The first 10 years of my life were a nightmare..at least the parts I can remember…like most nightmares it stays in your memory in some parts vivid detail in some parts lost feelings – feelings of dread behind hidden words – hidden images. And so it was that my teens were like a slow, dull and fearful awakening and my 20s, my teens. When I was 35, I was 25 and one day I was 45 but that number remained a lie. In the world, I was 10 years younger than that at the least and for always having been 10 years behind, I was also lost…in some ways still asleep – but of course we are all still asleep – or maybe we wake up one day…for some that day might even be now but for me no doubt that day is still 10 years away.

In that half light I stumbled thru my adolescence, fumbled like most youths – most youths of 2 or 3 – of course I didn’t realize it then. I simply thot I was different and couldn’t think there was a better way to be – my memories are better than a babies but not so my actions…there was a girl… I think I was in love but am equally sure she was not with me and still we spent 2 years together before she broke free – there was meaning in it – to love – but not a meaning for later – not for now – a babies bauble one, for certain – gone- now one of a few faded memories.

I didn’t flunk out of high school – I failed until the very end and came out the other side with nothing – and graduated to the soup kitchens, the slums and the street. I dreamed small – of sitting with a typewriter under a tree – but even that, even now was too big a dream for me. Instead I lived in fear – and made my full time job trying not to look it in the eye…to look anywhere but now and here. Perhaps that’s why I lost my will to dream – too many nightmares there – I was raised by nightmares. I did not want them.