07.21.98
12:24pm
I have the day off today, wahoo! Started early too, babysitting Katrina for from 7:30 to 9 AM then breakfast with sis and watering the yard as dad is in minneapolis for work this week (again)...and I was thinking as I watered, first thought was how it was even possible to be doing it, wasting all that good clean water on landscaping while people are drinking filthy water all around the world, every day...the other thoughts were a bit more somber...
It occurred to me that for all my fathers intelligence, his wisdom, and his years of hard work, he really has nothing tangible to show for it. Oh sure, there's the house, the car, but nothing really important in the grand scheme of things, nothing that screams attention. My father's life will live on only through his family, my sister and I, and now Katrina...one thing I think that is part of why he loves his granddaughter so much...it's another part of him that will survive his time alive, another part of him born of his life. Perhaps this is enough for him, his family. My dad has never struck me as the type to want to be immortalized, just another one of the faceless and nameless souls that make the planet a safe, peacefull place. Another ant in the millions of the colony so to speak...but I wonder if he's happy about it. I wonder if he didn't have lofty ambitions like I do...ambitions that died over the years. Mother said he didn't, not from what she knows, but she never knew him as a child, she never saw him grow into a man...
SO I'm left to wonder...without his family, where would my father be? Would he achieve fame and fortune, or would he just be another lonely old man. Every day it's more and more apparent just how like him I am becoming, how much of my father is within me...my decision to join the military is not really too different than his decision to join...besides the fact that he wanted to enlist before he got drafted into Vietnam frontline duty...he too was sick of school, and I have the feeling that he too didn't know where to go or what to do...just that he wanted to begin his own life and it was a path to that goal...
So I sit here, wondering just how much like my father I will be when I am his age. I wonder if I will be that ambitionless, lonely old man he would be without his family. If I never marry will there be anything that lives past me? anything to carry my memory...any substantial contribution to the world around us. It'd be nice to think of this journal as a start...but I dare not kid myself. Such a small audience does not constitue substantial contribution, does not create immortality.
The lower right front control arm on my car broke during a delivery saturday. It's fixed now, after a trip to the wrecking yard for a part (saving me $250 over a new one) and $130 in towing and labor at a mechanics shop. Usiung the CK van hasn't been so bad with my walkman and travel speakers to brighten the atmosphere...it was funny really how the front right end just all of a sudden *dropped*...
PJ ruled. seeing all my friends from la la land, grace, diane, nick, saw barb and amit and lisa and jay too, who now lives in SF, was just as excellent. I'm bummed I missed most of this part of the tour, but I couldn't really afford to travel at the time tickets where availible. Now, with my steady income at CK, i have the money to do that travelling...but it's a little late now...oh well, there *are* worse things in life than missing a PJ show. Not many, mind you, but a few...heh heh heh
The past couple of days I've been thinking of biting the bullet and getting an internet hook up at mom and dads. I would only be able to use it late and night with my piece of junk 2400bps modem, but having to run two seperate journals and cathcing you all up on the other one in this one is super annoying...for 20 bucks I can get unlimited access and keep everyone who bothers to come here on a semi-regular basis, informed...I don't, of course, expect any of you to send me an email and saying thats a good idea, but no-one emails journalists, at least, none of the ones I know. Maybe I just read jouranls by all the other losers like me...I dunno. But from what I read from others, I'd be proud to be included in that group...
Becca is here at the library on one of the word processing computers. I'm not making contact because I can't deal with her anymore. If she wants to be around me, she'll have to make the effort. It's cold hearted, and I feel bad, but I don't feel liek putting out the energy right now. I'm an asshole that way.
Oh yeah, the title? refers to my car. It's an old family joke regarding a christmas trip to the tree farm...my dad's old Dodge Colt (red) was dubbed the red cave on wheels...my piece of crap pontiac is the successor to that cave on wheels...
Family is everything for some people. Makes me wonder
what people live for if they don't have one...makes me wonder what my life
will be without one...