Sparrowman’s Perch

Folks, the Darwin Awards are out!

http://darwinawards.com/darwin/darwin2006.html 

I never thought that I’d do what I did.  In fact, I swear that anyone who did such a thing was crazy.  What in the world could this action be?  To me, it is a gross participation in a mutant abhorrent form of capitalism, in that in and of itself, is a mere symptom of where society is going these days.  It’s going to the dogs and even the dogs know better!

What did I do?  I got up extremely early on the Friday after Thanksgiving (now, commonly called “black Friday”) and went shopping for bargains.

Just watch the TV news anywhere in this country around black Friday and you’ll see hordes of people simply going nuts in places of mega-commerce.  I think that even Scottish soccer hooligans cower and hide just at the thought of transgressing the paths of middle-aged women who are everso determined to get that oh-so-perfect gift for the child or other loved one of their lives.

En route to my destination, I stopped to get gas.  Folks at the gas station were discussing how idiotic this day had become and that “no one in his right mind would go near a mall or store on this day”.  Someone mentioned a news story that police and K9 dogs had to be brought in to a local Walmart around 4 am due to erupting fist fights.   I remained quiet and paid for my gas.  Besides, at this time of day my forms of communication consists of “uh”, “uh ha”, and “ug”.  Standard  male communicative expression usually hits in around 10:00 am:  “coffee…, more”, “morn’in”, and “yeah”.  It doesn’t matter what the question was to the last one:
    “Could you do this such-and-such?”
    “Do you want to get together after work?”
    “Do you want to marry me?”
    “Were you involved in the Kennedy assassination?”
“Yeah.”

(Due to one of those morning “conversations”, to this day, I still have to pay off Ismet for that darn Indonesian thing of 1993.)

I eventually made it to the Circuit City near Century III Mall.  Darkness still covered the earth and everyone and his or her brother, sister, mother, cousin, accountant were out jockeying for parking places.  There were seas of SUVs and also of some of those other kind of vehicles that simply were known as “cars”.  Remember those?  I found a spot at the far end of a grocery store parking at the other end of the Circuit City plaza—which was roughly 16 miles away.  I placed my red flag marker on my car and used an expedition technique augmented from one of Sir Edmond Hillary’s journeys.  Yes, three base camps were needed between the car and Circuit City.

So what was this incredible bargain that I just couldn’t pass up?  Dudes!  Get this!  They had select DVD sets of some of my favorite TV shows on sale at dirt-cheap prices.
    The complete first and second seasons of Northern Exposure for $13.00 total.
    The complete first season of Monk for $13.00.
    The complete first season of House for $13.00.
    The complete first season of Arrested Development for $13.00
Also, they had select movies for sale.  I picked up a new copy of Total Recall for a whole $2.00.  I saw a ad the night before.  I knew that "I was there!".

Folks, I’ve been looking for Northern Exposure DVDs for a couple of years.  Usually when I did find them, prices were around $50.00 for one season.   

I got there just in time since only several copies of Northern Exposure were left.  House was already gone.  I only got Monk by apprehending an abandoned copy that was on a shelf of some appliances.   The store was only open for about an hour when I arrived.

Now came the next part—to find a cashier line and wait.  Several of these snaked their way throughout the store and they constricted the flow of new bargain predators and scavengers who continued to pour in.  I was now one with the snake, but not for long.

There was this one woman in front of me who had a habit of swaying back and forth as she remained in queue.  But it wasn’t just swaying, it was such a nervous rocking that I was starting to get sea sick.  (And I’ve been on boats—I don’t get sea sick).

I decided that I wasn’t going to stand behind Ms. Pendulum for the next half-hour or so.  I broke away and found another snake tail to join.  Looking back at my previous queue, she still stood rocking back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.  I liked my new snake.

Yes, it did take a least a half-hour until I reached the actual cash register.  I made my purchase and got out of the place as soon as I could.  It was light outside now.  I had forgotten how far away that I had parked my car.  (Fortunately, I still had my base camps though; however, one woman was buying one–thinking it was a good bargain, I guess).

I survived!  But that was only one purchase-event; one store.  I was already devising football style plans for “another time”.  I need to get at least a couple of other large guys.  Wow, consider it now:  
    Bubba, using his immense largeness, will take my right flank.  He will slow down my competition, thus, diverting them down aisle 5 –that will take them farther away from the neat, nifty electronic gadgets section on aisle 11 (ie., “goal zone”).  Bruce, “the Bus”, can hold off folks on the left for a couple of seconds.  I then can cut down the middle for a direct shot….

Sounds good, but I need to call Coach Cowher of the Steelers to work out some further strategies.  So, do you think I’m going to do this again?

Yes, I had a good Thanksgiving dinner with family back in Pennsylvania; however, three things did make me question this special time–to give thanks.  The day afterwards I called a good buddy of mine to do some traipsing on the local rail-trail.  I found out that he was considering going to the hospital when I had called him for the walk.  He never, ever, has indicated a desire to visit a doctor, let alone a hospital emergency ward.  Strong pain was present in his abdomen and for me, there was no question, I was going to take him to the hospital.

I spent most of the day there.  It was sunny and warm, a great late fall afternoon, perfect for walking, hiking, traipsing.  A mentally unstable woman kept very loudly singing her own version of “The Star Spangled Banner” in her room in the ward.  It was good to spend time with my buddy and chat a bit, in between the alarms of pain he experienced.  It was good to talk a bit with his girlfriend, even though we were trying to figure out the possible diagnosis for the one we both love in our own ways.  Bad food?  Sprained stomach mussel? Liver? Kidney stone?  Ruptured spleen?  An incipient alien like the one from the movie, “Alien”?

After two big tests the diagnosis was inconclusive.  He still has pain.  I still worry even though it’s going on two weeks now.

During the time of my first phone call to him, he had another phone call.  (As I am talking to him about going to the hospital he says, “Ah hold on, there’s another call…”  Blimey man.)  It was from a friend of mine, a relative of his.  The father of a mutual friend of ours had died Thanksgiving night.  I knew that my mutual friend had taken him into his busy household to take care of him.  I knew that things weren’t looking good for him.  I knew that there was some closeness between the two. 

I took a day off and came back up for the funeral a few days later.  I couldn’t make it to any of the viewings even though I wanted to.  Some of me was afraid to, but I would have if I could.  The viewing in Martinsburg for a friend of mine who died in 1997 still seems so damn fresh for me.  I did one of her eulogies. 

The death of my mum is still very strong within me, but not just her death.  It was the whole painful period beforehand of watching a loved one deteriorate before you that was painful for me, and likewise, so damn fresh still. 

During the funeral, I couldn’t help but to think of those powerful mediations of the Stations of the Cross by Sister Judith Brower of the Benedictine Monestary of St. Gertrude, in Idaho.  I use those when I lead that devotional during Lent.  I always choke up when I read some of those.  Two in particular kept hitting me in the brain:

Station 6: Veronica wipes the face of Jesus
    Jesus, teach me what it meant to have Veronica wipe your face with her veil:
    To know the concern of someone who feels your agony.
    To know her inability to offer much help—and her desperate need to try.
    To be touched to the heart by her willingness to bear part of herself to offer you comfort
    To leave an image of yourself in her eyes as your gratitude.
    Jesus, teach me what it means—for Veronica to wipe my face.

Station 8:  Jesus meets the women
    Jesus, teach me what it meant for you to meet these weeping women:
    To see them crying for you and for themselves and for their dreams.
    To know their agony at their inability to do anymore but offer their love.
    To be unable to offer them consolation.
    To somehow console them.
    Jesus, teach me what it means—to meet weeping (wo)men.

I hate the feeling of helplessness as someone you love very much lays before you, and you or anyone cannot do much if anything to change the inevitable.  I do not regret that time, as hard as it was for me, for being with my mum back in 2000.  The death of a friend in Martinsburg in ’97 came as a horrible surprise.  Even Christmas itself brings back strong memories of my dad who died at home when I was 8.  It was on December 20th.

All that I can say is “I know”, and I was going to be there for my friend for his dad’s funeral.

Being back home usually erupts in periods of reminiscence:  the schools that I attended, the places where I hung out, waiting for buses at certain corners, places that helped form me.  During my time in the hospital while chatting with my buddy’s significant-other, I heard word of the possible closing of my original church, St. Peter’s.

It doesn’t look like much from the outside—a pretty much unadorned red-brown brick, soot covered structure with Victorian neo-gothic hints.  Inside, you’re in a mini cathedral with vaulted ceilings, pillars, a two story marble high altar, simple but elegant.  Despite some attempts over the years to “bring it up-to-date with the spirit of Vatican II”, it still maintains much of its character from when it was built in the 1870’s.  My first experiences of Christianity, both good and some not so good, where in that building.  Christmases there were always magical.  To this day, I can’t find a “Midnight Mass” anywhere that equals that experience.  (With the exception of the Slovak Catholic church that later became my parish as well, just one block away.  But it is part of “the exception”.)    “No!  They can’t close that place!  It’s the mother church to the area! 

I went to what might be the last Sunday to the place.  Sure, they’re going to close it up for the winter.  There are now three churches that make up one combined parish, including the aforementioned Slovak parish. 

Originally it was four churches but they tore one building down.  It was a perfect example of ancient basilican style that had murals painted by German Benedictine monks.  The place always smelled of candles and incense even though such wasn’t used in there for quite some time.  The city lost a gem back then.  If my church won’t open, the city and posterity will lose another one.  However, the crown in which the gems are held rotted years ago.  Such is anything in the “rust belt”.

My first school is gone.  My second school is gone.  The places I hung out at are gone.  Now this.  I’m still not over the renovations they did to the Slovak church back in the late 1980’s.  (Yes, in this way I am a conservative of the worst sort perhaps.)

Change is inevitable.  Why does change seem to be so damn negative though?  Loved ones die.  Loved things get lost or torn down.  Even new love sours.   Prices of things go up and rarely, if ever, come down.  That is my outlook at present. 

I know that I’m overdue for doing a Ďakujem for expressing thankfulness.  I’m sure I can come up with positive notions of change.  At this moment right now, it’s tough.  I and friends of mine are getting old, loved ones have passed on, loved places and things are lost or being destroyed.   God, please keep me from being one of those old foggies who sit and look outside a window at life and say, “I don’t like it out there…, it ain’t the way it used to be…” And then they hide. 

And then we have Darfur, there’s the mess of Iraq, and then there are folks who microwave their babies or use them as clubs to beat their boyfriends, and you could get shot about 50 times and killed by police for being in the wrong time and place.  Maybe I should hide too.

I just want to go to midnight mass in a magical familiar place with some old loved ones.  Unfortunately, I know that I’m not alone in this feeling and it is not new, neither shall it be old.  (Perhaps more on this later as I work on this).