Memorandum for the Recond (continued): a Personal "Shopping List"

Committed to Memory (Part the Fourth) – Self assessment: It pays to advertise

I met Kathy, my loving wife, my adult supervision, and my very own “happily-ever-after,” through a singles ad ages ago.

Ever try and discuss yourself in one of those?

The responses I’ve seen run the entire spectrum from the teary-eyed woman who declared in her viral YouTube video that she wished she could hug all the kitty cats in the world; to a guy who sang his best Barry White impressions of what he would do to his would-be paramour into the video camera.

This wasn’t one of those ads.  This was an actual printed ad … in a real pre-Internet printed singles magazine.

So I knew I had basically once chance to impress the “… sweet, sexy, semi-artist …” whose ad caught my attention, and I had to get it right. (Query: Is a “Semi-artist” one who paints pictures solely of large, 18-wheeled vehicles?  Never have gotten a good answer to this question. But I digress.)

Lacking any Barry White ability (besides … this is a printed ad, remember?) and lacking any poetic abilities beyond things that rhyme with the word “Nantucket,” I elected to simply summarize myself in a rather long shopping list of attributes. (I know … typical “guy” response, right?)

But it worked.  Kathy tells me she wanted to meet that guy, even if our relationship never went anywhere afterwards. 

Aside from teaching me how to edit a list of bullet points (something that would stand me in good stead in the military, as I later prepared endless PowerPoint briefing slides,) writing that 7-page letter of “shopping lists” helped me to weigh and consider the person I had become.

And did I mention Kathy liked it, too?  We met for lunch at Beans and Barley, and started to talk.  We haven’t quit talking since then.  The rest, as they say, is history.

In the interests of full disclosure, I reprint that (edited) shopping list herewith.

Things I Like:

·        *  The “tick, tick, tick” sound my Trek Series 7200 mountain bike makes when I cycle down a country road, while the sun warms my back, and the miles whirl lazily by

·         * Stepping onto my elliptical machine, turning my IPod to 90’s music, turning the volume up to “stun’” and just stepping out hard and fast. Bliss!

·        *  Spicy food – I think that food (like Life) should be a little spicy and thus more memorable. I’ve always felt that life should be a little rough-edged and unfiltered … an attitude that has gotten me into trouble on more than one occasion.

·        *  An evening spent in the company of a small group of boon companions, with maybe a glass of bourbon or red wine to ease the conversation, while we talk of everything from politics to history to bullshit philosophies, to what we wanted to be when we grew up. (I always wanted to be an astronaut or a fire truck).

·        *  Telling and retelling sea stories (which strangely grow more epic in each recounting) to my grandchildren (after cleaning them up suitably for my wide-eyed, still-impressionable audience).

·        *  Reading. Reading anything … words in a row … cereal boxes if need be.

·        *  Sitting down at a computer terminal in a noisy newspaper newsroom, glancing at the clock to note that my deadline is just minutes away, taking a deep breath and reaching for the river of words that always flows through the back of my head.  As the minutes to deadline tick away, the adrenaline rush kicks in and the words just flow out of my fingertips into the computer keyboard and onto the monitor screen.  I grin to myself because I know I’m good at this and that the goddam’ story is gonna’ be brilliant  … and that tomorrow I’m going to have to do it all over again.  Of all the various and sundry jobs I’ve held over the years, from selling imported tropical fish and monkeys to operating a tollbooth, from  being a sailor to a dairy farm hired hand; being a newspaper reporter/photographer is right up there with being a Navy combat cameraman in my estimation.  Can’t remember ever having so much fun at work.

·        *  Becoming so involved in and transported by a novel that I actually come to care about the characters, and become impatient with the author (Are you listening, George R. R. Martin?) whose written output can’t keep up with my voracious reading

·        *  The intense bond between people in uniform that comes from shared hardship, danger and adversity...or sometimes just because we're all working for the same screaming T.I.U.  (Tool-In-Uniform), who gets away with it because he outranks us all.

·         * Sitting on the beach at night in Escanaba around a waning bonfire and “dreaming the coals,” as the evening winds down and the billions of stars and whirling satellites come out to dazzle us.

·         * Watching a pretty woman undress in the evening.

·         * Watching a pretty woman dress in the morning. (Not exactly raging hormones, but they’re there and fully functional, thank you.)

·         * A pot of freshly brewed coffee and a good cigar on a shady veranda

·        * Music – anything except “My Woman Done Left Me” hillbilly music … but especially the kind of music that batters you senseless with its power and majesty.  I can remember being in my High School orchestra when we played Handel’s Messiah.  The music swirled around us as we played … it was almost as though the air had turned to silver mist and you could almost see the arpeggios and scales as they whirled like silver dust devils through the thickened air around us.

·       *   The smiles that come with someone you’re connected to at the cellular level.  You need not finish each other’s sentences at that point, because you can hear the finish in your mind.  It’s as  though your DNA calls out to each other

·      *  Poetry, but the rather old-fashioned kind … the kind of poetry that stirs the blood and paints fiery pictures in your imagination.  Poets like Kipling and Masefield and Vachel Linday, whose works could almost be accompanied by stamping of feet or the beating of a regimental drum.

·       *  Time at the rifle range is almost like zen meditation to me.  You shoulder your rifle and gaze down the barrel at the front sight … letting the rest of the world go hazy.  You listen to your own breathing and slow it down to point where you can hear your breathing and hearbeat in your inner ear … and almost by itself, your hand begins a slow squ-e-e-e-e-e-ze of the trigger as you mentally reach out through the barrel to connect with the target a football field away.  When the rifle fires, it’s almost a surprise as the recoil pushes hard against your shoulder.  You let out the breath you forgot you were holding, and start all over again.  It’s as peaceful as naptime … punctuated by loud blasts from the rifle muzzle.

·      *    Animals – I’ve lived with and been owned by everything from peacocks to pygmy goats, guinea pigs to parakeets and ponies. I currently live with a rangy, orange tiger tomcat named “Al,” a clueless terrier named “Loki,” and two maniac little ferrets named “S’mores” and “Gadget.”  I find that animals give affection unreservedly, asking only that you take care of them in return.

   

      Things I don’t Like:

·       *  Politicians, who’ve never really served anything besides their own careers and bank accounts

·        *  Guys who treat their wives or girlfriends like they’re disposable or unimportant

·        *  Loud, boorish people who delight in throwing their weight around

·        *  Braggarts – how pathetic can you be?

·        *  Screamers

·       *  Those who’ve never served in uniform, but who feel compelled to lie and say they served with valor.

·        *  Peas, lima beans, liver

·        *  Non-alcoholic wine (what’s the point?)

·        * Parents who let their over-indulged, bratty children dominate their lives … and run around screaming in a public space (like Best Buy, for example)

·       *   Parents at the opposite end of the parenting spectrum who slap their children in public

·         * Having to go to the DMV.  Used to be, having to go to the dentist was attached to this same bullet point.  Lately, however, he’s started dosing me with really, REALLY happy pills before each visit.  Next, he lets me listen to really loud classical music on my Ipod while he’s at work.  I like my dentist now. DMV … are you paying attention?

Things I want to Remember:

·        *  Snorkeling near the Isla Taboga, off the coast of Panama.  The azure waters were warm and clear enough to put the best Swarovski crystals to shame.  Swimming through curtains of churning air bubbles, I emerge into a shaft of sunlight penetrating the waters like a spotlight.  In the middle of the dazzling brightness, a school of small squid were hovering in a long line like tiny, living, opalescent helicopters … the sunlight glinting off their parti-colored bodies, their fins moving sinuously as they kept station with each other in their underwater line.  I put out my hand to touch the nearest one, and like a sine wave on a screen, the line simply flowed around and away from my outstretched fingers.  Their huge eyes regarded me curiously as simply another denizen of the shallows.  Then, apparently reacting to a signal I was deaf to, the squid turned as one and sped off towards the deeper waters.  I looked around, seeing nothing to be alarmed at, but took my cue from them and turned back towards our boat.  A truly magic encounter.

·         * After 9/11, I was recalled to active duty and deployed to Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, in Cuba, where we were preparing Camp X-Ray for an expected influx of detainees captured on the battlefields of Afghanistan.  The first of what would be many Air Force flights touched down on the hot tarmac, and the massive rear doors of the aircraft opened.  Waiting military policemen walked on board, and walked off in pairs shortly thereafter, each pair with an orange jumpsuited detainee between them.  The prisoners, each many thousands of miles from their home base, looked around and spotted us watching.  The hate in their eyes was as palpable as the blast of heat from the tropical sun.  It occurred to me then that, these were the gentlemen who wished our country ill … and that I was glad to be there to see them safely taken off of the battlefield.

·      *  Sitting outside the Café Leopold Hawelka on a cobblestoned side street in Vienna.  I was sitting and reading the international edition of the Herald Tribune, and letting the empty Café Melange (Viennese coffee with thick cream and cinnamon) cups just pile up on the table.  I was in no hurry to get anywhere, and feeling especially worldly.

·        *  Sitting in a bar called the Green Parrot in the middle of a mangrove swamp on the island of Dominica.  The bar consisted of a few anchored platforms, with thatched roofs overhead, connected by a wobbly, floating wooden causeway.  (By the way, the parrot after whom the bar was named had long since passed away and the owner of the bar still grieved … and kept the empty cage hung over the array of rum bottles as a reminder.  Evidently, the parrot, whose name no one seemed to remember, got to pick the rum poured on any given day by pecking at the bottle.)  Bob Marley was blasting from the stereo, and a Rastafarian waiter named Keith was teaching us to play dominos.  A gentle rain – more of a misty spray actually – began falling and dripping through the thatched roof above us, and it was cooling and fine and simply wonderful.

·       *   Watching the ugly yellow-brown bar of a typhoon blow up over the horizon at sea, and start roaring towards my ship.  You know there’s nothing you can do about it, and that your day at sea is about to get “adventurous.”

·       *  Taking heavy seas aboard a small ship … you see dark, black water pile up and hammer down on your pitching decks … green water smash against the superstructure … and spray reach far up to soak the lookouts high above.  Just walking down a pitching, rolling passageway is a slow, torturous chore … and you grin to yourself because you know this is part of the adventure you signed up for.

·       *  Waking up on a ship at sea in the middle of the night, and feeling … feeling … the power of the ship vibrate right up through the deckplates, and feeling the rush of water along our hull as we plow through the heaving waves.

·         * Going to a family wedding at my relatives’ house in Mexico.  The father of the bride, my uncle Raoul, killed an ox and roasted it in a pit in the front yard of his house.  Only a few relatives were invited to the feast, but the entire village came anyway.  The bride and groom left after a few hours, but the party continued throughout the weekend.  I think someone stole my uncle’s knives and forks … but he couldn’t have cared less.  I think it was at this point that I began defining happiness less and less as owning fine things, and more and more as simply living life with gusto.

·        *  Making a difference in someone’s life.  By this point, I know I’ll never have a bridge or barracks named after me.  I know I’ll never be called the “…Father of Navy (insert random noun here…” or anything.  But I hope that the people I’ve come in regular contact with over the years will consider themselves helped along their path through my efforts.  It will have to do.

There were quite a few other items on the list as I recall ... but they were 'eyes-only for the "...sweet, sexy semi-artist ..." I was trying to meet.  I think I'll leave them that way.