Those floating feet again
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I’m on the edge of a mid-sized city, a place that I have been before.
I remember that this city lies on the way to New York (the Big Apple), and if I can get to the other side of it, there is a highway that will take me there in a straight shot. But I decide that I want to go back from where I came from.
I enter a building, some kind of station for travelers. I ask an old couple that I see if they can tell me which way to go to get back to the place from whence I came.
After a pause, and consultation from other strangers, it is agreed among them that there is no way back. A friendly looking guard who looks like the Maytag© repairman confirms this, and states that all exits lead west, and the only way to go back would be to retrace my steps and leave by the door that I entered through. I check that exit and find that the door only opens for those who are entering and not for those who are leaving.
I see a small boy walking toward the door, and watch him open it to enter. I catch the door with my hand and thank him and then proceed back outside going back from where I came. As I leave, I see the friendly guard approaching from behind, hand hovering over his side arm. But I am out now, and it seems that he will not follow, and he gives me a wink and turns back around.
I start walking and find that I am in between many parallel railroad tracks, with many trains coming back and forth on both sides of me. I must be very careful to stay on my path, since they are very close, and if I stray off of it, they will run me over.
I end up on a country road, where an older man picks me up and I tell him that I am looking for the road leading home. He tells me he can take me there, so I get into his car and he drives.
He tells me that he has to make a stop, and it happens to be at the home of an old client of mine. I go into the house with him. They say that they are glad to see me because the work that I did for them two years previously is starting to fade, and could I please fix it for them?
I explain that I don’t do that sort of work any more, as I am now out of business. The old man who gave me the ride sticks up for me and says that I absolutely cannot do that work anymore, and besides, waiting two years is an awfully long time to expect repairs under warrantee.
The homeowner asks me what brings me up that way, and I say that I am on my way home and that the old man is showing me the way. They look at me askance, and say that I should know the way already because I have been there many times. They give me short directions to a road that will take me there.
I explained that I didn’t remember because every time I had come out here before I had followed the old man home, and hadn’t paid much attention to all of the turns along the way, since I had relied on him as my navigator.
I start off again on my own, finding the road home, and begin anew my journey.
I find myself again at the edge of the sparsely treed forest with the wide path. I run down a hill again to gain speed, flapping my arms, attempting to fly, but can only manage to hover a few feet off of the ground, no matter how hard I flap my arms.
I come out of the forest and find myself at my old High School. It is orientation day for underclassmen. I remember that I must go sign up and so I go inside of the school.
I realize that I am naked. Although embarrassed, I ask around for the guidance counselor for seniors, and am given directions after a while to his office. I run into another student who is real cool. He tells me that he saw me flying earlier and he wants lessons. We agree to meet later to discuss flying techniques.
I enter my guidance counselors' office, which is empty, but after a while he comes in. He looks like my vocational rehabilitation counselor. He is taken aback by my nakedness, until I explain that I have been away in an asylum for a while, and that I have come back to finish my classes and to get my diploma.
He says that I look a little old for High School, and I say that I’m forty years old, and explain that I think that I only have one more class to take to graduate. We go over the classes that I have taken since the date I was supposed to have graduated in 1980.
I realize that it has been over twenty years now since that date, and that I have been going to school too long, and that I could have graduated much earlier.
Having settled this, he goes to the main office and gets me my diploma. He also gives me two large red graduation feathers. I leave his office, finding that if I hold one feather in each hand, one flap of my arms will lift me off of the ground and I can glide easily through the hallways.
I glide toward the exit of the High School, head held high, as the younger students snicker at my nakedness.
I’d started out just drawing an apple in the middle of the paper, a granny smith. I thought that it wasn’t a bad drawing, though it lacked a three dimensional depth about it.
A few days later K put a sticker on the fridge in our room in the flophouse we were staying. It was a picture of a granny smith apple.
I noticed how the artist had added three dimensional depth by using yellow to add highlights and curving darker green lines to add shadow and depth.
I did the same with my drawing, and then, when the apple was completed, I drew a kitchen scene around it. A bottle of wine half full, a glass with wine in it, a knife beside the apple, some blue canisters for different baking supplies; all on a black slate countertop, some beautiful knotty pine cabinets, and a sink and faucet. I also made the kitchen walls old red brick, with a wood framed window over the sink. I spent some time drawing a country scene outside of the window with a canoe pulled up to the shore of a pond, with mountains in the distance, and a tree in the foreground.
After completing most of the picture, I noticed that the apple was much to big in scale with the rest of the drawing,so I erased part of it and redrew it a good bit smaller.
It was sort of dream kitchen, one that along with the pastoral scene outside of the window, I would not mind having in my life for real.
A few weeks later I moved into a clean spacious clean apartment into a much nicer neighborhood. The bricks there are yellow instead of red though, and although the view from my window is not pastoral, it is at least clean, and not mean. There is no window in the kitchen.
While out purchasing odds and ends for the kitchen, I bought myself a picture frame. I reduced the size of the picture by folding back the edges, so that it would fit into the frame.
I placed the framed picture on my new (old white formica) kitchen counter, where I look at it every morning as I make the coffee that will brush aside the cobwebs in my head, and help me recall dreams of the previous night, and boost me forward to glide through another day.
I think the apple is still a little too large though.
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One in nine black men ages 20 to 34
One in 100 black women ages 35 to 39
One in 355 white women in the same age group.
Hat tip to the
Washington Post
One of the best MP3 blogs, motel de moka, has relevent links, and an MP3 playlist to match.
World Winding Down: Sleeping Whales