A Day in the Life of Chaos

  Navarone Playset When I was a young boy in the 1970’s, my  dominion was the carpet.  Between its 70’s shag fibers thousands of battles took place as my soldiers spread out in endless formations.  Bit by bit my mother’s Kirby vacuum would suck up small pieces of them.  Guns, knives, hats and scarves.  All would disappear in due course.  I treasu red my toy soldiers.   From America I had knights, cowboys, Indians and Civil War soldiers.    Green army men who would occasionally do battle against the prized Nazi’s a young friend of mine had.   His name was Shane,  and he had the best toy sets usually obtained at Christmas.   My favorite was a small mountain fortress with cannons sticking out posing as the fortress in the film "The Gun’s of Navarone."   He also had an Alamo play set filled with Mexicans and Texans.   Hamley's Regent Streat, London One Christmas morning in Alaska I awoke to find a giant playset my father had created for me.  Ever the architect he had constr

They call Alaska the Land of the Midnight Sun.  If you are not from Alaska you may not understand but this is largely derived from the fact that long about the end of June there is about as much light at midnight as there is mid-day.  Eventually somewhere around 2 or 3 in the morning it gets kind of dim but never really dark.  Alaska is a land of absolutes in many ways and while the Midnight Sun sounds romantic the opposite that occurs long around Mid-December is Eternal Darkness.  During that time the Midnight Sun becomes the Midnight Moon.  In winter you pretty much live in darkness because the only day light is from about 9am to 3pm and during that time you are likely in school or working.   The contrast makes half of the year stand out so much more vividly in my mind than the other half.  When I look back into the deep corners of my mind the vast majority of memories that bubble to the surface occurred in the summer.  Summer in Alaska is a kind of orgasm of life.  To escape t

I am not sure why as we grow older and try to remember the past often our thoughts drift to our youngest age.  Perhaps it is our own psyche recognizing the importance in those formative years on how we came to know the world.  Maybe it was the most interesting part of our lives.  Perhaps it is a yearning for lost innocence.  Whatever the reason I found myself today harkening back to memories of one of the most brutal locations of a young child’s life, the playground.   For a young child the playground embodies liberation, freedom, friendship and hierarchy.  It also is an arena where it is kill or be killed.  It is a regulated pandemonium when adult supervision is minimized and like Lord of the Flies children express their dominance over the others.  It can be in games, submission or actions of deprecation.  I can still recall Todd Mueller or was it Bobby Andresen pinching my neck and forcing me to bow while they said “Bauer, bow to the emperor.” I learned early on that a key to s

4071 MacINNES St. Anchorage, AK - 1969 Somewhere around my 13th year of life my parents made the determination that they wanted to create their own empire.  Okay, I admit that sounds a bit dramatic.  In truth they decided that they wanted to construct their own house.  My stepfather was a gifted architect and I suppose for him the house we were living in was not his own.  Divorced couples often feel this way.    A second spouse (my stepfather) moving in to the realm of a previous one always feels a bit awkward I suppose.  Or maybe it was the fact that my father who was a creative planner, had simply run out of options to recreate the interior of our old house.  This was despite a number of amazing reconstructions.  He had built wooden shelves ingeniously constructed in the kitchen, basement and my bedroom.  His crowning and in many ways most interesting achievement was the creation of a giant aviary built over the open two story entry way to the house.  The space was an enormous