“What I Would Say To Him. . .”

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Don’t you wonder sometimes what you might say, if you were able to slip through some portal back to yourself. . .your younger self? Full of some journey-fed wisdom filling a number of black marble composition books–or maybe those blue books they gave you at university.

That’s it–bring to your younger self the compendium of your experiences in black and blue ink bound in black and blue binders. And you could stuff them into a sea bag and leave them at your own bedside.

Maybe you would marvel at how a mobile home and an aircraft carrier are kin. . .you just have to know the difference between port and starboard. And appreciate stern. And be cognizant of the bow.

That’s it.

You’ve learned too much.

You’ll be of little assistance here with your lines and your verses. And hold your chapters, there are words enough in the day of the child without those you have brought from your adulthood.

 

But. . .if you could go. . .back to the property where all the trees are banded with poison to keep the army worms from colonizing. If you could go back to the place where the tool shed with all of its mysteries and dark propositions stands. If you could go back to the place where the summer took and the winters froze and left you springing into the truest sense of fall. . .

Would you steal a peak at the pile of books by the bedside, selfishly, in an effort to remember. . .and then forget what it was that you had to say? It would be better that way to be sure.

It’s all very novel, isn’t it? This idea that you would have anything to say to a younger you. The younger you would not be able to process the fullness of time and the richness of experience you have had beyond the years that the younger you has lived. This is the problem of time. It moves even as it might seem it is standing still. You could hold the hands at an hour, but you would never have another hour in which to hold your hand.

It’s a time-continuum issue. It’s built into the master plan that we respectfully leave our younger selves alone while we have a constant opportunity to revisit our past experiences, peering out from behind a Star Wars poster undetected.

I don’t pretend to understand it.

But I have been there. . .I have climbed three metal steps balanced against the side of the trailer and I have found the door to be unlocked. And I have stopped at the kitchen sink to drink a glass of country water out of a glass with Mayor McCheese painted on it. I have walked burgundy carpet past a cast-iron, pot-bellied stove and I have seen his silhouette drawn at the local middle school carnival earlier that fall. I know the shape and the contour of that face. And I know that many times that this face has been lost to a darkness that needs a little more light shown upon it.

And I have opened the first door on the left to see him sleeping there. His sleep is restless and I know why. The weight of a world that is quickly coming to an end will be his to inherit. But not before heaven and hell grapple for every soul. And I know that tonight he dreams of Babylon the Great.

And he is restless because he feels badly that he enjoys so many things that she holds in her hands:

Pop Rocks. Star Wars cards. Dynamite magazine. Disco music. C.H.I.P.S. . Muppets.

All gone in trade for a paradise earth.

I’ve sat at the bedside and I have watched him worry himself over his teachers who send him to the hall during parties. And the touching that happens at the hands of monsters all-to-real. And never telling because monsters can disguise themselves as loved ones and neighbors. . .you wouldn’t believe how convincing they can be in the face of confrontation.

And I have have told him. . .and I will tell him again.

Read. . .you reader you. . .read.

You keep reading until you find the truth that will truly set you free. And if you have not found it, you keep turning pages until it becomes so clear that the words that come after will make no more sense than the revelation you’ve been given to accept without condition.

Love. . .you lover you. . .love. . .

You love this world with all that your heart has left because as little as you might have there will be one who needs just enough to see the light of another day.  Love them all. . .big. . .small. . . And it is okay to touch with your hands. It is a temporal affection. The tingle subsides quickly. It is okay to love with your your heart. It is a complete kind of love and the absence that comes of it will may never pass but it is a fair exchange for those times that your heart will soar for all of the love that it draws in and gives out.

And love with your words. For as egotistical as it might sound, others will need them. When they struggle to find their own, perhaps they might find what they wanted to say in something you have shared.

Be. . .be. . .be. . .

Be here. Be eight. Be brave. It’s the best thing for you to be right now.  It’s really all you can do right now.

Oh. . .don’t ever lose those Star Wars cards. You’ll want them later on.

I would have brought them with me, but it seems that you never listen. Even now in the past you are thinking about unwrapping them to chew the gum that comes with the cards.

The problem of the time continuum is that our wisdom gets lost in the transmutation. You can never grow back again. All you can ever see if how the cards stack together to build the ramshackle houses in which you’ll take up residence.

But the living. . .oh. . .the living. . .is so good. And the loving. . .is so good. And the reading. . .gets better and better as you grow nearer and nearer to the truth:

That eight was as good as eight could be. And you’re going to be okay.

I’m here.

Aren’t I?

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