everything fades

Ughh, I feel sick. Summer is slipping away too fast, each morning in the shower I watch my freckles fade and then I look outside to dew and thick fog blocking my otherwise beautiful view of the city. The battlefields and the miniscule facts my brain held on to so steadfastly are fading now. I read on the wall of a bar bathroom Saturday night that we forget 80% of what we learn each day. So god damn it I hold tight as best as I can to the names and dates I read of before I go to sleep each night. Last week I finished the Ken Burn's Civil War documentary. I think I purposely put off the last segment about Lincoln's assassination because my heart could not deal with taking that DVD out of the player, sealing it in the envelope and mailing it back to netflix because I knew that somehow my obsession would begin to fade with all else.

Ughhh. Fuck. And as we were driving down Hwy 1 to Big Sur the weekend before last, I looked out of the back seat window and pressed my forehead against it (An hour earlier after I had just made the third trip to my car with our belongings I got in the driver's seat to start the car and the car wouldn't start. I called my friend who was already about 45 minutes on his way south as well and he came back to get me, and then we went to pick up my husband) while telling myself not to hold on too dearly to the upcoming weekend, because I just knew it would be fantastic, and I knew that if I met Lou or Jack that I would momentarily be torn away from my Civil War obsession and probably become obsessed/re-obsessed with one of them instead. What an idiot I am because I am feeling relieved that my Ramblin' Jack fuzzy feeling is leaving and I am cramming my head with Civil War facts once again, although not with the same vigor I had only one month ago.

When we reached the Henry Miller Library that first night, would you believe I got on the library computer to check my blog!? I was spotted by my friend who runs it as I was telling my other friend we drove down with about it. I saw such a look of confusion and mild disgust on his face as he watched me scroll over it. He was semi-paralyzed as he kept asking "Really?...really this is true, you are really into war...the civil war?? hhhnnnn.. I just don't believe it, I never would have thought." And who would? Anyone who knows me knows I could never face American History, that I purposely ignored all of the bullshit the biased textbooks fed us up until high school, where I was fortunate enough to go to a small art school, run by intelligent/artist/teachers. When one of my brother's gave me a book I requested for Christmas a few years ago by Howard Zinn (A People's history of the United States), he handed it over while he said "Is this more of your lame American hating shit Sucker?". "Gee thanks" I said before I even opened it. I can't tell you how many arguments we've had over the past few years, and now that W is fucking it all up in a way my brother can see, it has led to more civil conversations instead of our hate-infested yelling matches of yester-year.

Man do I know how to digress. So, in any case, all things American have always had my stomach in a knot. I was always very ashamed of American history and therefore chose to ignore it. But as is the case with all things, we can never understand where we are without looking back to the past. I just happened to become ensnared in one 4 year segment of it that I cannot escape. I won't let myself escape it though.