Moth Balls and Turkey Shoots

Where's Waldo is down to :45 seconds. Snaps for me!

I do not know why, but a craving fell upon me to play Baldur's Gate II, after several years of putting down my troll blood-stained scimitar. Being a gnome illustionist attracted me all of a sudden.

I knew that I had mounds of homework to do, and that the last thing I neeeded was to get addicted to that fucking game all over again. But I began a search to find the pesky game, and I was able to find 3 out of the 4 CD's to install it on to my computer (FERK, I HATE it when that happens).

I tore up Pop's office looked downstairs into Mom's office clawed down the baskets of computer parephenalia dogpiled in my closet opened drawers closed drawers checked cases for misplaced CD's looked in DVD piles found my copy of Rushmore rejoiced then continued and I could not find it anywhere.

I decided then to bring the campaign into the garage. A task not suited for later in the day, as our garage is a just a heap of junk. We have never been able to fit a car in there since I was 11. Eventually I gave up the search, and was about to return when I stumbled upon a box of Grandpa Jack's leftover letters. A lot of them were from his school days when he was an undergrad at UCLA and later doing his postgrad work at USC and Harvard. He was a Political Science major, but he did a lot of collaboration with pyschology and sociology as well. I red a little bit of his dissertation of the academic development patterns of certain ethnic groups. It keeps reminding me of how brilliant that man was.

He died a year ago. This will be the first time we observe his birthday without him.

I have not thought about him in God knows how long. It came when I was busy doing schoolwork and trying to revamp the club I was president of, and I just did not have any time to sit down an grieve. Then again, I was grieving him for about two years before that, ever since he got his stroke and began to decay. There is nothing like an old incendiary, a political lion of textbook Saul Alinsky status robbed of his ability to speak or move or do anything but watch TV.

The stroke slowly took its tole on him. I remember how little things began to be a challenge to him. He used to make some quick one-liner joke about it, but little by little you could hear the frustration creep into his voice. One image that sticks out in my mind was watching him struggle to put on shoes. He could not use a shoe horn effectively anymore, and my dad had to help him. After that he got continuously worse every time I saw him.

He called me when I turned 16, thinking that I was going to get my driver's license fairly soon. He showed me a couple pages he printed out on the computer of different poisons. He talked to me seriously about "staging" an accident, one that no one would have to know about. He did not want to carry on in his present state. When I rejected that proposal, he talked to me about me driving him to Oregon once I got my driver's license. Oregon is the only state that allows euthanasia. I yelled something indefinite to him, that he was not a dog and I was not going to put him to sleep that way. He never talked to me about it again, and I was further discouraged to get my license. I still do not have it now.

The last year was the worst, when he moved in with us and I had to sleep next to him so that I could help him go to the bathroom when he needed to. I remember hearing him cry himself to sleep, only the stroke made them come out like howls, as if he was a mother wolf crying for dead pups.

The office called me in during lunch. They told me my mom had to pick me up. This was September 11th, 2006. I knew already by the call what it meant. I did not cry, though. And now I realize that I did not have to. I was already doing it years back.

I do not remember much about the burial services. I can recall the stench of formaldehyde. He had a Hawaiian shirt on too, in the end.

I never knew him. I tell people that we were close, but in reality I never knew him. The whole time I was in love with everything he represented. He was deeply dedicated to academia and the progression of humanity. He believed in the power of grassroots democracy. He reveled in obscure arts. He was more bohemian than any cigarette-smoking fuck who lives today. But he never let me close.

I could remember wanting him to sit down with me, right before he lost his ability to speak coherently, to give me some lasting advice. I wanted him to pour his heart out to me, that he loved me, that he was proud of me, that I could live up to be half the man he was. I wanted him to tell me I was going to light the world on fire and fight against all odds, like he did. I wanted him to approve of my theatre, my essays, my writing. All I got from him was fucking criticism.

A fool and his time is soon parted.

I was lucky to have a grandfather at all, do not get me wrong. To this day I keep wondering if he would be proud of me. I wonder if he would approve of the choices I was making. My dad does not criticize me at all based on his experience of grandpa always attacking his ideas. Sometimes I want it though, because I want to be better than what I am now. I wish he was alive so that he could have heard me on the radio. I wish he could have heard my speech on Global Warming, so he could see his grandson following in his footsteps. Out of all his apathetic grandchildren, one was going to carry the Belasco torch.

If only he could have held out three more months.

I have decided Waiting for Godot will not only be dedicated to a particular friend of mine, but to Grandpa Jack. He would have approved of this, especially of my motivations to do this play. It has a message that I want to communicate to all the seniors. It is an important and urgent one, and I do not know how to communicate it any better than this. Kairos has a week, I have two hours.

God, that was far more bleak that I wanted it to be. Samuel Beckett is devouring my life.
October 5th and 6th at Mission PAC. Please come.