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Reports From The Frontal Lobe Gil VanWagner Copyright Gil VanWagner 2012 Published at Smashwords Reports From The Frontal Lobe Dedicated to the search for Truth. The thing we must learn, live, and share on our own. The thing that shapes and saves our world. Thank you to all that helped me learn, live, and share my truth. I exist here because of your example, inspiration, help, and guidance. "To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man...." (Shakespeare) ...or Womyn. (Gil Van Wagner) Here I am..........and that's the truth. This is dedicated to you...........you are the reason I wrote it. Introduction Maybe my story matters. Maybe not. You be the judge. I am who I am and who I am changes as the days move to the nights and then back to the days. As I get older, I get wiser. Since I am basically clueless at times, that does not say much for how much I knew when I was younger. So be it. Too busy with now to focus on my thens. Like most of you, I’ve tried to do my best. Just like you, that didn’t go so well at times. Kinda hard to do your best when you are doing all you can to make ends meet. That ain’t an excuse. It is a reality. If you don’t understand that, you hadn’t oughta be reading this cause it ain’t gonna mean shit to you. Life is trying to do your best, missing the mark, learning from the misses, and then doing your best again. Repeat as necessary and try not to get soap in your eyes. Now, why would you take your valuable time to read about me? You could be hiking, sleeping, kissing someone, picking your nose, or any one of many wonderful options. Yet here you are. Reading this. I might be hoping to hear from you or I might be such a memory that you have to ask to see if anyone even knows who the heck I was. Life comes and goes that quickly. Yet, here you sit. Reading about me. Guess it will help just to tell the story and see if you get anything out of it. If you do, cool. If you don’t, that’s alright, too. I hope you read on, of course, and hope even more that you get something out of it. Otherwise, this is a waste of my time. I could be hiking, sleeping…..you get the idea. So, here goes. My name is Gil. I am a real guy. That is important to remember because I am a writer and I can blow smoke up your ass and you will think you were just kissed and really believe it. So, this story here, is me. All me. Nothing but me. Honest to goodness. This is gonna be kinda jumbled. I could start at the beginning and end at the end but that ain’t that way two people talk to one another. Two people talk. If they talk enough and really are honest, the stories get told to make up one big story and it all works out really nice. That doesn’t happen too often. People tend to wonder what they can say and what they can’t and who they can say it to and who they can’t. Me? I am beyond that. You don’t even have to tell your stuff. Just take all of my stuff in. Nice and safe and easy. I send. You receive. If you stop receiving, I will still be sending only it ain’t likely for you. I kinda hope it is for you though. See, I know stuff about you already. You are a good person that sometimes doubts a lot of stuff. You live and love and laugh and cry and rise and shine. Sometimes though, you wonder if you really matter and if what you do is really the right thing. You are a good person. You just wonder if you can be better. Yeah, I know that about you. ‘Cause, you can be better. We all can be better. I ain’t here to lecture you or show you the way or invite you to a seminar so I can share my message. I am here to say that you and I are a lot alike. Except I am telling my story and you are listening. Nope, I don’t have your answers. I have mine and they change. Answers are elusive little suckers. Just when we think we found them, they change. Some folks do find answers that stay the same for them. That is called organized religion. You know those folks. “My way is the right way and you are invited to get a fucking clue”. That ain’t you. Not that you are against organized religion. If that works for folks, cool. It just seems kinda short sided to you. Like you prayed for a clue and then settled for the first one that made you feel all safe and warm. The next thing you know, folks are taking sides and have pissing contests about whose God is the right God and taking collections for conversion of the clueless. See? I did know a lot about you, didn’t I? ~ “You’re what’s in it for me.” ~ Stories from all over the place flowed in some half-assed order so you can read it from the beginning, which is actually the end, or at random or in any way you choose. This is me, blemishes and all…….so laugh at me, learn from me, love me, hate me, but read me, damn it! Death Let’s get this outta the way now. We are gonna die. You. Me. All of us. No one gets outta here alive. We are gonna die. It’s a coming for you. The Grim Reaper. Contrary to anything you may have heard, or hoped, death does not take a holiday. It sure does take a lot of our time before it gets here though. Seems we are obsessed with death while we are alive. We are handed images of heaven, then the Ten Commandments, and assorted other things in fine print of biblical proportion. Kind of a “Here is what comes next and you damn well better be ready all the time or you are gonna hate being you forever and a day or so without any time off.” Death is a part of life. Making it too big a part of life, kinda wastes the living part of stuff. Death is a cliff that we will all walk right off of because it is the next step on our path from where we come from to where we go. It is there. We will walk off of that cliff. Some folks spend way too much time looking for the cliff. They walk tentative and easy and in fear as if a misstep moves the cliff closer. As if they will see the cliff and have time to kinda pause and say, “hmmm……maybe I will just go back a ways and come back to the cliff later.” Well, boys and girls, that ain’t how it works. You walk off the cliff and you are gone. At least from here. You are back to where we were before Mommy and Daddy tripped their own light fantastic and made magic that grew up and can read big books now. The cliff is kinda known though. We all hope it is our right to move off the cliff in old age while sleeping after celebrating tons and tons of birthday parties. Secretly, we all believe the other folks will get to the cliff while we wish them well and get on with our lives. Young folks run and dance and sing like the cliff is just a rumor. Old folks realize the cliff is real and likely even real close and start looking backwards at where they were. The cliff ain’t back there so it feels safe and warm there. Doesn’t work though. The cliff shows up between bites of Tapioca and then they don’t have to worry about the when anymore. Death is big business. People do their best to buy longevity. It does kinda help since we can bring the cliff closer with stupid choices. That is an acceptance of the cliff that means eat, drink, and worry life to nothingness and the cliff sees you are excited about it and lets you jump off way too early. I learned about death in a lots of places. Not by experience yet but I will handle that when it comes. As a kid, death was something for old folks. There was a kid in fifth grade that died and that was sad but seemed kinda unreal. His name was Tommy and he was a good kid. Then he died. I knew there was some important message there. I also knew it was not me and that was enough at the time. One time, my buddy’s Dad died. That seemed harder and more real for me. My buddy and I were just kids. He was a kid. I was a kid. We each had a Mom and a Dad. Then one day, he didn’t have a Dad. I was supposed to go the funeral parlor and do something. Not because anyone told me. Just because I knew you were supposed to do that, like my parents did when people died and stuff. I didn’t go though. It kinda creeped me out so I just didn’t go. Could have, but didn’t. A week or so later, my buddy came by the house and we sat on the front stoop. We didn’t say much to each other. Some times are like that. You don’t have to talk to know how the other guy feels. Only, I don’t think my buddy knew how I felt. He didn’t know I felt guilty and weird and sorry for him and wished I had gone to the funeral home and knew what to say and had done the right thing and helped him and his Mom and his sisters and his brother and told his Dad’s body I was sorry and stuff. He didn’t know any of that ‘cause he couldn’t feel me. My buddy was in a place where all he felt was hurt and alone and confused and shitty. We didn’t say much. We just sat. That was enough. My buddy missed his Dad. Death is like that for the people on this side of their own cliff. Death is sickly kind in the way it enters our lives. At first, it is hardly even mentioned. Although, it is the one thing after birth that links us all. We are shielded from it for many years when we are children. Then, as our understanding of life increases, it begins to appear. Sporadically, so we can learn of it in bite sized chunks. From a human perspective, it begins small. Almost innocent. Goldfish. Perhaps a hamster. The family cat or dog. Remember how that felt? Aw, gee, why did Tippy have to die? That kinda sucks, Mom. Can I have another Twinkie, please? Then it comes in smaller, although distant, forms. A Grandparent. Another Grandparent. Maybe an Aunt or an Uncle. It might even be a Teacher or a Neighbor. It kinda pops in to say, “Hey, remember me? Just wanted to let you know I am still here. Enjoy High School.” In High School it arrives again. More impact this time. Usually involving two of our favorite forbidden fruits, cars and booze. Might be cars and drugs but that is pretty much the same thing. Actually, the very same thing but let’s save that for later. Someone we knew from Gym class or home room dies. It is tragic. Sometimes it is grizzly. A beer bottle through the heart. A beautiful head found somewhere other than attached to the budding body. This death stays in our life longer. It is talked about at each party for months to come. Parents use it to remind us how lucky we are it is not us. School usually has a special assembly. Most tout out the worst safety movies ever made with a State Trooper visiting hospital beds, graveyards, junk yards, and maybe even morgues. We are fed the reminders of death to ensure we live well. At least that is the premise. Usually backfires though. Gives a pretty a damn good excuse to party while you can when you are fueled by hormones and, “when the hell am I gonna get laid?”, concerns. I remember the grizzly accident that claimed four young lives in my home town. I really believed the bit about the beer bottle and the severed head for a long time. Right up until I realized it really didn’t matter if that part was true. Four people died and they died too young and they would not have died if they had made other choices. Of course, at the time, I was sorry for them, glad it wasn’t me, and buckled down for Algebra finals and the Homecoming Dance. There was one girl I met in ninth grade whose death touched me in ways that made me question things in much deeper ways. We went to the same school for one year and one year only. Ninth Grade. Thompson Junior High School in Middletown, New Jersey. Her name was Denise. It was not that Denise and I were close. We had a few of the same classes and enjoyed joking around and stuff. We did not date. We were not an item. She came from Middletown and I was bussed in from Keansburg since Keansburg High School was under construction and wouldn’t be completed until the following year. Keansburg and Middletown were different. A lot different. That’s just the way it was. So, Denise and I liked each other and lived very separate lives when we were not together in a few classes and school gatherings. I thought she was sweet and cute and a lot more. She was a really good kid. In my Ninth Grade yearbook, she wrote a full page note to me. I still have it to this day. It stunned me. I really mattered to her. The note felt special. It reminded me how much we can mean to someone even when we might think we are just a friend or acquaintance. I read the note a lot. Part of me, the boy part, wondered how the heck I could have been so clueless. Why hadn’t I asked her out? That sort of thing. Another part was happy. Happy I could be that important to someone so sweet and nice. The note became a secret treasure. Denise died two years later. I heard about it a few weeks after it actually happened. I didn’t get many specifics and didn’t ask. Dead is dead once all is said and done. The news saddened me in a deep…morose kinda way. It was like I lost her and never really had her. It made me see how much more she should have tasted and lived and enjoyed. It made me wish I had talked to her and known her more. It made me realize that she was more of a factor in my life than I suspected. She let me know I touched her life more than I knew and that made her touch my life more than she knew. More than she would ever know as it turned out. She shared and that linked us. As I share this with you I realize that Denise and I are still linked. She is still that girl that I knew a bit then and appreciated a lot more later. She is special and cute and went off that cliff way too soon. So, death sneaks in to make sure we do feel it looming. It visits a friend or two and then we enter the adult world and death becomes daily news as strangers explode in the sky and lose all their air miles. War turns death to a number right up until someone dials ours to let us know that another friend from High School now has their name etched in marble at government expense. ~ “Life is pass/fail. Retakes allowed. Grading is not on a curve. You can erase all you mistakes and ask each other for answers. The work you turn in at the end will determine if you move forward.” ~ My Life Stories We tell stories. We hide in stories. In truth, we are the story. I know. I am a Storyteller. I can tell yours, your mother’s, your mother’s friend from the old neighborhood, mine, or just make something up. Stories that are real, unreal, and all points in between…life is a story. Stories told, are lives re-lived. Stories are victory over death. We live forever in our stories. Ivanhoe…long dust, but alive because you just read about him. Uncle Tom and his cabin crossed time and space from my words to your truth just now. Stories live. Words are that powerful. That is why I write. Writing was as much a part of my life as socks. White socks. Dress socks. Warm socks. New socks. Just about anything but Red Sox. Socks are things we have with us almost all the time. Barefoot is a time between socks. Socks are that important. We hang them by the chimney with care. We darn them. We roll them. There are drawers dedicated to and full with them. Sock puppets. Sock it to me. Socks are more important to you and your everyday life than you know. Words are like that for me. I like pairing them as much as I like sharing them. I wrap myself in them and go for walks. Along the way, I wrote. In school, in the military, in corporate America...my path included words. I gifted, scripted, and encrypted. Sporadic, erratic, frenzied and sparse...words came. Trickle, brook, river, flood. I am an ocean of words, and ports call. Some moved to too little. More became not enough. And then, words were life. Death was keeping them inside. Along the way, I became a writer. ~ “Sometimes I write. At the best of times, I watch as the words let me know what needs to be said.” ~ Presto Lunch Just tiles on a sidewalk and now even they are gone. An oddity. More joke than truth, we jumped on them as children and opened ses‘ame’d their name. “Presto, Lunch!” Tiles. Like bathhouses or something Greek or Roman or special. Marker. Someone thought it out. Permanence. Not just a Diner. Hope. Ambitions. Dreams. Opened to the public. Proof positive in cement of staying power and good food. Presto Lunch. Just off the Boardwalk itself. Right around the corner from the movie house. Feed the crowd before. Feed them after. Feed them well. Feed them for as long as you can and then your children will feed them and you will be the one that made it happen. Then their children will carry that forward and their children, too. Generations from now, they will know you. That first signed dollar bill by the cash register ordered special from Sears. Your first, not second hand thing. National. Nothing but the best. Then the tiles. Art. Craftsmanship. Class. Presto Lunch. Weather any storm. Handle any traffic. This was more than a Diner. It was your Diner. A new life, in a new town. You even hired a waitress. Not even family. You were an entrepreneur. She needed the job. She had the baby coming and all. It was the right thing to do. She was a looker. That helped. She left after the baby was born. She married that guy Buddy. They came in now and then. Business wasn’t as good as you planned. Maybe a job on the side. Then that was not even enough. Soon, the bills were greater than the receipts. The Cash Register was the first thing to go. Paper and pencil did better…with negative numbers that is. Soon, you had to give it up. It was a big dream anyway. Too big for this town. It was kinda busy in the summer and damn near dead in the winter. Location. Location. Location. Three swings and a miss. The signed dollar went in a box. The box went in a closet. It was sad. No one saw you cry that night. Standing on those tiles. The ones that felt so good and now felt so dead. No one saw you cry. No one saw you kick them. No one knew you wanted to rip them up. Ashamed. Angry. No one saw. No one would know. Each time you saw them after that, you wanted to see them less and less. Soon you stopped going there. Soon you stopped talking about Presto Lunch at all. Soon you kinda talked about it but only the good stuff. The eggs that tasted just right. The burgers as good as any in those crap places on the highway. The dinners that were real dinners for real people in a real town. It was more than a Diner. It was your home and you knew the people that came in for coffee and a roll with butter. You are gone now. The tiles lasted longer than your Diner. The tiles lasted longer than you. The tiles are gone now. So is that waitress you hired that time when you had the new hopes, the shiny cash register, and the signed dollar bill. You are not forgotten though. I remember. That is the magic of Presto Lunch even though I never went there. You tried. You did your best. That is enough. I love Diners. Magic places. Good food. I like my eggs over easy, and hash browns. I bet your hash browns were awesome. ~ “My world is rich with words. Words I share freely to feed anyone that hungers for them.” ~