“Stupid Boy!”
2 days ago
Wednesday, February 24, 2016
On the Borderline
My brother was staying at a hotel to the east of here on the border of Ohio and Pennsylvania. I went to see him one night and I sat in a chair pulled away from the table and we talked and watched TV and drank from the mini-fridge. When the sun was just coming up in the morning, I could see that the place was right on the lake. From the window I could see across the parking-lot to the metal railing where the land dropped off at the ridge and the seagulls circled in the clear sky. I could see people getting up and heading out to their cars under the shadows of strange trees, maybe something tropical, maybe just elms. It was hard to tell in the dim light. I decided that this was where I wanted my wife and I to come before we moved. This is where I wanted us to spend our last few days in Ohio. The place just had that perfect feeling, like you were on your way somewhere, like you had left all your troubles behind and you had nothing but the birds and the clear blue sky ahead of you. It was a way station, unburdened and free.
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This one is so cool. I can't imagine a more perfect time of day than the golden hour for opening the book of your life to a fresh new page. Feels blessed & like a continuation of your last dream in a softer & less harsh light. Beautiful, hopeful & adventerous.
ReplyDeleteI like..
Thanks. I like too. I'm never quite sure how much I manage to get down in words and how much of it is still just in my head. The hardest can be when there's just such a specific feeling about a place. Places in dreams can be very strangely beautiful sometimes; it's hard to even begin to do that justice.
DeleteSometimes I wish I could paint it, or maybe smuggle a camera into my sleep somehow, and show how it was still kind of dark and you could see out onto the lake through a gap between the trees and the buildings, and show the different gradations of color in the sky and the fact that the sun seemed to be rising out over the lake (in the spot where it usually sets in the summer), and that sense of it being simultaneously resortish and yet homey because I couldn't quite make out the trees yet.
DeleteBut sometimes I also like the challenge of trying to put it into words. Plus, it's the only real tool I have at my disposal. I also kind of like the fact that someone reading it can kind of bring their own imagination to it as well.
You express yourself beautifully & in a way to be admired. You always do perfect justice to what you see and feel in your dreams. I've often felt like saying 'Thank You' to you, for all the hard work it takes. But I didn't know how to say it right without sounding like an over-the-top nut.
ReplyDeleteA mind's eye as keen as yours doesn't need a camera or canvas or any of that other expensive stuff to express itself. Your gift of writing is the best gift to have. It doesn't have to cost a thing. No matter how poor a writer may be there's always something around to write on and with.
I'm glad you mentioned what you did about wondering if you do justice by what you see in your dreams, because it gives me the opportunity to tell you I saw something I couldn't express the other day and you crossed my mind. I can't say right what I saw or the feeling it envoked in me & it made me feel unworthy to be the one to have seen it instead of you. You could have written it so beautifully. What I saw was massive excavators with tall reaching arms engulfed in an eerie fog. They were standing there like transformers from another world or something. And all around them was the biggest disgusting mess of raped earth I have ever seen. It was an early gray morning. Town wasn't busy yet and so
I pulled over & sat there for a few minutes. It felt like I was the only person at the funeral for the death & murder of the last farm left in Farmington. A town of hypocrites that should seriously consider changing its name now. But anyway, I sat there in my car for a minutes feeling beholding & helpless. My last thought as I
drove away was I wish Bryan would have been the one to experience this. I think that just goes to show how much I admire the way you can write.
And sorry for spelling adventurous wrong up there.
DeleteThere was a construction site near the apartments where we lived when I was about four, and it was a big field of loose wet mud like that. My older brother and his friend would go over there all the time. I don't know why. One day he came home all covered in mud and all upset, because I guess his boots had gotten sucked down so much in the mud that they had come completely off his feet. I think that freaked him out and he ran home without his boots. My mom put him in thr bath, and I was just standing there in the doorway. I had this fear of quicksand at the time because of something I saw on TV, and then this made it worse. Now I was afraid of sinking in to mud too! That's what I usually think of when I see muddy fields like that.
DeleteErr what I meant there at the last was that there was something else to the experience that I can't describe, but you could have. It was the most important part.
DeleteThat must have been so scary. Poor little guy. I bet you felt extra sympathetic towards him but at the same time glad it was him instead of you.
DeleteI think Gilligan's Island is partly to blame for little kids fearing quicksand.
And being stuck in mud can be just as scary!
Ha! I think there was a Gilligan's Island episode involved. A few other shows too. For some reason, quicksand was a popular plot device on late 70's TV shows.
DeleteBoats, too now that I think about. They were always springing a leak. One second little boys would be happily rowing along & the next they frantically trying to make it back to shore.
ReplyDeleteBut that was a boy fear. My biggest fear was probably getting hit in the nose with a ball & ending up looking like Marsha Brady.
Oh Lord, The Brady Bunch. I would get so anxious every time one of those kids were going to get in trouble, I'd end up having to leave the room. I couldn't watch!
DeleteYeah, hated that show. Didn't sit particularly well with my stomach after a long day at school. Not to mention it was nerdy even back then. Partridge Family was the cool after school show. My mom thought the Partridge kids were a bad influence on us, because they were hippies, but she reluctantly let us watch it. She sat her foot down about The Munsters and Addams Family, though. She really hated those two.
ReplyDeleteWe didn't watch t.v for very long in the afternoon anyway. There's was always something better to do back then.