The SoCal Byte

I became convinced that nostalgia is a disease and I tried to stay healthy by avoiding the past. Then facebook came along.

When I first saw the San Diego Padres camouflage baseball jerseys, back at the turn of the century, I assumed that these silly costumes would go the way of Pump Up Trainers, Pogs, Hair Mascara and Tamagotchis. A team named after Spanish priests won’t score wearing war gear, I thought. But I was very wrong.

At the Department of Peace, when we remember our wars (when we bring back our dark heroic past) we remember all the things that were and would be. We remember that complications beget complications; that the world’s weaponry is outrunning any ability to control it; that we make mistakes. We believe that that when young people go into a recruitment office they should see dead bodies, not stars and stripes and medals being pinned to chests. They should see scorched earth, deformed babies, dead relatives and damaged lives.

As far as my family knew, Allende was spelled with a “Y”. And my pen pal? Hugo didn’t seem to care about politics, either. As my Secretary of State Henry Kissinger plotted a military coup against Hugo’s President Allende, Hugo and I innocently bounced “How’s the family?” letters up and down the Pacific Coast of the Americas.

Uncle Charles’ Dodgers won the National League pennant in 1941, and again in 1947, 49, 52, and 53. Great shakes, except they were defeated in the World Series every one of those years by their cross-town high-rent rivals, the New York Yankees. That explains a lot about my Uncle. It’s how he learned the dance of the beautiful losers.

I think Emma Goldman, the great American activist-anarchist would have something to say right now: “The most violent element in society is ignorance.”

It was around the time that I met my duck Donald that I begin to experience my first feelings of existential dread. Yeah, I was precocious, but big picture responsibility — questions like "Who am I?" and "Why am I here?" — held a fascination for me. Donald however, didn’t think much of my effort.

People love to bifurcate — to imagine the world divided in two — even when there’s no real division: Us against them, red and blue, night and day, zero and one.

If we had more time to let our problems dissolve, maybe we wouldn’t do so many stupid things. We’re always in action, pushing forward, compelled to excel — never stopping to ask ourselves if what we’re doing is worth the result.

Living every day like it’s your last is ridiculous. It sounds like a curse or a way of life for end of the world prophesizers — your own private dooms day.