Apparitions

My father says I was a good baby. I never cried, except when it was time to go to bed. I haven't thought about these apparitions in years, now I wonder just how far back did they go.

At some point in time, every night, when the lights went out and I was in bed and closed my eyes, I saw apparitions. The apparitions were already as familiar to me as my own voice. Were they that old? Were they even older? I only know that they didn't stop until I was in Junior High School; was I twelve or thirteen?

They are hard to explain. Imagine driving a car at night in the snow. The snow flakes come out of nowhere; head straight at you in a strange curve from out of the sky and then disappear. They were faces of sorts. Hideously distorted faces in bright colors coming at me like a hard snow at night behind a windshield. Each was as unique as a snow flake. They came and they came and they came. I would try to sleep with my eyes open, but that always failed.

Sending kids to bed always seemed cruel to me. All throughout the day there is some adult around. But after it gets dark, they tuck you in; make you repeat some prayers (as if rote has any power over passion), then they walk away and turn off the light and shut the door. All alone, in the biggest world imaginable, alone in the dark. In darkness there is no wall a few feet away; darkness goes on forever, and in all that distance something bad must be happening somewhere. I was so afraid of the dark.

I discovered some tips along the way. First, put the covers over your head. Nothing bad can get you under the covers; you're safe there. Covers not only hide you, but nothing can hear you breath under there, and they can't smell you. Keep your eyes open under the covers, that's very important. That way, when your mammal lungs come up to breath some fresh air, the room isn't nearly as dark. You can actually make out normal objects.

It took me years to establish this next tip as a rule. There is the question of where to keep the top of the covers once you come out for the night. Over your shoulder? or under your arm? I knew this fact would make the difference between surviving the night alive or not. And every night I couldn't remember what I had done the night before. The weight of this decision, the disappointment in myself for not remembering , or even coming up with a simple way to remember, and trying to figure out what to do, and trying to retrace all my steps until I had gone to bed the night before wore me out. But not enough to shut my eyes. It wasn't until after I'd seen a few vampire movies that this question was settled once and for all. Vampires can't bite you through your blanket. Keep it around your neck.

Some nights, Mom would stay up late and watch TV. TV was young enough in those days that it didn't have permission to stay up all night either. I always stayed up with her. For one reason, I wanted to be with Mom as much as I could. Second, I never wanted to go to bed. We must have seen every scary movie ever made from the forties and fifties. I promised that they never gave me nightmares, but they did once in a while. Yet, those brief dreams where I was prey for "The Beast with a Thousand Eyes" or Werewolf didn't posses me like the hours of nightly apparitions. Those nightmares I can't recall. I'd also have nightmares about being trapped in a large nest of snakes, or spiders. Even then I noticed that horror movies weren't nearly as scary as what was real, or that the possibility of being real.

Years later, I found out how to stop having nightmares. We had the largest Crown of Thorns plant I've ever seen. All I had to do was lay down facing that plant and ask Jesus to keep me from having a nightmare. I wouldn't, but the apparitions always came.

Childhood seemed to be an endless search for explanations. "Where are the streets of heaven that are paved in gold?" They are the cobble stone type clouds at sunset. That's when God looks down at us. "How can outer space go on without ever ending?" Well, one night, while I was trying to keep my eyes open, an angel took me to the edge of outer space. It was a jagged metal strip like the ones on a box of aluminum foil. I noticed that both side of the strip looked exactly the same, black space. For my apparitions, there was only one explanation: I was evil incarnate. Satan owned my soul.

It didn't matter how good I was during the day; at night, when I was as alone as a bone before creation, I was Satan's own soul.

Some days I'd think about this a great deal. Some days I was reminded how bad I was by my parents, my Dad did it with every meal. Some days, if I could manage not eating with my father I'd not think about it all.

One afternoon, when my Aunt, who never learned to drive, rode with me in the back seat of our old 48 Chevy, she took my hands and examined them. I had little white lines in my fingernails. She claimed that telling lies made those. I must be a big liar. I hid my hands for days. I was ashamed of being evil. I started paying attention to the truth. That's when I noticed that grown-ups lied all the time. They would say things like: it happened the other day when we were at the grocery store. Well, it didn't happen 'the other day'; it happened exactly three days ago and we were in Krogers. I learned quickly not to correct grown-ups, especially parents in front of other grown-ups. I knew Satan didn't own my parents, like he did me, because they were always trying to get me to act right and good. And they decided what that was, so they must be good.

My lies, (and I did lie) just made the world more interesting. When Mom would ask me where my brother was, I'd say, "A donkey stopped by, and they went off to California to prospect for gold." I think I got my mouth washed out with soap for that one.

Some days, I would worry all day long, or so it seemed, that I was going to Hell the moment I died. Satan already owned me, and there was nothing I could do about it. My nightly prayers didn't stop the apparitions any more than praying for it to be bright and sunny when you driving through a blizzard. . My pleas to Jesus didn't stop them either. Then one day, I came to terms with it. What would the Devil want with a six year old kid when he could have Kings and Presidents? That comforted me. The apparitions kept coming, but they no longer scared me. I could lay back and watch them come at me.

Maybe children have been put to be alone to prepare them for being an adult. My future has often been black distances where hope is some object infinitely far away, where a million bad things can happen before you can get there. It has been my children who are my sun, the day, birds singing in flight, wonder and awe. There is nothing evil, or even bad in their souls. I hope I told them this often. Maybe by laying down with them until they fell asleep has made them weaker adults.

Looking back, through the lens of what children mean to me, I realize that Satan would love to take the soul of a child; what could be more evil? What could be more sad than to think that your life isn't worth Satan's spit? I struggle with that still. I've been going bed alone for years, for a very long time, and I still think its cruel. And I can't fall asleep without something, even if its only a towel, or an old t-shirt over my shoulder.

Grouse Dance

It was a period of my life when I could not sleep. My stomach churned with grief. One night, I did fall into a fit full sleep. I had a dream. I was walking down the alley of my youth, on my way to my first grade classroom, by way of my Grandfather's house. There was a tiny pasture adjoining his yard. The sky, the air, the thick green grass was fresh from my six year old memories. Suddenly, there appeared a grouse in the pasture. It started to dance. I stopped and stared in awe. Being impatient and too hard driven, I started walking onward, never taking my eye off the dancing grouse. It danced parallel with me. We went on that way, my heart beating as thin as a vapor. That grouse met up with another grouse and he passed the torch of dancing with me onto him. I met four grouse in all on my way to grandpa's house.

Suddenly, I felt light as a feather with happiness. To think a wild thing like a grouse would even notice me. Let alone look into my heart and decide to help me. And then to think that that grouse was met by another who cold see into its heart and say, Please brother, let me help in this noble cause. I nearly cried from the burden of deserving such tenderness.

So I looked ahead. And there was grandpa's house. The sycamores, the root cellar, the well, the wood shed, the front porch of life that met the great depression on bad terms and survived. Then there was the cinder driveway that hadn't known his car years before I was born. Near is stood the grandest walnut tree in town. I looked up at it, as I always have. Today, waterfalls were cascading down through the limbs of summer leaves.

All of my senses and focus was upon that most profound question of any age, "What's the source?" My eyes landed on each marvel of each waterfall's source until I found myself looking into the sky. And there I was confronted with a sight that caused me to forget my purpose.

The sky was as black as perfection. The stars were so bright, I was like a deer in headlights. As I stared slack jawed I noticed that sometimes a lightening bolt would shoot from one star to another. So many were doing it that it first appeared to be random. Then I saw that they were talking to each other. And then I knew they were speaking to my life, outside of this dream, "Greg, we gave you so many gifts; what happened to you?"

I awoke in sobs of shame. And I fell into the first restful sleep in days.

I awoke feeling great. The dream came back to me with my first breath of awareness. I felt deeply touched. I thought, wow, even the stars know how hard it is to remain human on earth, and they give each and every life careful consideration and bestow gifts that will help us each on our path in this world.

It helped. I began sleeping again, and my stomach settled into the routine of hunger management.

Lately, I've been hearing the night sky again. At night, I go out and look up. I can feel their concern for me. But I wake up to the light of day and go about my business of 'cause and effect'.

I'm aware that heaven is out there, beyond the sun shine. It's in that light of worldly navigation that I answer the stars. They speak in lightening. My voice struggles against the gravity of the great needs and geography of this land.

The Pencil that Failed

THE PENCIL THAT FAILED

Sam sat at his desk, with 20 questions before him. 20 questions of homework, due. They lay between him and anything else he wanted to do. “Mom, can I watch a movie?”

“Not until your homework is done.”

“Mom, can I have a snack?”

“Not until you complete the 2 pages in your phonics book.”

“20 questions will take forever mom”, but, he knew her reply.

"Then you'd better get started right now."

20 to go, and just - just look at them. He measured the length of each one with his pencil. Suddenly, he noticed that his pencil had words on it. Words too big for him to read. He wondered what the words said. Was the pencil on his side or his mom's side? Maybe the pencil was trying to tell him how to escape.

He put the pencil's words to his good ear and heard the pencil whisper to him, "Crawl inside the flower vase. Flower vases give me magical powers. I'll be your magic wand and you'll never have to do phonic sentences again."

“Hmmm???” He looked inside the flower vase. The opening was far too small to let his head in. A fact which didn't stop him from trying, several times.

Sam took the promised 'magic wand' in hand, and forced his arm through the hole up to his elbow.

"Maybe 10 of the 20 questions will disappear", he hoped. He looked at the page . Nothing had chanced. Almost nothing.

"Mom! My arm's stuck!"

He could hear his mother's footsteps pounding down the hall. Each step making the next madder still.

He closed his eyes and said, while holding his breath, "Trusting that pencil had been a big mistake."

The door burst open; his "I'm sorry, Mom," drowned out her exasperated breathing.

She walked past his aching arm and looked at his home work. "You've been in here all this time and you haven't done anything!"

She grabbed his arm and the flower vase; she bit her lip; he closed his eyes again, and silently said, "Oh no, she's biting her lip”.

Next came a jerk, then a twist with a jerk (and the loss of some dearly beloved skin), and his arm was free.

"You had better finish those sentences before I lose my patience, young man." She stormed out, slamming the door like the clap of thunder that introduces you to your maker.

He looked back at his homework. His arm hurt. The pencil was very quiet. He listened for his mother. He couldn't hear her. "She's outside the door listening to me. This is serious."

He squirmed. "Mom was never like this before I went to

school. We used to have fun together."

He heard the floor squeak in the hall.

"She moved."

He read the first question loud enough for his Uncle to hear in Idaho, "The dog, 'blank' to the boy.”

“Which word fits?”

“Jumped?”

(These sentences sure are stupid), he secretly thought.

He twisted his neck around (forgetting about his mother) Sam wiggled out of his chair. He jumped like a dog across the room. There, he found a book his mother used to read to him, “Peter Rabbit”. He put the book in his mouth and romped along the wall. He laid down in the corner; he opened the book and the memories of his mother reading to him nearly made him pump one leg, like a puppy will do when you scratch them in the right place.

Just holding the book, looking at the cover took him into his mother's lap

His mother hadn't been listening to him in the hallway. She was busy making supper. Something she didn't fancy doing either. She was mincing onions when she heard a child-awful noise coming form the den. "I'll kill him", she cried, and without wiping off her hands, she thrust her bit lip forward.

He heard the door open. She was on him in a step. In one smooth move she had him up from their reading corner of the floor and into his chair. She sat right beside him. She was crying too. Maybe it was from the onions, or maybe it was from her memories of reading to him.

"Number One" She pointed at the words while she read.

“The dog 'blank' to the boy. - Now these are your choices. - Jump, hit, ran, pat”.

“Ran”, he said, as quietly as a tear.

“Right! Write it down”.

His pencil jiggled at the top. The lead forced out an "r" then an "a", and finally an "n. This is truly awful, he thought.

“You read the second one”.

He did.

“I'm going to finish dinner. You finish your work and we shall both live happily ever after”.

"Okay mom"

“Number 3. See the frog .... “

'Jump', he decided.

As he began the "J" his pencil broke. His eyes grew uncommonly large.

His mom yelled down the hall and through the door. "Are you working?"

He swallowed hard; opened the door, and walked into the kitchen, where his mom was still fixing dinner, with the smell of onion on her hands.

He hugged her leg, and said, "Yes, mom, but my pencil broke,

really."

And that is why, God gave parents: the gift of 'a sigh'.

The End.

first recall

My first memory was a dream. I can only guess that I was at least three, but I'm certain I was less than five. And I can only deduct that it was my first memory.

One night, I dreampt I was flying.

I was gliding above our house. Soaring over the yard, of green grass, so thick and so tall it was hard to pull your foot free of it. The wind was blowing to beat the band. I looked down on the peach tree, the clothes line, and some building called the garage, although we couldn't get in there.

Then Mom came outside, yelling for me. I didn't it know it then, but I later learned that she always talked to herself when she was looking for us, she say it over and over, “God, I'm going to kill 'em.” In the dream she looked up and saw me flying around. She shielded her eyes from the sun. I heard yell, “That's great! Keep flying!”, and she ran back into the house.

Now, I know we didn't have a phone. Nor did we ever make a trip to a neighbors house to use a phone. But she went back into that house and made a phone call. You could do that when you were young. If you wanted something bad enough, sometimes it would just appear, so why not a phone for a grown-up, who needed grown-up things.

Soon, a car came driving up to the house, a trail of dust following it for miles. A strange man got out, which was no surprise because I didn't know the car either. He started taking pictures of me right away with a Jimmy Olsen style camera with the big flash bulbs. He was a reporter from the big newspaper in town, way down the hard road. After he took a lot of pictures of me posing in mid-glide, eyes focused ahead, as my will to fly shooting out of my eyes was the only thing that keep me afloat. Then we started waving me down. “That's great kid. Come on down so I can talk to you.”

I started down, but I lost control. I couldn't land; I tried to go back up, but I couldn't. I was free falling. And I woke up, terrified.

This dream gave me an awareness of my first house. The first house my mom lived in that ever had electricity. It was house that had a name. Although, it's been torn down and plowed under for years that corner of the field is still called, The Old Hurie House. The grass of it's yard, which bordered an oil road out front and three straight hard lines of open field all around it.

I still think fondly of peach trees and peaches, despite this other memory. Mom had just finished baking a peach pie from that tree. She set in the the middle of the kitchen table to cool. She ordered me not to get into it. I don't remember getting into pies before, and I don't remember where she'd set them before, but I do remember thinking: this, middle of the table spot was new, and designed to make it impossible for me to dig my hand into it and start eating away like Yogi Bear.

It did pose a problem; I knew I couldn't reach it. The other problem would take care of itself. It always did. Any time I wanted to do something my mom didn't want me to do, she would, sooner or later, invite me to do it. She'd leave me alone. And then she'd even start making noise, to assure me that she'd be away for quite some time. That when I pulled one of the chairs out. Climbed up into it; stood up and turned around; and climbed up onto the table.

Yes, I was going to get into this pie and have something good. If you wanted something bad enough it would happen. I could take several hand fulls out of it and the crust would look good as new if I really, really wanted to eat some it now. That's the way things were.

I was crawling out to the middle of the table when the middle fell to the floor and ends came flying up over my head. The racket was incredibly loud. The pie broke. And I was hurt.

Mom stormed in. She started crying and then she grabbed me. The don't remember the other times this happened, but I remember I knew what to expect. I was going to get a beating. They were always the same: intense heat; soon I'd be standing in a fire with flames over my head. And I would run! Run, run as if I willed it I could run straight up a wall of flame that was taller than my head. I never gave thought about it being impossible, or that I'd always failed before, I just knew that I had to try. After all, this was still of age before consequence and the laws of physics, this was the stage the age of magic and wonder.

Time still didn't make much sense. Maybe it was hours later, or minutes later that Dad came home. We always ate supper as soon as Dad came home. But tonight, when Dad got home he was greeted by mom yelling. And then Dad started yelling at me. I know I couldn't always hear what they were saying because the heat radiating off them scared the senses right out of me. Dad grabbed me and I started running for that wall of flame for all I was worth.

Afterwards, I remember watching Dad work on the table. There was no getting around it; he had to fix it before we could eat. I remember thinking, how can he possibly fix that broken thing. And I remember thinking, no matter how much he wants that table to fix itself and no matter how much we all want to eat right now; it's not going to happen until Dad gets the table fixed. I truly felt sorry for him.

If that had been my first memory I don't think I'd be so keen on peaches. Or anyone ever being proud of me.

Nearly thirty some years later I wrote a poem about that dream. I was talked into burning it, by some second ex-wife, and now I try to reassemble it:

A howling kite's take of human soul

A clothesline hung from a peaches hall

and the Justice Department

eats grilled cheese sandwiches.  

hanging with Jimmy

I had this dream with Jimmy Stewart. We were playing poker in a small, old hotel room. He was wearing his 40’s suit and hat. We all had drinks and smokes, like people did in those days. The guy to my left and Jimmy’s right, asks him straight in the eye. “ Jimmy, what does it take to make a good movie?”

Jimmy leans into him, slowing holds an open palm above the table and slowly chops into with his other hand, “At the beginning of the picture you make the audience a promise, see. And then he leans back in his chair and with thumbs in his vest and says, “By the end of the picture you fulfill that promise”.

I was telling Ron, a friend of mine this story on our way back from a sunset on a Santa Cruz beach. And he said, “And that’s the way life is to, you know. You make a promise to yourself and then you go out and make it happen. Whatever that promise may be”. And then he stops, looks at me with wonder, “Did you really dream you were playing cards with Jimmy Stewart?”

Yep.

Later,

alone.

I got to thinking about all the Promise that slips through my open hands every day. I’ve been living my life in a way to make any promise impossible.

I believe, that each of us is on a hero’s journey, in the movie, end epic sense of the word – even anti-heroes. Within every such tale, there is a period of time when the hero is convinced that he’s not the one, and lives in denial of his own promise.

While I was thinking that my son calls me, and tells me, out of the blue, his theory on luck. “It’s what you look for”. Couldn’t argue with that, so I gave him the Paul Simon line from The Boxer, “ A man hears what he wants to hear, and disregards the rest”, one of my favorite lines of all time.

What’s taken me so long? What was I waiting for? A dream where Jimmy Stewart shows up, leans into my ear and whispers, “Harvey, wants to tell you something”.

It’s time to keep a keen eye and honed ear out for passing straws of promise. After all, I have a Damsel in Distress to save; her name is My Muse. She visits me often, although I’ve never laid eyes on her. When she leaves my knees buckle, and I pace like a cartoon character in the delivery room, and my stork is a veteran of the Norse Gods. That’s going to be a long, slow flight.

I have some ‘bad habit swashbuckling’ to do, and some bureaucratic shenanigans to slight-of-hand. The thickest thicket to hack through will be self-acceptance.  

sighs

It is a Sigh that greets me

when the world hears my tale,

though the storytellers be, nods

from the gods.

No hero ever showed more heart,

My passion dims Blake-ian imagination,

and my Love for you

is older, and more fertile

than The Word that bore all creation.

It is your Sigh

I can't defeat.

It is your Smile

I can't abandon.

To the last of my Life Forces

I shall overcome.

Trust me.

The Majestic Pretense of Failure

has never before

met the Will of, My Sigh.

I Shall dip in the Joy

of Your Smile,

Forever, and Ever.

bouncy bass lines

Big bouncy bass lines carried me out the door with a satchel sized smile on my face (Fastball painted on my shoe, the outfield's loafing in the bull pen; the infield is sitting behind the pitcher's mound playing cards; one run up in the ninth. Batter's eyes as big as Cadillac whitewalls, don't you know).

And I'm humming in the alley, soot dancing on hundred year old city street grit. A man pulls a knife. I pulled my empty pockets out , for all the world to see. My wallet's as thin as toilet paper blowing down the alley breeze of a city borne draft.

The knife disappears; there's a pat on my shoulder, and a fin in my hand as he slouches away with ever the ever devouring eyes of a bird of prey.

Who's to say that's a bad thing? My mom used to tell me, when my stomach growled and I said, Mom, I'm hungry. She'd say, “You're fine. You ain't hungry. That's just your big guts eating your little guts”.

Ain't it always been the same. Big shots eating the poor man's life? The desperate plundering the odds in their favor.

I was in a tiny little alley grew up in a tiny yard. Somewhere the world is still as big as Blue and Green. I hope there's some place in the world where the Earth is still wearing its birthday suit.

You can take the 'hunter and gatherer' out of society, but you can't take the 'hunter and gatherer' out of our DNA. You can take the fields of food supply out of the land, bu you can't take the fear of being without out of mankind.

Yet, I'm still dancing on a cloud, not seeing any further than in a fog, and I'm wondering a-mist this upside-down turn of events: was it my humming that big bouncing bass line while dancing with that with satchel sized smile that woke up the dragon of DNA- Isn't Living Great!