Opulent Bathrobes In Velcro

Opulent Bathrobes In Velcro

12.24.05 (9:42 pm)   [edit]
Mom and Dad showed up as I was posting my last entry. We went to G.T. South's, a bbq place down the road from here. Excellent stuff.

Then they asked if I had any ideas for something to do for a while, and I suggested we drive down to Edinburgh. Half an hour south of here, my dad's grandfather was born, the grandson of the man who carried my family name here from Ohio in the 1830s.

We drove through Camp Atterbury, where Dad was in the National Guard in the early '60s. I have to look through more plat maps, but I think we drove right past where my ggg-grandfather lived, near the entrance to the camp.

Just north of there is a tiny town called Amity, halfway between Edinburgh and Franklin on Highway 31. I've been there a couple times. A little roadside cafe is right across from the turn to the cemetery. My ggg-granfather William Boucher is buried there with both of his wives, and a few of his children. I think his son Henry is there too. Henry died during the Civil War in his 30s. I don't actually know yet if the war had anything to do with it, but that's my assumption. I can't find Henry's grave. I assume he's buried there with his family without a stone, but I don't know that for sure.

Henry's son John ended up in Greentown, nearly two hours north, and 20 minutes from where I grew up. John was my great-grandfather, buried in Greentown with several others of my family, including a few on my mom's side.

Dad had been stationed so close to this place when he was younger, and didn't know his family had lived there. He never knew his grandfather - John Boucher died a few years before Dad was born.

It was cold, but not too bad. We tried to make out the writing on the stones. It's gotten worse there even in the three years snce I first found the place. It's a well-kept cemetery, but the stones are old and badly worn. William and Sarah's are still legible. Sarah's has a different spelling - Boutcher. I've seen several spellings in the places I've gone. I ended up with a French spelling for a German pronounciation. My first ancestor (Daniel) in this country spelled it that way on some documents, but he also spelled it Bauscher, which I've come to believe is the original spelling, at least from the time he came to America from Alsace-Lorraine, currently in France, but having changed hands between French and German occupation several times. A distant cousin in Ohio (I have no idea who) has his German Bible. He crossed the ocean in around 1750 and is buried in eastern Pennsylvania. His son William and two other sons moved to central Ohio in 1803 (near Chillicothe and Circleville, I found William's grave the day before I started packing my bags back in March) and William's son William moved to Indiana in the 1830s, buried there in Amity. That William was the only one of Daniel's grandchildren to retain the Boucher spelling. Most of my distant relatives in Ohio spell it Bowsher.

It was good to share this with my Dad. I have an odd relationship with my father, but today was very good.

I've been floundering around since they went back home this afternoon. I felt a burst of anger - seemingly completely out of nowhere, but related to the frustration in my last entry - and spent a while trying to get over that. It's unnecessary and probably completely unfair to the person I felt it towards. I'm not sure why it had to hit me so hard, but it didn't overwhelm me, and I finally broke free for a while.

I watched Beavis And Butthead Do America. I love stupid shit like that. I saw it in the theater when it was first released. But I didn't enjoy it as much this time as I thought I would, and found myself depressed after it was over. Depressed because of the anger I'd felt before. I haven't let go of several months (years, even) of frustration and anger, and I know I have to. I want to let go. I need to. I don't know how just yet. I live everyday with my own flaws and inconsistencies. I despise them. I feel that I'm still working out some major battles inside myself. I can't change other people, and have no business doing so in the first place. It's hard enough to change myself. But that's where I have to start. I've done a lot of work in that direction, and the past few months have been spent trying to figure out which parts need to be changed, which parts to make priority. I have little confidence in my ability to do this shit, but that's not fair either. I've BEEN doing it. It's slow. But it's happening. I'm seeing the results. They are few, but they are there. I can't do this shit overnight, or in a month, or a year. It's lifelong. Especially for me, the guy who seems to take five times as long to accomplish anything as everyone else does. That's probably not true either, but it sure feels that way sometimes. But it beats sitting on my ass watching TV. A little of that is fine. But it seems to be what most of the people I know spend their time doing, and I don't understand that. I'd rather fight these battles inside my head and try to hammer out a new reality for myself. I fail constantly at it, but it's better to fuck up than do NOTHING, right?

I want to be a better person. Religion didn't work for me. I'm too controlled by my emotions to do it with a strictly rational approach. I believe too much in that rational approach despite my inability to take it on to be able to rely only on my emotions and instinct. I think a balance has to be found, and I'm getting there, but I'm doing it in the dark.

And I sound like a pretentious fucking twit when I try to write this shit out. Fuck! Tits! Blowjob! Poop!

There. Now I feel better. Let's move on.

I only believe in what I can observe and feel myself. I also know that my powers of observation are very limited. I also know that this reads like total horseshit. Poop! Tits!

Absurdity. I live for it.

I really want to write something serious right now, but I'm not sure I can without being a douchebag.

So instead, I'll do this:


Fucko bee-bap
Yuah-hoo string bean
My hair dryer is reddish iguana hair
And you are a bear reen

Ooogah! Semprini! Batshit pie!
I can't light my match, no matter what jello I try!
This is art! This is art!
Fuck me!


Sorry. Don't know what came over me there.

Merry Fuckin' Christmas, assholes.

Love,
Dougie