the return

At long last.

After a good three weeks hiatus, I'm ready to let the creative juices flow and ebb. I think I've sufficiently pounded my brain into a tender submission with origins, insertions, innervations and actions (enjoy it my fine doctor friends who are beginning MSK!). I feel strangely dead inside a little bit - the winter weather having limited my physical activity level and my time, energy and emotions all but previously consumed by school. Here I enter the closest taste to freedom (well actually I'm just about to start clinical) and it tastes pretty sweet.

When you're aiming for the future in the present, all you can really think of is the past. Right now it's almost 4:00 AM, I can't sleep, and all I can think about is the beautiful sleeps I've had in the past. I draw this analogy parallel to the fact that when I'm sitting here trying to amuse myself with pointless shenanigans, all I can think about is my past and all the times I used to have fun...doing pointless shenanigans.

I remember in Grade 4 I took a handful of snow and went up to this high brick wall at Greenfield Elementary. I sidled along it and really nonchalantly wrote the letters "F-U-C-K" with the snow, then ran away. At the end of recess Madame Godin gathered up all the children and asked who did this, and I kind of just hid and got away with it.

I remember in Junior High when me, Kash and Aaron would head over to the swingsets at Westbrook Elementary and we'd do swing-jumping, seeing who could do the best tricks. Everyone eventually got the 540 down but I was the only one to finally hit a 720 and not bail; it made me pretty proud. Kash and I would also go to the front of Westbrook where they had this stone Westbrook sign up in front and we'd try to test our vertical by jumping up onto it. I was able to get up on it pretty consistently, but one day I undershot it and dented my leg. I still have the indentation today.

In Grade 3 we used to run over to St. Stanislaus where they would have these giant trees and we'd climb them and pretend we were in watchtowers. That was off school limits and we'd get in trouble for going there and yet we did all the time - it's like in that book Shaking the Money Tree where the main protagonist hides at lunch behind this tree that's off school limits and whittles with her pocketknife. We were so badass.

Things were so simple then. I used to go over to Uncle Ron's next door every Sunday morning at 6 AM to watch cartoons. He had this trampoline I used to love jumping on and this massive black dog Penny I loved hanging out with. He had these Marvel comics strewn all over the house, which is really the only reason I actually like comics, because every time I pick on up I reminisce. I played this 2D scrolling adventure game called Alcatraz (yes, it approximates the escape) at his house and to this day it's the best game I know (entirely for nostalgia).

I went back and visited Uncle Ron a few months ago just to say hello. It's weird, my old neighborhood has changed so much - all the people are different now. The tree in the front yard I used to climb all the time, the one that loomed so large when I was a kid seems like just another tree. I learned my neighbors, the one I thought were really cool and smart and did martial arts were actually in a lot of gang trouble and their mom packed them up and moved them away because they got in too much heat. Ron told me they broke into his house once but he never said anything. His daughter's living with him now, and his cat's still hanging around being a fat lazy slob like it always was. He's still a joker and still looks like Garfield.

I think things need to change so much because it's only then that we appreciate what it was.