Miles of lives separate us.
Time measured in longing
Over an ocean of sand.
My infinite companion,
Lost in the ebb and flow
Of the natural cycle.
My curse is to remember our pasts.
My blessing to remember at all.
We met when the trees were young;
Mere saplings scattered upon dark earth.
And we lived a freedom unseen again.
Lives end.
Our spark,
Our energy,
The lessons etched upon us,
Inhabit a space outside of time
And we breathe again.
But I remember.
I live and wander
With a severed strand
That trails ahead of me;
Always searching.
There will come a moment
When we are tied together
Once again.
We will live life
Knotted by fate’s secret hand.
We will die,
We will live,
And I
Will remember.
Monday, August 16, 2010
Eternity's Coastline of Forever
At six o’clock I did awake,
Popped in my mouth the pills I take,
But switched they were with poison tabs,
Meant for rats in sterile labs.
Who switched them I may never know,
But their cruel joke has cut me low,
For now I float above the world,
My soul from body has been hurled.
I guess I should enjoy my time,
No shackles mean no life to mime.
Perhaps I’ll take that trip to France,
No need to pack, I wear no pants,
No shirt, no shoes, no jacket too,
Walk freely naked through the zoo.
Though naked you can never be;
I lack a body you can see.
I do not eat, or move, or ache,
I have no lungs, no breath to take.
No bones to lack the calcium,
No teeth to chew a stick of gum.
Its food that I will miss the most,
No friends to see, no parties host.
I leave the city with this toast:
I’ll spend my time upon the coast
Where I will watch the waves you see,
And contemplate eternity.
Popped in my mouth the pills I take,
But switched they were with poison tabs,
Meant for rats in sterile labs.
Who switched them I may never know,
But their cruel joke has cut me low,
For now I float above the world,
My soul from body has been hurled.
I guess I should enjoy my time,
No shackles mean no life to mime.
Perhaps I’ll take that trip to France,
No need to pack, I wear no pants,
No shirt, no shoes, no jacket too,
Walk freely naked through the zoo.
Though naked you can never be;
I lack a body you can see.
I do not eat, or move, or ache,
I have no lungs, no breath to take.
No bones to lack the calcium,
No teeth to chew a stick of gum.
Its food that I will miss the most,
No friends to see, no parties host.
I leave the city with this toast:
I’ll spend my time upon the coast
Where I will watch the waves you see,
And contemplate eternity.
Angela
To hear Angela tell it, we were born at the exact same time, in the same hospital, and in rooms that were adjacent to one another. I’m not sure that I ever believed that story when either of our parents told it, but it was interesting to imagine that as one more thing tying me to Angela. We grew up together, our families living as neighbors for as far back as I can remember. Our fathers had been best friends in high school and our mothers had roomed together in college.
I’m not sure if it was our parent’s friendliness that brought us close together or simply the amount of time we spent together as kids. We were inseparable. Playing, eating, and even taking naps together.
Now I stand in the white washed halls of the very same hospital that everything started in. I can almost imagine the smell of antiseptic and dirty bed sheets. The light, unnatural and caustic to the eye and the heart, reflects off the pure white walls and the scuffed checkered tile floor. An alternating patter of black and white that stretches on around a corner I cannot turn. I’m tethered on the spot despite how much I want to run, to fly from this spot and see real daylight, smell the freshly cut grass and taste the first real winds of spring.
This is where it all began, the Meghan Werkheiser Memorial hospital. This is where Angela and I were born. This is where we came when we were sick, when we broke a bone, or when we needed a volunteer job. This room, 424, is only three doors down from the one in which Angela was born. The maternity ward had been relocated only ten years after we came into the world. It seems a cosmic joke that Angela, 87 years old, should lie dying only a few paces from where she was born. But not everything goes the way you expect it to.
I never expected to die at the age of 18. I never expected that I would never make it to my graduation party. I never expected to lose my life saving the person who, in the whole world, meant the most to me.
She never saw the bus coming.
It was too hot to be wearing a cap and gown. Sweat plastered my curly hair to my forehead and there it stayed; a constant annoyance to match the heat. It didn’t help that our graduation attire was a dark purple and absorbed the sunlight like a photovoltaic panel. Wired up, the students of Reibold High would have produced enough energy to light Las Vegas for a holiday weekend.
By some supernatural coincidence, Angela and I ended up sitting next to each other at the end of the 4th row of chairs. She looked just as hot as I felt and her long hair, the color of a clear starlit night, could not have helped as it spilled from the back of her cap and cascaded in a solid sheet over her shoulders and down her back. She was vigorously fanning herself with the Graduation program while we waited for our names to be called, our fake diplomas to be given to us, and for the rest of our lives to start.
It wasn’t a fantastic ceremony and I sometimes find myself irritated when I think about how dull the last two hours of my life had been. The Valedictorian’s speech was shoddily rehearsed and full of dry, over-used pop culture references. The principal seemed to have studied graduation speeches from movies, extracted every cliché, and strung them together until they stopped at the ten minute mark.
Our special speaker was a little more interesting. As a retired truck driver who had graduated from our school and who now made his living writing kids books, Bob Williams didn’t lie to us.
“It’s never going to be easy,” he started. A ripple of mild attention worked its way through the sun-blasted graduates. “Some of you have ideas of what the perfect life would be, some of you have an idea of how you’re going to go about achieving that perfect life, and some of you don’t have the vaguest idea of what you are going to do five minutes after you receive that piece of paper that you came here for today.” Here he paused and stared out over the crowd, catching the eyes of a few of the students. He caught my gaze and held it for a second and I realized that this was a man who lived, who faced down opposition, hard times, despair, and yet he had, at the same time, experienced intense moments of happiness, elation, passion, and excitement. Without taking his eyes from the students, Bob Williams continued.
“Is it important to get a good education? Sure, if that’s what you want to do. I didn’t go farther than Reibold High and I like to think I turned out okay,” an appreciative chuckle swept across the crowd, “but not everybody can do what I do. It takes a lot of nerve and grit to drive a big rig, so some of you might be better off going to college.” At this there was a full roar of laughter and Bob smiled the kind of smile that can only come from being deeply satisfied on the inside. “Yes, a good education is important, and you’ve been giving a great one here at Reibold no doubt.” A general smattering of applause and some cheers of ‘Reibold Rangers Rule’. “But I didn’t come here to talk about how important your education is, Mr. Varney,” and here he spoke into the microphone in a conspiratorial whisper, “that’s your principal,” the crowd roared with laughter and Bob returned to his speaking voice “already covered that.”
“I’m here to talk about your connections. Look around you.” I looked to my left and found Angela staring at my face in a way that made my heart skip town. Her eyes were the dazzling green of a grassy field in full sunlight and I had to fight the giddy smile that threatened to erupt onto my face. I played it cool, slapped on a lopsided grin and hoped that my eyes, which had quickly shifted downward for a fraction of a second, hadn’t given me away. Angela looked at me for an eternity of a second before turning back to Bob who continued speaking.
“No doubt you see your friends, people you’ve known for four years day in and day out. I’m sure you all know a lot of people, you have to when you attend class with twenty other students, but I’m talking about the people you stand around with before homeroom, the group you eat lunch with everyday, the ones who stand at the entrance to the school in the pouring rain waiting for you to go back and get the umbrella you left in Mrs. Stevenson’s math class. You will remember and cherish these people for the rest of your lives. Some of you may drift apart, some of you may forget to call or write, and some of you…well some of you may leave us forever.” The audience listened intently, drinking in Bob’s words, nodding, agreeing, looking at the ground solemnly and remembering David Katsh who was lost during a snowstorm just this past winter.
“But that doesn’t matter. The next time you see or talk to these people, it will be like the old days, it will be like the years between your last parting had melted away and nothing stood between you but the memories of a shared high school life. Don’t forget the friends you’ve made here. These connections will sustain you, they will help you through hard times, and they can even save your life.
“Don’t forget that these people, outside of your family, know you best. They will help you without asking questions, they will give you the shirt off their back and the last crumb of food in their cupboard. Do the same for them because you can get the best damn education you want at any time in your life, but these are the best friends, the best people you will ever know.”
With his final words Bob Williams gave a small bow and walked slowly off the stage. It was a moment before the crowd awoke from it state of intense attention and the stadium exploded as all four hundred students and over a thousand parents and family stood, cheered, stomped their feet, applauded, and some even quietly stood with tears streaming down their faces. I looked at Angela who had cast a sidelong glance at me and I felt a small, warm pressure on my hand. I looked down with surprise to find that she had taken my hand in hers and we stood like that while Mr. Williams’ standing ovation slowly wound down.
It was an indication of how dreadfully boring and oppressively hot the ceremony was when the crowd, so fired up from Bob Williams’ speech, settled back into quiet, heat induced aggravation while they waited for the names of 400 people to be read in different states of correctness. I was vaguely aware that these were my last few moments as a high school student as Lucas McMurdy was called out over the loud speaker and I stood up to receive my diploma.
Caps were thrown, congratulations were exchanged; embraces, kisses, and tears were to be found in abundance. Families looked with new eyes upon their sons and daughters, now officially adults, and tried to imagine them as the children they had been moments ago.
The lingering warmth of Angela’s hand, different from that of the scorching sun, remained with me as I greeted my own parents, smiled, laughed, and joked about the present and the future. Angela’s parents, like a second family to me, embraced me as if they had not one but two high school graduates; my parents did the same for Angela. It was time to go home; it was time for our party.
We had approached our closest friends and arranged a joint party, a grand end of school bash to celebrate everyone’s graduation so that nobody had to be left behind. Begging off our parents’ insistence that we ride with them back to the house, Angela and I began the thirty minute trek. It was a walk we had both shared these past four years and one that mirrored the four years before that in middle school, and the four years before that in elementary school. Like the two previous paths, the “high school march”, as we called it, was special to us because of the uninterrupted time we spent together five days a week, for an hour every day. We had both agreed that we would walk that path together for the last time as high school graduates.
“I’m really glad that my Mom took the cap and gown with her. Talk about hot!” Angela started as we crossed one of the outlying soccer fields of Reiban High, “No clouds, no wind, and we were in the middle of the stadium without any shad whatsoever. I know we’re supposed to cherish this moment,” Angela looked at me with a disdainful smile that said all too well how she would remember her last moments in that stadium, “but the only thing I really liked was that Truck Driver’s speech.”
“Bob Williams.” I stated with a glance in her direction.
“What?”
“Bob Williams. That was the truck driver’s name. I’m glad we got him and not Mrs. Peabody. Last year’s graduates had to sit through forty five minutes of her experiences working with quantum mechanics theories. Science isn’t boring per se, but forty five minutes of wave form algorithms in this heat may have caused a few casualties.”
“Okay, smart as you or I may be, and you’ll notice that neither of us were asked to quote our favorite musicians on stage, if you mention algorithms of any kind for the next two months, I’m going to have to pound you.” Angela’s smile was wide, taunting, and mischievous as she ground her fist into her palm.
“Yeah, sorry I brought it up. But Williamson’s speech, it really effected people didn’t it?” I looked down at the ground, we had both known David Katsh and we both had friends we didn’t want to lose, friends we wanted to hold onto for the rest of our lives.
“It was moving. I think sometimes we’re afraid to think about our friends, about losing them, about making sure that we nurture those bonds we’ve formed. But he was right, we can never forget the connections that we forged here, forgetting would be worse than losing our friends. You can remember somebody who’s gone.” Angela looked up into the sky and shielded her eyes from the sun with her hand. Her hair sparkled and I was reminded, in this moment, of just how deep my connection to her ran.
“You, uh, squeezed my hand earlier.” I rubbed the side of my nose and looked up into the sky as well. When I looked earthward once again I found Angela staring at me in that same way that had made my heart beat noticeably faster. “Wha..?”
“I love you Lucas. You are important to me in a way that I don’t think most people will ever understand. Our whole lives we’ve known each other I don’t intend for that to ever change.” She said this with a straight face, her green eyes looking straight into mine without hesitation or embarrassment.
I dropped my hand from my face to my side and fully returned her glance.
“I love you as well Angela. I…” She was hugging me and it was a moment before I could recover from the sudden shock and return her embrace. “Angela?”
“I’m just glad that we’re here, together, walking the high school march and moving forward in our lives.” She said as she broke away from me, “Anyway, now the mushy parts are over,” we both smiled, “we have a party to get to, graduation gifts to open, lives to get on with. We better not keep our parents waiting either.”
With that we began walking in earnest.
“No more old Mrs. Frazzard in the Cafeteria.” Angela stated matter of factly.
“Oh come on, she was a laugh riot, remember when she forgot to change out the milk from the day before and everybody was wondering what the smell was? Grade A hilarious.” I chuckled.
“Well yeah, you’re right. And the time she…”
But I never heard the last part. Time had slowed to a crawl and the world around me had drained of color. Angela was a few feet ahead of me stepping out onto road at the corner of Willow and Yew streets. I was acutely aware of everything around me. I could hear the sound of the rubber on the soles of my shoes as they rebounded off of the pavement. I felt the rush of air over me as I pushed my way through an atmosphere that was suddenly thick and oppressive. I could smell the slightly harsh smell of hot blacktop tar. I saw the glint of silver reflecting the sunlight off of the bumper of an intercity bus. All of this I sensed in a fraction of a second as my mind and my body screamed one single command in unison.
My feet left the ground, my mouth moving soundlessly as I tried to warn her, to pull her back from an almost certain fate that I feared I would be too late to divert. Each instant was an agony of thought. Would I make it? Would she be safe? My shoulder collided with the small of her back and I saw her fly away from me. Her body twisted in mid air and she must have caught sight of the bus and then her eyes locked onto mine and in that moment I knew a lifetime of love and memories. I knew years of sitting together on the swings, trading music back and forth, debating politics, playing recreational sports, and attending parties together. Her green eyes, glazed with the beginning of tears told me what she had planned for the future, the intimacy, dating, marriage, children, growing old together, and welcoming a long rest together after a full life.
She hit the ground and broke eye contact. I felt a brief explosion of pain and my whole life went dark.
* * *
I was a shapeless idea, only moderately aware. I could feel time and space as it penetrated what little conscious thought had collected to form my identity. It was like sitting in the ocean with the waves rolling over you; you can feel how powerful, how endless it all is as it surges backward and forward without the slightest acknowledgement that you are there.
As it passed through me I was privy to its secrets. Past, present, and future were open to me as if the very words were written in the air before me , waiting to be snatched won and read. However, as I passed from being a mere thought into a collection of thoughts with inherited memories, the rudimentary conscience that had begun to coalesce also began rejecting the information from this sudden clairvoyance like a transplanted organ.
It would seem, from my perspective that the more human the mind, the consciousness, the soul; the more unwilling it is to accept this infinite form of information willingly. It is almost as if we reject the easy answers, find that an existence with ultimate knowledge is akin to cheating your way through life, or whatever comes before or after it.
The memories that my loosely combined thoughts had inherited began the process of solidification. I did not feel or think about these things, I observed it like a documentary; a documentary about a boy, barely a man, who made a sacrifice which time told him that no matter which way it flowed or what stream it eddied in, the same sacrifice would always have been made.
I was not anger; I was not fear, depression, happiness, or curiosity. I was a recording device, an ethereal DVD burner. Knowledge of the memories was used to group the loose thoughts into a tighter bundle which attracted their scattered siblings, pulling them in tightly as the memories glued everything together.
The concept of “I” began to form among the thoughts and memories. Suddenly it was a cold dark hallway, icy, slippery, oppressive, and my thoughts and memories fought their way through the cold and the ice down a tunnel as long as time itself, all the while fixed upon the flickering blaze and warmth of “I” that burned brightly somewhere up ahead.
Memories overlapped, attached, strengthened, combined the thoughts, arranged them in order, and bound them in place. With cohesion came thought and suddenly the memories were fluid, a lubricant between the thoughts that could be sifted through at will.
The concept of “I” became the acknowledgement of “I” as the flame of conscience engulfed my mind and memories, fusing them permanently as one and burning my existence into being. At first I perceived through sight alone. I did not feel, I did not hear, I did not taste, I could not smell.
I was not afraid.
It was dark and I was alone but memories of a warm hand, a moment’s glance, these kept me from being scared; they told me that everything would be okay. I began to feel something, a tingling sensation like unrealized potential that slowly crept over what I imagined to be my body, I had not looked down at myself yet.
I thought that I must make sure that I am complete, so I looked down and saw my body, the same one I had lived in for 18 years, but I couldn’t feel it. It didn’t move. I felt the tingles and they stayed with me for some time. I was wearing a black t-shirt, faded blue jeans, and a pair of black sneakers.
These were not the clothes that I had died in.
The dark world around me erupted with color so blindingly bright that I wished to close my eyes against it only to realize that I couldn’t. I stood blinded by my suddenly vibrant surroundings and my vision slowly sorted out the scene before me.
There was a road, an intersection, and a bus was pulled off to one side. I stared at the back of the bus because I knew the intercity buses did not stop on streets like this, they went right on through to the center of town. There was a new 2008 Honda Civic parked on the other side of the street, facing the wrong direction into traffic. There were a few more cars backed up in a place where there was no stop light.
I became aware of a buzzing in my ears, like the static on a television when the volume is turned down really low. I waited patiently, my vision had returned, maybe my hearing would return as well. I wanted to pass the time by taking in more of the scenery but I still could not command my body, which still tingled, to turn in place. There was a sudden clarity akin to when your ears pop at high altitudes and I could hear. It was mostly quiet.
Some sound, something I could not quite distinguish from the quiet, was pulling at my heart, it made the tingling of my body intensify, especially around my chest. Without meaning too, without willing it at all, I began turning on the spot, drawn around by the sound that I was suddenly afraid to find the source to.
What I saw was what I least expected. That soft, whispery sound like a secret breeze was the quiet moan escaping from my mother as she kneeled near something that lay in the road. My father sat next to her with his arm around her shoulders, they were both shaking.
I could see Angela’s hair through the gap between my parent’s heads and again, without willing it to happen, I was moving, this time towards Angela. The gravel that lay loosely on the road did not crunch under my footsteps, there was no sound as the legs of my jeans rubbed together while I walked. I didn’t feel the air that I moved through and it was only with the most miniscule amount of surprise that I realized somewhere in the back of my mind that I was not drawing breath.
I stood in front of Angela, only she wasn’t the same person I had known for eighteen years. She was also on her knees in the road and I thought this was foolish until I saw her face. It was blank. The usual light, the intelligence, the smile that all occupied her expressive eyes was gone. What were normally bright green and full of life, were now dull, almost grey and staring into some far off void.
There were bits of gravel from the road mixed in with her hair and I realized that she had a trickle of crimson running from her hairline, down the side of her angular face, and disappearing beneath the collar of her shirt. She had not even made an attempt to wipe it away, her hands lay at her sides, palms up, her wrists resting on the asphalt of the road.
She made no sound but I could see that she was almost imperceptibly quaking where she kneeled. It was like a shiver that started in the ground and worked its way to the tips of her hair. A small drop of water hung shivering from the end of her short pointy chin and as I watched I saw it fall and land with the tiniest of splashes on her lap. There were two tiny, yet constant streams of water that flowed down her face, delicate like her features and they would have almost gone unnoticed if they hadn’t been so unnatural. Angela was a very happy person, she didn’t normally cry. This sight, more than anything else, caused a feeling of tightness within me that had I been able to break down in tears myself, I would have done so without hesitation. What had hurt her so bad that I hadn’t been able to protect her from it?
I looked down, following the line of Angela’s body, across the twelve inches of asphalt and came to rest on what was, seemingly, the cause of everyone’s strange behavior. The tingling I felt grew so faint that I feared for a moment the complete loss of it. The loss of that small sensation would, I thought, cut me off from everything around me; I might lose focus and become a scattered grouping of thoughts and memories again.
Except for the blood which had already began to thicken where it lay on the road in the cracks in the black top, the oddly bent limbs, and the torn clothing, the body that lay before me might have been asleep. The face was serene, the eyes closed, the hair disheveled, the mouth touched with an amused smile that the world around it did not share.
There was something eerily familiar about the shadow under the jaw line, the pointed chin, and the nose with more bridge than most people desired. The clothes were familiar; the shoes, the hair, that hand, though it was cut, scraped, and full of grit, was familiar down to the unevenly chewed fingernails.
It was me! Oh god, it was me on the ground! I’m bleeding! I’m broken! I’m not breathing! Oh god, somebody!
But that didn’t make sense, how could I be in two places at once? My vision darkened as my mind panicked and ran in circles chasing an explanation that would not come. Bloody, broken, and with a serene, almost amused face. The blood! It was dark, darker than I had ever seen, almost black like the road and I nearly followed it. I nearly followed that blood down into the cracks in the black top, into the earth, into non-existence, as my mind closed on the only explanation it could find.
That was my body and I am dead.
I looked around wildly, silently begging for help that would not come, hoping to awaken from a nightmare that could not be real, even if that meant sitting through the awful heat of the graduation ceremony again.
This last thought coincided with my gaze one again falling upon Angela. I was immediately inundated with images and words; memories that, while they were the most important part of the puzzle, had been suppressed, reserved, waiting for just the right moment to spring forward and shine their baleful light on the darkness that surrounded me. And I knew, with absolute certainty, that this was no dream. I remembered the bus, the running leap, Angela’s face, and my sacrifice.
Once more I was the calm observer, the initial shock bleeding away quickly as I silently accepted what lay before me on the road. I could move on my own now and I kneeled in front of Angela, taking in the sight of her face. I was certain that whatever awaited me in the afterlife was sure to happen soon because of my acceptance of the truth. I kept expecting to see a bright light or hear a chorus of some kind. Without warning there was a flash of light and a blast of sound. Before I realized their source I locked my eyes on Angela. Before I left for wherever it was I thought I might be going, I wanted to give her some form of encouragement, some last word. I wanted to tell her everything would be alright. Most of all I wanted to tell her, once more, how much she meant to me, how much our time together had meant, how cruel it was that in the very beginning of our lives we would be separated, and how happy I was that she was still alive and would go on living.
With each passing moment this desire burned stronger. It turned into a need and then a necessity that could not be ignored as if the whole world would burn away if I didn’t say it.
“Angela! I love you!” The words burst forward as blinding molten pain crushed me and tore across my being. The tingling that, by this time, had become a barely noticed constant, was now a surge of sharp serrated agony. If I could have spoke or screamed I would have filled the void with a sound that would tear apart existence itself.
The pain subsided as quickly as it came and yet I felt damaged, injured, and weak. The world around me had darkened and the edges of my vision were black walls streaked with thin strips of light. I did not understand what had happened. I looked once again on Angela and, to my great surprise, her face was not blank anymore. Her face was screwed up in an anguish that I had never experienced, her arms were wrapped around her stomach and clenched tightly, and the small streams that had once flowed over her cheeks were now replaced with fast flowing rivers.
She was visibly shaking now; quaking on the spot and I wondered why nobody was helping her, comforting her. My father was stony faced with tears streaking down into his well-maintained beard. He was staring at the ground beneath his knees with his arm around my mother’s shoulders. My mother’s face was in her hands, the moaning from earlier was replaced by quieter sobs.
I turned as the light and sound from earlier grew closer. I had resolved to face whatever was coming head-on, but it was not a bright white light or a chorus of voices raised in welcome that greeted me. It was an ambulance, sirens blaring, followed closely by a police car.
I wondered, for the first time, why they hadn’t been there sooner. The light tingling became an angry buzz as I thought about how late they must be, too late to save me at least. They were here to collect my body, to ask questions. They were here to clean up what remained of my life.
My father stood up, his face still set and unmoving. He walked slowly toward the pair of paramedics that were pulling a stretcher down off of the ambulance. The metal of the stretcher clanking against the back of the ambulance was harsh in this atmosphere, like an invasion of privacy, and my father stopped, blinking as he looked down at the stretcher before him.
The officer that had come along walked around the side of the ambulance and surveyed the scene. My father looked up again as the paramedics began to pass him with the stretcher.
“We’re sorry, sir, there was a…” but what he was sorry about was quickly cut off as my father’s fist smashed into the side of the closest man’s head. The man, caught completely unaware, fell sideways into the stretcher, toppling it and pinning the other paramedic beneath it.
“What the fuck are you doing? Jesus Christ, I’m bleeding!”
My father took another step forward before he was wrestled to the ground by the police officer.
“Get off me! Get off! Where the hell were they?! You sons of bitches! Where were you?! Why didn’t you save my son?” And as suddenly as the blinding rage that had overtaken him had come, it left, and my father lay on the hot asphalt sobbing like my mother.
“Like I was saying,” the man pushed a roll of gauze against the side of his head, matting his blonde hair with blood, “there was an accident involving four vehicles down the road the way we came. It required both of the local ambulances.” The man’s voice softened as he realized that his justification wasn’t reaching anybody, “that’s what took us so long,” he trailed off into silence.
The officer sat my father up and turned to the man he had struck, “Well Barry, gonna press charges?” The question hung in the air like a strangling mist. The ultimate insult to a loving father would have been his arrest at the scene of his son’s death.
“No Rick, forget it,” Barry replied quietly as he helped the other paramedic lift the upended stretcher, “It’s not Claude’s fault,” Barry continued, “I can’t say I understand how he feels, I’ve never had any children, but I’ve seen enough in this job…I’ve seen enough.”
Barry’s jaw was clenched tightly and a drop of red shivered at the end of a strand of hair.
“You know him?” Rick asked, looking puzzled.
“He’s a good friend of mine,” Barry turned his face away from my father, “took him and Lauren over there to the hospital eighteen years ago, back before we had the new ambulances.”
Barry nodded toward Angela, “Took her parents as well on the same exact night,” Barry looked at the gauze pad in his hand and tossed it to the ground, “This is the worst thing that could have happened today Rick.”
“What about the accident down the road?” Rick asked.
“Nobody died, Rick. Two broken bones and some lacerations. The cars are totaled which leads me to believe that you might want to talk to the driver of that bus over there.”
“Why’s that?”
“Well, first off, the cars down the road were all hit from behind at a red light.”
I looked at the bus parked along the side of the road. It was an older model, dirty and scuffed from years of use. I hadn’t noticed until now, the long silver scratches on the side facing me. As I traced their journey from the front of the bus rearward, I could almost hear the shriek of metal on metal.
“That bus looks a little beat up. Guess I should go talk to the driver,” Rick slouched off in the direction of the bus, disappearing around the right side before Barry and the other paramedic made their way to my body.
I moved toward the bus, a morbid curiosity about the circumstances surrounding my ejection from life, driving me forward.
“You can’t take him.” The voice was a shock, like diving into icy water and I whipped around to see Angela looking up at Barry while the other paramedic, looking embarrassed and out place, stood a few feet away.
“Listen, sweetheart,” Barry began as he slowly kneeled down.
“No! You can’t take him!” She was getting louder with each word and I saw my mother look up from where she was kneeling.
I moved beside my body, standing just outside the space that stood between Angela and Barry.
“Angela, right? I know your parents. Listen, we can’t leave his body here,” Angela hiccoughed loudly at this but Barry kept speaking, “I’m sorry sweety but he’s gone.”
Angela looked Barry straight in the face and behind the tears I thought I could see a flicker of the life that normally burned so brightly there.
‘You’re wrong. He’s still here.” She stated without hesitation. I became excited, wondering how she knew.
Barry looked nonplused; he had, in the long course of being an EMT, probably dealt with hundreds of people that were angry or distressed over the injury of death of a loved one. He started into what seemed like a tired and well rehearsed explanation.
“You’re right of course. He is still here, as long as you remember him the way he was, he’ll always be…” Barry trailed off as Angela began shaking her head.
“No! Don’t you feed me any of that. Lucas is still here, he’s still alive! You can’t put him in that bag!”
At her words I saw the black bag that was now sitting atop the stretcher. It reaffirmed the reality of the situation for me. There was no going back. Angela, while I loved her for her unwavering position, was chasing a dream. There was no way she could know I was here. Nobody else had so much as glanced in my direction. There was also no way that I could still be alive, my body had not drawn breathe for awhile now, and the paramedics, being forced to deal with my father and Angela, still hadn’t check for so much as a pulse.
“But,” Barry plowed forward, “we have to Angela, we can’t leave his body there!”
“No!” Angela was on her feet as she screamed the word, “You don’t understand. You’re not listening to me! He’s not dead! He’s still here! I saw him,” surprised, Barry and I stood stunned in place, “He said something, I didn’t hear it but he was there in that stupid black t-shirt and those ratty jeans. So you can’t put him in that bag! You can’t! I won’t be able to hear him…he won’t be able to breathe!”
She looked ready to continue when my mother, quiet and graceful, stood in front of her. I stepped to the side in order to see them both clearly.
“Mrs. McMurdy?” Angela looked up at my mother’s face, which, while tear streaked, was caring; gently arranged with a soothing, almost serene look.
“He’s still here, don’t let them take him,” Angela begged in a barely audible whisper. My mother shook her head and I knew what she would say before she spoke.
“He’s gone Angie, he’s gone.”
Angela stood unmoving, unblinking as if she had been caught in a spotlight. As her face began to melt from indignation to overwhelming shock and then back to grief, my Mother stepped forward, wrapped her arms around Angela, and slowly lowered her to the ground. The y remained that way, my mother quiet and Angela, grief stricken and sobbing, until the paramedics and the coroner, who had arrived ten minutes later, pronounced me dead and began the process of clearing my last few moments of life from the road.
***
My parents drove Angela home. My father took the driver seat and my mother sat in the back with Angela curled up next to her. My mother absently stroked her hair. Angela stared straight ahead. My father was one with the car. His movements and gestures were mechanical, no energy was wasted. He didn’t even complain about the other drivers, a favorite past time of his. I occupied the passenger’s seat. I paid no attention to the seatbelt; I didn’t feel the pull of the car turning or the gentle push of my father’s well executed acceleration.
The scenery passed by quickly and I only barely registered the groups of people scattered in front yards, back yards, and parking lots. They were celebrating the beginning of a new chapter of their lives. My book was already finished.
We slowly rolled by my house on the way to Angela’s. The mood here was decidedly different. People were sitting on chairs, on the ground, and on the steps. It looked like somebody had commanded them to sit and they had all obeyed on the spot. This was no party. They weren’t celebrating from where they sat with the shock and distress that stretched from face to face. This was a vigil, a few hours of devastated mourning. This was a support group without a leader.
Somebody had obviously called ahead, probably hoping to delay the arrival of too many people; hoping to lessen the impact on a day set aside for joyous, long-overdue celebration. I thought about how this might have gone if I hadn’t died. Angela and I would have entered the yard from the back and slipped in among the partiers, pretending as if we’d been there the whole time. The music and the laughter would rise in equal measure to the revolutions of the clock. Cell phones would be lost, broken, and dropped in the toilet, only to be replaced by proud parents temporarily blinded by the achievements of their children. Gifts would be exchanged among friends and squirreled away to be opened tomorrow. Calls of thanks, from brand new phones, would crisscross the town. Then people would wake up the next day and go about the process of getting on with their lives; wherever it might take them.
I felt as close to a burning shame as the tingling could recreate. These people, my friends, would not remember this as the day that they had graduated. My heroics would shadow this day on the calendar of their memories. Their lives were not destroyed; their time wasn’t cut overwhelmingly short. But this might alter their path. They might fail a college entrance exam or lose a summer job because of the loss that, for all appearances, had gripped every person who had the misfortune to show up.
Others would learn the truth later in the evening, still others would not find out until the funeral announcement went around. These people would be affected, but never to the extent of the people at this party. It was a matter of comparing a bruise with a deep laceration.
***
They sat around the living room in silence as the daylight slowly passed on into dusk. The radio, forgotten in the background, was playing something from the early 90s, but nobody listened. I heard the music but felt disconnected from it, as if the energy used to recall the artist’s name would be a waste. The cherry coffee table still had bits of Angela’s scrapbooking material on it, and this is what I focused on. She had been working on a graduation page. Words like “congrats!” and “off to college” littered the table on neatly cut out squares of paper. The borders were carefully arranged and ready to accept pictures that would never be taken.
My father sat in an old wooden rocking chair; the chair rocked slowly and silently back and forth with an almost imperceptible motion. Angela’s father, on the other side of the room, occupied a faded leather recliner with canvas threads showing through on the arms where Angela and I, much younger back then, had climbed and wrestled with him.
The ‘tink’ of ice melting was the only indication that someone had brought drinks into the room. My mother held hers but otherwise paid no attention to it. The front on every other glass was undisturbed; rings of condensation on the table were a testimony to how long everyone sat in silence.
My mother and Angela’s mother shared the love seat. Angela sat on the floor, picking at the fibers of the sea green carpet. I’ve heard it said that silence in a situation such as this is oppressive, weighing down on the lungs and the heart, making it hard to breathe until, panic stricken, you find some excuse to leave. This silence was not the same. There were no unasked questions, no awkward pronouncements; there was only flat, dry, tired quiet. Words had not stopped on the tip of the tongue; they had died, dried up, and blown away. There no tears, there was only an intense weariness that denied the energy necessary to squeeze them out.
I was not alive, but I was there, sentient and observant; restless with all the quiet and unmoving air. I paced the room, careful to step around objects and everybody there, without really thinking about why I was doing it. My steps made no noise and I didn’t cause the scrapbooking paper to rustle as I walked by.
***
The night wore on, the phone rang and there were knocks at the door. Both went unanswered. I don’t know whether everyone present sat in deep thought or if they simply existed for a few hours like caricatures of life cut from stone. Around vie in the morning my mother nodded off and slumped against Megan, Angela’s mother. My father’s eyes focused for the first time in hours, and he blinked in the pre-light.
“I better take her home.” My father’s voice was barely a whisper but it had the effect of a bullhorn. Save for my mother, everyone looked at my father as if they hadn’t even known he was there. Frank, Angela’s father, nodded toward my father, his prominent bear touching his chest for a moment and casting the lines of his face in deeper shadow.
My father helped his wife to her feet and turned toward the door. I didn’t want to stay in that room with the unbearable silence. I followed my father out onto the front porch and into the cool morning air. Flowers had already bloomed in the garden under the front windows and on this morning they were an explosion of color. Angela never paid much attention to what she and her mother were planting. She usually took a handful of seed and scattered it with the end result being a mix and colors and flower types.
My mother and father began walking across the sloping lawn toward our house. I followed slowly behind, taking in the sights and sounds of an early spring day. As we approached the boundary line between our property and our neighbor’s property I began to hear something that seemed out of place. It was barely audible, a whisper lost in the wind. I paid it barely a moment’s notice as I kept pace, unseen, behind my father. The farther from Angela’s house we got, the more noticeable, and the less ignorable, the sound became until was a voice, clearly speaking as if the person was talking directly into my ear.
“Don’t go…”
I whipped around, barley noticing that I didn’t feel the normal force of turning so quickly. The voice had been clear and familiar and for a split second I thought that everything had been a dream. However, as I turned on the spot I realized that nobody was there. Slightly confused, I turned to find that my parents were no half again closer to the door of our house. I made to follow them again.
“Lucas, don’t go, don’t leave me behind.”
I froze. The tingling sensation had become weaker and the voice had sounded strained, almost weak with pleading. I knew the voice, but found it hard to believe.
It was Angela, calling to me. I couldn’t see her outside but she had been un-muffled, crystal clear. Had she followed u out? Did she know I was here? Sure she claimed to have seen me, but she was emotionally distressed at the time.
I waited a few minutes to see if she would appear, smiling and open-armed, out of the crisp morning air. When she failed to appear, laughing and telling me it was all a joke, I decided that I was hearing things. Besides, what did I know about my current situation, maybe people who died heard voices all of the time.
I made it half way to the door of the house before my vision darkened at the edges and I began to lose even more of the tingling sensation.
“Please! Don’t go!”
This time the words struck me like a physical blow to my consciousness and I instinctively took a step back. The moment I did the world snapped back into focus and sensation flooded the parts of me that I will loosely refer to as limbs. I’ll point out that I imagine myself as whole and complete; two arms and two legs. But I’ve never figured out if this is only a projection my mind uses in order to capture and encapsulate my consciousness and memories. Perhaps like a glass holding water, my perceived body keeps my mind from spreading and evaporation.
I cautiously tested the boundary I perceived by stepping over it. The further forward I moved, the darker my vision became and the less I felt and heard until her voice came back. I stepped back, utterly perplexed. My parents were in the house already; the door was closed and probably locked.
I had graduated, I had saved the person I loved from death, I had died, and now I was along outside in the slowly brightening morning. I was hearing voices, but not just any voice, the voice of a young woman who was more important to me than my own life. And she was inside of her house. I closed my eyes, thinking of Angela as we had been. I wanted to open my eyes and be seated at graduation again. When I did open them, I was surprised. I was not at graduation, but I was in Angela’s house again, standing next to her bed.
She was curled into a tight ball underneath the same maroon comforter I had seen for the last five years. She had been crying again, the streaks down her face and the dampness on her pillow were evidence of that. But now she seemed a little more relaxed and she slept peacefully. I didn’t feel tired, I didn’t feel awake. I existed in a perpetual state of awareness and I wondered, for the first time, how long it would be that I was like this.
I stood next to her bed until she woke with a start at two in the afternoon.
I’m not sure if it was our parent’s friendliness that brought us close together or simply the amount of time we spent together as kids. We were inseparable. Playing, eating, and even taking naps together.
Now I stand in the white washed halls of the very same hospital that everything started in. I can almost imagine the smell of antiseptic and dirty bed sheets. The light, unnatural and caustic to the eye and the heart, reflects off the pure white walls and the scuffed checkered tile floor. An alternating patter of black and white that stretches on around a corner I cannot turn. I’m tethered on the spot despite how much I want to run, to fly from this spot and see real daylight, smell the freshly cut grass and taste the first real winds of spring.
This is where it all began, the Meghan Werkheiser Memorial hospital. This is where Angela and I were born. This is where we came when we were sick, when we broke a bone, or when we needed a volunteer job. This room, 424, is only three doors down from the one in which Angela was born. The maternity ward had been relocated only ten years after we came into the world. It seems a cosmic joke that Angela, 87 years old, should lie dying only a few paces from where she was born. But not everything goes the way you expect it to.
I never expected to die at the age of 18. I never expected that I would never make it to my graduation party. I never expected to lose my life saving the person who, in the whole world, meant the most to me.
She never saw the bus coming.
It was too hot to be wearing a cap and gown. Sweat plastered my curly hair to my forehead and there it stayed; a constant annoyance to match the heat. It didn’t help that our graduation attire was a dark purple and absorbed the sunlight like a photovoltaic panel. Wired up, the students of Reibold High would have produced enough energy to light Las Vegas for a holiday weekend.
By some supernatural coincidence, Angela and I ended up sitting next to each other at the end of the 4th row of chairs. She looked just as hot as I felt and her long hair, the color of a clear starlit night, could not have helped as it spilled from the back of her cap and cascaded in a solid sheet over her shoulders and down her back. She was vigorously fanning herself with the Graduation program while we waited for our names to be called, our fake diplomas to be given to us, and for the rest of our lives to start.
It wasn’t a fantastic ceremony and I sometimes find myself irritated when I think about how dull the last two hours of my life had been. The Valedictorian’s speech was shoddily rehearsed and full of dry, over-used pop culture references. The principal seemed to have studied graduation speeches from movies, extracted every cliché, and strung them together until they stopped at the ten minute mark.
Our special speaker was a little more interesting. As a retired truck driver who had graduated from our school and who now made his living writing kids books, Bob Williams didn’t lie to us.
“It’s never going to be easy,” he started. A ripple of mild attention worked its way through the sun-blasted graduates. “Some of you have ideas of what the perfect life would be, some of you have an idea of how you’re going to go about achieving that perfect life, and some of you don’t have the vaguest idea of what you are going to do five minutes after you receive that piece of paper that you came here for today.” Here he paused and stared out over the crowd, catching the eyes of a few of the students. He caught my gaze and held it for a second and I realized that this was a man who lived, who faced down opposition, hard times, despair, and yet he had, at the same time, experienced intense moments of happiness, elation, passion, and excitement. Without taking his eyes from the students, Bob Williams continued.
“Is it important to get a good education? Sure, if that’s what you want to do. I didn’t go farther than Reibold High and I like to think I turned out okay,” an appreciative chuckle swept across the crowd, “but not everybody can do what I do. It takes a lot of nerve and grit to drive a big rig, so some of you might be better off going to college.” At this there was a full roar of laughter and Bob smiled the kind of smile that can only come from being deeply satisfied on the inside. “Yes, a good education is important, and you’ve been giving a great one here at Reibold no doubt.” A general smattering of applause and some cheers of ‘Reibold Rangers Rule’. “But I didn’t come here to talk about how important your education is, Mr. Varney,” and here he spoke into the microphone in a conspiratorial whisper, “that’s your principal,” the crowd roared with laughter and Bob returned to his speaking voice “already covered that.”
“I’m here to talk about your connections. Look around you.” I looked to my left and found Angela staring at my face in a way that made my heart skip town. Her eyes were the dazzling green of a grassy field in full sunlight and I had to fight the giddy smile that threatened to erupt onto my face. I played it cool, slapped on a lopsided grin and hoped that my eyes, which had quickly shifted downward for a fraction of a second, hadn’t given me away. Angela looked at me for an eternity of a second before turning back to Bob who continued speaking.
“No doubt you see your friends, people you’ve known for four years day in and day out. I’m sure you all know a lot of people, you have to when you attend class with twenty other students, but I’m talking about the people you stand around with before homeroom, the group you eat lunch with everyday, the ones who stand at the entrance to the school in the pouring rain waiting for you to go back and get the umbrella you left in Mrs. Stevenson’s math class. You will remember and cherish these people for the rest of your lives. Some of you may drift apart, some of you may forget to call or write, and some of you…well some of you may leave us forever.” The audience listened intently, drinking in Bob’s words, nodding, agreeing, looking at the ground solemnly and remembering David Katsh who was lost during a snowstorm just this past winter.
“But that doesn’t matter. The next time you see or talk to these people, it will be like the old days, it will be like the years between your last parting had melted away and nothing stood between you but the memories of a shared high school life. Don’t forget the friends you’ve made here. These connections will sustain you, they will help you through hard times, and they can even save your life.
“Don’t forget that these people, outside of your family, know you best. They will help you without asking questions, they will give you the shirt off their back and the last crumb of food in their cupboard. Do the same for them because you can get the best damn education you want at any time in your life, but these are the best friends, the best people you will ever know.”
With his final words Bob Williams gave a small bow and walked slowly off the stage. It was a moment before the crowd awoke from it state of intense attention and the stadium exploded as all four hundred students and over a thousand parents and family stood, cheered, stomped their feet, applauded, and some even quietly stood with tears streaming down their faces. I looked at Angela who had cast a sidelong glance at me and I felt a small, warm pressure on my hand. I looked down with surprise to find that she had taken my hand in hers and we stood like that while Mr. Williams’ standing ovation slowly wound down.
It was an indication of how dreadfully boring and oppressively hot the ceremony was when the crowd, so fired up from Bob Williams’ speech, settled back into quiet, heat induced aggravation while they waited for the names of 400 people to be read in different states of correctness. I was vaguely aware that these were my last few moments as a high school student as Lucas McMurdy was called out over the loud speaker and I stood up to receive my diploma.
Caps were thrown, congratulations were exchanged; embraces, kisses, and tears were to be found in abundance. Families looked with new eyes upon their sons and daughters, now officially adults, and tried to imagine them as the children they had been moments ago.
The lingering warmth of Angela’s hand, different from that of the scorching sun, remained with me as I greeted my own parents, smiled, laughed, and joked about the present and the future. Angela’s parents, like a second family to me, embraced me as if they had not one but two high school graduates; my parents did the same for Angela. It was time to go home; it was time for our party.
We had approached our closest friends and arranged a joint party, a grand end of school bash to celebrate everyone’s graduation so that nobody had to be left behind. Begging off our parents’ insistence that we ride with them back to the house, Angela and I began the thirty minute trek. It was a walk we had both shared these past four years and one that mirrored the four years before that in middle school, and the four years before that in elementary school. Like the two previous paths, the “high school march”, as we called it, was special to us because of the uninterrupted time we spent together five days a week, for an hour every day. We had both agreed that we would walk that path together for the last time as high school graduates.
“I’m really glad that my Mom took the cap and gown with her. Talk about hot!” Angela started as we crossed one of the outlying soccer fields of Reiban High, “No clouds, no wind, and we were in the middle of the stadium without any shad whatsoever. I know we’re supposed to cherish this moment,” Angela looked at me with a disdainful smile that said all too well how she would remember her last moments in that stadium, “but the only thing I really liked was that Truck Driver’s speech.”
“Bob Williams.” I stated with a glance in her direction.
“What?”
“Bob Williams. That was the truck driver’s name. I’m glad we got him and not Mrs. Peabody. Last year’s graduates had to sit through forty five minutes of her experiences working with quantum mechanics theories. Science isn’t boring per se, but forty five minutes of wave form algorithms in this heat may have caused a few casualties.”
“Okay, smart as you or I may be, and you’ll notice that neither of us were asked to quote our favorite musicians on stage, if you mention algorithms of any kind for the next two months, I’m going to have to pound you.” Angela’s smile was wide, taunting, and mischievous as she ground her fist into her palm.
“Yeah, sorry I brought it up. But Williamson’s speech, it really effected people didn’t it?” I looked down at the ground, we had both known David Katsh and we both had friends we didn’t want to lose, friends we wanted to hold onto for the rest of our lives.
“It was moving. I think sometimes we’re afraid to think about our friends, about losing them, about making sure that we nurture those bonds we’ve formed. But he was right, we can never forget the connections that we forged here, forgetting would be worse than losing our friends. You can remember somebody who’s gone.” Angela looked up into the sky and shielded her eyes from the sun with her hand. Her hair sparkled and I was reminded, in this moment, of just how deep my connection to her ran.
“You, uh, squeezed my hand earlier.” I rubbed the side of my nose and looked up into the sky as well. When I looked earthward once again I found Angela staring at me in that same way that had made my heart beat noticeably faster. “Wha..?”
“I love you Lucas. You are important to me in a way that I don’t think most people will ever understand. Our whole lives we’ve known each other I don’t intend for that to ever change.” She said this with a straight face, her green eyes looking straight into mine without hesitation or embarrassment.
I dropped my hand from my face to my side and fully returned her glance.
“I love you as well Angela. I…” She was hugging me and it was a moment before I could recover from the sudden shock and return her embrace. “Angela?”
“I’m just glad that we’re here, together, walking the high school march and moving forward in our lives.” She said as she broke away from me, “Anyway, now the mushy parts are over,” we both smiled, “we have a party to get to, graduation gifts to open, lives to get on with. We better not keep our parents waiting either.”
With that we began walking in earnest.
“No more old Mrs. Frazzard in the Cafeteria.” Angela stated matter of factly.
“Oh come on, she was a laugh riot, remember when she forgot to change out the milk from the day before and everybody was wondering what the smell was? Grade A hilarious.” I chuckled.
“Well yeah, you’re right. And the time she…”
But I never heard the last part. Time had slowed to a crawl and the world around me had drained of color. Angela was a few feet ahead of me stepping out onto road at the corner of Willow and Yew streets. I was acutely aware of everything around me. I could hear the sound of the rubber on the soles of my shoes as they rebounded off of the pavement. I felt the rush of air over me as I pushed my way through an atmosphere that was suddenly thick and oppressive. I could smell the slightly harsh smell of hot blacktop tar. I saw the glint of silver reflecting the sunlight off of the bumper of an intercity bus. All of this I sensed in a fraction of a second as my mind and my body screamed one single command in unison.
My feet left the ground, my mouth moving soundlessly as I tried to warn her, to pull her back from an almost certain fate that I feared I would be too late to divert. Each instant was an agony of thought. Would I make it? Would she be safe? My shoulder collided with the small of her back and I saw her fly away from me. Her body twisted in mid air and she must have caught sight of the bus and then her eyes locked onto mine and in that moment I knew a lifetime of love and memories. I knew years of sitting together on the swings, trading music back and forth, debating politics, playing recreational sports, and attending parties together. Her green eyes, glazed with the beginning of tears told me what she had planned for the future, the intimacy, dating, marriage, children, growing old together, and welcoming a long rest together after a full life.
She hit the ground and broke eye contact. I felt a brief explosion of pain and my whole life went dark.
* * *
I was a shapeless idea, only moderately aware. I could feel time and space as it penetrated what little conscious thought had collected to form my identity. It was like sitting in the ocean with the waves rolling over you; you can feel how powerful, how endless it all is as it surges backward and forward without the slightest acknowledgement that you are there.
As it passed through me I was privy to its secrets. Past, present, and future were open to me as if the very words were written in the air before me , waiting to be snatched won and read. However, as I passed from being a mere thought into a collection of thoughts with inherited memories, the rudimentary conscience that had begun to coalesce also began rejecting the information from this sudden clairvoyance like a transplanted organ.
It would seem, from my perspective that the more human the mind, the consciousness, the soul; the more unwilling it is to accept this infinite form of information willingly. It is almost as if we reject the easy answers, find that an existence with ultimate knowledge is akin to cheating your way through life, or whatever comes before or after it.
The memories that my loosely combined thoughts had inherited began the process of solidification. I did not feel or think about these things, I observed it like a documentary; a documentary about a boy, barely a man, who made a sacrifice which time told him that no matter which way it flowed or what stream it eddied in, the same sacrifice would always have been made.
I was not anger; I was not fear, depression, happiness, or curiosity. I was a recording device, an ethereal DVD burner. Knowledge of the memories was used to group the loose thoughts into a tighter bundle which attracted their scattered siblings, pulling them in tightly as the memories glued everything together.
The concept of “I” began to form among the thoughts and memories. Suddenly it was a cold dark hallway, icy, slippery, oppressive, and my thoughts and memories fought their way through the cold and the ice down a tunnel as long as time itself, all the while fixed upon the flickering blaze and warmth of “I” that burned brightly somewhere up ahead.
Memories overlapped, attached, strengthened, combined the thoughts, arranged them in order, and bound them in place. With cohesion came thought and suddenly the memories were fluid, a lubricant between the thoughts that could be sifted through at will.
The concept of “I” became the acknowledgement of “I” as the flame of conscience engulfed my mind and memories, fusing them permanently as one and burning my existence into being. At first I perceived through sight alone. I did not feel, I did not hear, I did not taste, I could not smell.
I was not afraid.
It was dark and I was alone but memories of a warm hand, a moment’s glance, these kept me from being scared; they told me that everything would be okay. I began to feel something, a tingling sensation like unrealized potential that slowly crept over what I imagined to be my body, I had not looked down at myself yet.
I thought that I must make sure that I am complete, so I looked down and saw my body, the same one I had lived in for 18 years, but I couldn’t feel it. It didn’t move. I felt the tingles and they stayed with me for some time. I was wearing a black t-shirt, faded blue jeans, and a pair of black sneakers.
These were not the clothes that I had died in.
The dark world around me erupted with color so blindingly bright that I wished to close my eyes against it only to realize that I couldn’t. I stood blinded by my suddenly vibrant surroundings and my vision slowly sorted out the scene before me.
There was a road, an intersection, and a bus was pulled off to one side. I stared at the back of the bus because I knew the intercity buses did not stop on streets like this, they went right on through to the center of town. There was a new 2008 Honda Civic parked on the other side of the street, facing the wrong direction into traffic. There were a few more cars backed up in a place where there was no stop light.
I became aware of a buzzing in my ears, like the static on a television when the volume is turned down really low. I waited patiently, my vision had returned, maybe my hearing would return as well. I wanted to pass the time by taking in more of the scenery but I still could not command my body, which still tingled, to turn in place. There was a sudden clarity akin to when your ears pop at high altitudes and I could hear. It was mostly quiet.
Some sound, something I could not quite distinguish from the quiet, was pulling at my heart, it made the tingling of my body intensify, especially around my chest. Without meaning too, without willing it at all, I began turning on the spot, drawn around by the sound that I was suddenly afraid to find the source to.
What I saw was what I least expected. That soft, whispery sound like a secret breeze was the quiet moan escaping from my mother as she kneeled near something that lay in the road. My father sat next to her with his arm around her shoulders, they were both shaking.
I could see Angela’s hair through the gap between my parent’s heads and again, without willing it to happen, I was moving, this time towards Angela. The gravel that lay loosely on the road did not crunch under my footsteps, there was no sound as the legs of my jeans rubbed together while I walked. I didn’t feel the air that I moved through and it was only with the most miniscule amount of surprise that I realized somewhere in the back of my mind that I was not drawing breath.
I stood in front of Angela, only she wasn’t the same person I had known for eighteen years. She was also on her knees in the road and I thought this was foolish until I saw her face. It was blank. The usual light, the intelligence, the smile that all occupied her expressive eyes was gone. What were normally bright green and full of life, were now dull, almost grey and staring into some far off void.
There were bits of gravel from the road mixed in with her hair and I realized that she had a trickle of crimson running from her hairline, down the side of her angular face, and disappearing beneath the collar of her shirt. She had not even made an attempt to wipe it away, her hands lay at her sides, palms up, her wrists resting on the asphalt of the road.
She made no sound but I could see that she was almost imperceptibly quaking where she kneeled. It was like a shiver that started in the ground and worked its way to the tips of her hair. A small drop of water hung shivering from the end of her short pointy chin and as I watched I saw it fall and land with the tiniest of splashes on her lap. There were two tiny, yet constant streams of water that flowed down her face, delicate like her features and they would have almost gone unnoticed if they hadn’t been so unnatural. Angela was a very happy person, she didn’t normally cry. This sight, more than anything else, caused a feeling of tightness within me that had I been able to break down in tears myself, I would have done so without hesitation. What had hurt her so bad that I hadn’t been able to protect her from it?
I looked down, following the line of Angela’s body, across the twelve inches of asphalt and came to rest on what was, seemingly, the cause of everyone’s strange behavior. The tingling I felt grew so faint that I feared for a moment the complete loss of it. The loss of that small sensation would, I thought, cut me off from everything around me; I might lose focus and become a scattered grouping of thoughts and memories again.
Except for the blood which had already began to thicken where it lay on the road in the cracks in the black top, the oddly bent limbs, and the torn clothing, the body that lay before me might have been asleep. The face was serene, the eyes closed, the hair disheveled, the mouth touched with an amused smile that the world around it did not share.
There was something eerily familiar about the shadow under the jaw line, the pointed chin, and the nose with more bridge than most people desired. The clothes were familiar; the shoes, the hair, that hand, though it was cut, scraped, and full of grit, was familiar down to the unevenly chewed fingernails.
It was me! Oh god, it was me on the ground! I’m bleeding! I’m broken! I’m not breathing! Oh god, somebody!
But that didn’t make sense, how could I be in two places at once? My vision darkened as my mind panicked and ran in circles chasing an explanation that would not come. Bloody, broken, and with a serene, almost amused face. The blood! It was dark, darker than I had ever seen, almost black like the road and I nearly followed it. I nearly followed that blood down into the cracks in the black top, into the earth, into non-existence, as my mind closed on the only explanation it could find.
That was my body and I am dead.
I looked around wildly, silently begging for help that would not come, hoping to awaken from a nightmare that could not be real, even if that meant sitting through the awful heat of the graduation ceremony again.
This last thought coincided with my gaze one again falling upon Angela. I was immediately inundated with images and words; memories that, while they were the most important part of the puzzle, had been suppressed, reserved, waiting for just the right moment to spring forward and shine their baleful light on the darkness that surrounded me. And I knew, with absolute certainty, that this was no dream. I remembered the bus, the running leap, Angela’s face, and my sacrifice.
Once more I was the calm observer, the initial shock bleeding away quickly as I silently accepted what lay before me on the road. I could move on my own now and I kneeled in front of Angela, taking in the sight of her face. I was certain that whatever awaited me in the afterlife was sure to happen soon because of my acceptance of the truth. I kept expecting to see a bright light or hear a chorus of some kind. Without warning there was a flash of light and a blast of sound. Before I realized their source I locked my eyes on Angela. Before I left for wherever it was I thought I might be going, I wanted to give her some form of encouragement, some last word. I wanted to tell her everything would be alright. Most of all I wanted to tell her, once more, how much she meant to me, how much our time together had meant, how cruel it was that in the very beginning of our lives we would be separated, and how happy I was that she was still alive and would go on living.
With each passing moment this desire burned stronger. It turned into a need and then a necessity that could not be ignored as if the whole world would burn away if I didn’t say it.
“Angela! I love you!” The words burst forward as blinding molten pain crushed me and tore across my being. The tingling that, by this time, had become a barely noticed constant, was now a surge of sharp serrated agony. If I could have spoke or screamed I would have filled the void with a sound that would tear apart existence itself.
The pain subsided as quickly as it came and yet I felt damaged, injured, and weak. The world around me had darkened and the edges of my vision were black walls streaked with thin strips of light. I did not understand what had happened. I looked once again on Angela and, to my great surprise, her face was not blank anymore. Her face was screwed up in an anguish that I had never experienced, her arms were wrapped around her stomach and clenched tightly, and the small streams that had once flowed over her cheeks were now replaced with fast flowing rivers.
She was visibly shaking now; quaking on the spot and I wondered why nobody was helping her, comforting her. My father was stony faced with tears streaking down into his well-maintained beard. He was staring at the ground beneath his knees with his arm around my mother’s shoulders. My mother’s face was in her hands, the moaning from earlier was replaced by quieter sobs.
I turned as the light and sound from earlier grew closer. I had resolved to face whatever was coming head-on, but it was not a bright white light or a chorus of voices raised in welcome that greeted me. It was an ambulance, sirens blaring, followed closely by a police car.
I wondered, for the first time, why they hadn’t been there sooner. The light tingling became an angry buzz as I thought about how late they must be, too late to save me at least. They were here to collect my body, to ask questions. They were here to clean up what remained of my life.
My father stood up, his face still set and unmoving. He walked slowly toward the pair of paramedics that were pulling a stretcher down off of the ambulance. The metal of the stretcher clanking against the back of the ambulance was harsh in this atmosphere, like an invasion of privacy, and my father stopped, blinking as he looked down at the stretcher before him.
The officer that had come along walked around the side of the ambulance and surveyed the scene. My father looked up again as the paramedics began to pass him with the stretcher.
“We’re sorry, sir, there was a…” but what he was sorry about was quickly cut off as my father’s fist smashed into the side of the closest man’s head. The man, caught completely unaware, fell sideways into the stretcher, toppling it and pinning the other paramedic beneath it.
“What the fuck are you doing? Jesus Christ, I’m bleeding!”
My father took another step forward before he was wrestled to the ground by the police officer.
“Get off me! Get off! Where the hell were they?! You sons of bitches! Where were you?! Why didn’t you save my son?” And as suddenly as the blinding rage that had overtaken him had come, it left, and my father lay on the hot asphalt sobbing like my mother.
“Like I was saying,” the man pushed a roll of gauze against the side of his head, matting his blonde hair with blood, “there was an accident involving four vehicles down the road the way we came. It required both of the local ambulances.” The man’s voice softened as he realized that his justification wasn’t reaching anybody, “that’s what took us so long,” he trailed off into silence.
The officer sat my father up and turned to the man he had struck, “Well Barry, gonna press charges?” The question hung in the air like a strangling mist. The ultimate insult to a loving father would have been his arrest at the scene of his son’s death.
“No Rick, forget it,” Barry replied quietly as he helped the other paramedic lift the upended stretcher, “It’s not Claude’s fault,” Barry continued, “I can’t say I understand how he feels, I’ve never had any children, but I’ve seen enough in this job…I’ve seen enough.”
Barry’s jaw was clenched tightly and a drop of red shivered at the end of a strand of hair.
“You know him?” Rick asked, looking puzzled.
“He’s a good friend of mine,” Barry turned his face away from my father, “took him and Lauren over there to the hospital eighteen years ago, back before we had the new ambulances.”
Barry nodded toward Angela, “Took her parents as well on the same exact night,” Barry looked at the gauze pad in his hand and tossed it to the ground, “This is the worst thing that could have happened today Rick.”
“What about the accident down the road?” Rick asked.
“Nobody died, Rick. Two broken bones and some lacerations. The cars are totaled which leads me to believe that you might want to talk to the driver of that bus over there.”
“Why’s that?”
“Well, first off, the cars down the road were all hit from behind at a red light.”
I looked at the bus parked along the side of the road. It was an older model, dirty and scuffed from years of use. I hadn’t noticed until now, the long silver scratches on the side facing me. As I traced their journey from the front of the bus rearward, I could almost hear the shriek of metal on metal.
“That bus looks a little beat up. Guess I should go talk to the driver,” Rick slouched off in the direction of the bus, disappearing around the right side before Barry and the other paramedic made their way to my body.
I moved toward the bus, a morbid curiosity about the circumstances surrounding my ejection from life, driving me forward.
“You can’t take him.” The voice was a shock, like diving into icy water and I whipped around to see Angela looking up at Barry while the other paramedic, looking embarrassed and out place, stood a few feet away.
“Listen, sweetheart,” Barry began as he slowly kneeled down.
“No! You can’t take him!” She was getting louder with each word and I saw my mother look up from where she was kneeling.
I moved beside my body, standing just outside the space that stood between Angela and Barry.
“Angela, right? I know your parents. Listen, we can’t leave his body here,” Angela hiccoughed loudly at this but Barry kept speaking, “I’m sorry sweety but he’s gone.”
Angela looked Barry straight in the face and behind the tears I thought I could see a flicker of the life that normally burned so brightly there.
‘You’re wrong. He’s still here.” She stated without hesitation. I became excited, wondering how she knew.
Barry looked nonplused; he had, in the long course of being an EMT, probably dealt with hundreds of people that were angry or distressed over the injury of death of a loved one. He started into what seemed like a tired and well rehearsed explanation.
“You’re right of course. He is still here, as long as you remember him the way he was, he’ll always be…” Barry trailed off as Angela began shaking her head.
“No! Don’t you feed me any of that. Lucas is still here, he’s still alive! You can’t put him in that bag!”
At her words I saw the black bag that was now sitting atop the stretcher. It reaffirmed the reality of the situation for me. There was no going back. Angela, while I loved her for her unwavering position, was chasing a dream. There was no way she could know I was here. Nobody else had so much as glanced in my direction. There was also no way that I could still be alive, my body had not drawn breathe for awhile now, and the paramedics, being forced to deal with my father and Angela, still hadn’t check for so much as a pulse.
“But,” Barry plowed forward, “we have to Angela, we can’t leave his body there!”
“No!” Angela was on her feet as she screamed the word, “You don’t understand. You’re not listening to me! He’s not dead! He’s still here! I saw him,” surprised, Barry and I stood stunned in place, “He said something, I didn’t hear it but he was there in that stupid black t-shirt and those ratty jeans. So you can’t put him in that bag! You can’t! I won’t be able to hear him…he won’t be able to breathe!”
She looked ready to continue when my mother, quiet and graceful, stood in front of her. I stepped to the side in order to see them both clearly.
“Mrs. McMurdy?” Angela looked up at my mother’s face, which, while tear streaked, was caring; gently arranged with a soothing, almost serene look.
“He’s still here, don’t let them take him,” Angela begged in a barely audible whisper. My mother shook her head and I knew what she would say before she spoke.
“He’s gone Angie, he’s gone.”
Angela stood unmoving, unblinking as if she had been caught in a spotlight. As her face began to melt from indignation to overwhelming shock and then back to grief, my Mother stepped forward, wrapped her arms around Angela, and slowly lowered her to the ground. The y remained that way, my mother quiet and Angela, grief stricken and sobbing, until the paramedics and the coroner, who had arrived ten minutes later, pronounced me dead and began the process of clearing my last few moments of life from the road.
***
My parents drove Angela home. My father took the driver seat and my mother sat in the back with Angela curled up next to her. My mother absently stroked her hair. Angela stared straight ahead. My father was one with the car. His movements and gestures were mechanical, no energy was wasted. He didn’t even complain about the other drivers, a favorite past time of his. I occupied the passenger’s seat. I paid no attention to the seatbelt; I didn’t feel the pull of the car turning or the gentle push of my father’s well executed acceleration.
The scenery passed by quickly and I only barely registered the groups of people scattered in front yards, back yards, and parking lots. They were celebrating the beginning of a new chapter of their lives. My book was already finished.
We slowly rolled by my house on the way to Angela’s. The mood here was decidedly different. People were sitting on chairs, on the ground, and on the steps. It looked like somebody had commanded them to sit and they had all obeyed on the spot. This was no party. They weren’t celebrating from where they sat with the shock and distress that stretched from face to face. This was a vigil, a few hours of devastated mourning. This was a support group without a leader.
Somebody had obviously called ahead, probably hoping to delay the arrival of too many people; hoping to lessen the impact on a day set aside for joyous, long-overdue celebration. I thought about how this might have gone if I hadn’t died. Angela and I would have entered the yard from the back and slipped in among the partiers, pretending as if we’d been there the whole time. The music and the laughter would rise in equal measure to the revolutions of the clock. Cell phones would be lost, broken, and dropped in the toilet, only to be replaced by proud parents temporarily blinded by the achievements of their children. Gifts would be exchanged among friends and squirreled away to be opened tomorrow. Calls of thanks, from brand new phones, would crisscross the town. Then people would wake up the next day and go about the process of getting on with their lives; wherever it might take them.
I felt as close to a burning shame as the tingling could recreate. These people, my friends, would not remember this as the day that they had graduated. My heroics would shadow this day on the calendar of their memories. Their lives were not destroyed; their time wasn’t cut overwhelmingly short. But this might alter their path. They might fail a college entrance exam or lose a summer job because of the loss that, for all appearances, had gripped every person who had the misfortune to show up.
Others would learn the truth later in the evening, still others would not find out until the funeral announcement went around. These people would be affected, but never to the extent of the people at this party. It was a matter of comparing a bruise with a deep laceration.
***
They sat around the living room in silence as the daylight slowly passed on into dusk. The radio, forgotten in the background, was playing something from the early 90s, but nobody listened. I heard the music but felt disconnected from it, as if the energy used to recall the artist’s name would be a waste. The cherry coffee table still had bits of Angela’s scrapbooking material on it, and this is what I focused on. She had been working on a graduation page. Words like “congrats!” and “off to college” littered the table on neatly cut out squares of paper. The borders were carefully arranged and ready to accept pictures that would never be taken.
My father sat in an old wooden rocking chair; the chair rocked slowly and silently back and forth with an almost imperceptible motion. Angela’s father, on the other side of the room, occupied a faded leather recliner with canvas threads showing through on the arms where Angela and I, much younger back then, had climbed and wrestled with him.
The ‘tink’ of ice melting was the only indication that someone had brought drinks into the room. My mother held hers but otherwise paid no attention to it. The front on every other glass was undisturbed; rings of condensation on the table were a testimony to how long everyone sat in silence.
My mother and Angela’s mother shared the love seat. Angela sat on the floor, picking at the fibers of the sea green carpet. I’ve heard it said that silence in a situation such as this is oppressive, weighing down on the lungs and the heart, making it hard to breathe until, panic stricken, you find some excuse to leave. This silence was not the same. There were no unasked questions, no awkward pronouncements; there was only flat, dry, tired quiet. Words had not stopped on the tip of the tongue; they had died, dried up, and blown away. There no tears, there was only an intense weariness that denied the energy necessary to squeeze them out.
I was not alive, but I was there, sentient and observant; restless with all the quiet and unmoving air. I paced the room, careful to step around objects and everybody there, without really thinking about why I was doing it. My steps made no noise and I didn’t cause the scrapbooking paper to rustle as I walked by.
***
The night wore on, the phone rang and there were knocks at the door. Both went unanswered. I don’t know whether everyone present sat in deep thought or if they simply existed for a few hours like caricatures of life cut from stone. Around vie in the morning my mother nodded off and slumped against Megan, Angela’s mother. My father’s eyes focused for the first time in hours, and he blinked in the pre-light.
“I better take her home.” My father’s voice was barely a whisper but it had the effect of a bullhorn. Save for my mother, everyone looked at my father as if they hadn’t even known he was there. Frank, Angela’s father, nodded toward my father, his prominent bear touching his chest for a moment and casting the lines of his face in deeper shadow.
My father helped his wife to her feet and turned toward the door. I didn’t want to stay in that room with the unbearable silence. I followed my father out onto the front porch and into the cool morning air. Flowers had already bloomed in the garden under the front windows and on this morning they were an explosion of color. Angela never paid much attention to what she and her mother were planting. She usually took a handful of seed and scattered it with the end result being a mix and colors and flower types.
My mother and father began walking across the sloping lawn toward our house. I followed slowly behind, taking in the sights and sounds of an early spring day. As we approached the boundary line between our property and our neighbor’s property I began to hear something that seemed out of place. It was barely audible, a whisper lost in the wind. I paid it barely a moment’s notice as I kept pace, unseen, behind my father. The farther from Angela’s house we got, the more noticeable, and the less ignorable, the sound became until was a voice, clearly speaking as if the person was talking directly into my ear.
“Don’t go…”
I whipped around, barley noticing that I didn’t feel the normal force of turning so quickly. The voice had been clear and familiar and for a split second I thought that everything had been a dream. However, as I turned on the spot I realized that nobody was there. Slightly confused, I turned to find that my parents were no half again closer to the door of our house. I made to follow them again.
“Lucas, don’t go, don’t leave me behind.”
I froze. The tingling sensation had become weaker and the voice had sounded strained, almost weak with pleading. I knew the voice, but found it hard to believe.
It was Angela, calling to me. I couldn’t see her outside but she had been un-muffled, crystal clear. Had she followed u out? Did she know I was here? Sure she claimed to have seen me, but she was emotionally distressed at the time.
I waited a few minutes to see if she would appear, smiling and open-armed, out of the crisp morning air. When she failed to appear, laughing and telling me it was all a joke, I decided that I was hearing things. Besides, what did I know about my current situation, maybe people who died heard voices all of the time.
I made it half way to the door of the house before my vision darkened at the edges and I began to lose even more of the tingling sensation.
“Please! Don’t go!”
This time the words struck me like a physical blow to my consciousness and I instinctively took a step back. The moment I did the world snapped back into focus and sensation flooded the parts of me that I will loosely refer to as limbs. I’ll point out that I imagine myself as whole and complete; two arms and two legs. But I’ve never figured out if this is only a projection my mind uses in order to capture and encapsulate my consciousness and memories. Perhaps like a glass holding water, my perceived body keeps my mind from spreading and evaporation.
I cautiously tested the boundary I perceived by stepping over it. The further forward I moved, the darker my vision became and the less I felt and heard until her voice came back. I stepped back, utterly perplexed. My parents were in the house already; the door was closed and probably locked.
I had graduated, I had saved the person I loved from death, I had died, and now I was along outside in the slowly brightening morning. I was hearing voices, but not just any voice, the voice of a young woman who was more important to me than my own life. And she was inside of her house. I closed my eyes, thinking of Angela as we had been. I wanted to open my eyes and be seated at graduation again. When I did open them, I was surprised. I was not at graduation, but I was in Angela’s house again, standing next to her bed.
She was curled into a tight ball underneath the same maroon comforter I had seen for the last five years. She had been crying again, the streaks down her face and the dampness on her pillow were evidence of that. But now she seemed a little more relaxed and she slept peacefully. I didn’t feel tired, I didn’t feel awake. I existed in a perpetual state of awareness and I wondered, for the first time, how long it would be that I was like this.
I stood next to her bed until she woke with a start at two in the afternoon.
A Single Pedal of Red
Soft red pedals
Like the deepest blush
Languish in the sunlight.
The light
Direct and revealing
Traces the gentle purple veins
And the rich
Forest green stem.
She waves slowly in the wind
That whispers through the grass
Dancing in place.
The field stretches on
Until the emerald green
Blurs into a blanket
That lays under a delicate blue sky.
The field is alive
Rippling with the wind
And the shadow of transient clouds
She stands in the middle
The only color that expresses the suns warmth.
A single seed
Dropped from an uncaring hand.
The bees play with her for a time
But they do not stay.
There are fields with more color.
So she remains
With the wind
The sun
And the never ending grass.
Like the deepest blush
Languish in the sunlight.
The light
Direct and revealing
Traces the gentle purple veins
And the rich
Forest green stem.
She waves slowly in the wind
That whispers through the grass
Dancing in place.
The field stretches on
Until the emerald green
Blurs into a blanket
That lays under a delicate blue sky.
The field is alive
Rippling with the wind
And the shadow of transient clouds
She stands in the middle
The only color that expresses the suns warmth.
A single seed
Dropped from an uncaring hand.
The bees play with her for a time
But they do not stay.
There are fields with more color.
So she remains
With the wind
The sun
And the never ending grass.
Storm Chaser
I chased a storm
Lined with bluest sky,
Fully aware of the danger.
Foolish
Some might call it,
Exciting;
The better word.
I’d rather stand
Under darkest clouds
Anticipating rain,
Than settle for a boring life
Protected
And inane.
But I have seen a flash of lightning
That sets the hearts of men alight,
Felt the wind
As warm carress,
Awaited
Fires burning bright,
Heard the thunder:
Joyous,
Loud.
I wish to stay
Beneath the clouds.
Lined with bluest sky,
Fully aware of the danger.
Foolish
Some might call it,
Exciting;
The better word.
I’d rather stand
Under darkest clouds
Anticipating rain,
Than settle for a boring life
Protected
And inane.
But I have seen a flash of lightning
That sets the hearts of men alight,
Felt the wind
As warm carress,
Awaited
Fires burning bright,
Heard the thunder:
Joyous,
Loud.
I wish to stay
Beneath the clouds.
The Man and the Lady in the Forest
I. Walls and Doors
He stood before a red brick wall
That blocked the only path he saw,
The road went on beneath the brick
And to this route he had to stick.
He laid a gentle hand upon
With eyes closed wished the mortar gone.
A voice from trees on other side,
Rebuked him for what he had tried,
“Caresses will not break this stone
That’s mixed with iron, cast on bone.
A hammer you will need today,
Aggressive acts to break the clay.”
The man, he nodded to the wall,
“It’s not my wish that this should fall.
Destroy something so nicely wrought?
To keep it tall, I would have fought.
Caresses from the strongest hands,
Removing bricks in smaller bands,
A doorway I can make right here.
The smallest change, you need not fear.
I’ll leave the wall ornately dressed
So passersby will be impressed.”
The voice among the trees just sighs
“I’m done with those who tell me lies.
You say I do not have to fear,
Perhaps your sight is not so clear.
A door is still a hole you see,
Fraught with vulnerability.
And though I let you through today,
What else might cross, and what may stay?
You’re wrong, there’s danger clearly there,
When building doors, one must take care.”
To which this was the man’s reply,
“You’ve never seen one such as I.
I will not break your ramparts down
And leave them fallen on the ground,
Or leave my window to your space
Unprotected in this place.
For if I open up a hole
And pass on through, which is my goal,
I will not leave this wall behind,
In my strong hands, support you’ll find.
I’ll mend the cracks and keep you fair,
If you grant me passage there.
The voice from trees came once again,
“Here is the thing about you men:
Their pretty words are often lies,
But I sense truth behind your eyes.
I give you leave to enter here,
I hope the path you find is clear.”
II. All She Can Do is Smile
Having just pushed the wall aside
The man strode forward, peered inside
"Think I'm going to love it here."
The lady's voice came loud and clear,
"You did not know what you would find
And yet you spoke with words so kind
Though I believe in what you siad
I must admit the slightest dread
For there's a hole in my brick wall
That I cannot repair at all
And through it came something so sweet
That treads my ground with lovers feet.
He will not leave, so I've been told,
But who knows what the future holds
And should you take your leave of me
How can I know who I should be?"
"My lady, fairly do you speak,
The love of men does sometimes peak,
And they must wander on their way
While tearful lovers beg them stay.
This type of man I do despise,
Who looks elsewhere with lusty eyes
And never knows just what he has,
This kind of man I often pass."
The voice from trees did listen well,
Bound to his words, as if by spell.
A smile was upon the air,
"It's for those men I do not care,
But come, you've only answered half."
His voice rang out the clearest laugh,
"My lady doesn't miss too much,
Knows more than she lets on, my hunch.
Who will you be should I away,
The question that you posed this day.
Fir I have chiseled through your wall
And promised not to let it fall,
But who can know what fate does hold?
Perhaps one day my love shall fold,
Or you may find you need me not,
Dispel me from your forest lot.
But should we let the fear of loss
Dissuade us from the path we cross?
We do not know what chance we'd miss,
Perhaps in rain we'll dance and kiss.
A house we may yet build right here
With mason being my career
For I have shaped a pretty door
In your brick wall that's whole no more.
It seems I wax forever on,
Your question from my mind has gone."
It was the lady's turn to laugh,
"You've answered barely more than half,
But your clear voice does render calm
Upon my nerves, a soothing balm.
You have convinced me that its true
I've never met a man like you
Who stops, and looks, and cares, and thinks,
And deeply from this life he drinks.
Never content in shallow pools
To splash about with other fools.
He speaks his mind at every turn;
I never thought for him I'd yearn.
But still my question does remain,
And this would be our topic main.
Now listen close and answer clear,
I bend my question to your ear:
If fate should say this does not work,
How do I deal with things that lurk
Outside my wall that you have broke,
Who should I be, and do not joke."
A thoughtful silence fell on him,
His answer coming not from whim.
He cleared his throat and stood up straight.
The lady, silent, felt the weight,
The gravity of what he'd say
Was palpable on this clear day.
A smile spread across his face
And knowing warmth came to that place,
But "You" was all he said at first
With smile that was fit to burst
Into a laugh that signaled love
And would have scattered clouds above.
Instead of laugh, an answer grew
That shaped the course between these two.
"My lady, I do promise here
There's nothing you should have to fear.
With me you think that you have changed,
I swear I have not rearranged
The type of person that you are,
I've simply traveled very far
And found the person you could be
Without your walls restraining me.
Don't doubt me when I say you've found
A part of you; the most profound.
The part that lets you freely love
All things below that sky above.
And yes, I may have helped you there,
But did not pull this from the air
For in you it has always been,
Just locked away; a dreadful sin
Because you have so much to give
To learn, to teach, a life to live.
You ask me, what it is you'll be,
I'll tell you plainly what I see:
You'll be the person that you are
With strength and love no man can mar.
Though that's my answer, this is true,
I never plan on leaving you.
I love the trees that bring your voice
And its for this I do rejoice.
To hear you speak makes my heart light,
The thought of you and I feels right."
The man, he smiled in the shade,
Enjoyed the lady's forest glade.
The lady, she did smile too,
For what else could she hope to do.
III. Proposal Beneath the Leaves
As often happens, time did pass,
Yet still that man lies in the grass
Amongst the trees he dearly loves
Beneath the sky and nesting doves.
The wall he broke so long ago
Has weathered well without a foe.
The lady in the trees is near
Observing one she holds so dear.
The thought had never crossed her mind
That she had here what’s hard to find.
But now she paid the thought some heed,
And found, fulfilled, a complex need.
For here was one who broke her wall
And stayed to love her, roots and all.
He gives, and loves, and sings with glee,
And waits beneath the tallest tree
To speak with her about the world
And how the future may unfurl.
He’s strong, and kind, and handsome too,
“My lady, do I bother you?”
The man had sensed her waiting there
Watching him lay without a care
Upon the grassy spot he chose
For gentle afternoon’s repose.
“If nuisance I have proved to be
I beg you please to pardon me.”
“Dear, I have suffered no offense,
No need to act like one so tense.
I simply wished to see you lay,
Enjoying, fully, this fine day.
Perhaps in me there was a need
For from your eyes my soul does feed,
And as I look, my heart, it swells
Filled with the sound of chiming bells.
Your presence here, it draws me close
When peacefully you lightly doze.
More often than I thought would be,
I find I need you here with me.
‘Want’ is no longer the right word,
Of you I simply can’t be cured.
And though I fought you from the start,
You’ve found your way into my heart.”
There in the forest, with the birds,
The lady spoke no truer words.
The man, he smiled gratefully
With eyes she thought she’d never see.
Both deep and warm, they loved her most,
That day he looked upon his host.
My lady, you must never say
That you are sending me away,
For, as I’ve spent this time with you
These things I’ve noticed to be true.
You’re passionate at every turn,
You love your life and always yearn
To learn that which you do not know
And lean into the storms that blow.
No thing has ever kept you down
More apt to smile, less to frown.
You laugh more freely than the rest,
And forgive the most annoying pest.
You’re kind, and wise, and special too.
I only wish I could see you.”
The man, he closed his eyes and said,
“My lady, it will make me red,
But I must ask you this my love:
Will you come down from trees above,
For how you look I know no more
Than what lies on the farthest shore.”
The lady, knowing of true love
Appeared not from the trees above
But simply sprung out of the air
As if she’d always been right there.
No poet living can be found,
To note her as she touched the ground,
The sight of her was great to see
And brought the man down to his knee
To see the beauty of his love
Who came to him from up above.
And this is what he said, its true:
I cannot be apart from you.”
He touched her hand, a warm embrace
Then looked into her gorgeous face.
Her eyes were deep with love like his
And what the man said next was this:
“Dear, this is all I want to say,
We will remember this fine day,
As one where love was spoken true
From you to me and me to you.
What future will we, together see,
Megan…will you marry me?
He stood before a red brick wall
That blocked the only path he saw,
The road went on beneath the brick
And to this route he had to stick.
He laid a gentle hand upon
With eyes closed wished the mortar gone.
A voice from trees on other side,
Rebuked him for what he had tried,
“Caresses will not break this stone
That’s mixed with iron, cast on bone.
A hammer you will need today,
Aggressive acts to break the clay.”
The man, he nodded to the wall,
“It’s not my wish that this should fall.
Destroy something so nicely wrought?
To keep it tall, I would have fought.
Caresses from the strongest hands,
Removing bricks in smaller bands,
A doorway I can make right here.
The smallest change, you need not fear.
I’ll leave the wall ornately dressed
So passersby will be impressed.”
The voice among the trees just sighs
“I’m done with those who tell me lies.
You say I do not have to fear,
Perhaps your sight is not so clear.
A door is still a hole you see,
Fraught with vulnerability.
And though I let you through today,
What else might cross, and what may stay?
You’re wrong, there’s danger clearly there,
When building doors, one must take care.”
To which this was the man’s reply,
“You’ve never seen one such as I.
I will not break your ramparts down
And leave them fallen on the ground,
Or leave my window to your space
Unprotected in this place.
For if I open up a hole
And pass on through, which is my goal,
I will not leave this wall behind,
In my strong hands, support you’ll find.
I’ll mend the cracks and keep you fair,
If you grant me passage there.
The voice from trees came once again,
“Here is the thing about you men:
Their pretty words are often lies,
But I sense truth behind your eyes.
I give you leave to enter here,
I hope the path you find is clear.”
II. All She Can Do is Smile
Having just pushed the wall aside
The man strode forward, peered inside
"Think I'm going to love it here."
The lady's voice came loud and clear,
"You did not know what you would find
And yet you spoke with words so kind
Though I believe in what you siad
I must admit the slightest dread
For there's a hole in my brick wall
That I cannot repair at all
And through it came something so sweet
That treads my ground with lovers feet.
He will not leave, so I've been told,
But who knows what the future holds
And should you take your leave of me
How can I know who I should be?"
"My lady, fairly do you speak,
The love of men does sometimes peak,
And they must wander on their way
While tearful lovers beg them stay.
This type of man I do despise,
Who looks elsewhere with lusty eyes
And never knows just what he has,
This kind of man I often pass."
The voice from trees did listen well,
Bound to his words, as if by spell.
A smile was upon the air,
"It's for those men I do not care,
But come, you've only answered half."
His voice rang out the clearest laugh,
"My lady doesn't miss too much,
Knows more than she lets on, my hunch.
Who will you be should I away,
The question that you posed this day.
Fir I have chiseled through your wall
And promised not to let it fall,
But who can know what fate does hold?
Perhaps one day my love shall fold,
Or you may find you need me not,
Dispel me from your forest lot.
But should we let the fear of loss
Dissuade us from the path we cross?
We do not know what chance we'd miss,
Perhaps in rain we'll dance and kiss.
A house we may yet build right here
With mason being my career
For I have shaped a pretty door
In your brick wall that's whole no more.
It seems I wax forever on,
Your question from my mind has gone."
It was the lady's turn to laugh,
"You've answered barely more than half,
But your clear voice does render calm
Upon my nerves, a soothing balm.
You have convinced me that its true
I've never met a man like you
Who stops, and looks, and cares, and thinks,
And deeply from this life he drinks.
Never content in shallow pools
To splash about with other fools.
He speaks his mind at every turn;
I never thought for him I'd yearn.
But still my question does remain,
And this would be our topic main.
Now listen close and answer clear,
I bend my question to your ear:
If fate should say this does not work,
How do I deal with things that lurk
Outside my wall that you have broke,
Who should I be, and do not joke."
A thoughtful silence fell on him,
His answer coming not from whim.
He cleared his throat and stood up straight.
The lady, silent, felt the weight,
The gravity of what he'd say
Was palpable on this clear day.
A smile spread across his face
And knowing warmth came to that place,
But "You" was all he said at first
With smile that was fit to burst
Into a laugh that signaled love
And would have scattered clouds above.
Instead of laugh, an answer grew
That shaped the course between these two.
"My lady, I do promise here
There's nothing you should have to fear.
With me you think that you have changed,
I swear I have not rearranged
The type of person that you are,
I've simply traveled very far
And found the person you could be
Without your walls restraining me.
Don't doubt me when I say you've found
A part of you; the most profound.
The part that lets you freely love
All things below that sky above.
And yes, I may have helped you there,
But did not pull this from the air
For in you it has always been,
Just locked away; a dreadful sin
Because you have so much to give
To learn, to teach, a life to live.
You ask me, what it is you'll be,
I'll tell you plainly what I see:
You'll be the person that you are
With strength and love no man can mar.
Though that's my answer, this is true,
I never plan on leaving you.
I love the trees that bring your voice
And its for this I do rejoice.
To hear you speak makes my heart light,
The thought of you and I feels right."
The man, he smiled in the shade,
Enjoyed the lady's forest glade.
The lady, she did smile too,
For what else could she hope to do.
III. Proposal Beneath the Leaves
As often happens, time did pass,
Yet still that man lies in the grass
Amongst the trees he dearly loves
Beneath the sky and nesting doves.
The wall he broke so long ago
Has weathered well without a foe.
The lady in the trees is near
Observing one she holds so dear.
The thought had never crossed her mind
That she had here what’s hard to find.
But now she paid the thought some heed,
And found, fulfilled, a complex need.
For here was one who broke her wall
And stayed to love her, roots and all.
He gives, and loves, and sings with glee,
And waits beneath the tallest tree
To speak with her about the world
And how the future may unfurl.
He’s strong, and kind, and handsome too,
“My lady, do I bother you?”
The man had sensed her waiting there
Watching him lay without a care
Upon the grassy spot he chose
For gentle afternoon’s repose.
“If nuisance I have proved to be
I beg you please to pardon me.”
“Dear, I have suffered no offense,
No need to act like one so tense.
I simply wished to see you lay,
Enjoying, fully, this fine day.
Perhaps in me there was a need
For from your eyes my soul does feed,
And as I look, my heart, it swells
Filled with the sound of chiming bells.
Your presence here, it draws me close
When peacefully you lightly doze.
More often than I thought would be,
I find I need you here with me.
‘Want’ is no longer the right word,
Of you I simply can’t be cured.
And though I fought you from the start,
You’ve found your way into my heart.”
There in the forest, with the birds,
The lady spoke no truer words.
The man, he smiled gratefully
With eyes she thought she’d never see.
Both deep and warm, they loved her most,
That day he looked upon his host.
My lady, you must never say
That you are sending me away,
For, as I’ve spent this time with you
These things I’ve noticed to be true.
You’re passionate at every turn,
You love your life and always yearn
To learn that which you do not know
And lean into the storms that blow.
No thing has ever kept you down
More apt to smile, less to frown.
You laugh more freely than the rest,
And forgive the most annoying pest.
You’re kind, and wise, and special too.
I only wish I could see you.”
The man, he closed his eyes and said,
“My lady, it will make me red,
But I must ask you this my love:
Will you come down from trees above,
For how you look I know no more
Than what lies on the farthest shore.”
The lady, knowing of true love
Appeared not from the trees above
But simply sprung out of the air
As if she’d always been right there.
No poet living can be found,
To note her as she touched the ground,
The sight of her was great to see
And brought the man down to his knee
To see the beauty of his love
Who came to him from up above.
And this is what he said, its true:
I cannot be apart from you.”
He touched her hand, a warm embrace
Then looked into her gorgeous face.
Her eyes were deep with love like his
And what the man said next was this:
“Dear, this is all I want to say,
We will remember this fine day,
As one where love was spoken true
From you to me and me to you.
What future will we, together see,
Megan…will you marry me?
To Fly a Star Destroyer Through
Let's face it, most of us hardcore Star Wars fans saw previews for this movie and thought to themselves "I'm going to hate it, but I have to see it." I went into the theater completely prepared for the ruination of story continuity, cheesy, lilting visuals, a plot with holes you could fly a star destroyer through, and voice actors who were tired of playing their roles. What I got, while not mind-blowing or earth-shattering, was an entertaining movie with lots of gritty lightsaber combat (like in the original trilogy) and a better look at the camaraderie that formed between the Jedi and the Clone troopers before they were ordered to kill them. The visual design was top notch, the voice actors put some umph behind the characters and the story, however improbably, held together enough to finish the movie. Strangely, the biggest complaint I have is the lack of the opening fanfare and scrolling text, which I think was removed because it is, ultimately, a kids film.
A Great Way to Ruin October
October has always been my favorite month. I love horror movies, thrillers, and slashers. I love the general feeling of being creeped out or wondering if something is standing right behind the couch. It was with this in mind that a friend and I decided to see this movie Halloween night. Unfortunately, the scariest thing about it was the price for the ticket to get in. The story is a thoughtless, cliched, mess with no real redeemable qualities. The characters are flat cardboard cutouts of traditional stereotypes that feel like they're just going through the motions of making a movie. Most of the story elements and "surprises" are so transparent as to be laughable, and in fact, most of the people in the theater laughed out loud and mocked the characters and their plight through the second half of the movie. If The Happening had not been so bad, this movie would rank as the worst movie of all time. It's bad...
Parlor Tricks, Like Muggles Do
Anyone who knows me, or has bothered to ask about my taste in books, will know that I have a guilty pleasure in the form of the Harry Potter series. I had decided, back when they first became popular, that anything reaching that level of feverish popularity, read by that many people, could not, in any way, be good. Then the mother of a friend forced me, quite literally (by shoving the book into my bag one day) to read the first one. I grudgingly opened the first book and, like magic, I was hooked. Now, don't misunderstand me, I may be a huge fan, but I was never one to participate in any of the crazy line camping. I did anticipate the release of each book after the third (since that was when I started reading them), but, come on, I wasn't an addict.
Now we come to the movies, which have been a fantastic disappointment on the whole. The only movies in the series that can actually be called good are the first and second. And by good, I mean passable. And by passable, I mean I watched them all the way through. The third movie turned me off with the change of Dumbledore (necessary as it was, they didn't choose somebody with even an iota of the talent the earlier actor had played) and a werewolf that seemed nothing like the one in the book (or even the standard idea of werewolves as being either big and powerful or more wolfish/dog-like in appearance). In the fourth movie, Dumbledore nearly throttles Harry after his name comes out of the Goblet of Fire, further showing how little the actor had read the books, which, upon searching, was more true than I had guessed. I found out that he hadn't studied the character at all, he played Dumbledore how he wanted to, and not how the character is actually written. A dangerous, abusive, angry Dumbledore goes against almost every encounter readers have with him in the books.
I can't remember what turned me off about the Order of the Phoenix, but that's a bad sign in and of itself.
Now we come to the most recent movie, Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. I had high hopes; the movie was taking a turn down a darker, more adult road. I'm a sucker for romance and the romance that blooms between Harry and Ginny was one of my favorites because you almost want it to happen from the end of book 2 onward. The movie takes this bit of plot, rewrites it with an inky scalpel and some frayed duct tape, and then stuffs the whole thing into the room of requirement (room of hidden things edition). Ron and Hermione's romance bit was done well enough, which is perhaps the only thing I can give the movie credit for.
One of the overarching problems that I have had with most of the movies is the lack of special effects. Yes, they've shown some things flying, they've shown us dragons, people on broomsticks, and the occasional magical malady or two, but the real lack of ambient magic in the movies makes the scenes seem like hollowed out versions of their distant book cousins. For a book series that has grossed as much money as this one, and for all the merchandising and movie sales, it seems odd to me that there would be no money in the budget for bigger, better, more vibrant, and more visible magic in what is supposed to be a magical world. Half-Blood Prince was no exception.
Let's talk about things that they just plain left out. The pivotal, action packed last scene, where the death eaters are fighting DA and Order of the Phoenix members, Snape whisking Malfoy away from the astronomy tower and out onto the grounds while the battle rages around them, Harry tearing past everybody in his efforts to reach and inflict serious harm upon Snape's person, was awesome...IN THE BOOK!
The movie, incomprehensibly, just leaves it all out. The death eaters show up, they do their business, and then they run away without so much as a single expelliarmus from any member of any army or order. Harry gives chase through empty halls, he gets thrown around, Snape says a few things, and the whole thing is over. Not only did this lackluster scene fail to communicate the desperate urge of Harry's to seek revenge on the man who killed his mentor, it was not climactic, it was not exciting, it was bland, it was the vanilla ice cream of magical climaxes. Then as if to underline the lack of a battle and the flippant mistreatment that his character received from movie 3 on, they don't even have a funeral for Dumbledore. One of the most important characters in the series with one of the most gut wrenching moments in the book and all we see is the school working together to make the dark mark disappear.
What about Grawp comforting Hagrid? Harry telling Ginny that they can't be together? Hermione crying openly on Ron's shoulder? The merpeople singing their song of tribute? The respect of the centaurs shown from just inside the Forbidden Forest? The white tomb where Dumbledore is laid to rest? A character that was central to pushing the story forward is given all the farewell fanfare of a red shirt from a Star Trek episode.
The next movie is being split in two but I have little hope that being 4-5 hours long is going to make me like it. They've left so many holes in the plot with the movies that they'll be forced to avoid certain parts of the final book. Horcruxes or Hallows? How are viewers supposed to know why Voldemort goes to Dumbledore's tomb? How are we even going to recognize it?
Now we come to the movies, which have been a fantastic disappointment on the whole. The only movies in the series that can actually be called good are the first and second. And by good, I mean passable. And by passable, I mean I watched them all the way through. The third movie turned me off with the change of Dumbledore (necessary as it was, they didn't choose somebody with even an iota of the talent the earlier actor had played) and a werewolf that seemed nothing like the one in the book (or even the standard idea of werewolves as being either big and powerful or more wolfish/dog-like in appearance). In the fourth movie, Dumbledore nearly throttles Harry after his name comes out of the Goblet of Fire, further showing how little the actor had read the books, which, upon searching, was more true than I had guessed. I found out that he hadn't studied the character at all, he played Dumbledore how he wanted to, and not how the character is actually written. A dangerous, abusive, angry Dumbledore goes against almost every encounter readers have with him in the books.
I can't remember what turned me off about the Order of the Phoenix, but that's a bad sign in and of itself.
Now we come to the most recent movie, Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. I had high hopes; the movie was taking a turn down a darker, more adult road. I'm a sucker for romance and the romance that blooms between Harry and Ginny was one of my favorites because you almost want it to happen from the end of book 2 onward. The movie takes this bit of plot, rewrites it with an inky scalpel and some frayed duct tape, and then stuffs the whole thing into the room of requirement (room of hidden things edition). Ron and Hermione's romance bit was done well enough, which is perhaps the only thing I can give the movie credit for.
One of the overarching problems that I have had with most of the movies is the lack of special effects. Yes, they've shown some things flying, they've shown us dragons, people on broomsticks, and the occasional magical malady or two, but the real lack of ambient magic in the movies makes the scenes seem like hollowed out versions of their distant book cousins. For a book series that has grossed as much money as this one, and for all the merchandising and movie sales, it seems odd to me that there would be no money in the budget for bigger, better, more vibrant, and more visible magic in what is supposed to be a magical world. Half-Blood Prince was no exception.
Let's talk about things that they just plain left out. The pivotal, action packed last scene, where the death eaters are fighting DA and Order of the Phoenix members, Snape whisking Malfoy away from the astronomy tower and out onto the grounds while the battle rages around them, Harry tearing past everybody in his efforts to reach and inflict serious harm upon Snape's person, was awesome...IN THE BOOK!
The movie, incomprehensibly, just leaves it all out. The death eaters show up, they do their business, and then they run away without so much as a single expelliarmus from any member of any army or order. Harry gives chase through empty halls, he gets thrown around, Snape says a few things, and the whole thing is over. Not only did this lackluster scene fail to communicate the desperate urge of Harry's to seek revenge on the man who killed his mentor, it was not climactic, it was not exciting, it was bland, it was the vanilla ice cream of magical climaxes. Then as if to underline the lack of a battle and the flippant mistreatment that his character received from movie 3 on, they don't even have a funeral for Dumbledore. One of the most important characters in the series with one of the most gut wrenching moments in the book and all we see is the school working together to make the dark mark disappear.
What about Grawp comforting Hagrid? Harry telling Ginny that they can't be together? Hermione crying openly on Ron's shoulder? The merpeople singing their song of tribute? The respect of the centaurs shown from just inside the Forbidden Forest? The white tomb where Dumbledore is laid to rest? A character that was central to pushing the story forward is given all the farewell fanfare of a red shirt from a Star Trek episode.
The next movie is being split in two but I have little hope that being 4-5 hours long is going to make me like it. They've left so many holes in the plot with the movies that they'll be forced to avoid certain parts of the final book. Horcruxes or Hallows? How are viewers supposed to know why Voldemort goes to Dumbledore's tomb? How are we even going to recognize it?
No Yellow Ant Here
I remember those carefree days of sitting in front of the TV with a Super Nintendo Entertainment System controller clutched in my hand, directing an army of black ants, lead by their symbolic leader, the yellow ant, to beat back the soldiers of a red ant colony before moving in to defeat their queen and conquer their territory. SimAnt was an amazing game for somebody as interested in ants (and other insects) as I was at the time. There have been only one or two additional attempts at an ant colony simulator that have actually made it into mainstream notice, but they were either too buggy (no pun intended) or fell out of public view before they caught on.
Now we come to Ant Nation, a game you can download on the Nintendo Wii. I watched early previews for this with high hopes that I would soon be reliving those glorious days as the yellow ant. I purchased the necessary Nintendo points, downloaded the game, played for five minutes, then promptly turned off my system and went to play something else on my computer. The experience was something akin to being told you had to attend a funeral, have a route canal, and put down your dog...all on your birthday. Maybe that's a little harsh, but it was a bad experience, befitting a harsh description.
The game gives you very little to start with. There's no real tutorial, but the first ten missions or so, out of a total of 100, are meant to familiarize you with certain tools and aspects of control. However, the game doesn' really explain what it means when it tells you to use certain tools or take certain actions. It took me so long to figure out that "Level Up An Ant" meant "hold the little guy down and poke him until he got angry" that I seriously considered the game to be broken and my money to be wasted. I was probably right about the latter.
I decided to give the game a second chance and played it while I was installing another, more entertaining, game on my computer. When I use a game as filler for the installation of another, it usually speaks volumes about how much I like that game.
During the game you spend most of your time buying cookies and candy with gold that you collect for completing missions and dropping them on the ground so that you can build up your army. Then you watch in abject horror as said army is wiped out by a single stronger enemy, like a Japanese beetle or a weaval of some kind. This wouldn't be a problem if there was an easy way to build your army up again, but you spend an exorbitant amount of your starting gold on building up your initial army. Once you're down to four ants, it becomes hard to kill even the random lady bugs, which are supposed to be the weakest enemies in the game. This necessitates a restart, which is a horrible way to extend gameplay length.
Outside of building up your army, you have to move your ants around and give them commands with a set of tools that are somewhat strange. The pipette is straightforward enough; you hold a button to suck up your ants and press another to release them all. However, in order to get the ants out of their colony (which you'll see as a small 2-dimensional mini map) you have to do some odd massaging thing and hope that they don't all cascade back down the hole once you've stopped. The pipette is pretty much the only way to move the ants around that I've seen, but again, I haven't been through the whole game. Once my army was wiped out for the third time, I decided the game wasn't worth much more of my time and my other game had finished installing.
If you want to play an ant colony simulator, and have fun, you'd be much better off finding an old SNES, a copy of SimAnt, and leading the yellow ant to victory.
Now we come to Ant Nation, a game you can download on the Nintendo Wii. I watched early previews for this with high hopes that I would soon be reliving those glorious days as the yellow ant. I purchased the necessary Nintendo points, downloaded the game, played for five minutes, then promptly turned off my system and went to play something else on my computer. The experience was something akin to being told you had to attend a funeral, have a route canal, and put down your dog...all on your birthday. Maybe that's a little harsh, but it was a bad experience, befitting a harsh description.
The game gives you very little to start with. There's no real tutorial, but the first ten missions or so, out of a total of 100, are meant to familiarize you with certain tools and aspects of control. However, the game doesn' really explain what it means when it tells you to use certain tools or take certain actions. It took me so long to figure out that "Level Up An Ant" meant "hold the little guy down and poke him until he got angry" that I seriously considered the game to be broken and my money to be wasted. I was probably right about the latter.
I decided to give the game a second chance and played it while I was installing another, more entertaining, game on my computer. When I use a game as filler for the installation of another, it usually speaks volumes about how much I like that game.
During the game you spend most of your time buying cookies and candy with gold that you collect for completing missions and dropping them on the ground so that you can build up your army. Then you watch in abject horror as said army is wiped out by a single stronger enemy, like a Japanese beetle or a weaval of some kind. This wouldn't be a problem if there was an easy way to build your army up again, but you spend an exorbitant amount of your starting gold on building up your initial army. Once you're down to four ants, it becomes hard to kill even the random lady bugs, which are supposed to be the weakest enemies in the game. This necessitates a restart, which is a horrible way to extend gameplay length.
Outside of building up your army, you have to move your ants around and give them commands with a set of tools that are somewhat strange. The pipette is straightforward enough; you hold a button to suck up your ants and press another to release them all. However, in order to get the ants out of their colony (which you'll see as a small 2-dimensional mini map) you have to do some odd massaging thing and hope that they don't all cascade back down the hole once you've stopped. The pipette is pretty much the only way to move the ants around that I've seen, but again, I haven't been through the whole game. Once my army was wiped out for the third time, I decided the game wasn't worth much more of my time and my other game had finished installing.
If you want to play an ant colony simulator, and have fun, you'd be much better off finding an old SNES, a copy of SimAnt, and leading the yellow ant to victory.
Crackdown...with Tentacles
About a month or so ago I started playing a game that I never thought I would enjoy. I believe I only had this thought in my head because I hadn't read very much about the game and the title didn't strike me as interesting (having somehow developed the idea that simple one word titles are boring). I am speaking, of course, about Prototype.
You play as government experiment gone (gasp) horribly wrong, Alex Mercer. Perhaps we should just call him an escaped government experiment, since he seems to be exactly what the government was going for, much to their chagrin. After waking up in the hospital to some guy trying to cut through your skin and deciding that, in fact, you'd like to keep it intact, you make your escape.
The game is based around a mission system, much the same way that the GTA series is focused. There are missions to kill as many enemies as possible in a given time period with a different power, weapon, or vehicle, missions to see how quickly you can hit way points, and missions that even challenge you to fall from the sky and see how close you can get to the middle of a target. The missions are varied and entertaining enough to keep you playing the game, which is good, because there is a lot to enjoy here.
Mercer has a wide range of combat and special abilities that he upgrades throughout the game by earning experience. You earn experience by flogging enemies and completing missions. Each power is well animated and fleshed out and feels like it could make a definite impact on the way you play the game. I find myself using the Armor defensive ability with the Blade offensive ability because the combination makes for a surprisingly powerful melee character. If that sounds like it could cause some mayhem, you're right. The game doesn't hold back on the violence and gore, and you can expect to see a lot of things that will remind you that Prototype is rated M for Mature. For example, the Musclemass ability, which basically turns Alex into a grayish version of the Hulk, literally rips enemies in half when you devour them.
Speaking of devouring, the story is moved along through visually intense cut scenes that you can watch by basically eating certain enemies and civilians. The cut scenes are static images overlaid with sounds, movement, and other elements that are thrown at you while a voice over plays in the background. They are interesting and sometimes creepy, and they present enough of the story in large enough chunks to keep your attention.
Unfortunately, though the missions are varied nicely in the beginning of the game, as the game goes on it suffers from a great deal of repetitiveness, brought upon by the lack of any new kind of activities to engage in. At the time of writing this I have to confess that I have grown bored enough to stop playing, which is a shame because I haven't finished the game yet. Once you reach the highest tiers of your powers, the game starts to drag because you aren't really being rewarded for any of your work.
I would definitely recommend this to anybody that enjoyed Crackdown, as the two games have a lot in common, my favorite similarity being one of the main means of travel: leaping to the top of tall buildings without having to worry about dying from a fall.
You play as government experiment gone (gasp) horribly wrong, Alex Mercer. Perhaps we should just call him an escaped government experiment, since he seems to be exactly what the government was going for, much to their chagrin. After waking up in the hospital to some guy trying to cut through your skin and deciding that, in fact, you'd like to keep it intact, you make your escape.
The game is based around a mission system, much the same way that the GTA series is focused. There are missions to kill as many enemies as possible in a given time period with a different power, weapon, or vehicle, missions to see how quickly you can hit way points, and missions that even challenge you to fall from the sky and see how close you can get to the middle of a target. The missions are varied and entertaining enough to keep you playing the game, which is good, because there is a lot to enjoy here.
Mercer has a wide range of combat and special abilities that he upgrades throughout the game by earning experience. You earn experience by flogging enemies and completing missions. Each power is well animated and fleshed out and feels like it could make a definite impact on the way you play the game. I find myself using the Armor defensive ability with the Blade offensive ability because the combination makes for a surprisingly powerful melee character. If that sounds like it could cause some mayhem, you're right. The game doesn't hold back on the violence and gore, and you can expect to see a lot of things that will remind you that Prototype is rated M for Mature. For example, the Musclemass ability, which basically turns Alex into a grayish version of the Hulk, literally rips enemies in half when you devour them.
Speaking of devouring, the story is moved along through visually intense cut scenes that you can watch by basically eating certain enemies and civilians. The cut scenes are static images overlaid with sounds, movement, and other elements that are thrown at you while a voice over plays in the background. They are interesting and sometimes creepy, and they present enough of the story in large enough chunks to keep your attention.
Unfortunately, though the missions are varied nicely in the beginning of the game, as the game goes on it suffers from a great deal of repetitiveness, brought upon by the lack of any new kind of activities to engage in. At the time of writing this I have to confess that I have grown bored enough to stop playing, which is a shame because I haven't finished the game yet. Once you reach the highest tiers of your powers, the game starts to drag because you aren't really being rewarded for any of your work.
I would definitely recommend this to anybody that enjoyed Crackdown, as the two games have a lot in common, my favorite similarity being one of the main means of travel: leaping to the top of tall buildings without having to worry about dying from a fall.
A Man on the Metro with Intricate Detail
"Will not work outside of Airplane. Please do not remove."
Those are the words printed on the top of a pair of headphones as they clung to the neck of the man in front of me on the metro. The Dupont Circle station had come into view and while the operator announced our stop I made my way toward the middle door of the car. I have a couple of pet peeves when it comes to riding the public transportation: people who eat and drink on the metro when it clearly states that its against the law, people who listen to their headphones so loud that they might as well have brought a portable stereo with them on the train, people who sit in the elderly/handicapped seats without offering those seats to the elderly or handicapped around them, and people who lean on the vertical poles and make it impossible for those shorter people around them to get a handhold. This man was a leaner.
The other bothersome part about his leaning on the pole was that it made it necessary for me to wait until he moved before I could get any closer to the door. This may sound a bit like picking at knits, but any metro rider worth their smartrip card knows that the sooner you get out of the door at a heavily trafficked station, the better your day is going to be. So the man was already two points ahead on my scale of irritation. Then I saw the headphones.
Call me old fashioned, but if an object has the equivalent of "don't steal me" printed directly on it, that would probably mean that whoever placed it where you found it would like it to remain where you found it. Again, maybe I'm old fashioned. Maybe "yes" means "no" now and victims are really criminals in disguise, what with all the stuff they don't want stolen. How dare they keep it all to themselves?
What struck me the hardest was that this man never tried to remove the label from the top of his headphones and then wore them in such a way that anyone standing behind him, a common occurrence on the metro, would be able to read them. That speaks to me of either ignorance or baldfaced audacity. So, as my attention is wont to do, I tracked the man as he left the metro car, climbed the first escalator, and walked toward the metro turnstiles.
In his 40s with a face reminiscent of a mallard duck and hair receding like the rain forests, this man wore a simple, solid light blue button up shirt, an immaculately clean black book bag, and beige khakis that bulged slightly at the hips. He walked as if his stride was too short for his legs and each leg came down with the full force of his weight. He walked like a person who was trying to hurry but didn't want those around him to know. Perhaps he was trying to make sure nobody knew his headphones were stolen. Maybe that's just the way he walks.
The details swam through my head creating little 'V's of thought as I plodded up the long escalator at Dupont Circle. This man, dressed as he was with his button up shirt, khakis, and book bag, going to Washington DC and using the metro like everyone else, was not the type of person I had in mind as a thief. Maybe he wasn't though. I did think about that. Maybe somebody else took them and they were sold at a yard sale and the man decided he needed a pair of headphones. Maybe the company that owned the airplane went bankrupt and these headphones were sold to the highest bidder?
You see some interesting things on the metro.
Those are the words printed on the top of a pair of headphones as they clung to the neck of the man in front of me on the metro. The Dupont Circle station had come into view and while the operator announced our stop I made my way toward the middle door of the car. I have a couple of pet peeves when it comes to riding the public transportation: people who eat and drink on the metro when it clearly states that its against the law, people who listen to their headphones so loud that they might as well have brought a portable stereo with them on the train, people who sit in the elderly/handicapped seats without offering those seats to the elderly or handicapped around them, and people who lean on the vertical poles and make it impossible for those shorter people around them to get a handhold. This man was a leaner.
The other bothersome part about his leaning on the pole was that it made it necessary for me to wait until he moved before I could get any closer to the door. This may sound a bit like picking at knits, but any metro rider worth their smartrip card knows that the sooner you get out of the door at a heavily trafficked station, the better your day is going to be. So the man was already two points ahead on my scale of irritation. Then I saw the headphones.
Call me old fashioned, but if an object has the equivalent of "don't steal me" printed directly on it, that would probably mean that whoever placed it where you found it would like it to remain where you found it. Again, maybe I'm old fashioned. Maybe "yes" means "no" now and victims are really criminals in disguise, what with all the stuff they don't want stolen. How dare they keep it all to themselves?
What struck me the hardest was that this man never tried to remove the label from the top of his headphones and then wore them in such a way that anyone standing behind him, a common occurrence on the metro, would be able to read them. That speaks to me of either ignorance or baldfaced audacity. So, as my attention is wont to do, I tracked the man as he left the metro car, climbed the first escalator, and walked toward the metro turnstiles.
In his 40s with a face reminiscent of a mallard duck and hair receding like the rain forests, this man wore a simple, solid light blue button up shirt, an immaculately clean black book bag, and beige khakis that bulged slightly at the hips. He walked as if his stride was too short for his legs and each leg came down with the full force of his weight. He walked like a person who was trying to hurry but didn't want those around him to know. Perhaps he was trying to make sure nobody knew his headphones were stolen. Maybe that's just the way he walks.
The details swam through my head creating little 'V's of thought as I plodded up the long escalator at Dupont Circle. This man, dressed as he was with his button up shirt, khakis, and book bag, going to Washington DC and using the metro like everyone else, was not the type of person I had in mind as a thief. Maybe he wasn't though. I did think about that. Maybe somebody else took them and they were sold at a yard sale and the man decided he needed a pair of headphones. Maybe the company that owned the airplane went bankrupt and these headphones were sold to the highest bidder?
You see some interesting things on the metro.
I was a-quakin'!
Sometime in the early morning hours, in that time between dreading the alarm clock going off and it actually waking you in time to start your day, I surfaced from one unmemorable dream into what i mistook later as another. A low, throbbing hum filled the air and my mind, half-asleep, only began to try to interpret the sound's source as my ears picked up the sound of my ceramic work, suspended six feet in the air on shelving that I inexpertly installed, as it began to clink together like a stationary wind chime.
For the briefest of moments, a nanosecond of thought, the word "earthquake" shot across my mind. Layered behind that word were words like "terrorist attack," "gas explosion," and "really big truck." With those words having come and gone in the span of a mere moment, I settled for an explanation that seemed much more safe, but much less plausible: perhaps, in what could only be described as it's throws of death, the washing machine one floor above me had begun thrashing about, causing the hum that still throbbed in the air and the slightly musical chinking of my ceramic work.
At 6:30 in the morning the sound of ocean waves trapped in a tin can crashed over me and I hauled myself from bed. I showered, shaved, brushed my teeth, gathered some things, and not once did I think about that which I could easily dismiss as nothing more than a strange dream. When Megan called me in the morning, and as we were exchanging thoughts on the morning and the day to come, I suddenly remembered the odd experience. After explaining the experience, I told her that I was not sure if it had actually happened or if I had merely dreamed about it. We spoke of aliens for a minute and then considered options that were closer to home.
"Maybe it was an earthquake," she said.
"Oh yeah! I can check that!" I replied.
It took me a full three seconds to find the answer. Weather.com had, in big bold letters, a headline stating, "Washington DC rattled by earthquake." For me the realization that I had half-slept my way through even a 3.5 earthquake was surreal. How often does one get to experience a natural occurrence like an earthquake on the eastern side of the U.S.? Not often. However, despite Megan's claim that it was scary how many of these earthquakes were taking place in the area these days, I found that I was still rather excited about the idea of having experienced one for the first time that I can remember. I'm pretty sure I experienced one while I lived in California, but I don't remember it.
I feel that experiences are paramount to actively living life, and while I can't really say that this was a great experience, heavy with sleep and half stupid as I was, I can chalk it up to something that I will remember. For a little while anyway.
For the briefest of moments, a nanosecond of thought, the word "earthquake" shot across my mind. Layered behind that word were words like "terrorist attack," "gas explosion," and "really big truck." With those words having come and gone in the span of a mere moment, I settled for an explanation that seemed much more safe, but much less plausible: perhaps, in what could only be described as it's throws of death, the washing machine one floor above me had begun thrashing about, causing the hum that still throbbed in the air and the slightly musical chinking of my ceramic work.
At 6:30 in the morning the sound of ocean waves trapped in a tin can crashed over me and I hauled myself from bed. I showered, shaved, brushed my teeth, gathered some things, and not once did I think about that which I could easily dismiss as nothing more than a strange dream. When Megan called me in the morning, and as we were exchanging thoughts on the morning and the day to come, I suddenly remembered the odd experience. After explaining the experience, I told her that I was not sure if it had actually happened or if I had merely dreamed about it. We spoke of aliens for a minute and then considered options that were closer to home.
"Maybe it was an earthquake," she said.
"Oh yeah! I can check that!" I replied.
It took me a full three seconds to find the answer. Weather.com had, in big bold letters, a headline stating, "Washington DC rattled by earthquake." For me the realization that I had half-slept my way through even a 3.5 earthquake was surreal. How often does one get to experience a natural occurrence like an earthquake on the eastern side of the U.S.? Not often. However, despite Megan's claim that it was scary how many of these earthquakes were taking place in the area these days, I found that I was still rather excited about the idea of having experienced one for the first time that I can remember. I'm pretty sure I experienced one while I lived in California, but I don't remember it.
I feel that experiences are paramount to actively living life, and while I can't really say that this was a great experience, heavy with sleep and half stupid as I was, I can chalk it up to something that I will remember. For a little while anyway.
Sunday, August 15, 2010
Edward's Big Idea
“That’s the third fight this week, Betty. I don’t know what’s wrong with these kids.”
“I know, Mr. Carlson, it’s all that loud music and those stupid hats,” Betty replied while she touched up the blue eye shadow that lay like cracked paint above her eyes.
“These kids, don’t they realize that they’ll end up in prison later in life if they keep acting this way?” Mr. Carlson ignored Betty’s comment and wiped a single drop of sweat from his mismanaged hairline.
“And those pants! Some are too tight, some are too loose, and they all wear them too low. Don’t they make clothes that fit anymore?” Betty continued uninterrupted.
“I need to do something Betty! As the guidance counselor of this school, I need to take action and guide these children down the right path. Otherwise, all I see is nothing but the life of an inmate for 90% of the students here.”
“And all those gadgets, the Y-Phones and the MPT players. Writing messages to each other in class, their ignorant fingers tap, tap, tapping away instead of listening…” Betty kept up a quiet stream of comments about the problems plaguing the high school, her white hair bouncing on her forehead with each admonition.
Edward Carlson had an idea.
“Betty! I’ve had an idea,”
“Always driving too fast…”
“What if I teach them what prison is like?”
“Never holding doors open…”
“I could teach a lesson on the U.S. prison system,”
“Always smashing my jack-o-lanterns…”
“No, no, that would be too much of a distraction to their regular studies.”
“Graffiti everywhere…”
“Maybe a field trip?”
“Mouthing off in the store…”
“No, too dangerous to take them to the actual prison, it might scare some of them too much.”
“Gimme, gimme, gimme…”
“What about pen pals? Each of the kids will write to a prisoner and learn from the prisoner about the horrible experiences they are having in jail.”
“Crapping in the front yard and they never clean it up!” Betty’s small fist impacted her desk with enough force to vibrate her pencil holder.
“Well, I suppose it better not be real inmates or they might teach the students something bad.”
“Groceries spilled all over the place and they just laughed…”
“I’ll just pretend to be a criminal and write back to each of the students.”
“Teen pregnancy and gangs and one of them is always stealing the apple off of my desk. You understand what I’m saying Mr. Carlson? Kids today.” Betty rolled her eyes and sat down heavily in her padded office chair.
“Indeed, Betty. I’ve got some more work to do tonight. Could you get me a list of all the bad students in the school for tomorrow?”
A half-smile spread across Betty’s cosmetic-caked up face that would have made the most evil clown bow in abject servitude, “Why, of course, Mr. Carlson.”
***
Edward Quincy Fitzgerald Carlson grew up in a nuclear family of thinkers. When money was tight the Carlson twins, Zelda and Edward, were encouraged to build or create the means of their survival. In the 80’s, when his father was fired from his job as a pitch man, Ed invented inflatable pants that were supposed to double as a floatation device. When the neighbor’s five year old nearly drowned during the initial testing in their pool, the ensuing lawsuit further diminished the family’s resources. Zelda, on the other hand, cultivated a strain of lima bean that provided 90% of the daily recommended vitamins and sustained the family until their father found paying work again.
Spurred by the success of her daughter, Mrs. Carlson opened a successful Italian Eatery called Lima Italiano, which specialized in lima bean centric dishes. Zelda handled the finances and advertizing. Ed thought the food needed more kick and unintentionally poisoned a well known food critic with a homemade moonshine and vinaigrette dressing. Lima Italiano closed and the Carlsons were on hard times again after the critic sent them the review and the doctor bill.
In college, Zelda excelled at advanced mathematics, astrophysics, medical studies, political theory, and art. Ed missed his first semester of classes after his robotic mascot, built from old gym equipment and three lawnmowers, exploded, knocking him unconscious and destroying half of the newly renovated home bleachers.
Zelda now works for the Government and makes important decisions all day.
Ed works for a government subsidized school district. Ed does not make good decisions.
***
Ed sat at his desk the next morning humming a random tune and shifting a stack of papers. He stopped occasionally to read or to write something down. It was Free Lunch Friday at Z.C. Morey Highschool, a service designed and promoted by Ed that was supposed to save money for the students’ parents and provide the students with at least one hot meal a week. The school district covered the cost by serving sub-standard food and raising the local taxes.
As much as Ed loved his hot meatball sandwich on Fridays, he was too excited about his new inmate pen pal idea to even realize that his red plastic lunch chit was gone. So it was with much enthusiasm that Ed greeted his secretary, Betty, as she walked in, oblivious to the three heavy binders she dropped on her desk, knocking an apple to the floor.
“Betty! How wonderful to see you!”
Betty sat down behind the pile of enormous binders so that only the very top of her wispy white hair was visible.
“Well, Mr. Carlson, it’s always nice to be seen.”
“Right you are, Betty. Did you get that list I asked for?”
“I most certainly did Mr. Carlson. It took me most of the evening, but, I’ll just count it as a special favor.”
“That’s great, Betty! I just cannot wait to get this idea going. We’re going to rescue so much potential over the next couple of days Betty, you have no idea.” Ed smiled at Betty, never noting that she could no more see his smile than the rest of him behind the stack of binders. “Okay, Betty, let me see this list.”
“Here it is Mr. Carlson.”
“Uh huh, well, hand it over.”
“Its right here, Mr. Carlson.”
“I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Betty came around to the front of her desk, a toothy grin beaming from under her plastic-red lips. She picked up the top binder and handed it to Ed, “I’ve alphabetized the list. This is the first binder, starting with ‘A’. The bottom binder ends with ‘Z’.” Betty sat back down, her face now just barely visible over the top of the second binder.
Ed stood silently for a moment, flipping through the first few pages before gently closing the binder and tucking it under his arm, “Betty, didn’t I ask you to get me a list of the bad students in the school?”
“Yes you did, sir.”
“Then… what is all of this?” Ed indicated the other two binders, dropping the one under his arm, which cracked one of the floor tiles when it landed.
“That’s the list, sir.”
“Which list?”
“The list you asked for.”
“The list of all the bad students in the school?”
“Yes.”
“But…I don’t understand, there are three binders,” Ed stammered as he picked up the fallen binder.
“Yes, I know, sir. I had to print it out in eight point font to fit it in just the three. The fourth binder was only three quarters full, and I didn’t want to waste paper, sir.”
“Very thoughtful, Betty.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Betty…is this a list of all the kids in the school?”
“No, sir. It is a list of all the bad kids, just like you asked.”
“How many students are on this list Betty?”
“Forty thousand, sir.”
Ed dropped the binder, and again there was a loud crack as a second floor tile met an untimely doom, “Forty thousand?! Betty, there are only three thousand students in this school.”
“There are three thousand four hundred and eight students, sir.”
“Thank you, Betty. If that is the case, why are there forty thousand students on this list?”
“Well, sir, it’s a list of every bad child that has been in this school while I’ve worked here. There would be forty thousand and two, but my children know their manners.”
Ed’s bewildered eyebrows disappeared into his hair line, “You’ve kept records on every student in this school since you started working here?”
“Heaven’s no, sir. I couldn’t fill my house with eighteen years worth of paperwork.”
“Oh…then how…”
“I remembered them all.”
Ed slowly picked up the fallen binder for a second time, noticing with a degree of annoyance that the muscles in his back were beginning to stiffen, “Betty?”
“Yes, sir?”
“I’m going to go get lunch.”
“Sir, lunch doesn’t start for another three hours.”
Ed looked at the clock, and was amazed that hours of his life had not flown by considering his current state of shock, “Right, well, I’m going to police the halls for a little bit.”
“Very well, sir.”
“Could you do me a small favor while I’m out?”
“Any favor would be small compared to this list, sir.”
“Right you are Betty. Actually this concerns the list.”
“You want it in a bigger font, sir?”
“Sweet zombie Jesus, no!”
Betty released a high pitched noise something between a grasshopper’s sneeze and a mouse’s giggle, “you say the funniest things sometimes, Mr. Carlson.”
“Thank you, Betty. Now, about the list: Could you possibly pick out the six worst kids in the list and have it on my desk by the end of lunch?”
“Of course, sir.” Betty stood up and astounded Ed once again by walking over to his desk, taking a sheet of carefully folded vellum paper from her purse and spreading it face up on top of his desk calendar, “There you are, sir.”
“Thank you, Betty.” Ed walked out of the room.
“I know, Mr. Carlson, it’s all that loud music and those stupid hats,” Betty replied while she touched up the blue eye shadow that lay like cracked paint above her eyes.
“These kids, don’t they realize that they’ll end up in prison later in life if they keep acting this way?” Mr. Carlson ignored Betty’s comment and wiped a single drop of sweat from his mismanaged hairline.
“And those pants! Some are too tight, some are too loose, and they all wear them too low. Don’t they make clothes that fit anymore?” Betty continued uninterrupted.
“I need to do something Betty! As the guidance counselor of this school, I need to take action and guide these children down the right path. Otherwise, all I see is nothing but the life of an inmate for 90% of the students here.”
“And all those gadgets, the Y-Phones and the MPT players. Writing messages to each other in class, their ignorant fingers tap, tap, tapping away instead of listening…” Betty kept up a quiet stream of comments about the problems plaguing the high school, her white hair bouncing on her forehead with each admonition.
Edward Carlson had an idea.
“Betty! I’ve had an idea,”
“Always driving too fast…”
“What if I teach them what prison is like?”
“Never holding doors open…”
“I could teach a lesson on the U.S. prison system,”
“Always smashing my jack-o-lanterns…”
“No, no, that would be too much of a distraction to their regular studies.”
“Graffiti everywhere…”
“Maybe a field trip?”
“Mouthing off in the store…”
“No, too dangerous to take them to the actual prison, it might scare some of them too much.”
“Gimme, gimme, gimme…”
“What about pen pals? Each of the kids will write to a prisoner and learn from the prisoner about the horrible experiences they are having in jail.”
“Crapping in the front yard and they never clean it up!” Betty’s small fist impacted her desk with enough force to vibrate her pencil holder.
“Well, I suppose it better not be real inmates or they might teach the students something bad.”
“Groceries spilled all over the place and they just laughed…”
“I’ll just pretend to be a criminal and write back to each of the students.”
“Teen pregnancy and gangs and one of them is always stealing the apple off of my desk. You understand what I’m saying Mr. Carlson? Kids today.” Betty rolled her eyes and sat down heavily in her padded office chair.
“Indeed, Betty. I’ve got some more work to do tonight. Could you get me a list of all the bad students in the school for tomorrow?”
A half-smile spread across Betty’s cosmetic-caked up face that would have made the most evil clown bow in abject servitude, “Why, of course, Mr. Carlson.”
***
Edward Quincy Fitzgerald Carlson grew up in a nuclear family of thinkers. When money was tight the Carlson twins, Zelda and Edward, were encouraged to build or create the means of their survival. In the 80’s, when his father was fired from his job as a pitch man, Ed invented inflatable pants that were supposed to double as a floatation device. When the neighbor’s five year old nearly drowned during the initial testing in their pool, the ensuing lawsuit further diminished the family’s resources. Zelda, on the other hand, cultivated a strain of lima bean that provided 90% of the daily recommended vitamins and sustained the family until their father found paying work again.
Spurred by the success of her daughter, Mrs. Carlson opened a successful Italian Eatery called Lima Italiano, which specialized in lima bean centric dishes. Zelda handled the finances and advertizing. Ed thought the food needed more kick and unintentionally poisoned a well known food critic with a homemade moonshine and vinaigrette dressing. Lima Italiano closed and the Carlsons were on hard times again after the critic sent them the review and the doctor bill.
In college, Zelda excelled at advanced mathematics, astrophysics, medical studies, political theory, and art. Ed missed his first semester of classes after his robotic mascot, built from old gym equipment and three lawnmowers, exploded, knocking him unconscious and destroying half of the newly renovated home bleachers.
Zelda now works for the Government and makes important decisions all day.
Ed works for a government subsidized school district. Ed does not make good decisions.
***
Ed sat at his desk the next morning humming a random tune and shifting a stack of papers. He stopped occasionally to read or to write something down. It was Free Lunch Friday at Z.C. Morey Highschool, a service designed and promoted by Ed that was supposed to save money for the students’ parents and provide the students with at least one hot meal a week. The school district covered the cost by serving sub-standard food and raising the local taxes.
As much as Ed loved his hot meatball sandwich on Fridays, he was too excited about his new inmate pen pal idea to even realize that his red plastic lunch chit was gone. So it was with much enthusiasm that Ed greeted his secretary, Betty, as she walked in, oblivious to the three heavy binders she dropped on her desk, knocking an apple to the floor.
“Betty! How wonderful to see you!”
Betty sat down behind the pile of enormous binders so that only the very top of her wispy white hair was visible.
“Well, Mr. Carlson, it’s always nice to be seen.”
“Right you are, Betty. Did you get that list I asked for?”
“I most certainly did Mr. Carlson. It took me most of the evening, but, I’ll just count it as a special favor.”
“That’s great, Betty! I just cannot wait to get this idea going. We’re going to rescue so much potential over the next couple of days Betty, you have no idea.” Ed smiled at Betty, never noting that she could no more see his smile than the rest of him behind the stack of binders. “Okay, Betty, let me see this list.”
“Here it is Mr. Carlson.”
“Uh huh, well, hand it over.”
“Its right here, Mr. Carlson.”
“I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Betty came around to the front of her desk, a toothy grin beaming from under her plastic-red lips. She picked up the top binder and handed it to Ed, “I’ve alphabetized the list. This is the first binder, starting with ‘A’. The bottom binder ends with ‘Z’.” Betty sat back down, her face now just barely visible over the top of the second binder.
Ed stood silently for a moment, flipping through the first few pages before gently closing the binder and tucking it under his arm, “Betty, didn’t I ask you to get me a list of the bad students in the school?”
“Yes you did, sir.”
“Then… what is all of this?” Ed indicated the other two binders, dropping the one under his arm, which cracked one of the floor tiles when it landed.
“That’s the list, sir.”
“Which list?”
“The list you asked for.”
“The list of all the bad students in the school?”
“Yes.”
“But…I don’t understand, there are three binders,” Ed stammered as he picked up the fallen binder.
“Yes, I know, sir. I had to print it out in eight point font to fit it in just the three. The fourth binder was only three quarters full, and I didn’t want to waste paper, sir.”
“Very thoughtful, Betty.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Betty…is this a list of all the kids in the school?”
“No, sir. It is a list of all the bad kids, just like you asked.”
“How many students are on this list Betty?”
“Forty thousand, sir.”
Ed dropped the binder, and again there was a loud crack as a second floor tile met an untimely doom, “Forty thousand?! Betty, there are only three thousand students in this school.”
“There are three thousand four hundred and eight students, sir.”
“Thank you, Betty. If that is the case, why are there forty thousand students on this list?”
“Well, sir, it’s a list of every bad child that has been in this school while I’ve worked here. There would be forty thousand and two, but my children know their manners.”
Ed’s bewildered eyebrows disappeared into his hair line, “You’ve kept records on every student in this school since you started working here?”
“Heaven’s no, sir. I couldn’t fill my house with eighteen years worth of paperwork.”
“Oh…then how…”
“I remembered them all.”
Ed slowly picked up the fallen binder for a second time, noticing with a degree of annoyance that the muscles in his back were beginning to stiffen, “Betty?”
“Yes, sir?”
“I’m going to go get lunch.”
“Sir, lunch doesn’t start for another three hours.”
Ed looked at the clock, and was amazed that hours of his life had not flown by considering his current state of shock, “Right, well, I’m going to police the halls for a little bit.”
“Very well, sir.”
“Could you do me a small favor while I’m out?”
“Any favor would be small compared to this list, sir.”
“Right you are Betty. Actually this concerns the list.”
“You want it in a bigger font, sir?”
“Sweet zombie Jesus, no!”
Betty released a high pitched noise something between a grasshopper’s sneeze and a mouse’s giggle, “you say the funniest things sometimes, Mr. Carlson.”
“Thank you, Betty. Now, about the list: Could you possibly pick out the six worst kids in the list and have it on my desk by the end of lunch?”
“Of course, sir.” Betty stood up and astounded Ed once again by walking over to his desk, taking a sheet of carefully folded vellum paper from her purse and spreading it face up on top of his desk calendar, “There you are, sir.”
“Thank you, Betty.” Ed walked out of the room.
The Picture of Matt
She still had his picture. The battered black plastic frame was scratched and covered in six years of dust. She never touched it and never used the thrift store end table that it was on. The picture was there and that is what mattered. The young man in the frame, healthy and smiling, had just gotten off of the tallest rollercoaster in the world. There was a line of people snaking in and out of the frame as they waited for their turn.
In the picture it was three days before that young man would graduate from high school. Outside of the frame it was exactly ten years since he protected a girl he barely knew from an abusive boyfriend and lost his life in the process.
The woman who owned the picture was not the girl he saved. The girl he saved spent her weekends at the jail, joking and laughing through protective glass with her boyfriend who was now serving a life sentence without the possibility for parole.
Jennifer had taken the picture of Matt. It wasn’t anything special, just a picture of the last hurrah before graduation, before adulthood. She never dusted the frame and only saw the picture inside in passing. In reality the layer of dust on the glass was getting so thick that she could barely make out his face. But she didn’t need to see the picture in order to know it was there. The frame and its inhabitant were always with her. When she had a problem she thought of that picture and everything worked itself out.
For the first year or two she spoke directly to the young man in the picture.
“Matt, I think I need to switch majors, biology just doesn’t feel right for me.”
“Oh Matt, I just don’t feel like going to that party, Lee Fara is going to be there and he’s been creeping me out lately.”
“Matt, Lee Fara did something to me last night. I should have listened to you. I shouldn’t have gone to that party. I don’t really remember much. Matt, I should have listened. Matt, I think I was raped.”
Jennifer’s mother caught her speaking about Matt during a surprise visit.
“How are you dear? Is everything alright here at school? Your father and I haven’t heard from you in ages.”
“Everything is fine Mom. You know how I am, I get into a groove of work and class and I just don’t think about anything else.”
“Oh but Dear that isn’t really healthy. You need to take some time off and talk to people. You don’t want to become a shut in.”
“Mom, I’m not going to become a shut in. And anyway, I always talk to Matt.”
Her mother’s confused look clued Jennifer in to what she had just said. She slumped down onto the couch and didn’t speak full sentences for the rest of her mother’s visit. Her mother immediately scheduled therapy for her. The psychiatrist told her that she was showing slight signs of schizophrenia, probably brought on by the shock of losing a close friend at the very end of High School. The psychiatrist told her that because most high school teenagers expect a relief of tension and a general feeling of well being upon graduation, the introduction of a traumatic and deeply disturbing event can come as a shock that hits five or six times heavier than it would have under normal circumstances. He was certain that with repeated sessions and therapy, Jennifer would regain her emotional balance and bloom into a well situated college student.
She improved quickly. Her mother and the psychiatrist convinced her she was crazy but that it was alright because something horrible had happened to her best friend. Once she finally broke down and decided that something really must have been wrong with her it was easy to ignore the need to look at the picture, the need to talk to Matt whose happy smile had been changing lately into the mournful, lonely smile of the forgotten. Jennifer knew she was imagining it, knew it was just another symptom of her schizophrenia. She told the psychiatrist about it. In two days time she was taking medicine for her illness.
On a perfectly white sheet of paper taped next to the mirror in her bathroom were the instructions: Two Pills, Twice a Day, Do Not Forget. It was her mantra for two weeks as her mind and body became accustomed to the medicine. The dust on the picture frame lay eight years thick.
Why she never got rid of the picture, Jennifer didn’t really know. Her mother suggested it quite a few times and each time Jennifer agreed that it would probably be better for her if she just got rid of it and moved on. When her mother left, the thought flew from her mind like a bad dream slipping from her memory upon awakening. She never looked at it like she used to. She never spoke to it like she used to. Yet every time there was a problem, a mishap, a big decision or a problem that she just could not solve, Jennifer would think about that battered black frame and the figure within. There would be no exchange of words but Jennifer would immediately know what she needed to do to solve her problem.
There would be no exchange of words but Jennifer would immediately know what she needed to do to solve her problem. She never expressed this to her mother or her psychiatrist. Somewhere in her mind she knew that she needed the connection, no matter how small. She needed it as badly as she needed to take pills.
Eight years after she started her twice a day regiment and Jennifer was a moderately successful caseworker for battered women. She was, in other’s eyes, a successful and well adjusted adult. A few women, including her mother, wondered why she never married or even showed an interest in dating, but other than that she was generally well accepted wherever she went.
Work was starting to run later. The better she did her job, the more the work piled up on her. Weariness began to overtake her as the number of nights without adequate sleep began to climb.
In the picture it was three days before that young man would graduate from high school. Outside of the frame it was exactly ten years since he protected a girl he barely knew from an abusive boyfriend and lost his life in the process.
The woman who owned the picture was not the girl he saved. The girl he saved spent her weekends at the jail, joking and laughing through protective glass with her boyfriend who was now serving a life sentence without the possibility for parole.
Jennifer had taken the picture of Matt. It wasn’t anything special, just a picture of the last hurrah before graduation, before adulthood. She never dusted the frame and only saw the picture inside in passing. In reality the layer of dust on the glass was getting so thick that she could barely make out his face. But she didn’t need to see the picture in order to know it was there. The frame and its inhabitant were always with her. When she had a problem she thought of that picture and everything worked itself out.
For the first year or two she spoke directly to the young man in the picture.
“Matt, I think I need to switch majors, biology just doesn’t feel right for me.”
“Oh Matt, I just don’t feel like going to that party, Lee Fara is going to be there and he’s been creeping me out lately.”
“Matt, Lee Fara did something to me last night. I should have listened to you. I shouldn’t have gone to that party. I don’t really remember much. Matt, I should have listened. Matt, I think I was raped.”
Jennifer’s mother caught her speaking about Matt during a surprise visit.
“How are you dear? Is everything alright here at school? Your father and I haven’t heard from you in ages.”
“Everything is fine Mom. You know how I am, I get into a groove of work and class and I just don’t think about anything else.”
“Oh but Dear that isn’t really healthy. You need to take some time off and talk to people. You don’t want to become a shut in.”
“Mom, I’m not going to become a shut in. And anyway, I always talk to Matt.”
Her mother’s confused look clued Jennifer in to what she had just said. She slumped down onto the couch and didn’t speak full sentences for the rest of her mother’s visit. Her mother immediately scheduled therapy for her. The psychiatrist told her that she was showing slight signs of schizophrenia, probably brought on by the shock of losing a close friend at the very end of High School. The psychiatrist told her that because most high school teenagers expect a relief of tension and a general feeling of well being upon graduation, the introduction of a traumatic and deeply disturbing event can come as a shock that hits five or six times heavier than it would have under normal circumstances. He was certain that with repeated sessions and therapy, Jennifer would regain her emotional balance and bloom into a well situated college student.
She improved quickly. Her mother and the psychiatrist convinced her she was crazy but that it was alright because something horrible had happened to her best friend. Once she finally broke down and decided that something really must have been wrong with her it was easy to ignore the need to look at the picture, the need to talk to Matt whose happy smile had been changing lately into the mournful, lonely smile of the forgotten. Jennifer knew she was imagining it, knew it was just another symptom of her schizophrenia. She told the psychiatrist about it. In two days time she was taking medicine for her illness.
On a perfectly white sheet of paper taped next to the mirror in her bathroom were the instructions: Two Pills, Twice a Day, Do Not Forget. It was her mantra for two weeks as her mind and body became accustomed to the medicine. The dust on the picture frame lay eight years thick.
Why she never got rid of the picture, Jennifer didn’t really know. Her mother suggested it quite a few times and each time Jennifer agreed that it would probably be better for her if she just got rid of it and moved on. When her mother left, the thought flew from her mind like a bad dream slipping from her memory upon awakening. She never looked at it like she used to. She never spoke to it like she used to. Yet every time there was a problem, a mishap, a big decision or a problem that she just could not solve, Jennifer would think about that battered black frame and the figure within. There would be no exchange of words but Jennifer would immediately know what she needed to do to solve her problem.
There would be no exchange of words but Jennifer would immediately know what she needed to do to solve her problem. She never expressed this to her mother or her psychiatrist. Somewhere in her mind she knew that she needed the connection, no matter how small. She needed it as badly as she needed to take pills.
Eight years after she started her twice a day regiment and Jennifer was a moderately successful caseworker for battered women. She was, in other’s eyes, a successful and well adjusted adult. A few women, including her mother, wondered why she never married or even showed an interest in dating, but other than that she was generally well accepted wherever she went.
Work was starting to run later. The better she did her job, the more the work piled up on her. Weariness began to overtake her as the number of nights without adequate sleep began to climb.
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