The smells of Maryland in the summer. Not city Maryland. Green, fresh, wild Maryland. The plants, the fungi, the soil, the animals. I can hear the symphony of birds, crickets, cicadas, frogs, streams, rain, wind, thunder, leaves, pitter-patter on the windowpane. Cool darkness, fireflies, petrichor, and moonlight. It's all there, stowed away in my mind.
I told him I hated him. Something... ruptured. Something buckled and snapped inside. Tears, pain, fear... A meltdown. Everything felt out of control. Being forced out of our house, then shipped across the country in the muggy summer heat. Oh, and don't forget the hysteria that fills me up just before both take-off and touch-down. Jetlag. That horrid sun pounding its rays down on us. Bright, loud, crowded, foreign... D.C. was the worst.
I was tired, fed up, unsure where it was I was even going to end up when I went 'back home.' My things were packed and in Limbo... I was in Limbo...
*
Hikes... nearly 10 miles, Hurricane Ridge, Washington State. Again (though long before), I felt like I was on a bungee cord. There was ‘at home,’ and then there was ‘with Dad.’ The two became quite distinct. Military, Navy, kept him moving. We only visited him, though the offer to live with him was always present (and always declined.) Time with him was always moving, always tired, always elsewhere. I didn’t really want to move… I just wanted to stay put.
Halfway, maybe three quarters, I went ahead, just out of view down the trail, and I ran. I 'got away.' I took in some solitude, views of the lake, the nature... I finally felt like I could breathe again after a mounting pressure burst. Little did I know my dad would frantically search for me, skidding down a hill at one point, bloodying his leg. His efforts, my guilt...
*
“Future President” the somewhat oversized T-shirt read. As if school wasn’t enough pressure. All my dad’s efforts – all those failing efforts – what else could I do but stow them away..? I couldn’t refuse them, nor destroy them, nor return them. So they got neatly, politely stored, acting as a passive reminder of guilt each time I opened the drawer. Guilt that my dad’s efforts were hidden from the world, deliberately and wilfully by me.
*
Sitting on my bed, 22 years old, pseudo-hallucinating vivid flashbacks, triggered by such minutiae as the smell of an herb, taste of the air, sound of a bird chirping or a raindrop hitting glass… It’s all stored in there. It’s a vast, vast library long neglected, craving perusal. Holographic.
Echoing in my mind, "6 pounds and 7 ounces..." Ingrid Michaelson's 'Highway.' It sounds distant and warped, as though fluid, underwater, emanating from down a winding hallway. It swirls in the midst of a jumbled, juxtaposed cacophony, round and round. It’s a cyclone, bursting with wrathful lightning and thunder…
Pandora’s Box. My mind..
