What I thought the next chapter was going to look like.
I remember because I see forgetting as one of my two deaths.
I mean, what's a man with no past? I think it's little more than a shell parachuted into existence, barely above a single feather swept by a hurricane and taken where it doesn't want to go -- powerless to resist it, unable to stop it. But that lost feather may still give you the faintest outline of the whole story, even if it doesn't know it itself, like shards of broken, jagged glass glinting like stars at the base of what used to be their frame.
Memories are precious not because they are calm, but because they are survivors of the storm that gave them wings in the first place.
I think that what encapsulates those feelings perfectly for me was the time I was finally able to leave home, to take flight and leave the nest behind. It was a memory burned on ice.
It was supposed to be a moment of unparalleled glory, but it was coming out the tail end of what had been an emotionally-charged decade painted on wide stokes by the brush of mistakes and chances, so it didn't resemble anything like what I had imagined in countless late-night talks with my sister when we were supposed to be asleep. Instead of an epic flight into a sky so blue as to mirror an ocean and a Sun so bright as to turn myself golden, it resulted in something painful to watch (and, of course, live through) -- I honestly felt like one of those aviation pioneers that tried to touch the sky by affixing wings to their fucking bicycles. It was a rough awakening, a costly mistake, and the fire of challenge being lit up inside of me all at once.
What it actually looked like.
Finding a place to call my own wasn't hard because I didn't have high expectations -- I just wanted somewhere to crash in at the very end of a long day, a sort mansion for microscopic men. It was such a raw deal that I honestly think that the only reason I was so ready to pull the trigger on it was because I was 19-years-old and didn't know better. I mean... Imagine this:
A place so small that it literally could only fit a small bed (thankfully, provided), a few shelves built into the wall (and held in place by rusty screws so fragile as to threaten a complete collapse on the daily), a desk that was falling apart and a space heather so ill-fitting that it was actually lifting the shoddy floor tiles it was standing on through the poor, misdirected heat it was able to deliver. It was such a small thing that it didn't even have a bathroom of its own (at least not in the traditional sense): I literally had to go down to a lower level to get to the WC assigned to my unit... and you know what? That taught me the valuable lesson of eating healthily and just enough better than a myriad of one-on-one talks with my parents and all those health & lifestyle classes I had to sit through as a teen.
Moving into that place was so alien to me that I didn't even sleep that first night, being overwhelmed by the lingering thought of being completely alone for the very first time since my journey through life had begun. There were no noises around the house, no clattering of silverware as it was being used or put away, no distant and muffled sounds of a TV clicking on somewhere just far enough for me to receive as an unknown, indescribable sound. Not even footsteps for the most part... wherever I had decided to build the next step of my life, it wasn't a place for night owls.
But while the silence was suffocating outside of my tiny apartment, noise was raging inside my skull... I like to imagine it as something resembling half an epic party and half a funeral procession, which is exactly how I felt about this whole thing.
My mental picture is of cherubs playing the bass, of angels singing backup and even of a single demon jamming on the guitar, all forming an all-encompassing wave of sound that was the saddest of ballads, the happiest of anthems and the most deafening of silences at all once. It was such an overwhelming experience that it even overrode my complete exhaustion and forced me to do something, anything to try and keep my sanity just long enough to survive those first few hours of a weird kind of freedom.
The latest iteration of my trusty "travelling pack". While not the one described on this story, it has certainly gone through some of the same things.
And what I did was unpacking my bags.
Believe it or not, the thing that had taken the biggest toll on me was going through my old childhood room and deciding which things were going to make the journey with me and which ones were to be left behind. You can tell a whole lot about a person by the things he owns and there was something truly eerie about having to dissolve the picture of childhood and adolescence thrown carelessly (and perfectly) around that room. Every corner was a memory still too raw to touch, every object on crooked shelves and damaged drawers just a little piece of the puzzle that the mind wasn't ready to pull out or disturb, lest the whole thing may come crashing down and become an unrecognizable mess.
Thankfully, though, the universe had me cover (as it often did).
While deciding what may accompany me into the next chapter of my life was still very challenging, decisions were made all the easier because I could only take as much as it'd fit the passenger seat, backseat and trunk of my aging Regatta-S, a car that looked just as tired and fried as I did. That made me have to think very strategically about what the next move would be. And, so, I began prioritizing usefulness over comfort, adulthood over childhood; even present over memories.
My books and magazines were ceremoniously thrown into small boxes, taped shut and set next-to the traveling case for my Olivetti Studio 44 typewriter; a small pencil case full of office supplies and spare ink ribbons was tied to the handle. Then, I opened a duffel bag and began pulling in clothes from the racks: socks and underwear on the side pockets, shirts and pants on the main body. My old, cursed pipe and the cigarette case gifted to me by the Queen of the Mallrats hidden in between my jackets because the price of leaving them behind (and risk them being discovered in my absence) would completely outweigh the benefits of burying that past for good.
It's amazing to me how some of these things have been with me since the very beginning, nearly thirty years ago.
Then I grabbed my backpack and began dumping some of my favorite portable devises into it: my GameBoy Pocket, ancient Polaroid digital camera, the dented Walkman that once belonged to someone very special, and the half-dead flip phone I still held on to all went inside of it with dull thuds, followed closely by rain of batteries in various states of life. My tangled headphones, weird collections of nothingness, pocket knives, decks of cards (both Spanish and Poker) and a multitude of other things making sure that the bloated zipper on the pack could barely even close under the sheer pressure of a lifetime being put away.
Taking all of that into the car proved to be extremely relaxing (in a backwards kind of way), but that illusion was quickly shattered as soon as I got to the "meat" of the issue: those large electronics that may not even fit on the car anymore (and even if they did, they may not actually have space on the tiny closet of an apartment I had gotten for myself). That... made me pause for a really long time because I was sure that all my years of Tetris had completely failed me. How in the world was I going to do this? It was one thing to drop a lifetime of random purchases into small bags, but these things? Oh, those hurt to think about.
The first thing I did was getting a borrowed kitchen chair into the room I once shared with my sister and get it as close to the wardrobe as I possibly could... because up there, in a place that had looked like a mountain when we were children, was the thing that kept us company for years and years: our 14 inches TV through which we dodged sleep like champions, a gift so rare at the time that all our friends envied us for it.
It still worked like a charm even all those years and I simply wanted it. The thing that had fueled so much of my childhood was needed to light the spark of adulthood, and I was so utterly decided on it that it was my only non-negotiable term. I simply HAD to have it.
These guys have all been featured on different articles, that's how important they have been to me.
... Which made it all the funnier when I finally worked up the courage to ask every person around if they'd object of me having it.
When I asked my sister, she shrugged.
When I asked my mom, she acted as if she had forgotten the thing even existed.
When I asked my grandpa, he asked if I needed help getting it down.
Having no opposition for a plan that meant so much for me was great and all, but it also felt kind of shallow because no-one else seemed to give a damn about it. There's something undeniably empty about winning by default, doesn't it?
Still... unscrewing that thing from the coaxial wire that had been giving it cable service for nearly two decades at that point gave me back some meaning by having me fight both its natural stiffness and the few spiders that had decided that it made for a damn fine pillar to build their webs on. When I finally got the thing down, I was surprised by how heavy it actually was. Still, I got some old newspapers and immediately wrapped it on them before placing it lovingly in a box with all the other little treasures that were already on their way.
Retired, but not forgotten.
Keeping the TV also allowed me to move forward with the next step of my plan... because, you see, I was in no position to get another TV at the time, both because of the physical space needed for it and also because I was living off a very modest salary that was barely a small upgrade over the flier-handing ways that had afforded me my PlayStation just two years prior. But this? This opened some doors for me and also made it so I could just begin packing the rest of my console gear: my NES, Famicom, SEGA Genesis Model II, Dreamcast and, of course, PS1 (plus their joysticks, wires and small libraries). By the time I was done getting all of that into boxes and inside the car, my arms felt like undercooked noodles and there was barely enough space left inside the vehicle to switch gears. I'm sure a cop would have loved to ask a few questions as I drove through the city with that much garbage sticking out of windows, blocking my view and shifting under the strain of traveling. But, luckily, that didn't happen.
What's really funny to me now is that my trademark stubbornness had reached such grandiose levels that I actually went back home right before I was even two blocks away, pulled in again and began collecting part of my VHS collection and both my records, record player and mid-80s stereo in garbage bags. I knew right from the get-go that would likely have to stay packed for days (or even weeks) at the time, by I just couldn't leave without them... and it actually worked really well because my ginormous VCR actually provided a solid based for pilling up the rest of this wicked monument to consumerism on the floor right behind the driver's seat. I guess I'm luckily that I didn't get stabbed by my copy of Ace Ventura: Pet Detective as I raced to my new apartment just in time to settle in before nightfall, scared to make really poor first impressions among my fellow roamers of tiny spaces by operating the elevator twelve times in a row just getting my stuff up there.
This is not representative of my own experience... Tony Hawk ain't dead by repeated blunt force impacts with the ground.
I was actually sweating by the time I was done carrying all those things inside my new dwellings. But that was just part of the battle, now came the equally demolishing task of unpacking everything (always with the lingering fear of having dropped or forgotten something important along the way). And if getting all that junk to fit on the car required every ounce of my ancient Tetris prowess, then getting it all unpacked and settled called upon my most feral Mortal Kombat memories, essentially brute-forcing my way through bags and boxes with the trained hands of someone who just wanted to beat the problem in front of him to a pulp with something vaguely resembling mastery and elegance. It was... interesting.
Naturally, my books and magazines got a lot of love, being handled like the sacred artifacts they were as they began occupying the neatest spaces of the broken shelves. These were followed by my VCR and record player (both flanked by their respective collections). The stereo occupied a lower shelf and remained unplugged for the majority of my time in there, its powerful speakers threatening with making for a very unpleasant experience for neighbors that didn't hate me yet. The TV, though? At first, it occupied a space front and center of the whole thing: it was positioned at just the right angle for me to be able to get an unobstructed view from the bed, allowing me to channel-surf without ever lifting my head from the pillow. I loved that so much that I even forgot unpacking the rest of my stuff for a few hours just to experience it in full, getting the antenna to the airwaves because I didn't think far enough ahead to get cable installed on that place yet. But you know what? Watching a version of The Simpsons so full of static as to resemble an audio-only thing during my first full weekend on the place was so incredibly fitting as to make the experience perfect.
But that first night called for something far more active and rewarding than whatever could be found on broadcast television, and so I went back outside to get something that had caught my eye on the way in: a half-rotten, wooden stool that someone had thrown out, carrying it back to my place with the determination of an animal making preparations for a long Winter. I then removed the TV from its place of privilege and set it on that stool right by the door, all whilst getting my RF cables and controllers, jumping right into it as Double Dragon on NES lit up a screen that had never seen a videogame before and which allowed us both man and machine the luxury of experiencing something unheard-of and fun, me by playing in a completely new definition of "home" and it by getting to be used in a whole new way. I like to think it actually appreciated the gesture.
I was so engrossed by what my pixels were doing on-screen that I completely lost track of the time, my feet brushing against the sea of cartridges and CDs that were littering the floor like a plastic sea, still waiting for their turn to be played. I remember getting Medal Of Honor: Underground and Tony Hawk Pro Skater 4 (both for PS1) in there at some point, but I must have fallen asleep during my caffeine-and-mania-induced frenzy because I woke up to main menus as if I had turned the console on-and-off or something. Whatever the case, that random gaming session would turn out to be one of the most significant ones I had ever experienced, only rivaled by things happening on both ends of the clock: my epic, lovable battles of the past with my girlfriend and the fun-filled marathons with my kids in the future.
As for the apartment itself: it would spend most of its three years of service being way too hot in Summer, way too cold in Winter, way too crammed whenever I had people over for anything other than fixing one its many, many structural or electrical problems... and I loved it to pieces.
So many battles over the years... I'm starting to think that *I* deserve a Medal of Honor!
Not only did it allow me to rediscover my numbed love for gaming and to give my first, shaky steps into the so-called "real world", but it also taught me a lesson that I think too precious and important to remain unsaid: living is the ultimate craft and your first crack at it isn't going to be a perfect masterpiece, but a messy (often unsalvageable) and disjointed attempt that might vaguely resemble your original intent after dimming the lights enough and drowning just the right amount of beer. It totally makes sense that I'd end up reclaiming my own life in a place so imperfect as to make me homesick every time the silence settled in after a day so loud and busy as to make me long for the middle ground, the parental home where sounds were muffled and movement existed without ever disturbing the whole thing, but this was the next best thing. And all that really means is that was the best I could do at that stage, and do it proudly, like a contemporary Phillip J Fry playing the holophomor to the best of his (limited) abilities, resulting on a story made out of rough outlines and wild gestures through which passion still managed to shine though, however imperfect the end result may have been.
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