Fireworks for family: or the madman’s plea

A short piece.

by Marcus Jonathan Chapman

I went to my parents house, all fucked up
It was fourth of July
I text my cousin, 17 years younger
She just got off work. I just left the Bird.
I needed a ride, so I wouldn’t pass out
On my way up the hill
I demanded her wheels and her heels, on the gas, because I had some things to say, to my family, then I backtracked, because I was being rude and asked politely.

I don’t know how much I had. If you’re like me you don’t count drinks, you count the feelings that are left. I had one. The truth. Which I hear you say isn’t a feeling, but it is when you bounce your truth off of those who don’t know it. It ricochets and comes back as pain. So I wanted the ones I loved to know my lane. Cheesy, I under-stand, but who gives a shit, when they can hardly stand, like a poet who rhymes the same word with the same word. It’s all bullshit, like the sentence and incorrect hyphens.

That little kid, whose diaper I changed, drove me in her Mercedes Benz. She stopped and asked me a question. She wanted to know something first. Now I’m writing this drunk, again, and I wish I could remember, but I know that whatever came out, meant that I loved her.

So she took me to my parents, whom at my 35 years of age, moved into a villa, as they deserved. It makes me proud because when I was 3, we lived in an apartment in Canoga Park, L.A.

It occurs to me now, the luxury I have in writing and not working. In drinking and not worrying. In being divorced and not…well, that part hurts, but it’s all beside the point. I saw my family and they saw me for what I’ve been since 17.

We had hot dogs, as Uncle Sam’s pointing finger demands. My drunk uncle wasn’t there but my drunk ass took up a chair. Thinking now, my baby cousins and only aunt were familiar with this scene, I’m sorry, that was disrespectful to my aunt and baby cousins. (Yeah, there grown, but my age keeps them under) I don’t know why. Never done it before. I’ve always avoided, being fucked up and walking through any of their doors.

My grandma’s were their too, but they didn’t bat an eye. Greeted me as if I was the same quiet guy. But I couldn’t shut up.

It occurs to me that maybe both of their husbands drank and told me lies. One of them died in a drunk accident, then Yaya took up the sacrament, in sacrifice of her only child. My mom, definition of strength, and I walked in with that whiskey/ cigarette stench. 18, all alone, no English, never knowing a home. My Mom, still hugged me, said she loved me.

My dad, with the burden of his old man, telling him it’s over, that he couldn’t stand. Holding on to a pedestal and cementing his feet into a man that knows fucking everything, that’s my dad, who used to squeal and squeeze and call me machete, with a little lisp. Full of love but needing to be tough because, fuck the rules of poetry, he had to hear his dad talk of his own suicide. So now he stands in cement, like a statue, that I admire, but is too tall to hug and too scared to soften his love. Or maybe it’s just my self-pity because he still says machete to me.

Who knows what I said as I ate that soggy, relished bread, full of franks. I wanted to speak frank, but I don’t know what I said, the point was, I love you, I don’t know how to live, and I’m not yet dead. So help, I don’t know. I don’t know, I don’t. Know.

But I love you and I miss the Christmas story that grandpa used to read, even though I stared at presents with innocent greed. Then my cousins, belshnikle, (however it’s spelled) came out with humor when their lives were also in hell. Their daddy, my uncle, lost in his mind with alcoholic bread. Oats, hops, cans, pops, I saw his red face and winced but also pounded gavel. Then told my aunt she should tell him to pound gravel.

Like grandpa’s churchy slides, I projected what I knew should be done to me and it was and I’m no longer rhyming but the truth is, I also kept other people from climbing. If I’m drowning, I’m sinking, shrinking, struck with the curse of the alcoholic, too much thinking.

Too much thinking. I’ll never forget and when I’m drinking, my eyes always blinking. We were supposed to smile until our jaws quake, laugh until our lungs ache, lock our eyes til’ the gaze break and hold our hands til’ our bones break. Now…

If I don’t drink my hands shake. When the phone rings, I don’t take and I keep my eyes open til’ daybreak. I’m a shuttering glitch, stuck in a doorway.

And that’s where I’m at, rambling, not making sense. I want to be understood but I don’t care to understand. So now, I’m using my thumbs to write this shit. I stand in front of the mirror, after never drinking enough all day, after five lines of cocaine and for now my nose is clear, and for now I’m dancing to the same beat on the speaker my mom bought and I threw up nothing but liquid 20-some times in the sink, while my body still swayed to the music. And I dry-heaved 20 more times, still moving And I keep writing while I have 10 beers and a bottle of wine in the fridge And I rarely use my credit card and I keep writing and I rarely use my credit card but I raise up a line from that hill of California snow, roll up a 10 and breath in that fresh powder, like an asthmatic to his inhaler and I love you all, and the dogs are fine, and I love them too and I lay with them and I feed them and I take them to the vet and we’re fine but I’m not and I’m using too many conjunctions and that’s fine because I don’t want this to end, because I’m too addicted to breathing because I want to see how you all end up but I’m not sure how to stop and I love you and…

maybe this is how it’s meant to be

Wait until I turn into a tree.

Stuck in a long, slow, goodbye

Waiting for earth or sky

Always misbehave

To twirl an elegant wave,

like every stoneage queen’s hand

since water met sand.

Tomorrow I leave on a road trip

A short poem.

by Marcus Jonathan Chapman

Tomorrow I leave on a road trip
With my dad

We’ve been to
North Carolina
New York
Just the two of us

In NC
We saw all the green
From a Mustang convertible
Watched Eddie Murphy on screen
Took a dip in a mountain stream
Dad worked in the next room
I saw porn for the first time
I was still a single digit

In NY
We saw mountains of glass and steel
From taxi cabs and walks
Viewed works of art
Ate well
Dad went to a conference
I crossed the Brooklyn bridge
and smoked
I was in my early 20’s

I’m 35
We know each other’s vices
We’re driving to the deserts of the Midwest
We’ll see strip malls
gas stations
fast food
On our way to beauty

I’ll grab my watch
And
Hold its hands

Is Jesus coming before the Police?

A short piece written about a loved one’s suicide attempt. 2003.

by Marcus Jonathan Chapman

“Is jesus going to come before the police do?” a stampede of swine grunting, squealing and snorting away from the long splinter-scarred finger of gods only child run whole-heartedly off the edge of a cliff. The creator of everything Ferrero Rocher and pneumonia, sits behind the belt-buckle tightened around Orion’s waist. The long wrinkled finger of a guilt infected old man leads a boys gullible gaze to the twinkling stars, winking and nudging the darkness. One finger towards god but four curled back to underline the butt of his cosmic joke. A shitty Korean car idles in a closed garage. A special snorkel from exhaust to cracked window helps the old man understand the punchline. The swine fall through the roof before the chicken can get to the other side. The stars wink and nudge the darkness. “Is jesus going to come before the police do?”

Ages 12 & Up

A short piece written in 2008.

by Marcus Jonathan Chapman

This is the age of dissonance and divide, of fuck-you’s at school and prayers at home. The age of staring at girls. The age of exploring with fingers and untimely boners. The age of fantasizing about teachers and noticing mothers. This is the age of anger, of threatening teachers aids with a baseball bat. Of starting a reputation of unsportsmanlike conduct and hot-blooded tantrums.
…
Was it emotional, physical, spiritual or sexual trauma? A combination of all or any of the aforementioned? I don’t know. I hardly have any child hood memories. I feel stunted, less mature to deal with different stages of life and only until I’ve moved on to a new era or age do I feel all at once adept and inadequate all over again. Walking around pretending. An actor who highlighted the wrong parts of the script. Always wondering what it is that I am lacking and what it is so obvious to everyone but me. A theory, a specific method, a grammatical rule, a particular pronunciation, an author, a book, a piece of music or art, a historic event, an historic figure, the latest news, a cooking method, a social cue. So anxious and apprehensive about impeding my progress by misquoting, declaring a stupidity. I speak to strangers in a series or pattern of jests and facts; the language of the unconfident, the vernacular of the low-self esteemed. Sticking to things that are only true or saying things that are so over the top no one could dispute their falsehood, which is another type of truth. Steering clear of conviction or opinion or belief or individual truth. That isn’t easy. That is an un-lubricated trajectory.
…
What is my identity? What is my heritage? My background? My culture? I was born in the hospital of a city that was built around it. A mecca for Seventh-day Adventists wealthy enough to afford private schools but connected enough to get a discount. Long lines of last names trail the university’s history. New faces same names. A thriving enterprise in the middle of a decaying county/city. The navel-gazing institution growing to the tune of its own demand.

It’s a part of the story but not yet.

My mother was born in Spain. Emigrated to California at eighteen because she met my father. My father the son of an American soldier/missionary and a converted ex-catholic. He lived in Spain, Kenya, the pacific peninsula, and Oakland, California. From what he tells me, Oakland was tougher on him than the African wild ever was. Being the only white boy in a predominantly black school is the wrong reason to stand out. I was born the son of a teacher and a part-time hustler. My father taught Spanish, physical education and history at a small Adventist school in Redlands, California. My sister, four years younger was born the daughter of an attorney and a part-time hustler. In the time between my arrival on earth and my sisters, my father had quit teaching, moved us all to Canoga Park, Los Angeles and finished a law degree in two years.

I’m not sure how confident people are in their memories but I am not. I don’t know whether my active imagination recreated images to go along with the stories I was told so many times or if they are actual memories. In either case, none are very vivid. Foggy glimpses more than anything else. I’m also not sure if it’s my focus on the present or moving forward that makes me apprehensive about remembering things. What I do remember are emotions and lessons as they relate to this idea I have of the big picture. How things fit into the grand scheme. Exactly what or whose scheme it is, I don’t know. But I feel that I am constantly trying to zoom out, to view things from a more global perspective. When in fact I envy those who wear their hearts on their sleeves and keep the truth on the tips of their tongues.

A healthy amount of anxiety should also accompany the sudden thought of a memory. I become anxious because I have doubts that things actually happened as I remember them. And of course their are those vivid moments of drunken times that are ironically remembered. The moments of clarity that are the most clear in all the fog of the mind. Which I believe have to do with the reason why I drank. To come to terms with the way things are, to deal with life, to know that I live with a certain amount of privilege unearned brings a sharp dissonance. I do not call it guilt bit it’s a feeling of being the teacher’s pet, of being chosen first, of winning the lottery. It makes me think that god has less than pure motives for me if I am the teachers pet. But god and all the infinitesimal constructs that keep his wobbly frame standing have one fault. A fault that I will never be able to get over, even on my most optimistic days. Knowing that belief is a leap between two cliffs of knowledge or more often a leap off a cliff. The very fact that the idea of god was planted early and everything that comes with it, both good and bad are man made. Everything is man made. Our narratives put humanity at the center of the plot. Adam and Eve were to take care of the animals and the earth. But who would take care of Adam and Eve? Save for our meddling, the animals seem to be getting along fine. I will never be able to move past the thought that men continue to be confident about god. I myself can be confident about love, anger, sadness, hatred, integrity, etcetera. But what does that have to do with god? If I create my own god who is serving whom? Because I wish not to drink alcohol anymore, there are some who say that a belief in a power greater than myself is the only thing that will save me. Again if I create my god, what is saving me? And another rickety construct is born and it climbs in a jagged fashion along with the rest of the thin, beams to support an idea. An idea we call god (or whatever name) with infinitesimal foundations.

I continue to struggle with these existential thoughts but then ironically Jesus comes to mind. He was mostly about people. There are people around me all the time and when this thought crosses my mind I get disgusted with myself for staring up at the sky and ignoring what’s around me. People in my family, the people I was born to and those who are in close proximity, the people who have similarities and empathize. The people who help me and the people who need help. So I help and then I notice all the people that need help. We are everywhere. The more I help the more I realize I need help. And because I was raised to love myself as I love my neighbor I stop helping others and turn the help inwards. Some people call this selfish. They can go fuck themselves. (Which we all do anyway but because no one likes to talk about it or even recognize that it’s a normal part of life, we are offended when someone says go fuck yourself).

My interpretation of the golden rule is a good example of the constructs. Someone might hear my belief and hold a similar belief, the pastor of a mega-church may share their belief and an entire congregation will send up thousands of supports to hold up their version of the vagaries we all seem to insist upon. While I might knock down some people’s constructs, some other constructs will rise in its place, directly as a result of my cutting others down. There is no action that adds without subtracting or subtracts without adding. The idea that one is good and the other is bad is simply another part of the same vagaries we all maintain. Every person in a giant sphere. Close, but no one exactly on the same plane. Each one of us with a slightly different perspective than the person next to them. Each perspective growing more and more different until you look up and see the person directly opposite you in the sphere. You will think he is above and you below. The problem, is he may think exactly the same thing about you. So we draw lines. Lines from person to person, creating understanding. Yet this mostly fails because each line has a motive, so in reality there are two parallel lines running from person to person rather than a two way exchange, back and forth. There is instead a line for one and a line for the other: while one person shows their perspective, the other person does the same, simultaneously. Neither one paying attention to the other.

Memories

A short piece written in 2005.

by Marcus Jonathan Chapman

I don’t have clear memories. Ask what I did yesterday and I sound like a slacking student during a pop oral exam. The ‘um’s’ and uhs start to stumble out. Luckily there is a script for moments like this, one word of dialogue, “nothing.” Which translates into nothing worth telling you about or nothing I would like to share with you. That is my answer to the question of what I did yesterday, so my childhood is a black hallway with shapes, noises and the odd flash of light on a moment. I’m not sure how other peoples memories function. Mine seems to flash on and off like hitting a flashlight with corroding batteries against my palm. But why? I’ve watched too many TV shows, films and read too many stories about children and the experiences they suppress. I’m afraid to explore for fear I may find I’ve been poked and prodded by aliens or worse, someone I know. The feeling is almost relieving. The feeling is eerily giddy, like snuggling under the covers during a storm. The feeling surrounds the thought that I may have an excuse. If what I, think is true then I’ve found my despair, the muse of all writers with lasting work and something to say. I have a reason to be miserable and pretend to enjoy other peoples company. If what I think is true then ill have a cigarette, hell ill have a black and mild and suck it back until it melts the plastic or burns the wood. Depending on who did what ever it is I think might have been done, I may have a drink. Hell, I may even go on a week-long binge because everything I know is a lie, the mirror I’ve been staring at has shattered before my eyes. If what I think happened actually happened. where do I start? Ask my mom if her only son may have been treated like a flesh-light? Will I honestly be traumatized? No doubt if such a thing is true I will be shocked if I discover who it was. However I’m not convinced that the trauma of the discovery will out-weigh my excitement about the possibilities of a reaction. Do I somehow wish that I was a kiddie who was diddled simply to justify a drink? Yes and who would blame me? Any reaction other than a drunk binge would seem strange. If I don’t remember what difference does it make to me if someone tells me its true? Reliving a memory is not the same as repeating a fact. The difference is between standing in the shallow end and thrashing in the deep end.

Is who I am the result of this possible event? My skepticism blurring with cynicism, my tight lipped nature, my apprehension at physical touch, the duality of my personality split between my family and myself. The truth is an open festering wound but with enough morphine…what’s on TV?

Orion’s Belt

A short piece written about my grandfather in 2017.

by Marcus Jonathan Chapman

My grandfather was a mechanic. I remember the bar of soap he used to clean off his hands. A dry bar with deep black and grey grooves. I wasn’t sure which was doing the cleaning; his hands or the bar. At the dinner table I distinctly remember how clean his hands appeared. The smell of his shirt a mixture of sweat and grease. It was a comforting smell. A smell I wanted to emit when I became a man. Before every meal I would hold hands with my grandparents while my grandpa blessed the food. After dinner he would read his bible, old and worn with nearly every page highlighted, underlined or dog-eared. His favorite book was Revelation. He always talked about Jesus coming back and taking us home. How he couldn’t wait for the day Jesus came back. How it wouldn’t be long now before Jesus came home. He pointed out all of the signs in Revelation and said how we were living in end times.

I remember the things he said. At the time they didn’t mean very much but now thinking about him they make me sad. My grandfather isn’t alive anymore but before he died in his nineties he tried to end his life in his seventies.

Entering my grandfathers garage from inside the house I was met with the heavy smell of grease mixing with my grandfathers body odor. After walking My grandfathers garage was a monument to tools and craftsmanship.

Looking back now the things I wish he would have taught me like how to change the oil in a car, change the brakes, check the fluids, take apart and re-build an engine, all of those things he always stopped when I got to his house. Instead he taught me about the bible and about Jesus. I think I’ve gotten past deconstructing everything he told me. Now I’m at the point where I am reconstructing Jesus, the bible and my cultural/religious upbringing for myself.

From what I’ve gathered, everyone, upon reaching adulthood does some relearning and reconstructing of things they were taught as children. Well this has been the most painful, slow remodel of all the constructs so far. The way life goes, the reconstructing will probably never end.

When I was four years old my grandfathers white Chevrolet station wagon broke down on the 5 interstate on our way from Oakland to Redlands, CA. I was in the back seat by myself, my grandma in the front passenger seat and my grandpa driving. I only know this because my grandma doesn’t drive. The rest of the story I’m not sure if I remember or if I’ve heard so many times that I’ve mixed it in with my memories. I’ve filled in a few details. It doesn’t matter.

The Chevy breaks down, grandpa grumbles and grunts out of the drivers seat and lifts the hood of the car. Grandma’s jet black beehive hair turns around and she smiles showing the wide gap in her front teeth. She gets out of her seat, grabs some blankets from the trunk and sits with me in the back. Grandpa walks back from using the call box and gets in the back seat on the other side. It’s a cold night and I’m snuggled between grandpa and grandma while we wait for the highway patrol to show up. We’d been waiting for a couple of hours. While we sit their Grandpa points out the stars through the sun roof.

I have a vivid memory of his finger dotting the sky, leaving tiny bright lights in ancient shapes. My grandfather did this on more than one occasion. I remember my grandpa telling me where Jesus would come from when he came back to earth.

“You see that star right in the middle of Orion’s belt? That’s where Jesus is right now. That’s where He (capital H) is going to come from to take us home. That’s where heaven is.”

Presumably where Jesus cleansed the temple, leaving many disappointed millerites and thus a new cell of religions virus split off and they called it Seventh-Day Adventism.

After my grandpa said this, they tell me that I sat their staring at the middle star in Orion’s belt . They tell me that I looked like I was thinking. Then, they tell me I said this, “Is Jesus going to come before the police do?”

They did. The police came and drove us to a motel 6. And that’s it.

At the hotel, they tell me I was so restless I jumped from bed to bed before crashing. A couple of hours later my aunt came and drove us the rest of the way home.

But when they tell me, they stop after what I said. And while they are laughing and smacking the table I think about that little kid and everything he saw after that night. Everything I remember.

11 years later, when I was 15. My grandparents now living in Redlands, a few minutes away from my house. My grandfather started his car, closed the garage, and breathed in the exhaust from a hose he pinched in the driver’s side window that ran into the exhaust pipe. He sat and waited for Jesus to come.

But again, the cops came before Jesus could. My grandma found him in the garage and dialed 911 just in time.

Then I ran. I ran from everything, including my roots in the Adventist church, a part of my culture. I denied any affiliation with Adventists and hated the fact that I knew what Nuteena and stripples were. That I knew what the blood of the lamb was supposed to mean even though I didn’t really understand it. I hated the fact that I felt guilty about listening to music that made my head bob and felt guilty about smoking and drinking. So I drank more and thought about a god that let my grandpa down. If jesus couldn’t save my devout grandfather, what chance did I have?

But I never blamed my grandpa. In fact for many years I defended him saying that suicide is taking matters into your own hands. I would tell myself that he was like Hunter S. Thompson and went out on his own terms, knowing that he always would. I was kidding myself.

I don’t know about a moral to these stories.

The questions of god, purpose and existence zip around in an infinite loop in my head. I do know this, the pedestal I built for my grandfather no longer exists but the love I feel for him is still alive. I remember giving him a hug at the behavioral medical clinic where they took him on a 5150 after his suicide attempt. He was wearing a gown, his eyes glassed over from the cup-o-pills, and his few remaining hairs tousled. he gave me a dopey smile and a big hug.

I experienced my own great disappointment and it was my grandpa that disappointed me. He clung to the church like a lush grips their liquor. And now he’s a husk of what I remember. If spirituality is the ocean and religion is the vessel my grandfather never learned how to swim. And when the storms came, the foundation he clung to didn’t hold up. The great disappointment wasn’t a singular event, my grandpa relives it every single day.

A lunch from a long time ago

A short piece written in 2011 or 2012

by Marcus Jonathan Chapman

My aunt pregnant for the first time loses her baby. I am sad but I am too young to understand the impact a tragedy of that magnitude has on the person closest to it.
My aunt is a strong woman, full of love, confidence and wit. Perhaps a judgmental, albeit human, eye with a warm hug regardless of how she see’s you.
I make a habit of pushing myself into the spotlight of my mind but cuing the music to cut myself off early on the stage of life. My thoughts consume my relation to everything and everyone. I have learned that I need not waste time on people now if I will see them in heaven. What am I saying, there is no heaven. Childhood teachings are really sticky.
My narcissism is making me sick but I can’t stop thinking about me. The earth revolves around the sun, not the son of Christofer and Ester Chapman.
…
A lunch with my Aunt in which I cannot clearly remember if I was intoxicated or not. I remember itching for a cigarette as soon as I wolfed down the turkey salad on rye. I remember shaking my head and repeating “I’m fine, no, I’m fine. I’m okay. I’m okay.” The first lie we tell ourselves to convince the mirror that it will never shatter. My aunt relayed an observation about my 5-year-old self that has lingered and wriggled around in the back of my mind like a severed lizards tail.

Something changed when I was 5 years old. I can’t remember my childhood. It is as fuzzy as a booze fueled night on the town (or in my apartment). What happened to me? My heart races. Perhaps, this will be the tragic excuse of molestation. A victim of pedophilia turned poet. A writer who has been in the gutter and can paint it in a perfect-bound, hard cover copy of his first novel. How can I use this for immortality? I want to live forever. That narcissism can’t pull its gaze from the reflection.

My aunt lost a baby, maybe even two and I’m left wondering if I’ve ever been touched inappropriately or left in a toxic environment. Where do I get off feeling sorry for myself? Nothing has ever happened to me that I cannot handle. And there it is again that me word. Its all about me. Not you or him or her or them or it. Its all about me and yet I put myself in the lowest category of the last file in the dustiest, rustiest cabinet of life and all humanity but I insist to myself that everything is about me. Every hug, kiss, smile, squeeze, laugh, smirk, giggle, round of applause, slap on the back, is all about me. I am narcissistic and I don’t even think very highly of myself. Am I truly this selfish or do I indulge for the namesake of these pages? Both are scary prospects for an obsession that runs circles around my attention to anything else.

I have an excuse but you are simply stupid. I made a mistake but you have ruined my life. I forgot but you are careless. I am sick but you are lazy. I was wronged but you don’t stand up for yourself. I had a bad day but you have a bad attitude. I may gossip but you should get a life. I am frustrated but you simply don’t know what to do. I am not perfect but you think you’re better than me. I have an excuse but you are just stupid.

What is really going on here? The words follow the emotion, which rushes in after an experience. I feel less like a swan and more like a parrot. Obsessed with my own image and copying the noises closest to me. To be clawing through the same self absorbed drivel, session after writing session is enough to make me want to rip out my own heart and feed it to my brain just to get a taste of pure emotion. I am supposed to write for myself not about myself. This constant cycle of narcissistic thought is welling up in my chest I want to scratch out every letter “I”, “m”, “e” and hyper drive into some god like perspective. An uninvolved point of view. Place myself on the objective alter and slit my throat letting the Deus ex Machina of my psyche take over. To sever and shatter the ego from the self. Who am I supposed to be? Don’t follow me. We’re getting back into those dark slimy corners of the mind again. So deep down that I must slowly return like a deep sea diver coming up for air. Too fast and the chaos never leaves. Attempting never to dwell in the past I move ever forward so fast that the hair is being ripped off the front of my head and sticking to my back. Time whips past me and the closest I’ve ever come to the truth is a question. Does anyone get this right?

Flow, Irrigation, Plumbs

by Marcus Jonathan Chapman

God’s coming she’s just tying her shoe laces and once she gets her kicks on she’s gonna kick some ass. At least that’s what grandpa told me. He assured me, on multiple occasions that every mother fucker would get their comeuppance. Not exactly in those words but something like that.

Grandpa also said that if I kept up my hustle the money would flow in. That seemed like more pertinent, relevant advice than anything about god. If I had to wait for god to tie her shoes, then I might as well lace up mine and get out there to kill some time.

Grandpa and god. Two figures that let me down, albeit unintentionally. Grandpa let me down, not with his words but with his actions and god can’t let me down or lift me up, if you catch my drift. Grandpa could fix a car, build a house or make water flow in any direction through pipes. What grandpa couldn’t do was make himself better.

I remember the things he said about god and shit. He pointed at the stars and told me which constellation Jesus would return from, where heaven is, where I told grandpa he would be when I held his hand right before his last breath. I remember the way grandpa smelled after working on his cars. He washed his hands with a cavernous bar of soap and when he hugged me the smell of motor oil and grease was overwhelming. I wish he’d told me more about fixing cars, pipes and houses than he did about god. I can fix a car, I can’t do anything with the other information.

I remember the way he used to say orange, “oyenge.” I loved it. For a few years I made myself pronounce the color and fruit like that. Right up until he turned on the car, hooked up a hose from the exhaust pipe to the driver’s side window and closed the garage. He might have met god that day had grandma not opened the garage door and found him.

Like a plumb in my memory is grandpa. The skin is bitter and I have to get past it to get to the sweetness in the middle. I loved him. As for that other figure, what’s there to say?

Fog, Psychedelic, Ascend

3 things to inspire 1 story written in 20 minutes. #story320
words/phrase provided by https://wordcounter.net/random-word-generator

Believe it or not his name was Sheth like someone drunk trying to say Seth. His parents told the nurse at the hospital this name, Sheth, they said. The nurse began to write Seth but the father suspected this would happen and corrected him right away.

Taking off his glasses and wiping them, Sheth’s father chuckled and said, “Our Shon’sh name is sheth, you she, he’sh shpecial.”

Then Sheth’s father began to recount his psychedelic tale, which wasn’t at all psychedelic.

“You shee,” Sheth’s father continued. “Sheth comes from a long line of family membersh who have lifted their conshioushneshesh above the fog. They’ve ashcended.”

What Sheth’s father should have said was that one time at a concert his parents had taken LSD (or LShD) and wandered off the grounds of the event into a small shish-kabob restaurant.

Sheth’s great grandparents were named Sarah and Samuel, however, Sam was a mute and Sarah had a lisp. Her children were named Shamshon, Shyril, Chrish, and Shteven.

Chrish begat Sheth’s father, Shtan.

Sarah, the matriarch of the family never corrected her children with the lisp, she thought it was cute that they copied her own lisp.

When she named her children, god only knows why she chose names with S’s, the nurses took down the names she said exactly as she said them.

So Shtan, father of Sheth now stood proudly defending the one thing that made their family truly unique, a lisp passed down from generation to generation.

“we’re not sho different you and I,” continued Shtan to the nurse. “It’sh jusht that my family refushesh to adhere to shoshietal normsh. we proudly shay all the wordsh.”

The nurse had to interrupt.

“I’m sorry Shtan, but I’m being paged. I need to go but to be clear your son’s name is Sheth, S-H-E-T-H, correct?”

Shtan feeling a deep sense of pride at becoming a new father and excited that the nurse recognized their proud family tradition, tried to convey how he was feeling.

It came across as an awkward display of winks, thumbs and slow nodding’s of the head.

The nurse left and before the door closed Shtan heard him say–

“Can you believe the names of this family? Sheth? Shtan?” Then laughter

Shtan thought to himself, shshit.

Railway, Mountainous, Short

3 things to inspire 1 story written in 20 minutes. #story320
words/phrase provided by https://wordcounter.net/random-word-generator

In the Yukon there is a train that runs through the mountains. How the builders of this railway constructed those hundreds of miles of perfectly parallel lines through rocky, mountainous terrain, is a wonder every bit as spectacular as the views from the cars.

My grandfather loved that trip. We took a boat from Seattle to Alaska and floated around the last frontier. He was all smiles, a grin that covered his teeth but ran ear to ear.

On the train we rode during a day trip, he bought a hat as a souvenir. He wore that hat almost everyday until he went to the hospital for the last time.

I don’t know why I’m thinking about him now but I do know that I often think about him during times when I have a lot on my mind.

All my life I’ve been compared to my grandfather. The same short, stocky build. The same generally mild temperament but with a rare temper.

I think about where I am in life and the things I’ve gone through to get here. Normally I compare them to my grandfathers life and the things he went through.

None of it was remotely the same but somehow we’re similar.

The question I have for myself now is what am I thinking about that has me going through this exercise.

Maybe there is no reason. Maybe it’s year seven and all my cells have completely changed, I’m a different person. Maybe it’s just bed time.

Whatever reason, I know I’m thinking about my grandpa, wearing that velcro strap hat with “Alaska” written on the crown of the cap and he’s smiling.