Mind Travel

I should be working, but I'm not. I was just starting to read the blogs I peruse on a daily basis. I usually start with Greek Tragedy. And today Stephanie's words inspired me more so than usual. She was talking about how she falls asleep at night thinking about the "where I've beens." Isn't that what writing is all about? Remembering where we've been?

Even as a child I've always been uber aware of myself in the context of the greater scenery of which I am a part. Walking down the street, I imagine what people see: a lamp post, a man walking his dog, the tall girl adjusting her barrett in a shop window. This obsession made me acutely aware of scene. I remember so many of them in my life. Moments embellished by where they took place. I want to start a series (probably intermittantly) of moments of place and time that stick with me. In no particular order, here's the first one:


I remember countless summer afternoons that slowly stretched into summer evenings spent sitting on the rotting wooden picnic tables under a single pavillion in the one square block of a park in my hometown. There would be three or four of us, slurping on cream sodas and sticky clumps of fruit rollups we'd bought at the corner store on our way. The air always seemed cooler and damper under that sagging roof. We'd make plans, talk about who was going to kick whose ass if they ran into each other here. I often found myself walking around the structure, to each individual table, each supporting column, even the rafters, reading the grafitti scratched in the chipped gray-white paint. Some missives were written in thick black permanent marker. Some in pencil, barely legible. My favorites were the ones carved deep into the wood, the ones a fresh coat of paint wouldn't cover. Stephanie ♥s Aaron forever. David's a pussy. AC/DC rulz. Fuck. I would run my fingers over the grooves and feel the words. I longed to carve my own Fillmore Park propaganda. I wasn't even sure what I wanted to say. I was certain my dad would find out. Vandalism. Immortality. One night after the street lights had come on, my best friend stood watch. Digging deep into the cracking paint and soft wood, I left a piece of myself, a piece of me to stay behind when I left and never came back.