Patchwork
Taking a break from patching up my natty, all purpose coat...I always choose the "wrong" color thread in hopes that, by its shear obtuseness, it will encourage others to mend instead of replace and waste...I don't believe it has.
Another rainy Sunday...I love this dreary consistency, but I worry that Atlantis is being too passive... where is winter? ...I recall sinus shrinking cold and nasty ice storms from childhood...then again memory could be skewed...
Example: There was one winter in particular in which I was severely injured by a pie slice/shard of frozen sand, -the result of a rain soaked sandbox and freezing overnight temps. It was an event I recall with clarity yet my family can't place. I even have a tiny scar to map the injury.
It was one of the worst freezes on record from my understanding. Power lines, trees, sewer systems were all snapped under the pressure of ice.
I was bundled up on the 'Minischool' playground, walking behind a firing squad of first graders and watching them launch off a melee of Icesand pie-slices at a felonious fence despite the earlier protests of the overseers.
I turned my head toward the firing range at the precise moment boy #4’s arm arched back, hand loaded with Icesand Pie.
X met why. The physics involved must have been art. The arch of boy #4’s arm, its momentum, our combined heights, and distance from my head formed some nautilus golden rule.
Force. Mass. Acceleration. Elasticity of flesh and who knows what else.
I turned my head to look and, instead of crushing into or through my cranium, the Icesand pie slid nicely under my left eye.
Click of ice against bone. Paisley-bruise of squished eyeball.
Complications:
Do you remember that scene where the kid sticks his tongue to the cold flagpole?
Well evidently sand and ice, being crystalline, have similar properties.
Slow motion.
The tissue in my eye socket bonded briefly with the Icesand, while boy #4’s arm, unaware of my situation, continued its follow through. He tugged, time stretched my eye stuffing until there was a rip release followed by a festive trail of red fanning away from my sight.
Slow fade from red to black.
I recall the events after that with as much clarity. Finding myself seated in the 'Minischool' office with a nurse patching my eye. She was telling me the tissue was too thin and too close to my eyelid for stitches; that the boy would be punished; that my parents were en route; that I should go to a hospital; that the boy would be punished. I can remember hearing boy #4 being scolded horribly in the hallway and that I tried to explain to the overseers that he hadn't done it on purpose and they should stop yelling at him. They patronized me and the scolding continued.
Being a member of a Christian Science family, I did not go to the hospital. I remember the infection a week or later, and the great purple stain it left on my Wizard of Oz towel after the blister burst.
But nobody else recalls.
The only cross ref I have comes from my Uncle who was living downstairs at the time. He claims that he'd gone with friends to see The Exorcist one night and was too creeped-out to sleep in the haunted basement so he crashed on the couch upstairs. He woke to find me standing over him, staring at him, both eyes bruised and black, blood scabbing my face. He sent me flying into a nearby bean bag chair, and woke the house as he held me down, sure that I was possessed, screaming that I was evil.
(For the record, I had a habit of exploring the house after everybody was asleep, sometimes sleepwalking, other times just being nostalgic, and I was most likely on one of these excursions.)
Patchwork coat, patchwork memories.
Anyhow, the point is...I remember the harsh, wet and nasty winters. I want harsh, wet and nasty.
Keep watching the frogs. They die first.
Another rainy Sunday...I love this dreary consistency, but I worry that Atlantis is being too passive... where is winter? ...I recall sinus shrinking cold and nasty ice storms from childhood...then again memory could be skewed...
Example: There was one winter in particular in which I was severely injured by a pie slice/shard of frozen sand, -the result of a rain soaked sandbox and freezing overnight temps. It was an event I recall with clarity yet my family can't place. I even have a tiny scar to map the injury.
It was one of the worst freezes on record from my understanding. Power lines, trees, sewer systems were all snapped under the pressure of ice.
I was bundled up on the 'Minischool' playground, walking behind a firing squad of first graders and watching them launch off a melee of Icesand pie-slices at a felonious fence despite the earlier protests of the overseers.
I turned my head toward the firing range at the precise moment boy #4’s arm arched back, hand loaded with Icesand Pie.
X met why. The physics involved must have been art. The arch of boy #4’s arm, its momentum, our combined heights, and distance from my head formed some nautilus golden rule.
Force. Mass. Acceleration. Elasticity of flesh and who knows what else.
I turned my head to look and, instead of crushing into or through my cranium, the Icesand pie slid nicely under my left eye.
Click of ice against bone. Paisley-bruise of squished eyeball.
Complications:
Do you remember that scene where the kid sticks his tongue to the cold flagpole?
Well evidently sand and ice, being crystalline, have similar properties.
Slow motion.
The tissue in my eye socket bonded briefly with the Icesand, while boy #4’s arm, unaware of my situation, continued its follow through. He tugged, time stretched my eye stuffing until there was a rip release followed by a festive trail of red fanning away from my sight.
Slow fade from red to black.
I recall the events after that with as much clarity. Finding myself seated in the 'Minischool' office with a nurse patching my eye. She was telling me the tissue was too thin and too close to my eyelid for stitches; that the boy would be punished; that my parents were en route; that I should go to a hospital; that the boy would be punished. I can remember hearing boy #4 being scolded horribly in the hallway and that I tried to explain to the overseers that he hadn't done it on purpose and they should stop yelling at him. They patronized me and the scolding continued.
Being a member of a Christian Science family, I did not go to the hospital. I remember the infection a week or later, and the great purple stain it left on my Wizard of Oz towel after the blister burst.
But nobody else recalls.
The only cross ref I have comes from my Uncle who was living downstairs at the time. He claims that he'd gone with friends to see The Exorcist one night and was too creeped-out to sleep in the haunted basement so he crashed on the couch upstairs. He woke to find me standing over him, staring at him, both eyes bruised and black, blood scabbing my face. He sent me flying into a nearby bean bag chair, and woke the house as he held me down, sure that I was possessed, screaming that I was evil.
(For the record, I had a habit of exploring the house after everybody was asleep, sometimes sleepwalking, other times just being nostalgic, and I was most likely on one of these excursions.)
Patchwork coat, patchwork memories.
Anyhow, the point is...I remember the harsh, wet and nasty winters. I want harsh, wet and nasty.
Keep watching the frogs. They die first.