Changing plans, changing allegiances, changing goals, changing foci.

When my mother and I lived in the apartment in Woodward, I had a friend in the neighborhood who lived in a house nearby. Ryan had another friend that lived closer to him, who was also in a house. That was Mason. Mason and I must have been competing over Ryan’s attentions and affections because we didn’t like each other. But one day, Ryan was sick and absent from school, and Mason and I ended up playing together during recess. I don’t know who initiated, but we were playing on the merry-go-round, and — actually, he probably initiated playing together because he’s the one who showed me that you could lay upside down, head over the edge, and look across underneath at other’s red, puffy faces, eyes smiling, brains being laughed out — man, it was fun.

Mason and I had a blast that day, and I went over to his house after school. The next day, Ryan came back and both of us gave him cold shoulders. I feel some guilt and shame about this even though we were soon a group of three friends. We didn’t do anything meaner than just be unimpressed with and disinterested in Ryan — which was enough to make him cry. Rather than feeling guilt and shame so many years later, let me recalibrate that into a prayer.+

Better lessons are to see that I am capable of excluding others (rather than the comfortable but unrealistic excuse of “But I was only a child”. Children don’t invent otherwise unrecognizable human behaviors when they do bad things. Otherwise what — are they only being angels or making mistakes? That seems a childish way of thinking. Rather, children can be angels and devils but with a lot less understanding of their actions in either case. Us grown ups are supposed to know better. The fact that it has taken me until late into adulthood to really understand some of the things I have done — good and bad — makes my heart beat hard and mostly feel embarrassed within myself. No wonder I am so quick to want others to see my good things and so desperate to hide the bad ones), and that social exclusion genuinely hurts. Every single instance of me creating an outcast or adding my vote to that shunning is forgetful of myself. I hurt myself every time — not most of the time — every time that I think my relationship to another person is above them. And that’s not even the reason to avoid excluding others from myself. That’s just a cataclysmic risk.

But back to the kid-level moment…

I guess Mason and I were the closer pairing within the three of us because after my mother and I moved into our own house in a different city, Mason was the only one who ever came over, though I think it was just once.

Mason told me about how his dad was going to buy him an ultralight. I had seen those a few times up in the sky. A go-kart flying around. And Mason said his dad was going to buy him one. Then he delivered the most exciting news ever, and that was that his dad said he would also buy an ultralight for each of Mason’s best friends. (At the time, I thought it was true. Later on, I felt bad for Mason that his dad lied to him. Later still, I felt sure that Mason made it up.) (So much of my memory of my very young life, in fact, I think this principle probably extends to all of my life, even yesterday, but even more so, or in more fantastical ways, for those younger years. I think regarding so much of my life, I explore the recordings stored above from the perspective of now. That’s not much of a revelation, but “to know” is easy to hold merely as “know of”, whereas to really know something is more like really possessing it. In fact I think that, on average, I am closer to the truth when I say “I don’t know” than when I say “I know.” Here is a thing that I do know: that I don’t know how much my childhood memories are narrated in my current, adult-and-growing voice.)

Voltron was popular at the time, and somehow we made the leap from one to the other, but we went from Mason’s dad buying us ultralights to us modifying and upgrading those ultralights (not that we used either of those words) so that they could fit together and form a larger unit. We could do so many amazing and heroic things in our machine. We carved out our special roles and abilities. I also don’t know to what degree that we talked of this knowing that it was something called fantasy, to what degree we knew that we were wishing, and to what degree we believed that these things were even possible. I am sure that we were in different places. What I do know is that I took it serious enough, or I felt strongly enough about it, to tell Jude and Pete and George. Everybody was excited, though at varying levels. Even back then I felt their skepticism — all of them but Jude, but he was the one who was younger than me. This would have been second and into third grade.

What a strange and wonderful thing to have all of these collections in our heads. They are like places that we can visit. In some way, they are not even as real as a virtual tour. The manner in which I see things in my mind looking backward is very different than being able to sit down with a laptop and tour the Taj Mahal or Machu Picchu. And yet they are absolutely more real for the one doing the re-cognizing. This body, though few of its current cells lived through those ultralight moments — this mind, wherever it resides (does it reside?), whatever parts of it are still there from second into third grade — these fantasies and realities about our own living Voltron, which lived alongside other, darker fantasies and realities — all of it together kind of makes me not trust anyone else at all who attempts to peer into this. Who reaches to grab hold of, or insists I use their gloves if I insist on reaching myself.

This loam. That ground from which the tree grows, the tree that grows its fruit, the fruit that falls down to the ground, dissolves, and becomes root.

And I kind of don’t trust anyone who attempts to peer into that place and tell me about me. I know that’s not a sustainable way to live exactly, but I also think that dismissing the danger is foolhardy. There are many people who do invite themselves in in one way or another. Not make themselves available; invite themselves in. Even by accident. I am in danger of doing it now with one more word.

Scientists and thinkers of other times — and even moreso, regular folks — modify their dune buggies and piece them together and show up to save the day. They show up to resolve our mysteries and teach us about ourselves. I think that they are real and not fantastical but what they do is engage our surface. They may speak to the ripple of me but cannot explain why the Earth is turning.

So much material exists in the loam — better yet, back to the sky — material toward which to build artful aircraft — sages, experts, the self-trained — everywhere — asking — all I want is to remember.