don't know where i read that. the advice was to do this instead of worrying about what you're going to do with the rest of your life. i arrived back at the lookout to find out another longtime firewatcher died during the winter. i'd never met him, yet we talked over the phone for twenty years. not long ago he'd been able to purchase his own house, after years renting in the woods a basic cabin no electricity.
this has cast a shadow over my return. i've always been plagued by the transience of life, and even as mine reaches toward the end, i still ask, "what am i going to do with my life!" weird, isn't it? hope to the end? euripides writes the bacchae at 90. a woman on the news goes sky-diving at 102, says she's never thought about being old.
the colleague's demise does make me aware how important our voices are. i never knew him except through his voice, yet his daily work and efforts came through. from another friend who passed last winter, i have no recordings. this allows him to fade from memory quicker than he should. i've always treasured pictures, but they don't tell as much.
for example, on 9/ll i was at the lookout. the relief called and told me to turn on the tv. for that short space of one summer i did have a tv and i watched as the towers burned and collapsed. yes, i looked at it once, maybe twice, and turned off the picture. i turned on the radio. the voices in the street told the story much more dramatically, on a personal level, not with the even tones of an announcer. the shouts, the running, the screams, told all.
and the voice may affect us politically more than any photo-ops with pretty pictures. hitler would never have been had television been around. it was the hypnosis of his speeches got him where it did. and talk radio just elected a president with very negative attributes, all through the hammering away of right-wing hosts. i'd always heard pictures more powerful than words. now i'm not so sure.
talking to myself, i'm trying to focus on the next five minutes. planning out a life already taken place seems a bit more than foolish, it sounds downright mad. if i can take the first, right next step, the rest will follow as it will. the writer garcia marquez said, "i work the first paragraph over and over. when i've got the tone right the rest of the story follows easily and naturally."
