Alecto's Ophelia

Here is to Cardinal Puff, Puff, Puff, for the Third and Final Time.

Sometimes you can go home. Sometimes you can go home if you are willing to recognize that what's past is past and what's now is now and that both are happening, have happened, will happen and that nothing exists in a finite moment. I think that sometimes we have moments when we can put one foot in two places; kind of like having one foot on each of two train platforms. I stood in two places on Saturday and I am just now able to write about it (actually, I've been trying since Monday morning and it's just now coming).

Here in this photograph is a perfect moment. It is perfect because it is representative of a romantic and therefore perfect past and indicative of the here and now. It is perfect because it signifies a beginning but also tells the tale of an infinite series of endings that come flooding into the forefront of my mind like the banks of the Mississippi on a voluptuous day. Also, I think this photograph could conceivably sum up my entire childhood. Conceivably. Depending on how you wanted to look at it. Maybe Mom ought to stop reading now because I am going to romanticize it. It's real for me, go figure.

Here sits a glass of beer. Regulation maybe yes, maybe no. Budweiser definitely. A glass of sacred beer. A sacred glass of beer. Regardless of how you slice it, sacred to someone, primarily me at this moment, but most assuredly to the four people sitting behind the table in front of those regulation or not glasses of beer. I'll get around to explaining eventually but for now I'll leave you with the money shot.

On Saturday I packed up my family and headed to the drop zone. The drop zone is the airport where skydivers congregate to jump out of planes (note: I did not write the words 'perfectly good'). This is the drop zone in Ellington, CT where I grew up where much has changed and everything is as it has always been.

There were three events scheduled to occur on Saturday. The first was the Dads and Lads jump (skydivers are SERIOUSLY hokey) with four fathers and five sons. I am thinking that most of these sons are pushing if not at 40 which makes the dads pushing if not at 65. Not that there's anything wrong with 65 (or 69 DAD!!!), mind you, just that maybe some of these older gentlemen might not have been current and maybe things ought to have been kept a bit on the simple side, but I digress. No one died. Here they are dirt diving prior to the load (and I notice I only see one old man in this shot. I wonder where they could have been hiding the other three.) Also, my dad is the guy with duct tape on his butt. I'm just sayin'.:

And here they are getting on the big airplane that came down special from The Blue Sky Ranch which has a name but I've forgotten already (now who has missing brain cells?). Also, you can see more old men and have a little more faith that I'm not just making this part up.:

Like I said, nobody died but I'm not sure it turned out exactly as they might have envisioned. In any event, I think it was a last kind of thing. I don't think these Dads and Lads will be doing this again, not this set anyway. But there was a moment when all nine of them climbed up in that plane with a few other passengers where time folded up upon itself and nineteen sixty-nine kissed nineteen seventy-five kissed nineteen eighty-two kissed nineteen ninety-six kissing today finally folded over upon itself and guess what? The universe did not implode even though I thought it might.

Having written all that, Dads and Lads was a bonus. That's not why we're all here. We're all here to say good-bye to the Lion as well as Dick Barber and we've got two separate jumps scheduled because the families don't seem all that inclined to mix their metaphores, as it were. Despite the fact that these two dead men might as well have grown up together they spent so much of their lives in the very same space.

The culmination of these events brought all manner of people and animals out of the woodwork, myself and family included. I don't honestly think I've been on this drop zone in twenty-five years short of a quick midweek stop to lurk about when no one was around. I have been on other drop zones, just not this one. I have seen some of these people, just not in this place. This one place with these people which is and who are more home than I can call any other place and which I left so many years ago, forever refusing to look back as if I might turn to salt. And perhaps I might have.

The world does move on. Most of the time we aren't aware that it's moving, we're just along for the ride until one day the world up and smacks us in the face like a ten foot breaker and we're forced to take stock. It is one thing to attend a funeral or two off premises and quite another to visit those very same places with the remaining old guard along for the ride. It was a freak show of juxtapositions and I'm glad as hell I gave myself permission to be there.

Connecticut Parachutists Incorporated in Ellington, CT was recognized by the State of Connecticut as a non-profit group in March of 1962, twenty-five months before I was born. According to one of the bios on Marge Bates, there were 32 Charter Members of which fewer than a dozen had ever made a parachute jump. Marge Bates was one of those members, by the way, and she had two static line jumps to her name. Vic Deveau and Dick Barber may very well have been, I just don't have the documentation to back it up. In any event, Marge's husband, Jim, certainly was and in the last year three of these old guard have died. I'm sure there were more than three, but three of mine, three of mine have died.

The world moves on.

So I took my girls and my husband (mostly my girls) to this drop zone where my brother and I ran through the tall grass shagging down chutes or tumbling mindlessly into the unknown or otherwise universe. They cut the grass these days I notice. We went to pay tribute, to be with, to steep at least myself in the memory of what was and perhaps to let go. I wasn't counting on time travel. I wasn't counting on being hit right in the face with the notion of 'is always'.

The first thing I did was look for my tree. Trees change. I couldn't find my tree but I was pretty sure, given the lack of gianormous stumps in the locale of the creek bank that my tree lives. I identified one or two with a crotch in just about the right shape that given the years might have been low enough for one scrappy little girl's reach. That done I moved onto the corn fields. The corn is still there despite the housing developments encroaching at an alarming rate. It's hard corn, not sweet. This much I remember. I also remember we stole a bit and cooked it up over grills made from cut up old oil barrels. Al Bailey did our grilling and I saw the man on Saturday for the first time since maybe 1972. I thought of nothing but cow corn and husk braiding. He taught me that.

After that the girls and I did just about nothing but sit and wait in the hot, hot sun. And we rolled in the dirt a bit until we were good and sweaty and covered in the stuff and suddenly I could smell the smell that was me at six or eight or twelve or sixteen with my face down in a packing mat and the smell of crab grass in the hot sun and the voices buzzing in and out of consciousness as I moved in and out of the dream space as if waking and the dream were one and the same.

The jump meant to dump Vic's ashes and then the one to dump Dick's never happened. At least not on Saturday. The weather came in just as the photo ops were being had and the whole thing got put on hold until somebody gave in and opened the first beer. The beer does not open until the last plane of the day takes off. That's the way it always was and perhaps the way it always will be. So the beer was opened and the festivities were ready to go but we had some things to do first.

My dad went to the pea gravel pit which no one ever uses anymore. He went there with someone. I want to say Billy but now I can't remember, it could have been Al Bailey, it could have been just about anyone over the age of fifty. He went there and dug a hole where no one lands anymore because now there is something called a tuffet and he buried a bit of The Lion at dead center where we used to anchor a margarine lid. I ran into the pea gravel and squatted down and must have created some kind of agreement because I took a double handful of The Lion and I ran into the corn and spun about with my face in the sky letting The Lion go into the corn. In these moments I was stunned at the viscosity of those ashes. They are not light and fluffy. They have weight, and grit and carry chunks and bits of this human being reduced to the sum of something that can be contained. At last. And I wondered, who from his own generation will carry my father's ashes to the sky and the pea gravel and to the corn?

So the jump did not go. Instead we had to do something with the Marines that came and the VA as well and so we had a small service in the rain which I missed because I was so entranced with photographing the old men from the VA and the Marine who played taps but it's OK because that was for the family and I can say my own words for The Lion anyway.

And still, I digress from my point. When the ceremony was done, and here, by the way is the photo op (all of those people, with the exception of the boys who are or are nearly forty, are adults from my childhood. My heart breaks and releases):

When the ceremony was done and the food was eaten and the sun was back out there was nothing left to do but drink and play games.

The game of Cardinal is an old game. Perhaps you have heard of a college version but unless you were in the military and played it there, you do not know Cardinal Puff.

I grew up with this.

Sir. How would you like to be addressed?

Sir, Supreme Cardinal X, may I have your permission to begin?

Here is to Cardinal Puff for the first time.

And the series of events begins and continues until the neophyte (defined as lower than whale shit) misses a beat and has to finish the glass of beer with the glass to his or her lip until it is empty.

It's a shell game of a sort. You see the Cardinal masters do the demos and they do it so well and so effortlessly that I think of Stephen King's Gunslingers, which in a way, they were. They say, 'it is just one glass of beer. If you fuck up you can quit once you've finished. If we fuck up we have to drink up and continue until we get it right.'

You know, none of us ever made Cardinal. None of us who grew up with it despite the fact that the lines and gestures were indelibly etched into the lizard brain ever even tried. None of us were willing to play the shell game. None of us. Not a one. Therefore, these lovely young people who were born THE YEAR I QUIT JUMPING (OK, I was only 18, but still) have no legacy before them. Meet Penelope and Doug. Doug is up first (hey, Mom, that's Lisa Hays (and Jean was there with Everet and Baby Gary and Baby Gary's Baby Gary but no Tony) in the background and Drew Lamb with Dennis Testoni and Mary Lou and Josh Wolf is just off to the left but you can't see him here):

Doug crashed and burned a number of times (exactly the way I would have) but Penelope got close, close, close in her intensity and intention. Here is Penelope with a man we call Jello who has been in that wheel chair from a sky diving incident since about 1972. Do you see the look of indulgence and love?

The first generation is watching the third generation, who have already invented themselves from nearly whole cloth, trying on the shoes of their fathers. Because they can.

Sometimes you can go home. If you are willing to accept...

The following are gratuitous shots of people I have not seen in more years than I want to count. There's more on Flickr if you can find me. Gary Hays and Al Bailey:

Butch Auden:

Marge Bates (who had a chihuahua in her lap the whole time she demo'd Cardinal):

Al Bailey (who no longer drinks) looking on while Gary Hays, John Jefferies (my Dad), Butch Auden and Marge Bates give one of the final demos to Cardinal Puff:

Here is to Cardinal Puff, for the first time.

Amen.

Who wants to live? Raise your hand.

The Belmont starts in 24 minutes. I don't usually watch these things, I find it painful in a way that is nearly mind altering. I will, however, watch Big Brown today. I will watch Big Brown six inches from the television screen (OK, not six, but you get my point), glass of wine clenched in my hand, breath of air clenched in my lungs and I will be crying, tears and snot running down my face before it is even over.

It does this to me. A visceral reaction I suppose, to my lizard brain's memory of me and the horse.

It is 92 degrees in the shade and humid as all get out. I am making tamales in the kitchen, how freaking hilarious is that? That's why I'm out here on the porch under the fan hoping to catch a little fresh air before I go back in the house. We closed all the windows and pulled the shades this morning and managed to keep the house in reasonably good form until I got home with a load of groceries and proceeded to tear the kitchen down, as it were.

To make tamales you need two days unless you have more energy than me and that's substantial. You start out slow cooking in water (you need that stock for the mesa) about 7 pounds of pork and 5 pounds of chicken. This takes hours and hours at about 275 but in the end, when all is said and done, you have some darn near miraculous pulled pork and chicken from which to work your tamale magic. You can also mix it up with a mess of sauce and just eat it too and we might do that with some. Just some. If I'm going to suffer through tamale production in this heat I'm going to end up with about 90 of those suckers in the freezer when I'm done.

On the way home I was listening to an interview with the surviving owner of Affirmed, the last horse to take the triple crown in 1978. She was asked why triple crowns didn't seem to happen anymore and what she said boiled down to 'we are just too careful'. Think about that. Our horses aren't tough enough to make it.

And at some point Affirmed's jockey was interviewed. I missed the context, all I caught was, "I was just sick, so sick at the idea of not making it and in the end I let the horse go."

He let the horse go and the horse went. Imagine that.

Watch this if you have better than a dial up (CG, try anyway):

Velka Pardubicka - Grand Steeplechase in Pardubice, 2006

My mother sent me the link. Here were my comments:

1. Good God.
2. Ouch.
3. Those riderless horses cheat.
4. Does it count if they go around?
5. We are big babies around here.
6. I do believe that riderless horse is going to win and it isn't going to count because he a) failed to go back and retrieve his lifeless rider and b) cheated and went around on more than one occasion (but he NEVER crossed his line).

This is extreme as extreme is extreme. Have I made my point? Watch the clip. All of it. We, today, now, here in this place, are extreme only in our aversion to risk. It's why we keep on keeping on the way we do; we don't want to take a chance on the unknown even if it means dying with our heads in the sand. Some days it feels as if we are barely alive.

I remembered the Belmont because I was driving home today and passed that big and nearly famous barn the next town over (where I will never in a million years be able to do anything but window shop and they are tearing down 200 year old architectural wonders to erect mcmansions on quarter acre lots even now in this plunge into the abyss...)

(and D'Tara runs away with it, Big Brown has refused to run and it's over, one more time and WHY do I always cry through these things?!)

And I'm watching the gorgeously turned out little girls on their gorgeously turned out 30 - 50k ponies and I pull over for once in what can only be referred to as my ghetto mobile (it's a five year old Mazda6, don't go over in Beamer land), roll down my window, turn off my engine and prepare to be wowed.

I am not wowed. I am stunned, I'll give you that. I am so not wowed I have to check and see where I am. Yep, it's this town, this barn, these little girls and these ponies and I am not dreaming. They cannot ride worth a damn. No, really. They can't. I can't figure it out either. They have everything. Absolutely everything I never had except the horse and the time and even my horses were just horses, right?  The best barn, the best trainers, the best horses and for crying out loud, the bestest little monkey suits you ever did see, these girls look fabulous! Sitting still.

When they move they become stiff upright sacks of potatoes. Didn't think that was possible, did you? Neither did I. To the pony's credit, most of them did all right with this bouncy bouncy bouncy bang bang bang yank yank yank happening to their backs, sides and mouths. That there would be one $30,000 pony with one seriously hardened mouth. Sigh.

Watching is making my stomach hurt and I so don't understand. I want to get out of my car, climb up over the stone wall, grab a bridle and haul little girl and horse across the street to a big open field, slap that pony on the rump and yell, go girl, go!

Here's my theory. These girls have NEVER been out of the ring. Never. They have no idea what this beast is between their legs except it's big and it's scary and they've been told it might kill them (really, no penis is so big it will kill you. You get my point).

Learning, of any kind is 90 to 100% doing (and I'm betting there are a bunch of you out there going to tell me stick to that 100 number, not the 90). Immersion. That's it. Instruction is nice and CG will tell you she's been having some lovely instruction but it wouldn't mean a damn if she hadn't spent a million hours on the back of a beast losing the boundaries between he and me until we are just we. These girls have never been out of the ring and therefore do not know that they might not die.

And so not knowing,  no matter how much money you throw at it, all is lost but the picture, which is flat and meaningless.

Go Big Brown, Go. Or not.

Climbing the Great Bridge

This is for Madeline, because she's down under right now.

My brother married an Australian by way of Detroit and County Kerry, Ireland. Basically, she's as Irish as they come but the family is in Australia and that's where she finished growing up so that's where they got married. This was November, 2001, right after 911 when airport security was all over the place and nobody wanted to travel. Except us.

I left my husband and eleven month old last baby and two older kids at home and traveled on my mother's airline points because she just wouldn't go. I flew to San Francisco, spent a day at the office visiting with the trainers I'd just tormented within an inch of their collective lives a month prior and then marched myself off to the international terminal of the San Francisco airport.

And I entered the first class lounge because I had first class points giving me a first class seat and there I sat, looking around at the excess, wondering what to do with myself. You know what I did? I drank fourteen cups of free first class lounge cappuccino, that's what I did. Ever see that Beavis and Butthead movie where Beavis drinks too much cappuccino, pulls his shirt up over his head and announces to all and sundry that "I AM CORNHOLIO AND YOU WILL WORSHIP MY BUNGHOLE!!!!' or something like that.

Yeah. Pretty much, I turned into a slightly tuned down Cornholio. It's true.

So I got on the plane and entered the first class compartment of an overseas flight for the first and only time in my life and settled myself into my bunk in the nose of the plane. I was freaking DELIGHTED. I proceeded to chew up fifteen packs of nicotine gum, suck down probably three bottles of wine on my own and sleep NOT ONE BLEEDING SECOND. I annoyed the flight attendants, pissed off my fellow rightfully placed first class passengers and spent the entire fourteen hours watching our plane's path across the Pacific. Bloody fascinating, I tell you.

When I staggered off the plane, collected my luggage that contained one ball gown in one very large and padded suitcase and made my way through customs without a thorough strip search, I found my brother but promptly lost him again and was left with his old sky diving buddy, Rambo, who sounds exactly as you'd expect.

Rambo and I got in his rented BMW (WHY???) with a Hertz map and a vague idea about the City Center and the hotel at which we had reservations. While Rambo discovered driving on the wrong side of the road (sky diver candy, I assure you), I attempted to read an upside down Hertz map and not throw up on my feet. I couldn't quite figure out if I was more drunk or caffeined out of my mind.

Strangely enough, we found the hotel. Sober, I'm not so sure it would have happened. We checked in, I unpacked my ball gown, strappy shoes and underpants in my three room suite (HOW? HOW? HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?) and then I went downstairs and met up with the bridal party because we had a date with a bridge.

Have I mentioned that my brother's wife is also a world class sky diver? And all of her hard core girlfriends as well? Her sisters, now they were marginally normal and sane. No, not sane, just not sky divers. Also, they are all disturbingly beautiful no matter what which is enough to make a girl like me crawl under a rock in the best of circumstances. The cappuccino and alcohol worked wonders.

Somehow we got to the base of the Great Bridge in Sydney. We paid some money and put on some jumpsuits that required taking off all of one's clothing first. I don't carry enough on top to merit the use of Lady's under garments for anything other than an accessory. Therefore I wasn't wearing one. I may or may not have been wearing much more than a thong. At that point in my life I didn't believe much in the added effort of under garments of any kind because who the hell was going to see me without my pants on in the first place?

Somehow I got into this jumpsuit and there may not have been a lot of people in the building at the time and we marched out onto the lower deck of the bridge. We stepped up on the platform and began the ascent.

The first thing that happened was I looked down. This was a very bad idea. Vertigo and me, not so good. I chose not to vomit in public and kept my eyes glued to the girl in front of me. At some point in time we were harnessed to a cable to keep us from falling or more likely escaping and throwing ourselves over the bridge. During this ascent there was some conversation about an illegal ascent sans any kind of roping the night before by at least two of them which resulted in a climb all the way to the top of one of the poles and back down again. Apparently no arrests were made.

Through this climb our guide delightfully detailed the building of said bridge and the 300 foot fall of one of the builders that resulted in no death because apparently he dropped a wrench or something just in front and it broke the tension of the water where he entered.

At the peak they took our picture and I have it somewhere but I remember looking out over the harbor and having a feeling very similar to the first time I looked into the abyss of the Grand Canyon at Mather's Point and lost every sense of myself.

The descent was easier for some reason. Probably because my fatigue had reached the point of no return and I was bucking for the crash of the century. When we returned to the great room I found I could not remove the harness and had to be undressed by the other girls. At one point I realized I was in the middle of a very large and multi leveled common room in nothing but my underpants, whatever they may or may not have been covering.

I got my clothes on and got out. I did not go to the bar with the girls. I looked at my hotel on the sky line and made a general bee line in that direction. I got as far as a highway overpass and stood there flummoxed. I began to climb the damn thing, probably got a good fifteen or twenty feet off the deck and then realized that if I actually got to the top I'd have to cross six high speed lanes and then descend the other side (I'm OK climbing up, not so much climbing down). I got myself down from that place and somehow made my way around the City Center and into the lobby of my hotel.

I remember ordering oysters and not being able to understand what actually got delivered to my door. There's a big difference between what grows there and what I eat out of the Northeast Atlantic. In the end I managed to choke down half the strangeness and pass out fully dressed on some form of furniture, not the bed.

I slept a full fourteen hours. Exactly the length of my flight from San Francisco to Sydney. I took a little grief for not going out with the crew the night before but I wasn't arrested, run over or dropped into the drink.

The Great Bridge? I highly recommend the climb.

Road Rage - How Justice Was Metted Out in the Route 7 Corridor

There is a science to driving in traffic; rules, regulations and social mores developed and clearly understood by the ever-widening organized aggregate called 'that wave of people I drive to work with every day'. Some examples of these rules might be

• don't come to a complete stop at that three-way on Cedar, just look right and go if you can, otherwise we get backed up to that last stop and then all hell breaks loose.
• look left at the three-way at the end of Cedar, if you can see cars, turn right and go around, this appears to meter the flow.
• stay in the right lane starting 3 lights back (or when you start to see congestion) if you are going to make the right turn to Super 7. we all hereby agree that we will not use the funnel method at the last light.
• if the line to get on 95 South is past the hospital, go to the next exit, turn right, turn right, go straight and get on one exit south.  This appears to meter things.
• if you do get in line to enter 95 South from Super 7 make sure you merge in the funnel method a the end.  Do not go driving up the shoulder or someone will chase your ass down and put you on time out.

Those are just a few, but they are the big ones and they are an amazing occurrence that helps us collectively manage the horrendous overflow that we are. Lately another rule has been developing but I'm not sure where it's going because it involves a somewhat dangerous and winding dirt road without a guard rail, above a river as a bypass to some significant backup caused by the overflow of Local 7 evacuees coming out of Redding, Ridgefield and Wilton.  We know this will stop once the construction moves from the intersection at Wilton High school to beyond the route 33 cutoff where 7 can be skirted alternatively. In the mean time, how many people will go around, causing another metering affect, and how many people will choose to spend an average of 7 minutes in line waiting to get past the new meter (which is finally developing a funnel approach to each detoured vehicle allowing the release of one hostage vehicle in line as if we have added our own stop sign.

In any event, these rules are developed out of necessity, over time and without anyone but a few collective spouses actually speaking a word of it. Think about this, the old brain kicks in the hive mentality and if we accept (without much thought I would imagine) that we are part of this large moving organism then we manage to make it a little better for everyone.  So what happens when somebody gets out of line?  I saw it this morning and still can't believe what I witnessed.

Before I launch the story of the VW Bug and the Pickup, let me say that there are always a few spoilers who won't get in line and wait their turn and for the most part we deal with them effectively by refusing to let them in until the last minute, causing multiple I'm going to be late for work because I'll have to go around heart attacks. By and large, in this part of Southern Connecticut, despite Nanny's opinion, the drivers are rational, well behaved and sane.

So this morning I'm in line waiting to get on Super 7 and the VW Bug in the left lane is getting ready to dive in front of the truck in front of me as soon as he opens up so much as an inch. Well he does open an inch.  He opens a good 2 or 3 feet and then steps on the gas to catch up.  She misses his quarter panel by a coon's hair. They are momentarily deadlocked.

He starts yelling at her, she is yelling back (this was her biggest mistake, if she'd just looked at him with that 'I'm a complete moron and I can't believe I just did that to you' look, he would probably have been diffused). I am sitting in my car giving NoMans the play by play because he is too far behind to see it. I realize at this point that he has his door open.  She guns her engine and dives in front of him as he's lost track of the line while yelling at her. I wonder if she did hit him? He chases her down the line and gets all up in her stuff. This cannot be comfortable and I am thinking I'm going to be late to work because he's going to run her into a telephone pole and then we'll all have to wait but part of me is glad for this display of public punishment because I notice not one car from the left lane made any attempt to cut over.  Suddenly they all had somewhere else to be.

At the turn she performs another faux pas and cuts up on the right, which does not make the final left onto Super 7 but continues back into the deeps of Wilton. I know what she's going to do and she doesn't let me down.  Like the terrified sneak that she is, she slips in front of a dump truck at the very last minute and makes the turn.  The Pickup truck is right behind her. I am right behind him (both of us in the correct lanes, just gunning it).  I am not about to miss any of this.

The VW Sneak leads us on a merry chase across the 3 mile connecting stretch of Super 7.  We are doing close to 90 mph before I come to my senses and let them go.  I am disappointed to have missed the rest of the show but I don't think I ought to be doing 90 in traffic, even if it is keeping up with me.  I get back in the right lane and behave myself.

I approach the line to 95 South and determine that I am in alignment with the Norwalk Hospital rule and do not have to go around. I look up and see that I am about six vehicles behind the Pickup Truck.  How did this happen? Suddenly he makes as if to pull back into the middle lane and changes his mind.  He has done this because the VW was coming up on his left and he intended to scare the bejesus out of her.  How did she get behind me? One more time.  To drive the point home. After that I have no idea what happened.  All I know is I stayed with the Pickup truck all the way to exit 9 where he got off (I get off exit 8). My guess is she decided to meter herself one exit down.  Or just go home and call it a day.