(Artist unknown)
Yesterday Rachel and I finished off the NYC "bucket list" by going to Central Park, The Boathouse. It is the place that we decided many years ago that she would move to New York to live with me. Nothing very eventful. We stopped at the place and I had a single beer, which was warm. We moved on, through the heat and humidity. By the time we got home we were exhausted. Being in Central Park yesterday was similar to being at Disney World. The heat and the humidity and the undecided travel trajectories of tourists made the experience almost maddening. Almost.
There were sweaty kids eating ice cream everywhere we looked. Cameras of all shapes and sizes taking pictures that we must assume will somehow be treasured in years to come, irrespective of the subject matter's condition.
There were sweaty kids eating ice cream everywhere we looked. Cameras of all shapes and sizes taking pictures that we must assume will somehow be treasured in years to come, irrespective of the subject matter's condition.
I thought of something that I wanted to relay here, something from my childhood, but now it escapes me. I knew I should have written it down. In the early morning, pre-coffee haze, all is vague.
I have been getting shots of steroids, and getting pills. Cortisone and Prednisone. All my bodily pain magically disappears, even the imagined stuff. My neurologist has told me that I am in need of an operation, there is a pinched nerve in my spine, two herniated discs. He said that I can expect to be out of work for about 3 weeks. He surmised that I must be in considerable pain. I hadn't thought that I was until the pain suddenly was no longer there, then I realized... Now I suspect that I will realize even more. I've never been much of a fan of pain killers, except when I am in considerable pain. Most of them have given me a feeling similar to seasickness.
"Pain killers" is a funny phrase. Its implicit message impossible to misunderstand. The pain always returns so the word "killers" is a bit of overstatement, especially at the level that most of these things are prescribed for home usage. 800 mg of Ibuprofen usually seems about as effective as anything a doctor has ever given me to use at home.
Wait, this isn't a story about my childhood. Where did I go wrong here?
Ok, here is a different story about my Floridian childhood....
We lived on a dirt road when we moved to Altamonte Springs from Casselberry, in the summer of 1975, I believe. At the end of the block there was the entrance to a large area of patchy wilderness where I used to go and play. Incredibly stupid stuff now that I think about it. We would dig a massive hole in the ground, put a piece of plywood over it, install a 2" by 4" supporting beam towards the center and then cover the entire death-trap in sand. This would be our center of operations and all of the kids from the area would crawl in and await what should have been the worst headlines to hit Altamonte Springs in its entirely useless history. But the headlines never came.
I think somebody's father discovered the doomsday device and demanded that it be disassembled, on the spot. A substantial hole remained in the ground and each time that I would pass it I would get a childish glimpse into mortality. I fantasized about the meaning of death, the meaning of dying stupidly in such a place. I was, perhaps, a morbid child. But the effect remained. Over time I became more aware of the stupidity of some of the things that I was doing, though that is what also drew me onwards into them as well.
As I got older the shock that I really hadn't thought about how dangerous it was until a dad from the neighborhood discovered it and demanded its partial return to nature dawned on me in glimpses of shame. How stupid I would have felt dying there. I've had similar feelings at after-parties in Los Angeles and Mexico City. That same fear gripping me with a vision of the future perceptions of others.
Eventually they built condos on the land and they built a wall that surrounded the entire community, somewhat curbing our fledgling guerilla instincts. I would sometimes sneak out of my house by the bedroom window in the middle of the night. Bored, restless, unable to sleep. Not entirely different from the feeling that I have now in this early dawn.
I would sneak out after my parents had gone to sleep and I would pretend to invade the walled neighborhood as if it was a government complex... and I a trained agent, an assassin, a reconnaissance man. I would walk the entire circumference of the compound balancing on the wall, hoping for a glimpse of a woman showering, not knowing what that would look like, but knowing that it was to be sought. There was the occasional spot where I had to jump down from the wall and then climb back up again. A spot where some pre-existing neighbor had argued successfully for the retention of one of his trees, promising to keep it trimmed and then refusing to do so, resentful that this monstrosity in capitalist housing sprang up in what used to be an adolescent killing field.
There was a man-made lake in the center of the property that had an exercise path along it with various exercises to be performed along the way, metal outdoor gym-like contraptions. These were perfect structures for my counter-intelligence invasions. I would sneak up on the guard's office and spy on them there, imagining that at just the right moment I would unleash a volley of machine gun fire through the glass in glorious wartime killing motion, ending them definitively with the deafening burst from a grenade, lobbed from the clip on my belt. Decisively turning the tides of conflict towards the struggle for resistance.
Viva...
There was a series of cement drainage tubes leading to the man-made lake from many different angles. When the condos were first built they had no protective grating on them and I would crawl into them and find my way to intersections distant, my brother having taught me this particular bit of espionage in the daytime. Eventually they put up steel grates that kept me alive for a few more summers. I blamed the same father who had destroyed our desert operations center, but I never had enough proof to execute him. In fact I don't even remember who he was. He is now, as he was then, a benign male parent figure, not dissimilar from any adult from the Peanuts cartoons. It was as if he could speak no discernible words. But we all implicitly understood the message: No More Fun.
He's probably still out there, saving children from certain demise and lasting injury, an infamous local boor, loved by none.
Well, I must try to go back to sleep. Rachel leaves today and I must work later. Some more sleep would be ideal. Perhaps if I construct some sheets over the bed, in military tent fashion, strung from wall to dresser and window, crafting secret passageways from room to room, insisting that all who enter know the password, then maybe then I would sleep like a child. Not my child self, but some other. One that was far less restless and inviting of constant danger, escape. One that would never dream of sneaking out a window. One that slept tenderly in the loving arms of Jesus, not one that was doomed for the sleep of reason...
"Pain killers" is a funny phrase. Its implicit message impossible to misunderstand. The pain always returns so the word "killers" is a bit of overstatement, especially at the level that most of these things are prescribed for home usage. 800 mg of Ibuprofen usually seems about as effective as anything a doctor has ever given me to use at home.
Wait, this isn't a story about my childhood. Where did I go wrong here?
Ok, here is a different story about my Floridian childhood....
We lived on a dirt road when we moved to Altamonte Springs from Casselberry, in the summer of 1975, I believe. At the end of the block there was the entrance to a large area of patchy wilderness where I used to go and play. Incredibly stupid stuff now that I think about it. We would dig a massive hole in the ground, put a piece of plywood over it, install a 2" by 4" supporting beam towards the center and then cover the entire death-trap in sand. This would be our center of operations and all of the kids from the area would crawl in and await what should have been the worst headlines to hit Altamonte Springs in its entirely useless history. But the headlines never came.
I think somebody's father discovered the doomsday device and demanded that it be disassembled, on the spot. A substantial hole remained in the ground and each time that I would pass it I would get a childish glimpse into mortality. I fantasized about the meaning of death, the meaning of dying stupidly in such a place. I was, perhaps, a morbid child. But the effect remained. Over time I became more aware of the stupidity of some of the things that I was doing, though that is what also drew me onwards into them as well.
As I got older the shock that I really hadn't thought about how dangerous it was until a dad from the neighborhood discovered it and demanded its partial return to nature dawned on me in glimpses of shame. How stupid I would have felt dying there. I've had similar feelings at after-parties in Los Angeles and Mexico City. That same fear gripping me with a vision of the future perceptions of others.
Eventually they built condos on the land and they built a wall that surrounded the entire community, somewhat curbing our fledgling guerilla instincts. I would sometimes sneak out of my house by the bedroom window in the middle of the night. Bored, restless, unable to sleep. Not entirely different from the feeling that I have now in this early dawn.
I would sneak out after my parents had gone to sleep and I would pretend to invade the walled neighborhood as if it was a government complex... and I a trained agent, an assassin, a reconnaissance man. I would walk the entire circumference of the compound balancing on the wall, hoping for a glimpse of a woman showering, not knowing what that would look like, but knowing that it was to be sought. There was the occasional spot where I had to jump down from the wall and then climb back up again. A spot where some pre-existing neighbor had argued successfully for the retention of one of his trees, promising to keep it trimmed and then refusing to do so, resentful that this monstrosity in capitalist housing sprang up in what used to be an adolescent killing field.
There was a man-made lake in the center of the property that had an exercise path along it with various exercises to be performed along the way, metal outdoor gym-like contraptions. These were perfect structures for my counter-intelligence invasions. I would sneak up on the guard's office and spy on them there, imagining that at just the right moment I would unleash a volley of machine gun fire through the glass in glorious wartime killing motion, ending them definitively with the deafening burst from a grenade, lobbed from the clip on my belt. Decisively turning the tides of conflict towards the struggle for resistance.
Viva...
There was a series of cement drainage tubes leading to the man-made lake from many different angles. When the condos were first built they had no protective grating on them and I would crawl into them and find my way to intersections distant, my brother having taught me this particular bit of espionage in the daytime. Eventually they put up steel grates that kept me alive for a few more summers. I blamed the same father who had destroyed our desert operations center, but I never had enough proof to execute him. In fact I don't even remember who he was. He is now, as he was then, a benign male parent figure, not dissimilar from any adult from the Peanuts cartoons. It was as if he could speak no discernible words. But we all implicitly understood the message: No More Fun.
He's probably still out there, saving children from certain demise and lasting injury, an infamous local boor, loved by none.
Well, I must try to go back to sleep. Rachel leaves today and I must work later. Some more sleep would be ideal. Perhaps if I construct some sheets over the bed, in military tent fashion, strung from wall to dresser and window, crafting secret passageways from room to room, insisting that all who enter know the password, then maybe then I would sleep like a child. Not my child self, but some other. One that was far less restless and inviting of constant danger, escape. One that would never dream of sneaking out a window. One that slept tenderly in the loving arms of Jesus, not one that was doomed for the sleep of reason...
.
