Good Evening, Morning or Afternoon fellow denizens of the universe on this side of the proverbial wormhole of existence. It’s been a bit, hasn’t it? Almost nine months by my count since I last wrote anything substantial on this blog. My absence has not been due to a lack of inspiration. In truth, I’ve probably written more in the last, nine months than I’ve written in a few years. You simply haven’t seen anything because it’s all been short stories, poems, started novels and WIPs–with a little bit of a HEAVEN AND ENDWORLD re-write thrown in. I’ve also been busy running what I like to call my “Dad Gauntlet.” Between school for the minions, their activities and other, related concerns–not to mention my job–my time to simply sit in front of a computer and randomly muse has been limited. But as of last Friday, school is out for the summer (respect, Alice Cooper) and activities, though still a factor, are less than they were a few weeks ago. So here I am, returning to what many consider my best writing format–freestyle, First Person and journal-lite–to write about… Summer! Yes, sirs and madams/madams and sirs, the title gave it away.

I’ve written about summer in the past, most notably in “The Mayor of Maple Street” which has been and remains my most read (and re-read) blog entry/piece of Mental Flatulence ever, even 10 plus years after I wrote it. I often revisit that one because it reminds me not just of where I came from, but of how enduring an impact those summer days of youth had on me–back when my entire, subjective universe was centered on a little place that I and my neighbors endearingly called “J-Town.” I look at my minions now–one 15 going on 16 and the other 13–and I marvel at how different their summers look compared to how mine did when I was their age. Nights out playing Spring and Doors with the neighborhood kids until after dark have been replaced by nights on their phones, watching movies and spending time with their friends at the shopping metroplex, their houses, the pool or away on vacations down the shore or to the mountains. I’m not averse to this evolution–technology has changed everything from how we work to how we engage in interpersonal relationships–but I often ask myself if their situation is better than mine was when I was their age. Survey says? Not better. But different. Their memories of summer that they will one day pass onto their minions are and will always be different than mine. And their children–my grandchildren–will have a different view of it, as well. Onward and upward, generation after generation until this old universe we Sh*theads inhabit finally heaves its last breath and consigns itself, and those of us still alive within it to the halls of oblivion.

To be frank (no pun intended), I’m not a huge fan of summer. I like aspects of it–thunderstorms for instance; God you know I love a good “thunder boomer”–and the refreshing embrace of cool water on a hot day, whether said water is from a pool or from an ocean/lake. But the heat and humidity thing irks me. Sweating irks me. Yet despite this, summer holds an enduring sway over me, even now after almost 50 years of life on this side of the proverbial wormhole of existence. I find myself considering the why of this, today–as the gray, hazy sky that vaults overhead threatens rain and a few days of thunder boomers beginning tomorrow. The answer is really quite simple: Memory. A repository of memories from summers past that follow me no matter where I am or what I am doing. I close my eyes, and I helplessly feel my mind ticking backwards like a clock, moving in reverse…

Tock…

…To two years ago, when my minions and I travelled to Mexico with a few friends and their families for a week of tropical relaxation. It was the first real trip we’d taken since my divorce. I carry many, lasting visions with me of the week we spent there but the one that sticks with me the most? Swimming in a cenote with them, the cool, subterranean water soothing our sunburns and easing the heat stroke that I am relatively sure we were all within moments of suffering. I remember thinking–as I floated with them and glanced up at the distant sky above–that for the first time since I left my once-home in Broomall, PA and moved into my now-home in Swarthmore, PA I felt alive. I could glance past the hazy sky above me and see into a boundless future. While the time since then has not been without issue–life never is–I can look back on that moment now and realize that it was the moment I healed. Not physically of course–life, and specifically age brings with it a progressive slate of physical maladies–but mentally? Emotionally? I was, for the first time in many years OK…

Tick…

…To 2018, when I travelled to Disney World with my then-wife and our two minions for a final, family vacation pre-the divorce which we would file for a few, months later. We’d already agreed in principle to the terms of our dissolution and given its inevitability, there was little to no pressure on us. We simply went with the intention of enjoying ourselves and fortunately? We did. Against all odds we spent a wonderful week together. I have a number of memories from that week, a few of which have been captured for posterity, and one in particular that I have a framed picture of, sitting roughly four feet away from me on top of one of my bookcases: Myself and my minions, sitting upon the stoop of a porch somewhere in Animal Kingdom, eating ice cream in the shade and looking like a group of travelers garnering a respite from the tropical heat and humidity. But the one that sticks with me the most is from the day we got caught in a pop-up thunder boomer in the Magic Kingdom. I was easily within a few moments of suffering from heat stroke (again; in case you missed my earlier observance of how much I do not like heat/humidity) and the storm? It cooled me and may have saved me from passing out. I snapped a selfie of the moment we found shelter and while many of the pictures I took, over the years of my now ex-wife and I have disappeared, that one remains on my photo reel, and likely always will. It is a reminder of my family as it once was, pre-the moment it was diminished and a foursome became a threesome a few, short months later…

Tock…

…To the last time I ever saw the woman who I once called “the feminine bane of my early existence.” We ate Chinese food on the unfurnished floor of my then-apartment in Northeast Philadelphia, PA and mused upon our lives, which had been so irrevocably entangled for more than a half a decade. We focused on the good–our friendship, and our capacity to always find a way back to each other–and we avoided the bad. When we did touch upon the latter it was done in jest, and it elicited many long, overdue chuckles. I remember the red, golden glow of the setting, late-summer sun as it streamed in through the front windows of my duplex, like something out of an ENDWORLD novel. We said goodbye and parted with a long hug. I kissed her on her forehead and called her “kiddo” for the last time. She reminded me of my long-before promise to “write this all down someday” before she smiled, walked down the stairs and out of my life forever. I remember thinking as she departed that there was something left unspoken: Two words in a foreign language. “Je t’aime.” They hung upon my lips though, and they would for another, 10 plus years before appearing on the dedication page of my first, published novel. ENDWORLD was not dedicated to her publicly but privately? It was for her. It was the fulfillment of the promise I made to her when we were young, in love and allied against the world around us.

Tick…

…To the night, many years before that in 1995 when we hung out at my above mentioned, once-feminine bane’s house. We sat around her pool. We drank Zima malt liquor despite the oldest of us still being a few months shy of 21. We smoked regular and clove cigarettes, talked, laughed and sang. I remember crooning “Gallows Pole” by Led Zeppelin as my good friend played his guitar. We took requests. There was no love at that time between her and I outside of the love that one feels for a good friend. Yet by the time I had finished singing “Thank You” (also by Led Zeppelin) per her request, I was experiencing the early vestiges of what would soon grow into a feeling, and a relationship that would threaten to tear down everything that we as a group of friends… A family had built. Yet that conflict was still six months away in our collective future. At that moment under a clear, summer sky in far, Northeast Philadelphia, PA there was only a group of kindred souls, spending a summer night together in celebration of their existence.

Tock…

…To the day, a few years earlier when my friends and I–my newly minted family–gathered in Lorimar Park in Huntington Valley, PA for Water War 2.0, a war which I and my team would eventually win. We celebrated that evening by eating dinner as a group in Abington, PA on 611/Old York Road at a restaurant which no longer exists. Winners and losers alike drank Shirley Temples and Roy Rogers because alcohol was still a few years in our future. We shared baskets of fries and onion rings and marveled at how full our lives were. We were young. The world beyond our Super Soakers and water balloons was still a half a decade away. Our proverbial clocks had long, stopped ticking and we were frozen in a moment in time, something akin to the one described by Sting in his song “Fields of Gold.” With my eyes closed, I can still envision that moment as the sun set outside. I remember the feel of the air conditioning on my still-damp clothing and the goosebumps dotting my skin. I can see their smiles and hear their laughter and as much as I do not want the vision to end, I know it will remain with me, long past this moment, over 30 years later: A rapidly graying, divorced Dad with a complimentary pot belly, a bruised tail bone and a touch of osteoarthritis in his left shoulder and in his knees. Reluctantly, I open my eyes.

Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.

Beyond this there are other memories, but I’ve devoted much of my freestyle, First Person, journal-lite writing to them over the years (“The Mayor of Maple Street” is only one of a handful of pieces I have written that I hope to eventually compile into a novel tentatively called “Searching for J-Town”). Not much of what I have written in this format has focused on my life post-J-Town, and today felt like as good a time as any to revisit that era… That epoch of my life. There are others–a weekend away with my then girlfriend, one day to be fiancé, wife and ex-wife in Margate, NJ on my mother’s houseboat with our good friends who just so happened to be staying on another boat in the same marina. A day in Seaside Heights, NJ with the woman I was at the time living with in celebration of her birthday, a woman who I was hopelessly in love with and who I am relatively sure felt the same toward me. It was about as close to a perfect day as I can remember.

Obviously, these days and others, along with the days of pool parties and water wars carried over into the days of Mexico and Disney, and many of the same folks that armed themselves with water guns sometime in the early 1990s were with me for those experiences, as well–my always family. Family, friends and countrymen and women, is an all-encompassing term that goes far beyond blood, and while I love my minions, and I adore my blood family, the classification does not begin nor end with them. It includes them. Including my most recent memories of summer in this rumination simply demonstrates that the title I chose before I wrote “good evening” at the start was the appropriate one. Summer is and always will be a time that breeds stories for me because so many of my greatest memories are of it. ENDWORLD kicked off in the summer. “The Mayor of Maple Street” was about summer. And this blog entry? It further bolsters the claim that at even a few months shy of the big 5-0, summer’s enduring impact on me–whether I go by the pen name of El Autoro or the Madchronicler, or by my given name of Frank/Francis Marsh–will remain until such time as I breathe my last, proverbial breath in this universe on one side of the proverbial wormhole of existence, and consign myself to the halls of oblivion. Their laughter. Their smiles. Always with me.

FM.