Descending the Cairo Side

– DEPARTURE

  I took off to see the world on June Fourth, flush with the conceit of youth and hoping for a great embarkation party. But events soon veered off course. Sometime between my arrival in Montreal and an early morning flight to Madrid, the real world got in the way.

  I'd thought about traveling a lot. Fifteen years of uninterrupted schooling will do that to a person. From my first memory of alphabet-learning in pre-K through the tender ministrations of the nuns in primary school, to the charade of undergraduate studies, life had been nothing but a parade of classrooms overseen by battle-axe teachers and self-important professors.

 : Family life in the late Fifties and early Sixties was a progression of years that became increasingly boring and pointless. My parents took care of my physical requirements adequately, but they didn't have enough emotional room in their own heads to offer much guidance. I was raised alone and became psychologically destitute in an absolute sense that frightens me still.

Goodbye to the Road

The great bird, regal and sleek in flight, swooped over the dry forest above the desert. Far away, jagged peaks of crumbling lava gave way to a snow-capped Sierra, but the near shore of the Pacific Ocean lay concealed. Yet the creature knew instinctively about the pyramids that existed beneath the cloud cover, ancient structures that resembled the tops of the barren foothills that poked their summits above the heavy white mist.

The second chapter of Goodbye to the Road, title "The Reeds", was recently published in Words of Wisdom, a North Carolina literary magazine: Volume 25, #1 March 2006.