The Most Sane Insane

When I woke up this morning, a thin white blanket of powdery snow was draped over our world. I say 'our world' because there are more people than just me living here. Inside our tiny microcosmic town, on some distant planet, in a distant galaxy, ever so distantly distant away. Sometimes when I think about how insignificant we are, I get the shivers.

 

I turn around and walk back into the house I grew up in. It is small, yet modest and humble. The guts of the house have been completely renovated. The only thing that remains the same are the stencil patterns of bears and hearts that my Nana and I had painted when I was young. The walls in the basement are still stacked to the ceiling with pressure-canned green beans, home-made applesauce, pickles, relishes, peaches..... And God only knows what else.

 

The shelves are still painted egg-shell blue, a color that reminds me of my Papa's eyes. I found out today that if his father (what would be my Great Grandfather) were still alive today, he would be 134 years old or something-like-that. I saw a picture of him from when he was in his twenties. I now know where my grandfather got those sparkling blue eyes. Luckily those same blue eyes were passed on to my father, and to his youngest son. A feature of my 134 year old or something-like-that Great Grandfather that has been passed on for four generations.

 

These stairs are hardwood now. Everything is hardwood now. I miss the s****y colored rug. That stupid roll vacuum they kept in the hall closet. Coming up the stairs I feel like I'm surrounded by Native American warriors in the Plains of America. A large buffalo statue (it must weigh at least 35 lbs.) adorns the wall behind me. Below him are life-size Native American statuettes, and a wolf statue howls soulfully to a non-existent moon on the floor before me.

 

The color palette is neutral and the only thing that pops in the room comes from a long table filled heavily with flowers belonging to my Great Grandmother. African Violets, Spider Plants, English Ivy, and Christmas Cactus line the table which has a delicate woven lace doily puffed in between the plants.My Great Nan sat there telling me about how badly she wishes to go back to the farmhouse in New Hampshire. But she can't, some man had bought the farm, took it apart piece by piece and had moved it 40 miles up the road. She's old and wrinkly, but she's beautiful all the same. She has wisdom well beyond her years. You can see it in her eyes. She's soft and delicate, like a fresh flower petal, but you can tell that in her day she was a force to be reckoned with.

 

It's hard to find resemblances of my own Nana in this house. It was her house. She built it. I can't smell her cologne imbedded in the fibers of the carpet, I can't smell the cigarette smoke wafting in the kitchen in the morning, I can't see her sitting on her throne, with her thick green-blue robe and slippers. I have pictures of us hanging on my mirror in my bedroom. Sitting and playing Trivial Pursuit, (I have always been a beacon of not-so-useful information.) and a card game called Jungle Rummy, Old Maid and Blackjack. I miss her sometimes, but I think that's natural.

 

My old bedroom in the cellar had a cement floor, it was gray and cold, and would numb my feet all year round. I had a four post bed with a pink canopy. That was as close to a princess as I ever got. The notion never really appealed to me. I would have much rather been out in the woods looking for newts and salamanders and other amphibious creatures of the brook. I used to find trees with chunks of bark torn off. I think it was probably from the bucks stripping the velvet, or sharpening their antlers for a rut. The trees always had mysterious carvings in them where the hunks of bark were torn off. I would pretend that it was a magical language that only I could read, like fairy folk had left it for me.

 

I don't think that there ought to be a conclusion for every story. Some stories shouldn't end. Some stories never do. I think stories that work the best are the ones that keep going. The art of telling stories is dying. The art of fabricating our own worlds is fading. Imagination is falling further and further away from our clutches. Realism has become the movement of our generation. Our Imaginative histories are slowly retracting from the spotlight.

 

I want to say that I still believe in magic, and maybe a part of me still does. I want to say I believe in a God, but I have no proof. I want to say that maybe all of this isn't just a Big Coincidence, but that's all I see. But inside of my skeptical, sarcastic grey matter, a small glimmer or Desperate Hope keeps me sane. With this slight belief in magic I have been lead to my yearning to understand and ultimately believe that maybe, somewhere thousands of light years away or in another dimension (or some bogus s**t like that) that maybe there is a duplicate me, or some other bizarre lifeforms. Or maybe that God is real. Or maybe that Magic is real. Or Unicorns and Dragons do exist. I need that glimmer of Hope, that childlike anticipation and perception of the world. It keeps me the most sane insane.