Month: November 2012

I completed the Rubik’s cube I pulled out of storage last week. This is something I began five years ago. Chuck’s technique—start with the white side and move along—came back to me as I sat in the tent and bumbled my way through the toy’s challenges. Each side was one puzzle. All puzzles joined together toward a satisfying conclusion. The white puzzle began the march. The green puzzle proved most challenging. Red was the last. The red was an unnatural shade. Clown red. Dress red. This is the side that faced me when I set it down and drove into town to buy a turkey sandwich. Turkey, cream cheese, and cranberry sauce. The sun set was nice as a pretty girl’s golden eyes. Doesn’t matter who sees them. Always gold.

Titusville, FL lies in an area called the Space Coast. I forget my space history (will the history books begin with the space race? or with the Babylonians?), but I do know that Neil Armstrong’s was the first boot on the moon. I know I was in the Flash I class when the Columbia shuttle exploded in the sky. Titusville—near Cape Canaveral and the Kennedy Space Center—is about an hour west of Orlando. There’s not much there that I know of except it’s a place I’m going to go, so it’s something to me. I wonder how it will compare to all the others.

Among my oldest memories is an evening at home in the old apartment with my mother. The light of the table lamp cast shadows across the small living room and into the dark kitchen. We waited for my father. When he arrived—God, he looked young, about my age now I reckon—he smiled. He spoke of drums. “Tambores” in Spanish. Where is it? I asked. I wanted to play the drums. Not those kinds of drums, he explained. Brake drums. I was disappointed. I wouldn’t play the drums. Many years later, while describing experiences with my father to a girlfriend as we lay in bed, she said he sounded interesting. She would find him attractive. Teasing me as was her way, in spite of my insistence on serious conversation or because it. I nearly kicked her out of bed. Instead, I told her to watch what she said about my father and stepped outside.

I laid in the back of my Cherokee after the sandwich and smoked old weed while I thought of an unfinished novel. I thought of killing the lead narrator by old age, having never revealed his murderous past. There are people who don’t like to talk about their stories and I resent them for it. Who’re they that they can just hold back of themselves? Who the fuck are they not to spill all? Then I thought I could live there, in the back of that Cherokee. Save all the money wasted on rent for a place to sleep and storage of what little shit I still have. As far from what’s expected as possible. I will admit I felt uncertainty, or perhaps just let it bubble up to the surface.

Do not underestimate the effects of time. There’ll be hell to pay at the end of youthful arrogance.

I completed the Rubik’s cube I pulled out of storage last week. This is something I began five years ago. Chuck’s technique—start with the white side and move along—came back to me as I sat in the tent and bumbled my way through the toy’s challenges. Each side was one puzzle. All puzzles joined together toward a satisfying conclusion. The white puzzle began the march. The green puzzle proved most challenging. Red was the last. The red was an unnatural shade. Clown red. Dress red. This is the side that faced me when I set it down and drove into town to buy a turkey sandwich. Turkey, cream cheese, and cranberry sauce. The sun set was nice as a pretty girl’s golden eyes. Doesn’t matter who sees them. Always gold.

Titusville, FL lies in an area called the Space Coast. I forget my space history (will the history books begin with the space race? or with the Babylonians?), but I do know that Neil Armstrong’s was the first boot on the moon. I know I was in the Flash I class when the Columbia shuttle exploded in the sky. Titusville—near Cape Canaveral and the Kennedy Space Center—is about an hour west of Orlando. There’s not much there that I know of except it’s a place I’m going to go, so it’s something to me. I wonder how it will compare to all the others.

Among my oldest memories is an evening at home in the old apartment with my mother. The light of the table lamp cast shadows across the small living room and into the dark kitchen. We waited for my father. When he arrived—God, he looked young, about my age now I reckon—he smiled. He spoke of drums. “Tambores” in Spanish. Where is it? I asked. I wanted to play the drums. Not those kinds of drums, he explained. Brake drums. I was disappointed. I wouldn’t play the drums. Many years later, while describing experiences with my father to a girlfriend as we lay in bed, she said he sounded interesting. She would find him attractive. Teasing me as was her way, in spite of my insistence on serious conversation or because it. I nearly kicked her out of bed. Instead, I told her to watch what she said about my father and stepped outside.

I laid in the back of my Cherokee after the sandwich and smoked old weed while I thought of an unfinished novel. I thought of killing the lead narrator by old age, having never revealed his murderous past. There are people who don’t like to talk about their stories and I resent them for it. Who’re they that they can just hold back of themselves? Who the fuck are they not to spill all? Then I thought I could live there, in the back of that Cherokee. Save all the money wasted on rent for a place to sleep and storage of what little shit I still have. As far from what’s expected as possible. I will admit I felt uncertainty, or perhaps just let it bubble up to the surface.

Do not underestimate the effects of time. There’ll be hell to pay at the end of youthful arrogance.