Marius and I bumped into each other in the house kitchen, where we popped open a bottle of red wine and began snacking on dates, almonds, cheese, crackers, and chocolate. “I was in the sixth grade,” Marius told me, grabbing a cracker, “and the teacher asked me why I was late for school. I gave a smart-aleck answer because I was drunk.”
Travel inwardly and outwardly until you hear something, a distant and unfamiliar melody, sung in a foreign tongue around a strange fire. Break bread with those you find there, the “others.” Listen to their stories. Pay tribute to their gods and warriors. Honor their ancestors. Feel their hearts.
Some memories we keep, but others we must let go. The typewriter is not a prisoner of its past. It is not doomed to tell the same story over and over. It can write a new story at the hands of a skilled operator.
It’s as if all the lights on the tree have gone out save one ~ the brilliant angel at the top. From that one light I can still see the dim outline of our tree, still full, still alive, with its many decorations, the experiences of a lifetime, all still there, glowing like ghosts in the fading light.
Three different men, with three different sufferings, and how a tiny, pink Barbie shoe changed their souls.
