November 1, 2002
Dia de Los Muertos here in the aptly named Rollover Pass, Bolivar
Peninsula, Texas
As a child, I spoke as a child. I sought the things that children
seek. Halloween was my Christmas.. my birthday The Night Before...
Now as a man, I speak in whispered tones to an audience of bones.
Every year the list grows, the list of living now-dead I have known.
So tonight, whilst the world or this part of the world we call home
unites in a game of false goblins and ghouls, I sit alone awaiting the
clock's strike midnight: the day of the dead is near. -RSM
Dia de los Muertos - 2nd Day
Mary informed me today from Houston Control central (gotta have
somebody running NASA while i'm down here in Bolivar awaiting the next
hurricane).. that TODAY, November 1st, is actually only the first day
in what is apparantly a two-day celebration. On the first day of Dia
de los Muertos, says Mary, it is the children who are celebrated as
they lived. The second day is set aside for the adults, to celebrate
their lives, and, essentially, to make their deaths easier on all of us
left living.
So today I did what I swore I would not do. I made another art car. I
have sworn it in the general and in the specific, the latter reaffirmed
just days ago: I will not make The Thunder Brougham into an art car.
It is well after midnight heading into this, the 2nd day of Dias de los
Muertos and of November, and I see by a quick glance at my digital
camera that I have in just 12 hours completely gone back on my promise
to myself and whipped together what I must say is looking to be quite a
powerful statement about death. I see in my digital camera the
evidence. I am a fickle man, a man easily persuaded to change his
mind, a man who will sell out his staunch stance for a mere $200... ha!
In truth, I am a man who must by virtue of my chosen art, my career, my
passion, spend much of my time alone. BUT.. as such, I am a man who
craves from the depths of my soul to be a part of the world, of
anything. I want to join clubs, to be in brotherhoods, to mean
something to the environmentalists (and other liberals - ha! sorry D!)
with whom I so sympathize.
And so it happened that I was an easy sell when the other night over
cocktails at some bar at the weekly meeting of HACK, the Houston Art
Car Klub, Brian offerred me $200 in a kind of "gas stipend" to
tranform my blue Chevy Caprice Brougham into an art car by Saturday.
That's today.. well, will be today when I awake hungover, exhausted,
tripping over myself to get to the coffeemaker in all due haste, then
race downstairs to put the finishing touches on my new beauty, my
masterpiece, my broken promise to myself, my entree into the club, the
family of mad Houstonians who do this all the time. I have often
disparaged such slapdash car art, rolled my eyes at. But this is only
natural, coming from a man who has but one art car, a fucking gigantor
megalith on wheels over which he has labored for 10+ years.
Duke is the shit. He is THE art car. He will always be the first and
the greatest.
But now the Thunder Brougham has a bit of soul it lacked just hours
ago. Dedicated to and more-or-less named for my late great pet ferret
and friend Matilda, work on the car set me to tears a few times tonight
as I laid down photographs and memorabilia of various friends no longer
with us.
Introducing: the Chevy de los Muertos. It lacks now only a few wooden
crosses, a veil of recycled black screen, the names and dates, birth to
life, of a dozen great authors, and maybe a long string of Halloween
lights for tomorrow night's illuminated cruise through the streets of
Houston.
I don't know why I do these things. I don't know why after 12 hours of
intense labor and a busy morning bearing down on me at breakneck speed,
that I sit here relating all this to you. But I do. And I do. And
doing, in the end, is really all that separates the living and the
dead.
I write for you. For my friends lost to that inevitable end, but
mostly for you, the living, that I may inspire you to live a little
more richly, to suck deeper that marrow of which Thoreau speaks, to not
go quietly (Dylan T.) and without a life worthy of a movie (Jim M.)
into that great night.
Good night. Go with God, but only in your dreams. When God wants you,
you'll know it, and in an instant you will go from dreamer to the
subject of our dreams.
Dream now, while you still can. Dream big, dream happy, dream as a
Christian would pray, dream for a smile on everyone's face.. Jesus or
no Jesus. Dream for you and yours, and if indeed there is a Jesus
carrying you across the hotter sands, dream BIGGER and thank him, I
guess.
-RSM
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