Ian, I mentioned going back there, I oughta tell you the whole story, which can be a pain with me sometimes... but there it is.
I ain't been banned yet. I mentioned somewhere recently about staying at point Reyes in the camper van with Lu, and I mentioned Haaken, my grandma's stubborn 2nd husband and how through him I learned all about Norse stubborness, long before I met Bo. I think there are some real old kinship links there - between Norwegian and the Scotch-Irish so evident on my grandma's side. Those tough but loving women! I usta think the scotchirish were a blend, you know, of the scottish and irish peoples, but a good old American History class at Jr. College taught me my roots. The Scottish Protestants were the stubborn a-holes who couldn't get along with the catholic scots or the CofEnglish, and immigrated to Ireland, where they didn't (and don't to this day) get along with the Irish. So they immigrated to America, where they didn't get along with New Englanders and they went west into the Appalachians and Great Smokies and moved into shacks where they didn't have to worry about getting along with nobody. They got along pretty good with the indians, intermarrying lots and breeding a bunch of tough hungry americans who kept spreading west. There's a pervasive weed around here, nitrogen -fixing, drought-hardy, so it loves the many diggins and old workings where the topsoil was torn up by the same breeds that brought the brush - scotch broom, it's called, green all year except when it explodes in flower. Wildly hated. Mild hallucinogenic effect from smoking the cured flowers. And where do the Norse come in? Viking blood, raping and pillaging down the coasts of England. Although you gotta wonder sometimes, fishing village life being a rather boring and tedious repeat of yesterday and the day before, maybe the vikings and the scottish winked and went raping back and forth, just for a bit of variety in the days before cinema. Probably when it comes down to it, it was the women's idea. If they'd really fought 'em off, there wouldn't be so many red heads and blondes amongst the english speaking descendants of the isles. Haaken and I didn't get along much. He was nice enough, but he didn't like new ideas and I was all full of 'em. Mostly regarding the garden, which was his pride and joy. I helped him with it, but was starting down that path already that would lead to Fukuoka gardening and permaculture techniques - idle, shiftless notions about leaving the leaves on the ground as mulch, rather than sweeping them up and burning them for the sake of neatness. Stuff like that. And I didn't trust all the pesticides and herbicides and such that he used. And sometimes, neither did he. He had his doubts about chemicals. For one thing, he was pretty sick. Old and sick and sometimes he wondered aloud if all that round up he'd been spraying and breathing all those years really was a good idea. I wondered too and if there wasn't some sorta karmic connection between the industrial cancer we have spread, and the industrial caused cancers we have become. But hey, it was his house, his garden. I was just the hired help. Me and Lu, off in the north wing of the double wide, she learning how to bake bread, cook and clean according to the whims of my picky grandmother, me learning how to plant and harvest under the tutelage of her husband. We didn't enjoy it all that much, but we were pretty happy and it gave us that chance to be newlyweds, to have a lot of time to ourselves. That was when I read ZAMM to Lu everynight as she fell asleep. Often before I was finished reading. She said it was cuz my voice was so soothing but I knew she had a hard time following some of the metaphysics. C'mon Bob, couldn't you put a little more romantic interest in there? Oops, never mind. Look where that got us. Just kidding. Don't kick me out yet. I clashed with Haaken enough to know that he wouldn't be at all pleased with my revised honeymoon proposal. Initially I was gonna rebuild my vw camper van. And I worked on it. Even had a conception of Quality Maintenance to guide me, not to mention Bill who took a week off work to come and be my best man and help get the honeymoon van ready. But even with following all the instructions, we did get her rebuilt and started, but she did not sound good. And time had run out. My eyes lingered lovingly on Haaken's Ford Campervan, raised roof, bed and stove and porta-potty. A veritable palace compared to my vw, but the principle involved was that I was supposed to be hoisting my own petard. I'd be venturing forth in a craft crafted by me, rebuilt from the ground up. A sign of competence and self-reliance to my new bride. Borrowing my gran's, hubby's van smacked of "he ain't ready for prime time folks" - which was already a persistent criticism of air-headed-me that i was *trying* to dissuade. So it was tough to walk into that old man's room, and look into his old man's face, and say, please can I borrow your beloved camper for my honeymoon? His tough old face tightened. His tough old brows narrowed and he didn't say anything. Just stared at me as if I'd asked for his life, and shook his head no. I played my trump card, of accepting his answer, and started loading up the van. And let grandma worry for about a minute and then he called me back and said ok. It was kind of an a-hole thing to do to him. That van was really his pride and joy. It'd been his honeymoon van too - he hadn't really been married long to my granma then, 7 or 8 years. But he loved her more than anything, even his van. Plus he probably knew deep down he wasn't gonna be driving anymore long trips. And he didn't. He got worse in the 10 days we were gone, and when we got back he was getting in the back of their car, to make the trip into the hospital. He didn't want to go. But he went for Grandma's sake. He knew he was dying, he wanted to die at home. What man doesn't? Hospitals suck. But at home, grandma would have had to deal with him, and she just couldn't. I don't think my new wife was quite ready for that either, having been a pretty sheltered and pampered princess in her dad's eyes, and him being an industrial magnate and all... the old story of the princess and the outlaw. It's been told before. I'm really here to tell the story of the Mean old Norwegian and the scowl on his face as he hobbled slowly out to the car, just as we pulled up. By the time we got out, he was already in the car, but he opened the door, slowly made his way over to the roses bordering the house, picked a nice red one and came back and gave it to my wife and took her hand in his and smiled with his whole soul. As much as I appreciated the romantic gesture then, and Haaken's taste in women, its something I think about more as I get older. The endless story is man and woman and leaving and finding. It goes in circles folks. It always has. I pray it always does. Intellectual claptrap helps pass the time, but man and woman and circles of love is all there really is. And when I say "is", I mean that in the most metaphysical way there is. Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
