A Series of Laundry Rooms
It's odd what you remember about things, I remember laundry rooms.
Here is picture of A RA5C Vigilante I don't believe I've put up before.
 RA5C Vigilante from RVAH-7 (no. 612) airborne
I'd say it was a picture of a Vigi taking off, but someone else might come along and say "No, look how the flaps are set, that's a bolter." I don't know, so I won't say. I can say that the picture was taken from the catwalk on the forward starboard side. And I know it wasn't me who took it. You needed to dress up in helmets and vests that would allow you be on deck during flight ops to get a picture like that. It is a RVAH-7 plane, so I suspect this was taken by my supervisor Mark Ramsey or one of RVAH-7s Photo mates. Two other people who might have taken it, Mark Schwartz and Chris Healy had probably left the squadron by the time we were doing USS Ranger work-ups. Somewhere on a Kodachrome 64 slide I have a picture of a Vigi preparing to catapult that I took from the USS Ranger's signal bridge. One thing I learned early on is to not get caught out on the exterior ladder of the bridge superstructure when a Vigi lit afterburner. You would certainly feel that. The RA5cs were heavy enough that they often dipped below flight deck level before they gained altitude.
Along with the general topics I write about here I have given myself a side project trying to write up stories, reminisces really, of the years I was in the Navy. This has proved a lot harder to accomplish then I thought. The more I try to write, the less I realize I understand about what I'm trying to do. That is not the only thing or even the particular thing slowing this project down. There is the pointed problem of old events and memory. The problem of memory is that it is destructive testing. The act of recalling a memory, sounding down deep into a past event, changes its nature. It becomes like an echo, rather than the call. A memory of a memory. One caught up in current thoughts, needs and experience. A new, a different engram is formed to thereafter carry that moment forward. The only question is does it form over the original, or utterly replace it. I am wary of starting to recall events from so long ago, with an expectation of only having one shot at returning to that moment completely and uncolored. I've written enough half-baked things to this web log to realize the worth of slowing down and giving an idea it's proper due.
There are approaches that can be brought to bear on this. The mechanics of mnemonics. Mostly it involves a gathering of detail, objects, pictures, guides handouts and bus schedules, anything relevant. Google Earth gives you the ability to return to, and float over places you've been to before. In the Terra Firma category at least. I may get a bigger bang out of Google Earth/Maps than most. I was an aerial photo interpreter in the Navy, so I see it as more than a bad map or awkward way of looking at landscape, I see the place contained. The next step for Google ought to build a wayback machine into that product that would allow access to previous sets of mosaics. With these thing assembled there is an application of technique. Immersion several hours, all afternoon with this material in the character of a revery. I follow all tangents indulgently; songs books movies, world happenings. I recall impressions sounds smells, follow feelings. The mode is indulgent, but non judgmental, non directed. I take notes. It is a later step that I try to set it into a narrative.
One thing that puzzles me is why are some memories are accessible, to a degree, with no especial effort. You wonder how reliable they are, what purpose they are filling. I suspect these single clear recollections stand in for whole classes of memories. Or that they are exemplars of experience. A moment of awakening to a broader view of the world. Some of the memories I recall easily still are a series of laundry rooms. In Subic and other places, just sitting around talking to friends, usually Mark Edmunds. Possibly laundry rooms reminded me of the informal basements of my (and friends) suburban homes. Alternatively they may have seemed new and exotic, If only because of where they were, and certainly the ship's laundry could do unspeakable thing to your clothes - best to do it yourself. For this period of my youth and given that there were people around to talk to I am prepared to briefly mount a defense of the proposition that Laundry Rooms were the Voltairic Salons of my generation. Years of dormitory and apartment living took the bloom off that rose.
11:33:34 PM  ;;
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