... Tuesday, October 12, 1999 ...

     
     Well, silly that I am, I completely forgot to celebrate the holiday yesterday.  I'm very disappointed and stunned, to say the least.  After looking forward to it all year long and spending all day Sunday putting up decorations and getting ready, I just can't believe I ended up missing the whole thing because of something so minor as a memory lapse.  You would have thought that either the three cloth caravels I had hanging by my chimney or the neighbor's flashing roof display which even NASA has been complaining about would have served as a sure-fire mnemonic device, but no.  If I don't take the time to put a little note about it on our refrigerator, an event simply doesn't exist no matter how many other reminders the world throws up in my face.
     Well, next time shall be different.  I've already ordered a whole new refrigerator  just to hold all the huge Columbus Day reminder notes I plan on writing up in indelible ink over the course of the next few hundred days, and I've even already cleared away a spot at the foot of my bed for it to sit at.  And who knows?  If we can find an extension cord long enough to reach the kitchen, it might even come in handy for the storage of food....

     As it turns out, there are people on this earth who had an even worse holiday than I did.
     One of them goes by the name of Claire....

     Claire is a woman who seemed to have it all:  A PC less than 3 years old, a monitor that actually works right, and an online journal so inspirational that it once served as the basis of a new religion among the Zinbowi tribe of southwest Namibia.  
     Alas, appearances can be deceiving.  Claire overextended herself when she tried to simultaneously maintain separate sites for her ever-expanding Precious Moments collection, her latest streaming audio interpretations of Debussy, and the live Webcam in the sun room where she promised to perform uniquely poetic slow dances with whatever color silk scarf her paying subscribers requested.  
     At 9:03 am yesterday morning, she had no choice but to declare creative bankruptcy.
     By noon, the bank had foreclosed on her online journal and taken complete possession of it.  
     It was just before 3 pm that the sheriff's auction of its numerous parts began....

     I arrived a bit late, not really sure that I wanted to go at all.  It's always sad to see a great journal be ripped apart and sold to the highest bidder, and Claire's had touched me as few ever had, thanks to her exquisite taste in fonts.  I finally summoned up the strength to get there about 3:02 pm, but was then further delayed by those former cyber lovers of hers fighting in the parking lot over her silk scarves.  As the aged accountant from Nova Scotia ripped a remarkably electric blue item from the hands of a high school boy from Boise, I hastily clambered over the group of Cuban refugees vying for possession of a few stray strands leftover from a previous battle and hurriedly made my way towards the sound of the auctioneer's cigar-ravaged voice.
     Most of the good stuff had already gone under his gavel: Claire's charming "claires~lair.com" address; her Bryce-designed title page, complete with Java-powered ballet slippers and single, slowly running tear; her titillatingly discreet index; and her bulging, "guaranteed entirely free of artificial filler" archives.  Bidders were frantically waving their numbered cards in pursuit of her unique collection of small fluffy animal icons as I took a seat between a used clipart dealer from Dayton and a group of ladies looking for something special to enliven the Port Huron, Michigan YWCA page they had volunteered to author.  Alas, these icons went for far more than I could begin to pay, so if I ever post an animal graphic in my own poor little journal, don't expect it to be either small or fluffy....
     Alas, virtually everything ended up going for more than I could pay - even those raffle tickets for a chance to kiss the cartoon feet of Claire which she had drawn once upon a time with her own fingers prior to scanning them in and tinting them extra sweet.  I would have come home empty-handed had not the used clipart dealer from Dayton taken pity on me, his sobbing neighbor, and tossed a few camellia flowers my way just to shut me up.  The purple background I'm using today I filched from the back of a pick-up truck when no one was looking, while the ballet dancer's feet at the top of this page came from Claire herself.
     Yes, it's true!  One of the most remarkable online journallers I've ever read actually made an appearance at the end of the auction and announced that she had reserved a little something for the fan who was willing to perform in public the most abject display of mindless devotion any reader might ever give a writer.  It was as if a goddess herself had reached deep inside me and flipped a switch as I heard her honeyed voice enter my ears.  It was as if my body instantly leaped up of its own accord and -
     Well, to make a long story short, she ended up having no choice but to give those dancer's feet to me.
     And when that failed to stop my body from doing what it was doing, highly trained security personnel moved in and made sure that it never was physically able to do it again....

     It's sad to miss your favorite holiday.  It's sadder still to see one of the brightest shining lights of your generation lose it all and then have to return to a job waiting tables at Denny's.  I can take comfort from the fact that next year there will be another Columbus Day, but when O Lord will there ever be another Claire to help me through my days and nights with her wit, her beauty, and a scarf?
     Thank goodness her work will live on in my heart forever, even as its pieces live on in everything from Bob's "Half-Assed Reflections" to Trisha's "Zenfully Yours."  Thank goodness, too, that I got my own little piece of Claire to hold onto.  
     That I can finally post her items here without fear of being sued is just icing on the cake....

     And what of that one unsold item of hers?  The mind wonders even as the heart struggles to comprehend....  
     Exactly what do auction houses do with such unsold things as the deceased's dentures, a failed dog pound's half-used enemas, and those sections of an online journal entitled "Mighty Menstrual Musings"?  Are they recycled somehow?  Broken down into their component teeth, chemicals, nouns and verbs, and then reused?  Or do they, like so many things conceived with high hopes, end up in some faceless landfill to unceremoniously rot away to nothingness in the fullness of time?
     I don't know.  I can't say.  But if a landfill is indeed the fate of Claire's single unsold 2764-page opus, I can only hope that she doesn't take it personally.
     And I rather like to think that whatever landfill it ends up in, it is one which has a super absorbent, contoured clay liner, goofy old sentimentalist that I am....