The World According to Chuck

Someday I may just start writing titles, then filling in the rest of the stuff. That appeals to me for some reason.

The above title amuses me, since it’s one I’ve seen lately and because it has, in this case, as many meanings, I guess, as I feel like applying.

For one, it sort of sums up yesterday, a day in which I spent eight hours writing extensive documentation about the life of my son. At the end, or probably at some point in the middle, it struck me that it felt an awful lot like what 12-steppers call a fourth step, a moral inventory, a review of dark corners, dusty corners, shadowy corners. Corners and corners. More corners than you can count.

Fourth steps are considered valuable but not particularly fun. There are some wounds to be debrided and freshened, in other words, letting blood flow freely, and it can leave one a little anemic at the end.

And then there’s a fifth step, where you find another human being and tell him or her all about it, but that’s another blog.

For me, delving into chronology was exhausting and…I’m actually going to leave it at exhausting.

And I suppose, if you consider winter the fourth season, which you’re welcome to do, we awoke to a wintry blast this morning, with some snow, one assumes a last gasp. So there’s that.

Mostly, though, I’m thinking about the Fourth of July.

One particular Fourth, in 1985.

I’ve been editing video for about six weeks now, a project inspired by the death in December of an old friend. After slapping together a YouTube memorial to him, suddenly the videotapes I had sitting in boxes began to bother me.

I bought a video camera in 1984, supposedly to document my baby daughter, in utero at the moment but expected soon. But really? I wanted a video camera.

And I hauled it around everywhere, documenting moments, particularly those involving my friends. Almost of a dozen of us from college were in Seattle at that time, huddling together in small apartments, learning the city and drinking lots of beer.

Smoking a lot, too. Wow. We all smoked a bunch back then.

So I spent some time putting hours of raw footage of parties, parks, airports and plays together into a 30-minute DVD, and in the middle was a chapter I called, as it turns out, The Final Fourth.

July 4, 1985, we went to Discovery Park on a sunny day, ate fried chicken and tossed a Frisbee. It’s only part of the story, and part of the DVD, but maybe my favorite part.

It’ll mean nothing to most of you, except maybe a funny look at 1985, some perms, some big glasses. And a glimpse of Puget Sound, and a baby. The guy in the beginning is me. The baby is Beth, held by the man who stood up for me at my wedding. The beer appears to be Budweiser, but then.

The lady in light blue sitting by the baby Beth is Julie, who celebrates her birthday tomorrow. FYI.

And some of you will recognize faces from long ago.

I do, and did. In fact, I smiled at those faces, smiled so hard my face hurt, and at the end of a long, hard yesterday I watched it again, hurt again, in a good way.

The Final Fourth from Chuck Sigars on Vimeo.