How Archie Dealt With The Yin & Yang Of His Extremes

    In his secret life he was much less open, which made sense as the less he said about anything to anyone, the less chance there was of him accidentally revealing that he was indeed leading a second life that was completely different from the one that the vast majority of the people who knew him would say was his life.

    The small number of people who knew him in his secret life had never had a reason to believe that he was anything but a likeable, quiet man who enjoyed working the night shift at the small convalescent home, walking the halls and checking on the residents, providing whatever support was needed by the institutions medical staff, keeping the common areas neat and clean, and generally keeping busy as best he could.

   He had never met up with any of his co-workers outside of working hours, and he never volunteered anything but the barest of information about himself. Of course HR ran a thorough background check when he was hired, but Peggy in HR said there was nothing in his past that made him stand out or even, to put it bluntly, the slightest bit interesting.

   Which is exactly how he wanted to be thought of in his second life. He wanted to be regarded as a dull as dirt but reliable nice guy. He did not want to form any friendships or even get to know the full names of the people he worked with - he just wanted to do his job, be pleasant but uninteresting, and then go directly home at the end of his shift.

   The home he went to was one he had lived in for over two decades, situated in the heart of suburbia. He knew most everyone in the neighborhood and socialised with them actively. There were a number of them that he regarded as close friends, and some were even closer to him than his own family. 

   On weekends he would join in with several of his friends for various functions, be it a poker night, an afternoon bar-be-que, or maybe a birthday party. There always seemed to be something going on in the neighborhood, and that right there was why he had sought out a night job where he could shut down his social side and just commune with himself. 

   For he was one of those people who both needed and enjoyed being around people, and also needed and enjoyed being alone.

   And that was why he had created his secret life, so he could, as he put it to himself more than actually said it to anyone he knew, "deal with it".

Modern Life Themes

 Minute variations in tonal value

                              Contrasts of tone (light and dark)

                              Reduced to a minimum

                              Maximize the tensions

          Illusion of depth

Juxtapositions of pure color

                            Dramatic light

                                            Extremes

Strong sense of form and structure

Frozen solemnity

                      Gradations

                                  Full saturation

                                                  Stylized starkness

   

Set The Wayback Machine For September Of 1984

   Back in the early '80's when I was in the USAF, the staff of the Graphics department was given the okay to paint murals that reflected our off duty interests, on the interior walls in our work areas.

   I stumbled across these two pics of the mural I painted on the wall behind my desk.

   As can be seen, I painted myself surfing, with two F-15's in the sky behind me. I couldn't surf to save my life, but man did I love surfing. The lifestyle intrigued me to the point where I even subscribed to Surfer magazine, despite being 1200 miles from the nearest ocean and not owning a surfboard.

   Maybe I should get one now...and move to the coast.

   Right.

 

She Never Was One For Simple Explanations

 

The scars she pointed out were from all the wounds time healed

They were big and brutal and told an ugly story

Nothing but the truth she said, and it needed to be revealed

If only so she could understand the pain and put shame to the glory 

More Ancestral Knowledge Than I Could Absorb In One Sitting

   When I was a young boy, say around eleven or twelve, I would occasionally ask my mother about our family history. 

    See, I had never met any other relative - not a single grandparent, no aunts or uncles or cousins, and of course my father had been long gone, so I never had anyone in my life (up to that point) who would spin stories about the good ol' days and what wild and rambunctious or mild and milquetoast people we had been descended from - no one had ever told me anything about who I was descended from or any of the particulars about my ancestry.

   If I remember correctly, my curiosity had been sparked by a number of friends of mine going to visit grandparents, or having grandparents come visit them, and the subsequent stories those friends would tell of their grandparents being from far off lands such as Arizona, Florida, Mexico, or even Alabama.

   Mother dear was tight lipped about our genealogy, sharing only that my genetics were an admixture of Lithuanian on her side and Scandinavian, German & French on my father's side.

   When pushed for more details my mom told me that her father (my maternal grandfather) had been a "dumb hunk" coal miner & her mother (my maternal grandmother) had a beautiful singing voice but had died shortly after my mother's 13th birthday, that she was one of four siblings (she had a sister and two brothers, who all lived on the east coast and whom I never met) and that she grew up as poor as dirt during the great depression.

   Oddly though, my mom also made a point of telling me that we were descended from the last people of Europe to be Christianized, and that our Lithuanian ancestors had worshipped the morning star.

   The only details I learned about my father's side were that he was born in Northern California where his family still resided, that his side was somehow related to the Firestone family, and that he had remarried a number of times after he had divorced my mom.

   Oh, and that he had become a sheriff in Clear Lake, California after leaving the Navy.

   It wasn't until I was in my early adulthood that I began to dig for more information about my ancestry.

   I met my first relatives outside of my immediate family, an uncle (who was my fathers only full brother (my paternal grandmother had married and divorced several times, and my father had a number of half siblings) and my uncle's wife and their children - it was (and still is, sorta) so weird to suddenly have an uncle and aunt and five cousins.

   Looking into my roots was not something I was all in on a'la Alex Haley. It was something I did (and still do) sporadically. If I was near anywhere close to where any of my relatives lived I would pay a visit, but I never set out specifically to visit those areas - I made visits to Hazleton and DuBois, Pa, when I was in Pennsylvania on business, and I made visits to Stockton and Clearlake, Ca when I was in Northern California for similar reasons.

   Heck, the only reason I ever met my uncle and his family was because I was stationed in Denver and that's where they lived.

   However, with the advent of the Internet and the development of readily accessible DNA analysis, I did become more interested in getting better informed as to my genetic make up. In the past twenty years I've learned tons about my ethnic heritage and it has all been interesting.

   Last night though I had light shined on one of the more esoteric questions I've had regarding my maternal lineage, and that is, what did my mom mean when she said we were descended from the last Europeans to be Christianized?

   Last night I got a few answers and developed a whole new subset of questions. Last night I watched a documentary titled "Baltic Tribes: the Last Pagans of Europe."

   The documentary was made in 2018 by a couple of Latvian filmmakers, Lauris Abele and Raitis Abele (the Abele name should have an accent mark over the A, but I don't know how to make that happen).

   The one hour and forty three minute film covers a lot of ground and though the narration by what sounds like AI generated English translations of the original female and male narrators is somewhat dull, the story does shed some light on the religious beliefs and practices that my mother alluded to, and on the Christian Europeans efforts to extinguish those Pagan beliefs and practices. 

   Now I haven't had the opportunity to fact check anything but the most rudimentary details of the documentary, such as the geography of the setting (most of the movie was filmed in Lithuania) and the history of the main players such as the Prussians, Danes, Samogitians, Curonians (brutal lot, them), Latvians and Lithuanians, but so far what was stated and depicted is holding up to scrutiny.  

   Which means I'm probably not descended from the most civilized of peoples. 

   But you know, that was then, my ancestors didn't have the benefit of a fine education and knowledge of the more genteel arts.

I Need To Elaborate On My Short Reminders A Bit More

 I write a lot of notes to myself. Short little notes to remind me of things I need to do or story ideas or song titles or just something I think is clever word play.

The problem I have with a lot of my own notes is that I rarely make them clear enough or detailed enough for me to understand what I was actually musing on when I jotted the note down.

For example, a few weeks ago I wrote a down the words "Laundry Lounge is a great idea" and today I read that note again and all I could think was, "Great idea for what?" 

The Latest & Greatest (For This Year, Anyway) Of The Sunsets I've Seen