Discordia

This is Miss Jones, my beautiful hound. She is an absolute dick. Do you see that grin?  I mean! She spent an hour terrorizing the general public last night.  She's a puppy but her exuberance is...wow.  It's also partly we my fault: she's a sighthound, she needs space to run and I don't have that immediately available. Also, I'm probably not stimulating her enough intellectually. There's a joke there, I suppose, that I'm failing to keep her mind occupied.

She's also furious with me. She sees the suitcases and even at 10 months of age, with no immediate frame of reference, knows something is amiss.

Some days, getting a dog was the best worst mistake, others the worst best.  As is usually the case, she has saved me from myself. I use her as an acid test with potential suitors. She rides shotgun on adventures. And she likes Hitchcock films. What more could I ask?

Earlier this evening, sky opened up an almost Southern rain and all of a sudden I was so home sick for the Gulf Coast, I thought I might just sit down and cry a river.  Instead, I turned a corner and found the Plaquemine, has a slice of pecan pie (my cousin's is better but desperate times, nu?) And Eggs Florentine with Sardou on cornbread. Close enough to imagine I'm sitting on my favourite  bench out at  Fort Pike, the light settling out over St Katherine's Bayou. I know, I'm talking about food like it's my life line when I spend 67% percent of my life befuddled by it as anything more than fuel.

Money: check. Passport: check. Tickets: check. Power of Attorney? Check. But something's off. The Airport code for Columbus is not CSG. Well, I mean...it is, just not MY Columbus. Georgia, I can assure you, is not Ohio. Two states and many miles separate the two. 'Its like someone telling you they need a flight to Portsmouth and you fly them to Edinburgh,' I say to Jeremy, the sweet ticket agent last night, crying. 'The distance is even probably the same!'  It is only a matter of hours, the difference. And it works out better, because I can shower and defug in Atlanta. I mean, maybe Atlanta really is this century's Hades, the airport a crossing over point.

Last time I was in Columbus, Georgia, it was by accident and I never left Fort Benning. I was the lowest ranking service person on a military hop out of Keesler Air Force base, having flown myself down to Belle Chasse in New Orleans, for an interview at Tulane. 17, lost and and desperate to get away, I took any excuse to put distance between the discord of Frontenac Drive.

I checked into a room at the base lodging, early to bed with my book, only to wake up at 3:30 to use the loo. Feet to the side of the bed and to the floor. The excruciating crunch of cockroaches under feet. I yelped, turned on the light and there was sea of them, scuttling in the orangy glow. 

I grabbed my rucksack, shuddering at the crunch under foot and spent the next 2 and a half hours watching 'House of Games' on WGN. Mamet's staccato dialogue is still a favourite and I  still have a fondness for low-level con artists, cowards and under-dogs.  I made that trip alone.

It's only recently that I've been willing to acknowledge just how controlling my parents were. You mean not every one's parents

It was easy to not see the control because I loved spending time with my mom. I also loved spending time with Jim, but he was so low-key, it always surprised me it wasn't anemic.  Also, he had very firm of ideas of what girls were supposed to do. My interest in fly fishing and tree-climbing baffled him and my love of books terrified him, by his own admission. 'Girl, you'll read anything,' he said once, whilst I worked my way through _Das Kapital_ for a school project in Junior High.

'Sure will. Just doesn't mean I believe it.'

It also probably explains my affinity with the much-maligned subculture of the submissive brat, but that's a rumination for another time.

It's so weird the assumptions that we develop about one another, parents and children. I wasn't including in the camping or golf. I have minimal interest in Stockcar racing, it is true. It's so LOUD, you know? But still on my bucket list is to learn how to strip down an engine block.

One thing we do share is a love of war movies and pointing out the inaccuracies. 'That uniform was not in use by 1986,' he'll say, before wandering out the front porch for a smoke. 'Well, that is not a Soviet tank, either.' It's a fun game. I don't play it with my own kids, though we have variants.  So, I guess we'll be watching

Speeding along the A12 this morning (my driver literally made haste. We left at 4050 and hit Terminal 3. I watch the landscape flicker by, notice 5 different transport lorries for a logistics company called Discordia...it kind of makes me wonder who does their branding and marketing...do you really WANT discord in your supply chain?

I'm kind of thinking that's a hard pass. Discordia, there's a guy I know at Interbrand who can help. Or maybe it's like how Skoda has a doubel meaning? I mean the logistics company is out of Sofia...dark humour?

I think of the hours spent updating my dad's  logbooks in the years he was a long-distance trucker, packing his overnight bags whilst he puttered around the garage. He was so beautiful, so charming, it was hard to say no. It's a necessary lesson, actually, the reality that the very beautiful have traditionally given slack as though their beauty is carte blanche.  But in retrospect, there is just so much of my life he wasn't around for and it wasn't because of the Army.  And he certainly didn't know how to handle illness, his own or anyone else's.

I think about child wounds and I wonder on his...surely the abusive that he suffered at the hands of his father is a factor. I mean, what kind of monster beats a child with a bullwhip? That kind of latent anger...is it a wellspring? A one off? Genetic?  Throw in the discovery of his body in thatWaynesville, Virginia  dumpster in 1964...well...can I wonder that Jim is a small island of pain? Doesn't stop him from being my favourite narcissist, but still. Makes it hard to keep the boundaries up, when you've only just started to erect them.