Writing Exercize Number Two

I want to look deep into the back of my mind and think about the concept of the center.  Everything magical lives in the middle, in the center of dark labyrinths, in the center of a tootsie pop, in the loci of the heart, the pineal gland, the biological third eye sitting in the center of the brain.

And I’m reminded of when we are thinking of something we look up and to the left, as if searching the sky for the answers, and yet the rational answers, the ones we access from that vault in the sky, are so rarely the right answers.  It’s a cliché told a million times that we must look inside, search ourselves for the true answers, the important ones, the ones people write books about, the ones wars are fought over, are killed for, are only found in our deepest centers.

I’ve seen those who talk of transcending, moving out and beyond to some great other and yet I can’t help but see them wandering through life with their heads on a string, softly dangling and bobbing above them, detached, floating in space, carefully avoiding anything that might weigh them down.  But the most secure people, the most amazing people I’ve met have been the people who radiated outward like an atomic detonation, not upward like an impotent rocket ship.

***
Each unto their own, as the saying goes.  I should be writing one of Jacquelyn’s writing prompts.  Yesterday’s post about Charlie was the first and tonight I had several more to choose from though none of them caught my fancy nor matched my mood.  Perhaps she was right that I should be expanding my repertoire.  The philosophical, half-formed ramblings I’ve done and even working into a theme, perfecting them in my own way.  I’ve done funny and though that comes easiest too me, it’s the emotional realm which I feel the least comfortable delving into for creative projects.  Some would think that it’s because I’m not in touch with that or that I lack the capacity.  They would be wrong. 

It’s because I know the truth of writing, and what you write reflects directly on you, in a Jungian/Freudian sense, give your readers a bare look deep into your inner structures.  Writing truth lays all your kinks and curves, bumps, imperfections out in the open.  How can I hide my weak places, cover myself, protect myself when I’m laying out everything on the table like a thief at the precinct.  Empty your pockets, son.

God, who wants to see that? And more so, do I want people to see that?  Some of Jacquelyn’s ideas were tragic, some were sad, some were merely difficulty to imagine.  Yet one was rough because it’s a true story and it’s one of the worst things I’ve ever done.  I wasn’t in the mood for that either, and yet I listened to Gary Jules cover of “Mad World” and now I’m feeling a little melancholic and perhaps I can do it justice.

***
Jeremy had just turned thirteen in the summer of 1990.  You can see him there, behind the garage pushing the aging, grease-laden lawnmower, only the tiniest streaks of red paint visible beneath years of oil drips and rain storms, rust and grass clippings.  The yard behind his house is massive.  He’d overheard the landlord tell his parents it was half an acre, but in retrospect he thinks she might have had a propensity for exaggeration.  Yet, the lawn was still huge and irregular.  A steep hill on one end, used for sledding in the winters, a rock circle of wildflowers, two rows of grapevines, tart purples ones that make great jam but terrible snacks, and a failed garden of weeds, clovers and dirt hiding behind the garage where Jeremy now mows.  He is shirtless and sweating profusely, a cliché phrase he knows, but true nonetheless, which reminds him of a comedian he saw who said that men sweat and women glisten, and that sometimes women glisten like pigs.

He’s been mowing, back and forth, in large squares and small circles, around vines and trees.  He’s been mowing all day and evening approaches.  Jeremy stopped for a few minutes every time the mower had run out of gas.  Lemonade and a few minutes of a Saturday afternoon movie.  This time it was Weird Science, and therefore not a big loss since he’s seen it several times.  You can see a frantic, hurried energy in him as he pushes the mower.  When you glance around, you realize he is almost done, merely this last patch behind the garage, bordered by a row of the grape vines and the property line of hedges.  On one of his passes, very close to the vines, right up to the edge, he mows over a small pile of raked-up grass clippings.  The lawnmower makes a strange noise and something is obviously wrong.  The light is fading and yet there were streaks of red, not of the lawnmower, but coming from the lawnmower.  If you had a certain view, you might have seen Jeremy’s heart leap into his throat, a throbbing pulse enter his heat, heating up his face in shock.  He stops the mower, and adrenaline races through him as he snaps the mower away and flips it over.  He can’t believe this vision and his eyes quickly fill and overflow with tears as a sadness claws up from the dead garden, and drags him to his knees.

Pieces of young rabbits lie in an irregular path of blood and fur.  From what he can tell, there were three of them and no mother rabbit nearby, nor in the makeshift home she had made in the pile of dull green-grey grass.  Shaking and shuddering, Jeremy stands up, and collects the remains, salt-water replacing salt-water as his tears wash away the summer sweat.

Jeremy digs a hole beneath the hedges with his bare hands, digging, clawing at the baked earth.  Bent fingernails, cuts, scrapes and blisters are nothing, mean nothing as the hole deepens and widens, finally large enough to bury the baby rabbits he’s killed.  Even in this horrible emotional state, as his body shudders with Richter-scale aftershocks, crying from some deep reserve that only so rarely is tapped, he knows the hole must be deep enough to keep predators away.  Though he couldn’t protect their lives, he would protect them in death.

He places the babies, the kits in the hole and covers them with the dirt.  Were he a religious child I imagine he would have said something, done something to sanctify the grave, something to mark this place, but at that age, he doesn’t believe, doesn’t think of the big picture.  In retrospect, I think the grave was sanctified by his sweat, his blood and his tears, leaving a stronger impression behind, a brighter grave marker than any headstone or cross of sticks.

Jeremy washed his hands in the cold water of the green yard hose.  He sprays out the lawn mower until no evidence remains of his crime.  An accident yes, but to his young mind, a crime all the same.  This is the boy who set up a road block to save baby opossums after the mother was hit by a car, the boy who brought home a bird with a broken wing to care for it, the boy who pretended to miss when he was taken hunting.  Jeremy’s philosophy of life may not have included a big picture, but life was sacred and he’s just cut three cords in the fabric, took three players out of the game, turned three sacred lives into a hole of blood and bone and he was ashamed.

Jeremy went in the house, took a shower and went to bed and never said a word to anyone about his secret shame.

***
The  end, I suppose.