New Book, no title yet

Part 1
As a child, my bedroom window was my vigil,my comfort, and the place where I could wander freely, like the delicate seed of a dandelion or like a tiny star being hurled into its destiny. i can't remember a time or place where I wasn't enthralled in the possibilities, dreams, and visions that waited just outside a metal screen and sheet of glass.

Midnight until dawn was my time; the time when no one would bother, abuse, or question me.  I'd lie under my navy blue cotton sheets and gaze out the large window. I even moved my bed right next to it, as if to bring myself closer to the world's I'd dreamed of.

Sometimes, I can still feel my fingers touching the glass; cold, thin, hardly a fitting barrier to keep a soul from going.

Just outside was a small winding ridge that stretched around the neighborhood, Hillcrest Villa Mobile home Community.  It held numerous slight trees with jagged branches, lush shrubs, and wild bushes.  During the spring and summer it was a miniature green wilderness, during the fall it resembled a wall of suspended, serene fire as the leaves turned bright yellow and orange, and in winter is dissolved into a network of dark wood and frost that made everything the color of stone.  A sleepy sky stretched above, who's moon and stars I would come to revere as lovers or angels who gave me songs, and who holds my wordless prayers, pleas, and various outpourings of the heart.

In gazing, hoping, and believing I found both solace and restlessness. Yes, my home is out there, far away from here, miles away from this dilapidated trailer park. I will ride. I'll take off in some dream machine without any pause for goodbye, leaving only a few poems and a graduation gown crumpled and forgotten in a closet.  Let them all just guess why. Let 'em wonder....or maybe not. Just be gone from here at last...but no not yet. When? Soon? No....

Overwhleming joy mixed with tears of frustration without the immaculate release I craved. Jaw clenching. Dreaming. Yearning for a home while simultaneously yearning for harsh and beautiful abandon. The white walls covered in grime, cracks, and cheap wallpaper with tiny blue and pink flowers, seemed so weak and insignificant, yet they managed to hold me in and smother me. The only real break in them was the window and cursed goddamn glass and mocking wire screen.

One Night I opened the window and pressed my nose against the screen.  The air was humid and smelled sweet and inviting. I grabbed a pair of scissors from my desk, then gingerly began cutting away at the edges of the screen (thinking my parents wouldn't really notice as long as I made it seem like the screen was still intact. They never did, as far as I know). It was a slow and deliberate task, for I didn't want the sound of metal slicing through metal to wake my parents or little sister.  Soon the thin, semi-permeable wall became a mere flap, and I slipped through and landed with a happy thud to the moist dirt.  It was like stepping, or falling, into a different world and different time.

Everything was still in its proper place; the trees, the road, the rusted metal shed, the flowerbed my sister and I had built for growing cantelopes, all the tin-houses and broken cars, and dim orange streetlights. Only, the tone had changed. The air was less severe. The dirt and weeds and roads were empty, and they were mine. Everything was liquid silver in the light of the moon. I felt much better and took a deep, appreciative breath. A bat fluttered to a streetlamp close to my house and then spiraled away into nothing, and was gone.

I looked up at the moon--full, silent, glowing like a silver dollar in the sun, only surrounded by darkness and thousands of tiny blazing crystals. I felt a connection. I can't fully explain this connection because words would somehow ruin the memory I have of it.  All I can say is that I was suddenly locked in and my brain, or perhaps my spirit, was sarcastically asking, "Well, what do you want from me?"

I climbed back through the window, closed it, slipped into bed, and fell into a liquid, soundless sleep, like falling into a deep blue lake where no one could find me.

Nostalgia

I'm supposed to feel nostalgic, right? All those adults said I would always look back on my high school years and smile or cry or something. . .well, they were wrong again.

 I've started writing another book, more like a mix of poetry and prose, but a memoir nonetheless. It's all true, every word. For some reason it decided to take me back to my childhood and adolescence, and you know what I've discovered? there's really nothing there to discover. Much of my memory is hazy. But a few things I do recall fairly well, only there's no connection to them. No emotional ties. Like it all happened to some one else, and I'm writing this book for someone other than myself. All the friends I had in middle and high school? Nonexistent by this point, except for one friend I've known since I was 7. The buildings, roads, hallways, scenes. . .nothing. Not a tug or even a sigh.
I'm Boulder's boy now, even though I'm currently living in Denver. The stage, Red Rocks, the Flatirons, Boulder Creek, the cafes like Innisfree and The Laughing Goat, that's my home. This is my life. All that other stuff was either an accident or a detour that eventually lead back to where I am now. Even the name I was given is something I can't recognize.
 When I left I didn't formally say goodbye to anyone and very few people bothered to say goodbye to me. Now i can't even remember all their names or faces.
 So, what is this? Certainly not a belated fare-thee-well. More like another insignificant outpouring to no one in particular, a photograph of a perfect stranger found on the side of the street and then casually discarded. No remorse. No explanation. Just a mild wind that blows through you, shakes the earth a little, and then is gone.