Max got his braces 2 days ago. Orange.
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In the morning, shortly after waking up…
Max: “What’s the queen of Egypt?”
Aki: “Cleopatra.”
Max: “I had a dream. I found Cleopatra’s necklace. Cause it was like in, ah, the Anubis statue. And it was cursed so i didn’t put it on. And then you were there too. And then this other boy wanted it. We fighted. And then — don’t write that Aki — I killed him.”
Aki: “You killed him?”
Max: “I didn’t kill him on purpose.”
Aki: “You killed him for the necklace.”
Max: “Yes”
Aki: “He was a bad kid?”
Max: “Yes. He father was there, too.”
Aki: “So it was 2 kids with their fathers.”
Max: “OK, yeah that’s the end. It was pretty quick.”
Then a moment later…
“Did they find Cleopatra’s necklace?” [he means in real life]
Aki: “I don’t know. Want me to look it up?”
We look it up and find the picture above. He says that kind of looks like it.
Last night, we saw Despicable Me 3 at the Riverwalk theater: Lucas, Max, Karolina, and me. A couple of nights before, we saw Back to the Future — Max’s first drive-in movie. Max sat on the roof of Darren’s car.
Summer night movies!
Yesterday, a mama bear almost broke into the house. Karolina and I were working together in my office. She went downstairs to get paper and heard a scratching from our bedroom. Upon entering the room, she saw a bear’s head through the window. They stared at each other and then the bear ran away.
She had 3 cubs.
About four days earlier, a bear had eaten all of the birdseed from our birdfeeders. Maybe is was the same one? That time, she left paw prints on the side of the house. This time, the screen was ripped and there were claws marks in the aspen tree holding up the bird feeders (no bird food in them, though).
How do I give life meaning? Not “What is the meaning of life” but how to create meaning? Why am I still asking this question at 47? I already know the answer and have known it for some years now. It is through connections and relationships, like the synapses between neurons, not the neurons themselves. The neurons are just nodes that can be replaced, although replacing one with many synapses or one with strong synpases is difficult and painful and sometimes just not possible (Adamcik, Cohen, Berman, Kelly, Mishniewicz, Owens, Schaier, Jung, Appel. Appel. Of course, Appel. Trobman, Glassman, Harrison). I know this but don’t want it to be so, and that is why I still search for another way. I want to be Crusoe on his island. Then I remember that even Crusoe had Man Friday and an invisible synapse between.
How do I not stop time but savor each moment and then, at its sweetest or most bitter, record it so I can relive it. I remember learning about God’s Book of Life, wherein all moments of all lives are recorded and God, in his wooden throne among the clouds, pages through the Book during times of judgement. Can I have a copy of my chapter?
I have memories of my mother, but they are sparse and impressionistic. And at her end, I wanted her to die because there would be sympathy for me. It is selfish and evil. It is a jet engine drowning the other sounds of her memory. Already two weeks ago feels like 20 years as I am deluged by the consciousness of the moment and the impending fatalism of the forthcoming. I need my chapter.
I watch little Max growing up and each breath he takes kills me. Again and again. It’s not murder and it’s not suicide but it’s the natural order. It’s not a transfer of my life to his; there is no zero-sum, yet he grows and I diminish. It’s painless but perhaps the saddest thing I’ve known, perhaps even more than my mother’s death. But I wouldn’t know because I can’t remember that pain. I need my chapter.
On the bright side, I have no regrets so far. Our synapse is like a steel cable, and I am present more than any other father I’ve ever known.
I need my chapter, but I don’t always want it and sometimes I fear it. What if my present and future cease as I spend the rest of my days reliving the past, until I got to the point in the chapter where I’m just reading and re-reading, ad infinitum, like the reflection of a mirror in a mirror.
Back to work. Somehow.
We got back from Europe a few days ago.
Yesterday, Max came home from Cordi Camp with a cup of dirt and three worms. Karolina said he’d been playing in the dirt and the worms when she picked him up. I told him we have to put the worms back. “Why?”, he asked. Always why.
Last night, during dinner (Austrian dumplings for dessert!), Max’s foot fell asleep. I told him what it meant and why he must move, that a man who ignored that had paralysis in that limb for the rest of his life.
“When I go to sleep, is my whole body like that?”‘
It took me a moment to understand what he meant. Then I laughed at the beauty of it. Who thinks like that? I’m so programmed that I didn’t even understand him at first.
So I explained that “my XXX fell asleep” is a figure of speech, and how my mother sometimes called it pins-and-needles instead.
Max: “How many people have been on the moon?”
Me: “12. And they were all American.”
Max: “Why? The other countries don’t have the right stuff?”
Afonsi instead of fiance.
Photos: https://photos.app.goo.gl/WrNDOMq4yVl60HWr2
Map: https://goo.gl/maps/u2X2bMJ4FKB2
GPS coordinates are 47°41’14.5″ N 25°32’48.5″ E
Approximate elevation is 726 meters
This is in a forest. Nearest trail is a muddy cow path going up a hill. The whole cemetery is on a small hill. There are two sections; 26 graves in an upper section, which I call “upper” because it is higher in elevation. There 28 graves in the lower section, maybe 50 to 75 yards away from the upper section. There is one grave surrounded by an iron fence.
There are no toppled or broken stones. Have they been removed? There are large empty sections which tell me either stones have been removed or this has always been a small cemetery.
Two or three graves have the jar remains of candles. One jar has Hebrew writing, but another has a label showing Christian symbols (baby Jesus and a saint?). Some miles away is the famous Christian Orthodox monastery, Moldovița Monastery, so maybe the candle came from there.
There is very little trash except for two plastic bottles. There are stacks of sticks, as if someone had once cleared the place.
Max: “Aki, why is Trump building a wall?”
Aki: Because he wants to keep some people out of America, the Mexicans.
Max: Why? We all have the same heart. The Mexicans just have dark skin.
Aki: Very true, Max. You are smarter than some grown-ups.
Today we were in Sighisoara for the 2nd day. We walked through the old village, which is beautiful — cobblestone steps. We went to the room of Dracula’s birth, which Max loved and I could not get him to leave. There was one “hidden” room” in particular that he adored.
Later, Max dressed up in medieval clothing and looked like an attacking Viking (although there were no Vikings here).
Finally, we visited Saschez (actually our 2nd time there since we stopped there for lunch yesterday and explored a little). We drove down a dirt road and hiked 15 minutes through the woods to an an abandoned castle we could see from the village. It’s called Castle Saschiz and was amazing!
Max’s favorite thing to do today was the Dracula birthplace room. Mine was the abandoned castle–because it is so rare to see such a place in disrepair and will so few tourists (there were only a few others wandering around when we were there).
I think Karolina’s favorite was seeing the countryside. After the castle, we drove a bit west of Saschez on something that became a dirt road. The views were amazing. Stunning greenery. A flock of cows with a shepherd.
On the way home, we drove through the modern area of Saschez: communist-style apartment buildings. Many of the people were outside mingling. Many children were at their old, all-metal playground. Rusted swings and see-saws and one of those spinner things. No plastic anywhere. No sand to break falls. I haven’t seen see-saws in America in decades, nor metal playgrounds.
While in Romania, Max said “I don’t want to wear my ring in town because people are so poor and I don’t want them to feel sad.” It is a 4 EUR ring from the Vienna Imperial Treasury.
Max passed a tattoo parlor. The models on the sign outside of it had long hair, tattoos everywhere, wore leather, and looked like real bad guys. One was even making devil horns with his hands, like at a heavy metal concert.
Max said maybe they are the kind of tattoos you can wash off because he doesn’t like tattoos. Maybe a tattoo parlor gives washable tattoos 😀
“Can kids get tattoos? I’m just asking.”
“No.”
“It’s not allowed?”
“No.”
“That would be crazy if it was allowed.”
Max wants to type some emojis on my phone so here they are:
👹☠️😰
Today we went to Brugruine Aggstein.
Max got a spiked club stuffy toy that he loves. The castle was really cool… It was not in a very restored state, nothing like Neuschwanstein (which we saw last week), which was part of its appeal. There were some suits of armor in various rooms. Later, Max said:
“If I were an armor architect, I would put spikes all over the armor. And the biggest spike would be two spikes on the head for barging into people to kill them.”
Last night, Max and I first watched Rock ‘N Roll Nightmare (1987) on YouTube. It is absolutely awful, but Max didn’t know that. It had a budget of 50,000 and was filmed in a week. I drifted out of the room into my office. Max kept running into my office, urging me to come watch. There were so many different monsters to see, like these two:
Then we downloaded (The Pirate Bay) and watched Return of the Living Dead from 1985. He loved it. I had to skip certain parts (nudity, etc). I think it’s his new favorite movie. His favorite character from Part I??
TAR ZOMBIE!
Tonight he wanted to watch Parts II and III. We started Part III but had to stop because I needed to pack for our epic 32-day trip to Europe.
We were exploring June Creek Elementary School after-hours. Children had drawn pictures of what they want to be when they grow up. I was reading them to Max. One child said he wanted to be a soldier when he grows up. Max said that wasn’t a good choice (but up until last year or so he wanted to be a warrior/soldier, too):
“You can die very easily, specially if you’re in the first row” (He means the front line)
He had Minecraft Club for after school. I got there early, about 3:30, and went to the computer lab. I sat with him and we played side-by-side for 45 minutes with all the other children in the room. Max didn’t mind at all. In fact, he even sat on my lap for a time. I was helping him to learn how to craft different items (I had to look them up on the internet). None of the other children were teaching him so he wasn’t able to do much before I arrived.
Afterwards, I asked Max if he minded me being at the after-school program. He said no way, he loved that I was there. He told me that when Trevor is at Minecraft Club, Trevor helps him. I think he only liked me being there because I was teaching him to craft things, but it was so warming to feel wanted by him in front of other children. Many children at his age (including me at that age) are embarrassed to have their parents around their friends or schoolmates.
Max also wants me to go on the Mining Camp with him this Summer. I sent this to KC Lasher today:
Hi KC,
This is Eric Jung. I am Max Blodgett’s father.Max is signed up for the Mining Camp trip this Summer, which I believe your are leading. Max and I have a special relationship together when it comes to mines. My father and I used to explore abandoned mines and mining equipment all over the southwest when I was a kid, something pretty stupid in hindsight. Although Max and I don’t do that, he’s heard my stories, and we’ve visiting lots of mines and mining camps together. At one point last year, Max even said he wanted to be a miner when he grew up.Max has been asking every continually if I’d be able to join him on the Mining Camp VMS trip.Do you have a need for any assistants or chaperones? If not, is there any chance I can tag along in some other capacity?Ericp.s. we still haven’t made it up to Fairplay, but there’s supposedly a restored mining camp there. Have you biked/walked any of the Leadville Mineral Belt?
He says mawana instead of marijuana!
“Don’t stop, believe it” instead of “Don’t stop believin'”