Tuesday, January 18, 2011

'Letters Never Sent'

I posted an R.E.M. reference on Facebook (today, yesterday, recently), and none of my faithful commenters / FB Friends / friends called out the attribution.

Instead, they made humorous statements (thank you!) based on a literal interpretation of the statement.

I am sure I have done the same thing to others. (Maybe not as funny, though.)

Punctuation in the header / title is meant to provide a hint, though, after that introduction, it is merely a hammer-blow to the proverbial dead horse.

Alzheimer's disease has been in the free media lately; Ronnie Jr. speaks out about his father on ABC … Bob Newhart guest stars on NCIS as Ducky's ailing predecessor … on a related note, PBS is re-airing their ___ Friendly roundtable discussion about mental health services.

It is a grim story. (I'm rocking with the non-links, right? I link all day; I trust you all are hearty enough to use a search engine. I don't feel like it all the time, you know?)

One of the symptoms of developing this brain disorder associated with aluminum exposure, perhaps, and definitely old age, even though the late Missouri Senator Karen McCarthy succumbed to it at a relatively young age (not too long after the dear and effective alcoholic tripped on the stairs and went dry and public about it), is taking ridiculous jumps from subject to subject (using a free-association that is usually not apparent to anyone but the speaker).

So, umm, like, sea turtles and whatnot : )

A quote I recall from one of the shows (one was only a segment they dumped into PBS NewsHour … self-promotion — though I will say we saw a commercial for a new PBS program air during prime-time CBS; that was weird) is similar to: "If you forget where your keys are, you are just getting old; if you forget what they are for, that's a problem."

Off the hook for now!!

I do wonder about another phenomenon. I think everyone hoards something. I have a theory that excessive collection that threatens your living space and life is related to procrastination (another disorder, but it might not be listed in the DSM-IV).

In a desk drawer are cards and stationery decades old. Newer ones represent intentions not carried out:

a sympathy card, chosen after 26 minutes of deliberation at a poorly stocked national chain drug store in the mid-from-downtown urban core — they all were terrible, and later, thank goodness, I realized how terrible this one was and never sent it. You don't want to hear that, in the end, a text message actually was the best solution, avoided it as I did, when the situation was more acute … because that would have been insensitive and tacky;

a belated birthday card; a standard plain calm birthday card (blank); a MOM card; dozens of envelopes that don't match anything (much like having a metric wrench to work on a 1970 Chevy); post cards from places no one wants this city's postmark on; provocative notes written in illicit tones and sealed without issue for good; stickers …

I am the one who still has a very fun 2010 Japanese cat illustration calendar, an item I meant 13 months ago to send to a friend who, if reading, might know who s/he is. You do!

Talk about procrastination …

In the impossible closet in the original bathroom of the house of unmentionable difficulties is a Rubbermaid-type bin of letters I have received, along with copies (hand-written drafts!) of ones I have sent. Weighing far less than the practically useless 33s, 45s, and mostly 78s in a bin below them, this substantial collection of paper represents thoughts I don't remember and that I have not visited in decades. There they are, though, just like the IBM 486 (that's right — look at my 2400 modem, b___es! Going on the World Wide Web should be marked by uproarious clamor that sounds like locusts stuck in a blender : ), which holds years or written expression and that I likewise have not tried to access in years.

For some reason, I presume that those e-thoughts are more useful and less disgusting than the ones that were committed to paper-based journals. Many are school essays and papers and research projects, only a few are confessional, and others, hundreds of pages in .SAM format (whaaa?) are my impressions, decision points (I am Bush), traumas, and joys experienced while living in Japan for 11 months (a year with an American holiday hiatus — a vacation of which I remember very little except that I had to rent a car for four weeks and it cost me $1,000); others are letters, too.

Audience is one of the cardinal factors my excellent English instructors instilled in me. You tell me how I'm doing.

I try to follow rules, like: don't go spilling your guts to strangers (unless you are deranged; think about it — if some of the things people vomit onto these blogs came out of someone's mouth directly into your ears, say, on a bus or in the grocery store, for instance, would you stand there and listen to the whole gruesomely self-confessional and often nauseating story? ; )

Another blog rule is that you can save face by using metaphors that are not as personal and delightfully ticklish as the ones you have in your dreams. No one wants certain personal things unless there is meaning.

For example, if someone talks about her sex life and/or hygiene issues but is not fighting cancer … then person A is not interesting except to ridicule as self-indulgent.

Again, you let me know.

5 comments:

hearmysong said...

hmmm. now i'm questioning the REM reference.
and jealous that you have 16 out-of-the-woodwork followers! (i have three. three!)
there is meaning for those of us who know where to find it.

Applecart T. said...

but one of the followers is registered twice, and i lost the one whose name was written in arabic : (

two were goaded, after all …

ps, REM's site sucks (they don't even include the year of albums / they are all out of order, and the site overall is poorly designed), but here's a cheater:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yp4mX9bzBFk

the other reference "no one" got : ) has a folk parallel:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-3jggk7SxY

[what coincidences me is that both of these are from the same 1984 album … which i haven't heard or had in my possession for 15 years (i know where my CDs are, even though i thought i had sold them : )]

Nick said...

first you were all like "whoa", and we were like "whoa", and you were like "whoa...", which was all (unsurprisingly) so will share: once the 78 starts to droop over the the oven-safe (upsidedown) bowl, take the whole mess from the (200 degree) oven. you should be able to mold it into...a sea turtle? our initial usage back when such was not only acceptable but expected was as candy dishes in which we would drop 10 mg blues, 5 mg yellows, 'ludes, hash squares and when especially lucky opium gum balls. though for no particular reason the pipe dreams clustered in a harry belafonte fave, day-o, whose label melded into a burnt umber fringed with black - don't remember which oven was used as this singularity bemused us and we would have repeated it if possible...in any event, same was/is aluminum/brain disorder free or at least we never noticed a diff so your closeted correspondence could easily spin within sans dementia worries…

Applecart T. said...

@nick: are you saying this post is incomprehensible and sounds drug-induced? : )
the sea turtle section was a non-sequitur dumped there for humor.
i probably won't be melting my records.
i could try to get the player fixed … i do like how they sound …
and i haven't done anything red or blue … but sounds like you all had some fun parties ; )
catch you in the EAC, duuuude.
"how old are sea turtles? sandy plankton said they live to be 100!"

Nick said...

oh...we live longer than that.