I'm tired of people telling me things I should have known, but was happier not knowing

My drivers license expired last month. (I found that out when I was applying for a Macy's card to buy a suit. I handed the clerk my drivers license, and after she looked at it for a minute, she looked back at me and said, "Did you know this has expired?")

Anyway, because I neglected to remember to renew my license before it expired (when I could have done it online easily and painlessly), that meant I had to go to the DMV in person to get the job done.

I finally made it last evening, filled out the form, and waited for my duly-appointed turn as "C324". When my number was called, I ambled up to the window, and handed over all the requisite materials. The nice DMV lady started processing my form, and casually asked me to take the eye test while she did the paperwork.

When I looked into the viewer, my first thought was "Man...I must be tired. I can't get my eyes to focus." My second thought, after I had regrouped and refocused, was "How the #### am I supposed to read those little blobs when they all look like 3 letters at the same time?"

I took a guess at reading the first line. The pregnant pause that followed (during which I assume the nice DMV lady was trying to figure out how the heck I got those letters off the first line) seemed to last for hours. "Um...no. That's not right," was her reply, finally. "No, really?" I thought to myself. I took another shot, which, if anything, was probably less correct than my first attempt.

I tried to explain to the nice DMV lady what I was seeing in the viewer, thinking at this point that there was some mechanical glitch in the mix. She called a nice DMV man over to help defuse what I'm sure she was considering to be a potentially volatile situation by now. The nice DMV man took me through the whole dance again, and even went so far as to ask another nice DMV man one window down if his eye test viewer was working. He confirmed that it was, but the little blobby multi-letters were in that viewer as well.

"Your eyesite is not good enough for you to be driving," the nice DMV lady said. "Right," I thought to myself, "as evidenced by my numerous moving violations recently. WTF?!?" After that, it gets kind of hazy, but suffice it to say that I left the DMV last evening without a renewed license, but with the pity (and possibly a little disdain) of 3 nice DMV people.

So apparently I'll be getting glasses soon, because until I do that, I'm driving without a license.

Now, I have 2 main problems with this whole thing (2.5 really...there's the whole vanity thing, which I count as .5 of a problem, because it's just a visceral reaction, and I'll get over it):

My first problem with this whole thing is that this introduces a whole new category of hassles. Getting my eyes checked, getting glasses, getting back to the DMV, having to now worry about optometry-related things, and so on.

My second problem with this whole thing is that this is the first major organ in my body that's betrayed me. No longer will I be able to blithly answer "No" to the question of "Do you wear glasses?" No longer can I maintain the illusion in my head that I'm not getting any older. And it also begs the question of where the next betrayal will be. And, of course, now I feel like I can't see anything at all.

So I have an appointment with LensCrafters this afternoon. My wife thinks this is all snickeringly funny. She's worn glasses for most of her life.

On the plus side, the suit looks great.

Those who forget

Memory is a funny thing.

Memories are even funnier things.

They seem so concrete and so incorporeal at the same time, two sides of the same coin. For me, memory is not just visual, seeing things in that weird, gray space behind my eyes. I can actually feel the memory. Smell the memory. Hear the memory. (Maybe you can, too, but I'm in the weird, gray space behind my eyes, not your eyes, so I wouldn't know, would I?)

Sometimes it's a dream that sets it off. Or maybe it's the dream that's being set off. A dream can affect the way I feel for the whole day if it stikes that nerve at the center of a memory, sending waves radiating through me. Like a song stuck in your head, repeating over and over, until it's almost unintelligible and retains so little connection to where it started that it almost seems like something new.

Or maybe it's the song itself. Random songs, like Possum Kingdom by The Toadies, or Headed for a Heartbreak by Winger. Songs that dredge up the feeling I was wrapped in when I first heard it or when it played at a time when my emotions were exposed and ripe for insinuation.

Sometimes memories are like having an ache in a tooth. Not a sharp pain, but a dull ache, the kind where I can't keep myself from pressing my tonuge against the tooth or clenching my teeth, just to remind myself what it feels like. The pain flares up and fades, rises and subsides like the shadows in the woods on a moonless night.

Happening on a forgotten scrap of writing. Catching just the edge of a perfume wake or a breeze that passed through pine trees. Some building or clearing, echoing images off the canyon wall in that weird, gray space behind my eyes.

There are those who forget, and for some, that may be best. Not every memory is something to keep in a drawer, where you can take it out every now and then and turn it over in your hands. But if you do have memories in your drawer, like I do, you are destined to repeat.

I never promised you a rose garden...

OK...so I didn't promise scintillating content. (Or any kind of regular updates, apparently...)

I've never really been one to keep up with a diary, online or otherwise. And my problem with personal web pages has never been a lack of will or desire to create...it's always been a dearth of content.

Of course, there's always that part of my brain the chirps, "If you have time to blog, you have time to work on that non-personal website that you've been neglecting, you slacker!".

So...I still don't know what this blog is going to be about. And I'm still not going to promise gripping content, although I suppose I could make more of an effort to reward loyal followers (or possibly follower) with something approaching regular updates.

It takes time to organize your sock drawer. That's why people don't do it that often...

What's in your sock drawer?

As I sit here looking out my dining room window at the verdant jungle of waving grass that is my back yard, listening to the dulcet tones of Rammstein, I can help but wonder: what the bloody #$*@ possessed me to put up a blog?

Peer pressure, I guess.

That's not quite right. I suppose I have been nurturing a desire to connect with the collective consciousness as much as the next faceless keyboard over. But an online diary? A periodic glimpse into the bureau in my head? What suddenly makes me think it's a good idea to toss all the neatly balled-up socks over my shoulder to get to all the spare change and buttons at the bottom of my sock drawer?

Socks?

Who is this guy?

This blog sat empty for a day after I set it up. Someone (a peer...) said I should put something in it.

So I have.