There's another peace rally going on outside at this very moment. In other news, Italy just passed an archaic law to allow only Italian flags and EU flags displayed in public. This is in retaliation to the mass number of rainbow-pattern flags that have been hanging in various parts of Italy, everywhere from city streets to government offices. The rainbow is a signal for "pace", or peace. And we've also got tensions with France and Germany regarding arms delivery to Turkey, as well. No one appears to be on our side. I hate this. I'm either moving back to Italy or giving Canada a shot.
Back when I lived in Texas, which was from kindergarden to second grade, I lived in a small suburb area. Next door to me was a girl named Taylor Schoberle, who quickly became my best friend and my first kiss. This is the part of the childhood that seemed to steep itself in fiction, because all of it was so perfect, really. Out back, behind our homes, ran a small alleyway. Past that, there was what (at the time) seemed like a mile of field. It was full of this beautiful grass that came up to my chest at some portions. Taylor, myself, and her younger brother Ken used to lie in the grass, pressing down patterns of our bodies, and wait for rainclouds to roll in with an uncanny velocity and the rain to start coming. Before that, the wind would whisk around the grass while we were there and make the most wonderful, mysterious noise. After minutes of this, we'd scramble up and run inside, feet bare and hair wet from the rain that had the capability to drench us in moments.
Past the field, there was a small slope where there were trees upon trees and tiny trails that criss-crossed and flirted with the edge of the river that was just past that. We never went past the river because after that was a huge hill and then a housing community, but there was a hidden alcove with a gazebo nestled in the trees. I didn't go there as much as I'd have liked to. Not to mention the streets that laced between our suburbs were perfect for biking around. We created our own urban legend that, a few blocks down, a woman had a pit bull which had eaten a kid a few summers back (we actually had no idea what a pit bull looked like, but the name sounded fierce and the giant, black sheepdog that barked as us certainly wasn't friendly, so why not?), or that the small impass between our friend's house down the street was infested with wasp nests. That wasn't quite a lie, as this being Texas in the summer, you could virtually count on the steady hum of some sort of stinging insect any time you walked outside. Oddly enough, I never got stung (and still haven't).
Over 8 years ago, I went back to visit Taylor and Kent. They still lived in the same house, and now have moved countless times since then. But they still had the lovely garden out back, and the mess of cats that came in and out of their house. Taylor was stubborn as ever, god bless her. I remember trailing through their garden, the lovely scent of the vanilla-flavored tobacco that their Dad smoked still resting heavy in the furniture. I walked out their back gate and looked at the field, which was now completely covered up with a new apartment complex. It happens.
The air wasn't something that I quite remembered, though. I was visiting them in the summertime and I clearly remember the humidity attacking me like a rabid sponge. It was like breathing Jell-O. Taylor's mom said "Why don't you go outside?" but really, that would be equivilant to playing in a sauna. We may have still been kids, but we weren't as invincible.
Do you remember anything you did as a kid with total disregard to your body? Just flinging yourself out of trees, off of cliffs? I still remember the deep satisfaction I would get when I would come home (before dinner, of course, par the parent's request) and see, prior to the obligatory evening bath, my body covered with grass stains, new cuts from anonymous thorns, and maybe a bruise here or there. Calvin of Calvin and Hobbes had that same sort of appriciation: to "take the day and throttle it", as one strip said. heh. It's true. If only I could still get that satisfaction instead of get it now from completed papers or reports. There's always time for a paradigm shift, though, from what matters.
fingers crossed,
a decidedly youthful Jared