The Authentic Memory

I'm turning 52 next week, and I have to say I'm completely happy that I got to live my 20-something years during the 1980's.  Especially because the 1980's were the ending years of the unplugged life, right before hand-held electronics made their way into our moment-by-moment lives.

Of course it was a pain in the ass to have to locate a pay phone if you wanted to make a call, or to miss an important message because you were away from your phone, or to be unable to share good (or bad) news or a funny picture until you got home from a concert or a vacation.  But I can honestly say that during those wild, romantic, youthful years of my 20's, I was completely present where I was, doing whatever I was doing at the time, with no distractions --  no screens, no feeds and no statuses to check.

Think peak moments.  In my 20's, I had many, often in the presence with great friends or romantic partners.  We might be standing on the edge of a continent in Greece, enjoying a cup of coffee and scones at a tiny coffee shop on the foggy California coast, or witnessing a spectacular lightning storm perched on a hill in our car on a stormy late summer night in the midwest.

I experienced those moments in their totality, with whomever I was with and the gestalt of everything; the sights, the smells, the sounds and the emotions.  And even now, 30 years later, sometimes I catch a scent of jasmine, the sound of the ocean or the boom of distant thunder, and all those memories come flooding back to me, unbidden.  And they are welcome.  They bring back long-lost friends, places that no longer exist, and a time when life was a lot simpler and more innocent.

Fast forward to today, where every important moment is captured, pixelated and immediately shared. It's a huge loss, because in order to capture that moment, you must, by necessity, step away from it -- leave the real-time sights, sounds and sweeping feelings of that exact moment, in order to turn your cell phone on to camera setting, frame your shot, click away for a minute, and then get on the internet, log into Facebook or your address book and post it for everyone to see.  

It's like the time I agreed to photograph the Space Shuttle landing at Edwards Air Force Base in California.  I did my job, but ended up seeing the whole landing not simply looking up at the sky, but by squinting, one-eyed, through the viewfinder of my camera.  And I felt the loss when it was all over, because although I had the images captured on film, I missed watching the landing with my own two eyes.  I was so busy fiddling with focus, f-stop and aperture I missed the thrill of watching a spaceship come down from the sky and land.

And so it is today.  If you're standing on the edge of a volcano and have to start fiddling with your cell phone to capture and post an image, you've just diminished the primitive thrill of the volcano experience for yourself, while attempting to preserve it.

I see it at the winery all the time.  People ask me to take their picture, then spend the next 10 minutes trying to get a decent cell signal out of the winery so they can "check in" and post their photo.  And in those minutes they lose, they also lose the flow of the moment and the magic of the experience with their friends, a summer breeze and a glass of wine.

It's something I can't stress enough; if you want to feel those all-encompassing moments -- the ones that will still be capable of sweeping you over and under with their raw beauty and their emotions a quarter century or more after they've happened, put down the screen for God's sake, and just experience them with all your human senses, and nothing more. 

Take a picture in your brain, another in your heart, and another on your skin as the moment wraps you up and envelopes you. 

It's the only way to really keep a memory for all its worth.  An Instagram or Facebook post will never do it justice.

Getting to me

My cabinet of solace

So I found myself in the wine library while working at the winery this afternoon, polishing glassware and carefully placing it all back on the shelves after a busy afternoon.  I love the wine library; it's my favorite place on the property to be even if I don't get in there often.  It's dimly lit, has lots of warm wood cabinets and built-in wine racks, and is a nice even temperature of about 65 degrees all the time.  Perfect on a day when outside temps are in the 90's.

But it's become a favorite place even more since I've been doing this remodel at our house.  You see, my kitchen is empty and its contents are scattered throughout the house, which makes everything at home seem messy and unorganized.  I am not one of those people who deals well with disorganization; it makes me feel scattered, distracted and ill at ease.  

Hopefully this will be the last week when the contents of my kitchen are laying all over the floors of our own den, living room, dining room and guest bedroom, but until it feels back to normal, I will seek solace in the comfort of the wine library at work on quiet, late afternoons, where everything seems to have a place, and there is no clutter nor even a bottle or glass out of place.

Library ready for an event

General Update

This has been a crazy week, between getting the kitchen ready for new cabinets and harvesting a bounty of vegetables which I can't use, since I have no kitchen to prepare or preserve food in.  I'm giving most of it away, to the girls at the winery, to my neighbors David and Ray, and really, anyone who shows an interest.  Success is not a problem here, and hopefully by the time my kitchen is functional again I will still get some garden goodies put aside for ourselves.

We're also coated in a thick layer of concrete dust as we speak, because the kid who came to do the tile removal used a grinder on the entire floor and dust got into everything, all over the house -- into drawers, electronics, the ceiling and walls and of course all the furniture and flooring.  We were wearing respirator masks until about yesterday. 

The construction company has pledged to make this mistake right, and next Wednesday a team of four professional housekeepers will be arriving to clean our living areas from top to bottom. That's a good thing! Monday and Tuesday will be cabinet installation days, but as the countertops will not be installed until about mid-August, we'll be minus a working kitchen sink and food prep area until then.  But at least some of what belongs in the kitchen cabinets can be put away (after the concrete dust is washed off, of course).

In the garden, there is an abundance of cukes, zukes, eggplant and my first ripe tomatoes.  I keep up with the watering and the harvesting, but that's about it at this point.  Life's not allowing for much else.

But the best news of all is that I just found out that my two dear friends Hal and Peter are getting married -- finally -- after 21 years together.  Perhaps I'll even be able to host the happy couple for dinner soon using our new kitchen!  Keep calm and marry on, California!

A Lesson in The Law -- California Style

Today, Big Ag was outside working on the property when he spotted a family looking at the lot next to us.  We didn't know it was for sale, and while we were walking around on it, we realized our septic leach lines run across the top of the property, on the same hill our house is on, but definitely on the other property, not ours.

I can't believe we never noticed it before, nor did anyone else who helped us buy our home, including the previous owner.  So we did what anyone does when they realize there's a potentially huge and complicated legal issue relating to their land, which was 1) panic, and 2) begin research in earnest.

To make a long story short, it turns out we have a legal right to have our leach lines running across the neighboring property due to something called a "prescriptive easement."  It's a strange thing, good for us but not for absent land owners.

Basically it goes like this:  If someone encroaches on your property by putting something like a sewer line or septic system on it, or if they just walk across it every day to get to the grocery store, if you haven't put a stop to it within 5 years of it happening regularly, you're out of luck.  That's right, if its been done for 5 years, innocently, with no push-back from you, it's a done deal that it can legally continue to happen into perpetuity, without you being able to do a thing to stop it.  In fact, if you try to stop it the courts will rule against you, and you may be liable for damages.

Hard to believe, but true.  It's true in other states as well as California, but the number of years it takes for the encroachment to become legal can differ.  In Tennessee, for example, you have 9 years to complain before its too late for you to do anything.

I'm not sure how this is possible or if its even a law that I like, but in this case it works in our favor.  Our house was built in 2005, with the leach lines being put in place in that time.  That's 8 years ago, meaning it's now been legal for 3 years.

I'm thankful, but also a little perplexed as to how and why this law exists.  But mostly thankful.  It also means that our lovely 180 degree view of the Coast Range will probably remain the same, as it would be impossible to build on the other side of the hilltop without disturbing our leach lines or violating the laws that demand leach lines stay a certain number of feet away from any residences.

A victory for us, albeit a strange one.  

And it turned out the real estate shoppers were on the wrong lot, anyway.  The lot next to us isn't even for sale, and possibly never will be.

And so panic turns to relief as we watch another sunset from the back patio.

Deconstructing the kitchen

There's now real progress happening on the kitchen front.  Today Big Ag and Groceries spent the day de-constructing the  old kitchen.  There's construction dust everywhere and the entire house seems littered with kitchen items we had to remove from the drawers and cupboards, but it at least feels like we're making good progress towards a new and more functional kitchen.

Here's a couple of pics of the demolition so far:

Of course this just had to happen at the height of summer, when I have a bounty of fresh vegetables ready to be cooked, but luckily I can still grill things, cook in the solar oven, and when all else fails, give any produce we're not using to our neighbors and coworkers, most of whom don't have vegetables in their gardens.

Preoccupied with the vanishing celluloid crowds

I see dead people

OK, some people might feel like this post is a downer, but I have to be honest about where I'm at, which is somewhat reflective right now.

For those of you not there yet, I will tell you something:  Your 40th birthday is no big deal.  You're still good-looking, fit, and if you've taken care of yourself, still part of the "young" half of the planet.  You're a little (or a lot) wiser than you were at 20, and maybe you have a few gray hairs or a permanent slight mini-pouch from your pregnancies, but all in all, things still look pretty good.

50 is another story.

50 is different not because you necessarily feel any differently than you did at, say, 49, but because the number is significant.  It's half a freaking century, for heaven's sake.  And unless you are someone special (like my Uncle Earl, who passed peacefully in his sleep at the ripe old age of 104) there is every chance in the world that you are well past the halfway point of your life by the time the big 5-0 comes to call.

Your fifties are also the age when the generation that came right before you is on its way out.  My mother is still with us and still healthy, but she's 80 years old and is losing siblings and friends right, left and center.  My godmother has dementia and can no longer remember her grandchildren or what she had for breakfast today. My father's ashes were scattered at sea 25 years ago, and my grandparents are also long gone, relics from the bronze age at this point.

It's a sobering thing.

So here's how it hits me:  I watch old movies on television, and they get to me because, lets face it, if it's from the 1940's or even 1950's, almost everyone in them is dead.  That's right, while others see crowd scenes filled with hundreds of costumed extras and crowds of background performers, I see a crowd of....well....dead people.  Plus, depending on the film, dead horses, long dead dogs, and a way of life that is completely changed.  

Now lest you think I'm a total downer, I'm not.  In some ways, it's kind of fun seeing the phones that plug into the wall, the old automobiles, the bullet bras and the odd kitchen gadgets.  But the faces haunt me, because I know they're either gone or so old as to be unrecognizable. And I'm conscious that the things I remember from my own childhood are getting to the same obsolete place -- fast.

My friend Rod's mother, for instance, was a dancer on the stage and in film.  She was in the first stage company of "Oklahoma," was featured on the cover of "Life" magazine, and was a principal dancer in both the film of "Oklahoma" and the movie "Carousel."

My friend's mom, roof dancer on the far right

 I saw her on TCM last weekend and there she was, fresh, young and lovely, dancing her way across the locations and movie set of the Rogers and Hammerstein classic film.  In today's world, she is very old and stricken with dementia if I remember correctly.  But on my television screen she is young and vibrant, once again and forever.

And that's the thing about those of us who were born in the 20th century.  We are among the first generations who have ever been archived, documented and preserved so well for posterity -- on celluloid, on Kodak, and on readable disc.  But while the images of us that flicker across our screens will never change, we most certainly will.  And seeing the generation before mine begin to pass out of existence is a hugely sobering thing.

I try not to dwell on it in a depressed way, but rather to take note of it in a way that gives my life more meaning and makes the days more important.  When I realize that my entire generation is going to pass away along with me, I feel better, because I realize I have comrades in arms as we get ready to shoot the rapids into whatever comes next.  But to realize that we're next generation into the boats, it certainly gives me pause to reflect.  I see it in the mirror.  I see it in the faces of the crowds in the films, the crowds of people who are all gone now.  

And I see it in the world around me, which is now centered around the young adults of the next generation, as it should be.  As it was when I was their age.  And I turn my face towards those rapids, those most certain and unavoidable rapids where the generation before me is passing, and where we're headed next.  

And sometimes I look backward to what was with a little nostalgia, some sadness, and the realization that someday, my generation will be just like the crowds in the old movies I watch now -- long gone, us and our horses and our dogs and our gadgets. And it's a strange feeling, a feeling I wish someone would coin a term for, but they won't, ever, because we never coin terms for things we're too uncomfortable to acknowledge, however universal and inevitable they may be.

Cabinets and Cukes

In a few minutes, a truck will pull up and deliver our new kitchen cabinets.  Even though it's only the first step in the remodel, I can't wait to see those boxes.  I've been steadily emptying out the shelves in the old kitchen cabinets and stashing things in the spare room and our library, but as its been a slow burn I've had time to keep items stacked against the walls instead of underfoot.  But I still would not want anyone to visit our house right now, as it looks like we're moving or just auditioning for an episode of "Hoarders -- Buried Alive." My kitchen does not contain much junk, but with all the cooking, baking, canning and wine and soapmaking I do, I have managed to accumulate an impressive amount of equipment and supplies.

The vegetable garden is going like gangbusters, and this year its the cucumbers that have gone wild, to a point where I have many more times what I need (pickle and relish-making included!).  Luckily my friend Annette at the winery has offered to take my surplus, as she cans roughly 100 jars of pickles a year.  Sometime when we're not running around pouring wine I'm going to have to ask her what she uses that many pickles for.  Gifts? Potato salad? A giant decorative wall of pickle jars?  Those all sound good to me.