5 November, 2005 [Prose]

I met Charlie Manson at the bus stop today on the corner of Sycamore n Center

He was telling me about how God had told him that he had to kill the whore-pigs and that God also told him I only needed to give him my lunch money for Salvation

When the lemon-yellow bus finally came

I sat in the third row and Charlie went to the back to talk with his friends Lucifer and the other colorful assortment of goons who frequented this bus in particular

They never actually went into school but their personal driver wouldn't come into town because he was a Bolshevic and being in close proximity to such a glaring representation of Capitalism as the steel mill made his irritable bowel flare

Anyway, Charlie and I along with the rest of the human tide went into class and began the day as any other

The third grade teacher was very preoccupied with her Banzai tree and said our assignment for today was to reflect on every sin we had committed so far

And all of us, being already at the ripe old age of six, had our work cut out for us

I never quite understood how the teacher's banzai gave her any sort of peace as she only ever worked on it after shooting up a speedball and huffing airplane glue for half an hour. Most of the time she would just sit there staring at it and scratching various itches while muttering “Clean….clean….clean..” to herself

About half way through the day Rasputin had upset one of the hilltop boys

There were the hilltop kids and the valley kids

The valley kids were poorer than the hilltops and were thought of as scum. Rasputin didn't even belong to the district we lived in but he came to school here anyway.

The teacher was too preoccupied with the ghosts of her non-existent children (she had a faulty uterus) to address the situation and so the disruption carried on for the rest of the day. Resulting in a failed assignment yet again and another batch of Fs for all the little American school children.

I eventually made it home on the bus again. We had to take a detour past the various internment camps for different races and religions. Some of which were empty because the current regime hadn't yet decided it needed one more domestic enemy.

It was a favorite pastime of the children to throw the scraps from their lunches out the windows of the bus at the prisoners despite the “DO NOT FEED THE ENEMY” signs which were stapled to the fence posts around the camps.

When I finally made it to my home I checked the mail and saw that the People's Republic of China had finally served us the Armistice.

At the very bottom of the letter was a postscript which read “We are sorry to inform you but we are not currently looking for a ‘Chairman of Toilet Etiquette’ but will keep you and your family in mind in the event that we do require one.”

This saddened me greatly as we would now be having another present-less Christmas as my parents could not find work befitting their educations and the new caste system established by the current regime forbade one to take a job beneath their social status.

I brought the news to my grandmother who was a fortune teller from Eastern Europe.

She was an old decrepit thing. Always wrapped in blankets of various colors and patterns. She had the appearance of a large and colorful egg. Plump and with eyes, bright with thought and cunning, peering out from the depths of hidden shadows which shrouded her face.

In truth she was a waif and extremely frail. She was always cold which was the reason for so many blankets. Each one was from a different village she had gone through at one time or another when she was still and itinerant fortune teller in her younger years.

She smelled of exotic plants and unknown herbs and with a sort of earthy undertone.

When you sat close to her you could sometimes hear the sound of a distant sea crashing against craggy rocks.

If you held her hand while you talked with her you could feel pulses emanating from deep within her and resonating within you and going back to her. You could also sometimes feel the crisp breeze of an early autumn morning tickle your face and make the hairs of your arms stand on end.

She was an enchanting woman shrouded in a vast expanse of myth and rich with secrets and wisdom.

When she would sit at dinner sometimes she would reveal her face. It was an unremarkable face which was pale and boney, with loose skin hanging from the neck. I think her face was unremarkable in order that her eyes remain the most striking feature of her whole self.

They were a bright blue, vibrant and very lively. They did not have the same mysterious twinkle as when you could not see her face. They became somehow softer and less piercing. When she would speak to you at these times her eyes would lock into yours and you could feel the comfortable warmth of a crackling fire and the smells of what was a very plain and bland dinner suddenly became elegant and robust. Her gaze took you into an eternal summer. Proud and filled with warmth and mirth. A good time to bask in the sunlight and watch clouds chase one another and take on all the various forms of creation.

She would always remind me at dinner to finish my milk as it would make my bones strong and that I should eat all of my portion of bread so that my hair would curl.

Her words were like church bells and baringed with bright colors and visions of middle spring. They were words which were not colored by years of study and knowledge of clinical and bookish things. They were words which came from old wisdom and did not need definitive and quantitative proof to be true. They had the authority of old religion backing them. They were undisputed gospel and as such, they were law.

As she aged time began to take its toll on her. Her eyes became dull and eventually blind. Her presence no longer brought you visions of the shore and Phantom mist. Instead it brought the foul stench of decay and sickness. She spoke much less and not to those around her. Her transition into the next world was already taking place and she began conversing with the people of her past long dead and far behind. It was a sort of reunion and it was difficult to watch. No one wants to see someone very dear to them leave. We are nothing if not creatures of comfort and what is more comfortable than the love of a grandmother?

It was an uncomfortably wet spring day when she was buried. Those in attendance were few and had long been disconnected from the magic she had once contained. To them she was just an old woman. Perhaps more than that but she was certainly not the wonder and mystery which a six year old me had known and still knew. At this point I was eighteen. Charlie had been serving life for decades already and Rasputin was dead and Lucifer had left for Washington and had been gone just as long as the others. He had always wanted to be a politician and new regimes were always coming and going to he loved his new position as the sparrow which whispered in the ears of every leader and began them down the path of indifference. He was the boatman on the river Styx from then on.

Guinevere was still with me then.

The casket was decent. It didn't quite do justice for the royalty which was its passenger but it was good enough. If she had had her way, she would have been buried in a wooden box. She was always of the mind if the old Catholic when it came to death. The virtuous needn't be too concerned with this world since a greater one awaited.

When it came time to say a final goodbye all in attendance did so with quiet reverence as was expected of any respectable adult.

I was not a respectable adult. I was six again and asking all kinds of questions. I was putting my feet on the support bars of the chair legs again. I was much wiser and wasn't concerned with silly things like girls and the future. Imagination was more important than work competence. I was six again and I cried like a child.

Sometimes at night when I think about her and the blankets and the twinkle in those eyes. Those great portals which held sacred wisdom. When I see those eyes and I speak that simple word I had for her. “Baci.”

Sometimes then I could hear the sea.