Fundamental pieces

There are fundamental pieces of me.  Parts of an overall structure that form the foundations that hold up the bulky and malleable essence of my recognizable likeness. Those pieces are the identifier, hammered into the surface of the essence. 

A metaphor. Marble is the essence.  The shaped surface of the marble is the identifier. The individual blocks of marble are the pieces.  The circumstance is the shaping mechanism.

This identifier that I'm trying to explain is a single, simple thing.  Just a feeling associated with a memory.  It's not anything about myself that helped to form the essence of what it felt like for me to be a kid, this piece of me I want to describe.  It was the circumstance that I happened to be imbedded in, and everything that gave form to it was stuck right in there with me.  It was the soundtrack of the senses for those awful years.

I guess I'll go into it.  When I was a kid,  from about 6 to 12 years old, it was like... I always felt afraid.  I was grief stricken every day, because my parents were dead.  My mom and dad were dead.  I can't explain... of course, they were alive, but that's not how it felt to me.  To me it felt like they were dead, because I didn't feel safe.  I didn't feel stable.  I didn't feel protected. 

And every day I was filled up with guilt and fear.  Guilt, because I knew kids were supposed to have parents, but I couldn't see past myself to explain their absence... and fear.  The fear of not knowing if the next moment, or hour, or evening, or day, week, summer, year, or forever would be ok.  I think that's the main thing about being a kid, and growing up and developing, and becoming who I am that really poleaxed my development.  I never knew if it would be ok.  There was never a moment in my childhood that I could just take for granted that it would be ok. I was always scared.  Never secure.  Always afraid.

When I was a kid, it was never ever just ok or all right.  It just never, ever was, ever. I know those were important, formative years, because I remember how awful they were, and nothing else about them.

I was ten years old.  I remember my mom going to work, and when I try to examine those memories, I can't see my dad anywhere. I remember the feeling of being intolerably lonely, and lost, and horribly, irrevocably hopeless.  Lost inside loneliness and sadness, and guilt.  Guilt that I'd never be able to tell my mom I loved her ever again, because she'd always have to be gone, working swing shift, swing shift, swing shift, how I hated those words.  Swing.  Shift.  The alive part of the day.  Mom would be gone during the  part of the day that contained all of the life, but which for me instead contained all of the fear and grief. 

I felt like she was dead.  That my mom was dead when she worked swing shift.  I grieved every day when she left... the kind of grief of knowing I'd never see her again.  And I hated myself because I could never tell her how sorry I was that she had to be gone, and that I missed her so much... and that I was so sorry for missing her, and for being a hurt thing.

What I just described is the first time I've ever tried to put the essence of my childhood into words that someone else might understand.  It's because I heard a snippet of music that reminded me of then, and the memory of feelings has to be fleshed out, I guess.  It was a kind of spur-of-the-moment thing.

They're the memories which define my childhood.

At night

I got 'pulled over' by the cops again tonight. Some do-gooder called and reported me as a 'crazy person with long hair jumping around in the road'.  There's no walk signal for pedestrians at Carroll and University, so I suppose at 2:00 am, running across University at Carroll without getting killed, so I can shop at Kroger, could be easily mistaken as the antics of the criminally insane. 

Every time this happens, when some motherfucker (pardon my French) calls the cops on me for doing something at night that nobody would bat an eye at for doing if the sun was up, I feel like a shit heel for being me.

Pointy boots

When I was just a little kid, about three years old, I had these pointy cowboy boots that I really loved. I remember it. I remember wearing those boots, and in my little three year old mind, thinking that the pointy toes of those boots were devastating weapons. I could kick anything to death with those pointy boots.  Kick them to death, and make them bloody all over.

Those pointy boots have always been a fond memory for me... one of the few happy memories I have as a child, and the reason is because my grandmother used to remind me of them all the time.  She used to say, in this endearing voice, imitating me as an innocent three year old with grandiose visions of death dealing, "I'll Kick you with my pointy boots and make you bloody all over!"

On one hand, it's just the ignorant playtime thoughts of a three year old.  I remember those boots.  I remember wearing them, and saying that exact thing...

"I'll kick you with my pointy boots and make you bloody all over!"

I remember that, and it's only a fun memory to me.  But dang...

That's kind of fucked up, ain't it?

Poor kitty

Tonight after work I was walking home from my Wi-Fi spot.  That is, there's a secret place I know of, with a strong unsecured broadband Wi-Fi signal, where I bury my extra android tablet (just under a few pieces of tree bark and some pebbles) so that I can leech a couple of movies movies while I'm off somewhere else, doing something or another, so I don't have to sit there and wait.

Anyway.  I had just left that place and I was walking back to my compartment. I was thinking about the normal things that I think about whenever I'm alone at night and walking, like how beautiful everything is, and how I ain't never going to have a chance to see all of it, and how I can't decide whether or not I'm thankful or disappointed or relieved about that.  I was walking down the road, thinking those thoughts, and I look to my left, which happened to be East, where the three quarter moon just happened to be about 15 degrees above the horizon, and it just happened to have these clouds around it that formed sort of a frame, and all of that just happened to be snuggled into this narrow space between the side of this house and a tree that was in the yard over, which all together made another frame for the moon in the clouds thing, and when I noticed what I just described, that I was in the perfect spot that made the perfect point of view for connecting those two perfect places, my place place and the moon place, just for a few perfect minutes...

...well, when I noticed that, I guess I must have been in a really heightened sense of awareness situation, because otherwise I probably wouldn't have noticed that little kitty cat which wasn't making a sound at all, but which was following just behind me and for I dunno how long.  Just a scrawny shadow I happened to notice because it didn't seem quite like a rock or a bush to my peripheral vision.

It was just a scrawny cat, a skinny thing, and I thought it was a kitten at first but it wasn't.  It wasn't full grown yet, but it wasn't a kitten, but it was skin and bones, and hungry.

Taking all that into account, I can't believe I actually saw the dagum thing, 'cause it didn't make a sound at all.  It was just this shadow, kind of off to the left and behind.

When I totally became aware of it, I stopped and turned around and looked at it, and he plunked down on his haunches and just kind of sat there. He didn't sit there all tensed up and ready to spring; he sat there more like he was waiting for something. 

This kitty didn't seem like a fraidy cat at all. This one seemed like a friendly cat that had just been kicked around too much, and was really hungry, but wary too.  I know kitty body language, you know?  Does that sound retarded, that I claim to know kitty body language?  Well, I do, and this kitty really wanted to be friendly, but it was scared.  It wasn't a fraidy cat... it was a cautiously optimistic but ready to run like hell cat.  And no, that's not the definition of a fraidy cat!

This kitty never would let me pet it, and I didn't get aggravated at all. I just put some chips on the ground for it.  I really can't imagine any cat anywhere actually liking chips, but that's all the food I had at the time.  Poor kitty.