PWNST, or Pictures With Non Sequitur Titles, also used to have their own spot, until I realized that nobody was looking at them there, either. Today's picture is:
Once in a while is actually pretty often, depending on how many whiles there are in a life.
Yesterday, I took the boys on a trip to "Crazy Frank's," which is a store I've driven by numerous times over the past 20 years or so, this store with these big billboards which feature misspelled words and promise that you can save lots of money and I always wanted to stop there but never did.
April is cold so far, and brownish-drab, and yesterday promised a high of 52 degrees, so I hadn't planned anything outside, and it seemed a good day to go to "Crazy Frank's," so we did. Mr Bunches seemed intrigued, asking me what "Crazy Frank's" was (Mr F simply watched his videos on the computer), and after we got done fiddling around at the office where we go most Saturday mornings, we hopped in the car and drove there.
"Crazy Frank's" is a flea market, it turns out: a combination of Goodwill and an antiques store, and there was some neat stuff there -- vintage, mint-condition Star Wars toys, for example, and I was tempted to get Mr Bunches the AT-AT toy he wanted but it wasn't in great condition and WAS $30, so I nixed that (and the related vintage toy spaceship that I thought wouldn't work.)
After that, we went into downtown Mineral Point to check it out; it's one of those places where there are art stores and old-fashioned storefronts and fancy candy shops, although it has a half-finished feel to it.
We walked up and down High Street there, and stopped in their refurbished library, and bought some candy, and looked at the Art Park, and then took a different way home, stopping at the scenic overlook where you can walk a footbridge across the highway and watch the cars go below you before going to a lookout spot where you could see rolling hills and rocky escarpments and off in the distance, the futuristic space-shuttle-esque outcropping of Frank Lloyd Wright's "House On The Rock," which features prominently in Neil Gaiman's American Gods.
The boys liked Mineral Point, but got tired. They loved the bridge and scenic overlook, running back and forth to watch cars and climbing on rocks and looking out to see farms, which haven't yet turned green, either -- whereas fall in Wisconsin, after the leaves are down, has a feel of "job well done", like a house that's been cleaned up after a party before you go to bed, spring at this stage has the feel of a construction site before it gets interesting, just a dirt hole and a bunch of garbage that doesn't look like supplies yet -- and the boys got burrs on their pants, and had their hair tousled by the wind. The sun had grown warm, the sky was a flawless blue, and everywhere I looked there were old-fashioned buildings and interesting sculptures and beautifully twisted trees and distant landmarks and smiling boys running.
My camera, which is my phone, had run out of power early into this trip, and I got no pictures of 75% of the day, which worries me.
It worries me because that PWNST up there? I remember that day. It's a picture of the railing outside Wisconsin's Capitol building, and we go there all the time in the summer. I can remember taking the boys there that particular day, and walking over the lawn of the building, and inside, where Mr Bunches and Mr F looked into the Liberty Bell replica, and going up to the observation deck where we walked around and looked down at the Farmer's Market that's on Capitol Square every Saturday in the summer.
I remember that day even though it was years ago, because I have that picture (and some others, of course, but even that relatively nondescript picture works).
I can't remember anything before second grade in my life, at all. I can barely remember huge swathes of high school, law school, and many eras of my life. They've faded away and it may be that they're not there in my mind, at all, anymore.
I hate forgetting. Even the tiniest moments of life can be so wonderful that I don't want to forget them, and yesterday wasn't a tiny moment at all. It was a great day, full of things I'll want to remember, and now I'm worried that I won't, that someday that day will be gone, like most of my 7th grade and much of the year 1993 and others.
It affected me so much that I came home and spent a half-hour looking at cameras online, trying to figure out if I could afford to buy one to replace my phone, which loses power to quickly and which I can't upgrade for free for six months. SIX MONTHS. A lifetime can happen in six months and it bothers me to think that 10 years from now I might not remember April-October, 2014, at all.
I still had a fun day, but always in the back of my mind was that fear that I would one day not be able to remember this day. I never worry about much, at all, and I don't worry in particular about death, at all. I worry about forgetting, which seems somehow to me worse.
