6 Jan 0900
the mutterred winds of midnight came
whose icy tendrils etch and maim
the moon has fled the mind and eye
to give a dark where gales cry
I had the Old Neighbourhood Nightmare.
What's that one?
It varies, but generally, I return to where I grew up and see all the
changes.
Why should it change?
Oh, it did, even while I was there. They had torn out most of the orchards
and paved over the hills.
So what was the nightmare part?
Well, this time it wasn't too much to start with, just walking the
area the way it was when I left, rememberring what it had been like even
earlier. I was walking from the junior high to the highway to get
around the hill. But then the highway sloped up and became a dam I couldn't
climb.
Back then, the junior high had an apricot orchard one way side and
the hill on the other. They had built some houses on the other side of
the hill, but this side was all grass and stony fields. Beautiful serpentine
rock, like running water frozen in stone, but not too many plants can live
on it. It's also hard to cut through. Unless you have a bulldozer.
You loved that place.
On the side of the hill, at the base, was this lump of quartz and cinnabar.
We called it Crystal Hill. It rose out of the orchard. You climbed to the
top and saw the highway, junior high, everything. Or go back down to the
bottom and you're in a wilderness.
What happenned to it?
They ripped out the orchard and paved over the hill. Except Crystal
Hill. They kept that in a little park to remind the kids how beautiful
it used to be, before all the houses. And so it sits there like a lion
in a circus cage. Or a prostitute with her high school yearbook.
Our grammar school was halfway between Senter Road and the creek. It
was fields and cherry orchards from Senter to the school, and from the
school to the creek. You could see the water tower on top of the hill from
school. Once for art, our sixth grade teacher had us draw it. He was a
strange man. The class decided to throw him a birthday party, but we didn't
know when that was. So we made up the date.
One class had a field trip down to the creek. I don't remember much
more than pushing through the bushes and crossing the creek. I remember
we found delicate brown shells on the sand of a bank. They weren't bigger
than a fingernail. A child's fingernail.
Then all the fields were gone. Just rundown houses and stores everywhere.
I could actually watch the stores reproduce like a bacteria culture. And
just as sickenning.
They were threatenning you?
It's not that kind of nightmare. I used to run and play in those fields.
In the fall we'd go out to the back fence during recess. The pickers threw
us kids a bunch of bing cherries, fresh off the tree.
They were full of secret, shadowy places. Where you could pretend the
world was real.
No. It wasn't scary. Just the dull, aching loss.
When I was young, the world was new and fresh and green. Now it's old,
dull, and grey. I don't know if you're familar with us depressives, but
we don't see the future as an exciting opportunity. We don't see anything,
just a dull grey wall.
Yes, I seem to remember. It's due to certain neurotransmitters not
permitting temporal transcendence.
Right.
Whatever it is, I see no future, just the past which is gone forever.
I keep trying to open my mouth to scream, but nothing comes out. Then I
do cry out as loud as I can, but nobody pays attention. By the time I wake,
I realise screaming would be pointless. Nobody wants to hear me.
This time I visited my grammar school. It was in terrible shape, what
with the budget cuts. I met my sixth grade teacher. He didn't recognise
me at first, or he didn't want to. Then he was so ashamed of what I'd become.
So am I.
What's that?
A nothing. A waste of protoplasm.
And children always have so much promise.
'Is information preserved unchanged through a distance
of space and time? A candle here and now radiates far more light than the
most distant star, so I should claim it is the more complex, more energetic.
And the distant star? It can only be seen through a powerful telescope.
Does the telescope discover the star's radiation, or, derived from the
energy of its own construction and operation, does it create the radiation
itself in its mirrors?
'When we observe events far away, how much of the observation
is reality, and how much is delusion?'
-Patricia Metley
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