My first memory

I recently was given a mere ten minutes to re-assemble my first memory. It was a frantic reconstruction void of all order. At some point in time, unbeknownst to me, my brain brain decided on complete English language anarchy. I am at the mercy of my mind; my english now is void of all punctuation, with rogue capitalization and every third word misspelled. Thankfully spell check restored order and this is what was left, my first memory:

It still tingles in my nostrils all these years later. It has a heavy weight about it; as it somehow floats through the air, seemingly defying gravity. It smells like nothing living, yet doesn’t reek of the pungent putrid smell of death. My first memory does not have visual images, or audible sounds, but rather just a highly sensual touch my fingertips will always remember and a smell that is burned onto my olfactory bulb: my grandma’s hideous shag carpet. It was this carpet I spent much of my childhood tooling through. The carpet had a distinct smell, unique to perhaps one place on earth, 19622 Delight Street. It smells a little of musk, a little of dust, a little of drab and a lot like my childhood. It smelled like the haze that oozes forth from an aged recliners upon receiving a heavy load. Yet, for all the dreary smells it was composed of, it had a tinge of life to it, like spring was always just one more rain and month of sun from bursting forth from within it. It smelled like neither the ground nor the sky. It was somehow simultaneously soft and kind under your hand, yet, rough and devastating under your knee. One could simultaneously slide into the deep sleep of a content heart, or slide into a bleeding rub burn, hoping you took the lesson to heart. The carpet felt, above and beyond all else, like home. It was here I spent much of my infancy eating and sleeping; then slowly scooting, crawling; hobbling, wobbling and falling.

Call me Jelly Bean

It’s Wednesday afternoon and my first week and a half of school is done. Having a week done and in the book, also means it is back to hitting the books. However, sitting in my dimly lit bedroom I find a pen in my hand, not my book. My book is laying sprawled open, and looking rather lonely on the ground next to me. I made it through the publisher information; the table of contents, pushed pasted the thank-yous and the acknowledgements all the way to the title page, where I was stopped dead in my tracks, “On Death and Dying”, in slightly desensitizing cold bold black font. (Rhyme and alliteration, makes me smile, I am such a nerd.) Just the title of the book set my mind off in a million different directions, seeking to put a finger on the abstract, pen to the subjective and do I am not exactly sure what. More or less the simple four words that composed the title of this book set my imagination loose, free.

My imagination has been running rather rampant the last few weeks. Lately I have had a roaring appetite for short stories, in an attempt to fulfill this craving I have read James Joyce’s Dubliners, and am working my way through F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tales of the Jazz Age, both amazing works. Joyce has lead me to spend my evenings desiring to be an unknown character crawling through the underbelly of Dublin seeking some form of gratification, satisfaction, and an answer Joyce seem to never allow to exist; a cruel God to his fictional world. Most recently I have found my self frequently in the roaring twenties, perpetually pursuing pleasure; an eloquently named elegantly dressed member of a generation of faux passion.

And so reader I have a question for you. When’s the last time you let your imagination get away from you? When’s the last time you allowed fiction to become your momentary reality? Or allowed an author to whisk you away to a grand world, that is simply not this world?

As you struggle with the midweek hump, and the doldrums of your daily reality, I would encourage you to allow your mind to march to the drumbeat of your imagination. Read a short story, pick up a book and see how far your imagination can take you from where you are seated right now.