Post by Juan Castrocafe on Sept 8, 2006 17:11:59 GMT -6
REMEMBERING MY LITTLE SELF
Some of the greatest times in my life were with simple things really...a box, a doll but most of all, with a good friend like Ronnie and Kelly (couldn't find a pic of Kelly). Ronnie was always smiling and he loved cheese and crackers and of course the tootsie roll pops! It was a two hour scenic ride in the back of the family car to Nashville to the projects where my grandmother stayed. I believe my parents worked very hard (considering the times) to not let the teachings they got affect me concerning diversity. I could always sense that my father had a good amount of discomfort about being in the projects but he would never let on, however, I could feel the "look-down" he had about the place, considering our beginnings, the projects seemed to have better building materials than the duplex we lived at in Winchester, Tennessee before we got the "family home" on Orchard Lane.
I never knew the differences but I always looked forward to that ride because I was going to be able to play with my two bestest friends in my childhood. Kelly and Ronnie. My grandmother died about two years after these pictures were taken and our trips to Nashville no longer included trips to Ronnie and Kelly's place. No more june bugs on a string, stopping by the community center to get a really cool box lunch, always having the bigger black boys making the "black power" sign and then laughing hysterically when I did (I didn't know) and no more of having two people in my childhood who "got me". With these two boys, I was not some "odd fish" in a little pond, I was their friend and they were mine.
Despite some of the roughest illnesses and other abuses, this was a great time because I was just joyful for being. Kids get that at some time and somewhere between that point and adulthood, it gets "taught out"...joy, it has no price and can never be forcefully seized, it just is and so often, it is the one thing most fleeting in this trip around the sun...joy without expectation...that little look of hope in that boys eyes at a "new world" full of wonder, friends, parks, playing, donuts and cartoons. Sometimes I hear that Pink Floyd song, and I feel very sad for the writer because of the lines,
"when I was a child, I caught a fleeting glimpse
out of the corner of my eye,
I turned to look but it was gone,
I cannot put my finger on it now,
the child is grown, the dream is gone,
I have become comfortably numb..."
sometimes I have found comfort listening to that song, I could play the lead guitar part on a piece of string stretched across a stick I know it so well...but I found it, that which is so often thought of as fleeting, is often always right there...you just forget to look at it, because sometimes it is still just like that little person, until you stop and see them, they are just in the shadows...but joy is no matter the pain...no matter the nagging failures that may haunt you in the land of shoulda-coulda-woulda...they just don't add up when you stop looking at them and remember yourself, when the reason for joy was not a thing or a person or a place, because it was just that you were and then, everything was wonderful because of that and that alone.
Remember the good in yourself and if you can't, find where it is now, it is there...
John Moseley
Some of the greatest times in my life were with simple things really...a box, a doll but most of all, with a good friend like Ronnie and Kelly (couldn't find a pic of Kelly). Ronnie was always smiling and he loved cheese and crackers and of course the tootsie roll pops! It was a two hour scenic ride in the back of the family car to Nashville to the projects where my grandmother stayed. I believe my parents worked very hard (considering the times) to not let the teachings they got affect me concerning diversity. I could always sense that my father had a good amount of discomfort about being in the projects but he would never let on, however, I could feel the "look-down" he had about the place, considering our beginnings, the projects seemed to have better building materials than the duplex we lived at in Winchester, Tennessee before we got the "family home" on Orchard Lane.
I never knew the differences but I always looked forward to that ride because I was going to be able to play with my two bestest friends in my childhood. Kelly and Ronnie. My grandmother died about two years after these pictures were taken and our trips to Nashville no longer included trips to Ronnie and Kelly's place. No more june bugs on a string, stopping by the community center to get a really cool box lunch, always having the bigger black boys making the "black power" sign and then laughing hysterically when I did (I didn't know) and no more of having two people in my childhood who "got me". With these two boys, I was not some "odd fish" in a little pond, I was their friend and they were mine.
Despite some of the roughest illnesses and other abuses, this was a great time because I was just joyful for being. Kids get that at some time and somewhere between that point and adulthood, it gets "taught out"...joy, it has no price and can never be forcefully seized, it just is and so often, it is the one thing most fleeting in this trip around the sun...joy without expectation...that little look of hope in that boys eyes at a "new world" full of wonder, friends, parks, playing, donuts and cartoons. Sometimes I hear that Pink Floyd song, and I feel very sad for the writer because of the lines,
"when I was a child, I caught a fleeting glimpse
out of the corner of my eye,
I turned to look but it was gone,
I cannot put my finger on it now,
the child is grown, the dream is gone,
I have become comfortably numb..."
sometimes I have found comfort listening to that song, I could play the lead guitar part on a piece of string stretched across a stick I know it so well...but I found it, that which is so often thought of as fleeting, is often always right there...you just forget to look at it, because sometimes it is still just like that little person, until you stop and see them, they are just in the shadows...but joy is no matter the pain...no matter the nagging failures that may haunt you in the land of shoulda-coulda-woulda...they just don't add up when you stop looking at them and remember yourself, when the reason for joy was not a thing or a person or a place, because it was just that you were and then, everything was wonderful because of that and that alone.
Remember the good in yourself and if you can't, find where it is now, it is there...
John Moseley
