In my last post, I said that some personal projects of mine might make occasional appearances. Well, I’ve decided to go ahead and make that a reality.
This personal project is something I’m simply calling Memoirs. Not original, I know, but apt. In my blog, they will appear under the less pretentious title, The First Thirty Years (or, TFTY), followed by the appropriate sequence number and a subtitle.
In short, they are a collection of my most poignant memories, spanning my life from somewhere around the age of two or three to the present.
As most readers will probably notice, the style is not consistent - this has been done intentionally. I have endeavored to write in such a way as to make the memories flow naturally out of the age and time at which they were first experienced. As a result, early memories will most often rely heavily on outward, sensory language, while more recent ones will possess a more structured, internal nature.
Also, I would like to point out that the perspective of each memory is, of course, mine. I will be the first to admit these are subjective, and, as much as is possible, often depict sentiments that were felt at the time of the experience, regardless of the degree of hindsight received at the time of writing. These are not meant to be accurate, they are meant to be real.
Lastly, it should be noted that these memories are anachronistic - they do not appear in the order in which they occurred. That is because they are memories, and, as we all know, memories do not care about present time - they like to advance upon our minds and our senses when they please, often at the most inconvenient times.
For now, enough. I give you, The Prayer Room.
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I was born.
When the sun is high and heat settles into the bosom of the earth, there’s a juxtaposition of ultimate peace and radical restlessness that cannot be explained, only felt. It swells hard in the belly and makes its way into the corners of the mind. This is the South, but I didn’t know that then.
I was a boy.
Recollections come back in snatches of turquoise and cream-colored countertops, linoleum floor tiles, and cold blue fluorescent lights. This is America, as seen in the mind of a two-year old at the dawn of that impetuous decade, the 90’s.
The heat subsides. Fields of pebbles begin to cool and crunch underfoot. There’s a red-carpet room. Stained glass on the wall catches the light of a Biloxi sun at dusk and the room robes itself in kaleidoscopes of colored dust and crimson. The absence of sound is fluid – aromatic, heavy, asleep. This is the prayer room. God is a lion, but he isn’t. He’s a baby sheep, but He isn’t. I don’t know what God is, but He’s swimming in the prayer room.
Time skulks across the horizon like the silhouette of a bushy-tailed chicken thief, but I don’t notice.
Two giant chipmunks, Chip and Dale, emblazoned in stark tungsten relief against a baroque backdrop of brick. I sweat. The sun lives here, too, but he’s different, somehow. God is here, too, but there aren’t any prayer rooms. The dimples on the inside of my knees, wet from the sun, stick and slip against the neck of my father. His face, shaved and rough, scratches my legs every time he turns to look at Chip and Dale. This is Russia. Time stole the colors, but he left the sun. I want to go inside and watch the story about a mouse who sails across the ocean because his family hates cats. I don’t hate cats, but I like the mouse.
I like dinosaurs and cold floors, but we eat eggs by peeling off the hard parts. I like the white but not the yellow. Russia is old. Was God here first? Russia is cold. Where does the sun go when the sweat goes away? Wind is a woman who makes your nose hurt and bites your fingers but I like her.