[MD] Hal Darts

[MarshaV]

Hello Lu,

Maybe missing someone keeps them close to you.  I imagine you'll 
still hear his critiques, the best parts, when it would be your habit to 
bring them to him for his advice.  I'm very sorry for your loss. 


Marsha  



On Jul 25, 2010, at 3:39 PM, Louise Pryor wrote:

> He had some of the same gripes with me and art - he read books, and read
> books, and studied techniques for all mediums. His garage is a veritable art
> supply store, with very expensive books, paints, brushes and canvases, all
> still in the original packaging - price tags adhered. I drove him crazy
> because I didn't over-analyze, I just painted. And I didn't do it "right",
> and I didn't really care. But I really appreciated his care, and I really
> appreciated his advice. And I will miss taking my painting over for him to
> critique.
> 
> Lu
> 
> On Sun, Jul 25, 2010 at 11:53 AM, John Carl <ridgecoyote at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> Well it's been a quiet week in my hometown, my mom's husband Hal died.
>> Expectedly.
>> 
>> Everybody who watched it happen, admired his humor and good grace till the
>> end.  Everybody who watched his process said, "that's the way I'd do it -
>> no
>> chemotherapy"  Having witnessed my wife's mom's passing, and comparing it
>> to
>> Hal's, not as if that were enough of a sampling to hold any statistical
>> significance mind you, but the difference was like night and day.  Lu's mom
>> really suffered from the chemo and the effects, and lasted about three
>> months after her diagnosis, most of it absolutely miserable.
>> 
>> Hal had the same cancer (lung) and opted for a natural treatment and died
>> anyway, but lasted for a year and a half and he never really suffered, just
>> got shorter and shorter of breath.  His last day, he was pretty out of it.
>> On sunday, he said he thought he'd be gone on wed. and he was right.  Small
>> satisfaction, to be proven right in one's prediction about the day you die.
>> 
>> He died at home, surrounded by loved ones and family and peace.  He had two
>> packages of Depends - adult diapers - and only used one out of those
>> packages and didn't mess that one up.
>> 
>> Hal never wanted to be a bother.
>> 
>> He succeeded.
>> 
>> He didn't always hit what he aimed at.  In fact, his greatest claim to fame
>> might just be a phrase that derived from his creative misses.  "Hal darts",
>> is a term recognized in almost any bar in Grass Valley where there's a dart
>> board, and has been heard being used in places as far afield as Reno and
>> the
>> Bay Area and is understood in dart shops in Sacramento and all over.  It
>> refers to a lucky miss where a player is aiming at the trip 20, and hits
>> the
>> trip 18 instead.  It's a miss, but its a GOOD miss.    And very rare for
>> good players who usually just miss a little bit and hit the 1 or the 5
>> right
>> next to the 20 instead of landing all the way over in the 18 - and not just
>> a single 18, but a trip 18 to boot.  To do it so consistently that you get
>> the miss named after you takes some doing and I have probably more insight
>> into the mechanics of the miss, than anyone alive.  Which makes it
>> incumbent
>> upon me to explicate to the world at next Sunday's memorial service.
>> 
>> I'm  the chief Yougoogleyizer (as Derek Zoolander calls it) of the family
>> due to past performances at my daughter's funeral and my mother-in-law's.
>> A
>> rarely needed skill, but vital in the moment it is needed.
>> 
>> Just as funerals are vital to a family's sustenance and continuance.  You'd
>> think they'd be counter-productive to social adhesion, but its funny how
>> the
>> opposite is true. Just like Hal Darts, the creative miss from what we aim
>> for turns out to be better than we'd imagined at the outset.
>> 
>> First of all, the obvious.  With one old person out of the way, there's now
>> more room for the young.  Which by no means delights the young.  They seem
>> the most upset when they find out that individuals are not permanent.  But
>> what happens is, their upset turns to idealization, and the things they
>> appreciate most about the lost loved ones, becomes part of their behavioral
>> repertoire.
>> 
>> Second, old arguments and feuds seem to dissipate at a funeral.  We get too
>> locked into static grievances, which in the face of actual death look
>> stupid
>> and make it easy to look each other in the face anew and move on in
>> positive
>> ways.  I've seen it repeated over and over, in my family and other's as
>> well.  Funerals are great for burying hatchets as well as corpses.
>> 
>> And as for killing all intellectual patterns, well funerals are good for
>> that as well.  Not only in the deceased, but in the survivors as they cope
>> with a new reality with one less person to interact - starting most
>> strongly
>> of course, with the widow left behind.  My mom and Hal married the same
>> year
>> my wife and I did.  And my brother and his wife, who just divorced this
>> year.  1988 was a fecund year for marriages.
>> 
>> The theme of my eulogy, will be, of course, "Hal Darts".  Not only is it
>> obvious, but there's quite a bit to say.  Figuring out how to put it
>> together is a tricky bit of writing.  You want to convey information in an
>> eulogy, but more important than anything is the right emotional tone.
>> Preachers usually suck at it.  They're all about making the conversion,
>> manipulating the masses who usually wouldn't get caught dead in a church
>> (ha-ha) by scaring the shit out of them and promising them glory and
>> reunification.  If you really think about the true processes of grief and
>> healing, you'll agree with me that this is an insanely evil thing to do,
>> and
>> one reason preachers are (and should be) widely reviled.
>> 
>> Plastering their facile bandaid theologies over a family's real and
>> devastating wounds, and pretending to be kind in doing so.  What a farce.
>> 
>> I'm determined this time, to get the last word.  In the past, I have come
>> upon some very effective and moving themes in my eulogy, only to have the
>> mood completely undone by a sappy and stupid sermonologist intent on
>> scoring
>> his points.  I figure, let the man have his say, its his church after all,
>> but if I can get the last word, perhaps I can prevent the preservation of
>> platitudinous libels, on and on into the future forevermore.
>> 
>> 
>> Songs help.  A friend and I came up with a song for my daughter's funeral,
>> and it made such a difference to me.  I don't know why, but it did.
>> Accurately portraying my grief in words and music, was SO very cathartic.
>> I
>> don't perform the songs, I just write them.  I gotta good one for Hal so
>> I'm
>> optimistic that this will be a real good eulogy.
>> 
>> Man, what a weird thing to say - "optimistic about a eulogy".  But its
>> true,
>> so I havta.
>> 
>> Most of his life, Hal was agnostic.  Which I think is a good thing to be.
>> Open-minded seems to produce the clearest thinking.  We'd talk philosophy
>> while practicing darts in his garage, which was hugely cluttered with
>> paintings and pictures, mostly of naked ladies.  Hal was a title officer by
>> day and a painter by hobby, who did buttons for the lion's club, painting
>> the windows at the office for christmas and other such civic minded
>> contributions that he was always getting sucked into because Hal couldn't
>> say no.  He hated all that community shit, but he just couldn't say no.
>> What he liked to do was stay home by himself, listen to a ball game and
>> paint naked ladies.
>> 
>> And shoot darts on tuesday nights.  He was always working on his
>> techniques.  He read books and books and focused intently on his shot
>> mechanics and was very frustrated with me because I didn't pay attention to
>> any of that, just took my stance and let it flow without too much thinking.
>> This aggravated him a lot (but then, a lot of things aggravated Hal) and
>> he'd shake his head at me.  Nicknamed me "mr natural" because I just took
>> my
>> shot without worrying about outcome.  I imagined myself as a sorta zen
>> darter, but honestly I've always had pretty good hand/eye coordination and
>> in construction you're always having to throw stuff up to a guy on the roof
>> or something like that and one reason I could be natural, was that I had a
>> lot more practice than a guy who worked in an office all day and mostly
>> flipped pages for a living.
>> 
>> Not that title officer is a boring occupation.  Especially in Nevada County
>> with a rich history of mining laws as the basis for most of its real estate
>> - you get some fascinatingly convoluted conveyances over the years, and
>> there's a bit of field work involved.
>> 
>> But Hal with his worrying and his rules and his focus on technique, was one
>> of the most socially-bound people I ever met.  He and I were so different,
>> it was sorta like Phaedrus and DeWeese in ZAMM, we came from such different
>> worlds that we fascinated one another.  I studied him and came to the
>> conclusion that Hal's misses were sort of second-guessing himself midshot,
>> overthinking as it often happens, and his life was similar.  He didn't
>> really like people that much, but ended up with many friends who adored
>> him.  He didn't really have much appreciation for my mom's large and
>> invasive family  - Hal was a lone adoptee of a spinster schoolteacher mom -
>> but he ended up as the most beloved center of all her siblings and
>> spin-offs.  He didn't like religion, but he converted and was baptised
>> before he got cancer, and having all that under his belt felt about as good
>> about his chances in any afterlife as anybody.
>> 
>> I really emphasize family and community, but nobody can stand me and I
>> don't
>> do anything for civic causes ever.  And I certainly can't be guilt-trip
>> manipulated.  I've been a Christian most of my life, but if caring for the
>> sheep of the good shepard is any criteria, I'm for sure going to hell.
>> 
>> About the only good thing I can offer is the occasional eulogy, and bit of
>> poetry here and there, mostly for my own satisfaction.
>> 
>> 
>> So here's the song I wrote for him.  So far.  It's a simple rondelle that
>> goes C - am - F- G.
>> `
>> 
>> 
>> Young hearts
>> Fade to old smarts
>> everybody gets their day, in the sun
>> 
>> Where we aim
>> Is not the same
>> As where we end, when we're done.
>> 
>> Hal darts
>> the strange arts
>> of getting what we want, when we fail
>> 
>> missing wide
>> something inside
>> we discover at the end of the trail
>> 
>> It's all the same
>> a fool's game
>> when it comes to love, we don't wanna part
>> 
>> While we cry
>> We try
>> to remember leaving's just a brand new start
>> Moq_Discuss mailing list
>> Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc.
>> http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org
>> Archives:
>> http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/
>> http://moq.org/md/archives.html
>> 
> Moq_Discuss mailing list
> Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc.
> http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org
> Archives:
> http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/
> http://moq.org/md/archives.html


 
___