Is an interesting topic, especially now that I'm old enough to have been there then. I was going to write this diary as a snark, looking back on now as a gnarled grandfather, nostalgic for the glorious era that was now, but I realized that I was too lazy for that particular fictional leap at this particular moment, and that whatever narrative I spun up would provoke and offend as much as it inspired. So instead, I decided to talk about Historical Moments, about living in Meaningful Times, when Important Things Happened.
I got dragged through a lot of meta shit in university. I chose a BA Lit degree because it was the least restrictive I could find, and even so I was auditing additional classes I was more interested in. I got stuck in a few 400 level meta-history classes because it seemed like the Right Thing To Do. One skill that I've had since high school is the ability to write a well-crafted essay of whatever length, on whatever topic, with 12 hours of coffee and adrenaline. The one I'm proudest of is the 10-page essay I found out about around midnight, after returning to Canada after a Spring Break road trip to New Orleans and the Florida Keys, due the next day by 5pm. I submitted it at 5.30, with fat tire tracks across each page, and a scribbled note saying "It's a long story, involving a bus...".
Bob Marley's death might have been my first historical moment. I was about 5, and living in Kingston, Jamaica at the time. Based on what I was reading in the newspaper, elections involved fighting in the streets with machetes, and I expected that when I grew up I would do the same. Bob Marley's death was a time of national mourning. His attempts to bring peace between Jamaica's main political parties, the PLP and the JNP had been inspirational, and his death left a vacuum. He was a spiritual leader and though at the time I don't know if I actually knew any of his songs, I knew about Rastafari and had full respec'. I also played with Prime Minister Seaga's children at their house, which was the equivalent of playing with the Obama girls at the White House.
My second political event was writing to Ronald Reagan about nuclear brinksmanship, in 5th grade. It seemed to me that he hadn't really thought it through. "How can we save the world by destroying it?", I asked. I also applied to NASA for a slot on their astronaut program, based on my gymnastics skills and multi-cultural origins.
Third was the French Revolution(s), which I was taught at a Lycee Francais, a French Immersion program in the truest sense of the word. They imported the teachers from France, in order to perpetuate the proper French accent and culture. I had a long and frustrating argument with my teacher in 7eme as to whether there were 9 planets (as everyone else believed) or 10 (as the French believed at the time). I spent my first few months staring incomprehensibly at books that made no sense, listening to a language I couldn't understand, trying to bluff my way through on the pictures. I liked math best because it was the only class that made sense, although they used commas for periods, which was disorienting.
But the French Revolution(s) blew my damn mind! They form a profoundly destructive meta-narrative. Just when you start getting cheerful because the heroes overthrew the royalty, the heroes went tyrant and started killing everyone, and had to be overthrown again. And then the next heroes went through the same thing. They reset the calendar a few times, killed a few thousand people on the guillotine, lost a few hundred thousand more in wars. By the end, you were just glad that it was over, that no one was killing each other anymore. Even though it was obvious that it could start back up again at any time.
And the crazy part is that they taught it as straight-faced as everyone was explaining nuclear brinksmanship, as well as the Crusades, which was another contemporary obsession of mine, at the time. I signed up for the medieval weaponry, and stayed on for the mind-staggering destruction of all conventional values. Western European Civilization and Christianity was founded on a bedrock of betrayal, rape, slavery, cultural disrespect, misfounded faith in absent or indifferent gods, and so on. Progress was a vile sham, honor a rallying flag for lemminglike fools, and the best efforts of the bravest humans doomed to sink into a frothing muck of cynical manipulation, betrayal, cowardice, and idiocy.
Well, the topic of this diary is glory days. I seem to have gotten off-track. Maybe my point is that they never were. I shook Vice President George Herbert Bush's hand, and got his autograph on a copy of the Star-Spangled Banner. I did a gymnastics demo on the White House Lawn with Arnold Schwarzenegger, right during his Steroid Scandals, even while he was affirming Nancy Reagan's War on Drugs. I knew how wrong it was at the time.
Glory days is when I decided that the nascent Austrian tyrant that was ranting Hitlerian hate of Outsiders deserved the same emotional commitment to his assassination that Hitler had to his. Glory days is MLK days when I listened on the radio to Martin Luther Kings' speech and wept. Glory days is 2010 Inauguration Day on the Mall, when all the toxic hatred I'd witnessed and documented the last 2 elections disappeared into the purest celebration of communality that I have EVER FUCKING WITNESSED happened.
I have watched women attacked and beaten by the police. I have witnessed infinite hordes of well-funded self-righteous idiots argue their case. I have tolerated back-scrabbles from liberal politicians that I considered unnecessary. I have watched this all with more tolerance than I consider acceptable because I respect my parents.
My mother loved JFK and was devastated by his death. My father, for all that his view of America was conditioned by Bob Dylan and John Wayne, also loved America. I was born in a small town in rural Malaysia because they both were committed to JFK's dream, although neither was American. My mother taught French and my father fought communism by building a dam across a river valley where the post-ww2 survivalist insurgents still ran their weapons and allegiances. The communists killed his coworkers and for a time he commuted in a tank. Fathers of children my age died because they worked with him. Children that were born with me lost their fathers because they worked on this project.
And maybe they were right. Maybe there wasn't a good reason for that dam to be built. Maybe my origin story was a devastation story. I've seen similar devastations from more recent projects. And I honestly feel that my life path is one of atonement. For my father's work. Not my mother's. Whatever path she chose, it was one of nurturance. She taught. She fought for me long after I wanted her to. She'd still fight for me now if I gave her room.
Marilyn always ever fought for rightness and maybe she had less right to it than I'm arguing. She was born Mary Sunshine to a Nearing-The-End WW2 Alberta Canada aesthetic that no longer involved men being shipped out and dying on the front. My grandmother lost one love flying for the UK. She didn't lose my grandfather, a human computer during and after the war, who became a banker. During the depression, when all around him where starving, he did math while surviving on ketchup biscuit sandwiches. He walked hungry streets doing math in his mind so he could support his family. Natty Dreadlock in a Fifth Street indeed.
Marilyn fought for what she loved like I never had to. She told her family at age ten that she would go to France and they laughed and mocked her, and so she went. Which took her to Vienna, which opened the path to my father, though she sweared she'd never go back. I was born from defiance, and unfortunately for her, I couldn't stop where she had. She'd spawned forces beyond her control, and it was my fault that I upset those that she'd rather respect. I knew she was wrong. I knew they were wrong. I knew I couldn't but love her by showing them wrong. And I came to learn that that was wrong by her.
She loved those who'd treated her poorly and for all the grown I was, I had to show them the love and contempt that she'd wanted to. Back in the days. There are no days back but the ones that you are willing to fight for the women you love. I'd fight similarly for the men that I love.
I have unfortunately forgotten my point.