The Junkyard

WHAT THIS IS SORT OF ABOUT

Remembering things from your childhood is sort of like thinking back on a book you used to read over and over as a kid. You used to know everything word for word but now, years later, some of them are lost. You stumble over how exactly it went, but you remember the important parts. You remember the feelings. The emotions it evoked and why you loved it so much. So even if you can't recite it back exactly, it still brings the warm feelings to your soul. Even the vague, half remembered pictures, the indistinct blur of color is like having the crisp pages between your fingers again.

This is sort of about that.

The important parts of memory. The bits and scraps you piece together into something that means something. Summarizes the feelings, or fulfills some need of our subconscious. Sure, things may have gotten changed along the way. Shape-shifted, skewed, embellished maybe.

The mind is a junkyard. The stuff there can sit and dissolve or be used again. And that's the best part. They can become whatever we want or need them to be.

All that mattered at the time was what we did with each moment. And those moments still exist for us to use now.

So here is a brief look into my junkyard.

In one of it's various forms.

THE DINOSAUR

I am back.

Back at the old house in the shaded wood on the edge of a deep valley.

I remember now that there is a dinosaur buried beneath my back porch. Great brown bones stuck in the dirt of the great cavern beneath the rotting wooden deck. It is dry and dead under there. Like a desert. It smells of dirt and abandon. Like a century old attic or an Egyptian tomb. It is perfect for a discovery. I can see him now, walking the primordial wood and lying to rest upon the gentle slope and the quiet shade.

Millennia pass and here we come with our shovels and our brushes and we set to work, first removing the largest stones and the rotting branches and scattering them inconspicuously along the hillside a little ways from our spot. It is a secret business, and we mean to keep it that way.

And that is how we spend the day. Sweating in the ancient dark. Dinosaur hunters. Quietly digging and carefully brushing away the years, patiently unearthing the great monster.

Then there is a rustling out in the daylight. We shove our tools into our pockets and decide that the dead one can wait. We recognize the sound and we know there is another beast to reckon with.

He is alive.

And he is very, very fast.

But hunger and thirst burn our stomachs and throats, and so we walk quietly away in search of food.

Then the hunt can begin.

THE HUNT

Back inside, I quietly resolved over my half eaten peanut butter sandwich that I will catch him. I will catch him, and I will do it alone.

In the backyard I gather all the dead wood I can find, scavenge some old nails, hammer, and long section of rope from the red toolbox in the basement, and set to work with my trap. With the scraps of wood, I manage something very close to a box. At least the closest thing that my sweating, frantic hands can manage. In the kitchen, I sneak a small portion of food for bait and run outside, down the hill, and into the dark and dirty dinosaur cave. There I make a final inspection of the trap, hammering down a couple of protruding nails. Venturing out just a few feet, I find a stick that will work for the finishing component.

Everything is ready. I pull the rope from my pocket, set the device, and sit, rope in my hand, waiting for the animal to appear.

The sun is high. The air is hot. I am a hunter. The world is sharp with intensity and sounds of life. Not idle, random sounds. Sounds that are waiting too. The wind lies quiet in the bushes and all the trees dig their roots a little deeper. Tiny, salty drops stalk the edges of my face.

All the world is waiting.

And then he is there. I almost don't see him with his matted fur like rotting leaves, his quick movement like a gust of wind. It is like a pistol shot in every joint of my body, but I am still. So still you might have thought me a natural fixture of the earth.

Closer.

Closer he moves to the perfectly perched machine. His curiosity is potent, and it floods my nerves until I feel I can wait no longer. But I wait, still.

Now!

I pull the cord, the trap crashes down but the animal rushes past like a violent gust, disappearing into the trees. Am I worried? Of course not. Again I set the trap, and again I wait in silence. The symphony of wind and sun play softly and the hunt continues.

In this moment there is a rushing of time. The sun shines and adventures continue and we scurry like ants through the wooded hill. Eventually, the days grow shorter and the air grows colder. Soon there will be no more daylight, no more hunting. But that's alright.

Because night is when magic happens.

THE MOUNTAIN NIGHT

Now it is night and the snow has started to fall. Every night it falls heavier and whiter and colder. And every night the mountain grows brighter in the distance.

It is time.

We pull rubber boots over layers and layers of socks so that our feet sweat in the heat of our houses, by the light of our fires. One by one we gather beneath the clump of trees doing nothing but waiting and watching breath billow out from tightly swaddled faces.

Soon the last arrives, and without a word we all turn in the same unspoken direction. The cold freezes our bones but excitement pushes our little bodies through their exhaustion. Nothing can stop us. I squeeze my thickly gloved fingers tighter around the rope slung over my back and, digging my boots into the ice, follow the others up. Laughter and indiscernible shouts begin swirling around with the flurries of snow and fall back down to melt on our jackets. From our hats to our socks we are soaked in snow and laughter.

“Almost there,” I hear shouted from somewhere up ahead.

I smile, forgetting almost instantly about my freezing toes. Before long, the ground levels out and we are all standing at the top. The first thing I notice are the stars. So bright, the sky looks like a snowstorm frozen in time. Then we all look back down the mountain we have just conquered. Nothing is said in that still and infinite moment.

“Race you down!”

I throw down the rope and jump in the small yellow sled I had been pulling behind me. The snow and sky disappear in a blur of white and the entire hill is painted like a rainbow in motion. Red and yellow and green go down and then back up and then down again. The night bursts to life in a circus of laughter and color. We climb and fly and climb again until all motion seems to blend into the world like the blazing trails of a thousand shooting stars.

THE TRUTH (SORT OF)

Amidst the motion of these memories, the line of distinction between truth and fantasy is lost to me. Indistinct through the haze of feelings, smells, colors, and sounds.

But memories are like books. Condensed and filtered. Only the important things remain, arranged meaningfully in ways that the present motion of life can never manage.

In truth, the memories of our past happened however we may remember them.

Because the mind is a junkyard. Filled with things that were something once, but are ready to be something else again.

How we remember our past and what we make of it now is really all that matters.