Fictionarium 12. Episode 2. A Similar Saturday, Long Ago
"The ordinary life-- what had precipitated into an awkward and often brutal struggle-- was it just a veneer over the actual world, the one that is often scented with such grace, that authentic memory?"
Tucked away in a hidden compartment it the attic of the old cabin was a dusty journal, filled with odd drawings and various poems and writings. Camp 'L' was turning out to be an interesting place to live for Arlo. There had been some cleaning of cobwebs and dust for a day or two, but finding this old book allowed him a chance to take a break outside with his pipe. He sat on the porch steps and read one of the last entries in the yellowed pages:
"There had once been a feeling in the air of unlimited potential, a memory that there had been an underlying and unspoken human spirit stirring the sparks of thoughtful adventure, inspiring new ideas and imaginative futures. As a generation watched the dreams and finally the hopes of the world seem to decay, the soft light through the trees in the meadows of their memories had become angular and sharp-- piercing more than warming-- and they scurried into the shadows of booze and forgetfulness, fashioning themselves neckties and aprons and 'how-do-you-do's' to create what had quickly become ordinary life.
Imagination would be left to the professionals-- they would think-- even as they expertly pretended that everything was normal, and as good as it could be. Ordinary life was made easy to imagine, since things had always been that way. Or, had they?
What was that feeling-- that memory, again. Has it gotten away so soon? It was just there; the smell, the soft light in that meadow, the adventure, the new ideas. That was a real thing. A real memory.
It had been a time that they all secretly remembered, but nobody dared mention those times, because they'd been children then, thinking childish things. The acute pinch of ordinary life was always seconds away, while those distant memories were but sips of some fine nectar, dashing past the nose like phantoms-- gone again.
The nose has a good memory, sometimes it's nearly a time-machine, when a passing scent can take the mind back to that place... there it was again. There was that spot, where the shade was fine, and for just a second, a faint crickling sound like water from a giving spring.
The ordinary life-- what had precipitated into an awkward and often brutal struggle-- was it just a veneer over the actual world, the one that is often scented with such grace, that authentic memory? The imagination of what could be, had been replaced with the realization of what was, and the ways of the child were sacrificed for the ordinary world.
The power lines, that garbage truck, and the screaming siren-- they were all superimposed there, even as the brook babbled and the flowers were symbiotically reminding us to breath. When the golden light hit that meadow, it wasn't that the world was different then. The sunlight today still makes perfect circles on the leaves through the canopy, and the sparkling ideas are still faithfully bubbling like the old lost spring. The memories become more vivid, and begin to merge with what is. They can even become what is. Maybe we just forgot."
There was a good Saturday morning happening all around Arlo as he looked through the old journal. It reminded him of a similar morning many years ago, a wisp of a memory, but then it was gone as he plotted the things he had to do that afternoon in busy Hill Valley. Looking through the glade, the similarity returned, and he remembered a sense of adventure, a little sip from a hidden spring. Just for the briefest dash it was there, with just enough clarity to sense a whimsical, spontaneous parade along secret trails lit with golden rays, in the works somewhere, maybe even now.
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Thanks for reading this weekend special episode of FICTIONARIUM
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