Zero Readership

This Saturday is 'Beerfest Day'. Now, I have no official word that a beerfest is actually taking place - I have seen no advertisements of any kind - but Crazy Girl swears that it is happening, and so several of us at work are planning on sampling the fine brews from the independant vendors who will be participating at the event.

I'm both excited and worried.

Excited: It will be fun to have some drinks with the coworkers who are planning on going. It will be even more fun if some of them get very drunk and do silly things. I will have my camera at the event.

Worried: It's possible that Crazy Girl is on crack. It's possible that there is no beerfestery this weekend and I will be devastated when I show up at the site and see nothing but empty space and street people with mysterious brown paper bags. If this is the case I will go to the nearest beer selling store, buy a six pack and join the street people.

I will have a beerfest this weekend even if it kills me, or gets me arrested.

I love my new camera.

Saturday, after finding out about the death of my Uncle Cliff, was a strange day. I felt...well, discombobulated. I wanted to do something to honor the memory of my Uncle, a man of great influence on my younger years, and I had come up with going to the park early in the morning to light a candle for him.

By about 10 pm I was becomming restless. I needed to get out. I needed to get moving.

I came up with an alternative plan; I would drive to the coast instead and say my goodbye there.

It's about an hour drive, maybe a little more, to the Pacific.

I made a pot of coffee, grabbed my supplies, put some mellow, thoughful music in my cd changer and started the trip at about 11.

Usually I come up with good ideas and for one reason or another don't follow through. I'm a little proud of myself that I actually made the effort on this one.

Standing in the dark on a empty, remote beach is a queer experience; I kept wondering when the Leviathan would strike. Even though, I lit a candle and a stick of incense before I started to say my goodbye. I talked about the times I remembered, and was able to recall several deeply buried moments.

Uncle C. really liked children, and went out of his way to make all children feel special.

I remebered trips with his and my families to Atlantic City (before it became a gambling meca), and England.

I rememberd playing tenis on his front lawn, and his 'rubber' plant.

I remember his garden. He had a really cool backyard.

Picnics and pool parties.

Many other memories. It felt good to talk about them.

Also, something strange happened during the trip. Seriously, I can't explain it, and it continues to bother me.

Just as I reached Florence, the city that is at the end of the highway from Eugene to the coast, I hit a little bump on the road, nothing major - I've encountered much worse, and my CD changer died. Kaput! It had never done anything like that before. I pulled over, poped up my back seat and played around with it for a little while, but I couldn't get it to turn back on.

I continued on up the coast, found an accessible stretch of beach and performed my ceremony. I thought that maybe the stop might reset whatever was wrong with my chagner. Unfortunately it still didn't work.

I drove back most of the way to Eugene in silence, until I couldn't take it any more and turned on the radio.

I arrived back in Eugene at about 2:30 and pulled into a Shari's restaurant for some strawberry pancakes (I had decided I would end my night this way before setting out - it just felt like the right thing to do).

After returning to the car, I tried my disc changer one last time, and sure enough it worked.

I'd like to think this was some kind of message - seriously I would - but what?

"Stop listening to so much music, you hippie?" Actually my Uncle would never call me a hippie, which is good since I'm not one.

Anyway, I find this incident intriguing and strange. There is always a reason for everything.

My original intention was to post about my new digital camera, and to post some pictures. I was pretty excited about this; I used to do my own darkroom work back in NC, but, as with many aspects of my life, haven't done anything with the hobby since moving to Oregon.

Instead I want to purge a little - I need somewhere to vent and to organize my thoughts/feelings, so I might as well use Zero Readership to do so.

I called my Grandparents, just a routine call to say hello and talk for awhile. The big news was that one of my uncles just passed away.

It wasn't exactly shocking as he's been sick for quite awhile now and his health has been slowly deteriorating, but the news still managed to slug me across the head with a nice right-hook. The Uncle who passed-away is a great-uncle, a brother to my Grandmother. Although I haven't spoken to my Uncle in something like 3 years, he was a very important part of my upbringing and an influential person in shaping me into a man.

With his passing and realizing that it has been 3 years since I've spoken with him, I started to contemplate the 'what the hell am I doing with my life?' question in a different light.

Why haven't I made more effort to go back and see him? I knew he was very sick, I knew I should probably go see him, yet I a part of me always figured he would be there when I returned. Why didn't I care enough to make any effort?

Then again we haven't been close for so long that is it such a huge deal?

The fact that I'm not close with any of my family started to sink in. This makes me very sad. It's very difficult for me to connect with other people, but you'd think I'd still have fondness for my family members - which I do, to an extent - yet, I really don't feel very close to my family at all. How many of them bothered to call me after learning about my divorce?

I've spent my life running away from my life in hopes of finding my life. I can't say that this path has been a success.

Before I can go back to Canada I need to renew my passport. I've known this for a long time, but have'nt done anything about it. After the news about the death of my Uncle I pulled out the passport application form. At least that's one positive step.

Yet, I find my motivation to start working on it very low. Why? I need to go back NOW!! I need to get this frick'n passport done and yet I don't want to work on it right now. 'I'll do it later," I say.

One thing I will do tonight, though, is perform a ceremony for my Uncle. I don't know why I feel strongly about doing this, but I know that I need to. Very early this morning, around 3-4am, I'm going to go to a near-by park. I'm going to bring a candle with me and light it and think about my Uncle and what he meant/means to me. I'll think about the lessons he taught me. I will wish him well.

I'm not sure why I want to do this thing at a very strange hour. I suppose that it feels right, that it will feel like a sacrifice that I should make in his memory. I feel that I need to make some type of sacrifice against myself in order to be true to my feelings.

In many ways this feels like an important step for me. I'm scared about falling asleep or deciding not to do this thing. If I do it, I think that I will pass through some kind of boundary that's been holding me back - back from what I'm not sure. If I don't do it, my life will be more of the same.

Yeah, it's overly dramitc, but I lose nothing in trying. I lose nothing by doing this except for some hours of sleep.