Category: Stuff

So what on earth would prompt me to actually write a personal blog post after about a six-month gap?

I suppose it’s a combination of things. My daughter just started her senior year of high school, which obviously brings some rumination along the lines of how the hell did that much time pass that fast. Plus it’s Labor Day weekend, which has several weighty too-large-for-carryon chunks of personal baggage for me. I won’t go into all that, but something I ran across earlier today seriously picked the lock on my memory-closet.

It was this picture, in the middle of a bunch of other pictures of abandoned amusement parks.

See, when I was a kid growing up around Atlanta through the 70s and early 80s, my family would generally end up going to Panama City Beach for vacation — often around this time of year. I didn’t know it at the time, but I benefited from a unique period in that area’s history. It was in the midst of the first big boom in tourism there, which evidently had started in the early/mid-60s (my parents told me stories of sleeping on its nearly deserted beaches in the 50s, their Chevy parked beside them). But it was before PC Beach became synonymous with MTV-style spring breakers in the 80s and 90s, and before the real estate land-grab of the 2000s which razed almost everything left of the indigenous culture (such as it was) in favor of gigantic condo developments.

I wasn’t much of a beach person even as a kid. I mean, I had fun on the beach — digging for sand crabs, daring waves to knock me down, making sand castles, and getting seriously sunburned. But for me it was all prelude to visiting the amusement parks in the area at night. Especially the “Miracle Strip Amusement Park.”
This picture in particular was of the Abominable Snowman ride, where they basically had a classic Scrambler ride inside a big dome, with the snowman crouched over the door. The snowman dome wasn’t added until I was about 12, but I have vivid memories of waiting what seemed forever to get into the dome to get slung around in the dark with giant speakers pumping Van Halen and a light show timed to the music — and especially the air conditioning inside, which made the wait all the more worthwhile. Few things are so wrapped up with my visceral memories of early adolescence.

My favorite parts of the park were the scary ones, though; and those are the parts that tap into my very early memories of the sort of thing that still scares and thrills me the most. Miracle Strip had two “dark” attractions: one was a Haunted Castle, which had cars on tracks that would take you through jarring, loud haunted-funhouse moments, including a terrifically psychedelic twirling tunnel.
The other was a walk-through attraction called the Old House, complete with a hidden passage behind a fireplace, and a balcony that would drop at an angle suddenly and blow air up from its floor to feel as though you were about to fall to the ground two floors below.

Continue reading “I Remember the Miracle Strip”

Yesterday I turned 45 years old. For some reason, as I got up this morning, it hit me more than it did the day before.

Here are a few thoughts about it.

I’m technically halfway to 90 years old. I hope to live even longer than that, even though it’s older than the current average age of departure. But assuming the next 45 years will result in even better technologies for keeping us alive, I’m being optimistic. Still, there’s no denying this is, officially, “middle age.”

I don’t feel middle aged though. At least not emotionally. I’m starting to learn from others that this is not unusual. We all evidently wrestle with how we perceive our relationship with “time” — which is such a reified, non-thing to begin with.

Part of me would love to feel what I assume is a level of authority and confidence that comes with hitting time-based number that most would agree is undeniably “adult.” That’s the insecure part of me, though. The one that depends on something outside of me to tell me what and who I am. On a daily basis, I have to put that part of me in “time out.” It speaks out of turn and still isn’t quite housebroken.

Nowadays I have to work harder to catch myself resting on laurels or assumptions from prior experience. My eye-roll reflex is now nimbler and quicker on the draw than when I was younger. And that’s a dangerous reflex to exercise. When I notice myself being unthinkingly dismissive of a new idea, or an old idea revived in a new situation, I feel a little like Roy Batty in Bladerunner, catching his limbs in the first stages of rigor mortis, willing them to keep moving. Luckily I don’t have to stab myself with a nail. I just have to breathe, and remember to listen more closely. (Not that I find either of those things easy; some days I’d rather stick myself with a nail.)

I’m glad I’m working in a job where the company is still finding itself, watching itself evolve. It feels more like the old meaning of “company” — a group of companions, compatriots, fellow travelers.

I’m glad I’m working on this crazy book about stuff that I still wonder if I fully understand. I’m having to learn things in order to write it, and I’m never sure if I’m fully grasping and articulating the material; but I suppose that’s better than the comfortable stasis of writing only certainties. Even though I have weekly battles of self-doubt, I’m learning so much, and accomplishing something I never thought I’d have the wherewithal to do.

My wife and I are moving again, back to Philadelphia. We’ve been wanting to finally end up someplace where we could say “this is where we live” and put down some roots, at least for a while. So we’re going back to the place where we met, and where, when we feel homesick, it’s for that place. Is this going backward? Maybe. But only if we expect to be the same people we were when we lived there before. We’re not. We’ve grown a lot in four years; changed. Plus, now we have a dog. So we’ll see.

And watching my daughter become who she is becoming. Almost 17 now. Kind, intelligent, curious, good. Her mother has worked miracles in raising her. My daughter, who has to learn her own lessons, find her own way, no matter how much her parents would like to carve a safe, happy path in front of her. What a bracing, beautiful paradox it is, to have the power to bring a human being into the world, but be so utterly powerless in the face of their own story that only they can make.

So. Halfway. Even this far into my own story, I’m still a rough draft. I suppose I’ve always felt “half done” about most things, even the ones I’ve technically finished. I’ve always felt suspended between the poles of “making” and “unmaking.” There are more days, now, when I feel at peace with that unmoored oscillation. Not many, but more.

 

I’m using this post to give a home to a video clip from the show M*A*S*H. I sometimes use the clip in presentations, but it doesn’t seem to be compatible with YouTube, so I’m putting it here instead. QuickTime m4v format; just click the link to view:  French Toast