Richard P. Nixon's Blog

The hardest part is trying to explain this to folks. 😉

http://www.buzzfeed.com/autmnjones/signs-you-were-an-international-school-kid-grak

My son Matthew asked if he could go trick or treating with his friend who lives nearly an hour away. It was a school night and Mom wasn’t going to get home until the time he’d really have to leave, and…and I said I’m going to have to think about it. Before I might have just said it was too far away (read: too much trouble) and left it at that, but as I’ve been finalizing my memoir, The Troubles, I’ve been making a few changes.

I thought The Troubles would be the story I needed to get out of the way so I could move forward; let go of the past, so to speak. But I’ve come to realize The Troubles isn’t about the past. It reminded me that what they say about doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result is absolutely true. It reminded me, too, that life is about building memories. So I eventually told Matthew he could go.

Along the way Matthew asked me why I had said yes. I replied, “Because we either do the usual or we do something you can look back on and say I remember the time…” I smiled. Halloween 2013 would definitely be one for the record books as throngs of people were out in his friend’s neighborhood, far more than are usually out in ours, and so many of them congratulated Matthew on his Slender Man costume and cheered that he had added his own touches – the bowler hat, mustache, monocle, and black umbrella – all very British, and I couldn’t help but wonder if there was part of me in there. It really was especially fun to see girls his age squealing with excitement asking if he’d mind getting his picture taken with them.

On the way home Matthew thanked me and said he’d had a great time, but I already knew that. “I did too,” I said. He then told me of a student at his school who showed up to class in a really cool scarecrow costume. “He got in trouble,” he added. “They announced on Monday that no costumes were allowed.”

“I don’t think he should have gotten into trouble,” I replied. “Sent home to change perhaps.”

“He did it because of YOLO.”

I chuckled and said, “Carpe Diem. Seize the day.”

“Latin,” Matthew replied before I could decide if Robin William’s line from Dead Poet’s Society that sucking the marrow out of life doesn’t mean choking on the bone applied.

“You want to know why I said yes? Because each day should be extraordinary. You have to enjoy what you have while you can instead of saying I should have.” That’s something I didn’t understand until recently. As a kid I thought I had all the time in the world. Now I understand time is running out faster each day. The Troubles is filled with extraordinarily good moments I didn’t appreciate because they’d been overshadowed by memories and events I tried so hard to forget. I’m glad, now, that they bothered me enough to go back and really dig through them, get them sorted out, for that’s how I discovered The Troubles to be a road map of choices I can look on not so much to see how I ended up where I am but why I didn’t end up quite where I expected. Some say that life itself is a series of personal choices, and that we get what we earn (or deserve). There’s some truth to that, but our lives are not made up of only our choices but also the choices of other people. My son would not have gone trick or treating with Jamea had I not chosen to let him do so.

Now we both have extraordinary  memories of Halloween 2013. 😉

I even sampled pork rinds and decided I didn’t care much for them, but I drew the line at pickled eggs and brined pigs feet floating cut in half in clear jars by the register of every gas station and convenience store I went into. One time while buying cigarettes with a check I asked if anyone actually bought those things.

“Where you from?” the clerk said.

I told him Alaska. He raised his brow and puckered as if knowing that Alaska was north somewhere but not sure if that made me a Yankee. He looked at the check and handed it back to me and said, “Sorry, but I can’t take this from no Richard Nixon.” He smiled and I knew then there was no use in arguing.

As I left he added, “Have a nice day.”

~ The Troubles

A recent post on Facebook led me to a blog by one Kate Bartolotta who reminded me that cheesy inspirational quips from self-proclaimed authorities are meant to draw an audience. Many profess their goal is to change the world, but scratch the surface and I’ll bet lurking beneath is a book they are trying to sell. I admire her and others for building their platforms and doing the things the experts say authors should be doing for marketing, but ultimately every word that comes from such people is designed to fatten their wallets.

I take particular issue with her assertion that individuals and their problems are “both infinitesimally small.” Yes, in the grand scheme of things that is true if we allow ourselves to be put on the same level as, say, bacteria. Oh yes, I hear you screaming that even bacteria can be very powerful, blah blah blah – that’s not her point though. She’s saying that no matter how big our problems seem to us they are irrelevant in the larger scheme of things; an attitude that has probably killed more people than Hitler.

Star Trek The Original Series had a lot of cheesy lessons on how the world should be on the grand scale, but it was the small stuff that really stood out. I mean it’s pretty damned obvious that not blowing up the world is a good thing. Not so obvious is the deeper meaning of Bones’ lines to Kirk in Balance of Terror:

“In this galaxy there’s a mathematical probability of three million Earth type planets, and in all the universe three million million galaxies like this, and in all of that, and perhaps more, only one of each of us. Don’t destroy the one named Kirk.”

Instead of belittling us as mere unimportant specks such celebrates and elevates us and gives us the importance that goes along with the gift of life. Perhaps that I get it is why I am both tormented and inspired to be more, to do more, and why Walt Whitman resonates so profoundly with me.

Oh me! O life! of the questions of these recurring,
Of the endless traines of the faithless, of cities fill’d with the
foolish,
Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish
than I, and who more faithless?)
Of eyes that vainly crave the light, of the objects mean, of the
struggle ever renew’d
Of the poor results of all, of the plodding and sordid crowds I
see around me,
Of the empty and useless years of the rest, with the rest me
intertwined,
The question, O me! so sad, recurring–What good amid these,
O me, O life?

Answer.

That you are here–that life exists and identity,
That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.

“What will your verse be?” asks John Keating of his English class in Dead Poets Society. What will my verse be indeed – Whitman’s been dead more than a hundred and twenty years and yet it feels like he’s asking me right here, right now. If I were to believe the Kate Bartolotta’s of the world I might feel insignificant enough to give up on even trying to contribute anything at all.

Yesterday I nailed the opening bookend. Okay so I drove the nail through my hand into the wall instead of the table I was working on, but that happens sometimes with writing.

I’m making no assumptions on how the closing bookend rewrite is going to go except to say I know where this second nail *should* go.

“Do you not like Uncle Roger?” My youngest says, head cocked, her expression razor serious.

How to answer that? When I was growing up in Maryland and Alaska I was just a normal happy kid really no different from all the other kids I knew at the time. But just before junior high school my parents sent me to boarding school in Ireland with my brother, to keep me from ending up in the same trouble as him. I was thrust into an alien environment and singled out for the one thing that made me normal back home: I was American.

When I came home to the States seven years later I felt disconnected and had a hard time relating to anyone, and I hated that. I put on the brave face just as I’d done at boarding school, all the while believing in the notion that if I smiled then the world would smile with me and eventually people would believe that all was right in the world of Richard P. Nixon and then maybe it would be and I’d be normal again.

I had changed and I hated that, too.

What caused the change? The bullying? The war? Being so alone far from home? All the traveling? For so long I felt like the biggest wuss for not knowing and getting over whatever it was and I couldn’t tell anyone for fear they wouldn’t understand and think I was just weird. Wanda understood, though, the moment when we were making out in my parents’ living room while they were away in Europe and I suddenly pulled her from the couch to the floor and shielded her from the machine gun fire that some disc jockey played on the radio.

“Of course I like your Uncle Roger,” I say. “I just wish…” my voice trails off and I bite my lip and smile as I suddenly remember what Dad used to say about wishes and horses and beggars riding. “It’s a long story.”

From early on The Troubles has resembled a sandwich of sorts. All kinds of flavors both good and bad layered between two outer layers meant to provide textural and contextual contrast. Yet something was missing. There was too much contrast that left the all important question, “What’s it about” left unanswered.

But then something remarkable happened. I spun into a nosedive. I’ve been through many already and could do little more than grit my teeth and hope for the feeling to pass sooner rather than later. That’s not the remarkable bit, of course. This is: as I raced toward the crash I came up with the idea that what my memoir needed was some kind of binder, something to help the whole thing come together. Volcano mayonnaise, I decided, would be just the thing. It’s easy to make, a little goes a long way, and boy does it ever make a difference!

It may sound silly to be talking about bringing it all together at this stage but trust me – there is nothing silly about changes that move a project of this magnitude forward in a good way. 😉

As an experiment I plugged the latest version of my memoir manuscript into the book format I used for “Helle” (6×9 single spaced) and two things became apparent. One, the 111,000 words came to 340 pages which is shorter than I anticipated. Two, some of the chapters are very short. I know some of the later chapters are filled with “tell” instead of “show” (or at least more tell than I’m willing to put out) so there are likely good opportunities for tightening and polishing.

On a related note I’ve figured out that I need to rewrite the bookends. While they are “good enough” as they are and do relate to one aspect of the story, they do not sufficiently relate to the main theme. I’ve gone through hell trying to figure out what that main theme actually was, and even though I’ve said before that I knew what it was, deep down I knew I hadn’t found it yet.

A friend says each time you overcome obstacles you are stronger for the experience. That may be true for other people but I’m exhausted, not stronger. No matter. All I can do is hope and pray that this time I have it right. From what I’m feeling – mostly fear – I think I might be onto something. What I’ve been feeling the past five years makes sense to me now. When will I be able to articulate that into writing is anyone’s guess. I’ve got “Helle” to get out in the near future, and I’ll likely do more renderings and work on “The Peacemakers” while reviewing “The Troubles”. It’ll get done when it gets done I guess. 😉

My memoir has always been about the search for truth. I just found more than I expected.

…I’ll be adding a new feature to my web site. Stay tuned!