Memento Meminisse
The spedometer I ordered for my truck is here, and it's dirty and scary and still in the plastic casing it rested in on the dash, like they tore it brutally from its original home. (The hardest part of reassembling my beloved jalopy is that somewhere out there, some poor wrecked replicas are being heartlessly stripped of their guts. Yes, I’m aware of my neurosis. Thank you.) The odometer reads 116,234, which is just over 100,000 less than what the real mileage on my truck is. I'm annoyed that it won't be correct anymore. I'm obsessive-compulsive that way; things need to be honest. They need to be right. I know I can always keep track, do the math so we can throw a party at 300k, but still. I want everyone to know. I want the cards on the table. I want the proof in the pudding.
I'm not operating at full capacity. I don't seem to be oozing my patented secret cleverness; I'm not seeing the humor in all things; I'm neither witty nor glib; I'm not scribbling childrens' book ideas all over my deskpad at work or doodling in the prop-book that will someday induce Disney to come calling, crawling, begging. But all is not lost. I’m listening to Una Furtiva Lagrima, I’m blowing in my Benge 6C nickel-plated bass trombone mouthpiece whenever I have a free hand, and I’m cleaning my brushes. For what? Against the rusty camp stove (don’t ask) at the foot of my bed leans a stack of blank canvases. They make a good barricade to keep the cats from behind the bed, but someday they’ll be more; they’ll be money in the bank. Even thought I don’t entirely trust banks. (Don’t read Dean Koontz’s Dark Rivers of the Heart unless you want to wind up Totally Paranoid about Government and all things Economic. Do read it if you want a really compelling novel with awesome action, wonderful descriptions, great characters, including someone so genuinely psychotic you’ll walk around looking over your shoulder, wondering which government employee he is, a subtle love story, the gratuitous titillation the people seem to demand nowadays, major weapons of mass destruction, a funny chapter about Mormons, and a very cool dog.) Anyhow.
I have picked out a bright new room to put in my future dream house, which is not an accurate term because I'm not that high-maintenance. I suppose it would be a light-hearted study, or an office perhaps, or maybe even my writing room if I kept it toned down, because I can't write in a room that's done in the classic dark leather and wood and shelves full of burgundy leather-bound tomes. Tends to depress me. This room needs scarred, dark wood floors and a sloping, smooth white plaster ceiling, plenty of west-facing, multi-paned windows with good wide ledges for bottles and shells, and wainscoting to make it just so, but I'll be ok if I can just fill it with the treasures I've envisioned.
I know a nautical-themed room is nothing new. I’ve been to Pier 1; I've seen the wooden sailboats and resin pilings and artfully frayed net and thick hemp ropes with color-striped foam buoys. I've seen the brass-framed prints of docks and piers and lighthouses with backdrops of sunsets and storms, and I'm aware that Thomas Kinkade is to nautical decor what Magic Johnson was to the Lakers. But I’m not talking a ship-in-a-bottle, starfish-print-curtains, white-wicker-settee nautical room. No dark woven trunks, no handcarved ironwood seagulls. No yellowed treasure maps with lightly-crisped edges, no tiki torches. That all says to me seafood aisle at Safeway, because when I was growing up in Kemmerer there was a novelty yellow-twine net over the deep-freeze with a red plastic lobster and a shimmery little marlin caught in it. (Incidentally, when we got our new Super WalMart, my brother-in-law was all excited because the one in Rock Springs has a tank with live lobsters. Naturally, Ironically, for some reason our Wal is lobsterless. Go figure.)
Wow, am I easily sidetracked today. Today would be a great day to take advantage of me. I’d get to talking my head off about nothing and you could pull off whatever subterfuge you’ve been plotting, like selling me Utah Jazz tickets while I’m not concentrating on what I’m buying, or running off with my magic mirror, which would be silly because it only works for me anyhow…
Oh yes! My nautical room. The future museum and home of a plaque that reads National Register of Historic Places No. ___. Someday a tour guide dressed in period costume (!) will intone "and here is the desk where the American lliterary genius Ms. (Insert Pen Name Here) wrote The ____ of _______, the great and tremendously historically significant work." There will be replicas of my sticky-notes all over the big, clunky monitor (I’ll never get used to a laptop) and fine-point, black ink Pilot Explorer pens scattered all over the desk, and an overwhelmingly bored little girl, suddenly intrigued, will tug on her mother’s sleeve and ask "Mommy, what are those?" And her mother will smile and say "I believe those were used to propel particularly large cookie crumbs out of the crevices of the keyboard." And she will be somewhat correct. (We interrupt this long-winded musing to bring you this scary thought: what if, years from now, that famous room is this room I’m sitting in now, this spider-infested catacomb of terror? Not that it isn’t cozy, but this room? With its retro eggshell-enamel cabinets, its exposed pipes, its 10-inch resin Buddha, its bamboo calendar from the Golden Dynasty in Ogden? That calendar can’t be part of my posterity. Not with those goggly-eyed koi and the oriental writing I can’t read. It can’t. It just can’t.)
A nautical room should be a gracious reminder of living by the sea, not a tacky collection of plastic reproductions of things found in the sea. Not even expensive reproductions of nautical instruments found on the sea. No heavy brass sextants, no ship’s cabinet-knobs, no sea-bells with perfectly authentic-looking salt-air patina. Instead, wainscoting with sanded wood planks painted ivory on the bottom, pale slate-blue satin-finish paint on the top. White cotton curtains to billow in perpetual sea breezes, maybe with subtle Battenburg lace at the bottom or a strip of fine netting sewn in. A wide mahogany-framed mirror with silver hooks for odds and ends, some beige cotton rag rugs to trap the sand. To hold books and a vase of Muscari armeniacum, (my favorite little cobalt clumps, grape hyacinth), leaning mahogany ladders with wide eight-inch steps, instead of black-hole-solid bookshelves that trap paper-rotting moisture. An abilone shell for small trinkets on a humble, scarred mahogany coffee table, matching end tables with multi-faceted antique oil lamps in silver bases. Comfortable armchairs and loveseat in smooth ivory canvas washed soft as fleece, with wide slate-blue and ivory stripes. Puffy throw pillows in slate-blue damask, no fringe or tassels or lace, no silk or floral brocade, just wide ivory satin ribbon if you have to have your finery. Soft woven throws in darker beiges and blues, wool rugs in sedate solids. I’d need a desk in front of a window, a sturdy but not-too-heavy high mahogany writing table with one drawer, and a matching straight-backed plain wooden chair with a toile cushion. No potpourri, no Glade Plug-ins. Just open air and sunlight, and maybe a lemony wood-polish smell, and just the slightest hint of wet Lab.
I suppose at some point I saw a picture like that in a magazine, and liked the ‘cool’ colors and inviting textures, but the truth is, I’m not sure I’d be entirely comfortable in a room like that. It sounds nice, and I'm sure I’d get used to it, but I grew up in a beautiful jumble of sentimental artifacts: the black forest cuckoo clock, the hooked-yarn owl pillow with the green corderoy back, the little round green vinyl footstool that made such a wonderful wheel if you wanted to play circus, a perfect unicycle, a barrel for your elephant to rest one massive, wrinkled gray knee on. I highly doubt I’d let my kids roll around on anything with an Ethan Allen tag, or let the damp black Lab shed on an ivory colored couch. I’m accutely aware that there’s virtue in both the valuable and humble things I’ve inherited alike. Besides, I adore clutter. Thrive on it, as long as every piece has its meaning. I can make a memento out of anything. Don’t believe me? Look in my sock drawer.
Memento Meminisse: Remember to Remember. I am occasionally accused of remembering things wrongly, but all the same, I remember. And the older I get the more fun it is. How time does fly.
I'm not operating at full capacity. I don't seem to be oozing my patented secret cleverness; I'm not seeing the humor in all things; I'm neither witty nor glib; I'm not scribbling childrens' book ideas all over my deskpad at work or doodling in the prop-book that will someday induce Disney to come calling, crawling, begging. But all is not lost. I’m listening to Una Furtiva Lagrima, I’m blowing in my Benge 6C nickel-plated bass trombone mouthpiece whenever I have a free hand, and I’m cleaning my brushes. For what? Against the rusty camp stove (don’t ask) at the foot of my bed leans a stack of blank canvases. They make a good barricade to keep the cats from behind the bed, but someday they’ll be more; they’ll be money in the bank. Even thought I don’t entirely trust banks. (Don’t read Dean Koontz’s Dark Rivers of the Heart unless you want to wind up Totally Paranoid about Government and all things Economic. Do read it if you want a really compelling novel with awesome action, wonderful descriptions, great characters, including someone so genuinely psychotic you’ll walk around looking over your shoulder, wondering which government employee he is, a subtle love story, the gratuitous titillation the people seem to demand nowadays, major weapons of mass destruction, a funny chapter about Mormons, and a very cool dog.) Anyhow.
I have picked out a bright new room to put in my future dream house, which is not an accurate term because I'm not that high-maintenance. I suppose it would be a light-hearted study, or an office perhaps, or maybe even my writing room if I kept it toned down, because I can't write in a room that's done in the classic dark leather and wood and shelves full of burgundy leather-bound tomes. Tends to depress me. This room needs scarred, dark wood floors and a sloping, smooth white plaster ceiling, plenty of west-facing, multi-paned windows with good wide ledges for bottles and shells, and wainscoting to make it just so, but I'll be ok if I can just fill it with the treasures I've envisioned.
I know a nautical-themed room is nothing new. I’ve been to Pier 1; I've seen the wooden sailboats and resin pilings and artfully frayed net and thick hemp ropes with color-striped foam buoys. I've seen the brass-framed prints of docks and piers and lighthouses with backdrops of sunsets and storms, and I'm aware that Thomas Kinkade is to nautical decor what Magic Johnson was to the Lakers. But I’m not talking a ship-in-a-bottle, starfish-print-curtains, white-wicker-settee nautical room. No dark woven trunks, no handcarved ironwood seagulls. No yellowed treasure maps with lightly-crisped edges, no tiki torches. That all says to me seafood aisle at Safeway, because when I was growing up in Kemmerer there was a novelty yellow-twine net over the deep-freeze with a red plastic lobster and a shimmery little marlin caught in it. (Incidentally, when we got our new Super WalMart, my brother-in-law was all excited because the one in Rock Springs has a tank with live lobsters. Naturally, Ironically, for some reason our Wal is lobsterless. Go figure.)
Wow, am I easily sidetracked today. Today would be a great day to take advantage of me. I’d get to talking my head off about nothing and you could pull off whatever subterfuge you’ve been plotting, like selling me Utah Jazz tickets while I’m not concentrating on what I’m buying, or running off with my magic mirror, which would be silly because it only works for me anyhow…
Oh yes! My nautical room. The future museum and home of a plaque that reads National Register of Historic Places No. ___. Someday a tour guide dressed in period costume (!) will intone "and here is the desk where the American lliterary genius Ms. (Insert Pen Name Here) wrote The ____ of _______, the great and tremendously historically significant work." There will be replicas of my sticky-notes all over the big, clunky monitor (I’ll never get used to a laptop) and fine-point, black ink Pilot Explorer pens scattered all over the desk, and an overwhelmingly bored little girl, suddenly intrigued, will tug on her mother’s sleeve and ask "Mommy, what are those?" And her mother will smile and say "I believe those were used to propel particularly large cookie crumbs out of the crevices of the keyboard." And she will be somewhat correct. (We interrupt this long-winded musing to bring you this scary thought: what if, years from now, that famous room is this room I’m sitting in now, this spider-infested catacomb of terror? Not that it isn’t cozy, but this room? With its retro eggshell-enamel cabinets, its exposed pipes, its 10-inch resin Buddha, its bamboo calendar from the Golden Dynasty in Ogden? That calendar can’t be part of my posterity. Not with those goggly-eyed koi and the oriental writing I can’t read. It can’t. It just can’t.)
A nautical room should be a gracious reminder of living by the sea, not a tacky collection of plastic reproductions of things found in the sea. Not even expensive reproductions of nautical instruments found on the sea. No heavy brass sextants, no ship’s cabinet-knobs, no sea-bells with perfectly authentic-looking salt-air patina. Instead, wainscoting with sanded wood planks painted ivory on the bottom, pale slate-blue satin-finish paint on the top. White cotton curtains to billow in perpetual sea breezes, maybe with subtle Battenburg lace at the bottom or a strip of fine netting sewn in. A wide mahogany-framed mirror with silver hooks for odds and ends, some beige cotton rag rugs to trap the sand. To hold books and a vase of Muscari armeniacum, (my favorite little cobalt clumps, grape hyacinth), leaning mahogany ladders with wide eight-inch steps, instead of black-hole-solid bookshelves that trap paper-rotting moisture. An abilone shell for small trinkets on a humble, scarred mahogany coffee table, matching end tables with multi-faceted antique oil lamps in silver bases. Comfortable armchairs and loveseat in smooth ivory canvas washed soft as fleece, with wide slate-blue and ivory stripes. Puffy throw pillows in slate-blue damask, no fringe or tassels or lace, no silk or floral brocade, just wide ivory satin ribbon if you have to have your finery. Soft woven throws in darker beiges and blues, wool rugs in sedate solids. I’d need a desk in front of a window, a sturdy but not-too-heavy high mahogany writing table with one drawer, and a matching straight-backed plain wooden chair with a toile cushion. No potpourri, no Glade Plug-ins. Just open air and sunlight, and maybe a lemony wood-polish smell, and just the slightest hint of wet Lab.
I suppose at some point I saw a picture like that in a magazine, and liked the ‘cool’ colors and inviting textures, but the truth is, I’m not sure I’d be entirely comfortable in a room like that. It sounds nice, and I'm sure I’d get used to it, but I grew up in a beautiful jumble of sentimental artifacts: the black forest cuckoo clock, the hooked-yarn owl pillow with the green corderoy back, the little round green vinyl footstool that made such a wonderful wheel if you wanted to play circus, a perfect unicycle, a barrel for your elephant to rest one massive, wrinkled gray knee on. I highly doubt I’d let my kids roll around on anything with an Ethan Allen tag, or let the damp black Lab shed on an ivory colored couch. I’m accutely aware that there’s virtue in both the valuable and humble things I’ve inherited alike. Besides, I adore clutter. Thrive on it, as long as every piece has its meaning. I can make a memento out of anything. Don’t believe me? Look in my sock drawer.
Memento Meminisse: Remember to Remember. I am occasionally accused of remembering things wrongly, but all the same, I remember. And the older I get the more fun it is. How time does fly.
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