starting school in the 70’s was always done on crisp blue sun shinny days. Neat green grass wrapped the squat brick buildings of tan with their flat roof metal entrances. The halls polished brightly from a summer spent buffing by janitors I never remember seeing. Gray lockers lined the walls, longing to be filled with books and new memories even as the combinations locked away dreams from last year. Hard blue or green plastic chairs curved for your rump sat on top of thick chrome covered legs resisting the urge to be pulled out. Desks lined in columns. Wood pressured in layers, pale in the morning sunshine lying on gray metal hollows wait to conceal notes, snacks and other expected contraband. The red headed girl… still sun streaked from summer with a light touch of freckles still talking to you like a friend, resisting the urge to join the rest of the girls in their groups. So much hope and possibility.

The blue of reality encompassed all. Slowly, gray mists defined a horizon. White tuffs pulled my attention to what might be my right. As my gaze slid back, the horizon gained depth. Darkness flowed from the mists. Light sparkled and danced across waves as sounds (child laughing, old woman crying), then smells (pizza, wet dog, lilacs). A white dot appeared out of the mists… It grew as it flowed towards me leaving ripples in it wake.

Anxiety filled me as the stray memory came directly toward me

modern interpretation… from the original folklore, Misery was an evil fairy who hated all happiness and devised terrible little travesties to inflict on all normal people leading their happy little lives

I peered into the tomb of forgotten souls as I cautiously slid the closet door open. Menacing boxes full of neglected memorabilia leered at me as I slowly looked from one to the other, reading the various classifications written in bold black marker: IMPORTANT, REALLY IMPORTAN, KINDA IMPORTANT, EH, MAYBE IMPORTANT,… Finally, I came to it. DOCU-IMPORTANT. It was scribbled on a tattered, beaten-up red Nike shoe box located on the top shelf.

As I reached up to carefully take the injured box down, the casualty tore open, spilling it’s innards of discarded documents onto my upturned face. The small box sighed with relief at the expenditure.

Read the rest of this entry »

The memories aren’t always clear. They never are. It’s like a first person shot on a cheap video camera uploaded to You Tube… grainy, digitized yet still sharp with little jerky movements interspersed with slow pans.

In high school I had a friend… Jay. He was unique, confident… Jay was thin as in British rocker thin with dirty blond wavy hair in a conservative 80’s style. Cloths are a blur (insert your own jeans, tshirt or button down [untucked, please], nothing 80’s cliche, though), but not the shoes. He would switch between his canvashigh-tops or combat boots. And his car… makes and models generally leave my mind as quickly as they enter… a yellowed/tan station wagon. Older with some rust and possibly faux wood panels. Later, it changed… I vaguely recall something newer dark maroon, but that’s the car my memory always inserts. Jay could… would cruise down the streets weaving between the various clicks. He could talk to anyone and get along with most. Jay was the artist in school… drawings and I’m not sure what else. And when our lives intersected at the heaviest, he worked evenings/nights in a car wash making sure the machines all ran and the coin changer was full.

Read the rest of this entry »

random idea…

he always had a sense of how he would die… just like in a song… ‘leaving on a jet plane’ but it was never more than a vague wave of anxiety

the oldest twin daughter wasn’t wired like others… born way too early, her brain developed/grew at differing rates… synopsis wired in different ways, firing unusual thoughts.  Some things were faster, better, others slower, different.  since the beginning, she felt how things were going to be… as she grew, the feelings became thoughts, facts, visions… she knew how things would be… bad things caused by single/simple decisions could be changed… but changing events that resulted from series of interelated decisions, random events almost impossible

the youngest twin was distant… emotions couldn’t be controled or grasped without slipping between tight fingers.  when her father died when she was 6, there was just more reason to close off the world of feelings.  she pushed through the following years head down focusing on logic, facts, later science… her goal clearly articulated in her own mind was to control, predict everything

the oldest son was a thinker, story teller and scientist.  he believed in right and wrong taught to him from his dad, believed in dragons and knights and sought ways to make them all real.  his passion drove him and his innate ability to bridge dreams with science using the building blocks of what came before enabled his gifts

the youngest son was the solver… as far back as he could recall, his sisters and brother missed their father.  During the phase (grieving phase, they called it), he would bring them together and in his quiet voice show them the way through.  he grieved, but his father quickly faded into vague images and a voice off camera on family videos.  they told him his father was a builder and he tried to emulate that… he would build rather than take… he saw the problems blocking others and showed them the paths through…

25 years later could they save their daddy, dad, father… should they… would they…

Shiny eyes stared into his as he kneeled, bringing his face level.  “I’ll miss you, daddy” as the whispered voice caught. 

“I love you very much and I’ll be back in just a couple of weeks.  I will call when I can and we can talk” he promised, his heart breaking.

The little arms, the “good arm” hooking him tightly around the neck, squeezed.