Collector's Conundrum...

At what point does a person's passion become their "possession"?

Here, in this instance 'possession' isn't in the "nine tenths of the law" type, oh no... No, I'm considering more like the "Linda Blaire with Dick Smith working the tubes, green pea soup spraying" kind of possession.

I'll go as far back as Cabbage Patch Kids- if you remember those little mounds of angelic fluff, course linen and dim "beef cheek" plastic heads that came in all manner of hair style and ethnic dirivitave colors and the all out "Thunderdome" craze it created back in the day... Why?

At what point did sane people begin to lose those tenacious strings of common sense and abandon them for a meelee with complete strangers over a stuffed doll that today, no one seems to have [or, last I checked, there doesn't seem to be a trade fair for these things]?

I suppose I'll have to check the 'Net for sites dedicated to their continued survival [and possible revival- I seem to remember seeing their slow and methodical return as a mediocre attempt at their "Elvis Revival" in a Wal-mart just recently].

Beany Babies.

Personally- one question... "Why?" This question would also apply to Smurfs...

Please don't get me wrong- I certainly won't begrudge ANYONE their fun, and if that fun and amusement comes in the form of a cheaply strung together figurine filled with beans, [really- no kidding?] and an "official" sticker or card signifying it's "authenticity"- I will certainly NOT point a finger and laugh. My passions are surely as equal, if not greater, an oddity to any other person or group of persons' desires for the simpler things.

Other than to mention my own personal axiom "The Only Good Smurf, is a Dead One"- here's where I'm going with this...

I'm a big fanatic [no, not fan- a fan is someone that enjoys a craft, trade, possession or past time: I'm a fanatic- I can not live without that which I wish to possess!] for the space program- especially manned space flight. As a child I watched Neil Armstrong step on the moon- not only for the significant importance of the event but because it was well past my 5 year old bed time so "it had to be an important event to get to stay up that late"!

That Christmas back in 1969 saw both Apollo 11 and Apollo 12 come and go. Christmas shopping was all about "Space". Two items I lived for as part of my childhood experience was GI Joe and Major Matt Mason. If it existed and it wasn't so expensive my parents couldn't justify me tearing it up in 20 minutes time, I most likely had that product.

One thing that I "rubbed every bit of love off of" as a child was a toy Snoopy wearing a remarkably similar Apollo style spacesuit with the "bubble gum" style helmet known to be worn by Neil, Buzz, Al and Pete.

One day back in the blurr of youth, Snoopy had eventually worn out of his suit and the imaginary cartoon adventures I'd sent him on. Sooner, rather than later, eventually even that toy Snoopy succumbed to either the ravages of rough play or a mother who's momentary [and decidedly unbiased] lapse in judgement most likely sent him to a landfill somewhere in the bowels of Southern Illinois.

Fast forward some 35 years later.

I'm missing much of the hair I once had, but the boyish passion for all things space haven't left my mind or body. One day I find myself missing this little hunk of plastic and cloth shaped like a dog. Perhaps it's because by this time I have a 3 year old- and he's dangerously close to that age I was when it was all new and perhaps even magical.

At any rate, suffice it to say I attend a particular show here called Florida Extraveganza, or FX for short. It's one of teh biggest toy shows and collector/vendor 'ground zero' for Central Florida. Being as GI Joe is my passion, I have attended all but one since it's inception.

Well- I managed to find one of those Snoopy Astronauts lodged in a cabinet of one of the 'dog row' isles [how apropos!]. He wasn't the cheapest thing in the world [I seem to remember paying about $85 for a moderately decent one- but certainly not perfect by any stretch of the imagination] but just cheap enough to keep me from walking away from a piece of my childhood...

Paying that much for a hunk of plastic- old plastic in this instance- seems crazy. I have to look at myself and ask- is what I did any crazier than what others are doing with beef cheek dolls, bean bags, or small die-cast metal racers?

Perhaps- but I have a story to back up each and everything I have on my shelf. And maybe that's where I mark the line in the sand between passion and perversion- possession and possessed.

I think it's the stories- not the hunt and capture of the sail or the one of a kind- it's the history, teh mythos of a life well lived- and if not well, then lived none-the-less...

I continue to be;

Russ

So Many lives; So Little Time...

Here's an interesting piece of life for you...

9/11, 911, September 11, 2001...

For many of us this date, like the day John F. Kennedy was assassinated, or when Neil Armstrong Walked on the moon, or when the Challenger Space shuttle exploded will have a personal etch on our individual psychees.

Though these images, and stories will play a momentary part in the visage of who we are as a collective group and what we stand for in the coming days, [years?] as individuals- it's not really that "moment" or any singular event that becomes a defining allegory- it most likely is the culmination of all those events and perhaps something I'd call "The No-events" that make up our definition of who we've become or the culminated singularity that defines "me" [or "us" or "we"]...

Follow my logic here- no one event during the course of our day truly defines how that day has gone; provided that event in its own singularity didn't monopolize that set of waking hours. But have you noticed that tehre can be trends of events that inexorably begin to create life altering points of view?

Here's how I see things having shaped up starting with July of 2001:

July 12, 2001- Space Shuttle Atlantis [at least, I think it was Atlantis...] makes its next flight into space- and almost at the very same hour, my son is born into this world.

September 11, 2001- There's been enough written, speculated, truncated, flipped, slipped, boogered and snookered concerning "9/11" to the point of ad-nauseum. I'm not tired of reliving the facts and heartbreak of that day- I'm just tired of the finger pointing for something the majority of America found "unthinkable". Take a good look people. "Somebody" thought it up.

Most of 2002 is spent in reletive docility- my father in law has cancer, but he's plugging along as best he knows how and places a dignified face to an otherwise sidious malady. A dear uncle of the family passes away from the inevitable effects of Alzheimer's.

February 2003- My father in law learns that his cancer is terminal. by August of this same year he will hav succumbed to the malignancy that he fought to overcome.

March, 2004- My mother in law's sister also suffers from cancer, and begins to fade. My mother in law stays upstate to care for her ailing sister and watches her fade from this world by the end of July.

August 1, 2004- Shirl [my mother in law, she deserves "a name"] has had her house near ruint by a toilet pipe bursting and filling the entire house with 3 inches of water... She comes home from settling her sister's affairs to deal with the problem.

August 13, 2004- Hurricane Charlie hits us. If you ever get the opportunity to experience a hurricane for yourself, with the incessant howling winds, the sounds of God-knows-what flapping, cracking, popping, pounding against your house that seemed so invincible under any other conditions... Do yourself a favor- don't take anyone up on that opportunity.

September 6, 2004- if you didn't get enough of your house getting smacked flat here comes Frances- more of the aforementioned, just now you can add a generator to the mix so you have food, A light and a tv to know what's going on out there...

September 13- Shirly is diagnosed with 3rd stage pancreatic cancer. I still remember sitting next to her at the family table as my wife ran off into the other room to cry and Shirls looks to me and says, "I'm not ready, it's too early for this..."

September 26, 2004- trust me when I say, there is no horse so dead that you can't keep on beating it just that much longer- Mother Nature has a nasty way of proving that point... At the height of the hurricane, Shirly goes into pancreatic attack and there's no ambulance willing to brave the weather until teh storm settles to 50 mph winds- I risk the family and make the trip to the hospital myslef.

October 20, 2004- Shirly passes from her ailments.

Now you might look at this series of events and say "Wow- tough luck, pal" or perhaps there's a chagrinned element of "better him than me" that slips it's nose from benieth your computer desk...

What matters is that the events took place seperately- and though I certainly feel that all of these events have changed how I view the world [in this case, more from the subject [or should I say, subjecitve?] of life and death- not so to more "earthly concerns"] but they are distinct, and the only association is from that which springs these "coincidentals"- me.

Most all of the other events were more or less tied to other individuals, other places, other times- I wasn't the only one who got bitchslapped by three hurricanes in as little as two months, I wasn't the only one to lose a reletive- or five...

The defining goal of any one event isn't that a particular singularity created your perception of the world- it's that you allowed it to compound to other events in your life.

Big testimony coming from such a small fry as me- but you know what- this is my blog... It's my one "event" where I have some say in its creation. Where it goes, what it does.

But it's still the events of my past that will dictate how it sounds, what it will become.

That my dear reader is in some small way a form of singularity of purpose.

I continue to be- Russ

They Say "The First Time Ain't The Greatest"

Perhaps "Prince" had it correct in his Purple Rain album [well, "CD" now- but I'm referring back to a day and time of technological and social change]- and so it may be with this first publishing of the RussView- my own little dive into the exhibitionistic world of blogging...

"The first time ain't the greatest"... How many things can we look back on and make that comment? Sex, politics, fuel injection, turbo-charged V8s... The first time at bat for many things aren't neccessarily the best of what we'd hoped for... Give this blog a year and perhaps I'll be viewing this post with a shiver of catrission suited to a person who's discovered how trite a start he'd given his "gift" of this first time...

Could I make some social comment on the moores of our society, the jingoistic politics of a person who's outwardly conservative, but inwardly liberal; or perhaps wax eloquantly on the prose of some work of literature or matter of state that all but too obvious to solve, yet the beauracrasy of the day levels the point staunch and mute?

No... No- instead I choose to stroke my own sense of ego and pontificate like some long since forgotten "kernel" of the South who rocks in his ladderback rocker and tells all the "upstarts-n-younguns" how things were different when you wrote things down in a bokk and called them "memoires"...

I take this elequant moment to bloviate about "The Blog" and how my first few sentences will make or break my literary sojourn on the internet.

Sad? Perhaps, if we follow the backstory of a man just turned 40 with a 4 year old sone and another on the way in April with his mortgage, car, dog and all the BS that makes life in the good old "US of A"... But I don't think so.

Perhaps it's a view into the mind of a man who's taken the warrior's path of both strength by arms and strength by understanding. I've taken to technology more like that of a sooth, that may not understand how it works- but has chosen "it" [be ubiquitous, "it does a body good"...] as my path of knowledge for what it does and what I can do with it.

Perhaps, like the virginal overtones I speak of in the title, it's my first, and I want it to be special- original- exciting- and all those other adjectives one uses to describe what an aspirant would dream and hope for in their first...

But- as I look back; even now; at the words posted and the ideas formulating from my head, streaming through my fingers, and onto the CRT in front of my eyes- already I want to edit, specify and even delete- "The First" is no more than any other first.

Already, the high is receeding and my son who's potty trained but accident prone has managed to flush his underwear down the toilet...

Perhaps the first time is great- if not "the greatest"- simply because it's the shot of reality that brings it crashing down...

I continue to be- RusS