down the room, to find nothing. We lay awake in our bed and swap possible scenarios, but not a one seems to make any more sense than the other. I am perplexed but have also come to the immediate conclusion that this all is 1). Defintely a message, and 2). One that does not require the talents of Edgar Cayce to interpret: Watch out, and possibly, watch out for you lives. That an impending catastrophe or tragedy lay in wait for Andrew, or Linda, or for all three of us, I had no doubt. Just a matter of... time.

And for two full years I payed very special attention, to every day, and every evening, and especially every moment that I spent with Andrew. And I was afraid that it would all end, end just like that. In a swimming pool, a side street, an intersection, a park, you name it. Bang. Gone. Over.

But it didn't, as it turned out. And what?

If you'd had almost an entire lifetime of years to unravel that strange little ball of string, what would you make of it?

Here's my best shot: What if it wasn't a warning, or at least not a warning that something bad was about to happen. What if, instead, it was a message, but a warning to be good. To "Take care. Don't let it slip by." What if someone had reached into our lives with a magic timepiece and was whispering to us: "You are together and these are precious, joy-filled years - pay attention! You have a beautiful, happy son and he will soon be growing up. Play on the swing! Love each other! Enjoy! Time is running out!"

And maybe to be a tiny bit afraid at the time isn't all such a bad thing, given the stakes, given what you have to loose. No rehearsals, people, you're on.

Come to think of it, that's exactly the type of message I'd like to send back, if I was able to, somehow.

Hey Andrew, hey Linda, close your eyes.

Listen.

I love you. love you.

one of us

I have a storyline in my head, a short story - not even quite enough for a novella - about this old timer who lives alone a few miles from a flyspeck town somewhere in Nevada or Arizona. The desert, way the hell out in the sticks.

It's still somewhat nebulous in my mind, but definitely does not involve any kind of huge, melodramatic plot, more like a slice of life kind of thing. A simple character study depicting a few days in the timeline of this old fart and the little life he has carved out for himself over the years, in a who-knows-where patch of sand and scrubgrass. Let's call him "old Ray". I picture him on a tiny ranch he's cobbled together (something hardly more than a shack, along with a small barn), where he spends his days and nights alone, but with the critter companionship of a goat, a scruffy old mutt, plus a cat or two (he likes "creatures").

Following along, we also observe him visiting a lonesome-looking grave (always bringing colorful, plastic flowers), as well as chatting with a few of the other local characters on his brief trips into town for food and various other provisions. The days pass slowly for old Ray, a fair amount of his time being devoted to wrenching on his worn out Land Rover, which serves, along with the mutt, and the goat, and cats, as something of a sidekick. As I mentioned, his is a little life, and one spent somewhat delicately at the perimeters.

One more thing regarding his situation: buried under the barn, a few inches down in the dust, are the remains of a shiny, broken spaceship. Ray's ship. We learn that a little over a half-century earlier (our time), alien-astronaut Ray crashed his ship onto an unfamiliar orb of sand and sea, in a strange galaxy, light years away from his home planet, and was hopelessly marooned. Here. As weeks stretched into months and then months into years, old Ray accepted the fact that, alien or not, he'd be living out his years in a place about which he knew precious little, and amongst a people he had only the vaguest understanding of. Worst of all, and most worrisome, he possesses no powers here.

By the way - and I hope i'm giving away too much when I say this - the concept is somewhat autobiographical.

I'm not joking. I may not have had green skin and hairy antennae, but for a good percentage of the people I met in my early life, just having grown up in in a town named Sedro-Woolley would qualify me, if not for being pretty damned peculiar, at the very least highly suspect. "The Nuthouse?"

If you were additonally unfortunate enough to have had either of your parents (or in my case, both) locked up, er.... patients, in that place, then matters were only that much worse. As that unique sub-class of being, you no longer required odd glances or whispers to confirm your creepiness, you already knew it, from the inside out. Not that folks weren't happy as heck to remind you, just in case it occasionally accidentally slipped your (unsound) mind.

Humans.

Modern kiddie self-help books seem to champion the notion that loony eccentricity can often be a creative and inspiring kind of thing. I can personally vouch that this kind of diversity was as uplifting, spiritually speaking, as a diagnosis of ringworm. Both having very similar effects on your upward social mobility, not to mention your place in the lunch line. Few things serve to cool a relationship quicker, new or old alike, than having a bonafide lunatic in your family. The only thing worse was having one in the house with you. Trying to kill you.

Lucky for me I didn't have far to look to find a surrogate tribe: TV. I gorged myself on a childhood of Leave It to Beaver, Twilight Zone, and Ozzie and Harriet, convinced theirs was the real world, and my mine merely a temporary misunderstanding, like the stork who delivered the baby pig to pair of confused and disappointed baboons. As a result, my adolescent re-entry was a rockier one than some, and fueled with a hunger for life as 30-minute episodes, all which came with a interesting beginning and middle, and pleasant end. Drugs helped in the pursuit of the quixotic, and while that intermission lasted, I simply was TV.

Fortunately in my case, unlike old Ray, there were other aliens stuck out in that desert besides just me. My friend Bruce was a first-string player on that team, and from an extremely early age, as anyone reading this blog has already surmised. And there were others out there, lost and found - or discarded - along the way.

So, in case I may have invoked your sympathies, here is the story of but one: I bumped into Philip on a noontime recess during my first few weeks at a new grade school in Bellingham, Washington. Right off the bat, we clicked.

Turned out it was Philips' first year at Columbia Elementary as well. The more we spoke and exchanged info, the more we seemed to share a remarkable degree of common interests, on and off the playground.

Philip appeared to be about my same age, and a very keeno kinda guy, even if he didn't have the same home room as I did, of which Columbia fifth graders there were three. We still lucked into sharing the same recess, however, and used that time to bear down each other with increasing mutual enthusiasm, cheerfully sharing stories, portions of our brown sack lunches and tales about other kids at the school that we both hated or feared.

We'd been hanging out like this for a few days when I had him over to my house after school - I lived a scant two blocks away - in a two bedroom rental kitty corner from a local mom and pop market. Over ice cream cup sundaes we pondered the finer points of James Bond's new super weapons and the latest jokes from MAD magazine. We snuck a long peek into one of my brother numerous editions of Playboy, and showed off my clunky selection of plastic WWII bombers and fighters. Philip totally got me, and I him. When he left my house that afternoon just before suppertime, he carried under his arm a library loan-out composed of the pride and joy of my private collections: a stack of my favorite issues of Famous Monsters of Filmland, Archie and Dennis the Menace. My best, as it were.

Philip seemed too good to be true, even then, so it is strange to me now that I can recall so very little about how he actually looked, or even dressed. Were his eyes were blue or brown (?), I'm clueless. Despite my great affection for him at the time, the single trait I can recall is a round and perfectly white patch of hair, about the size of a silver dollar, that stood dead-center at the top of his otherwise solid-brown head of hair.

It must have been only a short while later that same week that things changed. For some reason, my attention had been drawn to the fact that Philip did not appear to be in any of the 5th grade classes at Columbia, at least so far as I could observe. The more I looked into it, the more perplexed I became. It was with the vaguest of suspicions that I continued to casually investigate the puzzle, and only by complete accident that I discovered that he was, in fact, in the Special Education class.

The revelation went through me like a bolt lightning.

Special Ed. Holy Shit.

As a footnote, it bears mentioning that this was the tail end of a sad era for Special Education in public schools, a time when it was perceived to be - often correctly - as an under-funded collection of unfortunate children huddled under a single umbrella, whose personal issues ranged wildly, from grievous deformities and other physical handicaps, to mentally retardation, to children who were perfectly normally (perhaps even gifted) but were confined to a wheelchair. Toss in a handful of kids with ADD (long before that diagnosis officially existed), one or two who might be genuinely emotionally disturbed - or just have problems fitting in - and you just about have it. Sometimes things even got a little rough, physically. It was not an enlightened time. "Mainstream" was still a concept yet to invented.

Although at the time I was not sure exactly how he quite fit into it, it was obvious I had learned Philip's secret. Here was the boy that I had believed was remarkably just like me - or was he?

I will save you any guesswork regarding my reaction: I completely shunned him, beginning at that very moment. If I could saw he was out in the playground, I avoided it. If I glimpsed him in a hallway or staircase, I turned on my heel and ducked him. Lunchroom: the same. Day in, day out. I don't recall ever having confronted him directly, or he me, only that I made every effort - successfully - to make certain we we would not cross paths ever again.

The innocent boy, whose oh-so tender heart had once sank upon hearing a cheap whisper of The Nuthouse, was not such an innocent after all. And while I may have neglected or failed at most of my homework on humanity, I obviously had at least one lesson down-pat: how to behave like a complete heel.

One image I can still recall, with with crystal clarity. It is the day, some time later, when I returned home alone after school and found all my magazines and comics waiting on the doorstep, stacked ever-so neatly, as perfect as the day they had been lended. A note was attached, which stated simply "Thank you."

Over the years I have often wondered how my betrayal may have scarred him, as well as what great friends we might have eventually become, had I shown even one shred of courage, not to mention decency. My imaginings drift also to his parents: did they hearten and share his happiness when told of his new-found chum, only left to wonder when their son so soon appeared saddened, the new friend missing? I'll never know. I never saw or heard from Philip again, or if I did, I blocked it out of my mind. I guess I thought I was too good for him.

This, mind you, from a fifth grade boy who stayed in during his lunch hour to cut nazi armbands out of colored butcher paper.

Humans.

Quite the bunch.

boys and wars

In a rare burst of wisdom, I once proclaimed that there was no fight ever as fierce as the one waged in the defense of ignorance. That revelation summed up, as good as anything, my own teenage years as well, an inauspicious time concocted with backwater recipe of bland idealism, incorrigible (and incredible, under the circumstances) conceit, aimless rage and flat-out stupidity.

My complete and total lack of appreciation for all that had come before me at the time, and any debt of conscience, is laughable, or at least it would be, otherwise.

I have a clear recollection of Mr. Bricka, then principal, addressing the 1972 graduating class during what was to be our final high school assembly. Speaking from behind a tall podium of varnished plywood (likely as not built years earlier as a student wood shop project), he looked out over us and proclaimed that we would "..look back on these high school years as the happiest of our lives." His words rallied a tiny, polite applause, a handful of pre-drunken hoots from the back rows, and from me a silent, incredulous wince: "Best years?". For me, at least, they had been anything but.

For the middle-aged man on that stage, however, and an entire generation of men and women like him, I realize now those young years might very well have been the best years, and most carefree. Happy days to recall before the lot of them were to enlist or be drafted into the maelstrom that was World War ll.

Bricka himself was not only a veteran, but a veteran for whom the Battle of the Bulge was more than a page in history, since he'd lived it, meaning fought it. As an epic 40-day-long fight endured (and won) by hungry, freezing and under-equipped troops that ranged in age from seventeen to forty, brutal would appear to be an understatement. The topic introduction in Wikipedia notes it as the "... single largest and bloodiest battle that American forces fought in World War II", one which left 100,000 American troops either dead, wounded or captured. It was never a subject I discussed with Bricka himself (we were on less then friendly terms at the time, and he passed away in 1982), but if he was anything like many of the veterans I've talked to since, it's a fair to guess that it was a memory he both took immense pride in addition to being one he may have also wished to forget.

Our vice-principal was also a WW II vet, and our schoool counselor wore large brown hearing aids in both of his ears, the result of an exploding hand grenade, also in Europe. There were probably others as well, if I'd been paying attention, which I was not.

Fact was, growing up in the 50's and 60's, almost every adult male you encountered, including your own dad and for that matter your mother as well, had likely played some part in that war. Almost as likely, every family seemed also have at least one name that would come up from time to time, a brother or cousin or friend, someone they had seen off to The War but had never came back. In my wife's family it had her mom's brother. At our house it was Otto Hinds, Jr., my dad's youngest brother, whose plane had been shot down somewhere over Europe. While that war to me at the time seemed as far-off and irrelevant as the Civil War, I do have one recollection that served to nudge it a bit closer: visiting my grandparents in Kansas one summer in the late 60's, I slept in the basement bedroom, the coolest room in the house. Across the floor, near a wood shelf rack filled with canned fruits and vegetables, I noticed a large green chest, bolted shut. My father informed me later that when each one of their five sons had left for the war, their keepsakes had been tucked away in matching chests, for safekeeping, until their return. My grandparents had never had the heart to open it, and to the best of my knowledge never did. The silent message of that grief, oblivious to time, multiplied beyond my comprehension, gave me pause even then.

Of course as a stupid-ass kid, I was always unprepared when veterans didn't jump at the chance to reminisce. Raised on the Hollywood likes of Combat!, Twelve-OClock High and Rat Patrol, I was eager to hear a first-hand account of the action. That it never quite fit with the TV image was slow to sink in. Meeting my stepmother's brother, it was with the anticipation of having been told he was loaded with war stories. True. Souvenirs, too, including a genuine German pistol, pretty juicy stuff for a fifteen-year old. He followed that up with an adjacent story that surprised me at the time, but doesn't anymore: the gun would have been a Walther P-38 - a prized handgun issued chiefly to German officers - but as his platoon entered a small village he'd loaned it to a fellow GI, who ended up gunning down a German soldier with it. "I told him to keep it, or just throw it away...." he said, and then was quiet for a few seconds. "I didn't want a gun that had ever killed someone."

For a deluxe multi-page article on the 50-year anniversary of V-Day, I was once assigned to interview and photograph over a dozen WW II veterans, a diverse group of silver-haired men and women from all walks of life who had one thing in common: The War. All were a pleasure and a privilege to meet, but one veteran, sturdily built but in his 70's, stands out. A naturalized US citizen, he was a native Philippino who'd spent the bulk his wartime fighting as a jungle guerrilla - a member of of the legendary Philippine Scouts- following the Japanese invasion of the islands in 1942. By all accounts the Scouts were very tough hombres. All the more reason to take notice when, after fifty years, he broke down and wept when describing to me the day the Islands were finally liberated, and his fellow scouts and US troops paraded the American flag from village to village.

I would like to say that, even as a rebellious, pain-in-the-ass teenager, I held each and every veteran, and their sacrifice, all in high esteem, but that was not the case. And that is most assuredly both my loss, and my regret. It does not diminish what truly matters, or the matters of true greatness, the likes of which I had no clue, and likely really still don't, although the space that I reserve for such is now infinitely greater.

It's only at this point that I am able to appreciate what a privilege, although not a proud one, it was to be so young, and so stupid. I mean that sincerely, and I thank all of you, sincerely, and with my whole, imperfect heart.

It was perhaps, in the most generous sense, how youth might have been intended to be experienced.

Safe, and smiling, and stupid, and completely ignorant of the real world, except for what we dream, and imagine and hope that it will be.

Hollywood, or bust

As a child, growing up in string of equally minuscule towns across the Pacific Northwest, I considered it simply an unspoken given that I would grow up and become rich and famous, though not necessarily in that order.

After all, my list of heros - and those I imagined to be "my mentors from afar" - were all movie men. First came the special effects wizards: Ray Harryhausen, Douglas Trumball, Willis O'Brian - it was their galleries of monsters and/or visual miracles that stoked my own mental storyboards. Next came screen icons Humphrey Bogart, Jerry Lewis, Rod Serling: a diverse pack of gents who shared a common creative theme: Loners. As I came of age a list of "Hollywood outsiders" was added to my list: Peter Fonda, Tom Laughlin, Dennis Hopper (while my role call appears to have been been only a mildly enlightened one by 70's standards, it certainly lacked no passion at the time).

Each year, when I sat cross-legged in front of the TV in my pajamas to watch the Academy Awards, I would do so feeling as if I were an active participant, that it was only a brief matter of time before I'd join the ranks of my brethren on stage and bask beneath a waterfall of praise, accolades and awards that would stretch out over my entire adult life.

A given.

Also please note that in my case it was never merely the "fancy" of such a life that drove my fantasies as much as my belief that I shared a visceral, gut-level connection with the entire process, one that drove me to compile huge inventories and lists (both physical as well as mental) of films, directors, character actors, soundtracks, scripts, film magazines and back stories.

At about the time I floundered into my teenage era, I was also writing and compiling my own movie reviews, notebook by notebook, an avocation that inevitably spilled into my High School newspaper, The Cub, in the form of awkward and often inarticulate words of praise for my latest favorite film. Looking back, precious few of these pictures rated a second glance, not to mention my clumsy editorial fawning.

Early in my photojournalism career, when a young reporter inquired as to what had prepared me for a career behind the camera, my answer was a dead-pan fact: an entire childhood of sitting in front of a horizontal screen, for better or worse.

As the gap between my childhood fantasies and the impending threshold of a real-life adult career continued to tighten, my likelihood for being a Hollywood success story seemed to rally, if only briefly.

In the Fall of 1970, a the beginning of what would be my Junior year in high school, myself and a small group of classmates - many who were also the stars of our school Drama Club - joined together to form a fledgling gaggle of young filmmakers. True to the spirit of a breed suckled on the sarcastic and irreverent sensibilities of Mad magazine, Laugh In and Stan Freburg, we christened ourselves "Greasey Films" and set out to set Hollywood on it's ear, 8mm at a time.

Since audio was not yet accessible for most 8mm and Super8 filmmakers (and the advent of home video was still fifteen years in the distant future), we decided our endeavors must be silent ones, and governed by the A-B-C choice (as we judged it) of Silent Film: A)Slapstick B)Spectacle C)Violence. We opted for bloody, and the more the better.

Shot after school hours in the course of two afternoons (it would've been just one if the magazine of 8mm film had not secretly jammed in the camera during the first shoot), "The Hunt" featured a sniper, a crazed escaped convict, two angry, pitiless lawmen and a small arsenal of weapons (both real and manufactured). True to our Greasey Films credo, we kept "plot" to a minimum and the amount of prop blood at a maximum. Its 1086 frames of 8mm Kodachrome film has a running time of four minutes and fourty-eight seconds, during which time four young men cavort through the woods, three of whom are gunned down, one execution-style. The final few moments of The Hunts original ending has now been forgotten, since years ago the final strip of 8mm film from the reel simply broke off and then was lost.

Shown during the lunch hour in our high school little theatre at the time, students payed twenty-five cents each to share our little cinema bloodbath, many paying to watch a second, a third, a fourth time and more. While a vocal soundtrack may have been completely out of the question, we did spruce up things with a series of thematic music played (on a cassette deck) during film presentations (gleaned from my own personal library of soundtrack albums). Shabby, perhaps somewhat, but judged by student-qulaity standards of the early '70s, pretty good stuff. And it got better.

Predictably, our next series films gradually became more ambitious: "Monster from the Deep", a ultra-short bit of improvisation that frame-for-frame may be our most inspired piece; "Eastwood", a western attempt that herds more cliche's than it does cowboys (sound effects were added to background music to help "imply" we were using real horses!); "Measely Rider", a lazy local send-up of the Peter Fonda classic.

There is little doubt, however, that Greasey Films' shining moment came with the genesis of "The Clarker Bunch", yet another cops & robbers film, but one with enough of a topical twist that it's premise still packs genuine box-office potential, even thirty years later. Hatched scene-by-scene over many an after-school cigarette (and occasional joint) in Roland Yarcho's black '66 Karmann Ghia coupe, TCB follows twenty-year-old Moss Clarker, just home from an Army tour of Vietnam, first through an unsuccessful series of (pantomimed) job interviews, and then reuniting with three former soldier buddies to embark on a string of bank robberies, a somber and relentless lawman in deadly pursuit.

Much of the film's drama is derived from the remarkable cinematic eye of cameraman Bruce Arnes, who appropriated his father's Bolex Macro Super8 camera (then something of a state-of-the-art contraption for home movie making) and tripod for our efforts. His stunning gift for ironic detail, for spotting a perfect location and then framing it on film just as perfectly, added a depth of character to our story where often the script left off, one that frequently surpassed not only our expectations, but likely as not even our ability to even fully appreciate at the time. Years later, as a "award-winning" photojournalist well-immersed in a "successful" career, I would marvel (and still do) at the photographic prowness of this formally untrained 11th-grade student. Above and beyond any of us others at the time, he is one whose professional-grade talent - a natural shooting ability and sense for cinematic magic - should have been his real ticket to Hollywood.

Perhaps the greatest compliment to The Clarker Bunch came the following year, when, while lingering outside a local movie theatre, we noticed the poster for an upcoming film. It pitched an plotline that for us was like a bolt of lightning: a group of GIs return home from Vietnam and, dejected, go on a deadly rampage. Wow. Rip off? Unlikely. A peek into a "Parallel Universe"? Without a doubt. It is one where dreams come true, and merely by wishing for them.

Warren Etheridge, a talent and critic in the film industry whose opinion I have come to highly regard as having an acute insight into such goings-on, once observed of his comrades that they almost could be divided into two camps: One group was employed in the film industry, being bored by and hating it in equal measure; the other group, desperately wanted "in", but so far without success.

Hollywood, at least for me, came and went early on. What at one time had been my powerhouse of knowledge, was now mere trivial pursuit. If raw talent only were the ticket, things may have taken different directions. Or not. Even at that there's no guessing which might have lead to lasting happiness, if such a crayon color comes in that particular box.

For all of its illusion and pretense, one thing Hollywood amply illustrates correctly is that our natural gifts and talents generally come in equal measure to our shortcomings, if not some personal demons. While the records of such wrestling matches occasionally make their way to the silver screen, they are first fought alone, in flawed hearts and silent rooms, without witnesses.

Back in the day, if you were to have lived just in the moment, you could have been there and believed that we all made it, right to the top, each and every one of us. Hollywood, Academy Awards, the whole rip. That's not an entirely bad way to let it go, in fact.

And as to what the hell came after, who the hell knows?

the little telescope

The woman I have lived with for thirty five years (and is also my wife) has a shiny little telescope that lives in her mind, one that comes and goes as it pleases, occasionally leaving behind a puzzle or an image for her to ponder.

Once it was a snapshot of a scene that involved Peter Haley, an old friend now, but just a photographer at the time, and one whose name I recognized solely by his reputation alone - we'd never met, not even close.

The picture in the little telescope was of Peter (we'd seen his face next a prize photo he'd taken in a magazine), as he approached me during a party of some kind or another, and of us talking and carrying on as if we were the best of friends. From the telescopes narrow point-of-view, it looked to be that we were at some kind of party or another. Blurting out the image a moment or two after it had just occurred to her, completely out of the blue, she stated at the time that "You and him obviously knew each other quite well - you were laughing and talking, clearly very familiar with one other." And then: "You two will become very good friends someday."

A couple of years later Peter and I would briefly cross paths - for the first time - at a sporting event we were shooting for our respective newspapers. There were no magic moments, no bolts or jolts of instant recognition either way, and for a while I thought nothing more of it, mysterious prediction or not. Months later, however, we were both interviewed, and subsequently hired, as part the new photo team for the News Tribune, a paper which had recently come under new ownership in Tacoma. And, what do you know, a few months later we'd be sharing that exact little moment that Linda had spied a few years earlier, through her little telescope.

Such things do occur, it's only for us to decide under what category we file them in our lives. Precognition, or predictable situation? Your guess is as valid as the next, although I personally opt for the "mystical" interpretation, as I have long ago discovered that any life stripped of the mystical is hardly one worth living.

The spyglass begs some additional explanation: She may occasionally peer out into her own life, and into the lives of those in her close orbit, to witness a random hug or stray giggle, a kiss, a warm embrace. But there is also a cautionary note here: because the little telescope is simply that, and does not possess a soul - not to mention a heart - of its own, it may also reveal events or circumstances that are frightening to consider, even painful to know.

The moment of her own death, for instance.

Without elaborating, she says she has witnessed it all, through the tiny lens, and is not afraid, just the opposite, in fact. It was/is a simple moment, she tells me. Perhaps to soften the blow, she tells me that that my face is the last thing on this earth she will see. Without the benefit buffer of a mystic glow, it is perhaps harder to listen to this than it is to have seen it, and no part of this message arrives as the least bit of comfort, at least to me.

The little telescope can be a mischievous one, it seems. Perhaps as time goes on and on, and the nearer to the end it moves, it is simply just running out of new snapshots to share, glimpses to glimpse. Could that be it?

It doesn't speak, although I sense a smile.

Only recently a picture postcard of myself arrived, taken from down on the death promenade. It was an old moment of me, very, very old (or at least, that's what I'm told). My exact age was not in sharp focus, but I was looked to be in my late 70's, maybe a bit older. In the spyglass I was seen walking, alone, along a dusty road. I stopped and slowly bent over to pick up a small branch I encounter in my path. There is a pause and "Pop!" - a little blood vessel bursts in my head. And I drop down into the road, dead as a door nail. As I'm laying there, a small group of children approach me to see what it is the matter. But I am long gone.

What my old friend and the little telescope couldn't have known was that I had already previewed that exact scene myself, almost a whole lifetime ago, when I was still barely a boy. Thirteen.

My visit came in a dream in which I drifted, a dream that is still as clear and real as raindrops: I'm walking alone along a quiet road (just as she says, I am very old), when I stop to pause. From her own vantage, it appeared that I was stopping to pick up a small branch, but that is only how it would appear from a distance, out of speaking distance. In fact, it is not a twig that catches my eye, but a voice that catches my ear. It is a familiar voice, and startles me as being so, yet one I am unable to instantly place it.

I turn my head around to see - is it perhaps someone who has stolen up quietly beside me? Then I see him. And I remember. Everything. Remember that "he" is me, and that this is my last dream and that now, also at last, my time is finally all up. And in that same moment I both vanish, awaken, and reappear. Somewhere entirely else.

I'm still working on the part up to that.