12 September 2010
 
Going Blue


(Arlington National Cemetery, 9/11 burial section, September 11th, 2010. Photo Socotra.)

It is still before dawn, with just the faint graying of the sky to the east. The light, filtered by the gray skies will be along soon enough. There are a couple chores to do, but for now I will try to sort through a story and drink coffee to see if I can get my brain firing on more than a couple cylinders.

I am slowly climbing out of the metaphorical blue emotional ditch I drove into up in Michigan. I heard only one report from my sister on the status up there, and nothing at all from the management staff of Potemkin Village.
 
Mom, by report, was observed in animated conversation at lunch the other day with another in-mate. Dad is far beyond being able to do anything like that, so if she has a pal there then her life will expand, and perhaps be tolerable. Or perhaps she is engaging a confederate for a break-out.
 
I guess we will just see.
 
I had one of those 9/11 days yesterday. I put off the thought of the game in the afternoon. I am a recovering college football fan, and have great pals who are as delusional as I am about the merits of our various programs. I am trying to get over the inclination to throw the television out the window after a heartbreaking loss, as an associate did after a missed field goal against the Buckeyes years ago.
 
The televisions are getting to big and too expensive for that.
 
I put aside the pre-game jitters and wrote something that encompassed the strange feeling of buoyancy I have been feeling despite the depressing economic and political news. I have a feeling of lightness and clarity; odd as I read of China’s continued rise and the implacable resolve of the terrorist wing of Islam.
 
I have determined to thin my own possessions as I look at the parent's vast hoard of junk, the gems amid the cancelled checks that go back to 1950.
 
I am not going to do this to the kids. At least that is my resolution. It is with some trepidation that I remember Raven’s vow that he would not go out in diapers like Jack, the dashing P-51 Mustang fighter jock from WWII who did his passage a decade ago.
 
I went to Arlington early, the day being superb, took the Mercedes with the top down, and the journey is easy now that I have a pass to enter the sacred grounds in my car. That makes the pilgrimage to the graves of my pals who were killed on that day so much easier than the march down the big bluff from the Fort Myer side of the cemetery.
 
I don't like coming in with the tourists from the main gate. The place is going to be where I wind up for the rest of history, so I have a certain proprietary interest in the place, all the stones, row on row neatly on rank and  file and perfect in the oblique.
 
It was solemn, sad as always, but affirming in a strange way to see the flowers on the graves of my shipmates. The turf has grown green and then burned off in this summer’s drought. It is quite unlike the red rent clay that was disturbed when they were put to rest there nine years ago in the shadow of the Pentagon across the road.
 
Then errands, retrieving the Bluesmobile from the Vietnamese bodyshop guys, a good hour's swim in the intensely chilly waters of the bonus weekend of the pool, chatting with Joe and Uncle Bill and then drifting off in a nap in the glorious thin sun of almost-Autumn.
 
Disoriented after sleep in the middle of the day, I considered opening the bar early and watching football, but was worried about Heckle the Cat. I gathered some things together and drove off into the late afternoon, headed south for Culpeper.
 
Good evening there. Found the cat alive, and fed her two cans of wet food. I don't watch much television these days except for a couple shows (True Blood Season Three conclusion tonight) but recovering or not, I do enjoy putting on football as background noise while doing something else.
 
I moved some things around in the house and waited for rain. The clouds came from the direction of Charlottesville, and then the rain, but that was after Michigan beat Notre Dame, which in my book makes a perfect fall afternoon.
 
I know, don’t bother to write. Both storied programs have a long way to come back to the greatness of elder days.
 
I dreamt of many things in the quiet of the night, hearing the whistle of the modern trains that run on the road of the Alexandria and Orange railroad that my great-great-great Grandfather helped to build. I remember particularly the dream of not knowing which bed I was in, north or south, but liking wherever it was.
 
It is useful to have a connection to this Culpeper soil. It brings a balance to things, and not at all blue, since it is dust to dust, after all, at the end of the long afternoon.
 
Copyright 2010 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
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